Good Morning Folks. I wish my Canadian friends would come collect their geese. We have a gaggle of them that roam around my neighborhood and this past weekend they straight up blocked my progress trying to get back home. I slowly had to ease up on them and they eventually parted and let me through. I got out of the car and tried to wave them away… but that only caused them to hiss at me and stand their ground. If you have been reading the blog for awhile you will know that they also blocked my progress when I was trying to get back to the visitation for my wife because I forgot to bring her glasses. Last night they also briefly blocked my progress when I was going to a dinner thing. It seems like they exist to be a roadblock for whenever I need to be somewhere.
Yesterday was a lot. It would have been my wife’s 49th birthday and as a result we planned on having a dinner thing at 7pm at one of her favorite restaurants. She was basic and loved Olive Garden… what can I say. I think her ACTUAL favorite restaurant was Desi Wok an Indian/Desi place in Midtown Tulsa, but it has a super small dining room and could not have supported the big group that we had last night. I am not sure the actual headcount but it was somewhere around twenty people and I mostly did okay. In truth I was way more stressed by being around that many people at one time, but I took it in good spirits. I did not get out of there and back home until around 10ish… so I was exhausted and pretty much went straight to bed. My children aka the cats were super grumpy that I had been gone all night, but quickly assumed snuggling postures with me in bed as I did my dailies in the few mobile games that I play before falling asleep.
One of the things that I need to do is come up with a reason for me to get out of the house more, and honestly be more active. I am pretty damned sedentary and have been over the five years of remote work. One of the things that I used to do with my wife was go off on camera shoots, looking for various interesting things to photograph. I am a bit fan of urban decay and turning benign subjects into abstract ones through the photo lens. One of the things I hated about this however was the weird proprietary chargers that we had to use with our canon cameras. So I started out looking to see if anyone made a version of the chargers that used USB C. Instead I found something way more cool. These are some replacement batteries that you just hook up with USB C as though they were a power bank. I bought a pair of them to try out and maybe this will jump start my desire to get out and take some photos.
My friend from High School that keeps tabs on me has also said that they want to go out and shoot photos more so I might be able to convince them to join in the madness. There are a few places that I would not mind revisiting. For example Downtown Coffeyville Kansas was really cool the weekend we took a trip up there circa 2014ish. There is also plenty of stuff in and around Tulsa to take photos of that is interesting. I remember we made a trip out to Guthrie and that was pretty great as well. Mostly the camera was a good reason to go somewhere other than my home, and while walking around looking for things to take photos of… I completely forget that I am walking around and end up putting on a bunch of steps that I am unaware of until get home and realize how tired I am. I need distractions I think and this seems like a reasonable one.
Another distraction that I am heading towards is starting up collecting and painting Warhammer 40k miniatures again. I’ve missed this but have not really had the space for it. At some point when I find someone to donate the library of math books that my wife collected over the years, I will probably start turning her office into a hobby room. At some point I envision having 3d printers set up in there and a painting desk. In the short term though I have been watching stupid amounts of videos trying to determine how best to ease back into things. The same friend from High School has said we need to do a few painting nights rather than me making a rash decision with which of the dozens of paint lines that I want to buy into. They have a smattering of various paints so that I can get a feel for how each of them works. The hobby industry has expanded significantly since I last paid any attention to it… which was around the release of Warhammer 8th edition.
Prior to that I was a Rogue Trader through 2nd edition Warhammer 40k player back when we were in High School. I grew up daydreaming about having access to all of the things that I saw in White Dwarf magazine. We did not have access to a GW store of any sort, with I think the closest one being over five hours away in the Dallas Metroplex. What we did have access to were woefully incomplete product lines at various small comic shops, but we made the best of what we could get and had a lot of fun painting them. Quite honestly having a paint night with this friend is going to be a massive throwback to our high school days where I would go to his house and abuse the large collection of apple barrel paints to paint up my squads of beakie space marines from the 30 count plastic box.
I played some more Titan Quest 2 yesterday and rolled another melee character, this time going warfare and earth instead of warfare and storm. There is significantly more synergy there and I went hard on doing a fire based whirlwind character like I have done so many times in Last Epoch. It works well enough, but still feels a bit more clunky than I would have liked it to be. However I do think a lot of what I am reading as clunk is just the slower pace of this game as compared to Path of Exile or Last Epoch. There are two problems that I need to solve with this build, the first being mana regeneration and the second being some sort of either life leech or regeneration that will keep my health topped off when I encounter status effects that I will not be able to easily avoid since I am up in the face of everything I am fighting. My goal with any build is to make them so they are self sustaining in way that I never have to hit the health potion, or at least not without me taking some massive spike of damage.
One of the things that still annoys me is how there are cases where you do not care at all about the early tiers of abilities for a specific mastery. For example I rushed pouring my divinity points into Earth so that I could pick up the aura that would make every melee attack that I do deal fire damage, because the two spells that were in the first tier were useless for the sort of build I was going for. This is sort of the thing that I was saying when it did not feel like there was much synergy between abilities. Some abilities have ways to mutate them into other types of attacks… for example you can make Lightning Bolt be a spear attack which is cool… but it would have been cooler if you could have just made that work with ANY weapon attack. Part of the reason why Path of Exile 1 is so awesome, is that in most cases you can use any attack or spell with most weapon setups, giving you some really broad freedom in how you build your character. There is more flexibility here than in Path of Exile II for example… but it also really feels like they have a build in mind for each of the trees.
Anyways. I think I am tired of writing for this morning. I am still sort of exhausted from last night, not so much sleepy tired… but emotionally drained. I told my folks when I got home that it was awfully “peopley” in there, and my Dad laughed who is also a confirmed curmudgeon. I now need to figure out what all I missed yesterday while I was not working, and figure out how to pick up where I left off from Monday. I hope you all have a wonderful day and I will figure out something to talk about tomorrow morning.
The post Of Geese, Cameras, Wolves, and Whirlwind appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! I was not really feeling it on Friday so I did not make a blog post. This weekend I spent most of my time playing single-player games, and I think that was a good call. In theory, I am prepping myself for the release of Dragon Age at the end of the month and wanted to try and knock out a few games that I had been holding onto for awhile but had not started. While this blog is old enough to have existed in 2011 when the previous game came out… that was during my dry period when I was struggling with blogging. I loved the original Space Marine game, it was a blast and pretty much everything that I had ever wanted in a Warhammer 40k game. When the original Space Hulk game from EA came out in the 90s… I mostly just wanted Warhammer 40k Doom. It was a great third-person shooter with some interesting systems and enough story to keep the game from falling apart.
What I wanted from Space Marine 2 was more of the same, and I wanted to see more of the Warhammer 40,000 world displayed on the screen. It delivered both admirably and I geeked out every time I passed a new imperial armor mode that I had not seen yet up to this point. I am not as up on my 40k minis as I used to be, but I am pretty sure this is a company of Chimera tanks rendered lovingly in video game form. I am pretty sure during the course of the gameplay I also saw at least one Predator, a Leman Russ, and a Manticore. 40k is a miserable world of constant warfare, but the thing that I dig the most is that this game respected the dignity of the Imperial Guard, who are wildly outgunned in almost every battle but keep pushing forward regardless. The Cadians were an excellent choice here, and I believe they also were the army of choice in the first game.
Probably my single favorite aspect of the game is these loading screens that show the objectives for the mission as dietetic or “in-universe” screens appearing to the NPCs as a holo in the Thunderhawk drop ships. Everything about this game just drips Warhammer 40k lore from the fact that you interface with an Adeptus Mechanicus Magos any time you need to change out your Wargear aka your weapon loadout. I pretty much standardized on the Oculus Bolter, Heavy Bolt Pistol, and the Power Sword throughout as much of the game as would allow me to use them. There are folks out there who like constantly swapping weapons, but I tend to prefer sticking to a loadout that works well for pretty much all situations. Though that said… I did spend a heck of a lot of time doing melee combat because it is just fun to rip through tyranids with a chain sword or power sword.
There were also so many great setpieces in the game that put you in wild situations where complete nonsense was going on in the background. Probably the highlight of these was an orbital drop through the wreckage of Imperial Gunships as you attempt to get into the atmosphere of the planet where it is just too “hot” to get a proper landing. The first game was all about the Orks and this game is a love letter to Tyranids… with of course the “Archenemy” of Chaos always in the background. I’ve never really been that big of a fan of the Ultramarines, but I also understand why they are the poster children for Adeptus Astartes. It sort of hit me this weekend… that they are effectively the “Union Jack” Marines which is probably why they are fairly beloved in the origin country of the game. If I ever got back into the tabletop game I would probably just give up trying to do custom chapters and standardize on the Space Wolves because they have most of the elements that I love going on.
The campaign is pretty short as a whole, but it was one hell of a ride. There are so many excellent moments that are pure fanservice for Warhammer 40k folks. Once the campaign is over however there are a number of strike missions that you can venture forth on as well as a whole Online Multiplayer PVP mode in the game. Honestly, the setup of Space Marine 2 reminds me of how the OG Halo games felt. It has a solid campaign and from what I can tell a very solid and fun multiplayer experience, both doing their own things. This is pretty much everything I could have asked for in a shooter. I’ve only played the single-player content, but I have friends who have almost exclusively played co-op and said it was pretty great as well.
If you are looking for a game that throws back to an era before everything was a live service experience… then maybe check out Space Marine 2. It is just a big dumb shooter with lots of really cool vistas in the background as you rip through enemies with awesome weapons. If you also happen to be a fan of the 40k universe, then it is just the icing on top of this delightful cake. I spent most of the game hating one of the two characters that you are grouped up within the story, expecting an imminent betrayal. However, it turns out that it was just another Carth Onasi situation, and was that archetypal character that distrusts you forever until they turn into a loyal friend. I honestly hate that shit every time I encounter it. That however is the single blemish on an otherwise amazing experience.
I rate this game Five Dakkas and a Chainsword Rip.
The post The Emperor Protects! appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We actually finally get around to having the Age of Sigmar discussion, and more specifically talk at length about Warhammer Fantasy and the new Spearhead game mode which feels a bit like a Magic the Gathering Format. From there Kodra talks about his recent experience attending the Dragonflight Convention in the Seattle Area for the first time. Related to that he talks about his experiences playing Starfinder 2.0. Tam has made it further into Fallout London and shares some more thoughts about it, and Bel dives into his non-spoiler thoughts about the Janthir Wilds expansion for Guild Wars 2. Lastly, Kodra talks a bit more about Mice and Mystics.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! This week we are taking a break from the Dawntrail topic because Ammo was not available. As a result, we dive into a normal topic load starting with Grace talking about their experience playing Diablo IV Season 5. From there we dive into a mega topic of Kodra and his recent trip to GenCon. He talks about True Dungeon, Various Assorted LARPs, and some of the cool stuff from the convention floor. We also dive into a discussion about how a convention reforms its reputation as being the D&D convention into something more open and welcoming. From there we realize that the Age of Sigmar topic is going to get bumped again… but end up also having a bit of a pre-discussion. Finally, we wrap things up with the charming indie game Thank Goodness You’re Here.
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