Good Morning Folks. I’ve had a weird week and a lack of desire to put pen to digital page. As a result you’ve only gotten Monday, Wednesday, and Friday posts instead of one each day. Largely it has felt like I have not really had much to talk about, because in truth I am struggling to find purchase on anything that brings me joy. Part of this is due to the fact that we got a partial RTO (return to office) order yesterday, starting in July… after five years of being fully remote. I knew this was coming down, but I just did not know the timing. As such I am struggling to concentrate on much of anything, and while I am enjoying what I have played of Expedition 33 so far… it is just too much thinking. I need shut my brain off entertainment so that I can stew in my own mess and sort through my thoughts and feelings. I’ve also just sort of been bone weary tired lately, which is not helping either.
I finished Andor season 2 however, and it is quite possibly the best Star Wars anything out there. Everything else is going to feel like a bit of a let down after how phenomenal this tale has been. At some point I want to watch Rogue One, which was already my new favorite Star Wars movie… to see how the character of Andor evolved between the two properties and see if it matches up cleanly at all. Even if you are not a traditional Star Wars enjoyer, you owe it to yourself to watch the two seasons of Andor. Even from a pure artistic standpoint it is so lavish and stylish, giving us a whole new view of the galaxy far far away. While we are only getting two seasons of Andor, I would honestly really love to see some more connected properties about characters that were introduced here as gap filler between these events and the more familiar events of the Star Wars original trilogy.
I also finally got around to watching Freaky Tales, which is a weird 1980s quadrilogy of odd tales… that feels oddly adjacent to the connected story-lines in Pulp Fiction. The trailer gives the impression that it is much more of a fixed narrative, rather than four individual stories, each from the point of view of a group of characters. The events of everything weave in and out of the narrative, but effectively each story is a closed loop. What is wildest about this sequence is that apparently they are based on actual events that took place in Oakland around 1987. The entire story is woven by Too Short, who is played in the movie by an actor… but actually makes a cameo himself. There are a bunch of odd cameos, specifically Tom Hanks as a gambling den running cinephile video store owner was specifically out of left field. It is well worth the watch, especially if you grew up in the 80s and were ever a member of any of the various subcultures from that era.
Last night I started watching my way through Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld which is a Dave Filoni animated show tracing a series of events centered around Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane. I am not sure if there is an eventual crossover in the series between the two characters, but thusfar there appears to be a sequence of Ventress specific episodes and then a sequence of Bane specific episodes. I’m only a few episodes into the Bane part of the show, but the Ventress episodes were phenomenal. I’ve always liked this character, specifically the interesting redemption arc that they have given her. She went from being just a really cool looking villain to a very textured character over the source of the Clone Wars series. I think that has honestly been my favorite part about the Filoni-verse is how his shows have taken relatively paper thin characters and added mass and form to them.
So when I said that I was done with Sir Gog league… I had apparently lied. I’ve needed something that I can shut my brain off while playing… and Path of Exile at this point is one of those things. I’ve committed most of the game to muscle memory, and I accidentally landed on a fairly reasonable build. I’ve continued down the path of Sunder, but making it do lots of fire damage and leaning into buffing that through a few support gems. Combine this with a bunch of gear that I am getting through running Kingsmarch shipping missions, and you have a reasonably tanky character that does fairly decent damage. That said… the boss fights continue to be complete nonsense. They just feel progressively more and more cheap, like Grinding Gear Games was setting out just to find brutal ways to kill players rather than making well thought out fights.
I do think I have hit my hard limit though with this fight, because I have reached the point where I just cannot grind through an encounter. During the Doedre fight in Act 8… I am doing almost zero amount of damage to the boss before the massive room wide area of effect attacks take me out. All I am really doing at this point is incrementing the death meter, and showing zero sign of making it through the fight. I think this is the point where my character just ends. I made a good attempt at getting through the gauntlet, but it beat me. I could get my second ascendancy points, but I am not sure that would actually buy me anything significantly in the survival department. Like I said before, all of the builds that seemed to do this when it was a hardcore event were some form of miner that just one-shot everything. I believe this was during the seismic trap is overpowered days of the game.
The other game I have been playing quite a bit of lately is AFK Journey. Normally I have this as part of my nightly before sleep ritual of playing through a bunch of daily missions, and then never really getting around to anything else. One of my friends though is looking for someone to duo a bunch of corrupted monster encounters, and in order to get to them I have to have progressed a certain amount of way through the storyline. So as a result I am mainlining the story and trying to get as much of it knocked out as I can. Yesterday I believe I cleared the bulk of the seasonal storyline, and am now in optional territory. However I am going to keep cranking through this just to make sure there are no walls later in the game when we actually attempt to group up and do the content. I still find the game deeply charming and am consistently shocked at just how much of it you can play without having spent a dime on it. It is not that I am against spending money on games… even mobile games… but games like this don’t really give you any reasonable feeling means of doing so. All of the money sinks are specifically designed for whaling out.
Anyways that is where I am at. This is going to be an exceptionally busy weekend because Mother’s Day has snuck up on me once again and I have no clue how we are going to see everyone within the constrains of a single two day weekend. Hopefully y’all have your own affairs figured out, because I surely do not.
The post Weird Headspace Time appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! I have been more or less taking the last several days off because I am technically on vacation. Due to the less-than-opportune placement of July 4th, I took off today and also largely checked out of doing blog posts late last week giving myself a bit of a vacation. This morning however I had to do some work really quickly and make sure that timecards were approved. So I thought that I might as well bang out a blog post because I have some things to talk about. More specifically I have watched quite a bit of movies and series of late, and thought I would give a bit of a round-up of some of my thoughts regarding them.
Nimona
I feel like all of you need to stop what you are doing right now and watch Nimona. It is available on Netflix, and if you don’t have access to Netflix… then pirate the fuck out of it because it is very good. If you are/were a fan of Lumberjanes or the most modern incarnation of She-Ra or pretty much anything else from ND Stevenson, then you are probably going to love this. If not… then you will probably still love this because it is exceptionally well-written. It is a story about trying to find your place in the world when that world often is diametrically opposed to your existence. It has a lot of things to say, but also… I want Nimona to be my sidekick. I had not been following the production mess that surrounded this property, but it sounds like it is a sheer miracle that this came out at all.
Very much a good film for the entire family as well. I highly suggest you check it out.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
First I feel like I have to say that I don’t hate Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The movie had problems and I feel like the whole aliens thing was pretty divisive, but for me most of the problems with that movie came from the fact that it looked wrong. We were still in the era of CGI “all the things”, and it looked it… and now I feel like we realize what we lost during the CGI boom years… and folks go out of their way to make things feel like practical effects even when they may not be. Dial of Destiny harkens back to the era of Last Crusade, and while it is still maybe a bit busy and a little bit less about bringing the audience along for the hunt, it feels more grounded in at least imagined reality.
I think what I like the most about this movie is that it serves as a nice bookend for the entire series. Indy is still punching Nazis and still chasing objects of tremendous power but is very much a man out of time. He doesn’t really fit into the world of the moon landing, but no longer has the vim and vigor to really keep chasing forbidden treasure. Dial of Destiny serves as a great last hurrah for Indiana Jones and hopefully can put the character to bed on a good note. If this series continues, it needs to continue in the hands of someone other than Indy, and at most him serving as a supporting character. He has had his curtain call, and I feel satisfied with this movie being the last stanza.
The Flash
I am not going to spend much time talking about what a seeming shithole of a human being Ezra Miller has turned out to be. I don’t really care much about the current state of the DC Universe. I’ve watched the various movies, and enjoyed them enough to keep watching them… but also never really felt the love for them that I have in the MCU. I was mostly interested in this film as it serves to give a last hurrah to “my Batman” aka Michael Keaton. What I was not expecting was to enjoy the film as a whole anywhere near as much as I did. I’ve always sort of hated Ezra Miller’s version of Barry Allen. I found the character annoying as shit and extremely abrasive… and this movie goes a long way to resolving that problem and shows reach growth of the character.
Michael Keaton as Batman and Sasha Calle as Kara Zor-El were both phenomenal. The two different Barry Allens though… felt almost like watching two different actors in the same way as you do when Tatiana Maslany plays dozens of unique characters in Orphan Black. The only disappointment in the movie though is the fact that I expected something that just simply was not there. Knowing that the DCU is being rebooted… I expected this movie to play more into that fact. There were a lot of deep cuts showing alternate timelines like the Nick Cage Superman… but the entire thing wraps up in a very weird note that makes me question what this means for everything that comes forward. It doesn’t so much give the current DCU one last send-off as much as it just deeply muddies the waters. It is still a good film but I would probably suggest waiting for it to release on streaming before you watch it.
The Witcher Season 3 Part 1
Unfortunately, Netflix has realized the error of its ways when it comes to releasing episodes… and has begun awkwardly cleaving a series in half so that they can have two different epic premiere dates. This weekend the first part of The Witcher Season 3 dropped, and with it comes the first five episodes that end on a bit of a cliffhanger. I have a lot of issues with this show… not the least of which is the fact that Henry Cavil will be moving on from the series after this season. I get WHY he would want to leave however because the showrunners and writers are needlessly fucking with details constantly. The Witcher is one of those shows that is good… so long as you know nothing about the supporting material. It reminds me of my early experience with the Harry Dresden series prior to reading the novels. I thought it was pretty good… until I actually read the books and then suddenly got annoyed at the weird inconsistencies.
I think what bothers me the most about The Witcher series, is the fact that entire scenes have been lifted from whole cloth from either the books or the games… but little details have been fucked with for no apparent reason. The worst of this is the way that they are suddenly changing the entire personality and motivation of different characters. I am sorry folks… but they did Eskel dirty last season… and this season they are making some truly bizarre fucking choices with Radovid. The series version of Djikstra is fucking heinous as well and is nowhere near as compelling of a character. Basically, the show feels sloppy, and that is maybe the worst thing a show based off course material can be. The only reason why I kept watching is that they’ve at least nailed the pivotal characters of Geralt, Ciri, Yennifer, and Dandelion/Jaskier. The source material is so fucking strong… that it just infuriates me that the folks writing this show seem determined to sloppily copy the original homework.
Final Thoughts
I cannot understate how much I enjoyed seeing the Keaton Batman ride again. Have you seen any of the media that I talked about? What were your thoughts? What things did I completely miss? I’ve tried to keep everything spoiler free because I do think that everything was worth watching at least once. Again I highly suggest that everyone stream Nimona because it was so freaking good.
The post Recent Media Round-Up appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
It has been a really weird weekend and as I sit down here to write my Monday morning post I largely just find myself staring at a blank screen. It was real hard getting up this morning because it was real hard sleeping last night. Around 9:30 Saturday morning I dropped my wife off at the airport for her very first international flight and around 7:30 Sunday morning she was landing in Lisbon Portugal. Knowing that she is that far away is doing weird things to my brain, and that first night I suffered a pretty nasty panic attack. Like it is not unusual for her to travel but for whatever reason the distance seems all the more extreme and tangible.
My parents wanted to meet for dinner Saturday night and that is probably the exact wrong thing for me to do. I love my folks dearly but they have a way of putting me into a real bad mindset after being around them. Admittedly it is a large part of why I avoid phone calls and have tried really hard to get them used to texting. I get off the phone with my mother and I am in a foul mood for the next three or four hours… and I am never exactly sure why because there really isn’t a reason to be. However that reaction combined with the fact that I was already worried about my wife’s international adventures sent me down a deep hole that I am finding it hard to dig out of today. Apologies that this is not the most cheery of topics for you to be reading on a Monday morning.
All in all however things are fine apart from the bed being too cold and there being too much room in it. Kenzie and Josie have more or less been glued to my side the entire time. I am not sure if it is that they can tell I am somewhat distraught or if they are continuing to get along better. Whatever the case I have had both of them with me in bed the last two nights, generally speaking Josie in my knee pit and Kenzie either laying on top of me or beside me. Mollie on the other hand has largely been non-interactive and I am guessing this is due to the brewing collusion between the other two. She is largely spending the majority of her time up in my wife’s office where she has reclaimed the room we formerly had Josie isolated in.
As far as media goes, I watched the first season of Atlanta because I am wildly behind watching things. That was one of my hopes for the period where I am the only person in the house was to watch a bunch of shows that I had wanted to. I knew that I really should not catch up on BoJack Horseman for reasons that it always makes me question my own existence… but Atlanta maybe wasn’t that much better of an idea. While I loved the season it also has some deeply melancholic undertones which likely did not at all help my mental state. I am engaged however and I am probably going to watch the second season tonight, or at least start it. It really has such a phenomenal cast and I am fully on board with anything that has Donald Glover or Zazie Beetz in it.
On the gaming front I made more progress into The Technomancer and I continue to love it even more. I am really interested in seeing the games that Spiders has to offer because there absolutely was a void left by Bioware that they are seemingly trying to fill. I feel like I am maybe starting to enter the phase of the game where you begin to collect allied forces and head towards a final showdown. That seems to always be a thing that exists in the type of games that Mass Effect or Dragon Age represent, and I am not exactly sure what to call that genre. It is like a sub genre within the Action RPG genre and I sorta feel dumb always referring to them as Bioware-Likes. Whatever the case I am on this course until I finish the game. It is doing a lot of interesting things, but unfortunately I can’t talk about them at length without generating significant spoilers. Part of why this game works is the way in which it unfolds the setting, and in case someone wants to follow in my shoes I don’t want to ruin it for them.
Josie is getting exceptionally good at climbing things… including me. Sunday morning I was sitting working on editing the podcast and Josie was apparently completely enthralled by whatever was happening on the screen. She figured out a way to latch onto my shoulder and then sorta drape herself down my chest as I leaned back in my chair. She is super bonded at this point and follows me around like a little lost puppy. It is almost always Kenzie and Josie that are with me all of the time, and I try and make sure they both get equal attention so that Kenz doesn’t get jealous. I write that and behind me Kenzie just bopped Josie for some reason that I fail to grasp. For those who are like me and search the background of photos, some things that you can see.
Commodore 64 Mini that I picked up on close out for $20
Sony PS1 Mini that I also picked up on close out for $15
Sealed Case of Commander 2019 that I have not had a chance to mess with
Flanaess Map from D&D 3rd Edition
Star Wars LP that I have had for ages
Guilds of Ravnica mini poster
Stuffed Topaz Carbuncle
I hope you all have a wonderful day and I hope I have a better week than I had a weekend.
Last week I had this grand plan of hanging out at home and watching BlizzCon 2015, so I took the day off work. Â Then as we got closer to the day, it suddenly filled up with other things I needed to do. Â Our house looked like madness yesterday with three vehicles of the contractors working on the siding and minor renovations, and another truck for the heating and air company. Â All of this while my wife and I were being forced to park in the next door neighbors driveway. Â Thankfully they were not here the last few days, otherwise I have no clue what we would be doing for parking. Â I am sure the neighbors are wondering what manner of insanity we are up to… as at one point yesterday we had a guy stop and gawk for a few minutes without asking anything. Â I guess that is the benefit of not actually knowing half of your neighbors is that you don’t have to make the same small talk over and over when something like this happens. Â This morning in honor of BlizzCon however I am going to talk about the things that interested me.
Diablo 3
I am leading off what was I originally thought going to be the big disappointment of the day. Â Blizzard did what they always do and rolled out everything that was new and shiny in their opening ceremony. Â The problem being… they said absolutely nothing about Diablo 3 which has turned out to be probably the game in their lineup that I care the most about. Â I had hoped they would announce another expansion this year, but alas that didn’t happen. Â However I am completely fine with this because the Diablo 3 panel later in the evening pretty much showed me that the team is quietly doing awesome stuff, in spite of apparently being ignored by Blizzard as a whole. Â The presentation was essentially a rapid fire series of announcements of new features. Â The one nearest and dearest to my heart surrounds the season play functionality. Â They have essentially sorted out that they are going to make seasons three months long, meaning at the end of that three months there will be new content leading into the next season. Â They said this gives players enough time to really deeply experience it… and also fits players like myself that swoop in… play enough to get the easy rewards and stop playing for a bit.
The biggest announcement as far as I am concerned is the “Rebirth” feature, which will allow you to essentially reboot a previous character and turn it into a new seasonal character. Â All of the gear that was on the character gets mailed to the account, and that character gets dialed back to level 1… but keeps achievements, hours played etc. Â It sounded like maybe there would be a special set of achievements for reboots, but essentially it solves the problem I always have of feeling like I have to create something brand new to be able to play along in the season again. Â They are also adding additional stash space… and the ability to earn slots by completing the seasonal journey on a character, up to 10 slots total. Â This all honestly would have been enough for me, but they are revising the buff system, changing the way damage is shown… Â adding a whole item set dungeon functionality where specific dungeons will require you have an item set equipped and then have challenges based on the strength of that set. Â On top of all of this… new zone and some expanded areas which makes 2.4 pretty damned awesome and it apparently goes up on the PTR next week.
Heroes of the Storm
The highlight of the Heroes discussion is the fact that we are getting Genn Greymane as a playable champion. Â This is absolutely hands down my favorite Alliance leader… that isn’t given the respect of having his own damned town to govern. Â I am still a little sore that Gilneas never became someplace we could actually use as a capitol city. Â I would seriously bank in that town all of the damned time if they allowed me to. Â All the same however it is awesome to have him as a champion and it looks like the gameplay is going to be based around changing in and out of Worgen form. Â The other interesting tidbit is that it seems like they are introducing ARAM for Heroes of the Storm. Â The details were pretty scant and I have not watched any of the panels for Heroes yet… but from the sounds of it, the mode seemed to put a random group of champions against another random group of champions just like “All Random All Middle” mode in League of Legends.
I am honestly all about that because ARAM is probably my favorite mode to play in League. Â Mostly because it takes all of the pressure off in that if you are getting randomly assigned a champion… no one can complain too much about you not being able to play it terribly well. Â I’ve found it a great way to get my feet wet and get used to how a champion performs under actual combat situations. Â The other interesting thing from the show was the introduction of Cho’Gall the two headed ogre. Â This is a champion that is literally played by two different players. Â I am assuming that one controls the movement and the other controls the combat at least to some extent. Â Everyone with a BlizzCon virtual ticket will be getting it added to their account… and then they can play matches with other players to pass the character on. Â After two matches a player will earn their own copy of Cho’gall and after I think they said four matches the original player gets a sack of gold for spreading the madness. Â It sounds cool and it is awesome to see this game thriving.
Hearthstone
The highlight of this announcement was awesome new Brann Bronzebeard artwork.  Hearthstone is one of those games that I like, but rarely actually boot up to play.  I am not sure what it is about the game, but essentially I keep playing the same deck over and over without changing it up much.  It is like this game requires too much of me to actually get in and sort out the decks I might want to build.  I am happy that it seems to be doing well, and I am happy that it has a meta that is very much alive.  That said I felt generally meh when listening to them talk about the gameplay.  I feel like maybe if it ran for shit on my iPad I would play it more, but I struggle with this game in the same way that I struggle with so many mobile games.  It requires too much of me to pop into it while waiting on something…  but it just isn’t sticky enough to make me choose to play it over literally any other game I have installed on my computer or consoles.  There just is rarely ever a situation where I am going to pick this over an MMO or a single player game experience.  I have so many other games to play… and honestly most of the time too damned many.  The hearthstone fans seemed to be really happy, so I am never going to rain on their parade with my own “meh”.
Overwatch
I won’t lie the highlight of the Overwatch presentation for me was seeing just how awesome the Mercy Wings are in Diablo 3. Â Other than that I loved the Mei reveal, because she was freaking adorable… and also looked like a really fun zone control champion to play. Â Similarly I thought D.Va was a pretty cool concept, but I doubt I could ever see myself playing her. Â The boot up sequence of her HUD was awesome, in that it showed a cute bunny icon while it was loading. Â I really don’t care for the design of her Mech, which is my main problem with her as a champion. Â There is just something wrong looking about it… I get they were going for a jet with legs after the reboot that allows her to fly… Â but a Guardian Mode Veritech is a better version of what they were trying to accomplish. Â Though I think the design they came up with was largely a compromise to save space on the screen.
I have to admit I was largely tempted when they announced this would be coming to PS4. Â The problem there is that the Xbox and PS4 Blizard games are disconnected from Battle.net. Â That is my biggest problem with playing Diablo 3 on the PS4 is that I am stuck with only having access to my PSN friends… which are in no way as long of a list of Blizzard fans as the Battle.net account. Â So even though I am going through a bit of a renaissance of console gaming… I am ultimately going to go with the mouse and keyboard of the PC and essentially have to reacquaint myself with that sort of game play. Â I agree with Kodra in his belief that playing with a controller on a PC is a trap when it comes to a competitive FPS. Â There are times I have even considered picking up a XIM4 for my PS4 so I have the option of playing with a keyboard and mouse there as well. Â The PS4 natively supports USB and Bluetooth keyboards and mice… but very few games actually support that. Â Mostly right now I just want to get into the Overwatch beta… and I am hoping that will be a thing that happens soon.
Warcraft Movie
I have to admit on this one that before this trailer I had not really given much of a shit about the Warcraft movie. Â But man… Â those feels while I watched this. Â I have just been burned in the past when a franchise that I love was turned into a movie… at least from the gaming side of things. Â Does anyone remember how horrible the Dungeons and Dragons movie was? Â or Doom? Â This however…. looks like it is going to be a really good movie and revitalize the Warcraft franchise for a whole new generation. Â Maybe it is just the hype I am feeling about Star Wars spilling over into Warcraft… but I am feeling like now is the time to set aside old grudges and just embrace any fandom wholeheartedly. Â Both Durotar and Lothar were awesome in the trailer, and I think they were probably right to make this a Warcraft movie… and not a World of Warcraft movie. Â My hope is that along with this we maybe see a rebooted version of the original Warcraft RTS franchise. Â In any case regardless I know what I will be doing next June… sitting in the theater and watching this movie.
Legion Expansion
Now we finally get to the low point of Blizzcon… which I guess tells you how far my tastes have changed. Â I was completely amped about most of the above announcements other than maybe Hearthstone. Â I wholeheartedly love Blizzard games… but I have just reached the point where World of Warcraft is my least favorite of them. Â The cinematic trailer was nice… but I honestly had hoped that maybe we would have seen Varian die during it… Â or at least I thought that was what we were going to see for a bit. Â For years Varian was supposed to be “our thrall” but he has always been this paper thin super one dimensional character. Â His son on the other hand… Anduin has gone through some actually interesting changes especially during Pandaria. Â So my hope was that we would see Varian dying during this siege and passing the banner to his son who is more than likely far more capable a leader. Â The trailer also gave me hope that maybe just maybe they would finally be retiring the tired old shtick of Alliance versus Horde and giving us the ability to play with friends from both factions. Â Look… it is a dream that I am not going to let go of ever… I hate faction bullshit.
For the most part there is a lot of interesting things at work here… but I lack the faith that they are going to be carried out in a fashion I am going to like. Â It is my honest hope that I get into the beta testing process so I can see if I like it or not. Â I big nail in the coffin for Warlords was how badly they made the Deathknights feel… Â so I guess there are a lot of things that sound good on paper but never quite work right when you put them into practice. Â I am absolutely willing to give this game a shot, but I want to know that I will actually like it before I plunk down that pre-order. Â The new zones do look absoultely amazing however. Â They are pushing this aging engine for every ounce of oomph that it can muster, and I love that. Â The way WoW looks right now, reminds me of the way late in a generation console games look… when they have really figured out how to make the most of the resources they have to work with. Â This expansion is a bunch of really good ideas, that just don’t seem to be connected by enough tissue to hold them together. Â My disappointment largely was that the game didn’t really give me that moment of “fuck yeah!” that I have had in previous expansions. Â It did however give me a lot of moments of “that sounds cool”, especially when it comes to the non-linear leveling process for the new content. Â Unfortunately that same level scaling won’t apply to the rest of the world… so we are again creating this walled garden of “good” content and everything older will feel like crap as a result.
Last week I had this grand plan of hanging out at home and watching BlizzCon 2015, so I took the day off work.  Then as we got closer to the day, it suddenly filled up with other things I needed to do.  Our house looked like madness yesterday with three vehicles of the contractors working on the siding and minor renovations, and another truck for the heating and air company.  All of this while my wife and I were being forced to park in the next door neighbors driveway.  Thankfully they were not here the last few days, otherwise I have no clue what we would be doing for parking.  I am sure the neighbors are wondering what manner of insanity we are up to… as at one point yesterday we had a guy stop and gawk for a few minutes without asking anything.  I guess that is the benefit of not actually knowing half of your neighbors is that you don’t have to make the same small talk over and over when something like this happens.  This morning in honor of BlizzCon however I am going to talk about the things that interested me.
