With all the depressing stuff going on, and a depressing season to look forward to it’s nice to find a distraction here or there.
3 days to properly defeat a game boss… No wonder I could never get into these types of games.
That time of the year again
There was going to be a Vlog today, but Bioshock Infinite kept crapping out whenever I tried to Alt+Tab to set it up in OBS classic. I’ll try to aim for next Thursday or Friday, possibly both if I have enough time.
Speaking of time, there was none today. We received a ton of Black Friday freight on top of regular freight that had to be broken down. I remember last year and even earlier this year when a freight load was this large I was either scheduled or requested to come in early. But due to our shrinking numbers in people and hours that seems to be impossible, much like finishing up today. It was impossible, especially with every Tuesday being Geriatric Tuesday until Christmas.
That of course brought in some interesting people persons. There was one old man that grabbed a screen protector for an iPhone 6 and thought it was an iPhone. Another one wanted to know which iPhone case worked for her Samsung Galaxy Sky, and there were others. Between the excessive amount of merchandise and the constant traffic with a bare bones staff it just kind of ate at me. I can’t wait until Christmas just to get this damned stuff over with.
Awaiting the inevitable
I’ve been meaning to write this for awhile now, but haven’t been able to convey my thoughts correctly into words. Even now I find myself struggling in my train of thought over last Tuesday. I took a nap after getting off of work and awoke to find that the groper in chief was chosen to lead our country. I was stunned, and to a degree I still find myself feeling numb. The election itself wasn’t that great, and I wasn’t really overjoyed by either candidate from the primaries to the final conclusion, but I cast my vote and hoped for the best. Trump won, he actually won. Despite all the insane things he said, despite his own scandals, despite openly admitting to how he treats women he won. I guess 55% of the women voting for him were willingly touched.
I’m trying not to dwell too much on it, though that’s been difficult. I have family and friends that will suffer from some of the changes should they happen, like losing their healthcare, going after minimum wage, gay marriage, etc. But hey, it’s what the country wants, and that’s what the country gets right? Yes, this will hurt a lot of people, but I can see this backfiring quite easily. And when it does I’ll be smiling a yuge smile.
I’ll just sit back and watch the inevitable shitstorm unfold since really there is nothing else to do. Protesting won’t get anything accomplished and states threatening to leave are foolish. I would, however like to put myself up for adoption to either go to Canada or Norway. 😛 Hell, people seem to think I’m from another country anyway. 😛
It’s already looking pretty entertaining isn’t it? Trump is giving his kids positions in his cabinet, and the rest of his choices are looking like something that would belong on a reality show. Hell I’m surprised we’re not turning this into one. Heck, you could call it “The Apprentice: White House Edition”. Which is kinda funny if you think about it, as Trump in this case is literally an Apprentice, having to learn the ropes of his new role. I wonder how he’ll handle a position where he can’t fire people?
I think I need to drown my depression in games again. Maybe at lunch I’ll play some Bioshock Infinite, it might prepare me for the next 4 years. 😛
The Lunch Vlog: Blade Kitten
My first attempt at a themed vlog about my lunchtime gaming adventures with discussions of food and other stuff.
Some improvements have been made to the new Skyrim
Thanks to some help on the Steam forums and a reddit link I can now play Skyrim Special Edition at 60 fps.
I did it a little differently from what the link provides. I disabled V-Sync but set the target framerate in another program (I used Radeon Crimson). So far the game is performing faaaaar better than when I tried the other day. Now my only gripe is the audio. It’s not as crisp as the original due to the audio compression they decided to use for this PC version as well as XBox One… For some odd reason the PS4 version is as crisp as the original PC release. :S
I think I’ll dink around with it a bit here and there, but I won’t get too invested in until more mods emerge.
Thoughts on the new Skyrim
I got to watch the new Skyrim release, followed by the ultimate trainwreck of posts on the Steam forums regarding all of the bugs. One of many is framerate issues, I happen to be in the camp of people who for some strange reason have a 30FPS cap. I have read that on R9 290’s and 290x’s aren’t being bothered by this. Once again the majority of people who seem to be the least bothered by anything are the NVidia crowd, and even then there have been some exceptions to the rule. Mainly people on the latest series of cards are suffering while people on the previous generations are more likely to run the game decently. And even then I have spotted some people on 970’s who are also experiencing framerate issues.
Apart from my unfortunate FPS cap the game seems to be running fine. I did forget how ugly the vanilla textures are… On top of adding the new lighting and shadows to the game would it have killed them to add 4K textures? I mean don’t get me wrong, I still game at 1080p but… $40 USD for godrays, nicer shadows and 64bit support seems a tad overpriced for anyone buying the game new.
As far as modding goes I need to look more into that. Bethesda seems to really want you to join their website to use mods, although I did notice there is a new version of Nexus Mod Manager out that will support the new Skyrim. Though in all honesty I think I’ll wait for the game to mature a bit before I venture into modding. As it is my older Skyrim keeps a better framerate, plus it has some mods in it that I consider essential… Also my game is far more fabulous.
And no. I’m not comparing modded Skyrim to the new vanilla. I just wish they would have improved the texturing. The Special Edition looks like they took the free enhanced texture DLC from 2011 and called it good.
A new Resident of Evil.
With Halloween coming up I decided it would be a potentially fun idea to try out some Resident Evil titles. I never had the chance to back in the days of the PS1 and interactions with sunlight, and the closest I ever got to playing was over at a friends house when I was a kid. I played some of the remastered original and had a bit of fun, though I found the save mechanic to be annoying. I feel like I’m playing a memory game, like Old Maid… minus the cards and plus the zombies that want to eat me. What kept me going was the puzzle aspect and multiple areas to explore. Multiple possibilities seem to keep me well invested in a game, especially with all of the “What if’s” and “Did I forget to check the bathtub for dead people” questions that I ask myself regularly. I also tried a bit of Resident Evil 0 which seems to have a similar mechanic to RE1, but didn’t get too far as of yet.
I’ve found that RE0 and 1 so far work far better with a controller, playing them with a keyboard and mouse is 50 shades of awkward when you don’t use the mouse for anything other than the two buttons. I’m sure if I played around a bit I could bind all the buttons to the keyboard, but a that point you might as well say screw it and fall back in your chair with a controller. I will say that both games did put my Steam Controller’s rumble emulation to a good test.
Then I got sucked into Resident Evil 5 which takes some of it’s ideas from the original game, but has a different feel to it. That one I have no issue playing with a keyboard and mouse, and I’m fairly sure I could get it to work with the Steam Controller too. My only gripe is the turning in that game, it nearly induces vomiting… though that might just be the mulled wine I bathed in this evening.
For the hell of it I decided to lookup the original version. God… I forgot how horrible the voice acting was! I also noticed there is a PC version of the original… And some other research shows that some of the other games were released for PC as well. I guess if I ever feel the itch to play them I’ll have the option. Though depending on how the games function it might be easier to run the games through an emulator instead.
Cutting loose in Shadow Warrior 2
So far I have really been enjoying the sequel to the 2013 Shadow Warrior. That has been my primary distraction for yesterday/tonight, and much like the other Flying Wild Hog games it’s been quite a treat. The changes they’ve made since their last release seem to remind me of Skyrim/Fallout/Borderlands in terms of crafting and weapon capabilities. You can also “enchant” your weapons, and replace them at anytime with better ones. There’s lots of weapons that can be purchased and found in drops. Not quite like Borderlands or Fallout but close enough to keep me entertained.
The visuals don’t disappoint. Aside from the satisfying First Person Slash and Shooting aspect there is a lot of detail to drink in, there’s even diaries and notes you can pick up from either exploring the levels or from random drops. I’ve been enjoying a good read whenever I either get stuck at a certain point or if I just don’t feel like doing much else.
And despite sneaking in NVidia gameworks I haven’t had much of an issue with optimization. I’m running the game fullscreen on highest settings, and I seem to stay above 60FPS. My framerate seems to average in the 80’s, which I think could be better tbh since Hard Reset Redux and the 2013 Shadow Warrior had a higher framerate with the same visual quality, but that’s plenty enough for if I want to record. Although I have noticed some lag when I hack and slash a bunch of debris on the screen. And believe me, there have been points where I have lots of body parts flying across the screen. There was even a point tonight where I had been slashing on a dead demon for a good minute before realizing it had been dead for awhile… I seem to have taken quite a liking to games that let you cut things to tiny pieces. I guess I’ll have to place this on my laptop for those hectic days where I want to vent.
Late Night Open Thread
For the first day of my vacation I mostly stayed in out of the cold weather playing mostly Hard Reset Redux and Shadow Warrior 2. I guess it was a Flying Wild Hog day. 😛 I did notice with the new patch to SW2 I had to place all of my accumulated skill points. And of course at the end of the night I had to turn to my go to game for absolute relaxation:
The new and improved Skyrim is slated to release in just a few days. I’m thinking I’ll download it, but I won’t invest much time into it until I know most or all of my mods will work in it. Speaking of mods has anyone seen this for the console versions? Mod limits of 1 GB for PS4 and 5 GB for XBone? Of course with the PS4 version the mods are limited to vanilla assets only. Wow, Microsoft actually did something appealing for a change?
Of course on PC we won’t have this problem. After reading the article though I did have to take a look at my Skyrim install, it’s a nice 49 GB in size. The joys of not being held back by a console ecosystem. 😛