Kluwes’ December 2024 Goals

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It always feels like I end up speed-running the last three months of the year. We tend to save our vacations for early spring and late fall when the weather at home isn’t as nice. Inevitably, those month pass by quick. Factor in the day to day at work slowing down as people start to take their holiday vacations and a few free PTO days around the said holidays and I’m staring at the end of the year already.
We had to cancel our Thanksgiving plans of traveling to see my parents this year on account of literal feet of snow closing the highway between Ohio and New York for days on end. But staying home and spending the time with the family near us was still fun.

I didn’t get up to too much gaming in November. I played a few rounds of Lethal Company with the Squad and we played through Backrooms: Escape Together. We all bought this one in October but never got around to playing. It was fun for what it was, I probably should get a post out about it sometime soon.

I don’t have too many goals this month on account of it being rather busy and there isn’t much that I can “goalify” (yes spellcheck, I’m aware that’s not a word…). The ones I do have should be achievable but, as always, I’ll see how true that is come January.

Goals

Meet my StroyGraph Pages goal for the year.


I was looking through the pages read stats over the summer and thought that it would be fun to try and beat my 13,200 pages read last year. Which by the way, was the most I’ve ever read in one year since I started tracking my reading stats.

That stat probably isn’t the most accurate though. I’m pretty sure it just adds up the page counts from the books I marked as read throughout the year. Which definitely allows for some fluffing of the numbers as some books have a bunch of back matter. I just finished one that had 45 pages of footnotes and citations…On the other hand, some books have more pages than the editions in Storygraph so it might even out somewhere. It’s not like Books Read stat is any better. I read 48 “books” last year, ten of them were under 100 pages. If a short story is outside of a collection there’s no other way to log it.

I don’t take these “challenges” too seriously. It’s fun to look at the stats, especially year after year, but I have found that trying too hard to read books just to hit the arbitrary numbers I set for myself sucks most of the joy out of reading. With that said, reading has been my main hobby for the past few months and I’m feel pretty confident I can hit my 14k pages goal by the end of the year.

Post two times a week.
I found out in September that posting 1 times a week was about as motivating as posting 1 time a month…so to remedy that I’m going to see how posting two times a week feels. That means 8 posts this month so I’m 1/8th of the way there!

MissionChief: Extinguishing Fires Near Me

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My gaming interests are fairly cyclical in nature. I can always count on them to come back around. It’s one of the reasons I never regret buying something even if I don’t play it. Eventually I’m going to come back to it.

This turn of the wheel appears to have landed on “games that use OpenStreetMap data”.

OpenStreetMaps is like Wikipedia for maps. At its core, it’s a database that’s updated and maintained by contributors that is also used to render a map of the world. Anyone can contribute to the map and make edits and the data is freely available for anyone to use. Services that use OSM data range from GPS routing apps, to finding hiking trails, data visualization, games, and much more.

I had no idea that OpenStreetMap existed until I stumbled upon Nimby Rails on Steam a few years ago. I spent some time creating virtual train routes all over the world and I was facinated with the idea being able to play anywhere in the world.

It turns out, there’s a more than a handful of games out there that use this data which are helpfully located on theOpenStreetMap wiki. As expected, the list has a number of augmented reality mobile games. The most notable, by far, is Pokemon Go which uses OpenStreetMap data to influence Pokemon spawns.There are quite a few PC games that also use OSM data. The big one there is Microsoft Flight Simulator.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a good sale for a few games on the list. There’s a couple published by Game Operators that look interesting: Delivery Inc which looks like a delivery company tycoon kind of thing and Infection Free Zone which is a zombie survival game. Of the two, I’m leaning more towards Infection Free Zone but I have yet to see it go on sale for a price I’m ready to pay.

To scratch the current gaming itch I went with a free to play browser game on the list called MissionChief . It’s a game where you manage and dispatch emergency services in an area of your choosing. You start out building fire stations and outfitting them with vehicles to respond to calls. Then from there you can expand into hospitals/EMS, police stations, water rescue, and apparently tow trucks. It’s a little bit of a tycoon game, a little bit of an idle game both of which I’m a fan of, and it’s been keeping me entertained for the last two weeks.

You can place stations anywhere you want but it appears most of the community plays with “realistic” station placements. I thought would be fun and maybe add a little more challenge too.

I started building around my area in Cleveland and it’s been fun to find all the fire stations in the different towns around me and see the vehicles drive around roads I know well. It was slow going at first but I’ve built up 10 fire stations now so there are always calls to respond to.

The gameplay is simple. You earn money from completing calls/mission. Each mission requires a certain number of vehicles to successfully complete. A mailbox fire only requires a fire engine while a garage fire needs two. So you need to decide which vehicle is the best to send where to complete the calls efficiently

As you build more fire stations, more mission types become available which require different vehicles. This means you have to make sure you’re not expanding too quickly or you risk either running out of money for the vehicles required for the new missions or not having the staff to operate the new vehicles.

It’s got a mobile app that I can hop in quick to dispatch some vehicles to missions while I’m doing other things. Then when I feel like spending time expanding my stations or setting map POI’s I can do so from my PC. It’s keeping my interest for now. For how much longer? Who knows!

Jack Move Impressions

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Jack Move is the game I picked for this month’s Blaugust Reviews – Humble Choice. There were quite a few games in this month’s Humble Choice that piqued my interest, which hasn’t happened in a long time. What drew me to Jack Move was its cyberpunk setting, pretty pixel art, and a turn-based combat system, all wrapped up in a little RPG.

And I do mean little. How Long to Beat has the game clocked at 6 hours for the main story. Which is fine with me me. At the time of this writing I’m 2.5 hours in, just under the half way mark.

I may even *gasp* finish it! Haven’t done that in a while…

Jack Move takes place in post-apoctolyptic future where the world ended and society collapsed in 1997 due to a solar storm knocking out all electronic and radio signals. Eventually corporations stepped in to restore power and we end up in the classic dystopian cyberpunk future. Complete with hacking decks, slums, corporate overloards, and using random tech terms as slang. That’s terra-floppin’!

You play as Noa Solares, a sassy hacker as she tries to save her estranged father who has been kidnapped by the Monomind corporation because of some research he was working on. She’s assisted remotely by her tactical planner friend Ryder and sometimes her martini drinking, gentleman uncle, who happens to be an ex-corporate spy. It’s a small but fun cast of characters who synergize well together.

Like most turn based RPGs time is split between walking around and engaging with the story and sweet, sweet, turn based combat. The walking part is pretty standard, there are chests to open and side quests to complete. There’s also some tablets lying around with bits of lore on them that help to flesh out the world. So far, the world isn’t all that big so it’s easy to get around without getting lost. There are times when you need to leave town which is where the combat comes in.

Turn based RPGs can get a bit samey after you’ve played a bunch which is why I always appreciate when one tries to switch up the formula. The most unique aspect of Jack Move‘s combat is limiting your party size to a party of one. It’s just Noa up against, so far, two to three enemies. What I like about this is that it forces me to do a couple of things for each combat instance. I need to pay more attention to the turn order so I’m not taking a huge amount of damage from enemies who are attacking one after another. I need to remember which enemies I can either one shot or take out during my turn to force the turn order in my favor. On top of that, I need to remember which enemies are weak to which element, and sometimes switch out my skills mid battle to get an advantage.

The whole single character party also interesting because Noa can play any and all roles throughout combat. Rather than have a dedicated healer/buffer or damage dealer who take their own turns, I find keeping this balanced through a fight with one character to be a lot of fun. You can switch your equipped skills mid battle at the cost of a turn which adds another layer to combat as well. It’s a fun approach and, with the game being short, I don’t think it will wear out it’s welcome before the end.

I like Jack Move, a lot. I think it’s totally worth the price of admission for this month’s Humble Choice. It does everything it sets out to do well and I haven’t run into anything I didn’t like about it in play time so far.

P.S. It also runs great on Steam Deck if that’s something that’s important to you!

Finishing up Heart of Thorns

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Well at least the personal story part. I’m sure there’s still a ton to do outside of that. Considering the personal story only required getting 5 out of 23 total masteries and the fact that I didn’t need to explore any of the Dragon’s Stand zone means I have more to do there. But I also know that if I stop the progressing the story to dig in now, there’s a good chance I won’t pick it back up. Long term, I’m going to take my current character, Vale Faelight the Sylvain Guardian, through all of the story first before venturing out to other aspects of the game or other characters.

I was surprised how short the story was for Heart of Thorns. Only 16 chapters and it probably took me around 10 hours in total to complete. I would hazard a guess that the core story felt longer because chapters were broken up by level requirements. Heart of Thorns, on the other hand, only required masteries to move the story along which did offer a nice break to explore and participate in events. The lack of Renowned Hearts threw me off at first but after a little while I preferred the dynamic events.

As I mentioned when I first got here, Heart of Thorns open world felt more difficult than the core Tyria. It did force me to pay a little more attention now that things weren’t face-roll easy. By the end of the story, I didn’t find myself staring at the downed screen quite as often.

As for the story itself, I preferred Heart of Thorns to the core story. The whole build up a large army and lead it storyline didn’t do much for me. Heart of Thorns’ storyline of a rag tag bunch behind enemy lines going to save their friends and defeat a big dragon was definitely more my style.

Playing a Sylvari lead to way more little interactions than I thought it would. Surprised that was the case, when everyone’s the hero I would have thought the story would be the same for everyone. Every once in a while I was questioned by Pact soldiers whether I could still lead because of the influence of Mordremoth. Some of the story missions had Mordremoth talking to me. On the final mission, I chose Caithe and Cnmach to come with me and someone made a comment about everyone going in to the final fight being Sylvari. What can I say? I love a good redemption arc.

It was so nice to get out of the same zones I’d seen a dozen times over and see some new environments. Gliding is a fun way to traverse the map but I enjoyed those first moments in (zone name) without the glider where one misstep would send you over the edge of a cliff.

For now, it’s on to Living World Season 3 but I have a feeling I will return to the jungle eventually.

(Bl)August 2024 Wrap Up and September 2024 Goals!

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Whew, I can’t believe August is over already. With it go the last remnants of summer. Break out the Halloween decorations! Take out those hoodies! Bring on the Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING!!

I love Fall, can you tell? Summer is great and all but we only get so many months of warm weather in Northeast Ohio so we tend to try and pack in as much outdoor activities as possible. This summer was full of concerts, trips to the zoo and the beach and then back to the zoo. Every weekend was booked from the end of May until right now. I’m so ready for a nice break.

I took part in Blaugust this year which was a rousing success. I skipped last year completely, so it was nice to rejoin the event again. My participation was for wholly selfish reasons, to inspire me to write more than I have been. Considering I’m writing this post, I’d say that was a success. I managed to write 22 posts last month which was above and beyond the goal of 10-15 posts I set for myself at the start of things.

Spending all of my time on my own writing meant I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to check out other blogs participating this year, especially all the new ones. When I did, I tended to stick to the blogs I’ve been reading for years anyways. It’s something I would like to work on for next year for sure.

My initial thought is, if I spend more time throughout the year writing I won’t feel compelled to cram it all in one month..or…and hear me out on this one….I might be able to plan better and give myself more time to read all those other blogs. Time will tell!

As always, thank you Belghast for organizing and putting on this awesome event year after year!

Top 5 Games in August

GameHoursTotal % of Time Played
Guild Wars 220h47%
No Man’s Sky11.5h27%
Dragon Age: Origin7.5h18%
Hunt: Showdown2h5%
Disney Dreamlight Valley1.5h3%

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t think I’d have enough games to fill this chart this month.

I knew Guild Wars 2 and Dragon Age: Origins would be up there because I’ve written a bunch of posts about those. No Man’s Sky being in second was a bit of a shock. I know I wrote a few posts about it too but if you asked me to guess before I put together this list I would have said Dragon Age would be higher. It makes sense though, it was the Squads’ weekend game this month.

I gave Hunt: Showdown another try this month and it fell flat for me. I don’t think I’ll be returning to it anytime soon even though it does have an awesome soundtrack. Disney Dreamlight Valley was vying for 5th against 3 other games that had a little less than an hour in them but the new Star Path that came out this month has had me logging in to the game every few days for a quick check. Earlier this year, it would have been higher on the list but my interest in that particular genre has waned since the beginning of summer.

September 2024 Goals

  • Finish the Heart of Thorns story. This one is a bit of a gimmie because I’m pretty sure I’m nearing the end of it anyways.
  • Continue my Dragon Age: Origins play through. I’m not naive enough to think that I will be anywhere close to finishing this game by the end of the month. Who knows, I may never start it up again. Such are the whims of my interests!
  • Don’t go dormant! aka post at least 1 time a week in September. Now that I’m back at it, I don’t want to lose momentum but I also don’t want to set a goal to high for myself the first month post Blaugust. Boom! Got the first week covered already.
  • Bonus Goal: Finish the Living World Season 3 because I think I’m very close – very, very, very close to the end of Heart of Thorns already…

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.