A return to Something

I have given some thought to how I want to proceed with my online persona/presence with this blog and as much as I want to be erudite and a chronicler of the history of vidja games I sometimes doubt my ability to do so. In any case I had kind of fallen off while writing my top ten from last year. Honestly it took me way too long to get that done. I should have had that finished by the end of January at the latest, in stead we are here in March where I finally finished all of my text that I wanted to write about each of the games from the last year and I'm not completely happy about it. It's done though so hey finally I can put that behind me and get on with writing this chunk of text.

There were a few things I wanted to do with this blog/my streaming activities when I started. My favorite games sites are CRPG Addict and Giantbomb. I guess I kind of want to emulate those influences but I don't think that I'm capable. From what I understand anyone who wants to enter this space needs to have their own gimmick. The Addict is going through every CRPG in history from number 1 and the folks at Giantbomb are quite funny (not that the Addict isn't he is, he's just seems to take a more academic view). I don't really understand what my shtick should or can be. I am who I am, and I try to be honest about things. I don't know if that can be a successful gimmick but my parents always told me honesty will take you places, so we will see. So unless some company dumps a ton of money into my opinion I'll be honest. Even if a company did try to buy my opinion I would probably try to subvert whatever it is that they were trying to accomplish because that's just kind of who I am.

I've been trying some different stuff to increase viewership on my streams and some of the Youtube videos. I've been told that I should go a little longer with my streams as it will give people some time to tune in, and also that on Youtube people tend to prefer shorter videos. I've been trying to accomplish both of these goals, but as my Youtube videos are pretty much just archives of the streams I do so they need to be both longer and shorter. I've tried to hedge this by starting and stopping recording for Youtube during livestreams it seems like it might be working okay. I've only started trying to do this recently, and have only really succeeded in doing it a couple times during my Shadowrun SNES streams.

I felt that this post needed some pictures.

Which kind of brings up the second set of tactics I've been trying (which I actually enacted first but I guess decided to write about second because of the beautiful segue I'm about to use). I had kind of lost any sense of direction with what I was deciding to stream. So I started over with the game I started the stream with, Shadowrun for the SNES. The thinking here is that sticking with one thing will help accumulate viewers who might tune in to one stream randomly and tune back in on a future broadcast of the same game. This thought came around around the same time that I also decided that doing more streams might again attract more viewers. More people might come by the stream if it's up more often and then tune back in for another stream. My anecdotal evidence is that this has worked somewhat. A few people usually tune in for my during the week streams but the shows I do Sunday evenings for Shadowrun seem to be the most popular ones I do by a fair amount. It honestly makes me a little worried about what I do next for my Sunday show after I finish up with Shadowrun, but I'll figure something out. I've already got some suggestions and ideas for stuff you would like to see feel free to add them in the comments (one thing I would eventually like to try is to play You Don't Know Jack or Drawful with my family, or maybe The Yawhg). With this three day a week schedule I've tried to keep it a little organized with playing old games on Sundays (as of this writing Shadowrun for the SNES), Tuesdays being my day for smaller more indie recent stuff and Thursdays being big "AAA" releases (or are you supposed to type that out triple A?) I guess it is worth noting again for myself if not for anyone else the recent SNES streams I've done have been the most popular streams I've done aside from the Star Citizen streams I've done, which inexplicably get around double the normal amount of viewers I get. Probably because it's not out yet.

I guess going back a little further, though it tracks to about the same time as the previous point I decided to build a better way run the capture. So I built a dedicated machine to run the capture I unfortunately bought two black magic HDMI capture cards which don't seem to work. I think that maybe they're incompatible with the motherboard I'm using, I should probably call them up and see why they aren't working or if in fact they aren't working. I even bought a HDMI scaler to try to get them to work. In any case I went back to the USB capture device that I have and it seems to work okay. I would really like a more direct line into my motherboard but I don't thing that is what is hurting the video quality when it is hurt. The things that seem to affect recordings are the bitrate I set things at. I really wish that OBS would let me set a more highly variable bitrate for the stream while keeping a really high one for local recording. I do think I've come a long way, quality wise, from my initial stream.

To my "reboot" of my Shadowrun playthrough. Like I understand now that if I have my stream playing on the computer I'm recording on I should probably mute it...

I still say ummm... A lot. I'm doing my best to cut that word out of my vocabulary but it's so easy to use... I do feel though that I have progressed, quality wise at least. I know that some people don't like seeing the player's mug on part of the screen but when you play a 4:3 aspect ration game in a 16:9 window filling up the rest of the screen I think accomplishes something. Even if it is just exposing my weird square haired balding mug. 

The most recent thing I've done is create a facebook page for the blog/streams. I've been posting when I go online on Twitter whenever I start a stream, I've not wanted to inundate uninterested Facebook friends with the same info so that is the reason for the creation of the page. So if you want facebook updates on when I'm updating things this is the page to "like". It will be one of the many places that I decide to update when I go online. This is the point at which things start to feel a little weird and like schilling. At some point you have to self advertise though.

At some point I guess it's just all sink or swim, do or die. I've got a few things I'd like to expand to in the pipes, or a few irons in several fires etc. One of the things that I want to try is to have multiple people on in one stream. To get this to really work after my transition from the office to the "basement" I'm looking for a cheap TV (read around 50" around $300). I have a 3 mics that work with my soundboard so I can get something like that going it's just a matter of doing it, and seeing if it works.

Aside from trying a cast with multiple people there are a few things I'd like to try. One is a game of Drawful or Fibbage played while streaming. Another is like I mentioned is multiple people on the same stream. I'm also thinking that if I can swing it a pen and paper game might be cool. I don't really know there are a lot of old games that I want to expose people to enough that it might not be possible to do but I'll work at it again if you have anything you would like to see if you comment I'll see it.

At some point I need to get to writing more posts on stuff whether I end up writing reviews of the old games that I complete I don't know if there is much of a point to it. By the time I complete them I will have played them in their entirety and I'm not sure how much value a review would be but it would be video or text content that I hadn't livestreamed so I'm not sure how much value that has.

In any case that is the state of Piltdown Gaming currently. I should probably write a post about why I have chosen the moniker Piltdown Man at some point. I also need to complete my profiles on several sites, and perhaps create some line art for thumbnails and banner art.

My Game of the Year list; because that is a thing to do.

So, now is the time of year that people who are members of gaming communities or run gaming blogs/websites/youtube channels come out with their top 10 game of the year lists. I guess I'm going to throw my opinions out there and make my own little list. My opinions should be taken with some grains of salt since due to my work and school schedules this year I've not completed many of the games on this list. I have played all of them, and will note how much of the games I've played in my descriptions. There are a lot of games that I wish I would have played or played more of so I would have been able to consider them for my list but unfortunately time did not allow. There were some games like "D4" and "Gods Will Be Watching" which deserved to be considered but I don't have enough time in those to even consider them. They may in fact be better games than the ones on my list but this is what I could come up with.

10. The Fall

This game seems really cool, it's a side scrolling game which seems mostly like just a regular side scroller action game at first until it tells you it's an adventure game if you want to categorize it. It examines some thoughts about artificial intelligence and the rules of robotics in an interesting way. *Mild Spoilers* You play as an AI who has to be kind of "crazy/malfunctioning" to deal with and bypass other "crazy/malfunctioning" AI. Most of the time when crazy AI comes up Bungie comes to my mind because the idea of Durandal and his craziness in the world of Marathon (yes I'm saying that Marathon is a good game or series of games, you should play them). There are some really cool themes in this one. It's just one episode though I hope they can keep it going throughout.

9. South Park: The Stick of Destiny

I've not always liked South Park, there was a time late in High School into early college when I thought it wasn't very imaginative. However, shortly after that time period I really think South Park started to come into it's own and now I truly appreciate it. Part of what I like about it is how they are able to keep up on current events and deliver cutting satire on topics that are pertinent to current events. This last season (after the release of the game) really came together amazingly with multiple story lines culminating in a Cartman vs. PewDiePie faceoff... not sure where else you'll get something similar.

The game does a very good job of inserting you into the world of South Park. It references a quite a bit of the South Park lore of which they have generated plenty over the years. Again I haven't yet finished it but many of the references I've seen have brought back fond memories of past episodes. So all in all it's a decent game that is a great tour of the world that it inhabits as opposed to a great game that is a good tour of the world it inhabits. I think the only thing that bugged me about it was its timing based combat system.

8. Destiny

I really wish that I could have put Destiny higher on my list. Bungie has made some of my absolutely favorite games/franchises ever. Growing up with a Mac in stead of a Windows machine the Marathon was my formative FPS. While I really enjoyed the Halo games they don't hold the same spot in my heart as Marathon. There may be an overall trajectory with Bungie's games. Read, my enjoyment with them is dwindling.

I do like the combat sandboxes that Destiny puts you in. I enjoyed the loot and leveling aspects of the game but as time went on it seemed to be an even more "to what end?" treadmill of getting more loot grind than even Diablo. The weapons and powers felt good but it did not feel like there was much variety among them but I only got a couple purple weapons and no exotics so I may not have progressed far enough to hit the point where I would have really gotten to see that. It's a shame if that's the case.

It has been said by many that one of Destiny's major faults is it's lack of content. I was hoping that the DLC would sate this thirst I had for more things to do in the game. Unfortunately by the time that the DLC came out my interest in all things Destiny had waned. Running around the Moon shooting Fallen in the head while hunting for helium had lost whatever luster it had once possessed. That combined what I had read about the increase of the level cap and the trivialization of whatever level I had traversed with the level cap boost made that "to what end?" feeling that much more pronounced. Again with all that said I did enjoy the time I did spend with it, it just would have been a bit nicer with something approaching a story and more than perhaps three things to do and three places to do them.

7. Forza Horizon 2

I am a gear head. There I said it. I love a good race day, or at least the ritual leading up to said day. My time with Horizon 2 has been limited. There have been enough bigger releases that happened around this one that I don't think I spent enough time with it. I do however think I will enjoy it much more than I will enjoy Forza (proper) 6.

I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of the off-road sections of the game. I kind of wish they would let me set up a rally suspension for those sections like there were seperate rally suspensions in the previous Forza Horizon. Rally is perhaps my favorite form of racing I went with a few of my friends to Pike's Peak for the annual Race to the Clouds in 1999 following my senior year of high school. For rally to be represented so poorly within a game with that much offroading seems to be a shame. If you're going to have large offroad sections at least let me put some brush bars on my car.

6. Nidhogg

Small local competitive games seem to be a genre that is emerging in the "indie scene" they have apparently followed the "Rouge-like-like-like-like" fad and preceded the emerging Arena Shooter fad. In any case a lot of these games look extremely fun, Samurai Gunn, Towerfall, Crawl, Gangbeasts, and more. I'm not going to refer to them by the suggested Min E-Sport or the incorrectly applied genre of couch co-op. I'm just never in a situation with like minded people where I'm able to play them.

With that out of the way; of all the ones that came out this year, and I've been able to give a shot I believe Nidhogg is the best. This one had me with it's announce trailer. I thought to myself this looks like a simple yet semi-competent fencing game. Awesome! Then I saw the bit where they were running through the wheat field fencing! It's like the final fight scene at the end of film adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo!!!

After that I was sold. Turns out when I play I don't do so much fencing since sticking a sword though your enemy is not how you win. Reaching the opposite side of the map is how you win, swords just slow you down. So for me it ends up being a game where I huck my sword at my opponent then try to jump over them a bunch. The pace is delightfully frantic.

5. Fibbage

The You Don't Know Jack guys made another great party game. It's not a real surprise, they're good at that. That the new game is hosted by Cookie Masterson is great, it would be awesome if he were to host a real game show. I'm happy though that he is hosting ones for my friends and family though.

This is a game about lying. There is a question posed and all players are given the chance to create an answer, points are awarded when other players guess your answer or if you guess the correct answer. The questions are often hilarious and and give set ups for easily funnier answers. It was a huge hit with my family the last time we got together.

One of the biggest innovations in this game is that you don't need controllers to play it. It is controlled by going to fibbage.com on any device, mobile phone, tablet, or computer. This makes it possible for up to 8 people to play without needing 8 controllers. It also makes this kind of game possible since everyone is able to surreptitiously enter their answers.

The selection of questions in Fibbage may be a little on the small side, since the release of Fibbage Jackbox Games (formerly Jellyvision) has realeased the Jackbox Party Pack which includes among it's five games Fibbage XL which is a version of the game with more questions, a new You Don't Know Jack, a game that is sort of a cross between Fibbage and Pictionary called Drawful and a couple others that do not look as stellar. The Jackbox Party Pack seems to be the best value so that is what I'm linking to in the header.

4. Witcher 2

I know what you're thinking, "Surely, Piltdown Man, you are trying to purport a hoax as great as your namesake but doing it poorly. Perhaps that or you are some sort of precocious trickster." To this I would reply, "Dear reader you are perhaps correct in that I do occasionally attempt to be precocious, I am in no way disingenuous in my naming this game on my list for this year." I realize that this game came out in 2011. I did play it a bit that year but didn't get much past the initial encounter with the dragon. I did end up reading the Witcher short stories during the time in-between this coming out and my complete play-through of the game. I started my full play-through of the game late December of 2013 and finished in January of 2014. Because I finished it this year and it is one of the few games that I did finish this year it ends up on the on the list. Honestly this game is not winning top slot mainly because it didn't come out this year and I feel guilty for putting it on the list. The world of the Witcher is extremely rich mostly by way of it being a work of literature before it was ever a game. The choices you make in the game are not black and white Paragon/Renegade choices that are often given in games, there is often no right choice, just choices you have to make, be they good, bad or more likely in-between. There is an end fight or as I played it not. 

I'm super excited about Witcher 3 however aspects of it do scare me. I do like that Witcher 2 funneled you down a specific path. There were enough side quests to keep things quite interesting within the finite areas that were presented, and even those finite areas seemed quite large. Turning it into an open game with my semi-obsessive compulsive nature may lead me to never finishing it. This is what happens to me in most Elder Scrolls games. I start heading off in one direction on one quest then something shiny off in the distance then I head off in another direction towards another quest. This continues until my quest log looks like a task list until I'm at a point where apprehension, consternation, and feelings that I may be missing something set in. I don't want to leave Witcher quests that have dark consequences with no clear answer unfinished. Time will tell how this will turn out. [Mid-wrighting edit: I hope I get this thing finished before Witcher 3 comes out

3. Jazzpunk

Pop your Missionoyl and get ready for a strange, strange trip. Agent Polyblank your mission should you choose to accept it is to delve into a game of cold war intrigue, bathroom sign NPCs, and absurdist humor. This game... this game... it so much appeals to my sense of humor. Plain weird does not describe it well. It is... I'm not sure if the game's trailer helps or not.

It's kind of like Airplane mixed with a cold-war spy film taken with a healthy dose of your hallucinogen of choice? I think that comes close to describing it best other than saying it's awesome, and funny, and awesome.

1. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Oh lordy this game was so close to number one it may as well be a dead heat. Wait what I'm hearing a judgment from the stands it's in it's a tie! They're both my game of the year even though neither of them grabbed me enough to do what a good game should do: Grab me enough to keep me playing through the end.

You can read some of my first impressions of the game here. I do really like the game but I got kind of hung up on the first transition part where you have to take out the War chiefs. The whole having to do the tasks to bring them out I'm not a huge fan of. The game did bring in some of the more interesting parts of the Tolkien Legendarium which got me to thinking what a Silmarillion movie or video game series could be. I'm waiting for the Fingolfin movie or game. None of this Sauron stuff I want to see some people fighting the real big bad Melkor/Morgoth. In any case even if the story in this game skews far away from the core canon of the legendarium I like that it attempts to dig deeper than the pop-culture of the movies. Plus whenever I see a bunch of Orcs traversing Mordor it makes me think of this.

I don't know how old I was when I first saw the Rankins/Bass version of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, but that may have been one of those moments in those formative moments that clenched my perhaps not inevitable geekdom (I doubt it but maybe). I tried watching the Bakshi movie to fill in the interceding events at that young age but dissapointed by that film I read the books and that combined with the MERP Treasures of Middle Earth (at this time the Google search first link is a PDF of the actual sourcebook, but I feel a little odd about linking directly to copyrighted material). Anyway I don't think the Bakshi film is good, but the Rankins/Bass versions are great. Nostalgia and what not Middle Earth has some great gameplay systems that are while not completely new come together in an innovative way that exemplifies the emergent gameplay that is so popular nowadays.

1. Dragon Age: Inquisition

Like most games on this list I have not yet finished Dragon Age: Inquisition. I will though it will probably just take me a while, quite a while. It seems like a rather long game, but I'm not complaining. If the internet is to be believed I am the only person who liked Dragon Age 2. I'm not sure I get the same thing out of these games as everyone else. I guess why I come to Bioware games is really the dialog wheel and the story. I think the first couple Mass Effect games were really growing in this aspect. That is until they had that Heavy Metal cover as the last boss of the second game.

Dragon Age: Inquisition does invest itself quite a bit in its world. It seems well fleshed out even though their reasoning for putting me in charge of everything seems a bit thin ("You're the only magical person who shut these gateways, we'll put you in charge of everything not just the gateway shutting division"). It seems great as far as I've gotten into it and it has all the things that I want in it's kind of game. Just maybe too much, it's taken me a while longer than I would have like to write this article but at the time I started it this was the game I wanted in this spot. I just currently have no desire to go back to it. For me they made it too big. For me I want some branching paths but like I said when I was describing my trepidation about Witcher 3 it's a bit too open with too many sidequests for someone like me who feels like I need to do everything.

All in all it is a great game and possibly one of the best showings of the games that came out in 2014.

Sadly it has taken me three months into 2015 to finalize my 2014 game of the year list. This honestly shouldn't be acceptable but this is free content and it is really just how I feel about things so the stakes quite honestly are quite small. I don't really know anyone who cares about my opinion on these things I'm just offering them here to the ether (or internet if you want to be more scientific and less poetic). I got a late start on this list since I started it in December and things keep happening between now and then, I'm guessing that the real professionals start these kind of synopsis/lists at the beginning of the year and cull/prune them year long so that is what I'm going to start doing for this year. Expect a much more prompt 2015 GOTY list from me. It might even come out in Februrary!