Month: June 2016

Lords of Iron Return

Apparently last night while I was completely oblivious, the trailer for the new Destiny expansion… Rise of Iron leaked out on the internet.  All of these leaks of course beg the question…  if everything comes out before E3… then why the hell have E3 in the first place?  You can watch the entire leaked trailer here, that was apparently ripped from a Snapchat advertisement of some sort.  I used VLC Media Player to snap a few pictures from the trailer for use in this blog post.  Firstly I am a little disappointed that it seems like we won’t actually be travelling to a new planet or moon.  As was originally suggested by many of the youtubers based on the leaked image from around a month ago… this does in fact deal with the twilight gap wall area.  It seems like it was repaired at one point and the wall has once again been breached.  In the meantime apparently a giant army of mutated Fallen have been amassing on the other side, and we as players are going to help quell this threat.  Now the first thing that really stands out is that these fallen seem to have a “taken” like thing going on… but instead of black and white and shaky… it is all dark red and pixelated.  Which makes me wonder if the virus is somehow like a digital version of the sword logic that has corrupted so many other things in the Destiny universe?

Regardless… I am pretty damned ready to say goodbye to the taken invasions, and I guess I can accept if that now means we are going to start getting Fallen ones instead.  I would have rather seen them spend more time fleshing out the Cabal, but since the Vex and Hive have seen their day in the sun… I guess it is perfectly okay for the Fallen to get theirs.  However it seems like we have already spent so much time fighting the Fallen since they literally appear in one form or another on every planet.  While they are not extremely active on Mars, there is a spot in the Rubicon wastes where they show themselves for a quest.  I guess considering that they are a race that was once chosen by the Traveler as well, it would make sense why they are constantly scavenging in its wake.  The other thing that I find interesting is it seems like they have somehow compromised some of the areas that Rasputin might have controlled.  There is definitely a Warmind-esc look to some of the areas that they have shown… but again they contain the same dark red contagion look.  All of this makes me wonder if… this is really just some sort of an infection that Rasputin has been fighting off.. and it is also why considering his obvious power that he really doesn’t end up lending us all that much help.  Maybe he has been busy with whatever is happening in the above screenshot.  I would say maybe this was an unknown Warmind, but I think lore wise there is only one per planet.

Gjallahorn is Back

The most controversial point of the trailer however will be the announcement of “Iron Gjallarhorn”.  This rocket launcher was the be all end all weapon from year one, and was as beloved as it is reviled.  Unfortunately I didn’t play enough in year one to actually use one.  In fact the ONLY exotic I managed to get in year one was The Last Word, and I think the game just gave me that one because it felt sorry for me.  I am absolutely a year two baby when it comes to this game, and while I played at launch… I only played for a few months before fading into the background and finding something else to do.  I’m not a huge fan of rocket launchers, but I have always though that at least on looks the Gjallarhorn looks amazing.  Now I seriously doubt they will be bringing back the weapon with the power levels that it apparently had in year one… but just the fact that it is coming back at all makes me extremely happy.  I want to be able to use this and see what all the fuss was about.  Maybe this will be the rocket launcher to change my tune and make me love rocket launchers?

The controversy that is waiting in the wings however is that this is that getting Gjallarhorn is a pre-order bonus for the Rise of Iron expansion.  I personally don’t have a problem with it, because I was going to pre-order the expansion regardless.  I like having the peace of mind that the game is there waiting for me whenever I want to participate.  This is a side effect of living through an era when copies of games were actually sometimes difficult to get.  I remember having to go from store to store to try and find several games in the past, and had that happen as recently as the launch of TERA.  The other big benefit in a pre-order is it often comes with the option to pre-load the content so literally at midnight you can pop in and start playing.  Granted my ability to stay up for midnight launches is not what it used to be… and I often times only make it through character creation before crashing.  What is going to cause the drama in the coming days is the insinuation that this might be your ONLY way to get Gjallarhorn.  It is my hope that Bungie is just giving us access to the weapon ahead of time, and that it will exist in the normal exotic rotation from engrams, or at the very least a similarly complete-able quest once the expansion launches.  Gjallarhorn is this iconic weapon, that even people who have never played Destiny have often times heard of it.  When you have something like that…  it just doesn’t seem fair to wall that up behind a pre-order bonus.  So hopefully during the E3 presentation they will do some massive clarification on that point.

At least with the September 20th date… we won’t have all that long to wait until we get to experience it all for ourselves.

Outdoor Fuzzbutts

Yesterday I still felt like crap for the majority of the day, and even though I had the desire to play something video game wise… I somehow lacked the focus to actually accomplish that.  Instead I laid around the house feeling pitiful for a large chunk of the day watching reruns of Teen Titans Go, Amazing World of Gumball and Steven Universe.  Towards the evening I wound up on the back patio because we had some unexpected visitors.  It seems that a huge cottontail has decided to take up residence in our backyard.  My wife sent me a sequence of texts that ultimately summoned me out into the backyard.  The bunny didn’t seem to give a shit about me opening the bedroom door and walking out onto the patio.  Granted I tried to do both of these activities as quietly as possible but at that point he bunny was maybe three feet away from me.  Generally this is well within the range of “bolt and hide” territory.  I have this feeling that this kiddo has lived around our yard for several years given the sheer size… as an estimate would be at least as long as my hand and forearm outstretched.  What was awesome is that even with us both on the back patio he continued to go about his business foraging.  There was a point where he came within less than a foot of where we were sitting, and that was during a period of time when he encountered another rabbit hopping around the backyard.

I failed to get a shot of the two of them nosing each other because it happened super briefly, but you can use this shot as scale for the sheer size of the larger bunny.  What was hilarious is that the little guy was more skittish, but actually wound up walking onto the patio rug with us inches away from it while it was dancing around uncertain of the intentions of the other rabbit.  When I went to walk upstairs to write my blog post I happened to look out the stairwell window and I saw this little guy hanging out on the concrete.  Ultimately I think this summer I am going to have to find something to put out for watering the bunnies.  In past summers that have started as hot as this one… I have wound up coming home and having to fish rabbits out of the swimming pool.  That is not really something I want to repeat this summer.  I would love it if they became friendly… I mean I have known for awhile that we have a bunch of rabbits that seem to take up residence in and around our yard, and since we have never done anything against them… I am wondering if some ancestral knowledge of our yard as a safe spot has been handed down.  We have a few places where they can easily pass in and out of our yard between the green belt behind the house and the front yard as well.  I would totally start feeding them if I had a clue what to actually feed.

What is extra funny about this situation… is that after the little interaction with us I thought they had run off and hid.  However at some point before we went in for the night I walked around the yard and wound up going up on our deck on the far side of the pool.  Sure enough there stretched out on the lawn like he didn’t have a care in the world was the big bunny again.  Just chilling, and even when I started talking it didn’t seem to phase him at all.  I would totally bring stuff out to feed the bunnies, but then again I am kinda afraid to get them used to being fed by humans.  We love bunnies in our yard… but not everyone is as happy to have random wildlife inhabiting their lawn.  So while it would be awesome to have outdoor fuzzbutts to pet and play with while sitting on our patio… I don’t want to end up getting the bunnies harmed by someone with less than friendly intent.  Between the bunnies and the birds though… I am loving our little haven outside.  Sure it is kinda annoying to have to water the flowers every morning and evening…. and sure the birds seem to burn through a container full of seed in a mater of hours.  The end result though is this peaceful place where there is always something interesting to watch while we chill on the patio.  I still have yet to see any sign of the baby Robins, but the tiny Sparrows continue to visit on a regular basis.  We have a pair of Cardinals and Blue Jays as well… and several of what I have been told after the fact are “Turtle” Doves.  I am not sure if these outdoor posts bore the pants off of people as they read them, but yesterday especially I didn’t have a lot else to talk about.

Sickly Weekend

This weekend really didn’t turn out how I had hoped.  I’ve picked up this crud in my chest and the amount of general lousy feeling seems to vary heavily.  Today for example I feel like death warmed over.  Sunday however I was feeling fairly decent and hopeful for the start of a new week.  I think maybe I simply did too much and should have rested, because I fell for the traditional trap of “feeling a little better” and then starting to try and behave like a normal human being.  I am not sure if this is an actual illness or just allergy overload, because both could be going on.  However my boss did complain of having a big of a cold that he brought home from London, and I am thinking that maybe he passed that on to me.  In any case I spent a good chunk of the weekend sitting around and playing games…  badly.  I also spent a good deal of time sitting on the back porch watching the birds and flowers.  A few days ago I wrote about the nest of baby robins that we had found in our bush.  It turns out that as my friend Thalen suggested, they were just about to leave the nest because as of yesterday morning they were completely gone with no trace.  I keep hoping that we will see baby robins hopping around and looking for worms, but have not so far.

A good chunk of my weekend gaming was spent replaying Dishonored, which was the May AggroChat Game Club game.  You can listen to our discussion of the game over here.  I remembered this game fondly but upon a second playing there were a lot of details that I either overlooked or simply forgotten.  Primarily it was the games setting that stood out, because everything we know going into it… makes it seem like the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin was a fair and just ruler.  However if you look at the sort of kingdom she ruled… it makes you wonder just how just and fair it really was.  I mean why would someone need the Arc Pylons or Walls of Light…. or the spooky mask wearing Overseers if the world the game inhabits was a good one?  We don’t get to see much of the world before the assassination of the Empress, so I guess in theory depending on how long you were imprisoned all of the police state trappings could have sprung up afterwards when the slightly more evil forces too power.  My first play through I thought I was doing the right thing by quickly dispatching everyone I happened to come up against…  however when I got the “bad” ending it made me completely rethink things.  This time around I managed to complete the low chaos ending, which simply means I didn’t kill that many people in the process.  The ending felt much more fitting for the sort of person I was trying to be.  I had thought I was bringing justice to this broken world, when in truth I was just inadvertently killing a bunch of civilians whose day job just happened to be the City Watch.

Spreading the Madness

The other interesting happening of the weekend is that I convinced my friend and fellow AggroChatter to play some Destiny.  Not surprisingly she is playing a warlock, and at first she tried out being an Exo…  but has since re-rolled to Awoken.  That was honestly the class and race combo that I assumed she would play, but I have been trying to keep at least a step behind in this process. I want to make sure she actually is enjoying the game, rather than me trying to force it upon her.  Yesterday was pretty fun however with us tag teaming a lot of her missions.  The big takeaway from yesterday however is that I had forgotten just how bad that first strike was.  Both the Fallen Walker and Sepiks Prime feel like the most bullet spongey of bosses especially compared to the missions that I am used to on a regular basis.  I walked into the strike with my level 40 and 333 light hunter… and even then it took forever for me to push down the walker.  I actually ran out of ammo on several occasions and had to go running around the map hunting for ammunition.  That feels like it is not the best possible way to introduce someone to Destiny strikes, considering the later ones are way more enjoyable and have more moving parts.

We have also been working on the recruit a friends quests, but it seems that it has abruptly ended with a quest telling her to level to 40.  I think after that the quest continues with a Heroic Daily, or a Nightfall or some of the harder content.  I’ve picked up several doodads along the way, but I am not sure if Grace has actually seen anything from it yet.  I am going to be supremely disappointed if the rewards are only for the mentor.  That has always been my frustration with these programs, because it always feels sketchy if all the rewards go to the person who is being recruited.  The other thing I played this weekend was Chroma Squad which is the June AggroChat Game Club title, and was a pick by Thalen.  Essentially this game is a tongue and cheek take on the Power Rangers, and involves a group of stunt people leaving their crappy studio to go off and found their own.  This is a bit of a cross between a tactical combat game and a “tycoon” game in that you control both the action of the “episodes” that are being recorded, and the layout and crafting of your studio as you fight to gain viewers.  A lot of the dialog is really funny, especially if you were like me and a little too old to fully get into the demographic of the Power Rangers.  It is definitely worth looking into, but at this point I have not played a ton of it.