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Stream Update and some Schedule stuff!

15 Jan

Hey all! Wanted to make a bit of a quick post to do a stream update. Basically just wanted to detail out some of the games I plan on playing on stream and my current schedule. Schedule is mostly the same, though I do plan on streaming more on Friday/Saturdays. It is hard for me to commit to a time on those days though. Current Schedule looks like this (all times Central time):

  • Sunday: 5PM – 10PM ~ Playing mostly old shooters this day. I haven’t quite started this yet, but I will NEXT Sunday. Starting with Painkiller. I plan to also play Serious Sam and Heretic as well.
  • Monday: Off day.
  • Tuesday: 6PM – 10PM ~ 6 to 7:15 is mostly just goofing off. 7:15 to 10 right now is Rainbow Six: Siege on PS4. Not sure how much longer that’ll last though.
  • Wednesday: 6PM – 10PM ~ Toss up date. I try to play games with friends this day though, but sometimes schedules mess up.
  • Thursday: 6PM – 10PM ~ Same as Tuesday
  • Friday/Saturday: I will cast one or both of these days, but like I mentioned above I’m not really able to commit to a specific time.

Here is also a list of games I’m currently playing:

  • Rainbow Six: Siege (PS4 – FPS PVP)
  • Final Fantasy 15 (PS4 – JRPG)
  • Nier (PS3 – JRPG)
  • Killing Floor 2 (PC – FPS MP PVE)
  • Painkiller (PC – FPS SP) – Sundays only.
  • Factorio (PC – Factory Simulator)

There are a few other games I want to finish up, but sorta not sure I have it in me. Namely, Dishonored 2, Shadow Warrior 2, and Gears of War 4. I’m also not into a lot of PVP stuff right now. Mostly because Overwatch has sorta died off for me again, and I’m waiting for Midair, Diabotical, LawBreakers, and Sky Noon. As always though, I’ll randomly be trying new stuff occasionally too. Especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays prior to Siege.

I haven’t started this season of anime yet either, I’ve got a  list of things I want to watch though. I might make an anime post to weeb out a little bit on 🙂

That is all I wanted to do with this post! If you’re interested in any of that fun, or even have some FPS or JRPG games to suggestion, head over to my stream at twitch.tv/Klokworkk or hit me up on twitter at twitter.com/Klokworkk!

 
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Posted by on January 15, 2017 in Misc.

 

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New Year Updates + Mini-GOTY thing.

09 Jan

Welp 2016 is over and that shit was a bit of a wild ride. It was personally a fairly good year for me at least! I’ve been battling with this post for a while, because usually I like to talk about the 5 big games of the previous year that I thought were really awesome, but I’m honestly struggling this year. A lot of really meh or just okay games released this year, and not a whole lot of really great stuff. Really the most fun I had this year came mostly from games that didn’t even release this year. Various betas and such (more on that later). So here we go, here is me trying to find more than 1 game that really stuck out this year:

DOOM (2016)

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DOOM was THE clear GOTY for me. Despite a relatively unremarkable multiplayer on launch, the single player of DOOM fucking knocks it out of the universe. The best attempt so far at modernizing the ‘old school’ model of FPS games, only seconded to the Wolfenstein game from 2014. I literally can’t think of a single negative thing to say about the single player portion of this game. It is just fan-fucking-tastic from every angle. Great gunplay, amazing soundtrack, brilliant level design, thrilling fights, it is really damn near perfect. For a game that went through some development hell, this game came out shockingly great. If it wasn’t for the really bleh multiplayer that got outsourced to a different studio the game would be nearly perfect. Also, for folks interesting in how DOOM became what it is today, check out NoClip’s DOOM Documentary.

Overwatch

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Anyone that knows me knows I have a bit of a Love/Hate relationship with Overwatch. An extremely fun casual shooter with a great cast of heroes, mostly polished gameplay (Looking at you, Roadhog Hook), and fairly streamlined experience. Blizzard took the Team Fortress 2 team based hero shooter formula and polished it up to a sheen and brought all there dedicated fans along for the ride. This is a great FPS game to play with friends and not take very seriously. Lots of fun characters to play ranging from difficult to use heroes but perfect for FPS veterans all the way to simple to use characters so people newer to the genre can still be successful. The barrier to entry to the game is extremely low. Pretty much anyone can jump in and have fun. Where things get a little dicey is when you start talking about the high end/competitive part of the game. Blizzard has never been too great at game balance, and this still shows in Overwatch. There have been plenty of awkward meta shifts from one basically overpowered thing to another basically overpowered thing. They fix one thing about the game that is a little busted, and another new busted thing is either found or introduced, to a bit of a frustrating degree. Blizzard has also been at odds with the community multiple times on some subjects. For example, the community essentially had to bitch about Competitive play need to be 1 Hero Limit (1HL) from the start of the game’s competitive seen in Winter of 2015. They’re still doing it now, with the most recent MLG event in Vegas, Blizzard pressured MLG to create a standard map pool and not let the teams pick/ban maps. This map Pick/Ban phase is literally a thing in every other FPS with a competitive scene. There are a variety of reasons for this: Teams practicing certain maps, Knowledge of a teams weaknesses or strengths on a certain map or mode, or some maps just being flat out BAD for competitive play (See: Every Capture Point map in Overwatch). There are a few other things as well, No difference in SoloQ or Teamed ranked, The Capture Point Maps all need to be overhauled, Roadhog’s Hook needs to be consistent, no true ‘demo’ or replay system, and more. So, all of this basically to say that the ‘core’ game is extremely fun, but the overall competitive nature of the game has a lot of growing it needs to do. I’d love for the game to get it all right, and not to go the crash and burn way of the competitive scenes of Starcraft/Warcraft/Heroes Of The Storm, but if Blizzard’s history with eSports, Balance, or Listening to the right part of the community are any indicator it might be a rough ride. I will say that the fact that this game has had huge success has ignited other people to either step back into the genre or realize that there is still a market for this type of shooter, which is a big plus for me!

Final Fantasy XV

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I love the Final Fantasy series. I also think that every Final Fantasy game from X onward has been pretty garbage (excluding MMOs). X was okay, X-2 had promise but ultimate was pretty bad, XII bored me very quickly, and the XIII trilogy was just horrid. When the ‘new’ FFXV was announced I definitely had pretty low expectations. Hearing about all the changes they planned to make from what XIII was had me hopeful, but still ultimately I just assumed the game would not be that great. The moment I started to get a bit more excited was when I played the original demo. Good animations, good combat system, nice sense of scale, good voice acting, and that part where you got to summon Ramuh was fucking awesome. After spending around 5 hours in that 2 hour demo, I was really pumped for the game. Luckily, the game actually delivered and wasn’t a huge let down. The great visuals, combat, scale, and style of the game I got from the demo carried over to the full release of the game. It is definitely open world, which is generally a bit of a turn off for me, but it doesn’t get SO HUGE that it feels like a pretend MMO (Like Xenoblade Chronicles X or Final Fantasy XII) which is something I LOATHE. So far I’ve spent around 75 hours with the game, and haven’t quite beaten it. I’m the insane type of person with these games that has to do everything before beating it you see (which is basically the worst for open world games, lol). Luckily there aren’t any super annoying collectibles or anything dumb like that. All just Side Quests and Main Story missions. How they use Side Quests is pretty cool too. The majority of them will be big chains kinda like you’d see in WoW or something, but the chain will end in a dungeon crawl. These dungeon crawls are actually really fun as well. Lots of tough monsters, maze like areas, plenty of secrets and items to find, with some really cool mini-bosses and big bosses. I have thoroughly enjoyed the game, which makes me excited about the series again. It isn’t without its faults though. I don’t care for the magic system in the game, as a start. Also, apparently, later in the game (I haven’t gotten to this section yet) there is a part that is in I believe Chapter 13 where you only play as Noctic which basically everyone says was pretty horrid. Still, I’m not sure that one chapter will be able to ruin the rest of the game for me. If it does I’ll edit this! Or something.

Stardew Valley

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I legit forgot this came out this year. February seems like so long ago! I actually recently reinstalled Stardew Valley after I had thought I was finished with it after 45 hours. I was ADDICTED to this game when it first released. A great Harvest Moon style Indie game for the PC. This is basically the perfect Zen game. Farm your crops, farm monsters, farm all the things, sell all the things, make bank, collect stuff, unlock things, get a waifu, and repeat. None of it was super challenging, but it was insanely addictive. Even now I just want to sit here and type about all the stuff there is to do over and over again and I’m getting itches to just load the game up. This is a good example of a game that when it released I expected nothing from it, randomly bought it after hearing about it on a podcast, and it gave me such a great experience. This game is totally worth the $15.

I honestly can’t think of another game to add to that list. I can do a few honorable mentions though (with a small snippet about the game):

  • Titanfall 2: Multiplayer is more of the same, but still really smooth and polished. Single Player actually exists and it is okay. I got a little bored of it. Short and sweet though.
  • Battlefield 1: Do you like Battlefield? Then you’ll like Battlefield 1. Just like Titanfall 2, this is just more of the same, but a really polished experience. I still suck at flying planes. Vehicles are easier to kill though, that is nice.
  • Uncharted 4: Gameplay was really smooth. Story was okay. Just more Uncharted (catching the theme here?).
  • Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE: Really fantastic battle system, great visuals, and extremely animu lol. I almost added this to the above list, but I have only played the first couple chapters. Need to finish it.
  • I am Setsuna: Fantasic JRPG in the style of Chrono Trigger. A good story with nice pace and great characters. Fairly cheap too! Worth the price.
  • Killing Floor 2: I almost put this above as well, but I’ve only recently dived into this game. An extremely satisfying ‘horde’ shooter with a great soundtrack and good gunplay. I can’t stress the fact of how satisfying the shooting feels though.
  • Pokemon Sun/Moon: Basically more Pokemon. Some minor changes to the formula, but in the end the same ole thing. Still really fun though, if you’re into it.

I can’t really think of anything else to add to that list! Next I’ll just add a small list of games I’m looking forward to next year!

  • Persona 5: HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG
  • LawBreakers: I’ve talked about this before on here, but I’m still pumped about this game.
  • Diabotical: Backed this on Kickstarter. Still looks like a great arena shooter.
  • Midair: Also backed this on Kickstarter. Tribes style shooter, woo!
  • Quake Champions: Looks like this will be ID’s take on the Hero shooter. I’m hoping it works out really well.
  • Sky Noon: This looks like a really neat take on some FPS arena action. Check this shit out.
  • Prey: BECAUSE I’VE BEEN WAITING FOREVER. It’ll probably suck though 😦
  • Strafe: FPS with really old graphics and randomly generated levels. Played it a few conventions and it was fun! Devolver Digital is publishing it too, which is a good sign.
  • DUSK: FPS with throwbacks to the old style of the genre. Lots of Quake/Doom/Heretic/etc vibes. Check out the trailer, it is probably the best trailer ever.
  • South Park The Fractured But Whole: Loved The Stick of Truth, I’m hoping this game is just as good.
  • Ghost Recon Wildlands: This game looks more like a FarCry game than anything else, but I still really like the concept. I’m down with some COOP open world mission based FPS. I wanted to like The Division, but that game’s end game stuff ruined it. I’m hoping Ubisoft learned from that and don’t make the same mistakes with Wildlands.

Welp, I think that is about all I wanted to type about that stuff. Hopefully next year has a lot more gems than this year!

Stream Schedule is still the same. Tuesday – Thursday 6PM CST – 10PM CST and Saturday 5PM CST – Whenever. Friday Jan the 6th is a new Diablo Season, so I’ll be streaming my leveling up process from 7PM CST until I pass the fuck out. I’ll probably Stream later today too since I’ve got the day off. I want to stream more Killing Floor 2 :). I”m also planning on fixing some of my FPS ‘sins,’ I’ve never played Painkiller or Serious Sam for example.

Note: I forgot to publish this last week >.>.

 
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Posted by on January 9, 2017 in Misc.

 

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Quick Update: Stream Schedule for the next month or two.

04 May

Hello everyone!

I’ve made some really light changes to the stream schedule based on what I’m playing with friends and such. I’ll likely keep doing this as I finish off other games and such. I’ve dropped a lot of games recently from just not getting really hooked on them :(. Hopefully that changes soon. Anyways, all of this information is also posted on my channel at http://www.twitch.tv/Klokworkk under the schedule heading.

  • Monday: 8PM – When we stop ~ Toukiden Kiwami 4 player COOP with the GG guys. Possibility of also streaming a random game starting earlier.
  • Tuesday: 6PM – 10PM ~ Random Game
  • Wednesday: 8PM – When we stop ~ Toukiden Kiwami 4 player COOP with the GG guys. Possibility of also streaming a random game starting earlier.
  • Thursday: 6PM – 10PM ~ Borderlands series 4 player COOP with the Four Horsemen of the Derpocalypse.
  • Friday & Saturday: Still totally random.
  • Sunday: 3PM – 8PM ~ Series Run Sunday – Currently still FF8 (just got passed the half way mark).

 

Stuff for the future:

  • I plan on hitting Witcher 3 pretty hard once that releases, It’ll likely take over Tuesday and I might carve out some time on Saturday for it, though it’d be iffy.
  • I also plan on finally making a video to show my setup, since I’ve made a TON of changes. Hopefully I get some time to do that this week.
  • I still also need to do an April blog update. I’ll try to make time for that soon.

 

That about covers it for that quick update.

See you all later!

 
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Posted by on May 4, 2015 in Misc.

 

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Feb & March 2015 Update!

16 Mar

Hello friends!

Last month in a half has been pretty interesting. Me and my brother beat Dying Light and Halo 1 (Master Chief Collection version) in Bro-OP, I finally managed to mop of Final Fantasy 7, I’ve started Xenoblade Chronicles, I’m still working on Bravely Default, I got and beat The Order: 1886, I finally played and beat Hotline Miami in preparation for Hotline Miami 2, and I went to SXSW yesterday! I’ll touch on all of these things and maybe more! Woo and shit. Let’s start from the top of that list.

So Dying Light is the game that Dead Island wishes it was. It is a great open world zombie survival game. The parkour bit did a lot to help the game, and it worked amazingly. There were a few jump puzzle style things that were mildly annoying, but it didn’t detract much from the experience. Combat was quite smooth and very responsive, which quelled my biggest complaint about Dead Island since the combat in that game felt like shit. They definitely worked out the kinks with that for this game. This is pretty much the perfect coop game too. If you’ve got a friend/relative/whatever that is a gamer and you’re looking for something to coop, this game is really solid for that. I played the entire game start to finish over about a month cooping it with my brother. We kind of picked it up as a thing that we’d only play together coop (side note: It is possible that this game might be boring to play solo. That can be a thing. I wouldn’t know because I never played it solo). My only complaint about this game is the last 30 minutes to an hour (Basically the very last mission). You’re forced to do it solo for starters, where I had been cooping through the entire game before. It was a fairly mundane ‘lets climb up a giant tower’ exercise. There were some zombies and stuff, but aside from one section at the very start of the mission where you’re running from Volatiles (super zombies) there aren’t many threats. At this point of the game I was slicing through regular zombies like butter, and even a single special infected wouldn’t give me much trouble. So you get all the way up to the top, and you go through the final fight sequence of the game. Which is horrible. I won’t spoil it, but it was very disappointing. After this you’re left with a fucking massive cliff hanger ending. It was a really shitty end to an otherwise really great experience. If you’ve got a coop partner, definitely look into this game. If you’re running solo, maybe wait for it to drop down in price some. Still a really solid game though.

After Dying Light me and my brother started playing through Halo. I don’t really have much to add there, other than getting my stream setup for the Xbox One was a real bitch. I was having loads of trouble with my audio and it was really frustrating. We eventually figured it out, but I’ve got to figure out a solution so that people can hear my brother when we voice chat on Xbone or PS4. I’m thinking we’ll just leave Skype open with stream mics up. Should have a Bro-Op session sometime this week where we can try that out.

FF7 update is easy. I beat FF7 fairly shortly after I started streaming. I was closer to the end than I thought I was. Also started FF8, we’ve had two sessions of basically just early game grinding to make the rest of the game easier. Going towards getting Lionheart in Disc 1 so that the rest of the game is a cakewalk. FF8 is one of the FF games I’m not the biggest fan of, so I’m trying to make it as painless as possible. That is about all I’ve got there. That journey will continue – on most Sundays >.>.

In the JRPG front I’ve started Xenoblade Chronicles and I’m still working on Bravely Default. I’m liking Xenoblade Chronicles well enough, but I’m not really a big fan of MMO elements in JRPGs and the world seems a little too big right now. Like I’m getting a FF13 feel of doing way too much running. Anyways, Bravely Default is still really good. I’m getting to the point of the game where it starts repeating itself a few times. I’ve been progressing really slowly there, but it is still enjoyable.

And now the Order: 1886. I’m sure you’ve heard that the game is ‘short’ (It took me about 6 hours to beat). I don’t necessarily think this is an innately bad thing. One of my favorite Xbox 360 games was fairly short (Dead Space). The Order’s problems don’t really have much to do with the length. The biggest problem I think is that the game seems to mostly be a proof of concept or ramp up piece for a sequel. You spend the majority of the game investigating happenings and thwarting bad guys until the truth is revealed and then the last hour of the game lots of really interesting things happen that lead to a cliff hanger ending. The story is partially resolved but not fully, and it ends very much like ‘you’ll be the hero we need not the hero we want’ sort of thing. It is worth playing, but waiting until the summer lull and maybe a price drop is probably the way to go.

Hotline Miami was a game I was always interested in but never sat down and played. I managed to do this the week before last, as I was getting pumped for Hotline Miami 2. I’m going to be pretty short and sweet here. The game is really fun, very enjoyable, and has a fantastic sound track. If you haven’t played this by now you should. I haven’t started Hotline Miami 2 quite yet, but I will soon.

Last thing on the list was SXSW gaming expo. This was my first time going to this. The expo hall had more stuff than PAX South, but was a bit smaller. There were no ‘free’ panels I don’t believe. You had to pay for the actual conference (and it wasn’t cheap). I did get a chance to play some Axiom Verge and Titan Souls. I can’t fucking wait to play these games all the way through. They’re both soooooooooo good. Great visuals and gameplay in both of them. I think I spent a solid 30 minutes on both since neither was too crowded. These two games need to hurry up and come out so I can put way too much time into them.

I’m going to go back to kind of giving a general idea of what I plan on playing during the week. It’ll be very rough, but the games I’m playing should stay pretty static. Some days can get swapped around though. I’ll try to post these on Monday of every week

Monday: Minecraft Mondays! Feed-The-Beast Infinity

Tuesday: Final Fantasy 15 demo.

Wednesday: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD // Maybe Halo 2 BROOP

Thursday: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD // Maybe Halo 2 BROOP

Friday: MAYBE D&D. Maybe Ori and the Blind Forest Late Cast.

Saturday: MAYBE D&D. Maybe Ori and the Blind Forest Late Cast.

Sunday: Final Fantasy 8 (Series Run Sundays).

Future Games from Backlog: Xenoblade Chronicles, Bravely Default, Shadows of Mordor, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Sunset Overdrive, Hotline Miami 2.

That about wraps it up. Thanks for reading and as always I really appreciate the support.

 

 

 
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Posted by on March 16, 2015 in Misc.

 

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TL;DR The story for the last 6 months or so

01 Feb

Hello friends!

So I’ve been a little MIA from the blog for the last few months and a fair few things have happened. I’m going to do the abridged version of all of that and then give some updates on shit I’m doing in the future.

I’m still in Texas and stuff is still pretty awesome. A half-year later I’m still absolutely thrilled that I moved from Troy, AL. The place had just become far too toxic and was very much a dead-end.

I was also going to do a Game of the Year 2014 post, but about a third of the way into the post I realized that 2014 was pretty shitty as far as games go. I did beat Persona 4 Golden last year though, so let’s go with that. Persona 4 Golden GOTY every year probably maybe.

I got to go to PAX South as well. It was very different from PAX Prime. It was significantly smaller and there were virtually no AAA production companies there besides Nintendo. It felt much more like a community controlled event, which was great. I got to meet a bunch of Twitch.tv casters and YouTube personalities that I hadn’t met before. I had a blast because of that, but if anyone went for just the expo alone I imagine they may have been disappointed.

Late last year I had picked up WoW again with the new expansion that came out. TL;DR there is that it started out pretty fun, but once raiding started it became very clear that Shadow Priest was just shit tier again. Add in the fact that the Shadow Priest rotation was a clunky mess I quit basically as soon as my guild had cleared all the current tier of raid content. It just wasn’t very fun. In order to produce the results I would want, I’d have to play a class that has a really boring rotation compared to the complexity I wanted. I quit instead. MMO wise I’m playing Guild Wars 2 with some RL friends, but I’m probably not going to play too much until at least EQ Next.

I’ve also been playing a lot of board games, and have bought quite a few myself. I may start doing some mini-reviews for board games as well. More on that later I suppose 🙂

So where is my focus now? Mostly back on streaming, but I’ve also got a project I’m going to start working on this year sometime. Mostly I’m just conceptualizing it right now. My current main goal is to improve the quality of my stream. Which means getting some new gear. The schedule is back to Mon – Thursday 7PM – 11PM and Sundays being for Final Fantasy. Speaking of, I ‘rebranded’ the Final Fantasy thing into ‘Series Run Sundays.’ The idea there is that Sundays will be dedicated to me playing through a whole series over the course of several Sundays (and maybe some extra days if I want to continue on an off day or if I get bored on a Saturday). At some point I’ll be streaming on Fridays and it’ll be dedicated to Board Games or D&D, but I’m still trying to figure out how I want to do that. The big thing I’m struggling with is finding a portable way to do an overhead camera for an entire table. Any tips would be appreciated 🙂

The above streaming schedule will start tomorrow (Monday). This week I’ll be streaming more Dying Light coop, Shadows of Mordor, and *maybe* some Dragon Age: Inquisition while I work on clearing up my AAA backlog. Series Run Sunday will be Final Fantasy 7, continuing where we left off. After Final Fantasy series is done I’ll be playing Legend of Zelda, and after that I’ll be playing Resident Evil. I’m pretty pump for all of that. I’ll always have 2 series in the queue (which can be found here) and I’ll update the listing as to which games in the series I plan to run and (hopefully) stream.

A few things that are in the project pipeline: Once I upgrade my webcam I plan on making YouTube videos reviewing/previewing all sorts of games. I’m also in the process of maybe starting a podcast. The podcast thing has been talked about off and on several times though, so we’ll see where that one goes. I’ll also try to update the blog a bit more often, but we know how that tends to go, lol.

As always, for updates on my shenanigans follow me on Twitter and like my Facebook Stream page. Also, feel free to add me to any video game service, my usernames can be found in the ‘About Me’ page.

One last big note, the best way to support my bullshit right now is simple to share my stuff around social media networks. Be it Facebook or Twitter. Any support this way will be a huge boon for helping me grow my little piece of the internet. Greatly appreciate any support, as always :).

Catch you later!

 

 
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Posted by on February 1, 2015 in Misc.

 

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Stream stuff.

19 Oct

Short post with some stream stuff updates.

So after trying it for about a month I’ve decided that the structured stream schedule thing isn’t really for me. I still enjoy streaming, but doing it like that makes it feel like less of a hobby. So instead I’m going to just be random about it. For the most part I’ll just stream when I’m playing something that can be streamed and I feel like streaming. I’m sure some nights I won’t, and I’m sure some nights I’ll play things I can’t stream (3DS/PSVita stuff namely). That being said, Monday – Thursday is still the most likely times I’ll stream anything during the weekend, and on Sundays I will still stream Final Fantasy until I’m all the way through the series. I’ll also say this makes it more likely that I’ll stream on Fridays and Saturdays.

TL;DR – Going to slow down the streaming. Stream schedule is Mon-Sat: Random | Sun: FF7 starting sometime mid afternoon and stopping when I get tired. (Likely still 4 to 10 ish).

I’m also looking around for an online community to become a part of and do content creation for. I just have a lot more fun when I’m doing it with a group. This was a big part of me trying to get back into MMOs. I’m not making much progress here though.

Anyways, small update there 🙂 Cya.

Quick addition: This also probably means I’ll post more blog stuff. Which will be nice 🙂

 
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Posted by on October 19, 2014 in Misc.

 

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10/12 – 10/18 Stream Schedule.

11 Oct

Sunday (10/12| 4PM-10PM) – Final Fantasy Day! FF7

Monday (10/13| 6PM-10PM) – Persona 4 Arena Ultramax (P4A Story)

Tuesday (10/14| 6PM-10PM) – New Release Tuesday! Tears to Tiara 2

Wednesday (10/14| 6PM-10PM) – Persona 4 Arena Ultramax (Continuing Story)

Thursday (10/15| 6PM-10PM) – JRPG Day! Tales of Xillia 2 (Continuing Story)

Friday – Won’t cast (Playing D&D, may start casting this at some point. TBD).

Saturday (Random) – I may stream something. Probably P4AU but maybe Tales of Xillia 2 or ArcheAge.

Thanks to the folks that support my silly stream effort and that come by and hang out. I really appreciate it!

http://www.twitch.tv/Klokworkk

 
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Posted by on October 11, 2014 in Misc.

 

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August-September Update! Small PAX rundown, Destiny, and some streaming stuff.

21 Sep

Hey everyone!

August was PAX month and some other stuff has going on where I was fairly busy. I didn’t get to stream as much as I would have liked in the past few weeks and I’ve definitely slacked off on Final Fantasy progress. I’ve gotten less busy lately so i’m playing stuff again, and by stuff I mean I’m playing a metric fuckton of Destiny. I’ve streamed a good bit of it, and I’ve really been enjoying that. So today we’ve got a brief PAX rundown, a Destiny Mini-Review, and some updates to stream schedule (For the sake of progress!).

We had a bigger group go to PAX this year than normal, which was pretty nice. I also spent less time in the expo hall this year than any year previously and probably went to twice as many panels. Frankly because the Expo hall sucked this year. Unless you’re down with standing in 2+ hour lines, which fuck that noise. The panels I went to were all really great though. The best ones were probably the Giant Bomb live panel and the PAX Game Industry Rumble (which the Giant Bomb guys are a BIG part of). The Giant Bomb guys are hilarious and put on a great show. I hadn’t been to any of their panels before, and only went this year because I have started listening to the Giant Bombcast more and going to their website more frequently (I mostly read/watch IGN, Giant Bomb, and Escapist now). Overall, it definitely goes to show you that the PAX community isn’t really on the show floor and the panels are bigger. Next year I’ll probably make a point of spending next to no time on the show floor period and just go to a bunch of random panels. I wish I had gone to more of the Polaris panels this year. Overall, it was a great PAX. Definitely better than last year.

Destiny has been the big game in the news lately. It seems like the gaming press didn’t really care for it, which is sad. I kind of thing some of them didn’t really give it a chance, or maybe the game just wasn’t what they were looking for. It is hard to tell really. Personally I think the game is fantastic, and there is a lot of room for growth in the game’s universe (which Bungie plans on doing). The game is a bit grinding, but it is more-or-less another shooter take on the Diablo formula. It isn’t quite an MMO, but it comes close. At best I’d call it MMOLite. There are a couple of places to go that you can see more than just your party (Patrol missions and the Social hub), but you can’t (and really don’t) interact with these people in game. Occasionally there are public events and that is probably the only time the game kinda feels MMO-like. It is a great coop experience though. Get a friend or two (or 5 for the 6-person raids and PVP) and go kill some aliens. Most of the missions are well done, but you will end up seeing a lot of the same places. There is a good bit of repetition because of that. It probably won’t be as bad after they add a few DLC expansions, but there are only 6 strike missions to do outside of story missions. Many of these missions send you to very similar places, but you’ll take a different door to a different boss. It isn’t too bad, but the missions are all fairly similar (Go here, defend this, kill boss, that sort of thing). I’m having a blast with it so far though doing all the grinding for loot so me and my friends can do harder stuff, daily quests, and PVP. Overall, I’d totally recommend this to someone that has a group of friends playing or wanting to play. You’ll have a blast.

So some quick updates to streaming stuff here too. I’m still going to stream from Sunday – Thursday, but I’m going to kind of change up what I’m streaming for a couple of days. My general plan is this:

  • Sunday: Final Fantasy Marathon (X – 10PM CST)
  • Monday: Random (6PM – 10PM CST)
  • Tuesday: New Release I purchase OR Random (6PM CST – 10PM CST)
  • Wednesday: Random (6PM CST – 10PM CST)
  • Thursday: JRPG Day (6PM CST – 10PM CST)
  • Friday & Saturday are not scheduled so those will be totally random. It is unlikely I will stream on Fridays at all.

I decided on this basically because I want to make progress on the Final Fantasy marathon without burning out, and I wanted to make progress on my JRPG backlog as well. Those are also may favorite games and the stuff I would mostly want to feature when streaming (outside of new releases). Now Monday – Wednesday I could also stream a FF game or a JRPG, but Sunday and Thursday are the dedicated days. I feel like that makes the most sense. Also, all times are ‘ish’ times. Meaning I can be a few minutes late or early. I always post on Twitter when I start streaming though. This new schedule will start tomorrow.

I’ve got some other things I’m working on, but I’m not quite ready to publicly talk about them yet. Both endeavors will involve me creating more content, which could be fun. More on that once I have something to report.

That is it for now. Sorry there isn’t more here, outside of PAX I’ve had a fairly uneventful past two months as far as gaming goes :).

 
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Posted by on September 21, 2014 in Misc.

 

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Opinion on newer MMOs and the state of the genre.

18 Aug

So anyone that has talked with me or watched my stream regularly knows that for the better part of a year I’ve been trying to find a new MMO to get into. I’ve tried A LOT of MMOs during that time, and I’ve yet to find one that really stuck with me. I figured I would detail each of the MMOs I spent at least two weeks with and give my opinions on each, and follow up with my opinion of the MMO genre. I’ll kinda structure this like I would my mini-reviews.

I picked up WoW again for a bit and played the newest expansion. Leveled up my Shadow Priest from level 80 to 90 in about a week playing extremely casually. I had a group of about 13 people that I had intended to create a guild with and raid stuff, but that didn’t really pan out. I saw all the available content in the raid finder thing and flex raids. I debated trying to recruit for a small guild or join one for Normal and Hard mode of the current raid content but I couldn’t get motivated to do the same content I’ve been farming in various modes. The fact that the raid force I wanted to start with didn’t pan out and the ease of getting my character to a fairly decent level of gear really just killed my motivation to go any further with the game. These various difficulty modes for encounters have killed raiding in WoW for me. Right now there are 4 different difficulty levels in Siege of Orgrimmar (not counting the difference between 10 and 25 man, which would make 8), which is just ridiculous. Two different difficulty modes were bad enough, but now there are 4. This level of making things accessible for your ‘casual’ players has quite literally ruined raiding in the game for the rest of us. Having stuff scaled differently for 10 mans and 25 mans was more acceptable (Like in WOTLK), more ideally things should be like they were in BC with independent 10 man and 25 man instances. Players want to see the end game content they should have to put in the effort. This trend of accessibility is ruining games.

Next up is Wildstar. I got excited about this game the first time I was it at PAX 2011. I started following it very closely. I eventually got into the beta and a fairly good guild that was ramping up for the game. I leveled a Spellslinger to level 20 and hated it. I NEARLY quit right there, but a friend talked me out of it and I didn’t want to disappoint the guild I had just joined a week prior. I suffered through level an Esper to 50. I still hated almost every minute of the leveling experience. It was terrible. I hate leveling though, so I can look passed that. The raid content and dungeons weren’t bad either. The PVP felt a little zergy, but it wasn’t horrible. However, all of these aspects were made bad by the fact that the gameplay is extremely boring. The 3 character classes I goofed off with all had 2 button rotations where you just mash shit on cooldowns, and practically every other of your only 8 allowed skills were movement or defensive cooldowns. You had a couple more buttons for class specific cooldown (offensive CD for DPS classes) or trinkets, but mostly you were mashing 2 buttons 90% of the time. There WERE other abilities you COULD use but that meant you were gimping your DPS. They wanted to make the 8 abilities customizable based on playstyle, but in order to do this ability setups need to be able to compare to eachother in raw DPS. This was never the case. There was always just one ability setup for your given role with the only variance being on what other random cooldowns you took. Even then there are the best random cooldowns, you might swap one out a fight. It became very stagnant very quickly. I need a rotation where I’ve got to pay attention to a lot of things. I played a Shadow Priest in WoW because it was complex (though normally not as rewarding as Mage/Warlock/Hunter). Even in Everquest the role of mashing a few buttons felt different because you had to manage threat, position, and mana. I liked the Sorcerer in Guild Wars 2 as well because you had to rotate between stances and each stance had buttons you needed to push, and different variations of abilities based on weapons. Restricting player abilities is just silly to me, but I don’t know if that would’ve helped the gameplay anyways.

Another game I’ve tried recently is ArcheAge. I wanted to like this game, it is very pretty and gives me a really big Star Wars Galaxies feel. The part that keeps me away is that the game heavily revolves around crafting and resource gathering. I have never really enjoyed crafting, gathering I’m okay with, but I’ve always seen crafting as a means to some end. Whether that end is certain items, stats, or benefits, usually there is a central goal. In ArcheAge crafting is just something you do and keep doing. So it didn’t really end up being my thing. Gameplay wise it seemed fine. Reminds me a lot of Rift with added comboing of abilities which is cool. I might come back to it (I highly doubt it).

I also played Final Fantasy 14 for a few weeks. I actually really liked FF14 and will probably go back to it. It is really relaxing leveling, and the instancing I did was actually really cool. It helps that I’m a total Final Fantasy nerd. The end game seems really small scaled with some difficult instances, which seems interesting. I have plans to get back to it in the future, we’ll see if those pan out. I don’t really have much to add other than I enjoyed it but didn’t get to spend as much time with it as I would’ve liked.

Another game I checked out was one called Black Gold. It had an interesting steampunk theme with mechs and other stuff that I’m kinda into. The gameplay for the caster wasn’t too bad too, you can move while casting which I’ve wanted since Vanguard. The whole experience was really meh though. The game looked fine and played fine, it just didn’t really hook me on anything. I played it for about a week and a half and then stopped bothering. I can’t really say anything negative about it, it was just kind of a thing.

Last game on my list is Guild Wars 2. I really liked Guild Wars 2. It was one of the few games where I actually enjoyed the leveling experience. I think I’ve talked about it on here before, but basically dynamic world events are REALLY cool, cutting out the quest NPC middle man was awesome, and rewarding players for completion and exploration felt great. No monthly fee is a plus too, not to mention that they constantly update the game and don’t charge for it. I still have it installed and jump in and WvW sometimes. It is a blast. The only negative aspect of the game is that the PVE endgame isn’t very traditional. World bosses are really zergy and the learning curve for instances is crazy high for various reasons. They’re not designed poorly or anything, I think they difficulty has to be that way to offset the fact that everyone has their own personal heal. The more annoying part is that people doing the difficult instances demanded you were one of like 3 classes which was really annoying and disheartening. Still the game is really fun and very easy to get into.

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So my opinion on the state of the MMO genre is that it is slowly dying for various reason. Development costs are crazy, the genre has stagnated, immersion is dead, lack of innovation, and most MMOs lack focus. While MMOs hemorrhage sales other game genres are dominating using MMO like elements (See: Call of Duty and League of Legends) without the negatives of MMOs. You get an MMO-lite experience without having to do the dance. MMO designers are trying their best to reel in as many gamers as possible with a jack-of-all-trades experience (See Wildstar, WoW, SWTOR, Rift, ESO) and not creating something for their audience. If a studio would market itself as an immersive experience designed with the people that drive MMO communities in mind (meaning your ‘core’ MMO gamers – Hardcore PVP/PVE players namely) and then actually delivered they would probably make a killing. I know I would be on board. Really I would just love another EverQuest but I seriously doubt that will ever happen again. I love getting lost in game worlds but MMOs lately just don’t want me to get lost, they want to shove things down my throat the whole way through the experience until I get annoyed or tired. Seriously, what other genre of game does that? For more, this is a really good paper on why MMOs are in a state of decline.

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That is about all she wrote on that topic. I’ll probably play some more Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy 14 eventually. I’m looking forward to trying out Everquest Next when that finally releases (Maybe I’ll get to play it some at PAX?). If that sucks I’ll probably give up on MMOs for a while. There are still really awesome RPGs coming out with really fantastic worlds to play in, I just wish I could explore those worlds with (and against) people.

Just a quick reminder: This week I’ll be playing Final Fantasy 7 Monday.Tuesday – Thursday I’ll probably be playing Tales of Xillia 2 with the Collector’s Edition unboxing on Tuesday (unless Amazon doesn’t get it to me on time -.-).

 

 
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Posted by on August 18, 2014 in Misc.

 

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June & July Update!

04 Aug

Hey friends! Time for super late June/July update. I’ve got mini reviews for Wolfenstein: The New Order, Transistor, and Watch_Dogs. I finally wrapped up Final Fantasy 6 and I’m about 4 hours into Final Fantasy 7. I’ve started playing through Dragon Age: Origins with the intention to beat it. I’ve gotten a PS4 and Wii U. I’ve played a ton of the Destiny Beta as a result and a little bit of Mario Kart 8. And I’VE MOVED! To a different state even!

So we’ll start with the paragraph mini reviews:

Wolfenstein: The New Order was pretty much everything I wanted from a modernized take on a classic FPS franchise and more. While there are some story loop holes they’re not massive and overall the story is actually fairly well written and designed. It is pretty basic vengeance/save the world but I won’t fault it for that. There was a lot of interesting character development for the main character, William “B.J.” Blazkowicz. They did a good job in portraying him as an actual human instead of some gun toting meat-head most of the time.

I’m pretty sure the game ran on the same engine that RAGE did because both games feel very similar as far as gameplay flow. Very smooth shooting and movement, but Wolfenstein has some added stealth mechanics that are actually really good, and I hate stealth. The level design and stealth mechanic were done in such a way that it was just an option you could use in one battle to the next. AND if you fucked up, you just had to fight it out (very similar to Dishonored). None of the forced stealth bullshit you’ll hear me bitch about shortly. I should also mention the game is very brutal and pretty dark, though I think that is expected it actually surprised me in a couple of places. Overall the game was really good. It played great, had a great story, and was just a great job in bringing a classic franchise into more modern gaming. If you’re looking for something to play and haven’t picked this up yet, definitely give it a shot. It is still $60 on steam, but I’ve seen it go on sale several times for much cheaper.

Transistor has everything in it I should love from a video game. Great art direction, amazing sound track, combat that sounds unique, and it was made by the guys that made the phenomenal Bastion. Unfortunately, I ended up finding the entire experience rather dull. It played fine, but for some reason the game felt lifeless and the gameplay wasn’t really all that interesting after playing it a couple of hours. The world, while pretty at first, got pretty bland pretty quickly. I can’t help but compare it to Bastion, who had a beautiful world with lots of variety and colors. That statement alone, may be part of my reason for being disappointed. I couldn’t help but compare Transistor to Bastion. Transistor had a lot to live up to due to that, and I think it wasn’t quite at that level. The story was really good, the pace was questionable but forgivable, but really the gameplay was just too much of a turn off for me. I wanted to like it, but I just couldn’t quite. It was just alright, not the brilliant follow up to Bastion I was hoping for.

Now, to Watch_Dogs. I was pretty excited about this game. I played it a lot the first week I bought it, despite UPlay really not wanting me to. I ran around and did a lot of stuff, because there is a lot of stuff to do. Notice how vague that is? Well honestly that is because there wasn’t much to remember. Everything was mostly stuff we’ve already done before in similar games (Grand Theft Auto being the obvious example, but so does other Ubisoft titles like Assassin’s Creed and FarCry) and so none of it was very exciting or memorable. It was more like a jack-of-all-trades Ubisoft title that mashed in a lot of stuff from Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed, threw it into a more modern setting, and then slapped a ‘hacker’ theme over it. By hacking I mean that you’re solving some tube puzzles but rotating some tubes (think Bioshock if the tubes were already placed you just had to make stuff line up right) or just pressing the hack button. I will admit that I didn’t even finish the game. Somewhere around the halfway mark there was a forced stealth section that required you to march through the middle of an enemy camp without making so much as a stick crack. If you did anything fun you’d get Mission Failed. So I failed it 10 or so times and uninstalled the game. Forced stealth sections in games are one of my pet peeves with game design. No one finds it fun in these types of games. Forced stealth is fine for Hitman, Splinter Cell, and Thief. Games where you expect to be running around in stealth all the time. However, in a game that is mostly run and gun with the occasionally puzzle these stealth sections are just tedious and annoying. Why can’t more games do stealth like Wolfenstein did? Add some stealth sections to the game, sure! But when the player fucks up, punish him for it by having to fight out of the situation. Don’t just show a fucking game over screen, it is frustrating and not fun. This game was very meh, I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you like GTA a lot but are bored of it and need something new to play.

With that done, let’s talk about Destiny. I put a solid 20 or so hours into the beta and I must say it is a blast. I played a Warlock to max level, and I’m likely to stick with that on release. It fits my playstyle pretty well. I like the whole Borderlands meets Halo feel to the game, and the mix of PVE and PVP with both being equally meaningful is awesome. Items in PVE carry over to PVP and vice versa, and rewards earned by your character apply everywhere. This is probably the best design for this type of game. There will obviously be the ‘best’ weapon for each weapon type, and eventually people will figure out what stats to min/max for PVE and PVP. Still I think it is great that both types of gameplay are pretty much equal in terms of meaningful rewards. I think the only exception being that you get better experience in PVE (I’m honestly not sure if you get experience in PVP. As I’m writing this I cannot remember), but you get different rewards in PVP, such as reputation and certain tokens for loot. The beta only let you level up to 8 and do a handful of missions, so after 2 days I had already knocked out most of that stuff and spent a bunch of time on the PVP. The PVP was pretty well balanced from what I saw. Nothing in particular seemed OP or anything to me. Shotguns are probably the strongest weapons on some of the smaller maps, maybe borderline OP but that is pretty expected from Bungie. I like how they dish out ammo in the Multiplayer. Instead of having heavy weapons spawn somewhere on the map, heavy ammo spawns in certain time intervals on two different sides of the map. This creates a mini-objective on top of the objectives you’re already going for, which I liked. The heavy ammo felt appropriately powerful too. From the beta I don’t really have any complaints. I’ve already pre-ordered the game and look forward to playing a ton of it. Here is a VOD of a full multiplayer game from the Beta (I’m only talking to myself because the PS4 streaming thing doesn’t capture party voice).

I haven’t really gotten much time to play Mario Kart 8. I’ve spent a few hours on it, enough to know that I’m terrible at it. I haven’t really sat down and just played it for an evening though. I honestly don’t enjoy playing certain multiplayer things without playing it with friends and I almost exclusively bought the Wii U to play games with friends (Mario Kart, Monster Hunter, Smash Bros, etc) and the occasional JRPG or something (HELLO XENOBLADE CHRONICLES X). Once I dive more into that I’ll probably talk more about it. Feel free to add me on there, I was able to get Klokworkk.

In streaming news I finally wrapped up Final Fantasy 6. You can see a VOD of me beating Angelic Kefka and the ending here. Feel free to make fun of me chewing gum and then trying to get chicken out of my teeth with my tongue. Lesson learned to not chew gum while streaming and get some damn toothpicks, otherwise I’ll look like a dumbass. I’ve started Final Fantasy 7. I’m not too far in though, about to get to Shinra building part. I’ll be starting the stream up as soon as I’m done typing this. I’m also going to be periodically playing through Dragon Age: Origins but I have no timeline on trying to beat that.

Only other thing of note is that I’ve moved! I no longer live in Alabama, I have moved back to Texas. I still have my own place though, I didn’t move back in with anyone. That wouldn’t be fun. I live about 45 minutes north of Austin now, which is a great location. Austin is such an awesome city too. If you’re ever in the area make sure you check out Pinballz and Dragon’s Lair, as well as the plethora of game shops. Tons of cool shit to be found.

Alrighty, I’m wrapping it up here. In August I’ll try to beat FF7 and Tales of Xillia 2. I also plan on writing a post about recently released, upcoming, or popular MMOs and my thoughts on them (spoiler: most of it isn’t too great). Expect that before PAX. I’ll probably also ACTUALLY make a PAX post this year, so I’ll probably take a bunch of notes and/or pictures during that. That’ll technically be an early September update though so I’m getting ahead of myself so I’ll stop now.

Cya!

 
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Posted by on August 4, 2014 in Misc.

 

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