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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Have We Gone Too Far?

Posted on November 22, 2016 by baudattitude

piestick

…maybe?

There was a bit of a rambling rant here about what the existence of this item means for us as a species, but I couldn’t make it funny and eventually took it out back and shot it.  It was for the better.

Anyway. Pumpkin Pie chapstick is a thing.  You can buy it.  I’m not sure I’d advise it if you actually have dry lips.  Stick to cherry, which works better.  If you just like pumpkin pie spice flavor, knock yourself out.

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I’m not meant to play Overwatch

Posted on November 19, 2016 by baudattitude

overwatchlogo

So, let’s get this out of the way: I really really really want to like Overwatch.  I love the visual style, the character designs, the overall cheerfulness of the thing.

And, in the last couple of years, I’ve gotten over my issues with multiplayer-only games and had a stunningly good time with both Titanfall and Splatoon.

So, when Blizzard announced a free weekend, I figured I would finally try it out, fall in love, buy the thing and be off to many happy hours running around freezing people as Mei.

It did not work out so well.

It’s a gorgeous game, and the attention to detail that was obviously lavished onto every last tiny detail of the arenas is amazing.  Mei is, as expected, both utterly adorable AND the perfect troll character…

…and I played for several hours and lost 19 out of 20 matches.  The one match I DID win was in the 3v3 arcade mode and it felt like an utter fluke.

Compared to Titanfall and Splatoon… those are certainly games where I lost matches, but never to such a degree.  Usually my being awful was balanced out by bad players on the other team as well, so I’d at least get the occasional thrill of victory.

It’s pretty obvious that I am just getting into this one too far behind the curve.  I could play single player against bots, I guess, and I could level up and get loot boxes that way, but it seems kind of silly to chase cosmetic items for a game I won’t ever be able to play as intended.

So that one goes onto my list of biggest disappointments.  Maybe some day Blizzard will make a single player game in the same universe.  I’d quite like to see that.

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A Bloodborne Primer

Posted on October 31, 2016 by baudattitude

That’s a bit of a misleading title, because this isn’t really a primer.

A few days ago, I talked a friend into trying Bloodborne, and watching him play through the opening bits made me want to play them again.  I was having a tough time justifying this, but then I decided to actually record them and post them, with annotations, in a way that will hopefully help anyone new to the title get over the first “hump”, which is playing the game up to the point where you can spend blood echoes to boost your stats and gain levels.

So, I started the game, made a character, got killed by the werewolf in the clinic and got sent to the Hunter’s Dream, picked up some weapons (axe, pistol) and then went back to Yharnam for another pass.  I did not return to the Hunter’s Dream at any point (though I dearly could have used some more pebbles) and I deliberately didn’t explore much.  There are a bunch of secrets just in this opening bit that I didn’t want to spoil.

It would have been much cooler if I’d done it without dying.  I left that bit in just because I was zipping along and just feeling altogether too smug about myself and then I pulled a ton of roamers and ate pavement.

I made liberal use of annotations during these videos, which apparently don’t work on mobile.  Best viewed on your home PC, then.

So, without further ado:

Part 1, in which I die at the end:

Part 2, the Yharnam Streets take two:

Part 3, Courtyard and Werewolves:

Part 4, fighting the Cleric Beast.  I’m really not proud of this video, I used so many blood vials during the fight.

So, with the exception of some truly awful footwork during the boss fight, I’m pretty happy with these as a “how to get started”.  Now that it’s a $20 budget title, I expect a lot of folks will get to try it for the first time, and I envy those people.

 

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Busted

Posted on October 31, 2016 by baudattitude

Look, Peach, you know I’m always coming home to you but sometimes a man just has to have his Nep-Nep time, you know what I mean?

mariovita

I’m not the world’s biggest Mario fan but this may have been the single costume that got the best reaction at work.  I work with a ton of late-30s-early-40somethings and this tapped right into their nostalgia veins.

Then, when I got home from work, I got out of the car just as a little girl in a Mario outfit was walking down the street.  I got a “Mom, look, it’s the real Mario!” which melted even my icy heart.

 

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Hobbies

Posted on October 27, 2016 by baudattitude

One of my many hobbies is giving people bad life advice.

badadvice

Fortunately my friends and family have learned to ignore me.

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OK, NOW I Beat WoW

Posted on October 26, 2016 by baudattitude

…OK, still not really, but I did finish one of the big parts of the Legion expansion, the class campaign.  This is a fairly long affair, largely because there are some mandatory timesinks in the middle – you need to recruit NPCs and send them off on missions, those missions take a certain number of hours, and you can only have one of the missions active at once – but using Blizzard’s phone application to dispatch missions when you can’t get to your computer does make the whole process a little more efficient, anyway.

Huh, that was one sentence and I should be ashamed of it.

Anyway:

wowcampaign

I also hit a gear milestone Sunday evening, pushing my ilvl up to 825 and opening up the first set of “LFR” raids.  LFR is Blizzard’s way of making large group raiding content accessible to everyone with patience enough to push a button and wait in a queue, and it’s pretty damn brain-dead stuff.  It’s not much more than watching a swarm of locusts devour a corn field that occasionally spits out epic gearz.

I am not good with the metaphors this morning.

Anyway, they pretty much consist of charging forward, nuking everything that looks at you funny, OCCASIONALLY moving so you’re not standing in fire, and looting.  The most challenging mechanic I’ve seen is “hey there are TWO things to tank and you need to move them every once in a while or die”, which is not  a high bar to step over.

If you do manage to wipe somehow, the entire raid gets a buff so you do more damage / take less damage / do more heals, and this buff improves with every wipe.  It really is no-fail raiding, and the rewards are a little less than you’d get from a proper raid, where everyone is on edge and ready to snap at each other for real or imagined shortcomings.

It’s a lot more healthy, though.  There’s really no stress and you get to let your derp flag fly.

wowdarkbough

wowtormentedguardians

wowriftofaln

Anyway, between some upgrades from those, and some upgrades from finishing the campaign and doing some other things, my ilvl hit a whopping 840 last night, so there are 3 or 4 NEW raids for me to LFR and button mash my way through.  Those are for tonight.

…and I still need to finish running all the group dungeons from this expansion.  They’re way harder than the raids, though, I actually need to pay attention. 🙂

 

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