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First I feel like I need to start this mornings post off with a discussion of how completely overwhelmed I am by the birthday wishes yesterday.  We were travelling and each time we stopped I furiously tried to catch up with personal thanks to everyone who sent me something.  I completely missed Facebook unfortunately because I refuse to install the Facebook app on my phone and wound up doing a sort blanket thanks over there when I got home.  Twitter however is my social media of choice and I tried my best to keep up throughout the day.  I think I successfully thanked each and every one of you…  but given how fast everything was scrolling there is a high chance that I missed someone.  If I did I am truly sorry because I am super thankful for all of the awesome friends I have.

For the last several years my wife and I have been doing this little mini vacation to the Kansas City metro.  As the rockstar teacher she is, she signs up to grade the AP Statistics exams…  and for the last several years has been a table leader that is responsible for making sure that all of the essay questions get graded effectively the same way by all teachers.  For those who are having trouble picturing this…  imagine a convention center filled with tables full of teachers… all of them grading essays for eight hours a day in a sort of weird factory type environment.  That is what my wife has been doing for the last week and some change.

Instead of having the AP Board fly her back home I have been driving up on the day she gets released and picking her up.  Then we run around Kansas City that night and the next morning and drive back to Tulsa.  Because we are lame we mostly just hit a bunch of the Half Priced Books stores there and usually the Microcenter since we don’t have one in Tulsa and pretty much anything else that happens to suit our fancy in the journey.  That means as the birthday wishes are rolling in we are usually moving from location to location with me trying to catch up as we go.

I tend to tweet out random things I encounter… like yesterday I made a joke about these being apparently the Amiibos that did not sell, given they were at a Five Below in Olathe KS.  Later I found out that no… these are fairly rare and were Amazon exclusives and who knows how they ended up in the secondary market.  I wished I had picked up a couple because various folks like Pizzamaid really want the Palutena one.  You can find a bunch of odd things that show up at Five Below, which is a discount chain that I wish we had in my area.  The Below part is generally a lie because I’ve seen very few things there that are cheaper than $5.

Another weird thing I stumbled across in my journey was this controller at Microcenter.  There was no way I was going to pay the $70 price tag but I did snap a photo because I thought it was interesting.  Once I got back to civilization I looked it up and apparently it is the Emio 5-in-1 switch controller, but based on the reviews from Amazon it is not a phenomenal product.  Apparently the Switch 5.0 update completely broke this controller like it did so many third party peripherals, but it was an interesting idea with swappable button layouts for the different Nintendo control schemes it is trying to emulate.

Anyways this is one of those rambling nothing posts.  I feel like I should suddenly feel wiser today given that I am not forty two and apparently the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Unfortunately I don’t feel much different apart from the fact I woke up this morning with an insane headache.  I remember as a kid anytime I would go through growth spurts my joints would hurt.  I wonder if headaches are just a sign of your mind going through a growth spurt too.  Personally I like that thought better than the alternative explanations.

I thought I would talk a bit about my varied experiences with The Division of late.  I wrote the other day about some of the difficulties I had and frustrations that it was not easy to swap gear around to fix those problems.  That said I decided to start trying to incrementally improve my lot in life.  I sifted through my bag and my wallet and decided that I had enough components to be able to craft a single item…  which luckily rolled with stamina on it.  After that I found that the base vendor also had an item I could afford that added stamina to a slot I had none in.  The above image is the original state of my character before swapping anything around.  Notice how heavily I am apparently leaning into electronics…  more than likely because that is just what I was able to get through drops.

This image is after that first swap of two items…  gloves and mask.  Firepower and Electronics obviously took a hit but my stamina went up significantly.  This was enough of a change to make the game feel completely different for me.  No longer was it feeling like a single shot was taking an entire pip of health off and I did not really notice that much of a difference in my ability to kill things.  This little act alone was enough to revitalize the game for me, which makes me question…  should stats make that much of a difference in the way the game feels?  It basically took something that felt horrible every single time I attempted to play it over the last year…  into something that feels pretty good.  Sure I still feel squishy if I get caught in the open but so long as I stick to cover I can hold my ground, which is absolutely not something I could do before without swapping out those two items.

After a few more gear and mod drops this is where I am sitting today and the game feels pretty great.  I played some last night, but eventually sleep claimed me.  I did however managed to knock out a few lengthy side quests including one that had like five phases two it and involved taking down two yellow mobs.  Now I am not entirely certain the yellow mobs were connected to the particular quest…  but I took then down nonetheless in the progress of doing it.  I also seem to have completed some Division Shields mission that rewarded me three pieces of endgame gear that will sit there and wait for me to hit 30.  I am just shy of dinging 28 so I sorta can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I had a lot of fun playing last night and it just seems weird that two item swaps could make all that difference.

I still have a significant number of quests to knock out in the world and there is at least two areas of the map that I have never even been to.  I seem to be getting back into the swing of things and enjoying my time.  It is funny how E3 works because it often has these side effects of making me interested in games that I dropped along the wayside somewhere.  The coverage of The Division 2 gave me the drive to give the original another shot.  Based on some twitter discussion that happened yesterday while I was completely swamped… it seems like there are a handful of other people still playing as well.  I still have yet to fully catch up from the threads that went nuts while I was sitting in meetings all day.  If you are playing Division however…  friend BelghastStern my UPlay handle.  I still don’t fully know what I am doing but I am dying a hell of a lot less.

Yesterday was the Nintendo Direct E3 edition, and the truth is not enough came out of it to really do its own post.  I am sure if you are a huge fan of Smash Bros it was an amazing presentation because they went into copious detail on how exactly that game will work on the switch.  The only Smash Bros game that I have played is the WiiU version and it honestly felt weird…  like I was unable to see why everyone is such a huge fan after playing so many other better fighting game options.  I realize this is probably blasphemy but whatever… it’s my blog.  Some of this will be a recap for those who follow me on twitter…  but I figured I would put a pin in my E3 coverage with an ordering of the show I thought was the best downwards.

1. Ubisoft
2. Bethesda
3. Microsoft
4. Sony
5. PC Gaming Show
6. EA
7. Nintendo Direct
8. Square Enix
9. Devolver Digital

Truthfully Ubisoft and Bethesda are really close, so close that I almost gave them a tie.  There were so many games that I was amped for coming out of the Bethesda show, but it also provided a whole lot of awkward moments.  Ubisoft on the other hand is just really good at doing a presentation and has mastered the flow of dialog to game trailer.  I think they are just technically better at these shows than most of the other companies.  As much of a Sony Playstation fanboy as I am… it pains me to admit that the Microsoft show was just better in every conceivable way.  Sony itself almost got marked down significantly for how bad this new show concept was that involved intermissions and shuffling the live audience between venues.  What gained it the fourth position however was the simple fact that everything they showed was awesome.

The PC Gaming Show has always been a mixed bag that never really felt like a blended experience.  While the production value has increased massively each year it still lacks something in cohesiveness and flow.  Electronic Arts would have been dead last on the list were it not for Anthem and my desire to get more information about it.  The problem with this show is the majority of things covered are recursive sports titles that I have never cared about.  I still feel like they would be better served having two shows… one with a high sports flavor that they could maybe partner with ESPN on… and one with everything else.  Nintendo Direct was a massive disappointment because the things I wanted to see…  didn’t show up.  We had no news of Metroid Prime 4 and I was honestly expecting something along the lines of Pokemon Lets Go but for Animal Crossing with a Pocket Camp integration.

Square Enix didn’t really have what I would consider a proper show.  What they released was a YouTube video that they just happened to be streaming.  The only thing I was really interested in like I said yesterday was the FFXIV/Monster Hunter crossover.  They should have simply skipped having a “live” event and just released a big YouTube video instead since everything was prerecorded.  Admittedly so was everything we saw from Nintendo Direct but at least it had some dialog interspersed between the game trailers…  Square was one statement at the beginning and then fifteen minutes of trailers.  Devolver Digital on the other hand I don’t even consider a real show… given it is mostly a running joke at this point.  That said they did at least announce two games this year…  but the majority of the experience was something straight out of an episode of Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show.

The E3 experience does weird things to me… like I fully expected to be having a resurgence of Elder Scrolls Online after the Bethesda show case.  Instead what I find myself doing over the last couple of nights is running around and attempting to get back into The Division.  I left that game in a really weird place in that I never actually managed to make it to the level cap.  Right now I am 27 and still struggling to get back used to the way it plays.  I feel insanely squishy, and in truth I think it is all because I failed miserably at gearing my character.  The problem there is I am too poor to do anything about that by picking up gear to fix this problem of any of the vendors.  That was a huge thing for me when I last played is that it felt like I simply was not getting the drops I needed, and never got enough cash to go the vendor route instead.  Similarly all of the crafting patterns that I have really don’t do much to dig me out of this whole either.

I missed the train with the Division.  Those players who got in early and power leveled their way through the content seemed to have a much easier time gearing up.  I remember that first patch and the nerfing of the drop rate of materials combined with an increase in the material costs of crafting really hit me hard.  I think more than anything that was the point where I was largely demotivated from moving forward.  I have been going with the solo build of med pack and turret and in some cases it works nicely…  in other cases it feels like I keep getting one shot by things that should be well under my level range.  I did one of the missions last night and it wound up taking me eight or nine attempts to get through the final phase which involved two yellow mobs that rushed in with a yellow sniper type mob.

The whole cover mechanic thing is a foreign concept for me as I am way more used to the run and gun style of Destiny.  I am very much not used to finding the best option as far as cover goes… or often times ending up getting pinched from both sides as something spawns in behind me.  These are things that are likely mitigated with more players, but as a solo player it is pretty much death.  There lies another problem… I attempted to queue up for another mission and managed to find exactly one other player wanting to run it.  Things went mostly well until once again we got to the end encounter and kept getting overwhelmed by a wave of purples and two yellow bosses.  After eight attempts the other guy just left and I found myself frustrated for the evening and logging as well.  It always feels like most of the encounters have one or two mobs more than are really manageable, and in turn I just die an excess amount.

I loved everything about The Division for a really long time but I just sorta hit a wall around level 26 where everything seemed way tougher than I could handle.  I am sure it is a combination of the fact that the game does a poor job of messaging how you should actually be gearing for solo play.  It also does not do a great job of letting you dig yourself back out of that hole because drops seem really spartan.  If they offered the ability to boost to level 30 and give you a decent starter set of solo gear…  then I think life would be grand.  Right now the only way I succeed is to just never get hit, which isn’t always a viable option when there are eight things rushing towards you.  I figure with time I might get used to the game play again… but for the moment it feels miserable.