Sorry for lack of absence lately, but this does make for a good story. I’m getting over a cold that started on Thursday, right? It got really bad on Saturday, so after getting off work I decided to take a nap… and I didn’t wake up until Monday. Ok ok I did get up and use the bathroom and maybe get some medicine and chicken soup, but yeah… All I did was lay about sleeping off the cold, and for the most part I do feel better. I still have a dry cough and my nose randomly flares up, but overall I feel far better than almost a week ago.
I like the concept, as someone who runs with dual screens when I’m at home, and I think it would be pretty sweet to have multiple screens for a wider view or even extra places to put chats and recording programs, but that design… The motor that deploys the extra screens will wear out eventually. If they came up with a way to connect the displays to one another as optional pieces. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about another set of failing components down the line.
Another problem I have with it is the keyboard/touchpad layout. It makes sense to me to have it in the center to make room for the numpad, why did they take it out and put the touchpad there?
Overall I say Razer has a good idea with the displays, but the implementation… I guess in due time we’ll see how it holds up.
I’ll admit, I haven’t really been into the whole smart vehicle buzz that people have been interested in, but I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t want my own pet motorcycle. 😛
Not much to report. Quiet work day, cold weather, pizza and Serious Sam. Yesterday wasn’t that much different. Tomorrow I have work and a hair appointment. I’ll probably nap for awhile or cover myself under blankets with hot tea and the steam controller. Oh! And scented fucking candles. I’ve been making a habit of burning more of those, they have done a good job of keeping me calm, sometimes they work a little too well though as I’ve been falling asleep without keeping track. One moment I’ll be reading at the computer and then the next minute I’ll be waking up hours later.
If more of these cold days keep piling up I may have to invest in a space heater. I’m getting sick of leaving my computer on to stay warm!
Teh Interwebz are abuzz about CNN using hacking footage from the Fallout series to show how Russians are hacking.
This is right up there with Russians using pictures and from games to make their cases about how evil we murican’s really are.
Well, I guess if I ever get Fallout 4 to work properly on my laptop I can use the hacking terminals and scare people in the breakroom.. Oh wait, most of the people in my area voted for Trump, they’ll probably praise my Russian American patriotism.
The Steam Winter Sale brought forth lots of fun investments and gifts, I decided to venture into one that was gifted to me recently called Samurai Warriors 4-II. It looks promising, the art style is really beautiful and the dialogue is in Japanese, so you’ll want to use subtitles unless you’ve mastered the language. The characters themselves look pretty awesome! You even have the option of making your own to play outside of story mode:
It was bound to happen.
The gameplay looked like a lot of fun from what I’ve seen in videos. That was until I had a look at the control scheme:
Bit of a problem here… The mouse is non-existent in this game, as in it doesn’t even exist as a cursor. Pretty shitty considering other hack n slashes give you a keyboard and mouse option. Seriously, who thought these controls were a good idea? For example if you want to rotate the camera around you have to press buttons… I tried plugging in a controller, not my Steam Controller but one of my Logitechs, since this game is a port from Playstation I figured I’d try something close to its native control, but even that felt awkward. And the camera wouldn’t move with the right analog stick, fucking really? When that didn’t work I looked into Steam Controller configs. Some of them came pretty close to working out ok, but I think I’ll have to make my own from scratch.
This is a Japanese game, but for the love of Bob look at some other Japanese ports to PC for inspiration. The Devil May Cry games (excluding 3 because that was a shitty port) and Metal Gear Rising did a good job porting the game to work with both a controller or a keyboard and mouse setup. There really is no excuse for this.
I’m hoping the Steam Controller can fix this game up good with a special config. I really want to like this game, it’s pleasing to all the other senses, but play-ability thwarts appearances. The game has such positive reviews, so I’m hoping there is some sort of workaround.
Ordinarily I’d post about the game or games I finished in 2016, but I think I’ll take it in a different direction. Not because I didn’t finish any games, in fact I did finish one (Hard Reset Redux), but I’m playing it on a harder difficulty and making sure I collect some more info on it before I post a synopsis on it (and maybe play the original for a comparison). I think it would be more memorable to reflect on the total shitfest that was 2016.
How 2016 felt for many.
We watched celebrities and well known people meet their ends in one way or another. All tragic, though I think the most tragic of them all were Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. I know people my age may look upon this as a bunch of old people kicking the bucket, but the way they went seemed so surprising to me. I’m really at a loss, like anyone else I feel sorry for their families. We’re all human and I know what it’s like to lose someone you really care about.
Then we also had the election from hell, with two candidates that were pretty undesirable, even the primaries were rather pitiful. I definitely didn’t feel like I missed being a small (i) independent. Though after the election I’m finding it harder to remain that way, one party is a bunch of spineless cowards and the other won’t welcome you unless you’re a straight white male. On second thought walking my own path isn’t that bad. Nonetheless this doesn’t change any outcome. The electoral college and Russia spoke for most of the country. Idiocracy is in full motion, and having listened to these idiots at work bitch and complain about the Obama Administration not doing a single valuable thing I look forward to the looks on their faces when their state provided healthcare gets revoked, or when their young adult children get dropped from their insurance plans. Some might call it heartless, but I think it’s time to play this game at their level. Some of these changes are already going to have effects on my family, and they could care less with their IGMFY attitude.
Reading and dealing with peoples attitudes since the election ended has been about as painless as a root canal with no drugs, and I’m not the only one who seems to have noticed. I only follow a handful of blogs and websites as going to official news sites or watching it on TV only serves to make you less intelligent when you’re done watching. They either post false information, or they leave out important details. The conservative owned liberal biased press is a total clusterfuck and needs a full blown enema. I’m trying not to pay much attention as it doesn’t seem to be good for my health. I expect I’ll be ranting more on the blog about this kind of shit when I have the time and energy to, have to keep my blood pressure low somehow apart from the occasional FPS or Hack n Slash.
I should probably quit on this post while I’m ahead. It’s difficult to think of positive things right now, well… I’m alive. Though for some that’s going to be debatable. I’ll try again next year.
I’ve spent most of the day playing Aragami and experimenting with OBS Studio trying to fix a problem I’ve been having for the last couple of GPU driver updates. For whatever reason I can’t stream and record locally at the same time. Well, I can… But both the stream and local recording lag the fuck out. I don’t get it either, before the ReLive update everything worked fine when I went to stream and record at the same time. But then even rolling back didn’t fix the problem, same with rolling back OBS Studio. This sucks because if I want to stream something I won’t have a local copy for potential highlights.
I did play a bit with AMD ReLive, sadly that doesn’t allow me to simultaneously stream and record. Recording is actually quite good, while streaming seems to suck no matter which setting. I also don’t care for the interface, why does everything have to be tiles and buttons? OBS Studio gives you all these sliders and options, and it looks more organized. Not filled with a bunch of friggin tiles. I hope AMD improves their GUI design, because if they want to incorporate game capture (which is a really good idea and does run well on the local recording side) they need a cleaner design.
The Steam Winter Sale is in full swing, and I’ve already been playing one of the games I’ve purchased from it so far.
Aragami is a stealth indie game developed on the Unity Engine. You’re an Aragami, a being made of shadows. You have been summoned to save a girl named Yamiko. She is being held prisoner by the army of light or the “Kaiho”. She talks to you via projected hologram.
Yamiko guides you through the game and teaches you how to traverse the shadows, you can leap from shadow to shadow using Shadow Essence, as well as unlock other skills by finding and spending scrolls on them, which I haven’t done yet (but I have TWO SCROLLS). Light makes you weaker, the shadows keep you strong. Don’t go towards the light! Offhandedly, Yamiko tells you that when the sun rises it will kill you. Fortunately this game doesn’t have a day/night cycle. 😛
Aragami runs on Windows, Linux, PS4 and Mac. This is probably one of the more smooth Unity Engine games I’ve played, though the graphics are rather simple but work well with the art style. Reviews for the game on Steam are “Very Positive”, Metacritic gives it an overall average rating of 70/100 on PC, and 71/100 on PS4. I’ve only played an hour of it thus far, and so far it’s been really nice. 🙂 I might install this on my laptop and put together a Steam Controller config (unless someone else has already, which is highly possible).
For Christmas I get the next couple of days off. I had to work today, but went in a couple hours early (huge freight load) which I was happy about, the last couple of weeks have been unbearable with last minute shoppers who get easily outraged that we’re out of something. There was even someone who was aggravated that we weren’t open on Christmas day, or open all of Christmas eve… God forbid allowing us one fucking day a year to be with our friends and family on a holiday. Meh, I’m sure one of these days it’ll be taken away from us too like the other holidays. Only a matter of time…
I have a nice collection of gifts I’ll be unwrapping gifts tomorrow, and I’ll be in good company. Plus steak and lobster will be made, one of the few Christmas traditions we have upheld is the annual steak and lobster. I don’t have a tree to put my presents under, but that’s ok because I have a bookcase made of wood… so I hope that counts.
