Aloy and Horsebirbs

Aloy and Horsebirbs

We live in trying times… and what I mean by that is right now there are entirely too damned many great games coming out in a very short period of time.  I was already woefully behind in my progress in literally everything, and when compounded by the fact that I am apparently bingeing the hell out of Final Fantasy XIV you end up with a lot of stuff simply not getting accomplished.  For example… this month the AggroChat game of the month is Final Fantasy XV.  It is in fact MY pick…  but I have been high center in the game for a long time and last night I attempted to fix that.  I kept telling myself that I would only do the main story quest, and that lasted for a little while but not long.  Firstly I wound up bumping into a bunch of ridiculously higher level mobs on the way to my next quest objective.  One of which was freaking Midgardsormr…  just hanging out chilling on the river bank.  When I made a tactical retreat and pushed forward into the cave…  I found that pretty much the mobs inside were also going to kick my ass.  So that means I have hit the wall that my gear and level seems to be able to get me to…  so as the evening went on my purpose seemed to disintegrate and I was once again wandering aimlessly and doing all of the side quests in a vague attempt to catch up level wise.

Aloy and Horsebirbs

Ultimately I am suffering from the exact same problem that I had when we were doing Fallout 4 as a game of the month.  For many of the folks in our podcast…  winning the game is the goal and seeing the story to its conclusion.  For me that really isn’t a thing… and instead I like doing all of the little objectives and inhabiting the world, participating in it.  So in many ways moving the story forward…  defeats that purpose because I keeps moving me past things that I kinda want to get out and roam around and explore.  When it comes to trying to push a game like this…  it ends up making me miserable.  Ultimately I am not going to be even closed to the end of the game when we record the podcast this weekend, and largely I think I am going to be okay with it.  Final Fantasy XV is still one of my favorite games from last night, and I really don’t much care about story spoilers in the first place.  That was never why I was playing the game, and never why it clicked with me.  It clicked because it was finally a Final Fantasy game that embraced my desire to roam around and get off the beaten path…  and then actually rewarded me for doing so.  Now I wish I had been playing the game all of this time, because last night I really enjoyed myself.  However I end up getting caught up in wanting to be around actual living breathing people… and for me that means MMOs.  Getting bit by the Final Fantasy XIV bug hasn’t helped lately either in my push to get everything to 50.  However this is still a game that I am enjoying moving through, albeit slowly.

Aloy and Horsebirbs

The game that is going to be the death of me right now however is Horizon Zero Dawn.  During the mishap with my account and a bunch of others getting compromised on PSN, I ended up getting $50 funded to my Playstation wallet.  They were unable or unwilling to reverse the charges on my credit card, so I had this pot of cash that was sitting there needing to be spent on something.  As a result I ended up pre-ordering Horizon and when I checked my PS4 yesterday morning it had already installed and was simply waiting on the magic moment to launch.  This is going to fall down into the “bel knows better” category… but by now I should have learned not to attempt to play a game at 11pm central when things generally officially launch for me.  However I did this thing… and as a result I wound up getting to bed significantly later than I would have liked.  Also as a result I am groggy as hell sitting down this morning to write this blog post.  That said I need you to marvel at how adorable babby Aloy is…  and that you end up playing as her for a bit and not just through a sequence of cut scenes.  I’ve barely scratched the surface and not even really made it through the tutorial section… and this game already has me hooked in both game play and its world.

Aloy and Horsebirbs

Admittedly this game did not really have to try terribly hard to hook me given its theme.  Awesome bow lady that fights zoids for fun and profit.  What I didn’t expect was just how damned good the controls feel and how responsive combat actually ends up being.  Things have happened already in the story line that I did not expect to happen… and I am super intrigued as to how they end up playing out in the long run.  I don’t want to get too much into my thoughts about story events, because literally the game just unlocked last night and I don’t want to spoil anything really.  What I do find interesting is that so far this game has confirmed my theory about something.  Several years ago I would have told you that I simply did not enjoy playing female characters in games.  I now know that is completely wrong… and I do absolutely enjoy female characters so long as they are the equivalent of the sort of male characters I enjoy.  I like warriors…  I like playing badasses that are armed to the teeth and more importantly armored.  Over the last few years there have been a long list of characters that I have really enjoyed from the modern reboot of Lara Croft, to Zarya in Overwatch, to Sonya in Heroes of the Storm.  Aloy is just another in a long line of these characters that I enjoy playing, and apparently it was never a gender thing…  and just a warrior thing.  I will be anxiously watching the clock today at work, so I can get home and play some more Horizon and see where the game takes me.  I know that Tam stayed up late last night to go ahead and start playing, and he seems to be enjoying it as well.

AggroChat #141 – Games of the Year 2016 – Part Two

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen and 9 Games

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It is that time again.  Time for the AggroChat crew to attempt to narrow down a list of games for our Games of the Year show.  We have never actually been able to reach a consensus so instead we gather up a big ole list of games and talk about it each year as in a two part show. So six hosts… 3 picks per host… 18 games in total, or at least in theory that is the goal.  This time around it seems to have mostly worked out as we have 9 games per episode.

During this second episode we visit our roman numeral friends talk about…

  • Pokemon Go
  • Dark Souls III
  • Overwatch
  • Stardew Valley
  • Stellaris
  • Tyranny
  • Final Fantasy XV
  • The Witness
  • Skyrim Special Edition

AggroChat #135 – Looks Like A Kahuna

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tam talk Pokemon and a whole list of other topics.

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Tonight we got a bit of late start, but once things got rolling we recorded a proper show.  Last week we had pushed off the topic of Pokemon Sun and Moon because we literally ran out of time.  We start recording around 9 pm CST and when it is past midnight…  we know we are in trouble.  So we talk a bit about the game and things that folks have noticed about it.  Several of us are not terribly far along… others have beaten the game.  Grace talks about her addiction to Justice Monsters Five and how no other games really matter at all.  

Bel goes on a discussion about his feelings about various streaming options and why he is moving towards Beam.  Bel talks about how this is the year that he stopped browsing steam, because there is just too much random stuff out there.  This spawns a conversation about games that get lost in the mix…  like Obsidian’s recent release of Tyranny.  This oddly spawns another contorted shift as Bel talks about that he figures out why he doesn’t really enjoy Halo games.  We shift gears and talk a bit about Final Fantasy XIV and the Alexander Turn 11 fight.  Finally we wrap things up with some talk about the new Star Wars Destiny Collectible Card Game.

Discussion points: Pokemon Sun and Moon – Justice Monsters Five – Twitch vs Hitbox vs Beam – Browsing Steam – Tyranny – Bel and Halo – Final Fantasy XIV – Alexander Turn 11 – Star Wars Destiny

Weekend Hibernation

Weekend Hibernation

It was a truly bizarre weekend for a whole lot of reasons.  Primarily because whatever illness my wife had seemed to strike with a vengeance during the tail end of last week.  As I said before I was originally planning on going to RiffTrax with work friends on Thursday night but by the time I left work I realized there was no way I could make it through an entire evening.  Instead I begged off and went home and crashed on the sofa in my fuzzy blanket cocoon.  By the time Friday came around I was really doing considerably worse and took a sick day…  which in turn screwed up  our evening plans.  We were originally slotted to do this monthly family dinner thing, but we rescheduled it for next weekend because I was not sure how well I would be to drive.  Instead I returned to the blanket cocoon once more and was as a result available for our normal Friday night Emerald Nightmare clear run.  I wound up tanking it, with the stipulation being that I was not going to talk at all.  In fact to  prevent myself from doing this I muted my microphone…. which lead to a weird run since I am fairly vocal as we make it through the content.  To make it even more odd, we were without the OTHER vocal leader Kylana which meant a whole slew of people had to step up to the plate and help make sure the run went smoothly.  So seriously huge thanks to Mort, Phy, Beist, Bledd, and I am sure a whole slew of other people who also were chatty and helpful but I am not remembering at this very moment.  It was once again a super clean run, and in the end I wound up swapping off for Erry for the final encounter since it generally requires a bit more vocal tank coordination.

Weekend Hibernation

Past that night I spent a lot of time piddling around in stuff by myself.  Namely this meant an awful lot of Final Fantasy XV, and I think maybe just maybe I am finally to the point where I am willing to move on past “world 1”.  As I said before there is a point where the game warns you that if you continue on you might not be able to return for awhile.  I took this warning to heart given that I just came from playing Final Fantasy XIV where this sometimes means that a two and a half hour long cut scene is about to happen.  Instead over the weekend I found out from some of the other folks playing it that at least in this case… the game is talking about a ten minute process and not a thirty hour long one.  In past games these warnings often times meant that you would not be able to return until you found the airship, and I am pleased to find out that this is not the case.  At this point though I am running out of things I can actually do in the starter world, and all of the hunts are of a significant level difference from my current level so I think the game is not so subtly telling me to move the hell on.

Weekend Hibernation

Another thing that took up some time this weekend is that I tore down a chunk of my office and set up my new Xbox One.  For awhile now I have been interested in owning an Xbox One to be able to play the titles that don’t exist on the PS4.  Similarly there is an entire group of friends that I have that are on the Xbox path, and I have not been able to play with them.  Unfortunately there were really no titles that supported Xbox 360 crossplay with Xbox One, so as each of them has upgraded…  my options similarly narrowed.  While I have had this latent desire… I also just could not justify the street price for the console given that I am primarily a PC gamer first… and a Console gamer second.  However on Black Friday I actually partook of a deal on Dell.com for an Xbox One, Extra Controller, Headset, and Five Games:  Halo 5 Limited Edition, Farcry 4, Ryze Legendary Edition, Sunset Overdrive, and Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes all for right at $200.  For this I was willing to jump on it and the box arrived at my house Saturday during the day… and I wound up setting it up after editing the podcast on Sunday morning.  There was another deal on Cyber Monday to pick up a copy of the Destiny Collection for the Xbox One for I believe $25 and I jumped on that too, so while I was installing other things…  I ported over my Xbox 360 copy of Destiny.  Firstly since I am largely a digital only gamer on PS4… I did not realize the whole download after installation was as much of a tedious chore as it actually was.  Halo 5 took a good three hours worth of download time, which I found insane and shocking.  Is this what disc copy gamers on the PS4 have to deal with as well? or is this largely just an Xbox One thing?  In any case… I was kinda happy to see that my PS4 clan tag ported over to the Xbox One, and while I will still primarily be playing Destiny on PS4, I want to level something to hang with my friends playing on the Xbone.

I’ve decided to start linking the podcast on Monday mornings in what generally ends up being a weekend rundown post.  Not that I think there is anyone who doesn’t have access to it… but just in case the youtube version embeds nicely.  The other big take away from the weekend was all of the food that we cooked.  We wound up having a weekend full of comfort food, cooked in the crock pot.  So Friday night before going to bed I threw our breakfast casserole on to cook so that when we woke up Saturday morning it was ready.  This dish consists of egg, cheese, potato, ham and sausage and it amazing.  We wound up eating on it for breakfast and lunch on Sunday as well…  and still have a bunch left over.  My wife had the bright idea to turn it into a breakfast burrito with a little salsa.  We also cooked our Chicken and Cheese Tortilla soup, which we only got two meals out of…  well and an extra helping or two.  Finally on Sunday we tried out this Orange Chicken thing…  that is close but not quite there.  It was good enough but it needs something to make it work properly…  and I think I screwed it up by putting the rice directly in the sauce and letting it cook.  I should have simply made a couple cups of rice and then ladled the sauce over it instead.  In any case…  my wife and I are both largely on the mend but we pretty much spent the entire weekend hibernating.  We started taking some OTC meds when it initially hit and I think it helped out quite a bit.