Yesterday was the day of me bringing back machines from the dead. During the week my secondary machine gave up the ghost, the one that I use to remote in from work on a regular basis and the one that I use to manage my media server. I came home from work on Tuesday and and my second machine was screaming, literally. Emitting an insanely loud noise, but I really did not have time to investigate it so I put that off until the weekend. My immediate thought was the processor fan, and that the system had overheated. Luckily I happened to have a spare one of these because I thought this processor fan had gone out before. Turns out that when I popped it open on my table, it was not the processor fan at all but the video card. The Asus 550 ti finally gave up the ghost and thankfully I have a whole slew of video cards to attempt. So I threw in my lowest power consumption, lowest heat card… which was a HD 7500 series card that came with an older machine that I replaced. Sure enough machine booted up just fine and the box is working once again.
For my second act of machine resurrection I decided to go a bit further back. In October 2014 my y500 laptop with SLI 650 gtx cards died. Well died is the wrong term, because it simply just stopped booting. It would hang on the Lenovo bios screen and refused to go any further. After spending a few weeks without ANY help from Lenovo or any other source… I ended up purchasing a really good deal of a laptop in a Lenovo y580 from Craigslist and moved on with my life. Problem being… this has been a bit of an obsession in my life. Every few months I go on a binge of searching for other people who have had the same problem. Numerous people had reported that it was the SSD, and when I cracked mine open I seemed to only have the one hard drive. I even went so far as replacing the hard drive with another one that I had laying around and nothing. Turns out there is a different kind of SSD than I even realized existed… a caching SSD which looks a lot like a funky RAM chip. While I was fiddling with machines yesterday I cracked open my laptop and saw the little SDD chip… removed it… and then BOOM it booted. In fact right now I am writing this blog post on the laptop. It seems perfectly fine, but just boots a little slower. Spending today patching things up to see which of the laptops actually performs faster. My theory is it will be this one because for the games that COULD support SLI it ran quite a bit faster.
Demon Hunter
As far as gaming goes, yesterday I spent my day piddling around in Diablo 3. For some reason I got the desire to start a new character and as of last night I got it to 40. I had never really played a demon hunter before yesterday, but I have to say I kinda dig it. I am playing a largely degenerate build where I am doing whatever I can to keep up the ability of Rapid Fire. I have heard this ability becomes less awesome as gain levels… but for the time being it is an insane machine gun ability that whittles down mobs quickly. Mostly this all came about as I was working my way through farming materials by doing bounties. I figured I might as well get the benefit of leveling as well, so I rolled a new character and once I hit 10 proceeded to spend my time doing bounty after bounty. This seems like an insanely fast way to level a character. Not sure how much I will actually play the demon hunter in the long run, but for the time being it is a fun diversion. I am not really sure why I am so drawn to Diablo at the moment. There are things I should probably be doing in Final Fantasy XIV, and other things I should be doing in Wildstar. However for the time being this seems to be the right amount of interactivity. Diablo I can just shut my mind off and play, and that seems extremely intoxicating at the moment. It also lets me hang out downstairs and watch stuff on the chromecast, because I guess I need the relaxation.
LBX is a 3DS game about fighting model robots. It’s a recent release in North America and Europe, but it’s a 3-year-old remake of a remake of a game that came out in 2011 in Japan. It’s kind of cheesy and clearly intended for a younger audience, but I love it anyway. The fighting itself has elements of games like Virtual On, and the structure of the game reminds me of Mega Man Battle Network, both games which I enjoyed a lot. More than that, the entire concept reminds me of one of my favorite games on the Game Boy when I was younger: Power Quest.
Tiny Fighting Robots
Power Quest was one of the early games for the Game Boy Color, and I got it as a Christmas gift when I turned 12. It is also a game about fighting model robots, but the core gameplay is a fighting game.The game itself involved you roaming around town, earning money to upgrade your model (by beating people around town in duels), and occasionally getting interrupted by the plot, which is mostly nonsensical and involves the Bad Hyenas Gang and your best friend. At the end of the game you fight in a tournament and defeat a masked wrestler to end the game. I probably wouldn’t consider it a very good game at this point, but on reflection it’s the first fighting game I got heavily invested in. I’d played Street fighter 2, but I didn’t really know how things worked until later.
While the plot is largely an excuse to fight robots, one thing that stuck with me is that about halfway through the game, your best friend moves away. Thanks to timing, I played this game shortly after I moved halfway across town (which might as well be halfway around the world when you’re 12). Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack, which was incredibly good for a Game Boy game.
Bigger Fighting Robots
LBX turns out to have a surprising amount of surprisingly well-done voice acting, and has an actual plot. It’s a lot like Pokémon in that an organization is using these things for evil (so of course you have to use them to put a stop to it), but there’s also a hint of a Last Starfighter-esque plot where this turns out to be training for actual giant robots down the line. (This is in the opening, so I don’t consider it a spoiler.) It also leans heavily on Defeat Means Friendship, so it’s not uncommon to be fighting alongside bosses after you beat them. Your own robot is quite customizable, so while you start with Achilles, you can eventually use almost anything you want. I’m eager to see where this one’s going, because I really like it so far. There’s also a cross-media element that might be a bit dangerous, but more on that later.
This week was pretty crazy, and involved a whole heap of work related stress. That said it is also the week before the labor day holiday here in the United States. With that in mind the stresses seemed to be more manageable knowing that I had a four day weekend waiting for me. The funny thing about doing these review posts is that I don’t realize I played quite as many games as I did until I actually sit back trying to sort it all out. I am not sure how effective of an adult I am going to be today, because a combination of allergies and exhaustion are settling in and leaving me groggy as hell this morning. Yesterday we did one of our whirlwind circuits of Walmart stores looking for back to school clearance… and of course for me… clearance Legos. During the course of the day we hit six different stores in several towns just outside of the Tulsa Metro area, and I managed to get a Lego Star Wars Snow Speeder and Tie Interceptor which made me pretty damned happy.
Destiny
Bel Failing at Destiny
With all of the talk of the Destiny expansion, I decided to give the game a spin again since there are several content packs that I have yet to even touch. That said a combination of lack of gear, and lack of skill kept me from really progressing. I am not sure what sort of gear levels they are expecting players to have upon starting the new story content, but at 22 light it felt like I simply lacked the punch needed to chew through it. I did have several nice weapons waiting for me when I logged in, so I guess that was awesome. One of which was a nice hand cannon, which when I last played Destiny was the weapon I really enjoyed running around with. I want to get in and figure out how best to increase my light score, and throw on a few levels before trying this out again. Supposedly right now Xur has a night Titan helm available so I might boot this up after the blog post and see what that does for my total light bonus.
Grow Home
Quirky Robot Exploration Game
While on the subject of PlayStation 4 games, this week also saw the release of a whole batch of brand new PlayStation Plus free games. If you own ANY Sony products… and are not a PlayStation Plus member, I highly suggest you do. One of the big positives about the PlayStation platform is how well the various products ultimately interact with each other. One nifty trick that my friend Ashgar showed me is that you can log in via the web interface and quickly “purchase” all of the free games even if you don’t happen to own a given platform. So for example for the longest time I only had a PS3, but I was still picking up Vita and PS4 games every month so that when I finally broke down and bought the consoles I had an existing game library. $50 a year ends up getting you a minimum of six new games each month. You cannot beat that anywhere.
This month saw something slightly different for the PS+ process in that they allowed the subscribers to vote between a choice of three games for one of the September slots. I personally voted for Armello, but it seems like the community as a whole really got behind the game Grow Home. These is by the UbiSoft branch that does more “indie” titles, and quite honestly… it is not ready for prime time. In my short period of time playing the game it locked up and froze numerous times on me. It is in theory a quirky exploration game where you play a robot that has been dropped on a planet to explore it. You collect crystals, climb surfaces, pick up items… all in an attempt to explore more. It has some strange controls but I got used to them pretty quickly. The only problem I have is the whole open world blocky exploration thing doesn’t quite hook me the way it used to… seeing as I have now played Minecraft for half a decade.
Teslagrad
Block Polarity for Fun and Profit
While Grow Home didn’t really grasp me… Teslagrad absolutely did and I made the mistake of booting this up late one night… and then ending up playing for over an hour before realizing just how late it had gotten. The story of the game is that you live in the Kingdom of Elektropia and find yourself being hunted by the King’s guard. You feel from them and find your way into Teslagrad the massive tower fortress of the technological wizards. The game of course does not tell you all of this, but instead asks you to piece things together from bits and pieces of information you see in the levels of the game on tapestries and through little animatronic theaters. The gameplay itself is simple and brutal at the same time. The core mechanic of the game centers around polarity… hitting certain objects with your left trigger button will shift it “blue” and with your right trigger button shift it “red”. This simply mechanic is used throughout this metroidvania puzzler to complete levels. There is also a level of twitch gameplay as you have to use other abilities at just the right moment to get through the levels. The challenge being that ANY damage taken will kill you. Much like Ori and the Blind Forest the game employs a really nice checkpoint system so very rarely do you have to repeat much gameplay, allowing you to quickly learn your way through a given puzzle element through rapid succession. The art style is this lovely hand drawn, hand painted feel that works really nicely. I highly suggest you check it out even if you don’t have access to Playstation Plus.
Rift
Badass Flying Bike
While I did not really play a lot of it, I did spend time in Rift. I ended up getting a code for the fourth anniversary aethercycle, which prompted me to want to return and play the game some more. Funny how cosmetic items can do that. I mostly spent time working on the “Intrepid Adventures” which sends you through a series of “Instant Adventure” style interactions deep within otherwise Raid only zones. The experience was fairly slow going, but it might be an entertaining way to get to the level cap. Right now I am 62.5 and I would really like to reach the level cap on at least one character before the next expansion lands. I am not sure why but I have really struggled leveling in the post vanilla Rift game.
Final Fantasy XIV
With folks at Pax Prime, it ended up being a bit strange as far as raiding weeks went. We did not have the Monday raid and with tomorrow being a holiday I don’t think we plan on raiding that night either. By the time we get back to work on Ravana Extreme we are going to be rusty as hell. Wednesday night also lacked the people to meet, so instead we worked on Alexander for folks. The 2nd anniversary event is going on in game and I highly suggest that you check it out because I think it is going away quickly. Easily some of the most touching content I have completed in any game, because it breaks the fourth way in a good way. Still going through a bit of a Final Fantasy XIV break, but poking my head in periodically to check and make sure everything is still going well.
Diablo 3
Greed Pays… at least when it comes to killing him
Once again this week I spent the vast majority of my time in Diablo 3. At this point I am completely decked out in legendaries… thought not really the right ones. I am also at Paragon 91 which makes my seasonal character far and away my most progressed character yet. I think on the normal servers I am only something like Paragon 19. At this point I am working on bounties and then grouping up with friends whenever folks are around, mostly for the highest chance of seeing set pieces drop. I currently have a charge build, which helps me keep up with my wizard friends and also as soon as I can get one more piece of gear… deals a silly amount of damage. I am having a blast, but still completely baffled that for some reason the game has just “clicked” with me where it did not for so long. I am one achievement away from getting my season four rewards, and after I wrap this blog post I am probably going to pop in and work on just that. It was a fun week, and I am really starting to enjoy doing these posts, hopefully you all my readers also like them.
Tonight we are recovering a bit from recording two mega episodes, and end up crafting a relatively short one. Since the last episode three of our hosts have been to Pax Prime and as you might expect have an awful lot of things to talk about. Ashgar, Tam and Kodra share their experiences, and some of the interesting games that they got to see. Additionally there was a pretty awesome meet up of folks from the blogosphere in Seattle and there is some discussion of that. In the meantime many of us have also managed to get sucked into Diablo 3 for Season 4. So we have been spending quite a bit of time stalking the Prime Evil, and grouping together to tackle the content.
