Books & Writing Archives

A Bit of Nostalgia From the Early Days of MMOs

Posted on July 18, 2024 by Nimgimli

I bought a new PC this week, so I’m cleaning out the hard drive of my old system, figuring out what I want to archive, what needs to be moved to the new machine, and what can just be deleted. I found a file called sig.txt and assumed it was going to be a signature file for email or something.

But nope, it was a character introduction I’d written in the way back times. The timestamp on the file says 2014 but since it appears to be an intro for my Dark Age of Camelot character I’m guessing it was written somewhere around the launch window of that game, which was 2001.

It isn’t good by any stretch, but dang I had kind of forgotten that I used to goof around trying to write fiction, if you can call a character into fiction.

Anyway before I lose it to a hard drive failure or something, I figured I’d archive it to the blog. So here it is, completely un-edited. I don’t even know what it was for… some role playing guild intro post or something, probably.

Sadly, I no longer seem to have any of my old screenshots from those days and it feels cruddy to ‘borrow’ one so… just imagine low res polygonal vikings and you’ll have the right mental image!

——————————

Was it an innate sense of duty that lead me to take up sword in defense of our realm? Sadly I say nay. T’was fish guts that made me do it.

How so? Ma and da were hard working fisherfolk and mind, fishing be honorable work. When’s the last time ye fought a battle with an empty belly? A hard task, no? We all need to eat.

But me, I just couldn’t warm to that life. I tried but oh, how I hated
it. I’d run off to watch the guards in town as they strode about . Soon enough they got to know me, and they’d show me a trick or two, me with a stick that served as me sword then. I’d come home and my da would holler at me “Where ya been Sig? There be a catch needs attending to.” And I’d cry out “Da, I don’t want ta clean fish, I want ta slay a dragon!”

As I grew taller, I spent more and more time hanging about the guards, and even grow brave enough to approach the Dreng who came and went. One day, a soldier gave me a cast-off sword. It was a weapon worthy of slaughtering chickens, perhaps, but it were mine! And I learnt quick from them guards how ta wield it. And I liked the feel of the sword in me palm. Oh yes, very much.

Da says, “Sig, there’s nets to be mended, put down that pig sticker and get up yer needle and twine.” Uppity lad, I says “Da, I got no time for mending. Somewhere there be a dragon needs slayin! I need ta go and find it!”

Finally, on the day I first realized that the itching on me chin were due to the fact I was startin ta grow whiskers, my da took me aside and he says, “Sigrund, I like the life of a fisherman. But that don’t mean you need to like it as well. I’ve seen you hanging about with the Dreng and those are the times ye look happiest. When you be gutting fish, tis like your heart has gone missing. Go and chase your dragons, son. Go and make your ma and me proud.”

And so I went. I trained with the town guard a bit but fact is, Vasudheim was feeling mighty small, especially when I’d overhear some freemen coming in from Auditlen or Hagerfel, or even as far off as Huginfel. I heard rumors of a place called Askheim overtaken by evil beings. Inside, a spark had taken hold, and the Dreng and the stories fed it, and I knew it were time for me to go out in the world and make my way. Talk of battles with elves and Arthur’s clan riled my blood, while right there at home in Vasudheim purses started to go missing and doors started being bolted at night.

At times it seemed all of Midgard was being torn assunder and needed mending.

So now, my sword be my needle, and honor be my twine, and I’m doing my best to mend our beloved realm. Valhalla awaits at the end of this road, I know. But that’s not for a while. There be much work to do first. I am proud to be a Warrior of Midgard.

May 2024

Posted on May 31, 2024 by Nimgimli

Well this will for-sure be the shortest recap post I’ve ever had. Why? Because I almost literally played 1 game for the entire month. Aside from popping in to a few others for 5-10 minutes here and there to get a daily achievement or something, it was a monogamous month.

Playing

Fallout 76 — Like so many others, I really enjoyed the Fallout TV show and caught Fallout Fever from it. I decided to give Fallout 76 another chance and boy howdy did it ever stick. I created a new character, one that is now level 125 or thereabouts. I completed the Season Pass. I’m nearly done with the main story quest lines in spite of trying to savor them over time. I’ve learned about builds and gear and mutations and the world and the more I learn, the more fun I have. It really deserves its own post or series of posts, so I’ll leave off for now. But yeah, the only game I played for any length of time this month was Fallout 76.

Fallout 76 character paying respects to a child's grave — Fallout 76 can be both silly as heck, as shown in the picture at the top of this post, and very sad, as when you find this grave of a child behind an NPC’s camp.

Watching

Renegade Nell (Disney+) was pretty enjoyable. Not a must-watch but it was OK. It was a lot darker than I expected it to be. Basically it’s about a highwaywoman who has on again, off again superpowers due to a sprite or pixie or something. Swords and flintlocks and girl power. What’s not to like?

The Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix) was quite good. It is based on, I believe, a Neil Gaimon graphic novel series and (guessing even harder) I think it takes place in the Sandman universe. A couple of British ghosts wind up in Washington State (?) helping other ghosts move on while fighting a witch and dodging the afterlife bureaucracy that is hunting them to send them back to where THEY belong. They are accompanied by a few living friends who can see them. I LOVED Brianna Cuoco (sister of Kaley, of Big Bang Theory fame) as the resident adult and goth butcher shop owner who rents them all rooms.

Star Trek Discovery (Paramount+) continues to underwhelm me. In fact we kind of drifted away and need to make a point to go back and finish it as some point.

Reading

The summer heat is back and that means less time lounging outside reading. I’m in the midst of Baptism of Fire, the next Witcher novel, but haven’t finished it yet.

And that’s it! Short May recap but I am doing a TON of gaming, it’s just all been in Fallout 76!

April 2024

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Nimgimli

Farwell, April! Hello, summer hellscape!

I almost didn’t do a recap this month. I’m just not feeling it; it’s a little crazy that writing 1 post/month is starting to feel like a chore, but that’s my brain for you. Back in the day I used to write a post a day for IT World and still had words left over to write here! Getting old…I tell you, I don’t recommend it. Though as the old saying goes, it is better than the alternative.

Playing

Diablo IV — I went into D4 with a weird mix of low expectations due to everyone I know having not stuck with the game for very long, while on the other hand having personally been waiting so long to play it. (Knowing that Microsoft was trying to buy Activision inspired my inner cheapskate to hold out for it to hit Game Pass.) When it arrived, I found I liked it in small doses. Weird thing about subscription services is, for me at least, it kind of colors my reaction to things. If I’d spent $60 or $70 on Diablo IV I might’ve been a bit sour on it too. But getting it for “free” (obviously not truly free since I pay for Game Pass) makes me feel pretty forgiving.

Horizon Forbidden West — I’ve pretty much drifted away without finishing. I do want to go back at some point. Poor Alloy.

Dungeon Encounters — This is a pure dungeon crawler with turn-based combat that is on the PS5. I’ve been playing it on the Playstation Portal before bed as it’s an ideal handheld game. It feels kind of mindless; fun for 15-20 minutes before I turn the light out but back when I first played it on the big screen it couldn’t really hold my attention for too long. On the Portal it’s ideal.

Immortals of Avernum — This hit the PS Plus Extra and it was a game I’d always wanted to check out. I was really enjoying it, and feeling a little guilty about not buying it, given that the developer has all but gone out of business based on the lack of sales. This is another one I want to get back to, though. It’s kind of a magic-shooter, almost.

Fallout 76 — And this was the Great Disruptor this month. Like so many others, I enjoyed the Fallout TV series quite a bit. And like so many others, it put me in the mood to play a Fallout game, and this is the one I chose. I’ve picked up Fallout 76 a few times in the past, on a few different platforms, but never got very far. I think my highest level character was 22 or so. This time I started fresh (of course) and this time it stuck. As of the end of the month my new character is level 35, and I’m around level 40 on the Season Scoreboard, earning tickets to buy things to make my camps (I have 2) shinier. I bought the Fallout 1st subscription because it was 50% off, so only $6 & change, and I’ve been bouncing between a Private server and Public servers. I generally go Private to do my daily Season Scoreboard quests so I’m not competing for resources, and Public for everything else. I’m really enjoying it this time around and I think it all has to do with sticking with it long enough to get a decent weapon. I found a “Handmade” at about level 20 and suddenly I felt powerful, at least for a while. (The game scales everything to your level.) Anyway, I have half a mind to write a whole post about it, though I know Fallout 76 is a game that brings out the worst in a lot of people who DON’T play it, so not sure I will. But I’m having fun. It just pulled me away from all the other games I’d wanted to play!

Watching

Fallout (Amazon Prime) — We loved this and we’re excited season 2 was greenlit. I found it interesting that @partpurple enjoyed it as much as I did even though she isn’t really familiar with the games.

Sweet Tooth (Netflix) — With the 3rd and final season coming in June, we decided to re-watch Season 1, and watch Season 2. Season 1 is kind of an origin store and road-trip show. Season 2 was more about how the world came to be and classic good vs evil stuff. It looks like season 3 might go back to road-tripping. If you’re unaware of the show, it’s a post-apocalypse world where most of humanity has been wiped out by a plague, while at the same time half-human/half-animal hybrids are being born. The titular Sweet Tooth is a half-deer boy around 10 or 12, and he’s being hunted by bad guys!

Star Trek Discovery (Paramount+) — We’re a little late starting this last season. I feel compelled to watch it as a lifelong Star Trek fan but I can’t honestly say I enjoy it very much. Kind of glad this is the last season. I have to say of all the Star Trek series, this is my least favorite.

Reading

Finished Blood of Elves & Time of Contempt, the Witcher series books three & four. Lola is slowing down and our walks are as much laying in the grass as they are walks, which means I’ve been getting a lot more reading time. What surprises me most about these books is that they’re really about Ciri and not Geralt. Who knew?

And that’s April in a nutshell!

December 2023

Posted on December 30, 2023 by Nimgimli

Hmm, I just realized that I maybe should be doing an “end of the year” recap but geez that sounds like a lot of work. I did do that ‘year in review‘ post which is more or less the same thing, at least for my gaming, so I’ll just leave it at that and do a regular old monthly recap. Outside of gaming nothing of consequence happened in my life this year, which at my age is a good thing because most consequential changes are bad ones!

Oh, I guess it might be worth noting that I started exercising in VR back in April and though I’ve had some ups and downs I’ve basically stuck with it. Lost some weight but more importantly just feel strongers and more limber. Those old-person groans when getting up off a chair are now a thing of the past. So that’s one good change from this year.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all who happen upon this post! Now on to the December recap!

Playing

I came in hot this month, finishing both Persona 4 (loved it) and Final Fantasy XVI (hated it) in a single weekend. The plan was to then jump back into The Witcher 3 and Starfield but… I didn’t. I just wasn’t ready to hop back into more 100+ hour games. Well, maybe they’re that long. I haven’t finished either so I don’t really know. So I started game grazing…

First, I jumped into playing Weird West on the PS5 because it was a game I was interested in that HAD been on XBox Game Pass but left that service, and then subsequently was added to Playstation Plus Extra. I figured before it left there, too, I should play it. I really WANT to like this game but I just don’t. I lasted about 8 hours before uninstalling it.

My biggest issue is the difficulty variability. The set up is that you’re a bounty hunter in a version of the old west that is just rotten with supernatural baddies. You have a quest line, side quests, semi-random bounties to pursue, random treasures to find. All of which sounds good. But when you accept one of these activities there’s no way to determine how difficult it is going to be, and many of them have time limits. Frequently I’d take on a side quest only to find I was completely unprepared to finish it, leaving me with the choice to either fail it (when time ran out) or reload an earlier save. If the designer had just given some kind of difficulty rating to activities it would’ve helped an awful lot.

The other issue is on me: the game relies heavily on stealth and as much as I tell myself I enjoy stealth games, in practice I never have the patience for them. I sneaky-sneak into a camp and stealthily take out one, two, three baddies, then I slip up, alert that camp and get gunned down. Reload and try again. Fail. Reload and try again. Ugh. You’re supposed to be able to Quick Save, and sometimes you can which makes things tolerable, but a few hours in both the Save and Quick Save stopped working unless I was in a safe area. I am not sure if that was a bug or a feature, to be honest, but it was super frustrating.

Anyway I gave it 8 hours at which point I decided I have SO many games I really want to play, and I didn’t purchase this one so… I decided to drop it. If there’s a Weird West 2 I’d definitely still give it a try because I loved the setting and the world; I just didn’t have the patience for all the trial and error it required.

I went back to having a blast in Snowrunner (itself now a 100+ hours and counting game for me) but also kind of exploded all over the place onto PC gaming.

Y’see, I’d been having issues with my dual monitors where my PC would stop recognizing one of them and it would take me all kinds of hoop jumping like uninstalling/reinstalling video drivers to get them both back. I finally got fed up and used this as an excuse to get an ultra wide screen while Black Friday deals were still running. I got the Dell S3422DWG, which I cost me about $350 (regularly $500). It isn’t a super fancy model but it was a big upgrade from 24″ 1920 x 1080 to 34″ 3440 x 1440.

Of course I then discovered that one 34″ monitor does NOT have the same real estate as two 24″ monitors (of course) so I STILL have two monitors, with the better of the older 24″ units sitting in a very tall portrait mode off to one side, but happily the old issue hasn’t returned. {knock on wood}

Anyway I’m digressing all over the place. The end result of all of this is oh my goodness this monitor is a beauty and it makes me want to play PC games! Now my problem is… which PC game to play? I had a run at Astroneer, a game I’d once played a good bit of on the Xbox until I got frustrated with the wonky controls while playing with a gamepad. I had it in my Steam library so fired it up and played it for a few days but even with mouse & keyboard the controls still felt wonky to me, and it was just a little too sandboxy. I’m not sure what my goal even is. So it was fun for a couple evenings but I moved on.

Christmas always triggers an interest in trains for me, as when I was a kid model trains and Christmas trees just went hand-in-hand. So I was delighted when I saw that Krikket was giving away a Steam key for Train Valley 2. This is basically a puzzle game with a transport theme. You have a small-ish map with a several hubs and you have to connect them with tracks and then trigger trains to run from one to the other. Each hub either produces a resource, or converts one (or more) resources into something else, or requires one or several finished products. So for example you connect a log-generating resource to a lumber mill to get boards.

It’s a fairly charming little game that can be played pretty casually (at least the early levels). For more challenge, each map offers a variety of goals, some of which get tricky. My only gripe is I found actually laying the track (which is basically the crux of the game) was kind of finicky, particularly when it came to intersecting two sections of track. Too often just as I released the ‘draw a track’ button things would snap into the wrong spot and I’d have to spend $$ to destroy and rebuild it. In the Steam reviews there are lots of calls for an “Undo” button which I think would improve the game a good bit. Still, it is a fun diversion.

I guess Krikket is my gaming mentor this month because another game I’ve been playing, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is inspired by her posts. Once again I’m not yet very far into it and honestly I haven’t committed myself to finishing it, but what I’ve played so far is quite entertaining. Krikket’s post will give you a fuller understanding of what the game entails, but basically it’s about cutting up and re-cycling space ships (reminds me of the start of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order), and trying to make a profit while doing so. It’s been a while since I played a game that has you maneuvering around in 3D space, which is definitely fun when it isn’t frustrating. Bonus points for this one as it is on Game Pass, both PC and Xbox, and is cross-play so I can work on the same campaign on both PC and Xbox, depending on my mood.

And this isn’t all! I dabbled in a few other PC games, and started a few more console games, but this recap is becoming boring to write so it MUST be getting boring to read. If I stick with any of these games (many of which I started just in the past couple days) I’ll include them in the January recap. But the header image gives a clue as to one of them!

Watching

Lots of hold-overs from last month. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and For All Mankind are still running (or if they’re not, we haven’t caught up to their ends yet) and we’re still enjoying both.

New this month is Lessons in Chemistry, a show very different from our normal viewing. It’s about a brilliant chemist (Brie Larson) who, mostly due to the patriarchal snobbery of her time (it takes place in the 50s) leaves her lab coat behind and becomes the star of a cooking show. It’s really good, and it feels like a ‘one season and done’ show that tells a complete story (it’s based on a novel). Very sweet story.

As for my ‘me time’ viewing, I’m still grinding through Attack on Titan but I’ve been watching a LOT of year end and Steam sale gaming recaps, primarily concerning strategy games that I’ll probably never play but think I would enjoy playing if I’d just devote the time to them. It’s always that lack of time that trips me up… maybe if I didn’t watch hour long ‘year in gaming’ YouTube recaps I’d have more time to spend playing, eh? I don’t know what it is about these videos I find so compelling but they are something I look forward to at the end of the year.

Reading

A Christmas Carol because I read it every year at Christmas. 🙂

So I guess it’s time to say farewell to 2023 and brace ourselves for whatever new disaster 2024 has in store for us. Expect the worst and hope for the best, right?

September 2023

Posted on September 30, 2023September 30, 2023 by Nimgimli

September has been a pretty good month for me, once we got past the stupid heat of the first half. We’ve had days where we were able to keep the doors and windows open for a few hours in the mornings and evenings and having some fresh air has been lovely. October should be better. I love October and November.

Gaming wise, I kept to my plan of choosing a selection of games and sticking with them. I dabbled a bit outside of this group, mostly to earn Microsoft Rewards Points, but overall here’re the games I played in September:

Starfield
The Witcher 3
Final Fantasy XVI
Persona 4 Golden

The first two weeks of September were pretty much 100% devoted to Starfield which I almost instantly fell in love with. I racked up 25 hours in the first week (thanks in large part to the long Labor Day weekend) which, for me, is a huge number of hours to spend gaming in a single week. About mid-month it became clear that this was a game that I was going to stick with for the long term, so I started mixing in the other 3 titles.

Persona 4 Golden was in second place, I reckon. I don’t actually track my play time but I had a couple of weekend days that were 100% Persona so I assume it comes in second after Starfield. I think a Persona game finally got its hooks into me, though I have to admit I find the actual dungeon diving pretty dull (well, aside from discovering the truly bizarre enemies we have to fight). It’s the social stuff and story and I’m invested in.

The Witcher 3 continues to be a slow and enjoyable burn. I play it almost like it’s an MMO. There’s something about it that just feels comfy to me, even though old Geralt is slicing off heads and cutting foes in half. A lot of times when I play I just run around exploring. “Oh, I’ve never been to that section of the map….let’s run over there.” Over the years the devs have added a LOT of fast travel markers but I just trot past them. Heck I don’t even call Roach. I just love to stroll around killing monsters and bandits.

Final Fantasy XVI is in rotation but I still am not enjoying it that much. I’m not sure why I’m forcing myself to finish it. I guess because I bought it at full price. I keep thinking I should do a post about the things that bother me about it but then I think maybe there’s enough negativity on the Internet. Perhaps someday when I’m feeling cranky.

Watching:

We’ve become big fans of Apple TV+ lately. Three of our shows this month have been on Apple TV+

Invasion season 2 is still airing. We’re liking it though we’re a little sad about how Aneesha’s character is written. She was so fierce in Season 1 and now she mostly yells “LUUUKKKEE” to her kid. And I don’t like her kid at all. But all the other threads keep us tuning in.

Foundation season 2 is over and I think we’ll do a 2nd watch; this is a dense show that rewards re-watching. Or at least season 1 did. And we’ll watch anything with Jared Harris in it.

The Changling is a horror show that we’re still in the middle of. It has this way of being a little dull for like half the episode and then totally hooking me in the 2nd half, forcing me to come back for more.

From other services, we’ve been watching Star Trek: The Lower Decks which we just love. It’s on Paramount+

We’ve pretty much lost interest in the Disney+ shows, particularly since we’ll be cancelling soon due to the stupidly large price hike. But even before that happened we both just drifted away from Ahsoka and I can’t get too excited about any of the Marvel stuff anymore either. That’s OK… looking forward to having that $$ in my pocket instead of Disney’s.

I’ve also been solo watching some anime: The Faraway Paladin & Ascendency of a Bookworm. Neither was mind blowing but both were enjoyable with a minimum amount of screaming. I bounce off a lot of anime because of the constant screaming. Also worth noting that I know nothing about anime. I’ve been told all the screaming is a hallmark of ‘shonen’ but I dunno how to tell if something is shonen or not before I start watching. I need an anime sensei. 🙂

Reading:

Finished The Last Wish & started Sword of Destiny; a nice pairing with my time roaming around in The Witcher 3. 🙂

And that’s September done. October should be great. The Quest 3 comes out and it just so happens (it was legit a coincidence) that I have a week’s vacation booked starting the Monday after launch. Also looking forward to Honkai Star Rail hitting the Playstation. Plus, y’know, spooky stuff all month! Woohoo!

August 2023

Posted on August 30, 2023 by Nimgimli

OMG you beautiful people, the hellscape which is August is OVER! Against all odds I have once again survived the heat of the North Carolina summer. Heck this year felt easy compared to other parts of the country. I think we maxed out at heat indexes around 105F or so which would’ve felt danged comfortable to the folks in Lawrence, KS who at one point ‘enjoyed’ a heat index of 133F. I can not even image what that feels like.

Forgive me, I’m old. Talking about the weather is about all I do these days. And when I say “talking” I really mean “bitching.”

Anyway, on to the recap, only 1 day early this month. I’m ditching the ‘last month/this month’ format. I’m generally pretty happy with this new ‘system’ of picking a handful of titles and sticking with them. My only real regret from this month is I’ve done so little VR gaming. A lot of that is just down to heat and humidity. I know it doesn’t make sense since I do my VR inside the air conditioned apartment but I still always somehow feel hot and strapping on the headset just doesn’t feel appealing. I’m also doing my VR workouts 4 times a week which, I fear, is conditioning my brain to try to avoid the thing because “visor = hard work and sweating.” I talked about this more in my VR workout post from the other day.

This month I’ve focused on five games:

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: I finally finished the Dawn of Ragnarök expansion which I quite enjoyed. In it you play as Havi/Odin rather than as Eivor and I kind of preferred him to Eivor. It was also pretty easy since I was over-powered for it. It meant I could just walk into a camp and take on all comers in a glorious whirlwind of arrows and axes. Once Dawn was completed I finished the final “farewell” quest wherein Eivor leaves her clan to go in search of new adventures. Which is a spoiler but not really since at the start of the game we’d found her grave in North America so we knew she’d eventually head that way.

The only major aspect of the game I haven’t completed is a rogue-like mode where you once again play Havi who is trying to rescue Baldr from Niflheim. I’m not generally a fan of rogue-likes though in this one you do get to carry forward some progression from run-to-run, which helps. But between being past the 200 hour mark on my save and the fact that the game (with all the DLCs) is a chonky 150 GBs (and my drive is rather full) I decided to bail on poor Baldr and move on. And while I still preferred AC: Odyssey to Valhalla, that 200+ hours doesn’t lie: I really enjoyed this game. And damn is it ever pretty.

If I really wanted to, I could stick around and chase achievements as there are still MANY things to do in the open world. Here’s a map that shows just a part of the base game and you can see all the white, yellow and blue dots that indicate treasures and artifacts that I never got around to collecting:

So many tasks left unfinished. If you tried to 100% this game I can see where it might make you a wee bit crazy.

After spending so much time with Eivor it was actually hard to click “uninstall.” I mean I could always reinstall it but it felt like saying goodbye to a friend. Yes, I’m weird.

Persona 4 Golden: Initially I started playing the console version of Persona 3, but then a remake/remaster was announced so I decided to wait for that, and switched to Persona 4 Golden. I just really wanted to finally make a serious attempt at a Persona game and it felt like something that I could play comfortably via Remote Play on the Steam Deck. It is early days yet… I’m under 10 hours and this is a long game. So far I’m liking it. I love the aesthetics and the music. There’re a lot of gameplay systems I’m still sussing out. So quietly optimistic about this one so far.

Redfall: When this came out it was so universally hated that I kind of had to play it (since it was on Game Pass). My inner contrarian was sure that the game must be better than folks said it was. I did wait until after their first big patch which I’m told increased the encounter rate, among other things. Given that the world can still feel kind of empty I can’t imagine how it felt BEFORE they tweaked that.

So I started playing and y’know, I was liking it OK. My plan was to just finish the main story and MAYBE to take one character to level cap. I was feeling pretty smug, given how clearly it seemed that my refined videogame palate that was letting me find the good bits that others missed. Then I kept playing and found myself liking it less and less, and the smugness faded pretty quick. I still don’t think it is awful but neither do I think it is good enough to keep playing, and I only got to level 10 (the cap is 40). I also didn’t spend $60 in it which probably softens my reaction to some extent.

The story is making so little an impression that I can’t even tell you what the plot is, but what finally got me to decide to pack it in is just how every fight kind of feels the same. I haven’t seen a new weapon in a while, just higher level models of the same handful I’ve had since early days. A lot of the character skills relate to multiplayer so it might be that playing in a group makes it all more fun but as a single player game, there’s just not much to hold me. I’m glad I tried it and if I didn’t have any other games to play I might keep playing but I have a lot of good and great games I want to get to. I can’t spare more time on what is, at best, an OK game.

The vampire plague seems to have been caused by technology rather than magic and here I think we’re supposed to be learning how but it is all so disjointed that I can’t follow it.

Final Fantasy XVI: To be blunt, I don’t understand the universal praise FF XVI is getting. I am not enjoying it all that much, which is odd because I played the demo and LOVED that to the point where I pre-ordered the whole game at full price, which is something I rarely do these days. What I’m finding is the full game is basically the demo recycled over and over. Fight some trash mobs then a mini-boss followed immediately by a Boss boss which will have several phases. There is very little exploration and the combat system, to me, doesn’t feel great. It is definitely a pretty game and the story is fine. I think I’d like it as a movie more than I do as a game. Side note: At one point I had to skip some cutscenes (the game has a habit of stringing together cutscenes without giving you a chance to save) which led me to seeing if I could find a YouTube video so I could watch what I missed. I found a video with all the cutscenes from the game and it is, get this, 20 hours long! That’s a lot of cutscenes.

One of my big gripes about the combat system is how hard it is to ‘read’ the fight since everything always looks like this. What is the enemy doing right now? I have no clue.

I could, and might, do a blog post about all the things that bug me about FFXVI [spoiler: a lot of it has to do with pacing] but for now I’ll just mark it as being something of a disappointment. I’m about half-way through it and decided to just flip the difficulty to “Story Mode” just so I can finish it as quickly as possible.

The Witcher 3: When we finally got around to watching The Witcher S3 on Netflix it got me in the mood to play the game again. I’m proud to say I did NOT start over but picked up where I last left off. I still am not as far as I’ve been in earlier (eventually abandoned) saves but I’m slowly making progress. There’re so many side quests and I KNOW I should ignore them and just follow the story line but…shiny lovely side quests! How can you resist them? Suffice to say I’m enjoying myself though I still don’t really understand “builds” in The Witcher 3. You have so many skill points but so few “slots” for skills. Fortunately not knowing how to build a powerful Geralt hasn’t really held me back. I guess thanks to being over-leveled due to those delicious side quests. 🙂

Watching:

The Witcher S3 which we enjoyed aside from the cliffhanger ending and knowing, what with strike and all, that it’ll probably be 2025 before we learn what happens next.

Secret Invasion was OK, but for me just OK. I found myself glad it was only 6 episodes. And yet they still managed to kill off a (somewhat minor) character that I liked.

Halt and Catch Fire is an old show on AMC+ that is about the start of the PC revolution. It ran for 4 seasons but by the middle of season 2 my interest was starting to wane.

Ahsoka is another one that, so far, I just find is “OK” though I think PartPurple likes it more than me. It’s early days so maybe it’ll ramp up but so far it kind of feels formulaic to me. And adult Ahsoka is so completely different from the young Ahsoka from the animated shows.

I guess we’re watching a lot of TV these days because I still haven’t listed Foundation or Invasion. Both of which we’re enjoying but in neither case do I feel like imploring you to watch. And with the writer’s strike still going on I’m leery about getting too invested in any show because it is really up in the air as to if or when anything is going to get a next season.

Reading:

I finally finished Leviathon’s Fall and the Expanse series and I’m really glad I stuck with it. As a series it was definitely 5/5 stars even though a couple of the books as stand alones dropped to a 4. I kind of feel like The Expanse has ruined all other space-based sci fi for me now.

And that’s the recap. Next up, September and Starfield. I wasn’t honestly paying much attention to all the Starfield hype until just recently, and now I’m kind of excited for it. I’ll be able to start playing on Thursday evening since I sprang for the enhanced edition upgrade (which was around $35 if you’re a Game Pass subscriber).

July 2023

Posted on July 30, 2023July 30, 2023 by Nimgimli

Summer in the south is never a good time, and this July wasn’t any exception. Going to be a pretty short recap this month because I haven’t done much! Well, except for work. Lots of overtime in the second half of this month.

My days have been going something like this: Get up and start working. I’ve been working from 7:30 – 8:00 am through to 5 pm, with an hour break for lunch when I can get it. Then I walk the dog in the sweltering heat. Get back in and do my VR workout (always a struggle given I’m over-heated before I begin), then shower. By the time that is all done its dinner time, which these days has crept later and later until now we eat around 8 PM. Generally watch some TV, usually an episode of Jeopardy and an episode of whatever show we’re into. So that takes us to 9:30 or so. Then often another couple hours of work and… as you can see not much time for gaming except on the weekends.

Last Month’s Games:

I finally finished Ghostwire: Tokyo early in the month. I wound up enjoying it but it was a game that I dropped and came back to frequently. It didn’t really stand up to that obsessive “spend every free moment playing” pace. Mostly it was my weekend mornings game. I might have kept playing past main story end except I’d already hit level cap and that took away a lot of the incentive of exploring and rescuing souls. I still got something like 30 or 40 hours of fun out of it though. If there’s ever a sequel I’ll be there for it.

I’m still playing, or trying to play, Walking Dead: Saints & Sinnners. The PSVR2 has mostly been sitting idle, though very much NOT by choice. This isn’t about getting tired of VR; it’s about struggling to find spots where I have the free time & the free energy & the free living room to devote to it. (Unfortunately with the setup I have, I pretty much have to take over the living room to do PSVR so I have to wait until @partpurple is off doing something on her computer.) Lately those 3 things just haven’t been coming together.

[EDIT: This is what I get for posting my recap early. After talking about S&S in this post I REALLY had the urge to play so I did and… finished. I had no idea I was so close to the end. Great game though! Now on to the DLC!]

I’m also still noodling around in Final Fantasy XVI but struggling to get into it. I loved the demo and immediately pre-ordered as soon as the demo ended, but the full game hasn’t grabbed me. I think that is more on me than the game; I don’t think it shines when you’re playing for 30 minutes every 2 or 3 days. I might just set it aside until life settles down some.

New This Month

Early in the month I jumped back into an old Oculus Rift game, Shadow Legends VR. I played through it using the Quest 2 and Oculus Air Link. Even finished it and wrote a post.

TV

All the usual subjects are in rotation: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (still excellent), Foundation S2, The Witcher (@partpurple needed a refresher course so we went back to rewatch the first two seasons.) Our lunch time guilty pleasure is a re-watch of Stargate SG-1. We sneak in an episode at lunchtime when my schedule permits. If we watch the whole thing that’ll keep us busy until well after Christmas! My end of the day wind-down show was Walking Dead: The World Beyond, and I would not recommend it. I more or less watched it to mock it.

Reading:

I finished Tiamat’s Wrath and started Leviathan Falls, the final Expanse book. I’ve been reading this series for so long I’m not sure what I’ll do with myself when I’m finished!

And that’s been July. I have a 4-day weekend coming up; I just knew by about now I’d be in desperate need of a mental health break and boy was I right. One of the work projects that has been causing all the overtime is due this week (and should be delivered on time) so after that things should chill out a bit. Maybe next month I’ll have something worth talking about!

April 2023

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Nimgimli

I generally write these recaps as a kind of running journal throughout the course of the month, then just hit publish on the last day. This month I haven’t been doing that. This sentence is being written on the 23rd, so while I do still have a week to work on the post, I’ve mostly forgotten what I did in the first couple of weeks.

Like almost every other thing I’ve ever done on a predictable schedule, the recaps went from fun to routine to a chore, so might be time to sunset them. On the other hand I DID just renew the blog’s hosting plan for 2 more years, though I’m feeling a bit of regret about that. So if I don’t do the recaps, what will I do other than let the blog lay fallow? I guess we’ll see. For now though…

Last Month’s Games

I finally got free of Genshin Impact. When the new battle pass started, I made a conscious decision to NOT go after points for it so that I wouldn’t get sucked into that cycle of doing tasks to earn points rather than because I wanted to do them. And when my $5/monthly sub ended I didn’t renew it so I don’t have the incentive to do my daily log in for free Primogems. Now I play it when I want to play it which hasn’t been too often. I still like the game, just need a change of pace for a bit.

Almost nothing else from last month remains. I did boot up Pillars of Eternity once or twice for a grand total of maybe 2 hours played all month, and I continued to play Age of Empires IV for the first week or so, but it too has been set aside.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is in danger of being forgotten amidst a ton of new shiny things that have distracted me, but I’m not ready to write it off yet.

New This Month

Golf games (2K, EA, Everyone’s Golf) — Early this month I got on a golf kick, trying ‘realistic’ games from 2K and EA, and Everyone’s Golf on Playstation, which is more cartoony and uses the old 3-click system. 3-4 days was enough of golf, though, partly because I couldn’t decide which variety I wanted to play. Choice paralysis set in and I moved on.

Everybody’s Golf goes with a fun, cartoony style. My avatar is apparently an elf.

Meet Your Maker — Wrote a post about this one, played for a couple more evenings then uninstalled. I just need some kind of narrative hook to keep me playing a game (even if that hook is only happening in my ‘internal roleplaying’) and Meet Your Maker doesn’t have one. Don’t expect to be going back to this one any time soon, but I do still think it’s an innovative game and I hope it enjoys a lot of success.

Ghostwire Tokyo hit Xbox Game Pass and I enjoyed it for a few nights before drifting away. I quite liked it but I’m just struggling to stay focused on anything these days. It’s nicely creepy but somehow doesn’t feel like horror, which is a good thing for me because I’m not really into horror or being scared. Real life is scary enough. Being creeped out, though? That I can do. Somehow fighting headless school girls comes across as creepy rather than scary.

Ghostwire Tokyo teaches you a surprising amount about Japanese food, and y’know I find myself making a point of reading all these!

Combat always feels a little sloppy and a little too chaotic for my tastes, but the lore and setting is pretty interesting

No Man’s Sky & Star Trek Online are both games I’ve started SO many times and never gotten far. Now I’ve started them both again and… surprise! I haven’t gotten very far. For No Man’s Sky it was because I opted to play it on PS5 and for some reason couldn’t access my PS4 saves. I probably had to convert them or something but opted to start fresh. In Star Trek Online I was DETERMINED not to start over but then there was an event where if you started a new character you could earn account-wide awards so of course I had to do that. Thus a Vulcan Science Officer was born.

I bet most of my crew looks familiar to anyone who has ever played, as does the newbie ship in the background

Honkai: Star Rail is like Genshin Impact, only in space and with turn-based combat. It’s out on PC and mobile and is supposed to come to Playstation soon. I’m dabbling in it but doubt I’ll play it seriously until it hits the PS5.

First mini-boss fight. Took me a couple tries to beat it

This isn’t everything but it’s all I can remember and I haven’t played anything enough to have much to say about any of it. I’m cautiously optimistic about Redfall, but that’s not out until next week. Sad that it is capped at 30FPS on Xbox but I can live with it.

TV

Picard Season 3 was gosh darned amazing. We just loved it. And cry? Yes, we cried… a lot.

The Mandalorian was pretty good, too.

The Walking Dead is a show we watched for like 10.5 seasons as it was airing before finally losing track of it. It’s finally hit Netflix so we decided to watch the last season and a half just so we can say we did it. That show got SO damned repetitive. We’re sorta glad we finished but I can’t see myself ever re-watching it.

School Spirits is basically an 8 episode mystery. It’s about a girl who was killed and is now a ghost, destined to haunt her high school. She can’t remember who killed her though. Show does a great job of leading you from suspect to suspect. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would even though I thought the protagonist was pretty horrible to everyone around her. It’s on Paramount+ and seems to have a modest budget, so even though many of the characters are ghosts there aren’t any special effects or anything which, it turns out, is absolutely fine. A good mystery trumps good CGI, I guess. My only real gripe was (of course) the ending which did present us with the solution to the mystery but in doing so opened some pretty big plot holes, AND then revealed kind of another level of mystery which, presumably, will be explored if they get a season 2. Overall I would’ve been happier with a tidy ending and a single season show, I think.

Also been watching a lot of Major League Soccer and English Premiere League football.

Reading

Finished Babylon’s Ashes and started Persepolis Rising. Yup, still doing The Expanse thing. Still enjoying them though, spoiler, there is a 30 year jump between the two which made me a little sad.

Sorry this month’s recap isn’t very interesting to read. It’s really mostly just a record for my own use if for some reason I ever want to remember what I was playing this month.

Not sure what next month will bring. While I like having a record, I feel weirdly embarrassed about starting so many games and not sticking with any of them. If I don’t do recaps I can just play what I feel like playing, whether it’s for 10 minutes or 10 months. But once I put it in a recap and then wind up dropping it by the next month, I feel like I’ve failed.

Might be time to go back to random “Hey I played this last night and it was kinda cool.” posts and leave it at that.

March 2023

Posted on March 31, 2023 by Nimgimli

Well, March kind of flew by, at least for me. And I’m still here, blogging a bit. Overall things are better with me. Got through that dark patch when exhaustion was really impacting my mental health. I firmly believe ditching social media and in particular stepping away from certain individuals has really helped. I had several ranting paragraphs about my issues with social media, and Mastodon in particular, in the first draft of this recap. It made me angry all over again writing it, though, and probably would’ve made me angry re-reading it at some point in the future. So I nuked it. It isn’t worth rehashing beyond saying I’m much happier without it.

Last Month’s Games

Genshin Impact once again took up a huge chunk of time for the first 3 weeks of the month. I finally got caught up on the “Archon Quests” (main story quests, basically), I completed the Battle Pass with something like 2 weeks to spare, and I hit the 300 hour mark according to the PS5. That all felt like a reason to step back for a bit to free up time to play some other games.

Pillars of Eternity (which I deemed ‘dropped last month, I guess prematurely) and The Witcher 3 are both being kept warm. I jump into both games maybe once a week just so I don’t forget how to play/where I am in them. I’m not ready to give up on either game yet!

Persona 3 Portable, however, does seem to be dropped.

New This Month

Outriders isn’t really new; I played it a good bit when it came out. I never liked it very much, but I came back to it mostly because I was nearing an Achievement and I needed an Achievement for a Microsoft Rewards quest. I was close enough to the end of the campaign that I decided to keep going so I could finish, delete and get the 100 gb or so of drive space back. The actual gameplay of Outriders is OK, but the aesthetics and the story are not my cup of tea. Like everyone else I guessed the ‘mystery’ within about the first 10 minutes of playing. I didn’t like the script, I didn’t like the voice acting, I didn’t like the character models, I didn’t like the character animations, I didn’t like the look of the gear you earned. But the combat was OK if you’re not a ‘hang back and pick ’em off one by one’ kind of player. Just out of curiosity after finishing the campaign and a couple of side quests (wanted to get to level 30 for another Achievement), I looked at the Worldslayer DLC. It is $40!! Oh hell no. $40 seems pretty expensive at launch, but this long afterwards that it is still $40 made this one an easy “delete and move on”.

The Settlers — see blog post. I’m not sure I ever played again after writing that post. I went through a ton of tutorials and by the time I was done I was ready to move on! LOL It’s still just a bit too retro for my impatient old brain.

After dropping The Settlers I moved onto Age of Empires. First Age I Definitive Edition, but that, like The Settlers, felt a little too old school so I moved up to Age of Empires II Definitive Edition. It adds some QOL features like auto-scouting and patrol routes that make gameplay feel a little less fiddly. I skipped Age 3 since no one seems to like it as much as II, and then fired up Age of Empires IV, which is where I think I’ve settled, mostly because it’s the prettiest. 🙂 My only real gripe is that there’s a lot of live-service adjacent/e-sports type stuff when you first load it up. There is some kind of player level/score they pressure you to increase and I find that super off-putting, but so far I just ignore it and skip past to the solo stuff.

I tried one of the AoE games on the Xbox but nope, my brain just doesn’t like RTS with controller.

Screenshot of Age of Empires IV showing a very 1-side melee skirmish — Never tell me the odds!

Fire Emblem Three Houses — I hardly ever use my Switch and I’m semi-thinking of getting rid of it, or at least sticking it in storage or something. Before I do, there’s a couple games I bought and never played much. FE3H is one of them, even though I’ve loved earlier Fire Emblem games. I think when I first started playing I didn’t like how much time you spent just talking to NPCs. I don’t mind that now. But what I do mind now is that the text is so small when playing in Handheld Mode. My plan was to swap the Switch for the Steam Deck for those “lying in bed” gaming sessions, but by that point in the day my eyes are too damned tired to deal with the tiny text of FE3H. I can of course play it on the TV but then it competes for time with Xbox and PS5 games. Talk about your #FirstWorldProblems, eh? But this is what knocked Persona 3 Portable out of the currently playing list.

I wasn’t planning on starting any other new games, but evil Microsoft made Marvel Midnight Suns one of their “Free Play Days” selections last weekend. I’d been interested in this game prior to launch, but once it came out it didn’t seem to make much of a splash so I kind of forgot about it. But for free? I’ll absolutely try it. And I really enjoyed it; enough so that I took advantage of a 50% off sale that was running to pick it up. Still enjoying this one quite a bit.

Midnight Suns gameplay example showing skill cards as well as super heroes arrayed for battle — Fighting some Hydra scum

TV

We finally finished Star Trek: Voyager. Whew! Definitely not one of my favorite ST series, but we both agreed having watched Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager sequentially was a good way to be sure we were pumped for….

Picard season 3. I get that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but we love it. Keep in mind though, we love it more or less as a reunion show than as great stand-alone sci-fi. There are so many little factoids that I’m sure would’ve zipped right past us had we not watched the old shows fairly recently. Like Professor Moriarty (from Sherlock Holmes) showing up as a security system. That comes from a Next Generation episode based around a holodeck program where Moriarty becomes sentient and attempts to take control of the Enterprise. If you don’t remember that episode I’m sure you’d be “WTF”ing when the character showed up in Picard.

Finished The Last of Us and loved it. It could’ve been longer, in my opinion, but maybe less is more when there’s a story about constant fighting with other people post-apocalypse. I’m looking at YOU, The Walking Dead.

Alice in Borderland — This show was way more violent than what I’m usually comfortable with, but the mystery of what the heck is going on hooked me. It starts when 3 friends in Tokyo, trying to hide from the cops for an incident that caused a minor traffic accident, all duck into a stall in a rest room. Then the lights go out briefly. When they come out of the stall, the city is seemingly empty. But soon enough they are forced to play a series of deadly games. Where are they and how did they get there? Watch and find out. Think Hunger Games meets Lost, I guess. But a lot of graphic violence, so you’ve been warned on that front.

We’d watched Season 1 of Locke & Key back when it came out, but this month we re-watched S1 and watched all of Seasons 2 & 3. And that’s it; the series ended. I’m very happy it did because I found it to be a really dumb show, but it was her pick so I endured it. I mean, a lot of these teen-based paranormal shows have characters doing really dumb things, but this one just seemed over the top with that stuff. And if I took a shot every time a character held up a key and stared at it meaningfully (often in lieu of running away from the Big Bad), my liver would’ve given out mid-way through Season 2. There also seemed to be a lot of inconsistences within the show’s own lore, but maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention. Also in my opinion, Bode, the youngest of the Locke children, was the true villain of the show.

Reading

Finished Nemesis Games (The Expanse book….. 5?) and started Babylon’s Ashes (Book 6). The TV show version of Nemesis Games was one of my least favorite seasons of The Expanse, but I enjoyed the book a lot more. And so far, Babylon’s Ashes is a good read, too.

I’ve also gone back to Marvel comic books. I had been working my way through all the comics in order but it was just overwhelming. I started this in Sept 2021 and I was still in 1964 two years later. Initially these old comics were a hoot but the novelty was worn off. I still want to get all the origin stories but at some point before I die I want to get into an era where the art is better and the villains slightly less cheesy. (Plus I’m learning origin stories change over time anyway; like originally Thor was some dude who found a magic staff that transformed him into the God of Thunder while he held onto it.) Anyway, I’ve skipped over to the 616 Essentials Order. And it’s still a lot, to be honest.

And that’s the recap for March. Life goes on… Hope you and yours are doing well, dear reader. See you next month.

February 2023

Posted on February 28, 2023 by Nimgimli

Another short recap. The bad times I mentioned in my January recap ran into February and only in the last week or so have things really started to ease. I’m trying to appreciate the lack of crisis.

This was the month I pulled way way back on social media. I am not missing it, at least not now. I do maintain a Twitter account which I use mostly to follow games. I’ve been gradually unfollowing actual people. I deleted Mastodon, deleted Discord. I’d delete a bunch of others if I ever used them but remembering them and logging in just to try to figure out how to delete the account just seems like too much effort.

Even when work and stuff was just crushing me into a paste, I could feel this one parcel of my brain was feeling lighter thanks to avoiding the toxicity and toxic positivity of social media. The free periods I used to spend doom scrolling I’m now devoting to reading, which feels like a much better use of my time.

The one exception is Facebook, of all things, where I’ve found a small enclave of folks I’ve known for literal decades and who’re mostly content to exchange pleasantries now and then. It’s super low volume and hopping in once a day even feels like overkill. So that suits me pretty well for now. But damn is Facebook creepy. I bought a pair of windshield wiper blades from Amazon and literally within 5 minutes my Facebook feed was full of ads for wiper blades.

Anyway, on to the recap.

Last Month’s Games

Genshin Impact has been taking up like 90% of my gaming time. Still really loving it (obviously) and it’s been the perfect escapist kind of game for these trying times.

The other 10% is a bit of The Witcher 3 and a tiny slice of Persona 3 Portable which, in theory, I’m playing on the Steamdeck in bed. Except I’ve been staying up so late I tend to just collapse into sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. It’s a great fit for Steamdeck though, considering it was originally designed for a portable device.

Pillars of Eternity is, I guess, dropped.

New Games This Month

Nothing

TV

The Last of Us has been incredibly enjoyable for us. I, of course, have played the game. Angela has not. I think we both enjoy the show about the same amount.

The Bad Batch isn’t grabbing us as much as the first season did. We are in season 2, right?

Poker Face is a new kind-of detective show, I guess? It’s about a woman (played by Natasha Lyonne) who has one ‘supernatural’ ability in that she can always tell when someone is lying. But she is on the run from some bad dudes and from the cops. She keeps stumbling upon crimes and opting to solve them. We, and a lot of others, are picking up kind of a Columbo vibe.

And we’re still grinding through Star Trek Voyager. On the last season and I feel like you can just watch the writers running out of ideas/interest.

Oh and Picard S3 but that’s just barely started. So far we’re digging it.

I’ve also been watching a lot of soccer. EPL and US Women’s National Team, plus MLS just started.

Reading

Lola was having some health issues in Jan/Feb and wasn’t up to walking much, but still wanted to be outside. So I was standing around a lot, and started back on The Expanse novels, reading via the Kindle app on my phone. It feels good to be reading something again. Nemesis Games is the book I’m on.

And that’s the recap. Maybe my last recap; I’ve been thinking a lot of turning off the blog. But I won’t go into all that just now.