The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Gaming

Far Cry 5: First Impressions

The Evil Twin Of Brad Jones… Making Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall Slightly More Bearable

Sometimes I’ve played games that in one way or another hit really close to home for me, sharing some realism with current times and events. I like games like these because they pose a “what if?” scenario that begs for more questions. The Wolfenstein Series posed the question of what would happen if the Nazi’s won the war? The Bioshock Series gave us a glimpse of what a world run by drug addicts and racist religious zealots would be like, and I won’t even get into the Metal Gear series… we’d be here all night. This game brings you into an area of Montana overrun by religious zealots on steroids called “Peggies” and you have to try and liberate the land after a capture of their cult leader going awry.

This is my first Far Cry game that I’ve played, but so far I seem to be understanding the game mechanics ok. The only part I really had trouble with was the escape part in the truck. Other than that I’ve been having no issues being a stealth killer. :zorak: I’ve already got quite a few hours in, and I seem to have a similar problem with this game that I’ve also shared with Skyrim. There’s so much you can do that it’s easily to get lost in the world. I’ve just been bumming around from place to place, finding interesting ways of killing people from complete stealth to physics based accidents. I even killed a bear with C4 to finish a quest! Truly this game is as American as Apple Pies and bourbon.

I think this is one that I’ll want to stream in the future, but it will have to be Twitch exclusive. It has copyrighted music in it, and unlike YouTube Twitch doesn’t give me copyright bullshit over blurbs of music being played over a radio. I might have to pick back up on this again next week. I’ve taken enough screenshots to at least last the entire week though! :meeseeks:

From what I’ve played so far I highly recommend getting it during a sale like I did. It’s fun, but not full price fun. I’m also wanting to check out New Dawn, heard good reviews on that one.

Gaming / Hobbies

One Week Later Into Next Month With One Extra Hour

Sorry for falling off of the earth again… Work kept me jumping most of last week between home and work work. I never even got a chance to send the damned packages off…. I wish I lived near a post office that didn’t close at 4:30pm. Will have to try it again tomorrow or the next day. Halloween was probably the busiest day, but I rocked my teeth again with style.

I was pretty tired by the end of the day, and I had to sacrifice my plans to do a Halloween livestream due to taking an earlier shift the next day. But I made up for that last night by finally streaming a fixed Bayonetta:

This easily has to be one of the craziest games I’ve ever played, and it’s so fun and bizarre. Seems to be a reoccurring style Platinum Games is known for when comparing to other titles, they’re not afraid to go over the top. I kinda want to go through all of the ones in my collection and just do comparisons between each in terms if similarities. They all have their differences, but in game mechanics and other nuanced details make their games feel almost interconnected in a way. It would be weird to get each platinum character together for a super fight, but you can somewhat do that already if you mod Smash Bros.

I also did a little sewing today. I had to fix up a couple sweaters that were losing their stitching in certain areas, then I did a little repair job on one of the many shirts I customized years ago. In the center of this V Neck used to be a clear crystal gem that broke recently from old age. I decided to replace it with one of the spare seashells from my craft collection. I really need to go through my wardrobe again and see if there’s anything that I can redecorate, been awhile since I’ve done that. It used to be one of the many things I had fun doing before entering adulthood, heh. Now that they’ve lax’d our dress code again I might have to let my creativity flow a little more.

I thought I’d also check out Far Cry 5. I plan to save that for another post, but suffice to say I’m quite happy with it despite having to make a uplay account… Runs quite nicely, got a good framerate the entire time on Ultra. Now I can relive parts of my vacation in Montana!

I managed to compile an ending for one of the upcoming videos next month. I have one more short animation and then I’ll be able to complete another video to add to my list of releases. I still plan on releasing a Bomberman video at the end of the month; The second part will be released on the first week of December and then this episode will follow shortly after. I originally wanted to complete all four videos before releasing the first one, but figured the way that I’m ending it works. I might even have another video to go by then to follow it, so who knows?

Anyways… Open Thread!

Gaming

Evening Open Thread

Tried to do a Bayonetta livestream tonight but it failed miserably. For some reason it turns into a black screen after a particular cutscene when starting on a new game. So instead of sciencing it out I went with Plan B (Skyrim), still unable to escape the platinum curse…. until I pick them up again next time. The weekend is over and it’s time to get back into the working mindset. My tea is prepped, my lunch is set, my clothes are laid out, and my money is where my mouth is. I’ll have my weird dreams and begin a day of productivity and errands… and that’s the story I’m sticking to. :trollface:

Something tells me that I’ll be having some fabulous dreams tonight… I know I had a dream of some sort last night, but I don’t remember it.. Judging by the cold sweat I woke up in this morning I’m not sure if I want to remember or not. :zorak:

The things that I see when I close my eyes…

Gaming

I’m not sure if I’m really good or if everyone else is really terrible

Yes… I’m one of those weird people that can fit every single game on their computer.

I’m running the latest Steam Client beta, and if you haven’t heard they’re beta testing an all new design to get with modern times. One of the things I do like about it is the additional stats on each game page in the library. I was glancing at the new achievements and couldn’t help but notice the percentage of players that got said achievements. They’re much lower than I would expect… I mean how many people actually bought this with the intention of playing it? Or did that many people give up on it due to the difficulty curve?  I mean, while I might be getting my ass handed to me around every other corner I am at the very least continuing to progress through the game. So this is kind of interesting to me given that the PC port was released back in 2017, one would think more would have finished it.

Or maybe some of Bayonetta’s moves were a little too much for people. I have to admit I’m still getting used to killing people with magic Umbra Witch Magical Body Hair. It just isn’t something I see everyday in video games. :zorak:

Gaming / Open Threads

Saturday Night Open Thread

I’ve been meaning to send some birthday presents off for a couple of you, but between work and ailments (and a vacation) I haven’t had a chance to send a couple packages out. This seems to be my problem every year… I always get the gifts way ahead of time, but when it comes to actually shipping them it almost always seems like I hit a snag. If everything goes well I’ll ship them off Monday or Tuesday. Maybe I’ll do better at Christmas time if the Black Friday anxiety doesn’t entirely consume my psyche.

Between some BS at work, some stress caused by a new computer customer, and ongoing issues trying to get my webhost to get my mumble server back up and running just to name a few items… I haven’t been in the best of moods lately. I don’t think I’ll be doing much tomorrow apart from maybe yell at my webhost again about another issue that I don’t even feel like going into detail right now, as it’s so ridiculous that if I talk to them right now I’ll probably end up verbally severing their head. I’ll wait until tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be calm enough by then to talk to someone and resist the urge to randomly yell about lamb sauce.

I played more Bayonetta this evening, figured I’d kick off the weekend and relax by playing a game that often kicks my ass. I’ve been having issues taking screenshots of the game, might have to see if there’s a fix or something in my spare time. That game is all kinds of Japanese weirdness, perhaps if I can master it I’ll livestream the game. I’m too terrible at it right now to want to do a public shaming of myself, there are other excellent game candidates to choose from! :trollface: I did manage to get a couple achievements, as well as unlock a couple new abilities. I can now take the form of a wildcat to sprint or a crow to fly.

I hope everyone else is having a good weekend. :melon:

Gaming / Technology1

Local CoOp Over The Internet

Steam had an update recently to the public beta branch that allows you to play local couch co-op games with friends even without them owning the game! So say for example I want to play one of the Mortal Kombat games with a friend, but they don’t own any of them. I can launch the game and play it with them as if they were next to me on the couch! I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, and from what it sounds like it’s still not working with quite a few titles. But I do intend to check out this feature! This opens up some new possibilities with games that have no online support, and I might even have to purchase some digital board games when the kinks are worked out.

Now it’s just a matter of what to play first? :melon:

This post is brought to you by a company that has made fewer mistakes in over a decade than Bethesda has made in less than a year.

Gaming1

$100 Well Spent

As usual, Bethesda doesn’t disappoint with disappointments.

Update: Fallout 76 players who have signed up for Fallout 1st report that Private Worlds have dead NPCs and looted areas in them and can get invaded by other players Also, some say that the Scrapbox has eaten up all their materials, removing them forever

Just think… they could have bought a couple games with that money, ones that actually work properly and don’t have more Fallout 4 content than Fallout 4. :trollface:

Gaming1

You Are Not Hallucinating: Fallout 76 Has Private Servers For $100

I was forced to check my calendar today to see if it was April Fools day, as that would be the only day news like this should ever be allowed to be announced:

There’s never a dull moment in the world of Fallout 76, the online multiplayer game of post-apocalyptic survival and adventuring. Last week, publisher Bethesda announced that the game’s much-requested addition of computer-controlled characters was delayed until next year. Today, the publisher said that it will be selling premium subscriptions that will provide players with access to private servers at a cost of $13 a month or $100 a year.

In such a short time this game and other things surrounding it have garnered quite a bit history! I mean going all the way back to launch they’ve:

  1. Shoved an unfinished multiplayer game out the door for $60 USD
  2. Stiffed fans that purchased the Power Armor Edition of the game with nylon bags instead of promised canvas ones
  3. Put Nuka Dark Rum up for pre-order for $80 and shipped it 4 months later due to delays, eventually receiving a low quality product that didn’t quite live up to the ticket price.
  4. Produced Nuka Cola themed helmets that had to be recalled due to high amounts of mold
  5. Announces they will release it on Steam later on after all
  6. ???
  7. PROFIT!

Now you might be wondering “What will the cost of what is essentially two AAA title games net me over the peasants that paid full price? (assuming there’s a store still selling it for anything above $24 at this point).” Well, it gets you:

So not only do they expect you to dump money on the base game, spend money on cosmetics, and essentially pay $100 for a private server that can only fit 8 people on it while being showered with imaginary currency. Oh, and icons and emotes?! That makes it fucking worth it! Alongside the exclusive outfit that tells other users that you’re a tool that spent $100 to rent what is essentially your own dedicated server, which used to be something game developers offered users to make for themselves… For fuck’s sake GTA5 allows you to choose if you want to play in a public/private or friends only mode, and that’s just playing the damned game! What’s next? Super Ultra Premium Servers that offer you 12 slots, two outfits and an autographed love note from Todd Howard? I have to hand it to them, they really know how to make people stretch out their wallets on a game that has essentially been a living clusterfuck.

Rants

A Heads Up Would Have Been Nice…

Right when I think about going to bed my mumble server decides to go offline. Upon opening my BlueHost cpanel I’m greeted with an oversimplified version of the cpanel. I try to launch the server via a cronjob, nada. I try to find the process manager to see if it’s even running. They replaced it with an application manager that only deploys Ruby Applications. Trying to search the help center leads me to old instructions for the old cpanel. If I wasn’t obligated to go to work tomorrow I’d stay up and try to fix this, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow…. I didn’t even get an email about these changes.

This pisses me off. I’m not feeling well, and this is literally RIGHT when I have go to fucking bed.

Gaming

The Darkness II Has An Air Vent Issue

There’s an air vent that you have your Darkling buddy climb into, and he uses his powers so you can see from his perspective. You use his tiny body to traverse through the vents, but the game won’t let you walk past an invisible wall. This is caused by a similar issue that I found in the PC version of Killer Is Dead, an issue tied with framerate. If your game is getting more than 60 frames per second you’ll be stuck until you enable V Sync. I tried enabling it in game but it only seems to work when running in windowed mode, and setting V Sync through my Radeon Software (Windows) doesn’t seem to help. But switching it to Windowed, getting through that area of the level, and switching back to full screen seems to have worked. I’ll have to try this on Linux to see if Proton will make it run any better, just as an experiment. I might also try tweaking the configs to see if I can get it to enable V Sync in fullscreen mode by changing some convars in one of the ini files, or running a borderless window program. If you’re reading this and have had similar issues check out this link.

Other than that particular snag I’m really enjoying the game! I survived the interrogation scene and have chosen that as my stopping point until I pick up the game again; Hopefully I don’t run into anymore issues.