Last night was a bit of a strange night for me. Originally I had plans to get together with some of my friends and work on Karazhan attunements… of which I have not even started running the dungeons. However I had apparently forgotten that last night was the RiffTrax live show. By “live” I mean streamed to theaters around the country as the original show is going on in Nashville. This time around we got to see two shorts and the really bizarre feature film “Carnival of Souls”(which is apparently up on youtube in its entirety). The film is apparently by the same guy that did another RiffTrax classic… the “Shake Hands with Danger” PSA from Caterpillar. This literally is probably one of the more bizarre movies I have watched because really from the entire moment it started… it felt like this strange meandering film about nothing. The RiffTrax send-up however was great, the movie itself just ended with what was supposed to be a shocking reveal… but largely felt like maybe the director was the only one not in on the secret? In any case by the time I got out of there, and drove home I was a little out of it. I existed in that state of too tired to do anything serious, but not tired enough to actually head on to bed.
Instead I decided to install the Skyrim Special Edition and check it out. I have to give Bethesda a lot of credit for giving it out for free to anyone who already owned the original game and all of the expansions. The install was roughly 9 gig so I am guessing that the improvements were more or on the processing side of the equation rather than just pushing a lot of upgraded textures. Whatever the case the game looks gorgeous, if I had been thinking I would have installed the base game on this newer machine and done some side by side comparisons. It is enough of an upgrade to make me happy, and I am always willing to have a new excuse to roam around Skyrim being a murder hobo. Once again however I am torn between sword and shield and bow… ending up mixing between the two quite a bit based on the fight. As is always the case I had trouble staying to the actual missing and instead have already cleared out the first barrow while retrieving the golden claw. In theory I think I probably should have gone to Whiterun, but whatever the case I am wandering down my own path once again. The game doesn’t really feel that changed, more like you installed a graphical upgrade mod. Whatever the case it looks pretty, and runs well so that pretty much ticks off the boxes I needed. At some point I might check out the mods available, but for the time being I am largely running vanilla.
This week Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tam talk Pax West 2016, Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns, and World of Warcraft Legion
This week we have a bizarre show that somehow covers a lot of content without us actually realizing it. Since Tam and Kodra attended Pax West last week we went into a discussion about all of the stuff they saw there. From there we branch out into a discussion about Guild Wars 2 and Tam recently picking the game up after talking to a friend about it. We largely discuss how the game has improved since launch and that Tam, Ash and Kodra are enjoying in it. Finally we wrap up the evening talking about World of Warcraft Legion and some of the experiences Grace and Belghast have after hitting the new level cap and experiencing World Quests.
Things We Discussed – Pax West 2016 – Dishonored 2 – Prey – 20XX – Open Sorcery – Thornwatch – Star Wars Destiny CCG – Hacknet – Elder Scrolls: Legends – Raging River Card – Elder Scrolls as MTG Colors – Duelyst – Speedrunners – Ultimate Chicken Horse – Pax Dev – Pax Panels – Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns – World of Warcraft – Legion – World Quests
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I feel like I grew up at exactly the right time to be a fan of fighting games. For the most part these were what consumed my High School game playing years, well apart from a healthy dose of pen and paper role-playing and miniatures. I remember when the local Circle K got in the original Street Fighter back in middle school, my friend and I were completely enamored with it. Sure we had played fighting games before, but there was just something different about this one. Then when Street Fighter II started showing up in Arcades during early 1991… it was quite literally all we could talk about. Electronic Gaming Monthly had become our bible, and when it released full move sheets for each character, my friend Wade and I practically memorized them. We were set on course for a wild ride over the next several years, as a new game would come along and dethrone the previous king. I spent so much money in the arcades playing Street Fighter II derivatives, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, Mortal Kombat 1 and 2…. and finally culminating for me at least with Killer Instinct. I went off to college…. got poor… so I missed a whole generation of the early Tekken games, finally re-entering the fighting game world with Soul Edge in the basement of the university center. I stayed engaged for most of the original Playstation and for the first bit of the Playstation 2… and then thanks to my addiction to MMOs… checked out of the scene once more.
From that point onwards I have tried to poke my head in, every now and then… even purchasing the original release of Street Fighter IV on my fairly new Xbox 360. There is still very much a will in me to play these games… but I have had to realize that I am not nearly as good as my nostalgia believes me to be. Generally speaking I get my ass kicked and get it kicked extremely hard when I try and play anyone with much skill. I also have completely killed any of those key callouses that we used to need to keep from getting a nasty case of “raw thumb”. There is something about Street Fighter V however that has reinvigorated my desire to try and learn to play Fighting games once more. At almost 40… I simply don’t have the reflexes to ever really be “great”, not that I ever was in the first place. I could dominate an arcade cabinet for a few hours on a single quarter during my prime, but that part of me is just no longer around. Gone is most of that competitive spirit, and instead I just want to have some fun playing a fighting game. So much has been added to the genre since I last played, that it feels like I will be simply starting from scratch again. We will have to see how long the drive stays with me, but as of right now I have every intent of sitting at home tonight and trying to remember how to play a Street Fighter game. I ended up picking it up on PS4, so my PSN id is Belghast as is my Capcom fighter tag, though I don’t expect to play against anyone for a long while. I wish I had ordered that Hori Fight Commander in preparation of this…. because I am not sure if I can get used to hitting shoulder buttons for heavy attacks.
In other news… I have now finished the bulk of the quests in Grahtwood and am moving forward to Greenshade. There are I am certain a few points of interest that I did not take care of while I was in Grahtwood, but a lot of them are simply going to wait for another level… and a fresh infusion of gear. So many of the world bosses that I encountered were actually two separate boss mobs that interacted with each other. I can absolutely whittle down one world boss, by simply out surviving it and self healing…. but when it comes to two at the same time my damage output is lacking. So my hope is that when I hit Veteran 4 and can craft a whole new set of gear… that I will be able to return and kick their ass. Right now I am largely wearing a crafted set of Veteran 1 gear… and at this point it is starting to feel a bit dated. In other news I got this installed once again on my upstairs gaming rig, so my hope is to maybe start streaming some of my evening shenanigans. I am not sure what it is about playing Elder Scrolls Online, but it very much feels like returning home. Its like the world waited there quietly for me to return, and has thus far welcomed me back with open arms. If you ever played this game in the past… you might take the bit to patch up your client and give it a shot. I know a few people recently have restarted after not enjoying the beta testing at all… and are enjoying themselves. The game certainly feels more polished now than it was at launch.