Fallout 4

It'll come as no surprise to many of you that I've not been updating very often, literally all of my free time has been dedicated to playing Fallout 4. I've become fully engrossed, and as a result my entries on this blog and recordings of SOMA just haven't happened. Honestly, I don't expect I'll get round to SOMA until Christmas is over. I got one day a week to play video games and truth be told I don't want to spend it recording SOMA, when I just want to play Fallout.

I will be doing an extensive write up on Fallout, but not until I've finished the main story. I shouldn't wonder that'll be my next project. SOMA is coming, but, you know - later.

Let's Play: SOMA Part 4 - Oh, hello

It's been a little while since I've uploaded, or even recorded anything, work has been kinda cray cray. Don't worry though, the lack of content is nothing to do with not wanting to record- just not having time to do so. I literally haven't even been on my computer, hence the not streaming too - if anyone even knew I did.

Another apology to start with on this video, hopefully it'll be the last. I've pretty much got everything under control in terms of how you get this recording business down. As explained at the start of the video, the frame rate issues were down to not recording to the correct HDD- it caused slowdown and I confused it with the reported frame rate issues this game has.

You know what to do, click Mr. Mays for a spoliery discussion of this episode.

Heroes of The Storm VS League of Legends. FIGHT!

Pre-match up statistics.

League of Legends (LoL) and Heroes of the Storm (HOTS) are titles that both belong to the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre of video game. They're basically a sub-genre of Real tine strategy( RTS) but in this version you (normally) control just one character. The aim is the beat the enemy team, usually composed of 5 different other characters, and destroy their base/nexus/core. To do this, the teams "push" against each others lane(s). In most MOBA's the various maps will either be this map, or a variation of it.

This is starting to feel too much like learning.

The blue dots represent towers that attack anything hostile that comes near them, in most cases it'll be the "minions" that spawn from each teams base. Minions are NPC that automatically push down a lane towards the enemy base to absorb tower hits and deal damage to enemy towers. In most MOBA's, enemy minions can be killed to award XP and gold. XP will level your character up and award better stats and skills, gold will allow you to buy items that increase your abilities, or defensive stats. The green part of the map, in almost all cases is referred to as the "jungle" the jungle houses various neutral objectives that both teams will want to have, and is often the cause of many team fights.

The genre got super popular after the DOTA mod for Warcraft 3. It existed, to an extent, before that but the formula found its footing around that time. At this point in time, there's a whole fistful of MOBA's floating around but I'm going to focus the two I play, because DOTA2 is too much for my mere mortal mind.

HOTS doesn't exactly have exact statistics in regards to current player base, as it's relatively new compared to other titles in the genres. However, according to this Reddit thread HOTS boasts a 4.8 million strong player base. Keep in mind that this figure is first and foremost 3 months old. It's also based from data from a third part website. So, it's possible it could be higher or lower or even a number that humanity hasn't discovered yet.

LOL's data is a lot more reliable, unless you're cynical, as it comes directly from the source. According to RIOT's website 67 million people play every month. So, there's clearly a big gap in terms of popularity.

This is in part due to LoL being released in 2009 and HOTS being released this year, in 2015.

Have a word with Billy for more.

Let's Play: SOMA Part 3 - Stick Your Finger Right in There

The next part of SOMA is here, there's only one more in the chamber - but I'll be recording another set of 4~ tomorrow. For those of you wondering why I keep saying "boop" when I press buttons, it's partly (and mostly) because it's fun, and just help me sync the audio. That is, until I find a better way of doing it. I apologize for the short episode, in both the video and now. I was recording to the hard drive I was running the game from like a complete Muppet so it was causing some slow down. I think, maybe now, all video problems have been addressed so hopefully from now on it'll be as smooth sailing as it can get.

Let's talk about the game a little more, follow my good friend Billy for spoilers from *this* particular video.

Lets Play: SOMA Part 2 - OMNItool GET.

So, there's a bit of a story behind this video. Despite being the second video in the upload order, and series - it's the 5th one I had recorded. I recorded 3 episodes after the first upload. However, the second episode freaked out and stopped recording the video for about 5 minutes towards the end of the video.

Lucky enough for me, I had checkpoints and quick saves all over the shop and was able to return right to the end of the first episode and just start again. That in of itself isn't exactly a huge issue, if I didn't say anything I doubt you would of noticed. The issue with this video, as I'm sure you are aware is the sound mixing.

You hear everything I say twice, this is due to Fraps recording my microphone as well as Audacity. I didn't even notice that this was the case until I had finished uploading the episode to YouTube.  This entire situation came about because I wanted to cut corners. When I record live commentary, I record the video using Fraps & the Audio using a separate program - I do it this way (as do many others) so you can edit/fix the audio in post. Making it louder, or slowing it down for dumb effects and bullshit. I did however, test recording the audio with Fraps instead- removing the need for me to sync the audio across the two tracks, as it would be embedded into the audio track of the video file.

It turned out that the audio was too quiet so I scrapped the idea, and went to rerecord my episode using the same set up I always have. Thing is though, I forgot to un tick the record audio box on Fraps. Thus we have the double dooble sound. This is in part due to me not being able to sync the audio correctly, because if it was done super well the audio files would be layered and you wouldn't be able to notice it in the first place.

Making video more frequently has allowed me to get more accustomed to the software, and what I need to do to get it to follow my lead. I've taken steps to better sync the audio now, so you'll see it improve over time and hopefully we'll get to the point where I'm talking about nothing but the game in these posts - and not the mistakes I made recording it.

But wait, there's more! I'll be talking about the game after the break, be warned spoilers (up to where this video ends) will not be tagged, make sure to watch the video first!

Lets Play SOMA Part 1

I promise a video, and within a week it went live. AMAZING. I've recorded 4 episodes at this point in time, though none of them are edited or uploaded at this point due to wanting to play the new HOTS patch. This episode just features me fucking around with physics, enjoy!

I only thought it would be two posts long, I ran out of clever names or part 3

So, we've looked at the amount of gold required to purchase the two single player modes, and the amount of time required to earn that gold. Next I wanna talk about the two free expansions that come with hearthstone. The game originally launched with 245 cards. 135 are class cards, 110 of which are neutral and can be used by all classes. The next expansion, goblin vs gnomes included 123 cards. 51 neutral and 72 class cards. Finally, the grand tournament comes with 132 cards 50 neutral and 82 class cards. So a total of 500 cards. Keep in mind, other cards do exist. Special cards that bosses will use, or cards that are created when using other particular cards. I haven't included those in this list as it isn't possible to collect them.

Again, getting hold of these cards can be done in various ways. In game gold, at 100 for a pack of 5 cards. The packs are split into the 3 sets I've previously mentioned. Real world money of varying prices depending on the amount you buy in one go. As discussed before, playing in arena can also net you free cards or free random card packs.

Finally, individual cards can also be crafted with dust, with he cost changing depending on the rarity. Dust can again be earned as a reward for arena, or by disenchanting extra or unneeded cards.

Click Billy for more.

Blizz Pls Redux

In the last post I discussed the amount of time/effort and or money required to earn enough gold to purchase a single expansion with hearthstones in game currency, I did however leave out the potential earnings from running arena in hearthstone.

For those of you that don't know, in Hearthstones arena you can pay 150 gold, or £1.49 for entry. This entry will allow to you play against other players that have also paid this price. In arena, you have to build a deck out of completely random cards. You have to pick a class, out of 3 possible random choices and you get to make 30 choices, split into a selection of 3 cards per choice. A total of 90 cards. Each phase you have to pick one card, and there is no take backsies. Once you've selected a card, you're locked in with that choice. There is an entire meta game of being able to build decks well, you can be great using your constructed decks but if you don't know how other decks work or cards you don't normally use you'll be at a loss.

In arena, you get 3 lives or losses and then you're out. With a maximum of 12 possible wins. You'll get to play against players with a similar record to you own. So your win/loss ratio will affect decide who you go up against. Each win will net you another tier of rewards, there's a chart explaining them all here but in general each tier has guaranteed rewards & random rewards. tier 0 - 2 has 2 guaranteed awards with everything above having 3.  Tier 0-2 will have two prizes to open, tier 3- 7 will have 3, tier 8- 11 has 4 and the 12th and final rank has 5.

With 7+ wins, you will definitely make your gold back at this point RNJesus doesn't need to be on your side. If you consistently get about 2-3 wins in arena you'll at least break even and possibly earn more. If you're looking to get more cards for constructed, then the maths of the whole situation will change - but we'll leave that for when we get into the free expansions of the game.

Depending on your skill level, arena can work out to be better for you particular if your quests can be completed at the same time. Assuming you're a brand new player, this is likely not going to work out for you - but I think when we're talking about someone trying to catch up with all the Hearthstone vets playing arena may not be the most cost effective, but it's the best way to learn the game.

What's love got to do with it?

So, I just finished recording and editing the first episode of SOMA. It's about 25 minutes long, and I had a really fun time doing it. All of my other videos are of things I've played before, and I guess maybe that coloured how I felt about recording them whilst doing livecom, perhaps I'll try to do post for stuff I've played before and live for stuff I haven't. It's even rendering and everything.

I guess that cats out of the bag, I use power director 12 - I bought it on sale when I recorded those Dark Souls episodes with Devyn and I've never looked back. Don't judge me.

I cannae think I can do it captain

About an hour ago, I watched an episode of the unreleased mass effect video series I made. Upon reflection, I thought it was pretty good. The video & audio quality we're actually spot on this time round. It was post commentary so I knew what I wanted to say about everything, and I didn't have any awkward pauses. I then tried to record a second episode, and the magic was seemingly gone.

Maybe I was tired, or lucky the first time or perhaps and I think this is most likely - the part of the game I was playing was boring as fuck.

I want to talk about the game, but I don't want to write about the game. Doing an LP of a game I've played to death is really fucking difficult on my own. The only real thing you can talk about is the story, or the content of the lore.

I may consider trying something a little bit different with Mass effect, but for now I think I'll play some SOMA and do livecom. See how I feel about that. I miss making videos, I think. WHO KNOWS MAYBE IT'LL EVEN GET FINISHED LIKE WOW.

Blizz pls

Recently, I've been playing a lot of Heroes Of the Storm & Hearthstone (as soon as Overwatch comes out I'll finally complete the trifecta & play nothing but Blizzard games) and as I said a couple of posts ago I've got some stuff I wouldn't mind getting off the ol' chest.

Hearthstone is a game I play at least once a day, and often times it'll be more than that. Sometimes I'll get a couple of buddies together and trying to get 12 wins in arena will be our evening. It's a really solid game. You can pick it up for ten minutes and play one game, or get sucked in and spend a good couple of hours on it. The art is fantastic, the varied styles & modes of play are really exciting too. Even the little descriptions of the cards a cool little nods to the larger meta world of World of Warcraft. Still though, the game still needs to make some changes - and I think at this point it's a little too far gone in its current direction to make them.

Click Mr. Mays for more.

The day Todd Howard saved video games

When we first saw all that Fallout 4 content at e3 I haven't spoken to a person that isn't excited about the idea of it all, I've seen that day being referred to the say Todd Howard saved video games. I completely agree.

This post is a little, or very I suppose, late. I just wanted to say that I can't wait and it surprises me that a jaded old man such as myself can still feel this way about video games. 

Mad Max the Game

The Mad Max game was a complete surprise, I had no idea it was coming out until I saw it advertised as coming soon at GAME. "A movie tie in game? Pfft" I thought to myself, and fortunately I was kinda mostly wrong? I mean, it's not terrible. Put that on the box.

Mad Max Ripper edition retails at around £49.99, there was no way I was going to pay that. I did want the game, as I enjoy post apocalyptia as much as the next guy and I'm quite into the series in general. Particularly the road warrior & the recentish Fury Road. So, I headed over to one of those dodgy as fuck code websites and picked the ripper edition up on PC for about 12 quid. So in short, this game is worth 12 quid but I don't think it's worth £49.99. If you want to know why, read on.

Mad Max the game was developed by avalanche studios, the guys that brought us just cause, and developed by WB studios - the guys that have brought us the Batman Arkham series. You'd think this would be a match made in heaven - but it's more of a relationship you gradually settle with because it's too much effort to explore outside of your comfort zone for anything that really challenges you. I also promise I'll try my best not to make a "mediocre" joke or reference or anything, this one doesn't count.

The game itself is split into two main types of game play, the vehicle combat & the ground combat. For the most part, you'll be driving around the wasteland in magnum opus (not the interceptor because it's too cool to keep for long) finding stuff to do, be that collecting scrap for upgrades, taking part in races, taking over bases, or busting up shit. All of the events you can take part in, bar racing, will lower the threat of the big bad Lord Scabrous Scrotus, son of our favorite warlord Immortan Joe. The gist of this mechanic is, the more of his shit you wreck the lower the threat in that particular area, this will unlock story missions, or upgrades for you car. However, it also lowers the patrols of baddies in that area. You get a vast open wasteland to drive around in, with very little to do besides that. The different types of events just aren't varied enough. I found myself intending to 100% this game, as I wanted to spend as much time with Max as possible - but in the end I just wanted to play Metal Gear Solid V more and more instead. It took me 20 hours to complete this game, with about 60% of that me dicking around and not doing the main story.

The story of this game is just dull. I'm not going to spoil anything, but suffice to say it basically follows the pattern of Max is just out for himself, he's an anti-hero. Then some dumb shit happens and you've learned the power of friendship and trust. It isn't a *bad* story, it makes sense, it follows it's own rules. It got on my nerves with how it made Max out to be a bad guy, with his only goal being to get the hell out of dodge but within the same sentence as him saying that he's happy to go collect the maguffin for one of the many unmemorable characters. The Max I know would just be all "Here's my rebuttal - I won't pull the trigger of my shotgun in your face"

My boy at the end game

The vehicle combat isn't inspired, but it's solid and quite a lot of fun. Slowly upgrading the car is a real treat, I just wish that we had more visual customization. More car bodies, colours, decals, be able to change the colour of particular parts. That kind of thing. There are some upgrades that feel skip able, like the spikes on the car or tires but for the most part if you don't build you car right, you'll get fucked up. Once you've bought an upgrade you can install and remove it at will, a great feature. This could lead to you removing your grill or armour for that bit of extra speed for a particular mission or event - but nothing requires it. The game doesn't challenge you enough with the upgrading, for the most part most peoples car will look just like mine at the end of the game, minus colour and the like.
If your car gets too heavy because of all the bullshit you have on it, it's too easy to mitigate. Just get a bigger engine. I would've liked more trade offs in this system, having it all is always boring. Oh also, naming the car Latin for "great work" real clever guys.

The ground combat in this game isn't anything special, if you've played the batman series you've played this. I will concede that the combat feels very heavy impactful. There are a few key differences in the combat that are oddly worse. For example, no double counters. It's like they've gone back a step with the combat. It worked great in batman, and yes I'm fucking bored of it - but there's nothing *wrong* with it, it's functional just not innovative.

In general, the game is pretty solid. It'll appeal to fans of the universe as it's more or less faithful. I'd of been pissed if I bought it for full price, but I can't remember the last time I ever did that. The game still has all the flaws of most modern open world games. Climb the thing, see the things, then do the things. But, it's just a product of its time in that regard and until we find a new formula that works better I expect we'll see this system kicking around for a while yet. Overall it's mediocre.

For the YouTube series I've lost before

So, as of the time this is posted I've currently got something like 3 YouTube lets plays currently running, the first being  the telltale walking dead series, the first season being recorded on a potato. The trouble with this series, and the reason it never went anywhere was mainly due to the fact I played too far ahead, I've played through to the final episode of series 2 at this point. And yes, lots of people do lets plays of games they've completed a million times, but I don't think the telltale walking dead gets better the more you play it. The more you play that game the more you see how little our choices impact the world around you. This makes for a very hollow second or third play through and I just don't have enough to say about the game to make up for it. I don't expect to carry this series  on.

Onto the more recent play throughs, both dark souls 2 and resident evil 4 are projects I'd like to continue. I've always enjoyed sharing games with a friend, and watching someone play dark when they haven't before is pure joy. But, and it's a big but, both of our work schedules and free time in our personal life need to be in sync to record an episode. That plus the time required to edit, render and upload need to also be factored in. I don't want to say those two are over, but it's very possible they won't be seeing the light of day again.

I won't remove these videos from my channel, I'm not happy with some of the quality of the stuff but pretending I didn't make them is pointless. Hopefully I'll learn from these mistakes and get better mastering this video marlarky.

Silent hill 2

Most of you will likely the remember the great sadness of the Silent Hills reveal. In short, it was a new Silent Hill game - one that had promise to actually be spooky skeletons and not shit the bed like many of the recent iterations of the series. At the helm we had Kojima & Del Dorito, and Norman Reedus staring. It looked amazing, the playable trailer was great and everything was right in the world.

Then came the dark times.

April 27, 2015, Konami stated the official for reals cancellation of the Silent Hills project. They did however, state they wish to continue to molest the series - or make new games or whatever. On that note I want to say how much I hate being a hipster about the whole thing "Oh the old ones were great, the new ones are baaaaaad" but there is a clear decline in quality since 3. There's been rumors galore that the Dorito & Kojima are still working on something, but there's nothing solid there and we're not talking about  this anyway I just wanted to set the scene.

Between the announcement of a game made by two people that I feel could bring someone fresh to the series and not just rehash the ending & themes of Silent hill 2 and the cancellation of Silent Hills I decided to replay Silent hill 2 because it's the only one I finished. I could never finish 1 because it looked like it was made of Lego, and 3 scared me too much as a kid and I never got around to finishing it. I may look into playing them, and recording it but you knows. Anyway, hardly any of this post has been about Silent Hill 2 so lets get down and dirty with it.

 I won't be spoiling anything despite the fact it came out in 2001 I won't spoil it if you haven't played.

To me, Silent Hill 2 doesn't hold a special nostalgia place in my heart. I played 3 first, it scared me and I haven't played it since. I didn't really get to the point where I have anything meaningful to say about it. Next I played 1, on an emulator because I had heard about how great 2 is and needed to get the story. Those of you that understand where 2 fits in into the mythos of Silent Hill probably just slapped their forehead with their hand, or as it is more colloquially known face palmed. Again, at the time, 1 didn't really impress me. It still kinda doesn't honestly. Not growing up with the game hurt its chances, and having been spoiled by better graphics in general doesn't help either. I appreciate the story, the themes & WHY it is good but on the whole coming back to a game from that era, when gorgeous 2D sprites were being replaced with clunky 3D models with pixels the size of dinner plates, is just too taxing. It just doesn't look pretty enough, and yes that's not a great reason but there you go.

The biggest gripe I tend to hear about Silent hill in general is that the controls are bad, and yeah they aren't great. There's not much more to be said about it honestly. Silent Hill purists tend to argue that the controls are intentionally bad or clunky to emulate the characters inability to fight due to being a regular person, or to make the player feel powerless and that's a nice thought, but it doesn't sit right with me. When you start having arguments about authorial intent to defend a game that you love that much it can make you blind to the real problems a game can have. It's impossible to say, and really - it's not even important. Did team silent want the controls to be bad? Maybe they did, maybe it does add to the game - but the fact remains the controls are bad, no matter the reason. You either get used to them, or don't play.

When people mention Silent Hill, they tend to mean Silent hill 2. This is due to a vast majority of people considering this game to be the absolute pinnacle of the genre. Playing though the game some 12 years on it still holds up, the games atmosphere hangs over your head like someone wanting to use the landline whilst you on cartoon networks new website, it isn't scary as such - not to the point I think 3 is - but it's the constant dread and isolation and the all the general weird ass shit you're seeing that gets to you. This game is watching a scary movie with your hands over your eyes. You want to look away, but you have to know where it's all leading. 

I'm not saying anything new, if you like to game as a hobby and you haven't played this game yet, chances are you're not going to - truth be told this post about Silent Hill 2 was originally intended to be 2 images and a few lines of text, whilst playing the game I had a notepad with me keeping track of clues, riddles and the like - and I just wanted to share those images with you all. So here we go, bad hand writing and all. The idea of having to do this is so attractive to me that I wrote this entire post just as a ruse to show you these images without sounding like I'm bragging about how cool I am because I played SH2.

 

All this sweet sweet content.

I have an absolute plethora of stuff that I'd like to talk about, since my last post lots of nonsense has happened - in terms of video game related things I would like to talk about. It would be the hugest wall of text you'd ever of seen if I attempted to talk about it at all, and I don't think I could stay focused enough to allocate every little thing x amount of words. So, instead what I'll do is bullet point everything, at the time of writing I'd like to dedicate its own post to and try to get through that in the next few months or so. As always though, promise nothing, deliver less.

• Status of the constant abandoning of YouTube series I keep trying to start up.
• Silent Hill 2
• Dark Souls 2: SOTFS
• Bloodbourne
• Mad max
• The Witcher 3
• MGSV: TPP
• Fallout 4 or how I learned to love Todd Howard 
• The inevitable heat death of the universe, and how it renders all human endeavor ultimately pointless.
• Heroes of the storm Vs League of Legends.
• The difficulty of getting into Hearthstone as a new player

Please keep in mind that these are in no particular order, but I've already started work on the Silent hill 2 post (it's not a long one) so it's likely we'll be seeing that soon™.

Can You Feel It Kickin' In?

As you can see, my last played on DS1 was like 3 months ago - but I did get all the achievements so I've got that going for me. I also haven't posted in like forever, but that's a given. I'd like to be able to promise that I've got something in the works, I kinda do- and I've edited and uploaded the first episode of it. I'm super unhappy with it, and I doubt it'll see the light of day. So look forward to that.