Author: Kluwes

Backlogged: Titanfall 2

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Titanfall™ 2_20161201103021The last time I thought to myself “you know what I need in my life right now, a multiplayer fps” was in 2007 when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came out. Well after a 9 year hiatus I decided I needed a new shooter in my gaming rotation. Enter Titanfall 2.

OK maybe it hasn’t been that long, I played a lot of Destiny’s multiplayer, I played Battlefield 4 for a while and I did get Rainbow Six Siege at the beginning of the year. Destiny was always kind of a side thing when I was bored of the PVE, I didn’t really play Battlefield 4 all that much, and my time with Rainbow Six Siege was mostly spent in the Player versus AI Terrorist Hunt. I will admit this was kind of an impulse buy. I wanted something with quick matches and I wanted to shoot things with Mechs. Plus, who’s game would capture the feel of Modern Warfare better than Respawn, the guys who made Modern Warfare.

It came out on the heels of Battlefield 1 like just a few days after. Kind of a weird plan releasing right after one of the most anticipated shooters of the year but it looks like its doing OK. I really hadn’t heard much about it before release. but afterward the internet was hailing the campaign as one of the best in years and praising the multiplayer for fixing the problems the last game had. The internet was also full of “lol this game will die in 6 months gg scrubs” predicting the fall off of players that plagued the first game.

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The campaign took me around 10 hours to beat. I’ve never been great at shooters even against AI so I died a whole lot even though I was playing the easier difficulty. The story is pretty forgettable, as in I beat this 3 weeks ago and faintly remember what its about. It’s story of a generic solider turned elite Mech Pilot who has to stop the bad guys from using a weapon to destroy the world. To Jack some credit, he was training to be a Pilot before the battle that wiped out most of the landing party. His mentor, the Pilot of the lovable Titan BT-7427 doesn’t make it and gives Jack the reins to BT seeing as he’s the only one still alive there isn’t much of a choice.  BT is your typical computer AI that takes everything too literally but he’s endearing and I never got tired of hearing him talk. The banter between BT and Jack is great.

So you may be wondering, if the story was meh why has the campaign been getting all this praise. Well, it’s the levels, the levels are really unique and I haven’t played anything like them. Each level comes with a mix of shooting things, stretching your platforming muscles, wall running, and using BT to shoot even more things.My favorite two are the factory level with all of its platforming goodness and the time travel level which adds something wholly unique to Titanfall 2.

One of the best things about the campaign is collecting all of the Titan Kits as you progress. These correspond with the Titan load outs in multiplayer so you can get a feel for each Titan before diving in. It’s also really fun to switch load outs on a whim in the campaign. One titan not working for the particular boss fight? Switch to a different one. Since theirs not cool down penalties for switching in the middle of a fight you can pull off some interesting combinations. Too bad you can’t do this in multiplayer.

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Speaking of multiplayer, Titanfall 2 has an interesting take on it. I didn’t play or follow the first one so when I jumped in to Attrition, the main game mode, I was  surprised to find AI enemies as well as other players. This really helps less than talented players, like me, contribute. They may not give as many points as an enemy player but they stand still long enough to shoot. Later in the match they seem to gain the ability to aim and do plenty of damage where they can almost kill you which just adds to the fun. At that point you most likely have your titan and are ripping through them anyways. The movement is really well done and it constantly makes you feel like an elite solider wall running and sliding around the battle field. There are constantly those moments of “whoa did you see what they just did”.  From my experience, even if your at the bottom of the score board you’re still getting your titan pretty often in battle which is nice because I don’t feel like I’m missing out on part of the game because I’m not doing well.

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All in all, I’m happy with my purchase. The campaign was short but fun and the multiplayer is fun even if your bad at shooters. The multiplayer definitely has that one more round feel and the matches are short enough that you can’t get too mad about losing. I’ve been playing for a few weeks and learning and improving has been the main hook. But that level up bar is always fun to watch fill up at the end of the match. Who doesn’t love a good level up bar?

The Magnificent Mullet of Eorzea and Other Final Fantasy 14 Things

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Kluwes A’llond 11/03/2016 11:43:25
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Look at it. It’s fantastic. Serious business in the front, raging party in the back. It’s a mullet’s mullet.  It’s glorious, a true character creation masterpiece. It goes with everything, it’s durable, and easy to clean. It doesn’t even clip…that much.It begs the question why did I not have this the whole time.  Unfortunately there’s only room for one sumptuous thing on this Roegadyn’s smug mug so the elegant mustache just had to go.

I played a lot of Final Fantasy 14 this past week and over the weekend. It’s probably the most I’ve played in the last few months I’ve been subbed. Me and Jay have been playing pretty regularly at least getting the dungeon roulette done every night. This weekend I had a lot of time on my hands.

In this past week I’ve gotten my dragoon to 50 and got him spiffy new armor. I have 10 more levels to go until max and I feel like I have too many buttons to press already. Learning the combos has been fun and the animations for the skills look awesome. Let’s be honest here, when your last level 50 threw rocks at things for hours outside of dungeons, having some more buttons is a godsend.  I got my level 50 armor and much to my surprise it really doesn’t look terrible on my large character.All the other dragoons I’ve seen have been stick thin characters. Sure I may not look as sleek but I don’t look like dragoon sausage. Now if only my weapon didn’t look so much like a gardening tool.

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I’ve been trying to help Jay catch up to me in the main scenario which is taking a lot longer than I originally thought. I have to keep finding something else to work on between dungeons while he runs story quests. So I settled on getting my bard up 2 more levels to hit 50 as well. With that came completing the quests for the armor. The other classes had some interesting reasons for getting said armor. Dragoons have to go through 5 trials to prove they are worthy of it, White Mage’s need to get it to wistand the force of the Great one, the Bard’s  boils down to dig up this old man’s clothes and wear them because he deemed you worthy. What an honor. Sadly the hat is not as obnoxious as I thought it’d be but the rest of the set well makes up for it.

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In an effort to clean out some of my uncompleted quests from my journal I finished the level 30 rouge quest. I’ll admit, this was probably a mistake, because the rest of the weekend was spent leveling up my new ninja and thoroughly enjoying it. After playing dragoon, the class feels a bit simpler and with less buttons to manage though I’m sure this will change as I get higher in level.

Finally, I actually installed the expansion and put the key on my account. I’ve had it lying in a drawer for a while now. When I went to open it I actually had to dust it off. I m itching to complete the 2.XX main scenario stuff and get into the expansion which I might go ahead and do if Jay doesn’t catch up soon. Other wise I’m going to end up with yet another level 50 class.

But seriously, this mullet is amazing.

 

 

 

November Gaming Goals Galore!

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Kluwes A'llond 10/23/2016 21:20:38

Wow it’s November already. I don’t have anything clever to say about November, it’s a pretty boring month. Ok so I do love a good parade and the majestic event that is the Westminster Dog Show.  Now that it’s November 1st I’m sure everywhere will be switching gears to Christmas everything. Actually I think they’ve already started playing Christmas music, at least the neighbors have.

October Goals Reveiw

I played a lot of Final Fantasy 14 in October. I got my Dragoon to 50, I got my Bard to 50, I got and apartment, and I finally installed Heavensward. Everything else I planned to do in October kind of fell by the wayside. It was a busier time than I thought it’d be. I think I’m about halfway done with Final Fantasy

November Goals

FFXIV

Beat 2.XX content get into 3.XX content

Backlog 

Beat Final Fantasy 1

Play more God Eater Resurrection

Play More Guild Wars

Complete a full run of One Way Heroics

 

Halloween Hijinks

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Kluwes A'llond 10/24/2016 00:42:48

I love Halloween. It’s one of those holidays that makes me feel like a kid again. Kind of like Christmas but with more candy and monsters. It’s kind of a weird holiday, we pretend to be things we’re not and we send children out to get candy from the neighbors. It’s the only time of the year that people will tell you they bought a pumpkin and that statement isn’t  followed by the words ‘spiced latte’. It’s also during the best part of fall, everything cools down,the leaves look amazing and there’s no snow.

This weekend I did the All Saints Wake event. It’s really easy and takes all of about an hour and a half to get all the seasonal goodies. Goodies that include a snazzy vest, some orchestral rolls, and a minion. The Continental Circus is putting on a Haunted House in Hauke Manor, glad they’re doing something with that place. To make sure the Circus isn’t up to any mischief the Adventure’s Guild sends out an investigator. Of course shenanigans ensue and we’re sent into the haunted house.

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The 4 person dungeon has you doing all sorts of tasks in the haunted house like collecting cookies and throwing smoke bombs at pumpkins. My personal favorites was finding all the magic circles to stand on and finding the code to open the hidden coffer. I liked these because it forced people to actually interact even if it was just calling out some numbers. All of  this while sneaking past monsters and not being turned into pumpkin.I thought that a cooperative dungeon like this would have been frustrating but all 3 runs went smoothly and everyone was really friendly and helpful.

Other than the actual event activities I loved the decorations Gridania and Huake Manor. Pumpkins everywhere!

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Other than completing the event I’ve still been leveling up my Dragoon. He’s up to 47 now, almost there. I’m also still working on ranking up with my Grand Company. I like doing the Grand Company hunting log but I’m so glad The Sunken Temple of Quarn is done with. It took me and Jay a while to understand the mechanics to the first boss there but luckily we had a patient group who didn’t mind teaching us. I’m hoping I can get the Dragoon up to level 50 by the end of the week and continue my way through the main scenario.

 

Welcome to Final Fantasy, Three of your Party Members are Probably Already Dead

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As much as I love playing Final Fantasy 14, I’ve never actually played any of the other Final Fantasy’s. Final Fantasy 7 in particular is one of those games I’ve never played but everyone I talk to has much like Zelda games. So Now that I have the means to play every Final Fantasy in one way or another I’ve decided I’d like to see what all the fuss is about. So naturally, instead of just starting with Final Fantasy 7, I started at the original Final Fantasy. I bought the Final Fantasy Origins edition for the PS one which comes with Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy 2 which upgrades both games graphics and audio but not much else.

So here’s the story of Final Fantasy. You have a group of legendary warriors and you have to go find the 4 crystals and save the world. It’s pretty simple, there’s not much too it but the thing that surprised me is that the first 10 or so hours didn’t have me searching fro crystals. Instead I was saving princesses, waking up elf kings, fighting vampires, and exploring castles. It’s rewarding to complete a task and a little bit more of the world or the story is revealed to you. Nothing is all that complex, combat is simple turn based combat without any gimmicky mechanics or timers. Just Monster and Man lining up and politely taking turns wailing on each other. There’s no complex crafting or stats everything is straight forward.

But simple doesn’t mean it’s not fun or stressful. There’s nothing like the stress of trying to get back to town to heal or out of a dungeon before your entire party is wiped out. At one point when I was in the Terra Cave I had just gotten the earth crystal after beating the boss. I had to walk back up the 5 floors of the dungeon to get outside to save in my tent. I had gone in with 100 potions and by the time I was done with the boss I had about 30 left. I began my accent to the surface slowly burning through my potions. I had to escape most of the battles, my team was being picked off one by one. I was on the last floor, only my warrior was left with 40 health to spare, most enemies hit for 1 or 2 points on him so I figured I was safe. It had been a grueling hour and a half from my last save. My heart was pounding, I was just 3 steps away from the exit. That’s when I the battle screen started and I was faced with 3 heavy hitting enemies. I tried to escape only to be hit with a devastating 20 point hit which left me poisoned and with 10 health left. At the beginning of my turn the poison took me out. The game over screen appeared and I was thrown back to the title screen, back to my save from an hour and a half ago.

I’ve died lost in forests circling around and around looking for town as my party is picked off. I’ve walked into castles and had every party member petrified on the first turn also leading to a game over. I’v had pary members one shotted during boss battles and die of poison when I ran out of antidotes. It’s not a friendly game at all and while these deaths don’t happen often when they do it’s when you haven’t saved in a while and think everything is going pretty well.

I’m 18 hours in and about halfway through. I have gotten the Earth Crystal and Fire Crystal and have two more to go. I got my hands on a map from the NES version and realized I skipped entire areas and am currently back tracking to the ice cave where I’m hoping the Ice crystal lives. The map is so incredibly helpful I wish I had it at the beginning.

PS Vita the Impulse Buy of the Year

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I don’t buy new electronic things often. When I do it usually takes me a month or so to research, weigh the options, look for deals, read the tea leaves, do a rain dance, that sort of thing. It’s a process, usually.

Two weeks ago I started looking into the PS Vita. Why, you may ask. Why would you want to buy a 5 year old handheld gaming device that was abandoned by Sony and has more games cancelled than a baseball team during hurricane season? The short answer is JRPGs. The long answer is, SO many JRPGs. It’s the first time that I’ve wanted a console not for upcoming games but for it’s backlog. While the Vita itself has a lot of games and more still coming out, it also boasts a huge collection of PSone games and PSP game. Not to mention it has all of the final fantasy’s from 1-10 in some form or another and I’ve never played any of them. But after playing Omega Quintet (it was $3 ok?) with Jay over the PS4’s share play, I’ve been reminded of how much I love JRPGs.

Vitas are surprisingly hard to find in good condition in my area and apparently in most of North America. Gamestop doesn’t sell them, the local game store down the street sells some that look like they’ve been chewed on by a family pet, come to think of it I don’t know when the last time was I even saw a Vita game for sale anywhere. I had to go to the mystical department store in the cloud known as Amazon to find the thing. Unless I wanted to import it from Japan with 3 week shipping that probably costs more than the device itself, I had two options. The first, a Certified Refurbished model (whatever that means) for $130 or for an extra $30 I could get a brand new  in the box one. New things are shinier and who doesn’t like shiny things right? Still they seem kind of expensive for a  5 year old piece of tech.

Now here’s the real kicker with the Vita, the memory card. Ah yes, I haven’t had to buy a memory card since I owned a Gamecube and honestly I forgot they existed. The new model comes with 1 gig of memory,  I haven’t seen a physical Vita game for sale in years so all of my games would be digital purchases. Here’s the kicker though, the Vita’s SD cards are proprietary so you have to buy Sony’s special snowflake of a memory card and these things aren’t cheap. A 16 gig card costs about $50 which is insane considering you can get a regular 32 gig SD card for around $15. No wonder no one wanted to buy this thing.

But I did. After only a week of researching and reading about it a few simple clicks and it was on it’s way from some warehouse in the middle of Pennsylvania. It was probably on a high shelf in the way back for a few years. I swear I saw dust fly when I opened the box.

I’ve always been a fan of handheld gaming. The first video game system I ever owned was a game boy advance and I took that thing every where. Consoles are great, and PCs are great but sometimes you just want to not stare at a giant screen in your living room and stare at a tiny screen in your hands. I have a 3ds,mostly bought for Monster Hunter and Pokemon. Other than that I haven’t had a lot of interest in its other titles, though thanks to the local library I’ve been exploring some. I had a PSP for a few years, and it was probably my favorite system of all time. Sadly I traded it in for the 3DS,  seemed like a good decision at the time.

I’ve had it for about a week now and I’m really glad I bought it. I picked up Final Fantasy Origins which includes Final Fantasy 1 & 2. I’m having a blast playing through the first one, there’s just something oddly addicting about it’s old school game play. The screen is nice and big and nothing looks too stretched out so far, which is one problem I have with the 3DSXL. Also it remote plays with the PS4 which I’m excited about. I’ve been testing a few different games and while the L2 and R2 triggers are usually mapped to the rear touch pad, most of my PS4 games play great on it. The other perk is I get even more out of my PS Plus subscription though this month and last month netted me 2 visual novels/ male dating sims…but what the hell it could be fun.

You know what plays surprisingly well via remote play? Final Fantasy 14. You would think the lag would be horrible considering its streaming video and inputs to and from an online game but it’s not that bad.When there is some input lag it’s not horrible and it rarely happens as long as I’m playing in my house. But for running some quests or completing the hunting log, it’s great and I can already tell it’s going to be awesome for crafting and gathering when I get back into that.  Of course, I won’t be running dungeons with the Vita, that seems inconsiderate to other people.

FFXIV: Wait, There’s a Dungeon Here?

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This weekend I put some quality time into Final Fantasy 14. It helps that Jay actually resubbed, it’s always been more fun with friends to talk to. Over the course of the weekend I got my Dragoon to level 35 and did the next job quest. What a surprise, I got another jump for my level 35 skill.

As I played most of the main scenario with my White Mage it was really easy to replace questing with queuing for dungeons when my level was too low to continue the story. The ques were short and I wanted to save the quests for my other classes who couldn’t get into dungeons as quickly, unfortunately this led to missing some functionalities of the game including dungeons, logs, and the Golden Saucer.

Halfway through leveling my Dragoon I realized that the quests with the + symbol next to them unlocked something in the game. This has been really helpful in picking which quest I should do right now and which ones I can save until later. This weekend as I was trying to advance my rank in the Maelstrom for an apartment, the Grand Company hunting log stumped me. I was supposed to kill three different monsters in Halatali. After looking at the map, it turned out Halatali was a dungeon and not a region. I assumed I had unlocked all the dungeons up to this point, my White Mage is almost at the end of the 2.0 story but it turns out I missed a couple of them.

So I took to Google in search of a way to unlock this dungeon. It turns out it was a quest in the Waking Sands at it was as simple as running to the dungeon and talking to the guy outside. The dungeons only level 20,  I always thought there was a big gap in between Copperbell Mines (17) and The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak (24). Now I know why, I just missed it by a mile. I also unlocked Dzemael Darkhold, a level 44 dungeon. It’s a good thing I was doing quests in the area or I would have missed this one as well.  After taking a look at a list of dungeons in A Realm Reborn it turns out I’m missing a few more dungeons. Guess I’ll be unlocking those as well this week.

 

 

October Goals

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Whoa it’s already October? September just flew by but that’s ok, October is one of my favorite times of the year. I can’t get enough of Halloween decorations, pumpkin spice things, and apple cider The weather get’s crisp, the hoodies come out, and the leaves start to finally change color. I can’t wait for haunted houses, horror movie marathons, and of course Halloween events in MMOs.

This month y goals list is a little shorter. After completing only 2 out of 7 last month it was time to trim down and look at what I might be able to accomplish this time around.

Final Fantasy 14 Goals

Level Dragoon to 50

Move into an Apartment

Backlog Goals

Complete a full run in One Way Heroics

Beat Final Fantasy 1

Other Goals

Read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Carve a Pumpkin!

 

 

September Goals in Reveiw

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Wow, I got nothing done this month game wise. Like at all. I’m not surprised thought I knew this was going to be a busy month of things in the outside world. I did do a few things I set out to do this month and decided to drop some all together.

FInal Fantasy 14 Goals

✓ Get Dragoon Soul Crystal: Hey I’m a dragoon now and it’s been a hell of a lot of fun poking mobs with sticks for the past couple levels

Get Monk Soul Crystal: Maybe I’ll come back to this some day but I just wasn’t feeling the game play of the pugilist and I’m guessing it doesn’t change a whole lot for Monk.

✓ Decide between Playing monk or Dragoon: Ladies, Gentlemen, this is the final rose tonight. I choose to give it too..Dragoon. Dragoon will be advancing in levels and hopefully getting into Heavensward one day,.

Complete the 2.XX content and get into Heavensward: Hahahahaha….I’m not even close.

Backlog Goals

Defeat the fourth boss in Furi: I think I’m done with this game, it was a lot of fun while it lasted but I’m just not into it anymore.

Get to the next system in No Man’s Sky: You know, the last time I picked up No Man’s Sky was 3 days after it’s release ad for some reason I still don’t regret the purchase.

Complete Unepic: What started out as a great game with a lot of RPG references turned into a mediocre game with too many RPG references. I’m shelving this one fr now and going back to my list of games on deck.

FFXIV-I Want to Be an Interior Designer

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With the drop of patch 3.4 in Final Fantasy 14 came the addition of apartments and aquariums. Since I still haven’t gotten past the 2.XX content there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot else to be excited by in this patch for the time being. Unfortunately I can’t even do that. While I do have 1 character at 50 I’m nowhere near the Grand Company Rank to be able to purchase an apartment.

Now I understand why this is the way it is. Once again there are a limited amount of these things to go around so might as well make people work to get them so they’re not all gobbled up quickly. To be honest I haven’t ever been that interested in player housing in MMO’s in the past, I guess I just had other things to do. However, I love player housing in single player games, I played a lot of animal crossing as a kid. But it intrigues me now in FFXIV, especially when a lot of craft-able items are pieces of furniture that I previously had no use for. As for aquariums, it gives me even more of an excuse to spend my time fishing, for some reason I love fishing in game. The list of fish that can be placed is kind of small but there’s always room for improvement.

I guess this will give me another thing to work towards while I continue to level my Dragoon to 50. I’m sure it won’t be that bad, I just hope they’re not all gone by the time I can get one. Though from what it sounds like, if I’m reading the patch notes right, there should be plenty to go around.