July 2017 – Page 5

Mobile Matters

July 13, 2017 by Belghast

For years I have said that I really did not think that gaming on my phone was really my “thing”. It was a platform that I largely felt didn’t quite fit my lifestyle, because in part I felt like I either had access to PC and Consoles… or simply didn’t have the ability to game period. Recently however I have been eating the hell out of those words. For the last week or so I have been getting used to a new phone, and at some point I will probably do a proper review of it. Functionally I could not bring myself to spend $800 to $1000 on a new phone… and my Samsung Galaxy s5 had lots of problems. This lead me to branch out and look into some other options… and I finally landed on the ZTE Axon 7 which is a very solid attempt at a Chinese flagship killer. When I finally do a proper review I will get around to more about that, however suffice to say I am enjoying it. There is a thing that happens with PC gamers… when we get new hardware. We go through this phase of installing everything that we have cared about in the past… and trying it out on the new setup to see what has and has not improved. With this new phone being so much more powerful than my previous one… I found myself going through this same routine and testing out things like the android Hearthstone client. When I say the previous phone had issues… it is because once upon a time I rooted my phone in an attempt to bypass the AT&T blockade against tethering/wifi hotspots on my current plan. I still have one of those ancient grandfathered in iPhone unlimited plans… and while they have raised the price there is no way in hell I am giving up $25 a month unlimited mobile data.

While the S5 is technically no longer rooted, I seem to have tripped some anti-tamper seal of a sort on the phone and it fails the Google Safetynet test that app manufacturers have started incorporating into their apps. This means that I was forced to stop playing Pokemon Go when they patched in this protection, and similarly have been unable to experience Fire Emblem Heroes, Mario Run or a whole slew of newer games that just do this check by default. The biggest problem with me and phone gaming in the past however was the battery life, and the way that a few minutes of Final Fantasy Record Keeper could shave off 25% of my battery before I even realized. With the new phone this seems to no longer be the issue that it once was… and either because the processor does not need to work nearly as hard… or the fact that I have a 3250 mAh battery (instead of 2800 mAh) I can functionally play games and still use my phone for everything else that I want to. As a result lately I have been heading to bed fairly early and then chilling out there and playing mobile games until sleep finally claims me. Similarly while I am out and about I am starting to play a lot more Pokemon Go, but have not really gone out on catching jaunts like I did around the release a year ago. I contemplated going out last night but it was still over 90 degrees outside after 9pm, so I figured I would leave that to a cooler evening.

The games that have seemed to clamp down the hardest on my attention however are Fire Emblem Heroes… which is a thoroughly charming tactics style combat game and of course Final Fantasy Record Keeper that I already played a significant amount of in the past. This is the point where I admit that I have never actually played a Fire Emblem game in the past, and while I am sure the actual games are not terribly similar to this mobile title… it does make me a hell of a lot more interested in them. The premise is largely nonsense… but it is the sort of nonsense that I find myself enjoying at the moment. The biggest problem with these games is that I really have no clue what I am doing on a regular basis… and not even sure what the best way to do anything in game is. I’ve been slowly working my way through the story in Fire Emblem, and in Record Keeper I noticed that they seemingly have gotten less sparing with handing you a bunch of characters. I worked my way through most of a Final Fantasy XIV themed event dungeon… and picked up Yshtola, Minfilia, Yda, Papalymo, and Cid… and started working my way through a similarly FFXII Zodiac Age themed one. Much like in Pokemon Go… the excitement for me is in the collection of new characters and not so much in the leveling and battle.

Lastly I have been slowly working my way through Final Fantasy V on the phone as an attempt to do things like play over my lunch break… which admittedly has not actually happened yet. I got completely wrecked last night by Garula, which means I am going to have to sort out a decent strategy for this one. Of course I am not playing the game legitimately… and instead am doing the Four Job Fiesta… which means I am attempting to take him down as a party of four Black Mages. Its time to go figure out some strategery so I can get past him and get my next set of jobs. I find the mobile FFV client a little wonky… and especially in mobiles where you need fine motor control… that is not a thing the touchpad really gives you. Getting through the poison plants at the top of the mountain was not really a thing… so I simply opted to walk through a couple and take antidotes. Regardless it works well enough for my needs and gives me a reasonable platform without really shackling me to a specific location for playing it. I kinda hope we eventually get a version on the switch through either virtual console… or a release of this mobile port to it. Whatever the case…. someone seems to have replaced me with a doppelganger that does not mind mobile gaming all the sudden.

Warbears and Stormsplitter

July 12, 2017 by Belghast

We will lead off with the accomplishment of the night. I knew I was pretty close to the ARR Warrior “Raid” mount but I had lost sight of actually going after it specifically. I never really did anything to purposefully grind for this, and for the most part got my 200 “high-levelhemse prompted a trip to the guy near the waterfall in Gridania… who also apparently had the Maelstrom themed mammet waiting for me as well. The way I ride this mount is sort of insane, with me reaching down and trying to hold onto the fur and it runs around insanely. It is funny how animation cycles affect how we feel about the speed of a mount, because while this is technically the same speed as everything else I own… the feels so much faster because of the dynamic run loop. Grizzled warbear is probably the most Bel mount in existence… and it is only slightly sad that it doesn’t fly. There is however a newer bear that supposedly does have the ability to fly… and at the moment I am 49 of some silly number of 70+ content needed for that achievement. I doubt I will purposefully grind for it, but instead someday also be surprised when I see its achievement scrolling by after tanking a dungeon for someone.

Once upon a time in a small town far far away… I was a little skater punk kid. Technically I only grew up an hour away but we are going to call it far away for sake of the narrative. I was lucky enough that I had a half pipe in my yard, that we bought second hand and moved to our location and reassembled. Now this was too small to have a roll in, so it was functionally a “drop in” style ramp. For those unindoctrinated… most ramps have a bit of metal coping at the top of the lip that is there to protect the wood of the ramp from the “trucks” aka axles of the skateboard as you come up to the top and grind. Getting onto the ramp involved danging your board out over the edge of the ramp, with your back trucks butted up against the metal coping and then shifting your weight from the tail of the board to the front causing you to “drop in” to the ramp. I found this process completely terrifying, and each time I went out to skate the first few runs involved me not being willing to give myself over to gravity… and ultimately sliding down the ramp on my ass. Eventually I would loosen up and get comfortable and be able to drop in just fine for awhile and be able to ride the ramp legitimately for the rest of the day.

The reason why I have related this analogy is that for the most part… doing new organized content in an MMO is like dropping in for me. I am super hesitant for awhile and unwilling to venture off on my own and give it a shot. I didn’t do a whole lot of solo grinding of Alexander because I felt like I needed that safety net there in case something went wrong. Similarly this expansion I have thusfar been unwilling to join a party finder group to do Susano Extreme or Lakshmi Extreme, and last night… was the moment I dropped in for the first time. My friends Mor and Grace decided that we were going to do the encounters, and we recruited Muspel as well… and the four of us… two tanks and two heals set forth to build a party finder group. Susano was for the most part a learning experience, but very quickly it became a situation of having to work the kinks out and get our dps up high enough to be able to beat the enrage. With about 20 minutes to spare we manage to do it and I got my first kill under my belt. Lakshmi did not go so well, and not only was it much harder to pull together the group… but it also was pretty clear early on that we had nowhere near enough dps to be able to finish the job. After some wipes… having someone drop… refilling the group and re-queuing… only to wipe again due to not enough damage… we opted to call it for the evening. That said I now feel significantly more comfortable in either fight as a tank, and in theory I would probably be willing to solo queue from now on. I got over the coping… and got my weight shifted in the right way and now am more or less fine. However it is only because I went into the content with some people that I trusted… that I was eased over the edge, so I appreciate it when someone is willing to just hang out with me and answer my questions while I do new harder content.

Reading Challenge #88: The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn

July 11, 2017 by Grace

It’s reading challenge time again! This time I’ll be sharing my thoughts on #88, The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn, originally published in 1991. This is a rare find for this challenge – part of a large series of novels licensed to expand on a movie franchise, as opposed to the many novels on the challenge list that eventually got made into movies.

I have been looking forward to reading this book (series) for a while now. In fact, the weight of other people’s opinions and my own expectations actually made me delay starting this book a bit. What if I hate it? What if it doesn’t live up to the hype? Eventually though, my own curiosity and honest desire to see what all the fuss was about won out and I got started. I only read the first book, Heir to the Empire. As with the Elric saga, I suspect I’ll want to pick up the rest of this story once I am finished with this challenge list but it didn’t quite grab me enough to convince me to get sidetracked from my goal for it.

This first novel in the Thrawn trilogy takes place after the events in the movie Return of the Jedi. There’s no way to place it into context with the newest films since the entire Extended Universe of these old Star Wars novels has been declared non-canon. This was unexpectedly off-putting for me while I was reading. I felt like I was reading a piece of fan fiction instead of a professional, sanctioned novel simply because I knew up front that the world in this book is no longer connected in any way to the events in the ongoing movies. Sure, the new movies are going through and systematically lifting some of the choicest bits from the Extended Universe, but the specific events and specific characters and their reactions in this novel are no longer tied to the greater cinematic universe.

In this novel, Leia has been training with Luke to become a Jedi herself. She is also pregnant with force-sensitive twins, representing a potential rebirth for the Jedi order. The New Republic is established as the new government for at least part of the galaxy, and the remnants of the Empire are trying to fight its expansion. The main antagonist of the story is Admiral Thrawn, whose keen strategic thinking keeps him a step ahead of our heroes for much of the book. I can see why Thrawn is so memorable as a villain, he’s smart and calculating and poses a true threat to the Republic. Unlike many movie villains, Thrawn also knows when a battle is lost, and chooses to save his forces and regroup instead of lashing out. That move definitely raised him in my esteem.

Throughout the book Thrawn is slowly drawing together several threads of his plan to defeat the Republic. Some of these come to fruition in this novel, while others are left hanging for the other two books in the trilogy. While he is thinking on a grand scale, the story also becomes personally perilous for Luke and Leia. Thrawn enters into a bargain with a dark jedi, promising to hand them over in exchange for help coordinating the fleet’s attacks using the force. Both bounty hunters and squads of lethal aliens under Thrawn’s command are hunting both Luke and Leia.

One of the people hunting Luke in particular, for her own reasons, is fan-favorite Mara Jade. I can only imagine that she does some awesome stuff in the later books, because I didn’t really like her much in this one. She spent most of the book brooding, with a planet-sized chip on her shoulder. Sure, I wanted to find out what her deal was with Luke, and her hatred was probably justified. After all that build-up, though, I’m still not sure why exactly she never just orchestrated an “accident” to kill him on the many occasions she had the opportunity. Something about honor? It never came across clearly.

The book ends almost immediately after the climatic space battle, with a fairly major cliffhanger. It threw me off a bit, mostly because my copy had a hefty excerpt from the 2nd book tacked on at the end so I didn’t realize I was so close to being finished. Zahn did a good job of making me want to see what happens next with Thrawn’s plan, but not quite good enough to get me to dig into the second book right away. Overall, Heir to the Empire felt like a huge disappointment mostly because it had been hyped up so much over the years. I believe I would have loved it if I had read this back in the 90’s when I was both younger and desperate for any new continuation of my beloved Star Wars. Now it’s just a reasonably decent “what-if” story set in that universe.

TL;DR: It’s essentially high-quality fan fiction at this point. It was okay but I’m sad it didn’t remotely live up to the hype. I wish I had read it back when it was first published.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

Rating: 3/5 stars

Verdict: Great for die-hard Star Wars fans but I’m not sure it’s a must-read in a post-The Force Awakens world. If you don’t love Star Wars (what’s wrong with you???) you can definitely skip it.

Next up: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Netflix Castlevania

July 11, 2017 by Belghast

It would be a bit of an understatement to say I was excited about the new Netflix anime series based loosely on the events of Castlevania III. I have a deep relationship with this game series and while I have not played a lot of them, it was nonetheless extremely important during my formative video game playing years. The original was the very first game that I saved up money to purchase for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Back then at roughly age 11, it took a long time to scrounge up the money to buy a $50 video game… but that was really only half of the obstacle. To get the game itself required going someplace that had video games… or at least in the case of Castlevania a trip to Toys R Us… the closest of which was an hour and some change away from home. To say I devoured the game is a bit of an understatement as well… there are sequences in the original game that are burned into my brain just as indelibly as the Vampire Killer theme is. I have said this plenty of times… but I count Castlevania Symphony of the Night as my favorite game of all time and consider it pretty damned closed to perfect. When Koji Igarashi started the kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night… I threw money at my screen and backed it as soon as I could. Since then I have played through the demo version that backers got a few times… so to say I am the target audience is also probably a bit of an understatement.

The show released officially over the weekend on the 7th but I just finally was able to sit down for a period of time and watch through it last night. Prior to doing so I had been seeing a bit of confusing press floating around with folks generally being unsatisfied with the new netflix offering. Firstly this is probably the most bingeable Netflix “series” I have ever seen… with only 4 episodes weighing in around 100 minutes of total watching. This honestly felt more like a pilot and less like a complete series, but I won’t get hung up on those details. What the season is more than anything is setting the stage for the second season. Since this series is roughly based on the third Nintendo Entertainment System Castlevania game… we go into it knowing some of the major plot points and it seems like the show more or less is following them. During the four episodes we are introduced to a cast of characters that will play out over the series… but I found it curious that at least one major character was completely absent. I am hoping this was just a situation of not having met him yet through the course of the very short few episodes that we got, and will join the team as a later reveal. The show sets up the central conflict between the early science hating church and Dracula… and to a lesser extent the general forces of the enlightenment. For the Christian viewers… I could see some of the dialog being a little hard to swallow. For me personally… it did an excellent job of setting up the central conflict that made Castlevania III so different than some of the others in the series.

One of the complaints that I have seen online about the show is that Dracula is not set up to be a sympathetic character… and frankly I disagree. I found myself sympathizing with Dracula quite a bit honestly, and were I in his position I probably would have wanted to burn everything to the ground as well. As far as matching the tone of the games… you are supposed to hate Dracula because ultimately that is the core conflict. Castlevania more or less is about the central conflict between the Belmont family and Dracula. More or less every 100 years Castlevania materializes in our plane of existence, and the Belmont clan trains to be able to stop him each time. This series has a Belmont and a Dracula… so I feel like it met all of the necessary requirements for being able to call itself a Castlevania anything. I honestly thought all of the character introductions worked extremely well, especially Alucard… who isn’t 100% on our side and we get that impression. The real problem with the series as I see it is that I want more of it. Four episodes was just not enough because it essentially serves as the pregame cinematic setting everything up… and we haven’t really gotten to any of the meat of the game yet… or in this case the series. I mean they had to functionally tell an origin story given that they cannot really guarantee that anyone who is watching the show has ever actually consumed any of the source material. I feel like they did a great job of setting the stage… but I am not really looking forward to the likely two year wait until the next batch of episodes. This time I am hoping they give us way more than four in a single sitting. This won’t be the show for everyone… but I am not looking to nitpick something that I never thought I would actually see in my lifetime. I am more than happy just to sit back and enjoy it.