I spent my weekend running around the wasteland, shooting at coyotes and bandits, and stopping every few feet to pick up rocks. Yep, this is only the kind of experience Fallen Earth can give.
You can’t tell by looking at the blog but I was quite fond of Fallen Earth back when I was playing it in 2019. Apparently, I only felt the need to write one blog post at a time. The only other post was 8 months later right before the game shut down. But now it’s back and I plan on writing about it a lot more while I make my way through the Wasteland again.
Last time I played I just got out of the first sector, The Plateau, before I stopped playing. It looks like there are 9 areas in total so I didn’t really see that much of the game the first time around. But with everything being free in “Fallen Earth Classic” I intend to see it all. Or at least more of it than I did last time…it all depends on how long it keeps my interest I suppose.
One of the things I’m doing differently is taking on all of the quests in each town. Who knows how long the game will be around and if I’ll ever get to do them again. It will slow down the journey considerably I’m sure but it will also give me some time to collect a lot of materials while I run around doing quests. And since the game is about shooting things and crafting I think it’ll be just fine.
My starter town of choice was Boneclaw which is described as a combat-focused town. There are two other starting areas, Midway, which has a crafting focus, and Clinton Farm, which has a support focus. The last time played I think I started in Midway so I wanted something different and getting into some combat right away sounded fun at the time.
Boneclaw is a town of outcasts. The Slaughter Kings are at war with the Blade Dancers and they seem to be competing over territory here. Since the Slaughter Kings are the ones doling out the quests, my side in the conflict was chosen for me. With Boneclaw being a combat-focused town and all I was tasked with killing lots of things. Blade Dancers, giant ants, coyotes, giant scorpions, prairie chickens. If it breathes near Boneclaw, I’ve probably killed it.
I also wanted to make sure that my gathering trade skills were always leveled up at all times. Since Fallen Earth is all about scavenging around to build your items it’s important to be able to gather at every node you see. Geology was easy, there were a whole lot of copper veins right outside Boneclaw and I needed the copper anyway to make ammo for my pistols. Nature proved to be a little bit of a challenge to get going. Every so often I would run into a level 1 node but most were 15+. It turns out that skinning prairie chickens are a really good way to level it up early on. There’s plenty of prairie chickens and they only require 1 nature to skin!
Salvaging took the longest to level up. Almost everything out there was level 15 or higher. Every so often I would get lucky and find a level 1 node. It doesn’t help that the level 1 nodes don’t look any different visually from the level 45 nodes so finding them was a challenge. It took me until I was almost done with all of the quests in Boneclaw to level up.
After finishing everything up that I could it was on to Embry Crossroads to continue the story and find out why my clone is dying and why this time it will be for good.
There is some hope though. While the game in its current form is being taken offline there are plans to continue working on a new version. It’s hard to say how this will play out. I’m giving it a 50% chance that Fallen Earth will return to us. I personally hope it does. Fallen Earth is such a unique game in the MMO space I think a fresh coat of paint and better server performance could do it some good. I also think reworking the free to play model would also help in the future. When your game has such a heavy focus on crafting, it’s frustrating when you can only craft 2 items at a time that take 15+ minutes without paying.
Kluwes- Spetember 5.2019
This was the last post I wrote about Fallen Earth about a month before the game was taken offline with the promise of bringing it back in a sort of Fallen Earth 2.0. The game went dormant at the end of 2019 and the longer we went without any news about the rerelease. In fact, there wasn’t much news at all. Most of the news at the time coming out of Little Orbit was about APB Reloaded and another game they were working on. After a while, I kind of forgot about the game as a whole.
But, much to my surprise last week there was a tease from Matt Scott that Fallen Earth Classic had a nice ring to it. Then a few days later it was happening soon. Then the servers went live yesterday. And well…I’m back on a horse riding around the post-apocalyptic wasteland again.
Fallen Earth Classic, as the name implies, isn’t a total revamp of the game. It’s a re-release of the game as it was before it shut down. Along with the game being relaunched the server was also upgraded which means pottentially less lag. But the best part about all of this is that it’s absolutely free. Everyone gets the highest tier sub which is fantastic as it makes the so much more playable. So honestly, I’m really happy with what the re-released Fallen Earth has to offer right now.
I think it’s awesome that Little Orbit brought this version of the game back online at all let alone for free. Sure, part of me wonders if this is a test run to gauge actual demand for a refund. I could see someone saying “Look we gave it ways for free and no one is playing it”. Even if it is, I’m going to enjoy as much of the game as I can while it’s around. Second chances don’t usually come around for these types of things. Well, official ones anyway.
My third appearance as the commander did not go as planned. I’ll tell you that right now.
One of the most interesting things about this succession game for me is playing this game, that I have relatively little experience with, in chunks. So much changes in between the turns and while I do take the time to re-read past commander’s posts I never know quite what I’m about to jump into. Plus every turn becomes harder than the last as the game advances and the play becomes more complicated as more options are opened up and more equipment is available.
We’re now beyond the point any of my single-player Xcom 2 games have gone over the years so I’m really going in blind now. It’s definitely been a unique experience so far.
As as I loaded up the save and jumped back into the game, I had to decide what to do. I knew what the main objective for us right now was thanks to Magi:
“…once the Power Relay is done our first priority should be to unlock the upgraded Comms Station so that we can make contact with West Africa and take care of that stuff over there!”
The Power Relay had only 6 days to go so I was hoping I could squeak past the 6 days with a supply cache scan without triggering a mission. After 2 days, the Muton research was completed. This gave us an advanced grenade launcher which I promptly built. I also started research into Psionisc because the description said it would have a lot of use in the field. How true this is I don’t know but it sure sounded good.
I held my breath and hit scan again hoping to make the next 4 days pass uneventfully.
It was not meant to be. 2 days shy of the Power Relay a trio of missions appeared and I had a choice between them.
This, again, was an easy choice. Two of the three missions had the difficulty rating of Difficult while one had the rating of Moderate. The Moderate one, besides being “easier” also seemed to have better rewards at least in the short term. Completing this mission would get us another engineer to use to get some help on excavating the Shielding Power Relay.
Operation Massive Mountain
The Team
Easha “Silentdeath” Dust Feather – Ranger
Tessa “Endalia” Hastjarjanto – Sharpshooter
Sofia “Black Widow” Vasilyeva – Specialist
Naithin “Naithin” Nahilin – Ranger
Marinia “Volcano” Schneider – Grenadier
Geoff “Doesn’t Have a Nickname” Mason – Grenaider
The Objectives
Neutralize all enemy targets
Recover Processing Facility Schematics
The team entered “Roach Station” (a lovely name by the way) with no enemies in sight. The console we needed to hack was in a small building not too far from the landing area. Of course, we couldn’t see much in or around the building as it was just out of range. The team was spread out but moved up at around the same time to cover as much ground as possible to find the lurking aliens we’d need to take out.
It didn’t take long. As Mason use some old wooden pallets as cover an ADVENT Stun Lancer and a freaking robot walked into view. They spotted Mason and the first fight began.
I noticed my grenadiers were equipped with….well…grenades so I decided to give them a go. Mason threw a flash bang and, to probably no one surprise but my own, only the ADVENT stun lancer was affected while the ADVENT MEC was unphased. It’s one of those moments where I went “Oh that was dumb” of course the robot wouldn’t be affected by a flash bang. But the Volcano was up next and she whipped a frag grenade at both enemies which did some damage and blew up all their cover!
While this engagement is going on I figured I’d have Naithin go do Ranger stuff and try to sneak into the building, hack the console, and mozy on back to the group to clean up the remaining enemy units.
Endalia and SilentDeath move in from the flanks to assist the grenadiers with the assault. Endalia faces off and gets decent hits on both enemies. The soldier is almost dead and the ADVENT MEC has just under half health. Silentdeath moves up and finishes off the soldier with a solid machete slash. At this point, the ADVENT MEC starts retreating.
Right into the path of Naithin….so much for sneaking in. The team all moves up to give Naithin support and take the building by force.
Once everyone arrived the ADVENT MEC runs into the building and reveals there were two mutons on either side of the door! Might have been a good thing Naithin was discovered after all.
While the team took potshots at the mutons I was able to use Black Widows drone to hack the console without going into the building. Which was my first and last moment of strategic genius of the mission. The team was to take down the mutons with relative ease but that pesky ADVENT MEC kept running away. It ran out of the back door of the building and revealed even more friends: a Naga and a Codex. Since we were on opposite sides of the building I figured I’d have the team group up in overwatch and shoot all the enemies as they inevitably walked through the building to get to us.
Seemed like a good plan until the ADVENT MEC hit us all with a frag grenade. It didn’t hurt as much as it could have but it did blow up everyone’s cover. Revenge for early perhaps?
And this is where the fight starts to break down. The Naga grabs Silentdeath from the other end of the building. The Codex can apparently teleport inside the building and start shooting at us. I’m not sure if the teleport canceled out the overwatch or the frag hitting everyone but no one took a shot. Endalia sniped the MEC and finally put it down. Neither of the grenadiers could hit the Codex through the open window and I did not account for the turrets on top of the building joining the fight.
Black Widow had to aggressively heal Silentdeath before the naga could deal a final blow. The Codex teleported from the building behind the whole team which ended up being its undoing. Naithin walked over and finished it off with a quick slash. The MVP goes to Mason though. On a 33% shot on the full health Naga, he makes the shot, hits, and does a crit, which drops the Naga and ends the mission.
After the Mission:
I was super excited to complete another successful mission without losing any units. That is until I saw the squad screen after the mission:
Ya, that looks bad. While no one was lost several were injured for the next few days. The worst off being Silentdeath who is out for the next month. Surprisingly, Corporal Geoff Mason was the only one to make it out of the encounter unscathed. Unfortunately, Naithin came out of this mission with Reduced Will which means more susceptible to panic and Psionic attacks.
It turns out when you return with most of your squad injured the game advises you to pick up some more soldiers as our ranks are thinning out. I didn’t really think it was that bad until I looked at our Armory:
We don’t have enough soldiers to field a full team for the next mission if it were to start right now. Luckily, it looks like we have some heavy hitters coming back in just a few days’ time. I’m looking at you Maji, Black Widow, and Bookahnerk. I’m hoping the squad will have a few days’ rests before the next mission pops.
There was some good news though. The Valcano and Black Widow both earned a promotion this mission. For the Grenadier I chose Suppression to add a nice debuff to her tool kit. I picked up Covering Fire for Black Widow to keep the Battle Medic side going strong. There’s also the fact that any enemy action causes triggering Overwatch which also seems really helpful.
Karen Peterson, the new engineer, was put straight to work on the Sheilding Power Coil project which should speed that up a bit.
New World launched this week. You don’t need me to tell you that but I’m doing it anyways.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to stop in this week on account of next week I hardly be able to play at all. But alas, Tuesday morning rolled around and I just couldn’t resist picking it up. A $40 price tag is exactly that sweet spot for me for I’ll buy this and give it a go. Any more and I would have been waiting to the blogs and reviews before dipping my toes in.
I didn’t play in any of the betas. By the time I got around to remembering there was an open beta earlier this month it was already over. I haven’t really followed the news about it either. I remember when it was announced, I remember a beta last year and reading some blog posts about it, and that’s about as invested as I was in it. But when the new Western MMO launch happens you just got to be there.
And I got the full experience! I knew there was going to be queues but man, those were some queues right? I knew for sure I wasn’t getting in Tuesday, I got home from work late and figured by the time I got through the queue it would be way to late to actually enjoy playing. I woke up earlier than usual Wednesday, figuring I might be able to beat the crowd and dable a bit before work. Unfortunately I was met with server maintenance! I was able to get in right as the servers came back up that morning and run through some of the tutorial quests.
Thursday night I decided to brave the queue for a chance to play. When I got online I was only 67 deep and that number was slowly going down. Right until it was stuck at 17 players for 2 hours…..Today I was off from work and woke up with my wife in the wee hours of the morning and beat the crowd.
Not today queue, not today.
Having no previous experience with the game everything was new and shiny, sort of. I keep getting the impression that I’m playing a weird, piecemeal, game that doesn’t quite all go together but it kind of works. The gathering and crafting feels like a hold over from a survival crafting game. The supply crates on the map feel straight out of a Battle Royale. The combat feels like an early access souls-like knock off/ Oh and there’s also this whole open world faction PVP thing you can just completely ignore but seems like kind of the focus of the whole thing.
But like I said, the whole thing kind of works for me.
Relatively speaking, I haven’t put that much time into it. I’ve played for a total of 6 hours and I’m still very much in the honeymoon phase. I’m taking it slow and taking it all in as I go. I’ve been trying all of the weapons to see which one I like the best. So far, I’m a fan of the rapier, ice gauntlet, and war hammer.
I’ve been following along with the main questline at a steady clip. I chose my faction and everything: Go Team Purple!
To be completely being honest though, the majority of my time spent in New World has been doing manual labor.
I can’t help myself. I think playing Runescape at a young age (and much more recently) instilled a compulsion to mine and chop trees. Especially, when the mining and cutting of the trees has level that goes up…it’s a problem, probably. But I’ve been happily swinging away at them gathering those materials and bringing them back to town to engage with the crafting system that also has levels attached to it.
Oh and there’s fishing which I haven’t even looked into yet. I’m going to be a very happy camper in New World even if I never swing a sword again.
I’ve been playing Warframe for a good month an a half now with no stopping in sight. In fact, it’s the only game I’ve been playing over that time period. I’m still a bit suprised how much it’s grabbed me but I think it’s come down to two things.: My friends are still playing it and I can consistelntly find new goals to work towards.
The former has been a great way to keep my interest since I have people to discuss the game with and maybe even compete a little bit. The later is really what keeps me going though. Warframe is such a big game with so much content that I’ll have goals to work towards for a while.
So far I’ve acomplished:
Finding and upgrading a few weapons I like and can use effectively for the rest of the game
Finding a Warframe I really like to play. Gauss is just so much fun to play. Gotta go fast!
Crafting an Archwing Launcher to I can fly around the open world areas.
Unlocking the Archgun Deployer so I can use a giant gun to shoot things anywhere.
Building a Railjack.
Completing a lot of the story quests.
Achieving Mastery Rank 15.
I’ve managed to do all of this since I’ve been back in the game. Some of them have been easy and some of them, like the Archgun Deployer, involved a 2 week reputation grind to get. But all of it has been enjoyable content to do.
Next up on goals to chase are:
Completing all of Nightwave
Completing the remaining story quests
Chasing down the parts to Octavia Prime
Collecting all of the Plague Star Blueprints before the event ends.
I’m sure I’ll find more to chase after as I continue to play but for now this is my current list of goals in the game. I especially what to catch up on the story quests as the next major story piece comes out in a few months.
I do still wonder how long Warframe will continue to hold my attention. I’m notorious for getting really in to games for a short period and then moving on to something else. I think it will continue to hold my interest as long as I have things to work towards and people to play with!
I’ve been playing Warframe off and on for…let’s see…5 years now? 5 years that sounds about right. In those 5 years I haven’t gotten very far and have clocked around 250 hours according to Steam. But I still like coming back to warframe every once and a while to see what’s new and make a little more progress.
Usually what happens is someone in my friend group gets the urge to play. Then we’ll all go down the Warframe rabbit whole for a week or two and subsequently leave the game on the shelf for months or years on end. This time around, we’re making a bit more of a concerted effort to stick with the game for a few months and see how that feels.
For the past 2 weeks now I’ve been trying to play Warframe a bit every day and find something to work on. It’s one of those games that has so much to do and so many systems to work on that if I don’t have a clear goal in mind I get lost. My goal right now is to get rid of my Kuva Lich who I accidently made last summer. It’s a charming enemy that not only steals rewards from missions on the planet it controls but constantly taunts me while it’s doing it….
Like everything in Warframe, the process for excommunicating the thing is a bit convoluted. It’s a good thing such an amazing wiki exists and there’s countless informative websites and videos out there. From what I understand, in order to kill the Lich I need specific mods for a weapon called a Parazon. These mods are obtained from Requiem Relics which are awarded sometimes during Kuva Siphon missions and always at the end of a Kuva Flood mission. There are eight of these special mods but only 3 are needed to kill the lich. Except you don’t know which three you need.
In order to find out the right mods you have 2 options: kill thralls during missions on the Lich’s controlled planet or trial and error every time your lich comes to visit on one of these missions. I went with the first option and killed enough thralls over several missions to see which mods I needed on my Parazon. At this point I had gathered 6 out of 8 of the Parzon mods and of course the two I didn’t have were the ones I needed…
Once I had the mods I needed the real fun begins. The mods need to be in a certain order for it to actually kill the Lich. This is the stage of the process I’m on now. Basically, I have to run missions on the planet it controls and kill thralls until it’s angry enough to come after me on the mission. Every time it loses a third of it’s health I get the chance to stab it with the Parazon. If the first mod is in the correct position then the fight continues until you hit the lich with the wrong mod in the wrong spot. At which point it disappears and you have to run more missions to piss it off and try again.
On top of all of that, there’s now a Rail Jack portion which I haven’t even looked in to.
The whole thing has been quite the project but I’ve been doing a little everyday so I don’t get burnt out on it. I’ve also been doing a lot of reading about the mechanics of damage in Warframe, how to build weapons, how to build warframes and I’m getting a better handle on how the game works overall. It’s definitely made things more enjoyable than it has been in the past. I can see myself sticking with it for a while as long as I have another goal to work towards.
Of course, now that I’ve said that I’ll probably drop it next week.
This is mission 13 of the Blogger Succession game. You can find more details and previous missions at Time to Loot.
When I arrived back on the Avenger things were already underway. Plated armor was a few days from being completed along with experimental ammo. As there wasn’t anything to research at the moment I set off to fly the Avenger around the map in search of my next mission.
I seemed to have considerably more time on the strategy portion of the game than last time. I don’t know if that’s because I missed a mission or if RNG gifted me with more time to roam around the map. I was informed there was resistance contacts not to far from my location. I flew over there and spent 5 days scanning.
During those 5 days a few things happened.
Plated Armor was completed
Experimental ammo was completed giving us Dragon Rounds which sound like incendiary ammo.
Two Dark events triggered: Ufo’s are now chasing the Avenger and the Aliens have improved their threat response procedures. Yeah, that sounds bad…
With research completed I went back to the Avenger to set up some new projects. I started another round of experimental grenades and performed some instant autopsies on Vipers and Sectoids. This seems to have unlocked new engineering research projects. I also started Alien Encryption research because it had a star next to it….and it’s also one of our next quest goals.
I turned my attention back to the map and headed down to the New Mexico radio tower for a few days. With that unlocked we’re gaining some more monthly supplies with the supply drops and reducing the cost to contact nearby countries. We also received a Spare Parts bonus which decreases the cost of Proving Ground projects by 50%
By the time that was finished the Avatar Project progress was looking bleak. We’re currently 3 pips away from it maxing out which seems like it might be an issue. There are 2 Alien facilities both 2 countries away from us. My plan was to try to get to one of them or at least make contact with a country before my mission triggered. I flew the Avenger over to the New Artic and clicked scan. Right away a mission triggered all the way back in the Eastern US. So we flew back without any scanning to start Operation Wolf Hound
Operation Wolf Hound
The goal of this mission is to extract a VIP from an Advent City. I remember these types of missions well as they were one of the reasons I gave up with Xcom 2 the last time I played it. The mission gives you a turn limit to extract the VIP and your soldiers. Anyone not extracted gets left behind. Last time I played I never managed to get the whole team out before the turns ran out. The saving grace of this escort mission is you’re in control of the NPC being escorted. At least your not at the mercy of your VIPs back decision making, only your own.
My squad for this Mission
Easha
Endalia
Sofia Vailyeva
Magi
Bookahnerk
Before starting the mission I equipped everyone with new armor. Now that we had completed the Plated Armor research we had the option of equipping Predator Armor. This adds some more protection and unlocks the second item slot for your squad.
This mission is on a 12 turn time limit for extraction. I’m informed that Advent already knows we’re here so there’s no point in hiding. Well if you say so….
Extraction is 2 buildings away from where we start. It’s on the roof top of the second building which I assumed was full of enemies. When the mission starts I send Easha down to check out the scene and see what we’re up against. Immediately we find 2 advent troopers.
I move everyone else into position. Endalia stays on the first roof top and takes up overwatch. Magi goes to the second roof top and takes up overwatch on the high ground. Now I forgot that once they move they can only take up pistol overwatch which isn’t ideal but it’s something.
Bookahnerk moves down to take full cover behind a statue to assist Easha in taking out the Advent troopers. I send the VIP close to the ladder to move up to the next roof top on the next round. To cover the VIP I send Valiyeva up with here.
On Advent’s combat turn I learn that windows exists and I should not position any one near them. The Advent tropper shoots at Valiyeva from the first floor window. Luckily, the shot misses. Lesson learned. Endalia fires with the pistol overwatch and surprisingly hits from quite a far distance! No one in the squad takes damage this round.
The Advent troopers have moved close enough for Easha and Bookahnerk to do their thing. Easha blows the first trooper away and earns a promotion. Bookahnerk fires at the next visible enemy and takes about half it’s health. Emalia fires from the roof top and finishes it off.
With no visible enemies I start moving people up. Magi takes a forward position on the next roof top and discovers 2 vipers on the second floor of the extraction building. The VIP has been moved up as well hopefully out of danger along with Valiyeva on the second roof top. Endalia, Easha, and Bookahnerk move up to get better shots at the vipers.
The vipers promptly jump out of the Windows and move up. This triggers 3 overwatches and the first Viper is toast. Out of spite, the remaining Viper shoots at the VIP and poisons her….
I send my poisoned VIP back out of range on her next turn and hope the poison doesn’t last to long otherwise I’ll need to use a medkit. Valiyeva finishes off the second viper with and earns a promotion. The field looks clear but I just know there’s got to be a few more aliens around.
A miss click on my part sends Easha way to far up out of cover. But hey, we found 2 more aliens a Muton and another viper. Unfortunately, Easha takes a whole lot of unnecessary damage in the process.
To try and cover Easha I send Endalia and Bookanerk up but in actual cover. Magi is on long watch still on the roof top which works out great when the Muton moves out of the second building. It’s not quite dead and suppresses Bookahnerk.
The Viper makes a grab at Easha and hits.
Magi still has a good shot on the Muton and takes it out with ease. Thanks to Nathain’s advice last time a viper grabbed someone I knew to move Bookahnerk up and throw a flashbang to free Easha. In turn, Easha blows the viper away with a point blank blast of the shotgun.
Not seeing any more enemies around it’s time to get everyone to extraction. I was trying to be a bit more aggressive this mission so I wouldn’t run out the turn clock and have to report leaving people behind. So once all the visible enemies were cleared I had 6 turns to get everyone to extraction.
I had everyone extracted with 3 turns to spare!
After Action Report
I was really hoping to find an Advent Officer to skulljack but didn’t see one on this mission.
Everyone returned home this mission with only Easha being gravely wounded. Unfortunately, this means Easha will be out for 24 days. Yikes! Everyone else returned without a scratch.
3 squadies were up for promotion after this mission
Easha, injured but carrying the team that last mission, earned a promotion. I chose Implacable which will allow bonus movement after a kill.
Bookahnerk, with some solid damage and support, earned a promotion. I went with Haywire to hack robots.
Valiyeva, protector of the VIP who only let her get poisoned once, returns home for a promotion. Keeping the medic theme going I chose Field Medic which gives 2 extra charges on medkits.
I got yelled at by our chief engineer that we had some engineers twiddling their thumbs. They were put to work in the Proving Grounds to speed up the research. Tygen also informed me that we really need some more scientists.
It’s August 1st which means Blaugust is officially under way!
August has become my favorite month over the past few years. It’s great to see this side of the blogosphere so active, seeing new faces to add to my feed, and seeing some old faces I haven’t read in a while.
Every year I shamelessly use Blaugust as a way to motivate myself to write more. It also motivates me to comment more and try to be more active in the community. I’m a blog/discord lurker by nature. This year I’m using it to get back in to blogging as my writing has fallen off pretty hard this year.
I already know I won’t be hitting the post a day challenge. I’m leaving for vacation tomorrow and did not prepare any posts in advance. But no worries there, my goal this year is to consistently write 3 posts a week and get my mind back on blogging and writing in general.
Assassin’s Creed Origins ended up in my Steam library at some point. It’s hard to say when I picked it up exactly. It may have been last years Steam Summer Sale or maybe one a one off weekly sale. But it was definitely sometime last year that I bought it with full intentions of playing it.
According to Steam, up until recently I had played about 3 hours of the game. I think I’ve started it up a few times and tried to play it but disliked the keyboard and mouse controls and lost interest pretty fast. It’s got some weirdly layed out buttons by default. So on the virtual shelf it sat until a few weeks ago.
Honestly, I have no idea why I started playing it again. Like most things I took a bit too long to write about it to capture those initial moments but it was probably along the lines of: I had an itch to play an open world game so I fired it up. I don’t think I had intentions of latching on to it as much as I have. I’m fully attributing that to playing with a controller this time around.
I bought a PS4 in late 2014. It was my first big purchase after I graduated college that was not rent, food, or student loan payments. The PS3 was still going strong but it was getting to that point where less and less new games were coming out for it. So I made the switch and it was my primary gaming device until I built a gaming PC in 2017. I still have the original controller that came with it but sadly it doesn’t work as well as it used to.
In general, the PS4 controller can be finicky when used for PC gaming. Some games will have trouble recognizing it and some won’t recognize it at all. Even with third party tools to turn it into a “virtual” Xbox controller it could be a pain to use. A few years ago, Steam released an update that helped more games recognize the controller which solved some issues but not all. And while it’s a sleight in convenience, it always through me off to see the Xbox button prompts on screen and have to figure out which button on the PS4 controller that was supposed to be.
The big reason I don’t use it as much as I once did is because the physical hardware it failing. It turns out, after 7 years of connecting and disconnecting micro usb cables to the controller, the port is starting to come loose. Slight movements will cause the controller to disconnect and reconnect quite frequently which can be really annoying when trying to use it.
Now, I’m not sure why I tried to use the keyboard and mouse controls for AC Origins the first time around, I really don’t, but this time I tried the controller and found it played somuch better. But that disconnects from the controller were getting unbearable. So it was finally time to go out and get a new controller.
I’ve put this off for a long time because controllers are expensive. A new PS4 controller still runs around $60. Switch joy-cons go for $80! Of course, I could buy a used controller but you never know how often it’s been thrown across a roo before it’s gotten in to your hands. I figured, if I was going to purchase a new controller I might as well buy one that would work better with my PC. So I went searching for a reasonably priced Xbox controller.
For the first time in years, I actually had a reason to visit a brick and mortar Gamestop. It was one of those rare times where I didn’t want to wait for shipping and remembered I could go to an actual store and pick up something that day. As it turns out, my local Gamestop was having a sale on controllers and I had an unused gift card still in my wallet from who knows how long ago. I ended up getting the controller for under $20 which was nice.
I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t like the layout of the Xbox One controller. After all, I’d been using the Dual Shock layout for almost a decade. Once I’d played on it I realized I actually liked the feel of the controller better than my old PS4 controller. Plus, it’s red which adds character. I’ve played a few games with my new controller and they all just work without fiddling around with Steam or usb cables which has been great.
I was a bit surprised to find that it cam with a set of double A batteries. Microsoft is still selling rechargeable battery packs still. It’s not really a concern since my PC lacks Bluetooth to connect the controller wirelessly
The difference between keyboard and mouse and the Xbox controller is night and day with AC Origins. It’s so much easier to play and interact with the world. The game even has aim assist for the bow so aiming isn’t too much trouble with the controller. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, Assassins’ Creed is a quintessential console franchise, it makes sense that it would play better on a controller. One of things I like the most about PC gaming is the options. Not just the options of what to play but how to play them.
I picked up The Pedestrian from the Steam sale this year. It’s been sitting on my wishlist for a while and I had an itch to play a puzzle game. What caught my eye with The Pedestrian was that the puzzles appear to take place on street signs. As it turns out, it takes place over all sorts of signage: From Street signs to bathroom signs to blueprints.
Things I liked:
The Difficulty: I like puzzle games a lot but I don’t like when they get so hard I feel like I need a guide on another monitor just to play the game. The puzzles start out fairly easy and do get progressively more complex as they should. While I’d get stuck every now and then on a particularly challenging puzzle, I always felt there was enough information to figure it out. Whether that be something I overlooked or leveraging a mechanic in a particular way. I never felt stuck to the point of frustration.
The Mechanics: The Pedestrian is a 2d puzzle platformer. Each part of the puzzle takes place over multiple signs and you can connect the signs in various ways to get the stick figure out of the exit door and on to the new puzzle. You can move the signs around to make more connections between them. Some connections that don’t work at a particular angle will become available when the sign is moved. Breaking connections after you’ve started moving the stick figure will, in most cases, reset the puzzle. As the game progresses, a few more mechanics are added on. Some levels need you to connect the electricity between wires to open up new pieces of the puzzle. Some signs let you jump to another sign without a door. And some signs can be painted green so certain obstacles in the level aren’t reset when breaking a connection. I really enjoyed figuring out how the whole level fit together before I sent my stick figure out to the exit.
The Visuals: The mix between 2d puzzles on signs and complex 3d scenery in the background made this game feel very unique. The music mixed with the slightly cartoony backgrounds made me feel like I was playing a Pixar short.
Things That Could Have Been Better:
Then Music: This isn’t to say the music wasn’t good because that’s simply not the case. I wanted the music to play more frequently than it did. The pauses in between the music felt slightly too long and there wasn’t much background noise in between. It lead to a bit of awkward silence, especially if I was stuck on a particular puzzle for a while.
The Length: The Pedestrian is a short game and while it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome I wish it was a bit longer. Just when I was getting a handle on the more involved mechanics of the puzzles it ended. I will most likely replay it in the future!
Many Welps 