Monthly Archives: July 2018

Blog: A New Man’s Sky – 07/25/18

Two years ago No Man’s Sky was released after a lengthy and very prolific advertising campaign and was met with less than stellar reviews from a lot of users and reviewers, including myself. As I’m sure a lot of people did, I basically walked away from No Man’s Sky shortly after it launched and never looked back. That is until today when the “NEXT” update was released.

There isn’t much to say about my time with No Man’s Sky just yet, I’m too early to make a definitive decision about it either way. I was spawned in on a harsh and unforgiving planet that was full of fire, poison and space cops, all of which were things that made completing the tutorial unnecessarily hard. I just wanted to explore the world and figure things out at my own pace, but everywhere I turned was something trying to screw me over.

The whole issue was exacerbated by the still overly cumbersome menus and crafting system, but once I manged to wrap my head around where in the menus I need to look for things, the whole experience became a little more manageable. But that process took me two hours, there’s video evidence of me being nearly defeated and re-rolling a new character on a new and hopefully more forgiving world. It was harrowing to say the least.

I’m not far enough into No Man’s Sky NEXT to make a definitive statement about it either way, but so far I’m enjoying my time with it more than I did previously. I still really dig the vibe of that game, from its retro-futurist visual style to its ripping soundtrack, it has an aesthetic appeal for sure. Hell, even the new character customization options are pretty awesome, even if they’re not terribly diverse from the outset. I am eager to see all of the content that’s been added and changed since I last played the game two years ago, and I think that’s really the driving force for me at the moment.

This whole blog may feel like I’ve basically said nothing about No Man’s Sky NEXT, but it only feels that way because it’s true. I haven’t gotten far enough into it to formulate a new opinion about it. What I will say is that I’m starting fresh and giving No Man’s Sky an honest second chance.

Blog: Dungeons & Dragons – 7/18/18

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Someone once told me that Dungeons and Dragons is basically the bedrock which modern fantasy media is built upon. I don’t know how true that claim is, but I could see that. I’ve never been a huge fantasy enthusiast and even less of a tabletop gaming fan, but as of this past weekend I have a new appreciation for D&D that I never had before.

Once a year a bunch of my friends from various parts of the east coast converge back in our hometown to hang out for a few days. This time around we wanted to do more than just drink and play video games, so we asked a friend who was big into the scene to be our Dungeon Master for our very first foray into Dungeons and Dragons.

Our DM went ahead and made some character archetypes with abilities for us to choose from, and plopped us into what was described as a one-shot game. The plan was to streamline the experience to make it more conducive to a 4 or 5 hour session.

After the first half-hour of play, any skepticism I had about the experience going in was long gone. I was playing a hunter character that was just really good at shooting crossbows and was insanely perceptive. Alongside me was a shield-wielding fighter, and Paladin with the power of God infused in his sword. Outside of the canned motivations for embarking on a quest, our characters were just names and stats on a piece of paper that we were to flesh out on our own.

Everyone fell into their roles and slowly became their characters in no time whatsoever. Our Paladin quickly became a man devoid of levity, solely focused on this mission that his God had ordained. His brother (our fighter), was a jealous and greedy man with a chip on his shoulder for not being the “chosen” child. My hunter was man who wasn’t incredibly thrilled to be in this situation, but these were his friends and he was going to stand by them and be the comic relief. And literally showing up late to the game, as well as being played by two different people was our mage, who because of what I assumed was multiple personality disorder, was a wildcard. But more on him later.

Getting into my character was only half of the equation though, the real heavy lifting was on the part of our DM, who was spectacular. He ultimately hammered the fact home that we can do just about anything we want in this game. No matter what crazy bullshit we threw at him, he’d tell us to roll a die and craft a story around it. From my understanding, this is what a good DM does.

Saturday came to end without us reaching a conclusion in our game, but come Sunday we would have to finish it because people were going home later in the day. With that in mind we sat back down with a new player taking helm as our mage. Previously he had been someone who knew his way around some D&D and was basically safely leading us through the campaign. That was fun, but it felt like he knew all the right questions to ask, and spells to use. On this day however, we had someone who was just as fresh to D&D as we were.

Time passed as we fought floating skulls, tentacle panthers and no-faced nightmare beasts until we eventually we got to what was later revealed to be a loot room. With our emotions high, it was here that our final encounter went down. We had to wrap this game up, so our mage pulled our DM aside and concocted a plan. The entire time leading up to this sidebar, I suspected our mage of some nonsense thinking he’d turn on our group or rob us or something. So I made it very clear for most of our stay in this room that I had my bow drawn on him, ready to inflict retribution for any attempts at fuckery.

The sidebar ended and everyone returned to their seats. The mage turned on us and tried to trap us in the room so he could escape. Him and our DM had planned for the mage to blind us with smoke and make off with some magical maguffin that would trap us forever and destroy the dungeon. But as I had established earlier, I had that fucker in my sights this entire time. Before his smoke could go off I was able to fire a massive crossbow bolt that landed square in his chest. He eventually was able to teleport out of the room, but we gave chase and met up with him as he was making his way to an exit. Within feet of being able to escape, I fired one last shot from my trusty crossbow at him.

With luck on my side, I rolled really well and put that bolt right through his back pinning him to a wall. The Paladin then strolled over to this monument to failure and hit him so hard he turned into a cloud of dust. We killed our former friend and had a moment of triumph before we realized it had gotten late. I’m a bit hazy on the exact details, but I’m pretty sure the dungeon collapsed and we all died anyway.

And this was a game that took place over the course of 6 or 7 hours at most. We didn’t really get to create our characters or flesh out our backstories. There was so much we didn’t do that might seem like we missed out on something from an outside perspective, but for us, this was the perfect introduction to Dungeons and Dragons. I applaud the game, my fellow players and especially our DM for making the experience really memorable. The biggest problem is that we enjoyed ourselves so much that we’re chomping at the bit for the opportunity to play again, but we wont be able to do that until this time next year.

Blog: Unhealthy Relationships – 07/11/18

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Every time that I end up playing Overwatch, I’m reminded how mechanically sound and charming that damn game is. On its surface, it’s a pleasant game to play and look at. It’s so weird that every time that I finish a session of playing it, I end up feeling angry or dejected. I can probably attribute it to the constant ass-beatings I end up getting from game to game.

Despite all that, I still have over a hundred hours in the damn thing. It’s this abusive relationship that keeps pulling me back in by waving a rolling gun-hamster in front of me only to kick me in the dick for being interested in it again. But it isn’t just me, I have friends who have spent way more time in Overwatch than I have, and have these violent encounters with it. The craziest part is that we all genuinely love this game despite how toxic it can be to us.

And it isn’t just Overwatch either. Dota 2, League of Legends, Fortnite, PUBG, Hearthstone, and so many more, all have their hooks so deep in people. Presumably said hooks are so deep in order to pull you closer and beat the shit out of you.

But playing a game that has the ability to illicit a huge range of emotions is a good thing, right? No matter how angry and pissed off that I get at Overwatch, it’s an experience so memorable I end up writing about it. It’s like seeing a sports team you like blow it in the playoffs. You hate them for losing, but you don’t stop watching them altogether because of it.

I love Overwatch, but I also fucking hate Overwatch. I’m sure there’s some real science that could explain this sensation, but for the time being I’ll call it “The Overwatch Effect.”

Coming Clean: I Will Never Play These Games

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I’ve been living a lie for a very long time now. I’ve deluded myself and maintained these misguided beliefs for years, and it’s high time I came clean and admitted the truth to myself. There are games that I own and have installed, that I will never play. For months and in some cases years, I’ve had these games ready to go at a moment’s notice. Now it’s time to let go, uninstall them and let them live on eternally as painful memories of money I once had.

So here’s some of the games I’m breaking up with.

Destiny 2

I recall playing in one of the beta phases of Destiny 2 and never playing it again. Having a less than stellar time with its predecessor, the beta made it abundantly clear that Destiny 2 was not going to be the game for me. Eventually it ended being one of the flagship games in a Humble Monthly offering and I installed it as soon as possible. Nobody I knew had Destiny 2 or had any inclination of acquiring it. Hell, I didn’t even want to actually play it, but somehow it sat on my hard drive for months. Now it’s time I let it go and move on.

Besiege

It feels like in order to properly enjoy Besiege I’d have to be an engineer, and that feeling was only reinforced when I’d look at some of the community creations on the Steam Workshop. People were making functioning tanks, fire-breathing dragons, and actual Transformers while I was having trouble making a cart with wheel that could turn. Downloading and playing with these creations is fun and all, but it’s nowhere near as engaging or satisfying as I imagine building them are. So it’s time I was honest with myself and admit that I will never learn to be good at Besiege.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

This is another Humble Monthly burden that’s been haunting my hard drive for a while. I don’t know what line of reasoning I used to convince myself that I’d actually play this game, but it must’ve been good. I historically do not play strategy games, especially hex-based ones, yet somehow Civilization VI has lingered on my computer for months. I feel kind of bad for never having even attempted to get into it, but I need to face the facts and just cut this one loose.

It’s here that I’m noticing that maybe the Humble Monthly subscription is to blame for most of my lingering, delusional installs. But that would be passing the blame, and that’s exactly what an addict would do.

Blackwake

Last month Blackwake was one of the three early unlocks for the July Humble Monthly subscription. In the wake of Sea of Thieves being a huge letdown for my friends and I, Blackwake was a game that we briefly looked at to get our pirating fix from. Being the only subscriber to the service in my friend group, you can probably go ahead and fill in the blanks as to why this one never got, and never will get played. At best, I have a passing interest in pirate-themed games, and one that relies on having multiple friends to play with is pretty much a nonstarter. So I’m cutting this one off before it gets anymore time in my library. Blackwake, I hardly knew you.

Undertale

This is more of a symbolic gesture considering that Undertale basically takes up no space on my computer. It isn’t that I had no interest in playing it, but having not played it when it first launched felt like I missed out entirely on the experience. If you were following anything gaming related on the internet, It was kind of impossible to not learn about the cool things that Undertale was doing. Everyone was talking about this game and how amazing it was, which is why I just felt like I needed to play it myself, but at this point I just don’t care anymore.

It feels good to finally free up some disk space on my hard drive, but it doesn’t change the fact that I could write a version of this article 300 hundred more times thanks to how much money I’ve wasted over the years on games I’ll never play.