Monthly Archives: October 2018

Blog: YeeHalloween – 10/31/18

A big howdy to all of my buckaroos out there, it’s the spookiest time of the year and somehow cowboys are involved. But you knew that already, hell, the entire world knows it judging by the over 700 million dollars Red Dead Redemption 2 made in its opening weekend. While I agree with the vast majority of critics that the game is exceedingly well made, it feels weird heaping this amount of praise on it in lieu of the information around Rockstar Game’s labor practices.

I feel that it should be mentioned to remind players of what was given to make Red Dead Redemption 2 such a colossal game. While I wholeheartedly believe that people in the games industry need protections from abusive work environments, you can see the fruit of that labor in every inch of the game itself.

That’s why it’s so weird to talk about Read Dead Redemption 2 and highlight the incredible amount of detail that’s on display in it. We know what it took to get a game that big and diverse to exist. I guess if I wanted to put a neat little bow on this train of thought, I’d simply say this: I really like Red Dead Redemption 2 thus far, and I’m extremely grateful for the amount of work that went into it.

So with all that being said, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a phenomenal game that very occasionally drives me insane. There is so much to highlight that I won’t even try to cover it here, but the thing I’d most like to emphasize is the world Rockstar has created. Every nook and cranny of the map seems meticulously planned and constructed in a way to either set you up for an interesting encounter, or let you fill in the blanks and construct a narrative about what has happened.

An example of the latter would be the time I came across a run down shack in the woods. Inside were several bunks of beds lining the walls each with a long decomposed corpse lying in it. At the far end of the room was an ornate desk with empty potion bottles strewn about. There was another corpse sitting in a chair wearing what looked like some sort of religious garb. To me, it looked like I’d entered the final resting place of a cult that had “ascended” and passed on. I don’t know for sure that was the case, but in my mind this was the home of cowboy Heaven’s Gate.

It’s little details like this that fill the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 that make me so eager to spend more time with it. Everything else seems to take a backseat to just inhabiting this space for me. The world itself doesn’t seem to exist in service of my character, but rather it exists despite him. And that’s the aspect of Red Dead that I love so much, this feeling of not being the center of attention and that inserting yourself into every situation is a good way to get gunned down.

It took me some time to adjust to the overall pace that Red Dead Redemption 2 operates at, but I’m glad I did because this game is something truly special. Special in the way that the house that gives out full sized candy bars on Halloween is special. And that’s the Halloween tie in. We did it.

Blog: Off-Week – 10/24/18

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So here’s the thing, I didn’t really prepare much of anything to write about this week and I don’t quite feel like phoning it in more than I already am. But there is a reason for all of this, something I’m sure I’ve spoken about before. I just haven’t really played anything of note since last week.

Well, that isn’t entirely true. I did play some Call of Duty Black Ops IIII which was a lot of fun for the few hours I spent with it, but it didn’t leave me wanting to return to it in a meaningful way. Like, it’s fun in the way that Call of Duty always has been, but it didn’t manage to grab me the way the older games did. I know exactly why that is too.

The simple answer is that I don’t have the time or the desire to really get into Black Ops IIII. It’s a really fun experience that I wouldn’t mind dipping into from time to time, but the military shooter genre itself isn’t really doing it for me the way it did ten years ago. I have plenty of good memories of playing these types of games from the past, but these days I find myself wanting a more insular and solitary experience.

It’s why games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate and Fallout 76 are doing absolutely nothing for me. It’s because I just want to play a game by myself, and experience it at my own pace. I almost made the mistake of buying the latest Jackbox Party Pack because I wanted to play the game where you make robots rap battle, but then I remembered that I’d never get the chance to actually play it.

More to the point though, I think the real reason I haven’t played anything this week is because of what is arguably the biggest release of the year being so close to being out. With Red Dead Redemption 2 mere days away, I’ve found it hard to want to play anything but that. It’s one of the first times in a long while that I’ve felt this “hype” for a game that’s demolished my will to touch anything else. I’m sure by next week I’ll post something about Red Dead Redemption 2 and title it in a ridiculous fashion. Something like, “Yeehalloween” or some shit.

Blog: The Bloated Assassin – 10/17/18

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For many years, I’ve heard people clamoring for the Assassin’s Creed franchise to take a break and find its footing once more. In 2016, Ubisoft decided it was finally time to pump the brakes and try to reinvigorate the tried and true formula they’d used for so long. The result was the critically acclaimed Assassin’s Creed Origins. Fast forward, and we’re face to face with the second game built on this new foundation, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

In another place, at another time, I could see myself getting really into Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and its massive world and wide variety of systems. There is seriously a ridiculous amount of things to do in this game, from taking down outposts, to hunting mercenaries in a stripped-down Shadow of Mordor fashion, to recruiting people to sail with you on your ship and sending them on missions. Those three things alone are concepts you could build full games off of, but in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, they’re optional missions.

That isn’t entirely true though. See, while these side activities didn’t seem particularly mandatory for me to engage with, it became apparent that I will have to spend time with them if I want to progress through the game. I recently got to a point where I was informed that the man I was to assassinate in the story, was about a level 12. This was an issue, cause I was a lowly level 9 assassin, incapable of stabbing through a loaf of bread, let alone a man. Then I realized what made Assassin’s Creed Odyssey such a lengthy experience. Aside from being genuinely huge, it also requires a certain amount of grinding to be able to progress, which for me is a bummer.

Just look at the estimated completion times in this thing!

On top of all of that bloat, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is just a little rough around the edges in general. There’s this weirdness with the combat in that it feels a little loose and unwieldy at times, from animations not lining up right, or the camera moving around in less than helpful ways when you’re trying to parry attacks. There was a moment where I was trying to hand in a quest, but the person who I was to talk to was fighting a wolf. Upon defeating the beast, he turned his aggression towards me and just attacked. So I retaliated in the only way I knew how, and kicked him off the side of a mountain. It was funny, but I could have used the experience instead.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a dense game that’s going to take a long time for you to get through. Even though it’s bloated and slowly paced, and even though it’s clunky at times, I’m still having fun with it. There are times when you’re stalking your prey through a compound, and everything just works and flows in a way that makes you feel like a competent assassin.

Blog: Run it Back Cowboy – 10/10/18

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With the sequel on the horizon, I figured it was now or never for me to revisit Red Dead Redemption and bask once more, in its glory. Hypothetically, this all should’ve gone off without any issues, but of course that wouldn’t be the case. Somehow, I had misplaced the power-brick for my Xbox 360, which was kind of a problem because I was pretty sure consoles needed electricity to operate. Luckily my local GameStop had one for six dollars, and it was smooth sailing from there.

Except for the fact that Red Dead Redemption didn’t age as gracefully as you might think. It’s still a phenomenal game, but the rough edges are a little more apparent, 8 years later. The thing that jumped out at me immediately was the consistent frame-rate dips. Like I mentioned, I’m playing this on my original Xbox 360 Elite, and the there have been plenty of instances where the entire game gets really sluggish. At most, it was an inconvenience

Something that definitely was a constant source of aggravation, was riding the horses. I don’t think any video game has really done horseback riding particularly well, and Red Dead Redemption is no exception. I’ve expressed in the past how a certain horse in The Witcher 3 is a hassle to ride, and I share most of the same frustrations with them as I do all of the horses in Red Dead. It’s just clunky and inelegant to ride these bad boys, and you have to do a lot of it.

But I did learn something new about Red Dead Redemption that I had never known before, which is that you can fast travel from just about anywhere and not just at stagecoaches. This was a fucking revelation for me. A random tutorial popped up and told me to use my campfire to travel somewhere, and it blew my goddamned mind. And you have unlimited campfires. That is insane and most definitely has made this impromptu play session much more tolerable.

There are a ton of little grievances I have with Red Dead Redemption, but as a package, it still stands as a monumental game. The story that it tells is (mostly) captivating and incredibly well told, and the characters are memorable and very well acted. The world itself is perfectly constructed to suit the setting and hammers home the feeling of isolation you’d imagine having when riding alone through the desert. While I’m happy I decided to revisit the game, it’s mostly just to distract me from the fact that we’re still a few weeks away from Red Dead Redemption 2.

Blog: Subscription Hell – 10/03/18

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Much like rearranging the furniture or throwing out a bunch of crap you’ve accumulated over the years, it felt nice to take stock of the subscriptions I had, and even better when I discarded the ones that I didn’t need anymore. But seeing how much money I was spending on services I barely used was a real eye opening experience.

For instance, I primarily play games on my PC, but up until about a month ago I was still paying for PlayStation Plus. I don’t think I’ve played any multiplayer games on my PS4 or even the “free” games you get, in a very long time. But every month, ten dollars would vanish from my bank account anyway.

Another one that I chopped off was my Humble Monthly subscription. In the past few months, the big flagship games that were promoted were all games that I already owned, and barely played as is. I’m also willing to bet that the October offerings are going to be of a significantly more spooky tone, and since I’m a wimp, I’m okay missing out on those too. Also, I already have too many games, I don’t need a service that’s going to just inundate me with more of them, as well as duplicates.

But it isn’t all bad, I still have various video streaming ones like Netflix and Hulu, but I use those way more often than anything I’ve listed thus far. I also have a portfolio site that I should probably cancel, because the amount of job offers I’ve received since making the damn thing has been zero. Oh, and let’s not forget the monthly blood money I pay to Adobe to use their suite of products.

This whole post kind of got away from me, but what I’m trying to impart upon you is that it feels good to take stock of your current situation. To step back and and really analyze where you are in this moment. It helped save me a couple of bucks and also gave me a little clarity, and I think we all could use a little more of both these days.