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GW2 Too
It has been about 2.5 years since I last touched Guild Wars 2 (GW2). At that time, I had been puttering around, completing daily quests to net the equivalent of $0.20/day, and basically stewing in my own cognitive dissonance. What broke me out of the cycle was the then-pending release of Secrets of the Obscure expansion. Even though GW2 is one of the few MMOs out there that doesn’t obsolete content once expansions come out, just knowing that everyone else would be doing all the cool stuff while you’re stuck gathering Flax or whatever sucks. On the other hand, I didn’t necessary want to pay $30 for more GW2, so I took that as a sign to uninstall and do something else.
And so I did. Another expansion came out called Janthir Wilds, and I let that one pass me by too. It even featured the ability to have a decorative house, introduced a spear weapon for every class, and so on. Neat. Have fun with that.
There is even yet another expansion coming out in October called Visions of Eternity. I think there are even new Elite specs this time around. Haven’t really looked into too far.
So why am I writing about GW2, and in fact have reinstalled the game? They finally introduced LFD.
It’s technically a beta feature, but it’s called Quickplay, and it’s the same automated group finder feature from WoW circa 16 years ago. Press button, get an instant 5-man squad and teleport right next to them. Right now, it is pointing towards even-easier versions of T1 Fractals, but presumably it will be expanded in the future to actual dungeons, perhaps Strikes, maybe raids? Moreover, ArenaNet has erected an extremely generous set of Achievements surrounding spam-queueing T1 Fractals for the next several weeks, resulting in extra bag slots, a Legendary glove (!!), and other such goodies.
As dumb as it sounds, yeah, reading about Quickplay (and the rewards, obviously) is what pushed me over the edge into downloading GW2 again.
…sorta. Honestly, I had also reached a point where I realized that I was logging into No Man’s Sky just because I couldn’t think of a better game to play for those “don’t want to commit to 1+ hour game sessions” moments. If I’m not committing to something, why not not commit to something that could possibly be relevant in the future? Then again, Guild Wars 3 is going to be a thing at some point, rendering everything moot. Also, heat death of the universe.
Anyway, bottom line, I’ve been playing GW2 a lot the past few days.
More Impressions: FF7 Rebirth
I am still plugging away at Rebirth. Don’t worry, no story spoilers here.
What I did want to talk about (again) is just how baffling the game systems are. There are some things that are just awkward and annoying, but true to the original, like having to meticulously move Materia around every time your party is forced to change. Mercifully, the devs do allow you to equip Materia into a slot from someone else, eliminating some of the tedium.
But then there is all the new stuff. Which exists for… some reason, to the detriment of the game.
Weapons have Weapon Skill slots, which act like Materia (e.g. slot them), but I honestly have no clue where they come from. Maybe I missed the tutorial for that part and they automatically unlock? Anyway, they are pretty minor and largely inconsequential fiddly bits you have to mess with on occasion. Then you have the Folios, which reminds me of the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. Or would if any choices there mattered either. Yes, the Folios are where you unlock Synergy Abilities and special magic attacks that don’t require MP. But along the way you have to spent points on things like “increase MP by 3” and “increase whatever by 5%.” Filler by itself is not always bad, but this is just one of a myriad of new systems introduced, again, for what reason?
And by the way, what Rebirth has done with spellcasting makes me wonder why they bothered with it at all. One of the issues of the first game (Remake) is wandering into a boss fight that hinges on you exploiting an elemental weakness that none of your team has equipped. With the Folios, all characters can unlock specific abilities that allow them to cast most elements without needing the Materia or even MP. That’s cool. However, the introduction of Synergy Abilities – which require two characters to perform ~3 ATB actions apiece – places a huge emphasis on executing actions that “count” towards them. What doesn’t count? Spells and those abilities that cast spells. Which… why not? Seriously. Combined with characters that have elemental-based ATB attacks like Cloud’s Firebrand, the whole spell system feels de-emphasized.
The other element (har har) that is becoming more annoying to me over time is the disparity between the characters themselves. Specifically, Tifa and Red XIII versus Yuffie. Both Tifa and Red XIII are melee-only characters that end up facing what feels like 80% flying enemies thus far. Not only can they not hit these flying mobs to gain ATB, many of their abilities won’t hit either. Enter Yuffie: primarily a melee character, that can also throw her Shuriken at distant/flying foes as a secondary attack. If it hits, a second tap of the button will teleport her to the Shuriken and allow her to start melee attacking the target, even in mid-air. Alternatively, if you start hitting the regular attack button, Yuffie will start attacking with her elemental ninjitsu, which is an instantaneous ranged attack. Did I mention she can change the element of the ninjitsu to target weaknesses?
I will concede that perhaps the devs feel a bit boxed in here. Tifa has the same attacks she did in the first game, as does Yuffie… who was released as a solo DLC character, and thus needed to have a broad spectrum of attacks to make up for it. At the same time, with all the craziness of Remake, I don’t think anyone would bat an eye at Tifa/Red having some way of engaging flying foes. Whatever the case, the end result is that while I want my party to be Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith, the classical trio is way outclassed by Cloud, Yuffie, and Barret. Sure, I could just do what I want and just take the OG crew, but that will make the enormously boring fights take even longer.
There are two final things I wanted to talk about, that are possibly only “me” problems. I’m very important, of course, so these are major issues. Those issues are Pacing and Tone.
From a Pacing perspective, Rebirth effectively has none. What typically happens is that you get to a new area, have a few Main Story Quests (MSQ), and then the next stage is far away into a blank map. Some of the time it is possible to make a direct approach and ignore the 20+ map icons and side quests and towers and collectibles and so on and so forth. There was even a time when the MSQ was almost directly in sight and you had to go out of your way to leave the area to hit up all the extraneous stuff. Other times you do have to unlock a certain amount of things and/or need to hit certain level milestones to not be stomped by the next boss. Regardless, I’m not a completionist or an achievement hunter, but I do actually care about extracting every drop of interaction I can from these characters that occupied so much of my youth, so I end up finishing everything I can stand.
Unfortunately, the end result is that I spend 2-3 play sessions doing busywork with this awful combat system and just can’t bring myself to push further into the story until I mentally recharge.
Double-unfortunately for me, the Tone for this game is all over the place. The original FF7 had extremely weird sections and comic relief at regular intervals, of course – the entire Wall Market sequence, for example. But I feel like the devs decided that every air pocket created from stretching the game into a trilogy needed to filled with nonsense. And not just a little nonsense, but ridiculous nonsense. Which again, fine, comic relief is a thing. However, the game isn’t that heavy to justify this amount of relief. Indeed, it’s hard to take much of anything seriously based on the in-game presentation. For example, there is a section in which Shrina soldiers are gunned down and everyone is somber and clutching pearls. Fast-forward past a bunch of filler quests (god, I wish I could have), you face off against a bunch of Shrina soldiers… that you gun down. What.
If it sounds like I’m not having a good time, you would be correct. I am currently sitting at 46 hours and sort of wish things had ended 30 hours ago. In the interest of plowing ahead, I have started to actually ignore the more Ubisoft-styled busywork, but it’s still tough.
This game is not the follow-up to Remake I was hoping for.
Blaugust 2024 – Day 1
I have chosen to participate in Blaugust 2024 this year, despite the fact that I am currently on vacation.
Hello. My name* is Azuriel and I have been blogging for almost 14 years now. In the early days, my blogging was focused on World of Warcraft. In fact, “Azuriel” is the name of my main in WoW. I started Player Vs Auction House for the release of the Cataclysm expansion, and despite that ultra-niche topic, the blog did well enough for itself. Over time though, I started to realize that chasing gold trends was less interesting than the design philosophy behind the game, so I pivoted to that. Once I started drifting away from WoW itself, it was time for another pivot towards “let’s talk about whatever else I want.”
That is probably enough as far as introductions go. If this is your first time here, I recommend clicking on the drop-down over on the right labeled The Goods, and selecting Philosophy. Everything that I post is top-quality, but those trend towards a higher level. Or you can check out this list of posts, back when I participated in Blaugust 2015. Nevermind that my best work seems to be from years ago.
Otherwise, well, welcome.
*Not my real name, of course.
So, You Want An Above-Ground Pool
[Note: I wrote this last year, but never got around to actually posting it at the time. Since I recently set up my pool again, it became a bit more topical. Enjoy.]
One of the reasons I haven’t been playing many videogames this past month is because I was setting up an above-ground pool. In the spirit of my other apropos nothing post about shipping PS1/PS2 games, let me chronical the struggles I had with getting mine set up. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes, maybe you just enjoy the schadenfreude.
Step 0: Do you really need one?
No, seriously, do you really need one? I got mine on the cheap, but a yearly pass to a sorta nearby pubic pool would only have run me $200, at worst, per year. By the time everything is done, you are likely going to be spending $1000+ and who knows if anything you bought is going to survive the five years (or more) it takes to break-even. Now, you are probably going to use a pool in your backyard on a whim more often than getting into a car and driving somewhere, but just acknowledge the math involved.
Also, do not bother with any of this late in the season. Like in August. That’d just be dumb.
Step 1: Survey your domain
It’s very important that you look at what you’re dealing with terrain-wise before you even consider pool options. Do you have a good space for one? Is it near trees? How tough is the soil? Are you going to try do everything by-the-book and actually get a permit for your pool, to include all the things the permit requires? Some of those things include having a fully-enclosed, self-locking fence, being X distance away from the home, and so on.
For me, my house already had a “dog run” area that was fully fenced up:
The grass looks sketchy, but that was because I had just mowed on the lowest setting. What is not obvious from the picture – or even looking at it in person – is how the ground isn’t level. Like, not even a little bit. But I’ll get into that in a minute.
Step 2: Secure a Pool
The retail price of an above-ground pool varies, but the 9’x18’x48″ pool we settled on is $800 normally. I bought mine for $100. How? Warehouse resellers. Sort of like eBay for items that people returned to Amazon, who then sold to warehouses for pennies on the dollar. I’m not going to give out the name of the one I used, but basically I saw some pictures of a very beat-up box online but the pool liner still looked wrapped in plastic, so I rolled the dice. Spoiler alert: it worked out.
Step 3: Prep the field
Do not install a pool in August. I repeat, do NOT install a pool in August.
So anyway, there I was, installing a pool in August like a moron. I borrowed a 25-year old mini-tiller from a neighbor and started to work on the 9×18 area where the pool would be located. Phase 1 was just clearing the grass out. If you have a sod remover or other fancy equipment, use that. Otherwise, make sure to till and rake that top layer of dirt/grass away and compost it elsewhere or whatever.
Step 4: Level the playing field
Mentally accept that 80% of the work in setting up an above-ground pool is leveling the ground. Don’t cut corners, don’t say “fuck it, that’s good enough,” don’t do this in August when your pasty ass is sweating buckets within the first 15 minutes of being outside.
The dirt needs to be level. I used a 3ft level taped onto a wooden 2×4, but that was sketchy. You can (and should) buy a contractor level, with longer being better – they are expensive on Amazon, but my local hardware store had a 6ft level for like $15. In any case, I took my level and… realized that the cleared area had a significant slope. Like 3 inches or more.
I recommend digging down rather than filling up. The idea is to use a tiller to get the dirt nice and frothy, and then shovel it over onto the lower end. Two birds, one shovel. The problem with just buying a bunch of topsoil and raising the low end is two-fold. First, it’s difficult to know how the topsoil is going to behave once compressed. Like, even if you tamp it down, I noticed it springing back up in a way four feet of water per square inch was not going to allow it to. Secondly, keeping the dirt and topsoil where it is supposed to be becomes tricky. If it’s just in a big pile, erosion might see the sides start to lower and things becoming increasingly uneven.
Step 5: Measure twice, dig once
Once everything seems level, measure everything again. Read the instructions, look at pictures.
My pool is 9×18 so I leveled a 9×18 area. Had I looked at the goddamn box one more time, I would have realized that while the bottom of the pool is indeed 9×18, the side support beams actually extend out another 1.5 feet on both sides. While we ended up just rolling with it, this means the side walls are bowed in and who knows if there is any permanent damage to the steel pipes or what sort of extra wear that will have done to the liner. All of which could have been avoided by looking at the box.
Step 6: Get some help setting it up
The instructions say 2-3 people can set up the pool in 30 minutes. Get at least that many people and budget 2+ hours. I’ve seen videos of people doing it themselves, but not when it’s August.
It is also important at this point – and probably before this point – to understand where things are going to be located. For example, where are the holes for the pump? Where is the drainage port? It’s a huge pain in the ass to move anything once those supports go in, so avoid having to make corrections.
Step 7: Fill and (hopefully) enjoy
At a certain point, you won’t know if everything worked out until you actually start putting in water. You are going to want to try and smooth out any wrinkles in the liner when there is less than an inch of water inside. It’s also very important to walk all along the bottom to feel for any errant rocks or pokey things that might cause issues.
For me, we ended up fully filling the pool and then had to completely empty it because the water level was a difference of 4 inches. The pool instructions say “no more than 1 inch difference” but most of what I read online suggested 2-3 inches would be fine. The issue was more than just the water level though, as we also had the side wall concern I mentioned earlier. So, after it was emptied, I put in a bunch of topsoil under the low side, dug 1-2 inches down on the side supports and filled it back up. It’s not perfect still, but we’ve successfully used it for two weeks now and it just needs to make it a few more before the likely end of the season. Next year, I will relevel things properly.
Not in August, of course. Because that would be dumb.
Addendum
To help protect the bottom of the pool, we used a giant tarp underneath. A tarp will not prevent rocks from poking your feet from inside the pool and otherwise being a hazard. No, I don’t camp a lot, how can you tell? Also, I do recommend rolling up the ends of the tarp so the support poles don’t push on them. This is primarily so you don’t have a little mosquito puddle just sitting there.
Buy and cut some treated wood for your supports to stand on and dig them into the ground a bit. I briefly thought about using paver patio stones, but was worried about what would happen if the stones snapped. A few of the wood boards are already in rough shape, so I’m glad I stuck with wood.
If you end up with wrinkles in the bottom of the pool after there is too much water in there, one lifehack solution is to buy a new old-school plunger. You know, the ones that are flat on the bottom and are terrible for plunging toilets. According to some clever Youtube videos though, they work just fine in lifting up the pool liner to help smooth out wrinkles.
Those chlorine tabs you put in bobbers are for maintaining a given chlorine level. Pool “shock” is super-concentrated chlorine to raise levels high enough to be safe. You can really optimize different chemicals (pH, alkalinity, etc) if you want to, but it’s all in service of keeping proper amounts of chlorine.
I recommend two different types of water testing kits. The first one I bought was all fancy with eye-droppers and little bottles of chemicals. Kept saying I didn’t have any chlorine though. Bought the test strip kind just to confirm and, hey, actually I had 5ppm chlorine in there. It’s possible that there was user error involved with the fancy test, but that issue is still resolved by having two different testing kits.
Solar covers do indeed work. The one I bought looks basically like a 22-foot diameter heavy-duty piece of blue bubble wrap. Threw it on, cut it into a rough oval shape with scissors, and will hopefully get another few weeks of reasonable pool use this Fall.
Chasing the High
It’s super dumb, but I have pretty much exclusively been playing Hearthstone Battlegrounds for the last 1.5 weeks. I say “super dumb” because this sort of gaming doesn’t mean anything. And, yeah, “does anything really mean anything?” but Battlegrounds is on a whole other level of frivolousness.
If you’re unfamiliar, Battlegrounds is a game mode within the Hearthstone client that is essentially an Auto-Battler. There are two main phases: Tavern and Battle. During the Tavern phase, you spend gold purchasing minions, upgrading the Tavern tier (unlocking higher-tier minions in the pool), refresh available minions, sell minions, use your Hero Power, and/or rearrange your minions. After about 60-90 seconds, you transition into the Battle phase. During Battle, minions take turns attacking from left to right, but their targets are chosen randomly (barring Taunt or other special effects). Whoever has a minion(s) left standing wins and deals X damage to the opponent’s hero.
Battlegrounds has been around for a while, but I didn’t really bother playing it for years. As my interest in Hearthstone proper started to wane though – I don’t care much about ladder ranks – Battlegrounds started to become more appealing. Throughout the seasons, Blizzard started to really shake things up with new, rotating features that added some spicey randomness. Granted, there’s already plenty of randomness in the game mode, but these were on another level. Things like Buddy units (unique to each Hero), Quests (bonus effects if you can complete them), and the latest season introduced Spells as something you can purchase in the shop. All of these things were introduced in a particular season, and then rotated out, keeping things fresh.
And then someone this season went nuts and added all of the things.
Specifically, this current season has Spells and then several weeks later… Quests too. The Quests have been revamped though, and some of them feature crazy effects like “Discover a new Buddy each turn.” That’s not actually the most powerful Quest effect, but I had a few degenerate games where I leveraged it to a massive win. Indeed, the sheer nonsense you can evoke depending on randomness – and the speed in which you must do so – is what is driving me to almost compulsively play Battlegrounds. I’m chasing the high I get from some of these games, or chasing the dream where I was a turn or two away from going nuts before getting wrecked by someone else’s high-roll.
Really though, the randomness cannot be overstated:
- Starting Hero selection is between 2-4 from random pool (94)
- Opponent hero selections are random (for you)
- Overall minion type pool is random (5 out of 9)
- The minions you’re offered in each Tavern are random
- There are only X copies of specific minions in the pool, which opponents can buy
- Getting a “triple” confers a huge bonus, which is a pick 1-of-3 minions from a higher tier
- Minion attacks are random (aside from Taunts or other special conditions)
- HUGE variance can that lead to losing to 5% odds
- Certain spells are random
- Steal a random minion from the tavern, Discover a Battlecry Minion, etc
- Quests are random on top of random
- At a baseline, you are offered a choice of three quests (out of 60)
- Your hero selection impacts which quests are available
- Quest completion methods are randomly assigned (out of 15)
- Play X Battlecry Minions; Speed Y Gold; Kill Z Minions; etc
- Minion types, hero selection, and quest power impact X/Y/Z values
- Some Quest rewards are themselves random
- Cast 5 Random Spells each turn; Discover a Buddy; etc
Sounds like it would be frustrating, yeah? And yet… it usually feels fine.
In Hearthstone, a card that does 3-6 damage is frustrating. Not drawing your combo pieces is frustrating. In Battlegrounds, the randomness is usually just presented as you needing to make the best decision out of available options. Did your minions miss the enemy buff target three times in a row and yet they hit your buff minion right off the bat? OK, that sucks. What’s your next play?
It also helps that losing early just means you can queue into a potentially better game right away.
Near as I can tell, whatever reward center in my brain that lights up from deck-building roguelikes (e.g. Slay the Spire) or survival-crafting games has been short-circuited by this season of Battlegrounds. I’m somewhat mad at myself because I should be playing Red Dead Redemption 2 (played one session) or anything else in my extended library. We’re talking like probably 30-40 hours of potential progress spent on otherwise wirehead activity in the past few weeks.
And yet… I need another bump. The next Battlegrounds season gimmick has been teased as being co-op, which honestly sounds pretty awful. I doubt that they keep Quests around for another entire season in any case, but maybe Blizzard will see the spike in (my) gametime and consider keeping it around. The fact that it may go away for a while makes me want to get my fill even more.
Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie! I need it.
Oh, and Hearthstone proper released a new expansion cycle too, I guess. Yawn.
Far Cry 6
I just finished Far Cry 6 after 34 hours. I should have stopped after about four.
As someone who has completed all the prior Far Cry games aside from Primal (got about halfway), there were some interesting twists to the formula in FC6. The game really leaned into the guerilla fighter schtick, wherein you could walk near soldiers without attracting too much attention before unleashing attacks. The wingsuit is unlocked from the start and being airdropped from any fast-travel location – provided you destroyed the anti-aircraft cannon in the area – made navigating the huge island of Yara a bit easier. After a bunch of silent protagonists, we’re back with a chatty psychopath. Also, you can choose to be a male or female Dani, which was also nice.
That said, there are a number of awful twists to the formula that I hope they never repeat.
First, there is really no tangible sense of character progression. Instead of Perks/Skills, all special abilities are wardrobe-based. As in, you open special chests located across the map, and unlock helmets, vests, pants, shoes, and wrists in a predetermined order. Later on, you can purchase specific items out of order to complete your “build,” such as it is. The problem is that 90% of the options are functionally useless, and once you unlock the good ones, there is zero incentive to do anything else or explore.
Plus, it’s hard to tell how gamey the designers actually want you to be. For example, equip all the stealth-based clothes to infiltrate the base, but the moment the alarm is raised, pause the game and instantly Sailor Moon transform into your anti-bullet clothes until you jump into a vehicle, where you swap it out again for pants that enable auto-repair. Is that really what they were going for?
There is similar banality in the weapon department. An early mission makes a big deal about the character visually tagging enemies using their cell phone, as it displays the enemy’s weakpoints. Normal soldiers are weak to soft-point bullets, the armored guys to armor-piercing rounds, the poison gas dudes to explosions, and so on. Which is cute, but I’m pretty sure armor-piercing bullets to the face are everyone’s weakness. As it turns out… it’s actually arrows and throwing knives. Yes, some enemies may actually take more than one round to the face with an armor-piercing bullet fired from a .50 caliber sniper rifle, but an arrow from a compound bow or thrown knife will take them down 100% of the time. Which gets real fun when you equip the wrist item that makes throwing knives auto-track targets – curving mid-flight even – allowing you to basically obliterate the army with a flick of your wrist.
I mean, whatever, #GameLogic amirite? It’s just sad when there are 50+ other weapons in the game and none of them are fun or useful despite firing explosive bullets or flaming shotgun shells because the enemy soldiers are resistant to all the damage. Again, did the developers intend you to pause the game mid-firefight and swap your entire arsenal of weapons to counter the one specific soldier you were shooting? It’s dumb. And don’t get me started on the wasted potential of the poison mechanic, where soldiers are supposed to go berserk and shoot each other and be extra weak to explosive damage. Or, you know, just kill them with fewer actual bullets or one arrow/knife.
Finally, the overall storyline and antagonists were weak as shit. This is perhaps the most damning bit to a Far Cry game. The story follows Dani as they go from attempted refugee to guerilla mastermind, but there’s a level of Far Cry shenanigans that just never develops. There are three major regions you unite by taking down the Castillo lieutenants stationed there, but only one of them has any personality whatsoever. Castillo himself is played by Giancarlo Esposito, but he must have been charging per line of dialog because he has more screentime on the box art and about as many dimensions.
Oh, and I guess the game is also attempting be Live Service? There’s a mini-game element where you can send out squads to roll dice on completing objectives – complete with XCOM-level success rates in terms of losing 95% rolls – but weirdly the squads take real-time hours to get to the target. There are also weekly Insurgent modes once you clear the campaign and Lola special missions to complete with co-op strangers for some reason. I’m all for designers throwing spaghetti at the wall and being inventive, but the spaghetti has to be, you know, at least partially cooked and hypothetically edible.
Overall, I regret stubbornly sticking to the end. But now it’s over, this post is done, and I won’t be thinking about Far Cry 6 any more.
The Haul
I purchased a number of games over the holiday break:
- My Time at Sandrock
- Dave the Diver
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands: Chaotic Edition
- Alan Wake 2
- Dead Island 2: Gold Edition
The (potentially) interesting thing is how four of them were from the Epic store and only one from Steam. As it turns out, throwing an additional 33% discount on top of the holiday sale discount is enough to get me to switch storefronts. Well, “switch storefronts,” with air-quotes. And, shit, I would’ve done it for like a $5 discount; I’m a cheap date. I do fully anticipate Epic to eventually stop with the free games and outrageous deals because they’re just hemorrhaging money, but for now I’ll soak up as much as I can and just assume them going bankrupt won’t lose my library.
I started writing about why I chose the five games above and not any of the other ones on my wishlist(s), but it started to feel a bit weird. Which has hardly ever stopped me before, mind you.
I dunno. My inclination to drop a game when it becomes less fun than something else I could be playing, is starting to run into guilt of a veritable landfill of half-chewed titles. I shouldn’t care – there is no one keeping score at home – but I’m also thinking about how silly it gets when talking about games to other human beings. “Oh, yeah, Baldur’s Gate 3 is amazing. I got 61 hours into Act 1 and then… stopped playing. Since August.” “Yep, 120+ hours in Cyberpunk 2077. Never finished.” “Elden Ring was beautiful, I agree. About 30 hours in, but haven’t touched it in 6 months.” WTF, mate?
Don’t get me wrong, there are still titles I’m very interested in that will be releasing in 2024. But at some point I hit a critical mass of straw such that my cognitive back can no longer sustain the dissonance. I need to get my shit together. Or abandoned shit. It’s getting a little ridiculous.
Welcome to 2024.
Night (City) and Day
Sometimes it ends up being the little things.
I was playing Starfield last week and wanted to rest in my bed (10% XP boost) before exiting my ship. Except one of my companions was standing inside the cockpit hatch. I literally couldn’t move past them. It wasn’t quite as bad as this, but it was close. “Why can’t I just sort of shove past them like in Cyberpunk 2077? That always felt satisfying.”
About an hour later, I was patching Cyberpunk and bought the Phantom Liberty DLC.
Granted, I was always planning to go back to Cyberpunk eventually, especially after the Skill revamp in 2.0. But let me tell you: being able to walk through a crowd of NPCs and not constantly be collisioned is exactly as satisfying as I remembered. And also reading random notes left on tables. And being able to have ammo. And having interesting dialog, set pieces, weapons, item modifiers, plot. You know, the “little things.”
I’ll probably be back to Starfield eventually. Bethesda also says Starfield will be supported for “years to come.” Cool. So… I guess I’ll see you in a few years then. Meanwhile, there are better games to play.
Dog Days
I have a tag called “ennui” and that’s what is currently going on over here:
a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.
Usually the ennui I experience comes as a sort of post-game depression after-effect of spending 6+ hours a day on some particular videogame and then beating it. That is not the case currently – in fact, I have found myself incapable of completing anything lately. The motivation just isn’t there. The proximate cause in these situations is typically that I really want to play X game but cannot, for whatever reason. You know, because the game isn’t on sale or some equally asinine thing.
This time around, it’s possible there are two things going on. First, I have a number of games in my “Early Early Access” Steam category, which I am deliberately not playing. Well, deliberately stopped playing in some cases. The second is that we have the imminent release of Baldur’s Gate 3 and some other titles, to which I want to play quite a bit. Hard to enjoy an independent experience when you know you’re under a time crunch to finish before heading to something you are anticipating more.
We’ll see where things go. By many accounts, BG3 is supposed to be 75-100 hours of playtime just for the main story, which is a bit absurd. On the other hand, I’ve been “throwing away” about a dozen hours on 7 Days to Die (and some other random titles) these past few days. I feel guilty doing so when I have Elden Ring and other meaty games waiting for completion, but that’s just the mood right now.
In An Age 
Hi-Jacked
Oct 28
Posted by Azuriel
Guys. Satisfactory has hijacked my brain. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but I have played basically nothing else in the last two weeks. I’m not into this genre, but I’m apparently into this game.
And I’m not even done. I mean, probably kinda sorta close? Still got two endgame items to factorized in this phase, neither of which I can build yet, and have spent the last three days working my way to harnessing Nitrogen gas. I think there is one more phase after this, but maybe not. Who knows.
Regardless, for now this shit has me wireheaded something fierce. Bounced off Factorio, didn’t get too sucked into Dyson Sphere Program in the days before it left Game Pass, but Satisfactory is apparently my jam. I doubt that I’m into it enough to like start another playthrough or whatever, but goddamn.
Looking at that list though, I don’t think it matters much. It has already joined an esteemed company.
In any case, that’s where I’ve been and/or will be for the foreseeable future.
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Tags: Automation, Factory-like, Satisfactory, What Am I Doing With My Life?, Wirehead