Month: August 2024

Minor Technical Difficulties

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So I started a new play through of Dragon Age: Origins this week on PC. It’s only been about 13 years since my last one and that was on the PS3 so it’s basically like my first time through all over again. It’s been a while since I booted up an older game (ya, ya 2010 is old now). It’s amazing how many thing I take for granted that just work with games now.

Borderless Window for one. Dragon Age either runs in Full Screen or a window. I can’t stand playing games in window mode, everything looks so small and seeing my messy desktop breaks that immersion! So that option was out.

Let me tell you, Dragon Age does not take kindly to switching to other applications when in full screen mode. Every time I went to take a note it was a gamble whether or not the game would come back up. Either the game would crash to desktop when the window was opened back up. It was a fifty-fifty shot whether I’d get back in. To get around that, I used the SimpleNote app on my phone to take notes even though I had the desktop version open on my second monitor.

It felt a bit silly but you gotta do what you gotta do, you know. That’s the plight of the game blogger.

Speaking of plights, Dragon Age doesn’t support Steam Screenshots. I found this out when I hit F12 to take one and the game crashed yet again! So I went to my backup option, Greenshot. It’s free, it takes screenshots, it even puts them in a folder for you. I typically only break this guy out when I’m playing games through Epic because that still doesn’t support screenshots. Unfortunately Greenshot, wasn’t really working while Dragon Age was in full screen. When I went to take a screenshot everything would freeze up for a few seconds. I’m noticing a trend here…

I thought maybe I could suck it up and play in windowed mode. Greenshot appeared to be working there. Appeared is the key word here. When I went to look at my screenshots they were not what I was expecting:

I was about to call it a day. But on my next launch of the game I saw the familiar green logo in the corner of my screen for the Geforce Experience overlay. I have only seen this thing in action once and that was last week where it kept saving clips of me being killed in Hunt: Showdown. I had no clue I could also use it to take screenshots and, surprisingly, it worked without an issue in full screen. It does save them to the Videos folder in Windows which I find weird but other than that it works!

Which brings me to my last pain point with this aging title: It. Kept. Crashing! Well most of it was my fault, I’ll admit, trying to swap applications while it was running BUT it also crashed while playing a few times. I managed to get past the starting zone of Orzammar – I’m playing a dwarf rouge by the way – and to the surface to join the Grey Wardens. This about 1.5 hours in to things when the game crashed while I’m running around trying to find my next plot point. It had been a little while since I saved and even longer since the auto save saved so I found myself losing some time.

That’s when I remembered that these older titles usually have some sort of mod or stability patch that makes them run better on newer hardware/ Windows versions. So off to the internet I went to find one. The first Google result lead me to the 4GB LAA Patch for Dragon Age: Origins which let’s the game access more than 2GB of RAM. For the EA and GOG versions of Dragon Age there’s a little program that needs to be run on the Dragon Age .exe.

Since the Steam version is encrypted you need an unencrypted version of the .exe which I found on NexusMods. I found the guy’s video on how to install the patch confusing so I went to try and find a write up somewhere. Lucky for me, there was a 10 year old Steam thread that detailed how to to it, which in all honesty, was very easy. Now that I have it patched, the game hasn’t crashed once in the last few hours.

Hooray!

Reminiscing on Dragon Age

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A few months ago I saw the entire Dragon Age franchise on sale for like $15. At the time, I wasn’t looking for a big fantasy RPG of any sort let alone three. But I know me so I scooped it up for the inevitable day that I would be compelled to play it. That day has come. It was apparently last night.

This 1000% has to do with all of the news I keep seeing about The Veilgaurd coming out this October. Also because I can’t seem to do anything unless I make it into a project. So of course I’m like “Let’s play all of the Dragon Age games! I totally have time for that!” (I probably don’t…)

So there I was, creating a new characters in Dragon Age: Origins and reflecting back on my time with the series as a whole. Well – not really – but I needed a way to somehow segue into this next part! I make no claim that any of the following is actually accurate, I’m just jotting down what I remember, I didn’t bother to fact check anything other than the dates the games came out.

Dragon Age: Origins was one of the first games I played through on the PS3. I must have gotten it over winter break of my freshman year of college because by the time I picked up the physical copy, it was the ultimate edition. Fun fact, I used the remaining balance of my meal plan that semester to buy it.

What I remember most about Dragon Age were the commercials leading up to the games release. I distinctly remember seeing one at the movies is somewhere in between those Maria Menounos Noovie things they played before the trailers. Grey Wardens looked awesome! A fantasy game that wasn’t Lord of The Rings!

What I remember from my first playthrough of the game? Not a whole lot. I remember Alaistar, the swamp witch lady, a particularly challenging boss fight with a very large boss, and speccing my character out to be a sword and board warrior. That last part was my favorite, I liked that I could be an actual tank for my party taunting enemies and knocking them down. It wasn’t a role I played a lot of in other RPGs, preffering characters who used a bow over melee. I also remember the combat feeling like a tab targetting MMO complete with a big hot bar with lots of skills that somehow was manageable on a controller. I thought that was pretty cool too!

Other than that, I couldn’t tell you much about the story. Something about the templars hunting down mages maybe? But then, that might have been a bigger plot point in Dragon Age 2 which I also played, though never finished. I did finish Dragon Age: Origins. Spent plenty of nights that winter break sitting in front of the living room TV plodding my way through. I did start the DLC, but I think around that time, classes had started back up. I never got back to it and just played Dragon Age 2 the next summer.

Dragon Age 2 I remember being more of an action game. Less create your own character and more you’re going to play our character but you can change their looks and pick their class. I don’t know how true that is, it’s been ten plus years since I played it. I think the main character actually had voice lines which I always preffered over the Silent Protagonist type.

For that game, I switched it up and played a mage. Again, I think a big plot point of that game was outlawing mages or something so I thought it was an interesting background to try out. I distinctly remember being a gravity mage that pulled enemies together and flung them all over the place while my party wailed on them. Good times.

Dragon Age: Inquisition dropped the fall of 2014, the year I graduated from college and had just started living with my then girlfriend/now wife. It wasn’t a game that was on my radar anymore, I had fallen off of gaming in general during college, well except for League of Legends. We played a lot of that.

I think my mom gifted it to me for Christmas that year. I distincly remember creating a character in the likeness of my now-father inlaw which my now-wife did not find it the least bit funny. I, on the other hand, found it very amusing…I remember some cutscenes, an interegation of sorts, then being thrown out into the world and not getting very far.

You know what also released in the fall of 2014? Destiny. That had a hold on me for at least a year and there wasn’t’ much time for anything else.

Weird Bug Creatures and Stuff

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Earlier this month, I wrote about how No Man’s Sky didn’t have much to offer in the way of multiplayer. I still think that rings true, but the Liquidators Expedition does solve some of the problems I have with it. Mainly, the shared goals, well sort of.

The Squad has been picking our way through the latest expedition which is set to end on September 2nd. So far, most of us have made it to Phase 4 out of 5.

This Expedition is suppose to take you through worlds that showcase the latest graphical and procedural generation update. We have visited some interesting places, my favorite being the starting world with a giant floating eye creature and islands floating everywhere. We’ve also seen planets made up of mostly water with huge waves and even bigger underwater creatures. Other planets may not have been memorable but they did show off the new flora and fauna combinations.

The Liquidators Expedition focuses heavily on combat. Each phase of the expedition has you traveling to a drop zone, which spawn bug creatures that you need to eliminate. Then you have to travel to an infestation site to shoot even bigger bug creatures! Each phase has an optional goal of killing x number of bug creatures too.

There’s been a whole lot of shooting things the last few weeks.

Combat, inherintly, lends itself as a great multiplayer activity. It’s certainly easier to take on the swarms with a few friends. There isn’t much structure to it, nothing to really plan for, just go out there and shoot the bugs until there aren’t any more bugs! The big boss bugs add some variety, they have armor that needs to be shot off before they take damage so there’s an option for coordination but it’s not strictly required.

The shared Milestones for each phase of the expedition also lean in to a more focused multiplayer experience. It would be nice if these were actually shared between the party playing together so each person didn’t have to go to their own drop zone, or collect their own eggs, or take out their own number of bugs, but it’s something. Inevitably there is some waiting around while every one finishes up their milestones for the current phase. It does give us all something to work towards together which is more than I can say for the normal game.

With that said, the expedition does kind of speed run you through the different features of No Man’s Sky that we haven’t seen before. Things like Frieghters, mechs, and other exocraft that can maybe serve as goals for us to chase together when we do go back to the main game. I still think the Nexus missions will give us more focused goals to persue together too, we just haven’t tried them yet.

My Blaugust State of Mind: Week 3 – wait, Week 4!?!

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Well, well, well, we’re a bit late for this post that was suppose to be published last Sunday aren’t we? Yes, yes we are….

But that’s ok, this whole positing daily thing was starting to drive me a little crazy. I felt like I fell behind and then couldn’t keep up. Quite frankly, I was starting to get a little obsessive. So I took a small break – okay a bigger break than I intended – and that felt great. It silenced the little gremlin in my head that said you can’t stop now you’re halfway to 31 posts! But I did stop, and now with a bit of a gap, a lot of self imposed pressure I was feeling went away. I notoriously drop off during the aptly named “Staying Motivated Week”, I tend to take too long of a break and then it’s September. Wasn’t trying to do that this year! (Nearly did though…)

This leads me to one of those lesson’s I tend to learn every year. Daily blogging isn’t for me. It’s a fun challenge but it’s not sustainable for me. Especially coming off of a, more or less, 2 year blogging break. I’ve been trying to find some sort of posting schedule here since I started this thing. At this point, that just might be whenever I fell like it. Though, this event always shows me that I enjoy writing a whole lot and should try to do it more often.

As a whole, Blaugust has been good for me. I have written more in the last month than I have in the last two years which feels great. I’ve already exceeded the goal I set for myself in the beginning of all this. I’m feeling confident that I can finish the month strong with a few more posts!

Hunt: Showdown – Hmmmm hmm hmm hmmmmmm!

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Hunt: Showdown has one of my favorite video game theme songs ever. I would recognize it anywhere. Its so catchy it’s about the only thing I remembered about my time playing the game four years ago. It’s also stuck in my head right now after revisiting the game this week to check out the big 1896 update.

Port Sulphur Band does all of the in-game music for Hunt and is made up of Crytek employees. They do both the soundtrack music and all the trailers and event music. According to their Spotify bio:

Since their first album released in 2019, Port Sulphur Band have become a cult phenomenon, with over 26 million streams across three albums, and live shows in Paris, Las Vegas, and Frankfurt. 

They have more music than I would have guessed. The original Hunt: Showdown soundtrack is just six songs coming in at 18 minutes long. I guess you just don’t need that much music in PVP game. They also have quite a collection of in-universe music outside of the OST. Their music gives more insight into the lore of Hunt and fits the vibe of the game perfectly.

The tragedy of Hunt:Showdown is it has such an interesting world but the only way to interact that world is through a PVPVE extraction shooter. This world of supernatural, wild west, with zombies and monsters and the hunters that battle them is ripe for good stories. I would love to see a story mode for this game – I’m not holding my breathe though.

Unfortunately, most of my story with the world of Hunt is walking around for 20 minutes without a soul in site and being mowed down by other players on my way to extraction.

This Week In Screenshots: Set to Music

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I’ve been listening to the Heart of Thorns soundtrack on the way to work this week. Only the first handful of tracks though, because I’ve found some can lead to some spoilers. I can, in fact I probably will, write a whole post on how I got into listening to game soundtracks on their own but…this is not that post. Just something short and sweet for Saturday.

Heart of Thorns has some great music and I thought it would be fun to match up some screenshots I took to the tracks I’ve enjoyed this week.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

The Pact Laid Waste

The Jungle Provides

Jaka Itzel

Far From Home

Tarir, the Forgotten City

Into the Jungle

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I got a solid start in Heart of Thorns this week. I started the main story and ventured through the first two zones: Verdant Brink and Auric Basin. Neither of which I’ve fully explored yet. The story picks up right where the Living World Season 2 leaves off, naturally. There’s enough of a recap where I would have probably figured out what was going on if I didn’t go through Season 2 but I’m sure glad I did.

The first thing I noticed about this expansion? It’s freaking hard! Well, harder than Central Tyria was, for sure, and a bit harder than Dry Top and the Silverwastes. I did a quick Google search to see if this was the case or I was rusty after picking the game back up after a couple months. Google confirmed that Heart of Thorns is, indeed, harder than the core story. Apparently, it used to be even harder too! But I don’t mind, it’s forcing me to pay attention to what each new enemy does. Thematically, it makes sense too because we’re dropped in behind enemy lines on their home turf.

The zones are beautiful. I have a so, so, many screenshots! I really dig the untamed forest vibe with the lush greens and the tree filtered sunlight….amazing. Plus we’ve got frogs everywhere. Big frogs. Small frogs. Tree Frogs!

I’ve always heard how wonderful HoT’s vertical maps are. I thought I had some idea of what a vertical map was. Let me tell you, Verdant Brink was rough before I unlocked the gliding mastery. One minute I’d be happily cruising down a hill on my raptor, the next minute I’d be falling off a cliff to my death. It certainly made those first few moments in the jungle memorable.

I like the way the mastery system is laid out here. In the base game, the masteries nice, ok Auto Looting is very nice, but they felt like something to passively unlock while I was doing other things: i.e the main story post 80 or the living world stuff.

Masteries in Heart of Thorns, at least so far, unlock more features for getting around. Gliding helps you get places you couldn’t before, learning how to use the bouncing mushrooms let’s you get places you couldn’t before, the Exalted lore helps you navigate the world. Actually, I’m not sure on that last one, it least let’s you use the teleports in Tarir, which saves a few staircases!

I’m looking forward to getting that next mastery unlock to explore more than. I feel more inclined to explore in this expansion. That could be because I ran through Central Tyria so many times before but, I’m taking my time here.

In addition to masteries, I also like that the story (again at least so far) is broken up into a few missions and then a pause to unlock a new mastery. This has given me a chance to get familiar with the maps, hone my skills against the enemy types in the jungle, and run around and participate in events. It’s has some nice pacing to it, I haven’t felt like I’ve been itching to get back to the story before I’ve unlocked the next mastery.

I had read that the Hero Points were geared more towards multiple people completing them than the hero points in Central Tyria. They do provide ten hero points instead of one which might explain that. I thought I would have a problem completing these, but every time I started one up, there was always one or two people who came along and helped out. I’m looking forward to unlocking the Dragonhunter Elite spec and playing around with that!

Creator Appreciation Week: Parsec

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It’s Creator Appreciation Week here in Blaugust-land. In years past, I’ve used topical week to talk about podcast that I love. I haven’t been listening to many new podcasts as of late, so this year I’m switching it up and giving a shout out to Parsec. If you’ve never heard of Parsec before, it’s an extremely low-latency remote desktop application geared towards gaming. And it’s free for personal use!

My main use for it is using it to play games that don’t support online multiplayer. My friend group is spread throughout the US so we use it a lot to play couch co-op games like the teenage mutant ninja turtles game. We’ve also used it to play single player games in the “pass the controller” style while sitting on our virtual couch like Little Hope.

I’ve been using it for years and it has always worked as advertised. We still get some latency, nothing is perfect, but for the most part controls are smooth and the frames don’t stutter much. We’ve even used it to play a mildly successful run of Dark Souls 3 where each of us were in charge of a single control of the character. I was on attacking, Blades was on healing and dodging, and CC was on movement. It was wild!

It’s a nice application, and while it can have some weird audio issues with Discord sometimes, I haven’t found another program like it.

No Man’s Multiplayer

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Wilhelm’s No Man’s Sky post on Monday got me thinking about what kind of multiplayer experience No Man’s Sky actually gives it’s players. I tend to think that, while No Man’s Sky, has made so, so much progress since it’s release in 2016, the multiplayer experience hasn’t changed all that much.

Yes, before you tell me it didn’t have multiplayer when it launched, I know, I remember. I also remember it being weird that Sean Murray led players on that their might be days before the launch.

Spoiler alert, people tried to meet up, it didn’t exists. Queue the outcry!

Now it does have multiplayer,it has for years, and still it’s as true now as it was 8 years ago, “No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game.” Can I see my friends? Yes. Jump around with them? Yes. Fly spaceships near each other? Also yes. Talk to them through an in game voice chat that, for some inexplicable reason, has the options to turn it off buried in the Network settings of all places? Unfortunately, yes. I can do all of that but there’s nothing to do together per say.

90% of the time spent playing No Man’s Sky with the Squad this weekend consisted of the four of us landing on a planet and immediately running in opposite directions. We did our own thing while chatting in Discord. I was doing this in 2016 too, I just couldn’t see any of them in the game. The only interaction we had with each other was meeting up and trading some materials with each other. Then it was right back out to do our own thing again.

I think this all stems from a few fundemental reason.

First, the world(s) isn’t all that dangerous. There isn’t muchthreat from anything besides the environment which can, often times, be mitigated by having enough supplies to charge all your bars or jumping back in your ship while they recharge. There isn’t a place you’re going to stumble in to that’s going to require someone else’s help. You’re rarely attacked and even if you are, you can probably get yourself out of a bad situation easily.

Second, there aren’t any shared objectives. Similar to above, there just isn’t anything that requires someone else help. There’s also nothing that brings you to the same spot for an activity. You can follow your friend(s)around from point of interest to point of interest but opening the same box as your buddy doesn’t add any value to the experience.

This all make sense, because again, “No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game”. Turns out, when you slap multiplayer on a game years later, it might be lacking.

Now, this may just be me not “getting” survival sandbox multiplayer. I think Palworld suffers from the same issue. Great as a solo game, servicable with two people, unbelievably boring with more than that. I want to play with people not around them. No Man’s Sky doesn’t offer meaningful ways to play together.

7 Days to Die, on the other hand, has a great multiplayer experience. The world is dangerous, made less so with a few pals. There’s a shared common goal of getting ready and surviving the Blood Moon. There are even shared quests from the Traders now. There’s always some reason to be within sight of another player.

All this to say, I don’t think No Man’s Sky offers much of a multiplayer experience.

Admittedly, we haven’t gotten very far in the game so I to see what we could do together. There, I found a lot of the same sentiment. One thing that did come up was doing Nexus missions together from the Anomaly. We haven’t tried these yest so maybe it will add some structure and a common goal for us to work on together.

I also came upon discussions of the Glactic Hub Project. This bills itself as a multiplayer Civillization which sounds kind of neat. It reminds me of the player groups that formed in Elite Dangerous:

The Galactic Hub Project is a multiplayer organization based in the video game No Man’s Sky. Founded in 2016, the Hub is No Man’s Sky’s largest and oldest active civilization. Our community features social events, PVP, sports, economic opportunities, creative writing endeavors, construction projects, and so much more. The wide variety of available content in our space has attracted the construction of over 2,000 bases in Hub space every year since 2020.

Galactic Hub Wiki Page

Of course, no space fairing civilization is complete with it’s own cryptocurrency. I’m not kidding…

Ready for Heart of Thorns

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Last week, for the first time, I got a character through the Living World Season 2 content which triggers the first quest of Heart of Thorns . I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 off and on now for over a decade. It’s taken me quite a while to get here!

I’ve had numerous challenges getting started in Guild Wars 2 over the years. I was obsessed with Guild Wars in high school; Guild Wars 2 always felt like a game I should love. But each time I would start up a new character and run through the starting areas yet again, I encounter the same problems that cause me to bounce each time.

I didn’t gel with weapon swapping. It was all fun and games until I hit level 10 and this feature unlocked, Not being able to see the cool downs on abilities on the swapped weapon drove me crazy! It felt like I was guessing most of the time when to swap between weapons. Plus, I didn’t understand the combat system all that much which led to confusion about which weapons synergism together.

Not using both weapons in the attack animation when dual weilding the same type of weapon annoyed me. It bothers me to no end that the basic attack for dual weilded weapons only uses one hand. It’s not so much that the skills use separate hands for animations, but I always thought if I had two swords/daggers/axes/ whatever equipped my character should swing both of them for a basic attack. A petty reason to be sure, but it still bothers me.

Combat stats are slighty confusing. I understand that GW2’s whole thing is breaking the holy trinity and stuff but did it have to go and change all the standard stat names too? Easily solved by reading the descriptions of course. Not arguing there.

Over time, “Do I really want to run through Metrica Province again?” became a problem. After a few dozen attempts of leveling up past 20 all the starting areas are worn out. Every time I came back, I rolled a new character, ran the same handful of starter zones, got bored, and logged off months or years. Doomed to repeat the cycle once more.

With all that said, you would think I would have move on. I have no problem with dropping games normally – usually to my friends’ dismay. But there’s something about Guild Wars 2 that I want to like. Reflecting on it, part of it is definately nostalgia for the Guild Wars IP. I have such fond memories of playing that particular game with friends and participating in the end game stuff. One of the only MMO’s that I’ve really been deeply involved in. Some of the other features that I want to like are the horizontal progression, the miriad of things to collect, and the world is Just. So. Pretty!!

Over the winter, I took my annual tour through Tyria yet again. But something was different this time or maybe I was different. I created a Guardian, which I had always avoided doing because I I already had one of those. I made a Sylvari because I had spent the least amount of time in their starting area. I took my time to read the additional dialogue, the Renowned Heart text, the *ahem* tool tips for the combat stats and skills. Amazing right, when I actually sat there and read the descriptions of things they were not confusing at all. A revaluation, I know. I also went out and looked up some newbie guides just to make sure I had a basic grasp on everything.

On top of that, I found that weapon swapping didn’t really bother me any more. Once I started to understand the combat a bit better, I found that weapon swapping had it’s own rhythm to it. Now, I could still be doing it wrong, but my skills seem to be up on my secondary weapon by the time I run out of skills on my primary or very shortly after.

I was playing regularly for a month or two. I got through the core story for the second time ever. I went through the Living World Season 1 and got half way through Season 2. I was enamored enough that I bought the rest of the Living World I was missing along with End of Dragons and Secrets of the Obscure. Then I promply fell off the whole gaming train in general.

Flash forward to this week. As chance would have it, I accidentally clicked on the Guild Wars 2 launcher on my desktop instead of whatever game I was looking forat the time. I saw there was a new expansion coming out and got the inkling to play again. I had a blast last week finishing up the rest of the Season 2 story. Now I’m finally ready to start Heart of Thorns. I’m excited to see a part of the game I’ve never seen before, check out the whole gliding mechanic, see those vertical maps, and continue the story that has been set up for this expansion!