Incremental Progress

I’m playing Bloodborne with Kodra, which is a kind of self-flagellation that I generally reserve for your more serious sort of monastery rather than my living room. Still, losing this badly to a video game is an experience best shared, and to our credit we’re making slow but steady progress.

Incremental Progress

Like its Souls predecessors, Bloodborne is brutal, unrelenting, and utterly fair. It’s satisfying in a way that few games are, because you genuinely feel like some of the things you fight are impossible until you beat them and realize they’re beatable. I rarely feel like I’m fighting the controls in the game, and the enemies are numerous and varied but all message pretty well. It makes me pay attention to things I normally leave to the UI– watching the angle of attacks, watching enemy animations, watching the game, rather than a hotbar or an addon or a warning message or what have you. You run into these big, hulking person-shaped monsters pretty early on, and while the first time we ran into them we died horribly, the second time I was able to pay attention to their movements and figure out how to simply not be where they were striking.

It genuinely feels like I’m developing skill as I play the game, and part of it is perception, which I like a lot. I can get better at the game just by watching how enemies fight, so even if I lose, I learn– and I lose a lot. It’s worth noting that we’ve played for probably ten or twelve hours at this point and we haven’t beaten any bosses. We’re not great at this game, and neither of us have played much of the previous ones.

It’s still a great couch co-op game, in the sense that we trade off each time we die, or (more recently) sometimes when we’re looking at an enemy that one of us is better at fighting than the other. With our powers combined, we’re almost a single competent player, it’s awesome. One thing I’ve noticed is that the game rewards boldness a lot more than the previous ones. My previous experience with Demon’s Souls was hiding behind a shield and moving through the world in fear, very defensively. Bloodborne rewards me for acting boldly, dashing through that group of enemies and going back into the fight when I take a hit rather than hiding in a corner to lick my wounds and heal.

I also really like the little notes that are left around. Seeing other players try to string together warnings with the limited word/phrase selection is fantastic, and we’ve gotten quite a number of handy hints from them. It makes the whole game feel like a shared experience, and the blend of pre-emptively helpful (“reeks of trap!” and “remember hidden path”) and post-tragedy frustration (“vile crows” and “alas, ambush”) messages are often really funny. I think my favorite so far is, at the edge of a fatal-looking drop, simply “time for common sense”.

There’s something I love about people getting creative with heavily constrained communication. The ‘helpful’ messages littered throughout Bloodborne and the Souls games would be nowhere near as fun if players could simply type things out. Instead, the strict, limited word selection and short length makes for some delightful moments, especially when you run into a note that you know is trying to tell you something important, but you have no idea what it’s trying to say. Sometimes messages are just trolling you, but you’re not sure how until later.

The best note I’ve seen isn’t actually in Bloodborne– it was in Demon’s Souls. At the center of a bridge, filled with enemies and that a dragon would continually fly over and breathe fire on, there was a note. It wasn’t reachable for ages– you had to kill the dragon or otherwise be rid of it before you could stand on the part of the bridge where the note was, and I remember running past it but not being able to stop and read it maybe twenty times before finally getting a chance. I finally defeated the dragon, made the long trip back to that one bridge, fought all the enemies on it, and, curiosity burning, went to check the note that it had taken me nearly a week to reach and reveal.

It read, bright and cheerfully, “Hi!”

Glitchy Oryx

Rookie Revenge

Glitchy Oryx

Last night was one of those nights that went in a completely different direction than I was expecting.  If you remember last Tuesday we had a combination of one of the smoothest runs for me personally in Kings Fall with the jumping bullshit.  That then quickly became one of the glitchiest runs once we hit Oryx, and though we put up the valiant fight we simply ran out of time for attempts.  We had agreed to meet up last night, given that it was the night before reset… and give taking down Oryx another go.  We had a checkpoint already saved sitting at that encounter, so in theory it should not have taken terribly long.  That was at least my line of thought going into the night.  However we ran into a myriad of issues, but in part that is why this “Rookie Raid” exists is to get folks through the fights and teach them the things they need to succeed.  I absolutely resemble that remark given that this week was just my third time into the Kings Fall raid at all.  There is still so much about the raid and the various encounters that I simply don’t know… but I am trying to assimilate information as fast as I can.

One of the things that threw off the rhythm of the raid early on was that Wet had to rush to the hospital with his mom.  Jex filled in admirably, and instead of snuggling with Wet in the middle I got to snuggle with his Titan while doing bubble duty.  For leadership we had an alternating mix of Jex and Squirrel depending on the situation, and they both did a great job stepping up to the plate and helping folks through the Oryx fight.  That said there is something almost talismanic about Wets presence, and when that is gone it is noticeable.  It is almost like we need his snarky commentary as a good luck charm to get us through the encounters.  We tried our best to fill in with talk of “MacGuffins” and “Tummy Wumzles” but it just didn’t quite feel the same.  So Wet if you are out there reading this you were definitely missed.

The Haul

On the positive side though it took us an hour and a half worth of constant attempts we managed to get down Oryx.  This was made even sweeter when we all realized that this was Warman’s first Oryx kill after apparently having gone to various Kings Fall raids for the last year on an almost weekly basis.  That right there is why the Rookie Raid exists, to get folks access to this sort of content and I am super thankful to be part of it.  I had wanted to raid myself for ages but never really had the opportunity, and then Squirrel, Wet, Jex and the rest of the Axioma Clan stepped in and bam… I am now doing awesome stuff in Destiny.  I am also falling off things quite a bit because I can’t jump for shit.  My biggest need right now is simply raw light levels, which I am working on a little bit at a time through exotic farming.  Unfortunately I seem to mostly get the same slots… that don’t really need leveling up, however I figure during this weekends Iron Banner I should get a few more exotics.

Glitchy Oryx Glitchy Oryx Glitchy Oryx

As has been my habit of late, now the haul for the night.  I was sitting at 25 moldering shards so apparently the “bonus loot” business is in full effect now.  The portion that I did not realize however is that it seems like the moldering shards are consumed upon getting said bonus loot?  I ended up getting three drops from Oryx plus additional shards, but it takes my total shards to 7 so it means that I guess I got two off the boss.  Anyways the awesome thing about last night is that I have a full “set” of armor from the raid and can now look like a Hive Knight.  I also picked up a second Smite of Merain which will just serve as either a spare copy for an alt… or infusion fodder to try and get my Mida Multitool up in level.  What I am looking forward to this weekend however is the return of Iron Banner which supposedly also has a decent chance of dropping me some upgrades.  It seems like the clan as a whole is planning on running stuff with it, and hopefully even though I suck at PVP in general I can get in on some action.  It would really be awesome to be able to hit rank 5 so I can start getting the good drops.

Scattered Gaming

This weekend was an odd one.  After a string of relatively nice weekends, we ended up getting one that was either cold and windy… or cold and rainy, both of which drove my instinct to stay inside and hibernate.  The only problem is… with all this play time I largely squandered it and spent more time staring without purpose at games… than actually playing them.  It feels like I am starting to go through another one of my “funks” because nothing seemed to fit “just right” as far as games go.  I flitted between lots of different titles, playing them for a bit before shifting to something else…  often times ending right back up in the game I started in.  For a good chunk of the weekend I had the desire to play Destiny…  but wanted to instead be hanging out downstairs which only left me the unofficial remote play app as a solution.  Then there were games that I felt like I needed to make progress in like Division where I am still not at the level cap.  Friday was largely devoted to Undertale, and I think after forcing myself to play that game… it maybe soured the rest of my weekend.  So this morning I thought I would run down some of the progress I made in various games.

Undertale

Scattered Gaming

I wrote about this at length but after hanging up my controller as it were… I opted to instead watch several of the different endings.  I still feel fine in my decision to just abandon this game in an undefeated state.  I guess I don’t have a primal urge to finish games, and more often than not I get to the ending and just don’t finish.  I reach this point where I have gotten out of the game what I wanted, and I don’t see the point in expending that effort to push it across the finish line.  In the case of Undertale the thing that was driving me forward was to understand the story, and now between the podcast and the various youtube ending videos… I feel like I do.  Once that carrot was gone, the game play itself doesn’t make me want to ever touch this game again.  On the podcast folks talked about ways to lower the impact of the mechanics, like the Temmie armor…  but that isn’t even really an interesting option to me.

Destiny

Scattered Gaming

I really did not do much in Destiny other than a little bit of Crucible.  I am constantly amazed at how much I actually enjoy player versus player content in this game, when traditionally that is just not my thing.  I think a lot of it is that in this game it feels like there is zero negative impact on the rest of the game.  It is just another option I have to play, and gives me the same sort of PVE rewards that I expect to receive elsewhere.  Other than specialty modes like Trials of Osiris it feels like I am rewarded equally for just doing whatever I happen to want to do at the time.  I started down the path of the crucible simply as a way to get more Legendary marks, and then recently when I was grinding out sword kills I came to realize…  I was actually legitimately enjoying myself.  What is great about the crucible is that I get the central game play loop that I enjoy of shooting awesome weapons and charging around… without zero downtime.  It seems like it is easier to get Three of Coins to proc on Crucible than it is while doing strikes… or it might simply be that Crucible itself is just about the perfect amount of time per coin use.  While I have not actually gotten any of the really cool PVP drops…  I do get a fair amount of strange coins, motes and random pieces of armor that end up getting deconstructed.  Tonight I will hopefully be finishing up the rest of the Kings Fall raid that we had to abandon on Oryx last Tuesday, and beforehand it is my goal to hang out upstairs and run some more Crucible.

The Division

Scattered Gaming

This weekend I managed to push Division a little harder than the rest of the games and caught up with my friend Tamrielo at least.  At the start of the weekend I was sitting at roughly level 20, and as of this morning I am just about a third into 22.  While I absolutely could play this and only give it partial attention at lower levels, as I have gotten into the twenties this is not really the case.  As a result this weekend I managed to die probably more than I actually managed to accomplish anything.  There are two missions that I know I attempted at least a half dozen times before finally giving it my full attention and pushing through.  My standard operating procedure while hanging out with my wife downstairs is that I essentially have one eye on the game and one eye on whatever we happen to be watching…  not literally but you know what I mean.  The problem with this is that in doing so I am not exactly paying attention to the best possible tactical spot that I could be in while shooting incoming mobs.  The addition of snipers really changed how the game works, and now that I have guys that rush me with shotguns as well..  I am having to be way more careful about how I take on content.  That said I feel like I made some decent progress, but most of it was in short bursts of me playing for thirty minutes to an hour… and then logging out and doing something else.  Thankfully much like Destiny… short batches of play time feel just as rewarding to me as multiple hour long sessions.

World of Warcraft

Scattered Gaming

The other major happening of the weekend was me poking around on my Forsaken Hunter in World of Warcraft.  Recently Blizzard added an achievement that you could unlock by leveling a character in WoW to 20, aka the free mode level cap.  For doing this you end up getting Lady Liadrin as an alternate Paladin hero in Hearthstone.  Not that I really play Hearthstone… and even more so… not that I really like playing Paladins in Hearthstone…  I have this drive to get the achievement and unlock the extra shiny bits.  The negative of this achievement is that it only counts if you have recently leveled to twenty after the launch of the achievement, that means my army of level 100s are doing me zero good for this goal.  As a result I opted to level something on The Scryers Horde side since that is where the bulk of my lower leveled characters are these days.  I largely played during the podcast on Saturday night, and as a result managed to get to I believe 18 before giving it up for the night.  The goal is to spend some time this week pushing it over the line, so that I at least can feel like I got this out of the way.  I honestly think this whole promotion is a brilliant idea to try and cross pollinate some of the players actively playing Hearthstone and get them to try World of Warcraft.  I know Hearthstone is a major nostalgia bomb for me… but I wonder if it is the same for a player who has ONLY played Hearthstone, now being able to see where those cards they love are actually from.

 

 

AggroChat #100 – The Undertale Mishap

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen…  run into our first massive issues with the recorded show

aggrochat100_720

Last night we recorded episode 100 of the AggroChat podcast, and also wrapped up our Undertale AggroChat game club show.  It signified our switch to a new way of recording the show… and is often the case with trying something new.  Things wen’t horribly wrong.  Essentially every voice by my own was recorded sounding great… and when I spoke it sounded like a voice scrambler.  At first I thought the show was a complete loss however this morning after copious amounts of edits I managed to get the show at least in a listenable state…. albeit my voice sounds like a hilarious chipmunk voice modulator.

So join us for a slightly screwed up show as we talk about UnderTale.  Several fans on twitter urged us to release this show in “as is” condition.  I posted a snippet of what it originally sounded like on twitter and I think it is a slight miracle that we managed to get it that listenable.  Thanks again for sticking with us through 100 shows, and especially being willing to deal with bizarro issues when they arise.