20160711

Just Another Manic Monday

Man, I am just a monster on Monday mornings now. Yikes. I can kinda joke around, but I get so annoyed with people that aren't focused on the discussion at hand, and get pretty fucking dismissive about things that I see as irrelevant to what I am discussing at that moment. Wow.

That's like four work Mondays in a row in which I'm just not feeling like dealing with people. I usually roll my eyes at people that are like that, too. When did I become one of them?

Part of it, I think, is that, for the summer, I get up at 530AM Mon-Thurs to accommodate the family schedule. To accomplish that, I dose myself with various pain relief PM pills to help me get to sleep early, but then I'm groggy as hell in the morning, and I still haven't quite slept enough.



I dunno. On one hand, I need to get over it, but on the other, I'm OK with asking people to cut me a little slack at the front end of the week.

On the positive side, I did finish the main campaign for Dishonored, which was a really fun game. And about the right length.

Dishonored and Doom, both, have recently hit home for me just how important traversal can be for a game. A big part of the reason I enjoy them both so thoroughly is that movement is easy and fun. WASD + mouse look + context buttons are great, and when the first-person control constantly lands you where you were expecting ... man, it's just so satisfying. And the 'Blink' power. Ah. So wonderful. By the end, I was Blinking everywhere. I'd Blink up behind a dude, stab him in the neck, Blink to another dude, stab, and on and on. It was so awesome.



And yeah, I ended up with a pretty high Chaos level, but I felt justified. I didn't kill everybody, but I did take out the ones that I felt had lied to me and/or betrayed me. Or if they shot at me. Or if I couldn't take the chance of leaving them alive. You get the idea.

I then moved on to the first of the Daud DLCs (The Knife of Dunwall). I think I should've held off for at least a month or two, actually. One, Daud's jump is just waaay too floaty relative to Corvo's, and two ... it's weird right back in with lowered stakes. I dunno. Maybe I'll chill on it for a bit.

Otherwise, I got back into Shadowrun Dragonfall Director's Cut. Yeah, OK, let me explain.

So, I have this thing where I'll hit max-frustration breaking point with a game, in which I decide 'this is no longer fun, so why am I spending time with it? I'll come back when I figure out how to beat this part that's making me crazy.' Sometimes, it's a week, sometimes it's nine months. In this case, it was nine months.



So, yeah, I saw that game in my 'installed' list in the Steam instance on my ROG, thought about it, walked around the house doing a little picking up, and then it dawned on me that a) I needed to leave one party member way behind while b) drawing the enemy forces into a choke point, and it worked!

And, man, I LOVE games by Harebrained Schemes. These guys are so good at what they do. The writing, art, combat, strategy, lore, and world-building are all top-notch in their games. I can't wait to play more, and then jump over to Hong Kong.

Of course, now, I'm at that point where I have too many games all going on. Dragonfall, Dishonored: The Knifs of Dunwall, Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, a second playthrough of Dragon Age Inquisition, the four MMOs I juggle, and I still wanna do another playthrough of Deus Ex: Human Revolution before Mankind Divided comes out. I think I'm gonna chill on Daud for now, focus on Dragonfall and Blood and Wine, then maybe come back to Daud after DXHR is done again. We'll see.

Oh, and this is a separate post for another time, but I installed Pokemon Go to bond with my oldest son, and it's been a lot of fun doing something with him where he's the expert instead of me. It's made him really happy, and it's been a cool way to spend time together. More on this later.

You playing anything cool lately? Anything coming out soon for which you are crazy-hyped?

-Blaine

Oh, and I streamed some Final Fantasy XIV for no reason, but ended up having a great discussion with chat about what defines a 'Final Fantasy' game. Check it out, and feel free to chime in the comments.

No comments:

Post a Comment