On Surface Gaming

Posted on January 19, 2017 by baudattitude

surface3logo

So, I mentioned that I was playing Ys: The Oath in Felghana on a Surface 3 in my last entry, and I thought I’d talk about that because it’s one of the more interesting pieces of hardware I’ve owned in a very long time.

If you remember, the first couple of Surfaces came in “Pro” models, those being the models you would actually want to own as they had real Windows and x86 processors, and “RT” models, those being the models that ran weird ARM processors and couldn’t run normal Windows applications.  These were widely reviled and Microsoft didn’t bother to make a Surface RT 3 when they released the Surface 3 Pro.

That left them without a budget Surface, however, so they released the Surface 3 a little later.  If you look strictly at the specs, it’s nothing amazing – it has an Atom processor, albeit a quad-core version, a 10″ 1920×1280 screen with a weird 3:2 aspect ratio, and either 2GB RAM/64GB SSD or 4GB RAM/128GB SSD.

The big things going for it, really, are that screen, because it is exceptionally bright and sharp, and an overall feel of quality construction.  Mice aside, Microsoft has never been a company I’ve thought of as making particularly enticing hardware, and I have to give them credit for making something that – while a budget model – doesn’t FEEL cheap.

Anyway, so you have this weird little stop-gap Surface, and it’s $600 for the version anyone wants (4GB/128GB), and it was actually reviewed pretty well in comparison to the iPad Air 2 which was its main competitor… but then they decided to get out of the budget tablet market and focus on the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, both of which are admittedly stunning but also a bit higher end.

And it just happened that my wife and I were walking past the Microsoft store at a nearby mall, on my birthday, on a day when they were running, essentially, a PLEASE BUY THESE sale.  That $600 Surface was priced down to $400, with the dock included free of charge, and a further educational discount thanks to my wife having her college ID handy… and things happened and I had a new gadget that I assumed would be good for, well, visual novels mostly.  I did not have high hopes for gaming on it beyond that.

Then I was sick for the better part of a month and spent a fair bit of that playing hidden-object games on the thing.  It worked pretty well for those, as well, not that any given HoG is ever THAT taxing.

…and then I was playing the first Ys game (on a different computer) when my wife asked if she could use the TV.

Now, the first couple of Ys games are all 2D sprite based, so I installed them on the Surface, and I had it sitting on its little kickstand, and I plugged an Xbox 360 controller into it, and then I looked at the 12 foot cord connecting me to the computer, and had a lightbulb moment where I realized that it probably had bluetooth built-in, and then I went looking for a Dualshock 4.

A month ago, this wouldn’t have been a great idea.  That was before Valve added Steam Controller drivers for the Dualshock 4, so now the DS4 looks more-or-less like an XBox controller for games that support that, even if they don’t natively support the DS4.

Timing really IS everything.

So, tl;dr version, an low-expectations impulse buy has managed to surprise me.  I’m not in the market for a new computer any time soon, but I will be putting the laptop version of the Surface on my list of things to look at the next time I am.

surface3

Also it’s pretty adorable, silly kickstand and all.

 

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On The Fine Art Of Item Descriptions

Posted on January 18, 2017 by baudattitude

I decided to follow up Ys Chronicles+ with Ys: The Oath in Felghana, and it’s a pretty huge jump in visuals – rather than the sprite-based artwork, it’s all polygons and looks stunning on the Surface 3.  It’s also about the toughest game the Surface 3 can actually handle, I think – I’ve seen some pretty nasty slowdown during one of the boss fights.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.  Rather, I was shopping for some new gear and the item descriptions made me giggle a bit, so I thought I’d share:

ys_banded_mail

ys_banded_slayer

ys_banded_shield

No, SERIOUSLY, the guy was NUTS.  COMPLETELY off his rocker.  Made some good armor, though.  You like?

 

Posted in PC Gaming, videogames | 2 Comments

I got a peaceful, Ys-y feelin’

Posted on January 15, 2017 by baudattitude

ys_chronicles_logo

One of my worst character traits, and one that I manage to keep mostly under  control, is a short temper that flares up at frustrations that are always ridiculous in hindsight. Fortunately I have learned to recognize the signs, and can usually get myself out of the situation that is making me see red BEFORE I wind up needing to apologize to people for being a jerk.

I bring this up because one of my more memorable and humiliating temper tantrums revolved around the last boss of Ys Book II, back in the glory days of the TurboDuo, who was a right bastard of a boss and made even worse by an unskippable and infuriating cutscene that played before every attempt.

I was NOT good at recognizing how angry this was making me at the time, and it was the closest I’ve ever come to breaking a controller in rage. I had barely enough self control to restrain myself to just turning off the console and walking away, never to put the disc back in the system again.

So, it’s been a sore spot for a couple of decades now. Not just because I’d gotten to the final fight of a long RPG and been stymied, but because there was so much personal embarrassment around how it had gotten under my skin.

Anyway, short version, I have recently found myself wanting to go back to the Ys games, give the first two-parter a new chance, and see if I’d be able to get through the things without losing my cool. Playing through all of the Souls games last year with no thrown controllers gave me some hope in this regard, and  XSeed publishing the PC ports of the series on Steam gave me the opportunity (the TurboDuo is long since gone to a Canadian gentleman on eBay.)

I am not ashamed to admit that I set the difficulty level for both games to Easy, nor am I ashamed to resorting to a walkthrough to get through the maze-like Shrine of Solomon in the second game.  I’m pretty sure it was designed to sell hint books back in the day, and I already made it through the maze without said hint books once…

…and I am glad to report that the rematch went much more in my favor this time around AND that I don’t have any new embarrassing outbursts to confess.

One of these days I may even be a grown-up. Give it time.

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Achievement Name: Appropriate

Posted on January 4, 2017 by baudattitude

Getting from prestige 1 to prestige 2 took about 2 weeks, and came with an achievement that really summed up my thoughts on the whole process:

prestige2

Taking the “Grand Marshal’s Medal of Valor” back to the king in Stormwind got me the new look for my class weapons that I had been grinding towards, so that’s another piece of vanity gear added to the wardrobe and life is good.

At some point I should probably start running dungeons and raids again, or something.

I did notice one interesting side effect of the increased PvP rank, though it may just have been coincidence.

There’s an area in the current big hub city that is a PvP area.  In-game, it’s justified as being a kind of lawless area where the guards can easily be bribed to look the other way.  It wouldn’t be a big issue in most cases, since it’s tucked away in a little side nook, but there are quests and goals that take you down there even if you’re not intending to participate in any PvP combat.

On a bad day, it’s a good way to get yourself killed a lot just trying to get something done.

Well, I had to go down there today, for the first time in a while, and I noticed two things:

  1. When you look at another player, you see their approximate PvP rank.  There were some guys running around down there that were in the P5-and-up range, so they have done a LOT of PvP.
  2. Still, even at P2, I didn’t have anyone so much as say “boo” to me.

So… it’s just possible that I no longer look like an easy target, or at least I look like I might be enough of an annoyance that it’s easier just to pick on someone else.  Either way, it was nice to get my questing done and out again unmolested. 🙂

 

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What the well-dressed Draenei is wearing this season

Posted on January 1, 2017 by baudattitude

WoW PvP continues to be an unbalanced and aggravating mess at times, but still offers the occasional feeling of triumph that makes the losses less important.  My goal is to get to Prestige rank 2 and unlock a new look for my class weapon, and win or lose I’m still making progress.

I did complete my PvP armor sets for appearance use, and the two sets are very appropriate for the two schools of priest I play.  Also it makes for a really easy post for the day because all I need to do is throw up a couple of images. 🙂

Holy spec: This is WoW’s classic cleric specialization, sacrificing damage for a wide range of healing tools.  It needs a pretty outfit, and the “Gladiator” armor set fits the bill:

pvp_glad

Discipline spec: WoW’s other priest healing spec, kind of an oddball half-dps half-heal spec, not particularly good at either but remarkably hard to kill.  The spec is designed around doing damage to enemies which in turn heals yourself or your group members, and most of its ability descriptions are on the ominous side.  It needs a correspondingly ominous outfit, and fortunately the “Combatant” set comes with glowing eyes and ominous in spades.

pvp_comb

There is a third armor set, but it’s restricted to characters playing at the higher end of WoW’s ranked PvP ladder.  I’m not even on the ladder, so I won’t be seeing that any time soon. 🙂

I’m 17 honor levels away from hitting that second prestige rank.  How hard could it be?

 

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Geometry, Practical Uses Thereof

Posted on December 29, 2016 by baudattitude

So, to follow up my long and whiny post from a few days back, I am still quite vexingly sick and enjoying the freedoms that come with; that is to say the freedom to lie in bed most of the day and feel very sorry about myself while my wife brings me hot cocoa.

On Tuesday, however, we had run out of hot cocoa mix and I decided that I was feeling well enough to wear pants and go to the grocery store.

I probably shouldn’t be allowed to go to the grocery store unsupervised while feeling sorry about myself, because one of the things that wound up in the cart despite not being on any list was an entire frozen cake, something which couldn’t even be justified as “for sharing” because, well, it’s coconut and I am the coconut fan in the house.

cake1

Surprisingly, for a cake from the frozen section, it’s pretty good.  Even more surprisingly, I find that the “serves 8” label on the thing is actually accurate; it’s smallish but rich enough that once you’ve had an small slice you are actually pretty well-caked.  Not that it’s going to serve 8, mind you, but it will serve one over, let’s call it 6 to 8 sessions.  I have up to 5 days to do this, it says right on the box.

Because sometimes one wants a second piece of cake and can justify it; see also the whole feeling sorry for self thing.  I’m not sure where I’m going with the bizarre switching between first and third person here, but it’s not like I have anyone grading these posts.

To distract, momentarily, from the fact that I am currently involved in eating an entire cake (over several days, I must be very clear on this point), I would like to draw your attention to a smallish detail on the box flap.

cake2

…

I had a good few hours of feeling very smug about the silliness of this diagram, because as muddled as my brain is right now, at least I can cut a cake all by myself, right?  Who could this possibly be for?

Then I had a terrible thought.

I work in a pretty technical field.  I can be a little insufferable about the stuff I do at work, because being a little insufferable is a defensive mechanism to cover up the fact that, really, it’s technical support – technical support for some pretty complicated stuff, I tell myself, but really it’s only a slightly evolved version of the job I had when I was 17.

We write plenty of documents for customers on how to use our stuff, and they’re not really FOR the customers.  They’re for us, so we stop needing to tell people how to set up firewall rules for the umpteenth time, because that way lies madness.

This diagram… it’s not for the guy buying a cake he intends to eat all by himself and just wants to portion out, it’s not even for the person who is hosting seven friends and wants to make sure that everyone gets an equal piece of cake.

(although, if you’re hosting seven friends and buying a coconut cake, you’re probably a terrible person unless you ask if everyone’s OK with coconut first.  Or this may be a way for you to buy a cake “for everyone” and wind up with some extra slices for yourself.  Not judging.  Pretty clever really.  Got off track.  Sorry.)

…where was I?  Oh, yes, this diagram isn’t for you.

This diagram is for the poor guy or gal at Pepperidge Farm Cake Support, the guy or gal who has to answer the ringing phone and walk someone through the cake cutting process (and probably an emergency thaw session as well).  When they get that call, they’ve got to have something they can point the customer to and say “look, just like on the box.”

And then presumably THEY get to go home and despair about a world in which someone needs help with cutting a square into eight pieces.  I don’t get to do that.

I haven’t earned that right.

 

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On Family

Posted on December 25, 2016 by baudattitude

It’s Christmas Day, which is a day to celebrate family.  In this case, I will be celebrating the way my father has gotten into his 70s with all of the common sense of a sea cucumber. 

He is not, just to get this out of the way, an uneducated man, nor does he come from an uneducated family background. His father was a medical doctor and he has a PhD. My mother has two master’s degrees, herself – I’ve never been quite clear on whether two master’s beats one PhD or whether they’re tied there. 

Point is, in theory I have a super smart family (as the son with a single bachelor’s degree, I am the black sheep), but sometimes it does not feel that way. 

Take, for example, the events surrounding my father’s birthday, earlier this month.  As a dutiful son, I took him out to his favorite Chinese place on Friday (12/16), then took him to see Rogue One on Saturday night. 

We’re getting into my car afterwards, talking about what we’d liked and oh god could they have HAD any more trailers, and he says to me:

“I hope my coughing didn’t bother you, I’ve had a cold for a couple of days”

Monday was the sore throat. 

Tuesday was more sore throat, with fever and coughing. 

Wednesday and Thursday? Also bad. 

Christmas Eve, I’m looking at a thermometer at 2 in the morning thinking to myself “well, it’s 103.6. If it hits 104, I need to call a cab and say hello to the hard-working staff at the local emergency room.”

Christmas Eve at about 4, the fever finally breaks, I have an hour or two at regular body temp, and then it ramps back up to 102ish. 

I’ve been going through cycles since then, every time with the high a little lower, have almost completely lost my voice, and am in general thinking very unkind thoughts about the stock I am theoretically descended from. I comfort myself with the notion that I was obviously swapped at the hospital. 

Still, I know what he’s getting next Christmas. I’m thinking a DVD set of The Stand, Outbreak, and The Andromeda Strain, maybe a book on germ theory, some of those filter masks the Japanese wear when they have a cold or flu but need to go out in public…

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Kick-Ball, Stick-Ball, KILL-THE-GUY-WITH-THE-BALL

Posted on December 21, 2016 by baudattitude

(Do You Want To Play?)

So, usually I pick up a new MMO, get to max level, play through all of the group content, do a little raiding and call it good.  I love MMOs – they’re basically “Checklist: The Game”, and I am never happier than when I’m checking checkboxes on a checklist – but I do not love myself when I am in heavy MMO mode, because I recognize that there’s only so much checkbox checking you can do before you need to check yourself.

So, I did all of that in WoW – got my max level character, mucked around a bit with trade skills (WoW’s implementation of trade skills are probably the worst I’ve seen in a major MMO ever, as an aside – do they even have a trade skill and economy guy on staff?), did all of the dungeons, did the available raids, did the raids again on a higher difficulty level, and should have been done.  I even started writing my post-mortem “dunwowin” post…

…and then I decided to try the “battlegrounds” feature again.

I am not typically a proponent of PvP in MMOs, because it is usually ludicrously imbalanced to the side of one faction or another (and Blizzard is particularly to blame for the “every MMO must have two sides who hate each other” design that plagued the industry for a while) and open-world PvP just seems like a recipe to feed the ego of roaming gank squads.

That said, PvP in a controlled setting – like the battlegrounds instances, or like the carefully delineated “this is a PvP area” areas in the overland zones – can be quite a blast… particularly as it comes with gear with unique looks.  I can get tired of chasing Bigger Numbers pretty quickly, but the opportunity to play Pretty Space Goat Princess Dress Up never gets old.

Anyway, WoW’s most recent expansion takes a page from Call of Duty in that it lets you gain PvP levels, and when you hit the level cap of 50 it lets you drop back down to level 1, but this time you’re a PRESTIGE 1, level 1 and you get a little icon next to your picture so everyone else knows you have done the grind once and are doing it again just to show off.

Also when you hit a prestige level there are cheevos flying EVERYWHERE, to wit:

prestige

…which is the equivalent of a horse-syringe-sized shot of dopamine directly to the lizard brain.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I still need some pieces of PvP reward armor and I will revisit how much more WoWing I will be doing after I get those and maybe get to prestige 2 which unlocks a new appearance for my class weapon and…and…

 

…oh, dear.  This could be a while.

 

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We Are Already Living in the Future, And You Can Keep Your Flying Cars

Posted on November 25, 2016 by baudattitude

OK, OK, that’s a bit of hyperbole.  I like hyperbole.  Also I stole the post title from threepanelsoul without guilt or shame because I don’t like guilt and don’t know what you meat people mean by “shame”.

Last winter, I played through both Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Origins, with the second of those leading me to a huge epiphany re: Bat-Gaming.  I put a bunch of hours into it, did a lot more optional stuff than I usually do in open-world games, and really wanted to check out the game’s “Cold, Cold Heart” story DLC… but didn’t want to pay 10 bucks for it, since the game itself only cost 5.

So, I fumed a bit, and I waited for the next Steam sale, and the next, and… well, it just never got any cheaper.  It was very frustrating.

Thankfully, I use a site called IsThereAnyDeal, which does exactly what it says on the tin really.  It watches a ton of different sites and emails me when something on my Steam wishlist goes on special offer.

In this case, it sent me an email saying that Cold, Cold Heart had been marked down to $2.50 on Direct2Drive, one of those digital distribution sites I am embarrassed to admit that I’d kind of forgotten existed.  Back in the days when Steam only posted a single deal a week, I used to occasionally buy games from them, but I hadn’t visited their site in probably five years.  Still, my old account still worked and they promised to sell me a Steam key, and then I got to checkout and there was an option for Apple Pay.

…Apple Pay?  From a website?  Oh, right, there was something about that in the macOS Sierra introduction thing I hadn’t really watched all that closely, I wonder how it works?

It turns out that how it works is you say “I would like to give you money” and your phone lights up asking for your thumbprint, and you put your thumb on the appropriate spot, and there is a happy chime sound and the website records that you have transferred them currency and here is your Steam key.

And I am old enough that this is damned near to being black magic.  Truly this is the magnificent future.

 

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On The Evolution Of Gaming Skill

Posted on November 24, 2016 by baudattitude

First off, I want all the credit for not spelling “Skill” with a Z at the end.  It took some self control.

Carrying on, then.

While I have been playing games since the glory days of the arcade, and an avid purchaser of console games since the Sega Genesis, I was always awful about actually finishing them.  That didn’t change until a friend and I played through Battlefront II back in 2007, but since then I have quite prided myself on a steadily-increasing willingness to try new games and new genres and tackle them with the intent of, you know, actually playing the entire dang game.

One of the earliest games I played after having the “wait, I can BEAT these?” epiphany was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, hereafter CODMEW, which was notable both for being almost immediately played, rather than left in the shrink-wrap, and also because I’m almost certain that it was my first experience of sitting down with a game and not stopping until I saw the end credits.  It’s pretty short, to start, and it rarely slows down outside of loading screens and a couple of scripted bits, making it a good candidate for a one session play-through.

One of the best things about CODMEW, as the inexperienced twin-stick FPS player I was at the time, was a very user-friendly feature baked into its tutorial.  Essentially, you’re given an obstacle course to play through, with a fairly generous time limit, and the game assesses your score at the end and suggests a difficulty.  If you don’t complete the obstacle course within the time limit, it runs you through it again. You can of course run it again yourself if you want to test yourself a bit.

Back when I played through the game for the first time, it suggested “easy”, which I thought was quite fair.

It’s been nearly nine years since then, and CODMEW has always stuck with me as one of the best experiences I’ve had in this hobby, so I naturally bought the spiffed-up shiny remastered version.

Now, keep in mind that I have played a lot of games since then, including some that have a reputation for being rather taxing.  I went into the tutorial, then, with some anticipation that nine more years worth of gaming experience would be reflected at the end of the obstacle course.

Technically, having it suggest “normal” DID represent some improvement.  Right? Right?

…I will just be over here clutching the tattered remnants of my dignity.

(Oh, and I played it start to finish in a single sitting again.  It holds up very well and it’s neat to look at all of the things it did that other shooters have since borrowed.)

 

 

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