Good Morning Folks! On Tuesday night I started a brand new character and last night I got it into maps. This has been one of the faster leveling characters I have played, but that was in part because for most of it I was using a bunch of uniques to speed up the process. As I talked about yesterday, I created a Necromancer and started working towards a Vaal Absolution build. Last night I did my normal build testing routine of running a T1 map, a T5 map, a T6 map, a T10 map… and then ultimately trying a T16 map. Shockingly I survived very well in a T16 “alch and go” Crimson Temple with red altars turned on. Did it feel amazing? Absolutely not, but it does feel pretty solid when I drop back down to T10 “barely red” maps. I think more than anything I just need more levels to make this build feel a bit more comfortable as I just dinged 76 this morning.
I am sure I will do a full write-up at some point, and I recorded a brief video this morning of how it looks currently. Essentially you can see my POB from level 73 and just starting maps, and I am making a few “choices” that differ from the standard spiel. Most of it is stuff I had lying around like using a +2 Minion Geofri’s Crest just because it had a boost to minions and really good resistances on it rather than its actual purpose of scaling up Holy Relics. I am still not entirely certain what I think of this build but in the grand scheme of things it seems to be pretty solid. I think it falls in the category of so many of my alternate builds where if I put more time into it, it could feel amazing. More than anything this was a test case to feel how absolution plays, and I think I have gotten a decent idea at this point.
I also wrapped up the second book in the first Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson and plan on starting the third book tonight. This novel was a wild ride, and I realize I have said that before… but no really… this was a wild ride. It went in a bunch of directions and wound up with a very “Empire Strikes Back” type ending where everything is bad for our protagonists. However, that makes a lot of sense given this is the middle book in a trilogy. I just did not expect the direction things went, many of the actions that were taken, or the resolution that came out of them. I am still very deeply invested in most of the main characters so of course I will hungrily begin consuming the next bit as soon as things have settled down tonight.
Lastly, my order for the Gamecube Purple Nitro Deck came in yesterday and I had a bit to play with it. Essentially it is a controller dock of a sort for the Switch where you take the central tablet portion and click it securely into a wrap-around controller base. The end result is something that feels significantly more solid and balanced in your hands than the default configuration of a Switch. It features rumble and gyro with the only lost functionality being NFC but given I rarely if ever use Amiibos… this was not a big deal to me. The buttons and dpad are maybe not as high quality as I would have liked, but the thumb sticks are Hall Effect which should stop drift. There is an added benefit of having four buttons on the back in a similar arrangement to the Steam Deck. The entire package is a bit lighter than the Switch with native Joycons attached. All in all I think I am going to like it quite a bit.
While I was writing this post, the video of Vaal Absolution gameplay finished uploading, so check that out if you are interested. Today is my Friday, so quite honestly I have no clue if I will be making a blog post tomorrow. If I do not… I hope you all have a wonderful day. We are going to get our Flu Shot and latest Covid booster so I have no clue how I will be feeling in the morning.
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Hey Folks! I’ve mentioned a few times that I have been playing around with Yuzu and while I purchased Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch… I didn’t really get into it until I dumped the game and started playing it on PC. Essentially “Breath of the Zelda” series has one fatal flaw as far as I am concerned… weapon durability. I hates it… I hates it so much… and it ultimately destroys my enjoyment of the game. So on the emulator, I can apply a “patch” of sorts to simply remove that problem. I did not make it all the way through Breath of the Wild until I played it on Cemu, so it isn’t shocking that the same seems to be playing out with Tears of the Kingdom. You also have the side effect of playing at a higher frame rate and with slightly improved graphics.
All told I think I like this entry a lot better than I liked Breath of the Wild. Both games started you out in a sort of “starter island” experience, with Breath of the Wild being a plateau that you could not leave without access to the Glider and Tears of the Kingdom being a literal island in the sky. You are set forth with only the vaguest of directions and left to sort of bumblefuck your way around the island and figure out exactly how you should go about traversing it. At first, this felt grossly inefficient, especially given that you only end up with one shrine marked on your map and you sorta have to guess at the location of the other two. Each shrine is effectively unlocked by the power you’ve learned from the previous one, so by the time you leave the first island you get a feel of how to use the new combining powers to their fullest.
A few months ago Kodra set forth to play some Tears of the Kingdom and found the experience disappointing which led to a discussion on the podcast with me relating my feelings about Diablo IV to his feelings about the latest Zelda entry. The end result is that we thought maybe Breath of the Wild was a good game but not necessarily a good Zelda game. I think the challenge is that we are looking at the game through the lens of multiple decades of living with this series. I personally consider A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda game in the entire series and I think for Kodra it is Majora’s Mask. As I have been playing Tears of the Kingdom I have begun to re-evaluate that conversation in my head. I think maybe I was misinterpreting my modern view of the series with what the series originally was at its core.
Thinking back about the very first game… I similarly was left to bumblefuck my way around it and failed to make much progress until I got my hands on the above image. Nintendo of America released this magical tome called the “Official Nintendo Player’s Guide” and it contained detailed maps and boss strategies to take down almost every game in the arsenal at the time of publication in 1987. In the original Legend of Zelda, that first dungeon is super easy to find and then the second dungeon requires you to just roam around aimlessly around a ton of territory to actually find it. I am pretty sure originally I had fought these dungeons out of order and did three long before I finished two. So when I got ahold of the maps… I was finally able to strategically knock out the dungeons in order. Similar to Breath of the Wild, I only had the vaguest of directions to go on… that I know Dungeons exist and that I should clear them.
The outrageous options that you have with Tears of the Kingdom and building took a bit of getting used to. Last night before I logged I was held up in a shrine that required me to make hot air balloons to do “something” but that objective was not entirely clear. It was fun as hell though to slap a fan to a minecart and watch it zoom along a track out over a chasm. I’ve built several different boats to varying degrees of success and can see the potential to make gliders that are powered by a fan and can let me cross great distances. Last night I helped repair a cart and tame a horse to drive it. The objectives are what you make of them, and there is often a simple solution… and then a way more convoluted one that you could take if you are so inclined.
I also now get why folks were telling me that weapon durability was not as much of a problem in this game as it is in Breath of the Wild. One of your powers amounts to the ability to take shitty weapons and glue strong components to them… to make less shitty weapons. For example, I glued a fire emitter to a shield and now have a fire-breathing shield. Similarly, I have a Boss Boko horn that is curiously sword blade shaped… glued to a random tarnished sword that I picked up and have turned into a rather effective piece of gear. Per the lore… every weapon in Hyrule has decayed as a result of the opening moments of the game and the only way to make them viable… is by crafting something with them. I still greatly prefer not to have durability turned on however so that when I land upon a weapon I like… I can just keep it indefinitely.
I’m in no real rush to get through this game, but I do find it rather relaxing to play. I’m trying not to let it bother me how general or vague the objectives are. If I see a shrine along my path… I go attempt it. If I see something off in the distance that catches my eye… I go explore it. I am however mostly going in the direction of my next objective marked on my map. However, I was given four equal objectives… and I just happened to choose the one that seemed like it was the correct one. All in all, I think Tears of the Kingdom is probably a more compelling game than Breath of the Wild. The world already feels more vibrant and alive. It also feels like less of a retread of the rote Zelda story we have experienced in one form or another before. There are more new elements being woven into this tale.
I am honestly surprised by how much I am enjoying the game. After the conversation on the podcast, I sort of thought that it would not be for me. I am pleasantly surprised that has not been the case. It is also shocking how much more I enjoy playing Nintendo Switch games on a PC than I ever did on the console. That is entirely my problem, and I wish there was a way to pass saved data back and forth between the two. I might look into this… or I might just get Yuzu up and running on my Steam Deck as that might be simpler. Hopefully, you are having a great week. At this point, I have gotten three certifications this week and will be wrapping up the fourth today. Then by Friday I should have my fifth and be done for a while. I am so ready to return to being alone in my office plugging away in lieu of being in person. The experience has been fine, but by yesterday at lunch, I was done with human interaction.
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Good Morning Friends! I was a bit all over the place when it came to gaming this weekend. I did not make nearly as much progress as I thought I would in Guild Wars 2. Essentially I wrapped up Bitterfrost Frontier and Lake Doric, which now plants me firmly in the middle of Draconis Mons. I have some bad memories of this section of Living World 3. Specifically I remember there was a quest chain where I had to change up my keybindings in order to get through it. By default I have an option turned on that makes my ground target effects center on whatever I happen to be targetting. This is super useful when it comes to not having to fiddle with aiming them. However there was a sequence I can remember when I was flying up in the air and having to target specific things on the ground which required me to turn this all off. So I will have to figure how HOW I do that… by the time I get to that part of the quest.
I am still playing a bit of Honkai Star Rail every day, and still slowly working on trying to get Coffin Guy aka Luocha. It is not necessarily that I even like him as a character, but I want access to a second healer. In my travels of trying to pull for him, I did manage to pick up Pela which is cool. I bonded with her as a character during the whole Museum event. Speaking of events there is a new one starting today that gives you double Calyx rewards. Like as far as events go it is boring… but it is a decent time to stock up on resources. Unfortunately only the first 12 Calyx battles count towards the double rewards, so I guess I know what I will be doing for the next few days at least… stockpiling resources.
One of the cool things about Mastodon in general is that it has a heavy indie dev presence. The other day the very awesome Megan Fox (the game dev one) was doing a thing where she was boosting indie devs that had less than 100 followers. One of these was Craig, who works on a game that recently hit early access on Steam called Trinity Fusion. So I picked it up and have played quite a bit of it over the weekend. Essentially it has a lot in common with Dead Cells and Hades, and there are some really interesting options. I think maybe the difficulty curve might be a bit overtuned especially if you choose the “easy” mode because there isn’t really much of a difference from the normal mode. The art style reminds me a bit of Flashback for reasons I can’t fully explain. There are a lot of interesting weapon options, some of them clearly better than others but that is always going to happen. I will be interested to see how this one evolves over time.
I also spent some time this weekend screwing around with Yuzu the Nintendo Switch emulator. It had been quite awhile since I last touched it, and lord has it improved during that time. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the emulator is capable of latching onto the gyro sense in my Dual Sense PS5 controller. I remember when I was playing through Breath of the Wild on Cemu I had to use some monstrocity where I latched into the gyro in my android phone to complete those puzzles. I mean I could just play all of these games on my switch, but I know with Cemu the ability to remove weapon durability from Breath of the Wild made that game infinitely more enjoyable. I need to dive into the mods for Yuzu and see if I can find something similar for Tears of the Kingdom. I have to say playing on my 3080 equipped PC… is so much prettier and smoother than playing on a native Switch.
Lastly I spent some time this weekend screwing around on the Mage in Last Epoch. I’ve decided to follow a build guide and go all in on lightning damage. So far it is just immensely fun to shock everything to death and watch the lightning damage arc between oncoming monsters. I am not sure how far I will make it with this character. I spent the entire podcast on Saturday playing it and am now around level 21 ish. I’ve chosen my specialization and went Sorc but am still picking up basics from the Mage tree. I am curious to see how this character feels once I get a decent amount of ward preservation on it, because at the moment it feels a wee bit squishy.
Last week was a bit of a slog, in spite of only being three days long. I am hoping this week will be a little less compacted and stressful. I know I essentially have to prepare for being in training all week the week after next. I’ve not done anything in person for that many days in a row for awhile, so that will be its own sort of stress. I hope you all have a pheomenal week, and I hope that maybe I can pick one of the many things I have been doing to actually focus on.
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The mClassic external graphics processor by Marseille Inc.
Hey Friends! Sometimes I do things that make little to no sense and this mornings post is going to be one of them. I write about them because they can serve as a lesson for others, and occasionally they work out fairly well. You may or may not know what the mCable or the mClassic are, because you may not run in the same informational circles that I do. However what it promises is a magical dongle that upscales a video signal being passed through the device and attempts to improve the image quality in the process. This device normally retails for $100, but I managed to find it on sale for $80 a few months back and which piqued my interest enough to make a purchase. Again… I do dumb things sometimes so you don’t have to.
mClassic scaling chart
A lot of the press surrounding the device claimed that it could take a 720p input signal and scale it up to 4k, and in theory that is a thing that is within the realm of possibilities but you have a lot of caveats. So if that 720p signal is only 30 fps then sure enough you can get a 30 fps 2160p aka 4k signal out of it… pending you are using cables that support HDMI 1.4 and that all of the devices in the chain also support HDMI 1.4. If you have a input signal running at 60 fps… the highest thing you can get out of it is 1440p, which is very rarely supported by televisions and as a result you get 1080p instead. So the scaling seems to work but only in the most optimal of conditions and only if you hold your mouth just right.
Digital Foundry review of the mClassic
So something you have to understand before we get into this… I had watched a number of reviews on this product… the vast majority reported minimal improvements. Yet I still do this thing, in part because the Nintendo Switch looks awful on a 4k television, and anything to clean up the image would be a great improvement. I have a nonsense setup where everything pipes into a very nice 8 port HDMI switch, then goes into my Elgato Pro video card which in itself is only capable of capturing a 1080p image, but the pass through port is capable of passing along a 2160p signal just fine. Originally I had the mClassic in line so that it was processing every signal passing through the HDMI switch, but the results were not amazing.
Modern Vintage Gamer review of mClassic
It seemed to actually make a lot of my experience with the PS4 considerably worse. One example that I sadly don’t have video evidence of is on the FF7 Remaster, the chain link fence at the train station was reduced to just a grid of shiny points with most of the wire itself being smoothed out of existence. On the PS3, Xbox 360 and Xbox One it seemed to make absolutely no difference at all. I ran numerous tests, not really seeing any perceivable benefit. Where I did see benefit however is on the Nintendo Switch, which seemed to have a decently improved image. The annoying part about the cable is that it requires a separate usb power connection, and since it connects to the console and not the television… you can’t simply do the reach around to the USB trick easily. I decided to remove it from my entire set up and instead connect it straight to the Switch dock, where I thankfully still had free USB ports.
The core challenge I have had with this device is that the benefits are subtle. So much so that I am never quite certain that I am actually seeing any tangible benefit and are instead just WANTING to see a benefit thanks to spending $80 on it. As a result I devised a test, which is nowhere near as expansive as some of the reviewers I have already linked above. I have my Switch running through my Elgato capture card, which in theory is receiving the full benefit of all of the image processing. At the same time if I take a screenshot on the Switch itself, it has no idea that the mClassic exists and takes an image of what the hardware is actually producing. So yesterday I did the very fiddly method of taking a screenshot on the console while at the same time hitting my capture button on the PC, and then merging the two images to try and discern if I was actually seeing a difference. Today we are going to go over the results.
Diablo III: Eternal Collection on Nintendo Switch
The first game I tried this on was Diablo III, which looks absolutely horrible in docked mode on a 2160p display. The methodology I used was to drag both images into photoshop, layer them on top of each other, and then slice down through the layer at key points trying to get some side by side comparisons. First off like I said the difference is subtle, but in this example it is absolutely there. The image coming out of the mClassic appears more vibrant and sharp and seems to refine the muddy textures. One of the big places I notice this is in the Blacksmith’s stand where the mClassic absolutely appears to be improving the texture quality. Another place that I found surprising was just how much it seems to be improving the text. Is it $80 worth of improvement? I am not sure… but it does seem to be making a difference.
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Nintendo Switch
Once again the image here for Breath of the Wild appears more vibrant. This is going to be a theme for most of the comparisons in that when you look at the original it almost seems like there is a haze on it. The biggest place where I notice a difference is in the grass texture, which seems to be significantly more defined on the signal coming from the mClassic. Once again it also seems to be sharpening up the HUD elements which is nice.
Monster Hunter Generations X on Nintendo Switch
I opted to test out Monster Hunter Generations X in part because it is a game that is already extremely vibrant. The end result almost seems over-saturated to the point of starting to lose a bit of detail in the shadows. The textures are absolutely improved as is the overall quality of the models. I did a slice on my character to show the difference and you can similarly compare the two palicos.
Astral Chain on Nintendo Switch
I wanted to try out some overly dark games and opted first for Astral Chain. Similar to Monster Hunter it seems to increase what is already going on with the game. So to me it seems like it is actually darkening much of the game and pushing away a lot of the subtle mid tones. The thing that I find most interesting is how it seems to almost remove the glowing effect on my character’s eyes. Just like the other examples it does a good job of sharpening textures so they feel like they have more depth, but I am not sure about the overall experience.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Nintendo Switch
Finally I wanted to test this out on a fairly dark 2D game, and as a result I went with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This is the example that I see the least difference in. There is a bit of sharpening to the textures but it is extremely subtle. Additionally there seems to be an improvement in vibrancy, but it mostly just has the effect of darkening the image slightly.
The mClassic external graphics processor by Marseille Inc.
So in the end… I am still deeply torn about the actual benefit of this device. I believe that it is in fact doing something, but I am not sure if the something that it is doing is worth the price tag. The part of it that is being touted the hardest is the promise of taking a 720p or 1080p signal and turning it magically into 2160p for your shiny new 4k television. Yes it does this thing, but it feels like there is a mountain of legal small print that comes with it and the understanding that it only does this in the most specific of circumstances. The only system that I saw a visible improvement with was the Nintendo Switch, and even there you can see by the examples I have provided that it is subtle.
So in the end… would I recommend this product to anyone for the price point? Probably not. Am I disappointed that I purchased it? Not really, because it does make some improvement to the worst offender on my television and I am fine I guess knowing that. Like I said I had watched a dozen or so reviews on this product before purchasing, so I knew what I was getting into. The claim the device makes is tantalizing, but unfortunately in my experience not nearly as magical as it sounds.
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