March 2017 – Page 5

Evil Forces

March 15, 2017 by Belghast

This morning I am using a screenshot completely unrelated to anything that I am going to talk about just because I thought it looked cool. Last night was that night we dread all year long… the night we attempt to deal with Taxes. Tax Season is sort of the boogie man for adults, with the IRS being the grim harbingers of our impending doom. The truth is we have never really run into major issues with Taxes, and in spite of this… I still get almost physically ill when I think about dealing with them. We have our taxes done, because there is something about having the piece of mind that someone is obligated by contract to come defend you if you ever get audited… and at least somewhat financially responsible if something bad comes up. I realize in the internet age I should be able to deal with my own taxes rather easily… but it is just more comforting to hurl a stack of papers at someone else… flail my arms and expect them to make it all make sense. Over the years we have gotten mildly better at getting our shit together, and have started a system that involves cramming everything that looks even vaguely tax related into a manila envelope. For the most part this year… we were able to pull things together easy enough with only minimal last minute scramble to try and sort out the last few documents that we were missing. The truth… the fact that we did this pulling together act on a day other than the day we had our tax appointment… is a huge positive for us. Traditionally right up until the very moment we are supposed to go we are flying through the house rooting through piles of paperwork looking for a golden ticket… or in our case that receipt from some charitable giving.

The thing that always screws us over in the end, is the fact that we functionally have to pay taxes in two different states. During the summer my wife works as an AP test grader… which always occurs in another state and counts as income for said state. So that means in the next few weeks we are going to have to do the whole money order/certified check thing… and get the stupid slip of paper mailed off to this other state and hope beyond hope that it gets there. We are fine in the long run, having to pay both states as is usually the case and getting back some from federal so it works out in the end. But I cannot explain how fundamental and deep to my very core this sense of panic is that I feel when we start discussing taxes. I am wondering if this is just a me thing, or if literally everyone goes through this yearly hell. Its like so rarely do you really actually have to confront a cold force that can literally ruin you… in quite the same fashion as the IRS could. All of it seems to be buried in arcane formula, and calculations that only software actually understands… that feels like it could very well add up and say that you owe everything you have. There are certain aspects of life that make complete and total sense to me… but the Tax code will never be one of them. So instead we live in this state of augmented anxiety until finally we gather the courage… or it gets late enough that we absolutely have to deal with them.

Then when they are over… there is this crashing wave of euphoria. Like we just survived the fight of our lives and came out with most of our limbs intact. So instead of heading home we went out to eat, to celebrate our victory. Its like going home didn’t make sense after the epic battle we just survived. So instead we went to one of our regular rotation of Mexican restaurants where I had a glorious feast of chicken, cheese and chorizo. I am supremely disappointed in whoever coded the spell checker built into Windows because I am seeing a red squiggly line over chorizo… the most glorious of meats. After dinner we wound up needing to make a quick trip to Walmart… which for us is a once in a month occurrence because our local store is completely crazy. After wandering around and looking for what we actually came for, we exited thirty to forty minutes later. So by the time I fed the animals and changed into my comfy flannel pants… I wound up getting home about an hour late for the Final Fantasy XIV raid night. I had talked during the day about wanting to make an attempt on Diadem and they did in fact seem to be able to pull together the people for that. Some folks even got some of the tasty 265 gear…. but not for the classes they were actually playing. Final Fantasy XIV really needs to give us the ability to trade gear among a fixed party. I wound up tagging in after Diadem for Thordan Extreme, of which we sort of figured out at least the first few phases of that dance. It is going to be one of those fights where we simply have to memorize the pattern and make sure everyone makes it through each phase shift alive. More than anything though… I am happy to have slain the tax beast at least for this one season.

Rotational Hell

March 14, 2017 by Belghast

Apparently according to Storm I am still logged into Final Fantasy XIV downstairs on the laptop… so that is something that I am going to have to take care of before I head to work. I ended up in that state because I had probably the worst Palace of the Dead run I have ever experienced. Before leaving floor 51 we had to use the rez shrine three times… because for whatever reason people kept running in to aggro entire rooms worth of mobs at the same time. Had I been the last one standing I would have just wiped and ended the run. However I kept trying to pull things out, but since I shifted to being a monk to level that job… it just wasn’t happening. So instead I wound up leaving the party and eating the 30 minute debuff that keeps me from queuing for anything else. At which point I THOUGHT I logged out… and wandered off into the bedroom to play some Zelda, never to actually return. I am not entirely certain why I find this game so damned compelling. It is like an unsolved puzzle that I keep going back and fiddling with… and while I don’t make a lot of progress in any attempt… I keep plugging along.

I have however found the absolute bane of my existence. Firstly the game has a ton of shrines like the one pictured above scattered throughout the country side. Inside of each is a puzzle that requires you to do something to utilize the various skills and abilities that you have collected to that point. However there is one shrine type that I am absolutely certain was not designed for Wii U players. Every so often you encounter these gyroscope gadgets that force you to stop using the Pro Controller and pick up the Wii U Fisher Price Little Tykes Gamepad. I may be bitter about the Gamepad and its over sold promise of being able to play the console remotely from within your house… so long as that somewhere is within 5 feet of the base unit. Anyways the puzzle requires you to rotate the gamepad to solve it… but it also requires you to do some super contorted angles that make you feel like you are steering a garbage barge down an interstate. The primary problem however is the fact that when you are playing with the GamePad… the video feed is ALSO on the game pad. If I could figure out how to get this to work while holding the tablet but staring at the television I would probably be okayish with this process. However during these puzzles it seems to always want to put the video feed on the tablet, which means that when I have to flip the tablet upside down or something stupid like that… it also means I have to contort myself in all sorts of bizarre positions so that I can still see the tablet screen. I’ve completed two of these at this point and hated every minute of it, but I am just assuming these were designed for the much higher fidelity rotational sensors of the switch joycons… and that the Wii U players simply get fucked by an outdated experience.

The only other real problem that I still have with this game is the durability bullshit. You have to understand… that I am one of those players that finishes a Final Fantasy game with 500 potions of various kinds because I feel like I need to hold onto them for a moment when I “really need them”. So when that moment never comes and the final credits roll… I think why the hell did I hold onto those potions. That said it is an instinct that I just cannot root out of me, and it is severely effecting my enjoyment of Zelda because I feel like I cannot risk using any weapon that is not complete and total crap… because I might need it at a later date. So instead I am using various sticks and clubs while I have a Guardian Sword sitting in my bag just waiting there, begging me to use its awesomeness. Instead I have that and another awesome looking sword flagged as “for a boss fight” but you can damned well be certain that when said boss fight comes along… I am going to try and defeat them with a bunch of expendable garbage first. I think part of it is the simple fact that I never quite know exactly when I am going to get my next reasonable weapon. If there were a swordsmith in one of the towns… then I could at least know that I could keep returning to them and stocking up on good weapons and shift my mindset to farming rupies to pay that upkeep. So instead I am just stuck in this indecision hell of not knowing when I can and cannot use reasonable weapons for fear that I might be stuck in a bad situation with a bad chock full of worthless crap.

For a game that causes me so much internal strife… I am constantly amazed that I keep returning to it. Every time I see the game over screen… I keep hitting the button and starting again trying to sort out what went wrong during the fight. This is not a souls game, but I am sort of playing it as though it were. I still think however this would be a much better experience on the Switch and I am constantly annoyed with myself for not pre-ordering. I knew this would happen. I knew that a combination of demand and Nintendo’s piss poor supply chain management would end up with no units available for purchase. I’ve checked every place I can think to check and now am simply resigned to hope for one of a handful of places to restock, which is supposedly coming mid April. The other level of hell that I have wandered into… is that I am now trying to collect the Zelda related Amiibos because you can get nifty shit in game for using them once a day. Those also seem to be completely sold out, and each day at lunch I have been venturing to new places to see if they happen to have any left. For a game that obviously frustrates me… I cannot put my finger on why I am finding it so damned sticky. It reminds me of the feeling you have when you are watching a horror film and screaming at the person not to go into the closet… but also at the same time wanting them to go in… so you know what is inside the closet. Zelda Breath of the Wild is a deeply conflicted experience… but man do I at least on some level deeply love it.

Another Horizon Weekend

March 13, 2017 by Grace

I don’t really want to go on and on forever about this game, and yet it’s pretty much the only thing I’ve been playing lately so that’s what you’re going to get. I’m more than 60 hours deep into this game and much farther along in the story now, so there will be spoilers in this post. Consider yourself warned.

Horizon continues to hit a lot of perfect notes for me. This far in, I’ve gotten most of the available upgraded weapons except the last 2 hunter lodge ones. Combat has become about getting better at killing machines with the tools I have, instead of learning the strengths and weaknesses of the different kinds of weapons. Now that I have more health, I’ve switched from favoring laying out elaborate trap mazes ahead of time to either just letting machines kill each other with corruption arrows, or tearing off a few key components from a distance and then running in with the blast sling. The exception is with Deathbringers, which even fully kitted out at level 50 require some smart use of elemental attacks and precision hits to do real damage. I really enjoyed the challenge.

Progressing the story has been fun, even though it feels like a slightly different game when you’re exploring ancient ruins and getting saturated with lore instead of hunting down machines in the open world. I have been pleasantly surprised that the story, while improbable, isn’t completely stupid. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised that so much of the story of the world is laid out pretty clearly for you as you progress. I was half expecting some kind of unsatisfying hand wave of “it’s lost to history” but that’s not what we get. So far I’ve seen exactly what happened to the world in the 2060s and what project Zero Dawn actually was. I’m excited to see how the last bit plays out and whether Aloy is satisfied with her answers when I get back to the Nora sacred lands.

I have come to absolutely love Aloy, to the point where she is now pretty high on the list of my all-time favorite videogame protagonists. She’s smart and capable and snarky and strong and she suffers no fools. Initially I expected that there would be some type of romance, either optional or forced by the story, but so far there’s no sign of that. Or rather, folks keep hitting on her and she keeps shutting them down. I love this. The best of these was when the sun-king found out his lover had died, and then immediately started hitting on Aloy. You get a couple response options here, and in the one I chose she basically says “do you hear yourself right now? I don’t think you’re actually interested in me.” The reason why I know this is a game and not the real world is because instead of freaking out or getting angry the sun king basically says “oh shit you’re right I’m sorry” and moves on to other things. I love this whole exchange because Aloy has plenty of empathy but doesn’t get mired down in anyone else’s emotional issues.

Anyway I said I didn’t want to ramble a ton more about this game and yet here we are another 500+ words later. I can see the finish line on this game looming pretty close now and I honestly don’t want it to end. I’m sure I’ll write even more about it here when I do though.

Ballad of Cowboy Ninja

March 13, 2017 by Belghast

This weekend largely belonged to Final Fantasy XIV and the brief appearance of the Cowboy Ninja. One of the huge benefits of leveling through Palace of the Dead is the fact that you end up with a bunch of treasure tokens… that often times reward awesome cosmetic gear. Pretty early into my process of pushing the Ninja from 38 to 50 this weekend I stumbled across the above Cowboy hat and from that point out my path was set. I gathered a bunch of appearance goodies that I had collected from running the dungeon over and over… namely because my appropriate level gear was a subligar and harness. The three main appearance items that all came from palace of the dead are of course the Boarskin Survival Hat, Survival Shirt, and the Wind Silk Bottoms which are these bizarro red plaid pants. Through out the weekend I ran the dungeon wearing this outfit and gathered up a bunch of commendations… I largely believe in appearance alone. I am still around 25 coms away from my golden magitek mount so… in truth anything I can do to rake them in is a bonus!

I think another huge factor for getting coms is being talkative in dungeon runs. While Final Fantasy XIV tends to be a much more friendly experience as a whole than World of Warcraft, it is still a largely quiet one… especially when it comes to grinding Palace of the Dead 51-60 over and over. Everyone more or less knows their roles and falls silently in place doing them, and I try my best to break up this monotony with some comments here and there. I always start the dungeon run with a “Hey Folks :)” and finish with some variant of “Thanks for the run. Have a good one!” and then I watch as the coms slowly trickle in. Sure it is formulaic, but it seems to work… and the truth is I usually get responses back from the other players which is part of my larger goal of breaking the silence and getting folks interacting. I mean it is not so formulaic that I have a macro set up or anything… so there is at least that. Regardless I hit 50 during Talking Dead last night and started working my way through the Ninja quests. I had forgotten that I had a full set of high quality level 115 gear sitting in my bank waiting on me, that I picked up while questing my way through Heavensward. So I also now look like a proper ninja as well.

The other thing that I spent a significant amount of time playing this weekend was Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. At this point I have made a proper foothold in the world beyond the plateau, and in my travels I met Hestu. I am pretty sure he is my spirit animal… and all he really wants to do is shake his maracas for people. Thankfully by the time I encountered him I already had a few seeds to throw his ways, which I got by uncovering the hiding places of some of the Korok. I still have this very mixed relationship with this game. On one hand there are a bunch of things that I would love to change… and on the other hand I just can’t seem to stop playing it. There are absolutely things that feel needlessly obtuse and arcane… but by the same token you feel rewarded when you finally figure out how this or that system works. In many ways it reminds me of when I first set foot into Minecraft and had no clue how to craft anything at all… and simply started throwing things into the crafting bench to see what I might be able to make with it. Cooking works exactly this way, and while I have no clue how to duplicate some of my efforts… every now and then I get something truly awesome in the process.

Another thing that is needlessly arcane is the process of taking screenshots from the Wii U. For awhile I have known that you can hit home… click Miiverse and save a screenshot through that method. The problem there is that there is really no way of actually getting at that screenshot other than looking in your album in Miiverse. I mean you can share it with other people using Miiverse… but is anyone actually using Nintendo’s pseudo social network? As a blogger I of course want access to the screenshots for the purpose of posting them on this blog, and in order to do that… you have to follow a completely different process. The process begins much the same as the Miiverse route, but instead after hitting home you bring up your browser and navigate to this address… i.nintendo.net. This process will bring you to a “Nintendo Image Share” page that will allow you to connect to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr and post whatever happens to be on your screen at the moment you bring up the browser. This in theory works on 3DS as well, but I have yet to test it out. The images of me in Kakariko Village and of Hestu were snapped in this manor and it seems to work extremely well. I mean like everything to do with Nintendo it is needlessly complicated… but it works. As always I configured my Wii U to post to my screenshot twitter account that I have connected to the PS4 as well. I highly suggest having a secondary account for screenshots… that way you can without feeling bad dump twenty screenshots in a single night. I do however need to check this out on the 3DS and see if this will finally allow me to get proper screengrabs of the games I am playing there. How was your weekend?