Month: August 2015

What I’m Playing, August 2, 2015

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Blaugust 2015, Day 2

To save myself some time and stress I’ll be devoting Sundays to a quick update of what games I’ve been playing for the week and any progress I’ve made. Over the past week I’ve played:

My much fancier looking level 70 wizard.

My much fancier looking level 70 wizard.

Diablo 3: I’ve been trying to get a second seasonal wizard up to level 70 before patch 2.3 arrives. Why? I don’t know. That may be the reason why so far I’m only 44.

WildStar: This week I’ve been trying to get a head start on Blaugust by running shiphands and taking lots of notes and screen shots for some guides. I also managed to save enough plat to finally buy the highest rank of riding speed. Sadly it doesn’t feel all that noticeable. On the plus side while farming shiphands I looted a second Supernova White Dye which helped me regain some of the plat I spent. I’ve also set aside a project for the month for this game. At the start of the month I took all my money and sent it to an unused alt, and I will be tracking how much I make over the month starting from 0. After playing yesterday and today I’m already up to 3 plat. I’m curious how much playtime it will take to be able to afford a CREDD, and how much I will end up with at the end of the month!

Crimzon Clover WORLD IGNITION: Last month’s Aggrochat game of the month was Astebreed, which got me in the mood for more bullet hell shoot ’em up gameplay. I honestly liked this game more than Astebreed, mostly because having a sword just felt like cheating to me.

Hatoful Boyfriend: This month’s Aggrochat game of the month. It was my pick, because it has been sitting in my Steam library for a while and I really wanted an excuse to play and talk about it. I’m going to save my opinions for the podcast for now. A note for anyone who might want to play along: I found out the hard way that this game has potential save issues. Make sure to double save each time you save or you might end up like me, staring at a screen with nothing but a pigeon picture and no way to progress 🙁

Final Fantasy V: I’m participating in the Four Job Fiesta and I feel like I’m way behind. I need to spend some more quality time with this one soon.

Alphabear: This mobile bear word puzzle game keeps me entertained at the doctor’s office and when I can’t sleep at night. The $5 for infinite honey was money well spent.

Final Fantasy XIV: Where I’ve been spending most of my time this week. I’m close to being done with gear from Alexander normal mode, and am working on the esoterics grind so I can buy my weapon on Tuesday. Our Wednesday raid was plagued with computer issues this week, so I’m really hoping we can get everything to go smoothly for a Bismark Ex kill next week. Part of me wants to look for another static in addition to my current one.  I’d like to start to work on Alexander savage, but I don’t know if I will truly be able to devote the time and energy to it.

To finish up, I want to touch on Bel’s daily writing prompt from Friday: What game that you are not playing, do you still have a deeply nostalgic connection to and why?

There’s obviously a ton of games from my childhood and growing up that would fit this, but the game I want to talk about is SWTOR. Just the fact that it was Star Wars and it was really fun (once you got past the bugs) is enough to mark it as special to me. On top of that, it marked the first time I worked up the courage to join a guild full of people whose blogs I read. I didn’t know these folks beforehand, I only knew what I read in their blogs. It felt incredibly weird to apply and I was very nervous that I’d make an ass of myself. For some reason they actually let me join, and being part of that guild was one of my best MMO experiences. I made some friends that I still talk to on a daily basis and have met in real life. More importantly I got over my fear of reaching out to people whose blogs I read, and ended up joining amazing guilds full of bloggers in multiple other games! It turns out that most of us are just regular gamers who just happen to make a little extra time to share our love of gaming with the internet. Since it is Blaugust and you’re inundated with posts from dozens of different people this month, why not consider reaching out to say hi to some of your favorites?



Source: Moonshine Mansion
What I’m Playing, August 2, 2015

AggroChat #68 – Supportive Friends

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psv-sword-art-online-import-english-chinese-ver24-555x314

Tonight we have Belghast, Ashgar, Thalen, Grace and Tam with Kodra having fun without the rest of us in GenCon.  Once again we return to the standard format of the show talking about the games we have been playing over the last week.  As always the bulk of us have been spending time in Final Fantasy XIV juggling leveling, the Law and Esoteric grind, and Alexander.  Ashgar managed to get his Paladin and Belghast his Dragoon to 60, giving them both a DPS and Tank at max level.  Grace has been focused on trying to play catch up on her relic weapon and is now in the midst of the nexus light grind.

In non FFXIV news Ashgar spent the week working on yet another play through of Final Fantasy V for the Four Job Fiesta.  Thalen spent time delving back into Kingdom Hearts getting the bug to replay it after seeing all the recent buzz surrounding Kingdom Hearts III.  Grace is using Blaugust as a good reason to write some Wildstar blogs, focusing on a guide to the Veteran Shiphand missions as a start.  Tam has been moving deeper into Anime and spent a good chunk of the week watching various shows, and also started playing the remastered Sword Art Online game on the Playstation 4.  Belghast talks a bit about the current state of Skyforge, and his journey into StormHold the time locked Everquest II server.  Bel also talks about his recent binge of Netflix watching including Sense8 and Bojack Horseman.

Finally we get on a discussion where the title comes from, talking about how each of us goes through phases where we need to extract ourselves from the world and how it helps so much to have supportive friends that understand when you are going through one of these phases.

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On Ninjas

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Blaugust Post #2

N++ was announced before the PS4 came out, and released this past week on PS4. It’s the sequel of sorts to N+, which was on the PSP, DS, and 360, which was itself the successor to the flash game N. (Note: I don’t think the original holds up terribly well.) The basic concept remains as it did from the beginning: You are a ninja, get through the levels with as much time left on the clock as possible. Levels contain gold, and each piece picked up adds two seconds. For the 360 version of N+ and for N++, the game tracks your time against other players automatically. Levels are simple, single-screen affairs but there are a very large number of them, ranging in difficulty from 1-1 to Super Meat Boy.

n++

Newton’s First Law

One of the key concepts in the N series is one that was in the kind of Sonic games Sega doesn’t make anymore: Momentum is key. Standard movement speed is pretty fast, but use of ramps and wall jumps can speed things up dramatically, or let you get to jump higher than you can from level ground. N++ in particular begins with levels attempting to teach this, and I’d say it does a pretty good job. I’m not the best judge, because I played a lot of N+. I will say that the level “Intro to accepting your limitations?” is a bit of a dirty trick, because it’s the third level in the tutorial but requires you to grasp the concepts from later tutorial levels to 100% it.

Profanity, Usage by Cause:

One of the areas where N+ really shined was in multiplayer. You could play in the single player levels, but there were also special co-op levels that require at least two people. I’ve referred to the New Super Mario Series as “divorce mode” multiplayer, but this is almost as bad. (Almost, because at least you don’t have collision with your partners.) You will likely have moments of stress where someone is leading a rocket around and you are a little too close, or when someone hits the bounce block you were aiming at causing you to fall into a minefield. It happens. Restarting a level is always only a button press away. If you’re going into it with the intent to break up your friendships, there’s also a race mode.

N++ is one of those sequels that is “the same, but more”, and I’m okay with that. More levels, more obstacles, more colors, and more features make this a worthwhile pickup, and I really like what I’ve played of it so far. I recommend this game if you like relatively difficult platformers and/or games that are better when you add people.