Mordor Mischief

When the marketing surrounding Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor first came out I thought I got the basic gist of the game. You're some sort of "Wraith" who is trying to mess up Sauron's plans, albeit with an interesting gimmick of the "Nemesis System" which seemed really interesting to me. That system alone however did not seem to be enough to interest me in something I expected to step all over childhood memories of a beloved franchise. I was pretty much out at that point. More silly "movie universe" Lord of the Rings tie in games. Nothing to worry about here, another LotR game I can ignore safely.

Then I start hearing things like it was originally meant to be a Batman game, and it had Batman combat. I really liked Arkham City, that combat was pretty cool. Perhaps more importantly I thought I was pretty okay at that combat. However, I'm still not in at hearing of this Batman lineage.

What got me in was when I started seeing some video of the game and saw that it wasn't completely torn from the movies. It became apparent to me that the story did  not seem quite as silly as I thought it was going to be. Then I heard that there was a significant character for the lore that wasn't really mentioned in the movies, this to me is super cool, more on that later. Also, the Batman combat and traversal is pretty cool. Finally, so as to not use up any better adjectives the "Nemesis System" is extremely cool.

The Nemesis System is somewhat unique. Its component methods aren't particularly new.  Randomly generating named foes isn't, Diablo and other games of the type have done this for some time (or at least I think that they're randomly generated). The thing about the named enemies of Diablo and similar games is that the player doesn't really generate any kind of attachment to them. The only feelings I generally get when one shows up are "Oh this fight might be tough," and "Yippee, a higher chance for a better loot drop."

Ghura the Brave. I'm not quite sure how he earned this epithet, the first time we met he ran away from me.

Games like Dwarf Fortress have randomly generated characters who live out interesting lives and have various quirks. You can follow characters in Dwarf Fortress through their lives. That game is more of a simulation though, kind of like a fantasy Sim-City but much more granular and with less direct control. You can end up caring about these characters but to me it seems a little different because they're on your side. They are the little denizens that you are the caretaker of.

I guess the difference that makes Mordor unique is that it mixes these two concepts (and others to be sure) to simulate that these captains in Sauron's army have lives of their own. Their stories only intersect yours occasionally.

If only career advancement were only so simple as getting a bunch of grog and throwing a party. Then again...

Each orc is given a little blurb about their personality. Many orcs have unsurprisingly bloodthirsty, ambitious, or petty motivations, like our friend Ghura above. However some like the current thorn in my side, Takra have much more sympathetic motives.

Oh Takra, I'll get my revenge. I agree with you though, and doesn't it seem doubly so around election time.

To me this kind of system ends up generating the best kind of open world gaming. I think I've had more fun so far with the emergent scenarios that have sprung up so far than with any of the 5 story missions I've played in my 6 hours with the game so far. I'm not sure how much time those missions have taken up but it feels like I've spent most of my time chasing around the underlings of the black army.

My first encounter of this kind was shortly after I jumped out of the first tower that you start the game in. I proceeded down a cliff and found myself facing one of the captains. I can't remember which one was the first I ran into, but I had apparently crashed some sort of orc convention, perhaps Goblin-Con? I began attacking the first Uruk who told me something along the lines of "Its your time to die," or the like. We started trading blows, more accurately I started escorting him to whatever afterlife the creatures of Morgoth go to when one of his buddies show up. At first I expected it to be just a random non-named orc, but soon he also tossed a threat at me as the camera zoomed in on him and gave me his name. The combat as stated above was reminiscent enough of batman that even though it's been a while since I've played I was doing okay. Then a third captain showed up, and he brought a couple non-named buddies with him. Somewhere in this melee I drive off one of the captains I chase him a little bit but not so far that the others ceased their pursuit and a couple more captains join the fray. I did emerge from the battle successful. I drove off most of the captains and slew two of them. I can't remember all their names but I do remember one Ghura the Brave being a part of the battle and running...

Ghura then happened to dog me for some time. He started getting promoted and more powerful not for defeating me but merely for being present when I was defeated by other more capable orcs. In my mind Ghura became one of those people (is that the right word there?) who failed upward or at least one who likes to take credit for the success of others. Granted the orcs who did defeat me gained more power and notoriety Ghura was always able to relate to the other orcs that he had helped Takra take down that mighty ranger. I don't particularly care for people like that, Sauron's army is apparently not a meritocracy. Not particularly surprising I suppose. Ghura was definitely on my "list."

I don't remember leaving you for dead, I remember you running away...

When we finally met on the battlefield in single combat, Ghura knew what was up. He didn't boast about having defeated me, quite the opposite. I had apparently left him for dead at some point that I don't particularly remember. He didn't really stand a chance. I knocked his life bar down to the point where I need to knock it to in order for my Elf-Lord buddy to suck whatever military intelligence Ghura had out of his brain.

Personally Ghura isn't the sort I would trust with any valuable intel.

This and other emergent stories like it have been the most fun for me so far in the game, however I have been liking the games use of Tolkien's lore. I'm going to make a post about the story stuff in the future, I just wanted to get this one done because it's been quite a while since I've published a post. Yes, I'm still working on the Watch_Dogs post, it'll happen hopefully before the year is up. If not by then sometime next year maybe.

I have streamed the game a couple times. Both of the streams contained story missions, so if you decide to watch be aware of that. I have the first one archived to YouTube currently and I'll be getting the second one up soon. I apologize if the audio quality isn't great on the first one, I had a friend over to try to discuss Tolkien as we played and I was using a different board and computer for streaming than I normally do.

Don't call this a comeback. Okay, call it that. It's exactly what it is.

I've been here for a little over a year. Even if Momma said "knock you out" I probably wouldn't because you're a pretty nice person. I think we'd actually get along well and could probably do lunch sometime. I'm not really sure why I'm using that song as a framing device at this point.

My summer class is over but I already have reading assignments for the upcoming seminar class that I'm taking so we'll see how my update schedule can hold up. In any case I'm planning on streaming on this Thursday evening 8/21/14. I'll tweet out when I start. Game plan going in is some Star Citizen and then some Spintires, but it's up in the air at this point.

Radio Silence

My biggest apologies for the lack of posts and streams recently. I'm currently taking a summer course which will have me pretty busy until about August 15. What was I thinking taking a summer course for grad school while working full time in a retail setting where I often get out of work around eight or nine? Well my first thought was I'll finish a semester early, my second thought was it's only a month, and sleep is highly over-rated. As a result of this decision most of my side projects are going to be put on a kind of hiatus during this time, not that I was having a hugely prodigious output on the blog side of things anyway.

I do have a couple drafts in the works that are either half done or more and I may get into writing mode and finish them up, but I'm guessing the chances are pretty slim. I had been doing a better job at keeping the Twitch and YouTube channels active than I have been doing with this blog. It's a lot easier for me to just jump on and play a game and talk to a chat room or camera than it is to come up with coherent prose, but it does take me a little bit of time to get into the right mindset to do it, and even those hours that I would stream during seem like they will be precious. If I do stream I'll tweet it out but I'm not really sure if that will happen either or if it does there is a high likelihood that it will happen off the schedule I was trying to develop.

To end this I'll give you all a lit of games I want to stream/write about and you can comment suggestions. This is what we'll try to hit when I get back.

Spintires
Next Car Game
More Star Citizen
Town of Salem
Finish writing Watch Dogs article (at this point I'm not sure why)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Divinity: Original Sin

Again, if you have any suggestions put them in the comments, I'll be updating the list and adding ones I think of.

Don't cross the streams.

So, I haven't posted in a little while. There are a few strings in life that have been tugging me in different directions. I've been working on a write-up for Watch_Dogs for a little while now and while doing so trying to amp up my production values on this little blog. That makes my writing time take a bit longer as may become more obvious when I eventually publish the article well after the game has past from the zeitgeist.

In any case I've been trying to get onto some sort of regular broadcasting cycle with my Twitch streaming. Which is at http://www.twitch.tv/thepiltdownman if you want to go old school. The regular cycle that I had been trying to get on was late Thursday nights, basically after I get off work, work out, shower, eat, then streaming time! The last couple weeks work has changed up a bit and I have an extra day of it plus maybe 8-15 hours of that work. The last couple weeks I've been too bushed to broadcast. The driving factor for me doing this is some weird idea that my having fun can have some sort of larger function. That is that my silly hobby of playing games can inform other people on their decisions on which games to play? Maybe that I can be part of a larger intellectual discussion on games as art and the dissection thereof? I don't know but as with any hobby I take up now I seem to be trying to workify it. I start giving myself deadlines on silly things that don't really matter. So in order to not inundate my streams with Watch_Dogs and not just go completely dark on the streaming front I've been streaming some other stuff in order to keep things alive. In short blah, blah, blah, no one cares about the written word anymore, I've tried to create more silly videos.

Teleglitch:

So of all the current Rouge like like like like likes this one seems the most Rougeish to me, or maybe most Nethackish to me. I don't know yet if there is any amulet of Yendor or any other artifact at the endgame that is someone's first name spelled backward. In any case it seems a very fun game that I've had a little fun with a few times. My play here does show how far I've ever gotten in the game.

Crimsonland:

This is a game that I've known for quite a while and was super excited when it got re-released to Steam. This is one of the shareware classics of yesterday that does translate quite well to gameplay today. Unfortunately I'm guessing that it will be passed over if it doesn't get pushed to One or PS4.

It's really freaking awesome though. It will show up in a future stream. This is a timeless game.

The Forest:

I saw this when Giantbomb.com did a recent Unprofessional Friday where they played this, and the weird looking dudes (I'm not sure if aboriginal is a PC term I'm sure if anyone knows if it is I'll get some comments) killed them. I tried to create a scary environ to stream with so I could get freaked out knowing the premise, the freaking out worked for the first time I died then on subsequent plays I know they are going to be around and that I'm probably going to die. Along with Crimsonland this one will return. I'll try to figure some things out and learn how to get further in the game. There has to be some sort of sleep until morning or something to keep the monsters at bay right? That is how these things work?

In any case hopefully I can get some work on the website done to keep everyone interested before my summer class begins and have sporadic installations during that time to keep everyone tuning back in.

Citizenship to the stars.

So this is the game that I'm the most excited for this year, in fact it's been the game I've been most excited about since I heard about its crowdfunding campaign. I was a little hesitant to jump into a third party crowdfunding system so I waited until they went to Kickstarter. At this point I'm sure that my worries were unfounded the campaign was funded easily and at the time I'm writing this they are well on their way to an insane amount of money as far as crowdfunding is concerned.

For anyone who doesn't know what Star Citizen, I should probably summarize what it is to the best of my understanding. As I understand it the game will be like an MMO version of Freelancer or Privateer, so it's a space-sim where you can forge your own path, be it trader, pirate, bounty hunter, etc. The game will also have a first person component, with boarding and walking around on planets and inside capital ships. From what I understand when you buy Star Citizen you also receive Squadron 42 which again, as far as I understand it is a single player military campaign a la Wing Commander.

The biggest thing about this game is that it seems to hit all the highest notes of my ideal game. There is still enough of my inner child that has survived that I still remember the times I wished I was a cool interstellar space explorer, or perhaps a space fighter pilot, or space marine, intergalactic merchant or politician, maybe a Goa'uld (probably not the last one or only with mods). In any case Chris Robert's ideal game seems to coincide with many of my ideas of an ideal game. I've loved X-Wing, and Wing Commander and as far as prominent games go space flight sims have been absent from the stage for far too long, perhaps because the joystick has given way to the gamepad as the preferred method of input in gaming and the direct control feeling is no longer there. It could be because the structure of individual missions where you have to escort a capitol ship or take one out have fallen out of favor (I do think that some of the worse escort missions have taken place in these games). I do believe that Star Citizen solves some of these problems by providing other solutions to traditional space-sim gameplay.

The second part about Star Citizen that is super exciting is its inclusion of first person. The ability to board and take other ships with varying degrees of artificial gravity in place seems quite cool, as do the role-playing possibilities of sitting down and playing some holochess with your not wookie co-pilot while you're doing some interstellar travel again quite cool. Unlike a game like EVE where you have an in game portrait and are basically a ship that interacts with space stations and whatnot, you're an individual that is on a spaceship. This seems much more immersive to me and much more like the original intent behind Start Trek Online before it changed developers. I'm super into the idea of a few buds and I hopping into our one spacecraft and going on adventures rather than a bunch of us forming a fleet of ships and heading out. I don't know about everyone, but the first one seems much more visceral to me.

Keeping in mind that this is all theoretical since the game is not out yet and all we have so far is the ability to view our ships from a first or third person view as a pilot aching to get out to the black, and soon the ability to run simulated dogfights (I feel this should be innately understood but dogfights in this context refers to two aircraft and not lovable terrestrial mammals, I've had to explain this to a couple co-workers)  with each other.

I've made a tiny video tour of my hangar. The hangar module has come a long way since since it first came out. When it first came out none of the holodisplays worked, and one of the walls didn't render. It's pretty impressive how far it has come.

Before PAX East Cloud Imperium held an event highlighting the upcoming dogfighting module. The highlights of which are displayed here.

Newtonian flight makes me think I can hang for the first 5 minutes in the online community after that I'm bound to get thrashed. With that being said as long as the dogfighting module comes out before summer classes start I will give my best shot at doing a weekly livestream of some online multiplayer. Initially I was thinking that were going to announce the release date for the dogfighting module at PAX but they didn't which is fortunate for me as it allowed me to get this article out before the new module (I do worry a bit that I've typed dogfighting too many times in this blog entry and I'll be put on some sort of watch list as a result).

In housekeeping news I won't have classes for a month or so now so hopefully I'll be able to publish articles more frequently and hopefully build up enough of a backlog that I'll be able to get at least one out a week throughout my next too classes. I'm sure this is wishful thinking but the power of positive thinking is a thing right?

Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Xbox (one)

I've been meaning to write about my initial impressions of the Xbox One for some time now. It has taken me a while to get my thoughts about the console together. Part of this was really the lack of software available for the machine and getting enough seat time with it to form any sort of coherent opinion. Keep in mind that it is still early days for this current generation of consoles, and my opinions are more than likely to change, but I, like everyone else on the Internet, am prone to hyperbole and rash decisions that I will not admit to after six months. Some of my gadget lust got the better of me and I purchased the Xbox at launch rather than waiting until now when a savvy buyer can get the console for $50 less than I did with a game (arguably the one I was most excited to play on the system in the launch window) thrown in.

All that said I during the days before launch I did debate between getting the One and the PS4. I'm not sure what got me to make the decision I did. I've owned a PS1, 2 and 3 over the years, I got the PS1 midway ('97 or '98) through its cycle after having gone away from consoles for a while, and I got a PS2 as close to launch as I could which was very difficult to find at the time, but most of the game playing went to the original Xbox as soon as most games started coming out on both platforms. During this last generation my leaning was far more 360 than PS3. I did end up getting the PS3 when the slim came out but I've only played a handful of games on it and I've used it primarily as a Blu-Ray player then to play Uncharted, Demon's Souls, and Borderlands. Not a screaming endorsement, plus I vastly preferred the 360 controller to the Dualshock 3, I realize that the Dualshock 4 is an improvement but I really think I prefer the offset analog sticks to the ones next to each other. I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of the One's controller but I've really not played enough games on it tell if the differences are in any way significant. With all this preamble I'm going to get on to my observations to date:

Television Viewing Redefined(?):

I used this like twice just to play with it, also Bob's Burgers is awesome you should watch it.

So far the thing I've used my Xbox One the most for is to watch TV. I've only 4 HDMI inputs on my home theater receiver, and at the time I purchased the Xbox One, HDMI 1 was the TiVo, 2 was the 360, 3 was the PS3, and 4 was my HTPC (I'll get more into the HTPC later). So with all my receiver ports taken I figured the One would be much easier to integrate into my setup than the PS4 for which I would have to take something out. The TiVo went into the One and I "programmed" them to talk to each other. This did a bunch of things but only a few of them were of significance to me with the positives being:

• I can say "Xbox Pause" and "Xbox Play" while I'm watching shows. I'm not sure how much other people get up and do things while they're watching a show but I might a lot. I might be watching TV while doing the dishes or laundry want to get up and do things, the ability to issue these commands with my voice is kind of cool, saying "Xbox Pause," is easier than grabbing the remote while wandering off to the mirror, I know its stupid, but honestly that's the most I've used this feature.
• Again the voice commands being able to switch through other viewing apps. Being able to say "Xbox go to Netflix" or "Xbox go to Amazon Instant Video" is pretty cool then being able to navigate those programs through voice is pretty handy, or unhandy, har har har.
• I guess the idea of being able to see when a friend is playing a game I want to play or get an invite to a game is kind of cool, the only time it has happened for me I had company over otherwise I would have joined in.

There are some negatives to the whole Xbox as an entertainment portal:

• It makes using the entertainment system that much more complicated. I'm usually the only one who uses it but showing the folks how to use it. ("Ummm... how do you turn the TV on") took a little bit but after that they thought the voice control was awesome, so I'm not sure where that falls.
• You have to have the Xbox on to watch television, which means to watch TV I've got my TiVo, receiver, Xbox and screen on. I'm usually not a super greeny when it comes to stuff like this but when I type it out like that it does maybe seem a bit excessive.
• The voice and guide options aren't useful other than what I've already pointed out. My TiVo already has a guide built into it which works better than the one in the Xbox. The voice commands would be a lot more useful if they were able to select and play recorded videos but it can't. It also keeps hearing "resume TV" as "Watch MTV," and thus thinks MTV is one of my favorite stations. I wasn't that into MTV when I was part of their target demographic.

The Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu Plus apps all seem to work pretty well and are pretty easily navigable by voice. Worth noting Netflix is probably the worst as far as the voice controls are concerned. Instead of saying the name of the show you want to see, it wants inputs like "Xbox Select Item 1," I'm sure they will patch it to get better at some point. Also worth pointing out is that there are 0G achievements associated with all these apps which is kind of... weird.

In Search of the Killer App:

I would recommend against this. Unless it's free, and even then it isn't necessarily a good deal.

So win any new video game platform the biggest and most important question is what games are on it that you want to play. This is perhaps where my early purchase was far too hasty. So far I've bought 5 games for the system,Forza Motorsport 5,Battlefield 4, Halo: Spartan Assault,Titanfall, and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. None of them are the killer app that you absolutely need to go get a One for. So I'll go through my quick thoughts on each one.

Forza Motorsport 5:

Always love the inclusion of cool rally cars.

I've always liked driving games. The whole reason I got a PS1 was for the first Gran Turismo. I enjoy the ones that have a simulator bend but not necessarily whole on simulators like iDriving though I haven't tried that so I shouldn't say that I wouldn't like it. Previously the Forza series has seemed to get a nice blend of fun and simishness with the ratio getting closest to the entertainment ideal in Forza Horizon. I figured I would like the latest installment and it would be a good launch title to get. True I did like the game and it did some cool stuff with the rumble triggers which I do think got me some better lap times but it falls apart as I get to the higher end cars for me where the limits of the car probably exceed my driving ability. I got my Caterham 7 souped it up and was not able to control it. I kind of stopped playing shortly after that. Other drawbacks is that the game was kind of lousy with micro-transactions, the menus took forever to load in and you were forced to go through way too many of them to get to where you wanted to go (to get to the main menu after a race you have to go to the next race then exit to the menu which means two load screens). The drivatars kind of suck by which I mean they drive like assholes constantly crashing into you making it impossible to pass unless you do the same. Though it is kind of cool seeing your friends list even when playing single player. There also don't seem to be as many cars as previous games. I remember that they did have the Porsche liscense in at least one previous iteration that I had which meant I couldn't build my firebreathing undriveable 914 in this version. All in all okay but could be a lot better, and hopefully the next title in the series will hew closer to previous versions than what they came out with this time which feels largely rushed and unfinished. Oh yea and the lack of any licensed music kind of sucked. I'm not against orchestral music at all but in driving games I need something to rock out to.

Battlefield 4:

This is what BF4 is supposed to be like.

So my fun with Forza running out I figured I could Battlefield might be kind of fun. It is, however the broken state in which the game shipped did diminish some of my fun with it. Frequent crashes, single player progress not saving, not being able to find matches. I'm also not terribly good at these games the last time I played battlefield was during the original and everyone else has gotten better at them than I have.

A cool feature of the game is that it makes a little recording every time you rank up which you can then upload to your Microsoft Skydrive and then do what you want with. Sometimes these moments might even be something you're proud of.

Again, my excitement for the game which I was never too excited about waned and I was looking for other stuff. It could probably have held my attention longer had there been fewer bugs and it were easier to get into matches.

Halo: Spartan Assault:

I thought this would be a fun dual joystick shooter set in the Halo universe. It is a dual joystick shooter.

Titanfall:

This is probably the game that I've gotten the most excited about on the One. It was originally meant to be an exclusive but they decided to release it on PC as well. My online gaming skills are not at the point where I want to be playing against other people with mouse and keyboard. I'm much more comfortable doing my competitive (a term I use loosely when it comes to my playing) FPS action. I also don't like using the Origin service. I've had a lot of fun with it and it looks great. I'm not great at it but the traversal mechanics make you feel pretty awesome doing all the parkour moves with the jetpack. Also who doesn't love giant robots?

I used Titanfall to test out the Xbox Ones built in Twitch streaming which launched around the same time. It's super easy to set up and it looks pretty decent, I'm not sure why but I think the transfer to YouTube didn't fare so well.

I'm probably going to play some more of this but I am more excited about Dark Souls, which I'm going to get back to I swear.

Next Generation?

With how far PC gaming has come during the previous generation of gaming systems with the universality of controller support, the Steam marketplace and ease of integration into a home theater setup I hadn't really used my 360 or PS3 for much of anything except platform exclusives for the past couple years. When it comes for upcoming games I'll still keep getting the PC version if it is available there unless of course that version is horribly optimized or takes too long to come out.

Games currently on the horizon that I'm excited about and the platforms I'll probably play them on

• Star Citizen - PC (I'm probably going to have a post or two about this soon)
• Witcher 3 - PC
• Watch Dogs - PC
• Destiny - One (I'm a big Bungie fan and would love to stream out some Aleph One especially if some internet multiplayer could be had).
• The Division - One (The concept behind this seems really cool as far as I can tell but it's too far out to tell for sure).

Those are the big ones I can think of at the moment. I'm sure there will be others out, I'm also super hyped for the Oculus Rift which is only going to be on the PC.

So was the purchase worth it? Maybe, but probably not at this point unless you really want to play Titanfall or Dead Rising 3 it might be worth it to wait for a good deal. There have already been a few one the system and I'm sure there will be more to come. 

Nostalgia Vs. Modernity Part 1: Early Childhood Memories (NES) [Repost from Giantbomb Blog]

This is a repost, and I guess analysis of an entry blog I made on Giantbomb back in 2011. To me there are a couple funny things about my writing here, one is the reason I was writing the post, and two is my perhaps enhanced clarity in seeing how my views were affected by the prevelant attitude of the time (Three years ago being soooo different from today, sarcasm intended but only just so).

"I’m relatively new to the Giant Bomb world. I’ve been listening to the Bombcast since maybe this July (2011). I’m currently enamoured enough to go back in time a few podcasts and check out older ones. During this process I’ve hit the E3 2011 podcasts where there has been talk about the revival of old franchises. I’m coming over from the Kotaku community but I’m sure much of the chatter and backlash against revivals is similar in both communities. The purpose of this essay series is going to be to address the arguments on both sides of the arguments on the revival of old franchises that I’ve seen going on from someone who has played the old games but still tries to keep an open mind. To understand where I’m coming from, you will probably need to understand a little bit about my past and know how similar or dissimilar it is from yours.

I was born in 1980, and didn't have any interest in gaming until I got a Nintendo for Christmas one year. I don’t remember which year I got it, I think Zelda was out since we rented it a few times before I got it. I also remember the skeletons freaking me out as a kid, so I’m thinking I may have been six or seven when I got my first game system. That given I never beat Super Mario Bros. but I was really impressed when my dad did. I never beat Zelda, and I had to write into Nintendo Power to figure out how to get to the second area in Zelda II.

I spent many of those Nintendo years renting various games but I think I had about seven or eight games that I owned. Hogan’s Alley was pretty cool, but I tired of it quickly. I think that Duck Tales may have been the first game that I actually beat. I remember playing Final Fantasy and having no clue what to do, going to friends’ houses and having no clue what to do while we were playing. Getting the Nintendo Power guide and still having no clue what to do... I also remember my parents resubscribing to Nintendo Power and getting a copy of Dragon Warrior. I had been a subscriber since the Nintendo Fun Club days, I think I still have my copies of those magazines around if people want to make an offer...

I had about as much luck with Dragon Warrior as I did with Final Fantasy, not being able to get too far because of my age coupled with the difficult of the game. I also suppose there was some sort of desire of getting far in it versus the difficulty playing into it. The Wizard also came out around the end of this era. I remember my parents taking me to that movie and “Get the star Jimmy!” was a quote that was thrown around in our house a fair amount. I also remember that the gas station near our house that rented out games had a Japanese copy of SMB 3 with an adapter that allowed it to work on US NES units. I remember renting it so many times that my parents probably had paid for a copy by the time that it came out here. I also remember going to Wal-Mart the day it came out here and running to the electronics department and asking the clerk to hold a copy until my mom got there to make sure that no one could buy it before she got there (I also remember it being kind of hard to get a copy).

I think I was also playing a few Apple II games during this era. Number Munchers, Oregon Trail, etc. during this era. I loved being able to play those games in school during this era. I can’t remember if there was a Carmen Sandiego game out during this era, but I want to think that there was, but I didn’t really obsess over those until our family got our first computer.

In any case, this is my early childhood in gaming, I’m guessing it’s quite different than those of you who grew up when Halo was new, and those of you who are either my age or older we can look at these days in a certain lens of nostalgia and love those games. I didn’t mention other games I’ve played such as Contra, Elevator Action, TMNT (the first one on NES), going to other friends houses and playing Atari and Sega. These are the stand out memories for me since that is the focus of this essay series."

Dark Souls II: Reaching for too much.

I tried to do another stream, but I flew too close to the sun. I cranked the setting for my local capture, and set my upstream quality rate for 4 Mbps. I had gone to speed test and it told me I was getting around 5.5 up. Well the stream kept hanging so I stopped and started it back up, this seemed to be the thing that messed up my local recording. I'll get this down yet.

Had three major things happen during this time, I'll try to chronicle them here.

Fire Longsword:

During the previous session a Twitch viewer had mentioned the Fire Longsword. I had figured that this hallway full of fire would probably be a good place to look for it. I looked it up online in the time between sessions. This had me running past the fire salamander rather than fighting it. Probably wise at this point. It also warned of two hollows near the chest that held the fire sword. These guys never showed up, so maybe I had cleared them out of the area before I went to grab the sword? I'm not sure.

Super Knight:

Hi there, can we be friends?

So after beating up on some hollows I get to this platform and this bird carrying a guy flies by. Oh, okay that's neat but there is a guy throwing firebombs at me so I go and knock him off the little battlement he is standing on and turn around and this massive knight is standing behind me.

Then he hits me, I can't quite remember if I get time to heal or not, but he's fast. And he can also shoot magic rays out of his sword, I don't have a shield out and I'm trying to heal and then...

Was that fair?

Doing a quick scan of the DS wiki I couldn't find any information about him. He didn't seem to come back when I went to retrieve my souls. Does he come back? Does anyone beat him the first time they meet him?

Finding the Cartographer:

So the next little section involved me doing my best impression of an Assassin's Creed game jumping from dilapidated rooftop to dilapidated rooftop killing guys with my swords. I think I've nicknamed them "Sparky" and "Lefty." I get to a cave and start slowly walking in and a large boulder rushes across the cave in front of me. I think to myself would anyone really be sprinting through here? Then I see this:

I made what I thought was a really funny Courtney Love joke while I thought I was recording.

I touched a couple bloodstains nearby and decided that the trap was trying to explore the hole left by the boulder. That's a little more devious. In any case I rounded the corner and found the Cartographer I've seen so many people talking about. At least I think he's the one. He gave me a key to the mansion in Majula, so that might be the next area I scope out or I might push on to try to find the next bonfire. I'm not sure which I'm more likely to do at this point.

I made a joke about GIS here that probably wasn't as good as the Hole one.

Looking at this after it's done I'm not sure if this works better than the videos or not. Maybe I should do both for a while and see which I like better? I'm also going to give creating a little Piltdown Gaming banner for the top of this a shot, it'll probably take me a while to come up with something I like.

Dark Souls II: Drangeleic Explorer Society Application

Threw my hat into the ring in this forum post.

I decided to check out the Dark Souls II forums on GiantBomb and noticed a sticky post at the top which was looking to collect all the various streams, Youtube channels, and blogs covering Dark Souls II from the community. I saw that and thought, hey I may just be starting this thing up, and currently not very good at it, but "Hey, that's me!" so I let the original poster know about my blog.

I hadn't really thought about this in any of the posts I've made so far but it should be fairly obvious since I'm just chronicling my play through of the game but there are going to be spoilers.

So last time I played I spent most of the time running up the the Heide Knight in the Forest of Fallen Giants over and over again without much luck. This is how these games can get the better of me. I'll get frustrated at a point and just start making silly mistakes. From being even the least bit present on the internet I can tell that I'm not alone in having this happen to me. After last time though I had accumulated enough souls to level 3 times. So I did and took off to try to get him again. After taking a wrong turn I got to him and came oh so close to killing him. There were at least a couple times when I was pretty sure I was going to die but didn't. I had him whittled down to an imperceptible amount of health when he got me.



One of the great things about playing these Souls games is how they can make even these relatively minor combats in the greater scheme of the game seem epic. However I did not give up and as I returned I noticed all these throwing knives that I had been picking up and thought hey these might be useful. Indeed they were. I'm not sure how much of it was the increased stats, how much was softening him up with the throwing knives but my first little victory in Dark Souls II felt pretty good. After this I took his lightning sword and noticed that I had picked up a couple viewers on Twitch. After this I proceed through some very poor gameplay to lose around a thousand souls. I think these may have been the first that I've permanently lost so far. It was bound to happen at some point.

After this and being clued in to another sword I'll probably want to look for I did a little more exploring and found the next bonfire with a crazy lady sitting by it. Cleared a bit of the area after that saw a big fire looking lizard and decided that was enough for this bit of exploration.

I'm still trying to figure out the best settings and way to do this streaming to Twitch and posting of videos to Youtube. I figure the best way to approach this is to just keep at it and keep tweeking things until I get them where I like them. That sounds like a sentiment that has an eventual endpoint but it probably doesn't.

I don't think I have my sound levels quite where I want them yet. I do think the latest video is better than the previous one in this regard, but I think for the sake of watch ability I need to increase the voice level over the gameplay by maybe a fair chunk. I've been setting the levels when I'm at the loading screen which is much quieter than when there is action on the screen, either that or I'm speaking too softly.

I think I'm starting to figure my capture setup a bit. For this video I switched from an old dual core AMD computer I had lying around to my main PC. I still can't get the ElGato to play nice with OBS but I'm getting further than I did on the other computer. I'm also a little more confident in turning the capture settings up on this computer than I am on that old one. After looking at this video on Youtube compared to the old one it isn't great but it isn't quite the pile of garbage visual fidelity wise as that one. I thought I was capturing it at 720 and the file I have on my computer is, so I'm not sure why Youtube isn't displaying it as such. I think it has something to do with the bitrate of the file I uploaded. I think I'm headed in the right direction though.

The other thing I'm not sure about is how often and how long I should be making these little videos. Should I be doing the whole playthrough online? Should I make some progress offline and then just stream every once in a while? Is an hour too long, or not long enough? Should I stream for an hour then break the video into smaller chunks? That might work better for these little write ups.

I know one thing that I need to do to increase my success at this is to have a consistent schedule for doing this. I'm not sure what that is yet but I'm pretty sure two posts every 6 months or so is not the ideal for engaging any kind of community. I think I'm going to shoot for at least one broadcast a week and see how things shake out from there.

Dark Souls II: Super housekeeping and a renewal of effort edition.

Remember when games would put out fansite press kits? I got this from their Facebook page.

So, I'm still not super sure what I want to do with this space. I do want to return to Shadowrun for the SNES, but I realize that there are newer games I want to play. With school and work the time I'm able to dedicate to this sort of sub hobby of my hobby is pretty limited, as evidenced by my lack of posts or streaming output. I had the idea of making a post on my initial impressions of the Xbox One and I had the idea of making a year end post, but I think the window has closed on the latter, and after I maybe capture some footage of me getting killed a lot in Titanfall I will probably return to the former idea, but currently the zeitgeist I'm following and vainly trying to be part of is Dark Souls II.

The format I've chosen so far is to stream some gameplay out live then archive it to the Youtubes then embed it here and post my thoughts on the game clip and game in question. I'm inspired to do this by my two favorite gaming sites Giant Bomb and the CRPG addict. In a way I'm trying to emulate both of them while trying to do my own thing. Probably succeeding at neither but there you have it. I suppose as this goes on and if I get any feedback I might find a direction.

The last little bit of housekeeping is that I'm going to try to make these blog posts closer to the actual times I make the videos I have a video or two that I've made for Shadowrun that I haven't made posts for. They're upcoming in 2050 don't worry. My problem is that I don't really take notes during these gameplay sessions (I'm pretty lousy at notes in classes that aren't pure lectures either). I might be better if I weren't live streaming all of them but trying to make the stream interesting with my rapier wit (I want to go there) but that is the most efficient way for me to create content.

Enough of me complaining, Dark Souls II is out and all of us who are going to play it are going to die quite a bit. Why did I choose this game to be my return to live streaming? Well I was mistaken in thinking that streaming a popular game might get some viewers. I now realize that all the popular streams are streaming the same game and I'm buried underneath people who have been doing this more than like once.  Whenever I tweet out I'm going live I usually get 2 viewers, I'm not sure if that is a function of my tweeting things out or if two people who just don't want to have anything to do with chat are watching my channel for a while after I log out, I'm guessing the former.

In any case, my plan going forward is to try to post a summary as close to the streaming date as possible as such here is my first foray into Dark Souls II.

Unfortunately I was using a new video capture device and computer and apperntly I hadn't set up the stream to correctly take audio info. There are a lot of bits where I try to do dumb things and make pithy comments that just look like me standing around, fortunately it's the tutorial area and just me fumbling my way through it and it should be largely ignored especially how many times I died. I'm also thankful you guys didn't see how I got the "This is Dark Souls" achievement. I'm slightly embarrassed/proud of how dumb I got that achievement.  I wanted to get through the character creation bit before I started streaming and I managed to die twice before that area. The first time I died I thought hey the pathway in front of me looks like the way they want me to go. It would be like a Souls game to put something in the opposite direction, so I went the other way, I went too far. My running the opposite direction took me off the side of a cliff and well I died, I didn't lose any souls but I did lose my chance for a perfect run (ha). The second time I died that wasn't chronicled was when I saw all the creatures running around before the house with all the creepy ladies in it, and they kept running away from me I thought it might be advantageous to kill one or two before I "started the game" or "praised the sun." Yea, they didn't feel like having any of that. They all quickly ganged up on me and I died but I did get the 30 or so souls back when I respawned, maybe you can farm that area, it's weird. I don't understand why it's there. I'm sure there is a reason if I started reading the internet would become apparent. So then we go into what I actually played through and that first section is going to be super boring, or at least it would be to me since I just go through the tutorial area a few times and try to crack a few jokes which don't get recorded because of some problem I had with the Elgato capture device I was using and the software, I tested my mic going into broadcasting and it seemed to work, with their software, and it captured gameplay and failures against those hippo looking monsters at the beginning of the game. But for some reason it catches a bit of my mic at points and I don't really understand what is going on with it, I'll discuss some of that at the end of this post. In the end I fought the hippo guys enough to understand I'm not supposed to kill them at that point in the game. I moved on and went to the starter/only "town in the game" which lead us to this clip. Which is just as if not more embarrassing as far as skill goes. That is my first foray into really gonna a lot. It does seem that my VO is pretty quiet vs Game Audio, next time I'll pump my mic back to where it was a the beginning of the stream.


 

Yea, I'm still trying to figure things out as streaming goes, A, that rapier wit I was talking about. I know I fall short a bunch of times. B, I'm going to boost the volume of my VO (read rapier wit) next time around. C, I'm not going to ingest a ton of fluids next time.

Lessons learned during part two of DS stuff first empty the bladder, I'm really sorry about that. Don't take sips of a soda durning the stream because that will cut it off early, I feel for Breaking Brad segments now.  This video kind of sucks because it shows me sucking it up against the same stupid semi boss several times if anyone has good suggestions on how to use my 3 leveling points I would be glad to hear them.