Tales of the Aggronaut – Page 720

Streaming Goodness

February 4, 2016 by Belghast

RWBY

Rooster Teeth is one of those groups that I have known has existed forever… but never really watched much of. I was not a Halo player, but I do admit to watching quite a bit of the first few seasons of Red vs Blue. Similarly RWBY is one of those products that I have known was available, but for whatever reason never actually watched. There was a certain bit of fitting tribute the other day that I started watching the show, on the Anniversary of its creator Monty Oum’s death. Over the course of several hours of watching I went from knowing absolutely nothing about this show, to becoming a huge fan. I had always heard it described as “An American Anime” but didn’t really know what to expect from that. I mean Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra are pretty much what I think of when I think of American Anime. I love both of those shows and a lot of other continuous narrative cartoons like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and Bravest Warriors. So as to why I never started this one in particular, is as big of a guess as any.

I guess what I like about it so much right now is that it has pretty much everything I loved about Bleach, without all of the stuff I didn’t love about it. What attracted me to Bleach was this premise that created a universe full of really interesting characters. Sure while Ichigo is the “main character” there are a bunch of other extremely interesting good guys and bad guys that make up the tapestry. RWBY does this through the creation of teams that fight together, and can either be positive or negative influences on the story setting. Also there are shades of post apocalyptic, in that the characters exist in this world that is being plagued by a bunch of supernatural creatures known as the Grimm. The only way mankind has managed to survive is by harnessing the power of dust, refined elemental essence to power up their abilities and be able to fight back. The show itself takes place in a sort of Hogwarts for demon hunters, a school known as Beacon that trains individuals to become either Huntsmen or Huntresses. So all of those elements like Bleach and Naruto are there, to keep churning out interesting people to encounter in the world.

What makes the show better for me… is the fact that thus far at least over the course of the three seasons I chain watched… there isn’t a lot of repetition. The frustration with Bleach is when you have the realization that every single season is the same. Ichigo gets his ass kicked by some new bad guy > Ichigo trains to unlock some previously undiscovered ability > Ichigo wins… but just barely… but still enough to save his friends. While RWBY borrows heavily from Anime tropes, the way it puts things together feels more fresh to me… because it is based in a culture I already understand. The problem with Anime in general is that there are so many cultural experiences that I lack, and I simply cannot understand without having to research why the hell “this thing” was funny or important. When I watch most Anime, there are certain points where I feel I need footnotes to understand the subtle nuance of what is happening. RWBY however makes sense out of the box, with nothing lost in translation… because it quite truly IS “American Anime”. So I have to say… I am now hooked and will join the folks waiting every week for the next show to release. I’ve even gone so far as to hook others on the show, which I guess is the truest sign of enjoyment.

Heroes Reborn

When I am sick I seem to ratchet down my game playing and increase my television watching. So over the last few days I have been hunting for things to watch, and over the last two nights have picked back up on Heroes Reborn. I started the first episode of the show some time ago, but it either failed to grab me… or I got distracted. I’ve now chain watched my way through the entire first season and I have to say… I really enjoyed it. Heroes is one of those shows that I have both extremely fond and extremely negative memories of. The first season was among the best single television seasons I have seen… and then that second season…. I would probably rank among the worst. The third season came along and fixed some of the problems with season two… but by that time the audience was gone and the show was doomed. I don’t think I actually watched any of that fourth season… which honestly after watching Heroes Reborn, makes me want to go back and chain through the originals again.

Reborn is the perfect example of a show that stands on the shoulders of the original, but doesn’t actually require you to have watched any of it. Sure there are plot points that you will get earlier if you know who certain characters are from the original, but you learn soon enough what powers they have. The entire show takes place in a very “Days of Future Past” storyline, where the heroes… now called Evos are being forced to register their powers. There is very much a “humans” vs “evos” undercurrent that runs through the show, along with the expected “no evos allowed” signs. What makes this season work however is the same thing that makes me question if they are setting themselves up for a crappy second season again. Much like the “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” plot of the first season of the original, there is a clear narrative path that ends up being concluded in a massive event. The problem is… I am not really sure how they top this. I mean you can only quite literally save all of humanity so many times during a television show. All of this said… I really enjoyed myself and I guess I am along for the ride when the second season releases.

Pax Pox

February 3, 2016 by Belghast

The Convention Crud

So this weekend obviously was Pax South, and I am not sure how you could read my blog and not know this… but whatever. It went pretty well overall, but on the drive home Sunday my throat kept getting more and more sore. At first I was thinking that maybe I was getting closer to Oklahoma, and as a result my allergies were just going haywire. The entire time I was in the San Antonio area, I honestly did not have much issue with my allergies. It was just like they magically went away, so in theory driving back home… could feel like I was coming down with something. However yesterday I heard from Damai that he too is in the sore throat phase, so I am guessing we quite literally did walk away with whatever crap happened to be going around down south. PAX is this universal incubator for illness, and last year I somehow escaped catching whatever Ashgar and Rae ended up bringing home. This year however I was not quite so lucky, and in spite of using the hand sanitizer every single time I passed one… I still caught something.

I’ve been in hibernation pretty much the last two days. Originally I had requested off both Monday and Tuesday to recover, but had not planned on actually taking Tuesday. However it seems like I apparently was clairvoyant in knowing that I would need that extra day. This morning… I still feel like crap, but my fever broke sometime between going to bed Monday night and getting up Tuesday morning. My lungs are getting consistently clearer, and my throat while feeling sore still is getting consistently less sore as time goes on. While it felt flu-like at first, I am guessing it is just a run of the mill virus or cold, because I seem to be getting over it pretty quickly. The irony is… that I completely resisted catching whatever my wife had prior to the convention… but I am guessing that probably taxed my immune system to the point of catching something while there. In any case I think I am more or less on the mend, but going out and grabbing some groceries last night left me completely exhausted, so I can only imagine what state I might be in tonight when I finally get home.

Lady Monk

The great irony of a gaming convention is the fact that during those few days… I end up playing far fewer games than I usually do. The other strange side effect has been, that now that I am back at home…. I am not quite sure what to play. As a result I have been poking my head into Diablo 3, even though I have seemed to lack much purpose. Monday night I spent a good chunk of it running around with Grace and completing various stuff like greater rifts. Then when she logged to go take care of something, I ended up starting a brand new character. I realize that I could have probably gotten one of my friends to boost it to 70 within a few minutes… but instead I have been leveling a monk through doing bounties. The funny thing about this is that with all of my paragon levels, Master is the new Normal. I could probably ratchet up my difficulty some more, but I like how fast everything seems to be going right now. I’ve needed to run bounties for a bit, and doing so on a fresh character feels like I am gaining more than doing it on my crusader.

The truth is, I’ve never managed to get a monk to 70. My original non-seasonal one is 68 and I realize that I could very easily push it over the line. The problem being that I just haven’t had any desire to play non-seasonal characters. I have been in this mindset that “seasonal” are the “real” characters… and that the normal characters are almost like playing on some test server somewhere. I realize that it is backwards from the truth, but I have shifted to this point of view as looking at the season as the only thing that really matters. As a result I just can’t seem to bring myself to play any characters that aren’t in the current season, which I guess works out nicely since that seems to be what most people are playing. The only thing that worries me is how I am going to function when I need to merge this season into my existing already overloaded bank. At some point I need to spend some time eating some legendaries and unlocking abilities, because half of the junk that is clogging my non-seasonal vault is never actually going to get used. In any case as of last night I hit level 43 , and I plan on working it up some more tonight. I should be able to hit 70 in no time as I am gaining at least one level per bounty step on average.

The Division Impressions

February 2, 2016 by Belghast

Bad Christmas Simulator

The Division Impressions — Black Friday Ends in Tears

I have to say I was pretty sad when I found out that The Division beta would be going on the same weekend I would be in San Antonio at Pax South. So when I heard that they planned on extending the deadlines, I have to say I was pretty pumped. The Division is one of those games that has looked good on paper up, but I have been really questioning as to whether or not I will like it. Call of Duty for example, is one of those series that I enjoyed when it first came out, but as it has evolved I have become less and less interested in the continued military operator fantasy. I think a lot of it has come from the fact that every game seems to use exactly the same guns. I mean I get why this is the case, since these guns are real world guns… that they are just trying to replicate in a game. So when I started thinking about The Division versus Destiny…. I have to say I lean heavily towards crazy space guns over things that can actually exist in the world I happen to live in. However I am also a huge fan of post apocalyptic settings…. and The Division seems like it might deliver on a near future version of that. So to say I was fraught is an understatement, then over the weekend I ended up talking with a couple that told me who much they liked it, coming from a heavy Destiny background. So when I got home Sunday night, I went upstairs started the hefty download.

So when I got up yesterday morning I finally got the chance to play the game. I really was not sure what to expect, and I guess in all of the screenshots and video I had not really gotten it through my head that it was a third person shooter. This has honestly been the biggest challenge for me when playing Warframe recently, because I am generally bad at playing a shooter from a third person perspective. Third person definitely makes things easier to move around, but when it comes to aiming a gun…. I just find it awkward. The fact that this is a game that relies heavily on ducking behind the next patch of cover, it almost HAS to be third person to make that work. In many ways it reminds me of Gears of War, in that you are constantly rolling forward trying to move up on mobs while at the same time staying in safety. The problem with that is… I am just not that kind of a player. I tend to be very run and gun… and sure I use the hell out of cover but I am constantly zipping in and out of it. This game feels more like a tactical RPG at times than it does a pure shooter, and I am not quite sure how I feel about that. You have to understand… that I have never played any of the other Tom Clancy branded games, because that player fantasy never really appealed to me. The fact that this game is an MMO Shooter of sorts… is really the part that places it in my wheelhouse rather than the content matter.

The Systems

The thing that I really want to talk about is just how damned good this games mapping system is. When you pull it up it brings up a holographic representation of the area you are in, and it has various objectives marked. You can go talk to an NPC inside each of the bases that gives you a situation report on the area, and as a result creates these little highlighted markers. As you are running through the world, you can see every single blip on the map… but you get special visualization for whichever objective you happen to have highlighted. In the various screenshots I am posting today, there will be these orange lines running down the street, and these serve to show you the best route to the location you are trying to reach. This makes movement through the very dense sections of New York city pretty manageable. What it does not take into account is that in many cases you can actually cut through buildings to get to your destiny and in doing so find all sorts of hidden resources. As you are roaming around there are lots of caches that you can find, and these have everything from resources to weapons, and it feels like looting structures in a zombie survival game. I am still not 100% certain what some of the resources are used for, but the obsessive side of me cannot leave a single bag sitting un-looted.

The gameplay for the most part resolves around expanding your reach and setting up these bases of operation in new areas. At first you start out on the banks of the Hudson River, and you push into the city with the first mission based around driving away the hostiles and reclaiming a base. From there you start retrieving people from the impromptu medical center set up in Madison Square garden. So you rescue a virologist to take back to your base, and then that launches a sequence of quests that involve collecting additional resources to help set up your medical facilities. The problem is for me at least that I cannot seem to stay on track, and that even though I have a giant orange line leading me to the objective…. I keep ending up going off the rails and looting every building that I happen to come across. The other issue that I am having is that I struggle how to identify who is just a harmless bum roaming down the street…. and who is someone that will actually kill me. I ended up wandering down this alleyway, without much options for cover… and next thing I know a patch of what I think are harmless survivors… ended up opening fire on me. In the middle of the batch was apparently a major boss that straight up killed me. So while the mapping system is amazing, the threat assessment portion seems to be kinda confusing at least for me… since everyone including me… dresses like they just came from a shelter.

Still on the Fence

Right now I am not sure if I am on board or not. I played enough to decide that I mostly liked it… but I still struggle with whole third person thing. The big boss fights are pretty hectic, but I have learned that for the most part… I simply need to find a hidey hole and kill mobs until the boss finally comes to me. It isn’t nearly as heroic as rushing in and dodging bullets…. but it seems to be more consistent than trying to run around and stay alive at the same time. The other big take away…. is that gear is really damned expensive. I am used to being able to buy upgrades pretty quickly in games… but I have sold a lot of random crap that I have found out in the world, but have been able to afford absolutely nothing. One of the things that I love about Destiny is that I am constantly getting new weapons to play with… and if this game ends up keeping the same set of weapons around too long I am going to get bored. What makes MMOs interesting for me… is the whole aspect of constantly upgrading gear. I have learned over the years that characters get stale for me, when I stop getting upgrades. So while I am getting drops that are upgrades are mostly armor, but I have yet to get a single interesting weapon drop. So I think in the long run that might be an issue if the beta test is relevant to how the rest of the game is going to feel. The other big problem for me is that I have a feeling that if folks get this…. we are going to be spread out between PC, PS4 and Xbox One… and I am certain that there will not be cross platform play. Right now I am leaning towards the PS4 version… but I have a feeling that most of the AggroChat folks if they got this… would be playing it on the PC. So now I just have to decide…. do I pick this up or do I wait, and while making this decision I should probably see how nice the pre-order bonuses are.

Pax Deconstructed

February 1, 2016 by Belghast

Not Prepared

It turns out Illidan was right…. I was not prepared. This morning I thought I would break down some things I learned this weekend while at PAX South. Overall I had a fun time, but there were just some things that didn’t quite work out as planned. The first year it felt like I had a lot of my time planned as I had numerous media appointments to attend to. This year I was going for what ended up being the polar opposite, and that didn’t quite work out either. Over the course of the weekend I walked roughly 25 miles, and either I have the beginning of the PAX Pox… or my allergies are just going haywire now that I am back in Oklahoma. I am so insanely sore, and in truth I lacked the stamina for this conference. Before the first year I had been walking every single day, and for the most part I took it all in stride. This time around I am thirty pounds heavier and have not been walking at all… and it took its toll. Both Friday and Saturday I was up by 5:30-6 am and out at the convention by 8. Then after wandering around largely aimlessly trying to sort out what to do for several hours…. I ended up leaving around 4pm each day and going back to the hotel room and crashing. The first day this was largely due to a general lack of parking downtown, and having several of the major garages booked out by another corporate event. On Saturday however it was absolutely due to the fact that I was simply “PAXed Out” and too tired to keep going.

The other thing that did not phase me during year one, but absolutely did during year two were the crowds. There was this strange thing going on, where there were fewer big games at the convention…. but the crowds were so much bigger. A prime example of this is the fact that on Saturday we were trying to find a table in the gaming area to play board games. This area was over twice the size of it was during year two… but every single table was full with zero signs of anything opening up. Similarly every other room in the convention seemed packed… the Jam room… the Arcade room… the Intel PC Gaming room… all were just packed with people. While the first year did not bother me at all when it came to crowds…. this year definitely did. It makes me pretty certain that there is zero way I could handle the type of crowds that a PAX prime has. By the time I left at 4 pm, on top of the exhaustion…. I just needed some peace and quiet and a place to sit down and chill. I realize I could have probably gotten this in the AFK room…. but given that every other area was packed…. even the first aid station, I figured that would also be completely packed. I don’t want to give the impression that I did not enjoy myself, because I absolutely did… it was just a much harder convention for me than the first year. Year one was this super chill event, and it has just gotten considerably bigger.

The People

For me at least this con was absolutely about the people. The folks that were in attendance were… Ashgar, Thalen, Paragon, Rae, John her brother, Tick, Dallian, Damai, Rowan, Sctrz, Genda and his wife, Exale and Maovis. This at least was the number of people that I actually managed to meet up with at least for a period of time. The problem is that it is really damned hard to have a meaningful amount of time with fourteen different people, that may or may not be in the same place. I felt like I was constantly trying to meet up with different groups of people and failed miserably at spending much time with any of them. Then there were other folks that I meant to meet up with, but never actually saw. Early on I had every intent to try and meet Fynralyl and Psynister on the way down, or Beau and Leala… but I simply ran out of mental bandwidth to try and juggle everything. In theory I could have come up with ways to make it happen, but in trying to keep my schedule super flexible…. I spent a good deal of time simply doing nothing. So the truth is next year… a bunch of things need to change. While I hate having every moment of the day scheduled out, I feel like I am going to have to make some hard and fast appointments so that I can feel like I actually made the most of the weekend. I also plan on making some more media appointments because they did a great job in the first year of breaking up the day… and also giving me a quiet place away from the crowd to sit down and talk about games with the developers. To facilitate that however I am going to have to really get my shit in gear and get that Media pass.

Now that I am home… I just feel overloaded. On top of the sore throat and sore everything else…. I am just feeling like I need to hide out from the world for awhile. It is situations like this that make me realize that I am in fact introverted, regardless of how hard I try and be extroverted. The happiest moments of the weekend for me, were introducing people to Ultimate Chicken Horse, sitting in the board game area and playing Codenames, or just chilling out and collecting street passes with Dallian early in the morning. Had I been able to do more of that I probably would have been fine staying considerably longer, but there was one period where I walked non-stop for two and a half hours trying to sort out what the hell we were doing…. and after that, I was pretty much beat. Essentially I think the key for me to be able to function at this bigger PAX Prime is to have better planning, which is not exactly a strong suit of mine. I tend to do best when I roll with the punches, but there are far too many punches in this case to be able to roll with them. I will say it was amazing to get to hang with all of these people in person, but I just feel guilty that I didn’t get to spend all that much time with any one of them.

Next Year

All of this said… I am absolutely going next year. This is the only PAX that is really viable for me to attend. Also we have made it into and event that my wife actually looks forward to for completely different reasons. The big thing for me is going to be sorting out the parking thing. That first day… was a huge damper on the weekend, and it made me super paranoid about finding parking on Saturday. I think I am going to try out the bus system next year, that way I can get downtown without having to drive… which also makes me less paranoid about partaking of adult beverages. Next year I also need to take more photos… because in the entirety of the weekend I only took five or six. I think the biggest thing however is going to be scheduling actual lunch and dinner times with different groups of people so that I feel less like I abandoned folks. I got to spend the least amount of time with Rowan and Sctr and Genda and his wife, but in both cases I get to the Dallas area more often than I do San Antonio, so hopefully I will be able to meet up with them on another occasion soon. The biggest goal however is to be a much smaller person by the time PAX 2017 rolls around, because that thirty pounds and lack of regular walking made the biggest impact on my enjoyment. Once I made it back to the hotel each night, I was just dead to the world. I am so thankful that I ended up taking today off from work, because if I had to roll back in after travelling yesterday, and just the sheer exhaustion of the convention…. I am not entirely certain I would be able to function.