Monthly Update: June, 2015

Happy June everyone!  Unless June is an unhappy month for you, so in that case, "HAPPY JUNE EVERYONE ELSE!  And you too."

So updates from our gaming worlds it is now that we're on to talking about.

Within the realm of Dungeons & Dragons, I've come to the realization that I need to work on describing environments that the PCs are in when there are no descriptions prewritten from the module.  Sure I've got maps and whatnot, but for when the PCs are traversing along a well traveled road from morning to night through the grasslands of Faerûn, I need to do more than say "After you wake up, you continue traveling south along the road.  (Sound of a die rolling). . .The weather throughout the day is fairly windy and (die rolling). . . is uneventful.  You make it to about. . .here on the map by nightfall."  I also need to do a better job at describing enemies rather than by their name.  "A twig blight scuttles out of the bushes and goes after Dagnar."  I also feel that I should have a random name generator up because the few people that I've given names too have been "Joe" and "Bobby."

But Conklederp reminds me that people keep coming back so I must not be doing that bad of a job DMing descriptions.

I managed to finish Silent Hill on the PSP late last month.  It was about as stressful as I was expecting and after just over nine hours, I was able to see the fruits of my fingering labors.  There will be an article later in the week or the beginning of next week, somewhat akin to the Dead Space articles about my experience with the game rather than directly about the game.  It did come out 16 years ago after all.

I've also managed to progress a bit in Radiant Historia on the 3DS although I still find that I'm overthinking things as far as time travel and parallel universes.

In the PC gaming arena, Conklederp and I have been playing the proverbial fecal matter out of The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited.  Last week alone we clocked in around 17+ hours traversing the vast swaths of High Rock and portions of Hammerfell.  I don't know if we will keep pace this week as I have a lot of real world work I have to finish.

Lastly, there are going to be some changes coming up this month that DRoBOTTS and I have been working on for just about the last month.  We're both happy to see this happen (no we're not monetizing and no we were not bought out for 4.7 million after a tense bidding war between PC Gamer and Gamespot), so stay tuned for more vague updates.  I'm sure you'll enjoy our cryptic ramblings as much as we've had creating them.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Oughta Get Going

Monthly Update: May 2015

Happy May, or I guess "May the 4th be with you."  I'm sure y'all've already checked out the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer #2 by now and even if you have, it wouldn't hurt to watch it again. . .for the 47th time. . .this week.  There're also apparently some new pictures up from the movie which may or may not contain spoilers.  Ye've been warned. . .arrrr. 

Reaction to Konami cancelling
Silent Hills.  Decency people!
(Public posts means I don't have to
black out names).

Aside from that, it's been an interesting month in the Land of Gaming where apparently a fair amount of people were pissed off at one person or another for any reason or another.  There's been the Silent Hills cancellation, and Valve allowing modders to charge for use of their mods in Skyrim (but only if they want to charge) then nixing that idea after less than a week. On Friday however, and on a happier note, (so technically May) the splinters from Rare who created Playtonic have started a Kickstarter for their game Yooka-Laylee (which is, as of this writing, 412% over their target goal of $270,041 and it's been less than 12 hours since their email announcement).  And there's Rare's announcement that they've been working on something that's been a lot of fun for them that will be announced at E3 next month.

But that's all well and good for the rest of the world, but what about little ol' me?  I've been keeping pace with course work which has left some time for putzing around with a couple of video games, this time across multiple platforms.

I've gotten back into playing the Atlus time travelling multiverse fantasy game Radiant Historia, which originally came out on the DS back in 2011.  The game can be a bit overwhelming with multiple timelines and people/items/skills that you might need to learn in an alternate timeline before continuing with your current timeline.  At the moment I'm only transitioning between two separate outcomes, but I have  feeling that things will begin to branch off in the next chapter or two.  Thankfully you have the ability to speed through conversations that you've had umpteen times before and the music is good as far as JRPG soundtracks go.  I'll stick this one out until the end, barring any 4 Heroes of Light graves that I manage to dig myself into.

On the PC gaming front, I'm finishing up Borderlands (the first game) and I recently started Mass Effect 2.  My first off is that Borderlands is a great FPS with a crappily weak story.  Mass Effect 2 is a great story with too much online emphasis about who Shepard is going to doink.  Who Shepard (male or female) ends up with relationship-wise and what is unlocked in Mass Effect 3 based on your relationship choices from the previous two games seems a bit overwhelming on top of trying to save the galaxy.  It's almost like in order to experience the "full" game, you have to have a separate save file for each decision regardless if you have the option of using a paragon/renegade response; basically like in Radiant Historia.  And then there's Miranda, who apparently is nude with painted on clothing that is frequently emphasized by the camera panning or holding over her gluteal maximal region.  I know body paint's a thing, I saw a video about it once.

Lastly, and back to handheld, is Silent Hill (1999) which I'm playing on the PSP, influenced from all of the Dead Space posts last month.  Presently my biggest complaint is that the game screen doesn't take up all of the PSP screen that it should be able to.   There is an empty black space around the entire gaming-viewing window when it looks like the viewable window could have been stretched out diagonally in both directions by a couple of more pixels.  I've actually been conversing with Dr. Potts textually while playing and it's very reminiscent of 1999 when we were living in the same abode and would frequently talk to each other about where we were at in our respective games.  It was nice.  I should probably also check to make sure he has an unlimited texting plan, or I'll just revert to Google's Hangout app which Chreekat inadvertently introduced me to last week.

Leading up to the December release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, my unofficial plan is to finish Star Wars: Dark Forces and start another of the Star Wars games that Humble Bundle bundled together a few months back.  There might even be a "Why A Star Wars Game?" post somewhere in there as well.

Oh, and D&D has now reached a "regular basis" status for which I am very grateful.  Maybe a post in there about this as well later in the month.  Although I should probably get everyone to sign a release form, but being the DM, I can always make up some threats.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

A Feast of Friends

Monthly Update: March 2015

"Lousy Smarch weather!"  I can't help but think of "Smarch" whenever I see the month of March. although I guess that could be somewhat appropriate with the East Coast buried under a few meters of snow and us the Pacific Northwest being burned alive with average temperatures of 55° F, which is warm for February for us.  But onto why we're really here!

In February, we saw the Humble Bundle people put up a massive Star Wars game bundle with 11 games, none of which have I ever played before.  Later in the month I'll actually go into what makes a Star Wars game fun for me to play versus some other science fiction so be prepared for that one later in the month as well as for people to rip me a new one for not being über Star Wars canon knowledgeable.

I've also gotten back into Dungeons & Dragons (As I mentioned last month) and I am presently really enjoying the game.  For our group, I'm DMing and we've managed to get in two sessions, about every other week, but as with every D&D group ever, scheduling is always an issue.  I know that I said I would do a write up last month, but I may actually get around to it this month after I complete my final schooling electronic paperwork assignments for the month.  And I still need to get back on that painting wagon again, but I'm hoping for some nice detail brushes to come into my possession soon.  

On a similar note, I uncovered a D&D story that I wrote back in 2002-03 and I am going back, rereading and converting everything to a 5th Edition model.  The nice part about this is that I am figuring out some story elements that I sort of flubbed on or just ignored to make the story work and it's a lot of fun to go back into this world/story that I concocted.  I'll tell you what, it's somewhat nice to know that my storytelling capabilities didn't completely suck 12 years ago.

I've also decided to put Dragon Quest VI on the back burner for a bit as I just seemed lost with the story.  I don't know if it was because of intermittent play or because I am genuinely not as interested in the story as I want to be, which might be a fault in itself; forcing myself to play something because I feel that I'm supposed to like it is probably not the best way to play a game.  So now I'm going back to Radiant Historia, which I started very briefly I don't know how long ago because I love the concept of the game and the short amount of time that I did put into the game, I recall loving what I was experiencing.

Ah, and I also started up Borderlands after finishing RAGE, which both need articles of their own, which may or may not happen (see paragraph #3).  I am afraid though that it will turn into another Skyrim, which I always seem to be learning something new about once every few weeks.

Lastly, Conklederp and I will be attending the RePLAY orchestral video game concert up here in Portland in a few days so as I may have said (see paragraph #3), there may be an article at the same time.

JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

This Thing Is Too Precious To Ever Sleepwalk Your Way Through This.

P.S.  And then there's the whole Elder Scrolls Online going free later in the month and becoming Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited.  And I thought I read somewhere that the game is not considered canon?  I may need to look into that.

Today's Hipster Title: The Price We Pay Will Be Our Own

Super Sweet MS Paint Art!

So it's Veteran's Day, or at least, the day we observe it, as opposed to the actual Veteran's Day, which was yesterday, Sunday November 11th.  Part of me felt that I should post something Veteran related, but I don't know much of anything about that world.  I've had some friends over the years that were in varying branches and degrees of the military although those topics never readily came up.  So now I'm going to talk about something I will claim to know about.

The stock market.  That's something that I don't really know anything about either.  I know there's the NYSE, there's the NASDAQ, the S&P500, and there's some over in Europe and Japan too.  It's not the stock market itself that I'm conjuring, but just the way that the value of stocks moving up and down and how people will wait.....wait......SELL!SELL!SELL!!!!  That magic price, whatever it is in that magical number that tells them that now's the time to either sell or buy.  It's a bull market.

I'm that way with video games at Amazon.  Whenever I find a game I want, I'll put it in my shopping cart, then click the "save it for later" link so that I can watch the price fluctuate multiple times every day.  I've recently done this with Radiant Historia for the DS.

First off, Radiant Historia is a game by Atlus and the "gimmick" for this game is somewhat similar to Chrono Trigger in that you're able to move back and forth through time to alter events.  That's the extent of the information that I've looked up.  I don't want to know anymore than that.  So the game comes out at the regular DS price of $29.99.  At some point, the game jumped up to $75.99, possibly because it came out at the tail end of the DS's life, just as the 3DS was being released (RH: February 2011 & 3DS: March 2011) and because that's what seems to happen with niche RPG's from Japan.  Limited release in the US because distributors aren't sure if a popular game in Japan will sell well in the US.  Then it becomes popular with low stock.  I even checked at Gamestop, both new and used and the price was higher than I wanted to pay for a game.

Within the last week though, I noticed the price of Radiant Historia was dropping.  It went from $29.99 to $25 something to $22.  The morning of the 10th (Saturday), I told myself after waking up, that if the price was under $20, that I would purchase the game.  The price was $18.10.  I purchased it.  The conundrum was weather or not the price would continue to fall, or if it would jump back up to some insanely high price, which for me, is over $25.  The morning of the 11th, after Amazon told me my order had been shipped, the price dropped again to $16.20.  Sure I was annoyed, but not mad.  This morning when I checked, the price was again $29.99, which is still what the price is, 12am on the 13th.

I have absolutely no explanation for why the price at Amazon will fluctuate so drastically over the course of a week.  Maybe it works like the stock market?  Someone mentions something good about Atlus, the price goes up, metacritic hates the game, the price goes down.  Rotten Tomatoes thinks the guy who did voice acting for a game is a sell out tool because he forgot his indie roots when he signed with Warner Brothers, the price stays the same.  I can't say.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

First World Problems Abound

P.S.  I also have the same train of thought when it comes to buying gas.  One day the price will be $3.89 a gallon and it'll drop down to $3.65 the next day.  I'll need gas, but wait just in case it drops the following day.  That next day, I forget to buy gas because it's my two days off and I'm not driving anywhere.  Then, the day I get back in my car, I remember about the gas, and the price jumps up to $3.99 a gallon.  Stuff like that.