Category Archives: Gaming

New Game Console

So, my son Vincent decided that he was tired of playing the XBox One, XBox 360, the PS2 and the Nintendo 64 and the DreamCast,  … and he had a Christmas gift card he hadn’t used yet. He decided on a new game console, suitable for 2018 gaming.

That’s what he came home with.

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Aff’s Opinion Reviews Nier: Automata

Copyright: Square Enix; used here for illustrative purposes for a game review only.

 

Shadow’s Note: Aff wrote this for me some time back, and then shortly afterward, we got buried in being busy. I found this on my desktop and decided to go ahead and post it.


So I haven’t written anything in a while (injury, lack of free time), and Shadow suggested I review a game I blew some of that free time on.

It’s extremely rare that I buy a game for single-player content. Truth be told, that wasn’t exactly why I acquired it – NieR: Automata was added to my Steam account because the box art character looked interesting… and by interesting I mean she looked very hot. Continue reading

Life imitates Game?

Back when I was in college/early days of working, there was a little game called Pandemic. It had a quirky premise: you are a disease, and your goal was to kill everyone on the planet, before they shut down flights and ships, and before someone created a vaccine and started inoculating people against you. It was a fun little game that you could do while doing homework especially if you were doing several typos and needed a short break. Surprisingly, it was actually conducive to productivity since you had to wait a while before your mutations and evolutions took effect and while you were waiting, you could keep working. I introduced this game to several of my online friends, and since we’re of the geeky and usually rather busy sort, this was a game with plenty of appeal. We could let it run in the background while we were typing up homework or researching, and then take little breathers. If I had to come up with an equivalent, it’s like running for 15 minutes then jogging for 5.

Screenshot from Steam; this is the current version of the game.

Now, if you were playing on Normal and up, you would get a random country to start in. Pretty quickly we found out that if you started ANYWHERE but Madagascar, you couldn’t win the game, because Madagascar would shut down its ports and airport at the slightest hint of epidemics. My AIM messages over a while were variations on “Dammnit, Shadow, I hate you for introducing me into this game, it’s awesome, but FUCKING MADAGASCAR.” Yeah, it was that fun, and I laughed a lot, because I knew the other person was also getting work done.

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The Democratic People’s Republic of NCWest

Or, how to efficiently kill off your longest-running product in a single sentence.

This wasn’t going to be my next post, but I am still stunned by the breath-takingly bad example here, that I decided to write about this. This is about gaming, so feel free to skip, unless you’d like the entertainment of watching a gaming company burn themselves to the ground with a single catastrophic post, highlighted by a single epically horrible line.

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Cake and work area

I’ve been busy RL with things; one of them is making my son Vincent a Minecraft themed cake. It’s not Pinterest worthy; but eh, he was happy with it and considering that I’ve never worked with fondant before, or done anything with fondant other than eat it, I’m okay with the way it turned out. The cake itself was yummy and fluffy and the children were greatly entertained by the fact that the sparklers were set into the TNT block’s ‘fuses’.

The other thing I did was to rearrange my workspace again. I’m rather pleased with how it looks so I took pictures.

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Elven Bread v2

So, over the holidays, I remembered to finally cook up some elven bread to share with my in-laws; taking advantage of the fact that my brother-in-law has a lovely wok to deep fry with. I try to cook dinner at least once or twice when we visit, and that night I commandeered the kitchen for a full dinner, and while it was cooking, whipped up dessert for that night (chocolate cake), a leche flan as a gift to my brother in law, (he also got the recipe) and a batch of elven bread to leave to rise overnight.

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Star Trek Bridge Crew and cheese eating Vulcans

I love how randomness can result in my finding out about something rather cool.
Such as Star Trek Bridge Crew.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?=vromB8e5nMp8

I make no secret of the fact that I play Star Trek Online. I’ve got a toon I started I thiiiink around New Romulus arc, then I made a Delta Rising character, and an Agents of Yesterday toon. (When the next arc starts, I am likely to make another toon because of rumors that it’ll center around Section 31.) Anyway, the current event that’s ongoing is the Mirror Universe Invasion; and we finished it on most of our toons today. Continue reading

Brain-twitch Inducing Stupid

So the other night, we had a run in with a social justice bully / overly sensitive fainting couch CHORF in one of the MMOs Aff / David and I play, Lineage II. There’s a level 99 quest that requires you to use global shout a certain number of times, and you only get 3 a day. So David, on his character Seda the elven healer, cracks jokes in the form of very obviously bad advice: “Constipated? Drink Draino! It’ll clear you right up!”

Someone replies to him in area shout, “That’s terrible advice and illegal to say!”

David, in the same spirit of cracking wise, goes “I’m Australian thus not subject to US laws, and cracking jokes is part of our culture, and if you’re offended by that, you’re a bigot.”

The stupid bint goes “That’s still horrible to say! Don’t you know that if you say things enough times, the person listening will come to believe it and actually do it?”

Aff blinks and goes “Hang on, so you mean if I say to you enough times that you’re supposed to drink draino, you’ll do it?”

Idiot: Yes, that’s called peer pressure.

Aff: If you listen to some random person give out bad advice as a joke in a game I think you have far more serious issues than listening to jokes in a game.

Idiot: You’re a healer! Healers are in a position of trust! People are going to listen to you! You’re the number one cause of suicide in the US!

Aff: I am? Really? …SWEET!!! (In party) Holy crap wtf is wrong with this bitch?

Seth & Me: … speechless at ‘position of trust

Gothpixie, who’s in our party, says in party chat: I guess that Lineage II is more popular than I thought.

Seth: Why do you say that?

Gothpixie: Because it means that lots of people play L2 for Aff to be the leading cause of suicide in the US.

we crack up

Idiot in area shout: OMG You’re a terrible person I’m going to report you I’m so traumatized by what you said you’re so going to be banned so that people will be safer from you!

THEN a game master suddenly pipes up in area shout and says “Actually no, because he’s not breaking any rules.”


…Seriously I get so much material for my comic, FML, I barely need to edit the dialogue.

You wanted a recruitment post so here you go!

I play Star Trek Online, and by play, I mean I will log in, give my duty officers assignments to carry out over a few hours, be distracted by baby, forget the game is on and get logged out. On the rare occasion that I DO get to play, I’m busy running away from Borg Elite Tactical Drones, because my weapons are crap and they adapt too quickly. Somehow, I survived to become Admiral. I’m not sure how that happened.

Pick up a Tribble or three dozen...

Pick up a Tribble or three dozen…

I’m in a tiny fleet called Apathy Squadron, because we just don’t care. Surprisingly, this has netted us a number of high level / long time players who just wanna play and not be constantly told ‘Use teamspeak’ or that they HAVE to participate in Fleet actions. I’m also the kind of player who likes to read what’s going on, and that might annoy other players.

Kinda annoyed

Kinda annoyed

At any rate, one of our members, a Chinese-American player called Sinaman (yes, and that name tells you immediately how many fucks he gives. Zero, for the totally clueless…) told Aff that we needed a recruitment post. No, he didn’t want to write it. Aff should totally get on that. Because we needed one.

Aff obliged him. The post, I am informed, meets with his approval. 100%.

For those who don’t want to click on that link, here’s the recruitment post.

 

Our motto is “if you care enough to join, you don’t qualify for membership” – but that’s not really true any more, so the fleet that doesn’t care is making a post looking for like minded people.

Known for nothing, we’re not famous at all – except for being horribly uncoordinated and generally unreliable as team mates. We have a firm belief that the average STO player cares way too much about everything.

Why worry about your damage per second, what sector you are in, or the hull integrity of your starship when you can simply not worry about those things.

As a fleet, Apathy Squadron offers absolutely nothing. We also require nothing, and will probably do nothing. Some of the benefits you will get out of joining us include:

– Trying to figure out how we manage to feed ourselves unassisted;
– Other fleets will be unable to spam invite you whenever you are unfortunate enough to beam down to a Federation Starbase;
– No matter how bad you are we probably contain someone worse – and we don’t care;
– We have a Mumble server – that none of us use, and it isn’t required;

Our fleet has strict entry requirements, they are as follows:

– You must play STO*

*Our definition of playing includes being able to log in. Whether or not you explode in every single space mission, or are sold into slavery and forced to do unspeakable things to Gorn captains during away missions is none of our concern.

Some bonus things:

– On occasion, one of our members rises above the minimum standard (which is zero) and will probably help if you need it for a mission or something;

Pros:

– No secrets in the fleet. You’ll all know what everyone is doing.

Cons:

– No secrets in the fleet. You may need therapy.

Other:

If you still want to join this fleet, you are probably an idiot and/or a masochist. This is excellent, feel free to contact Seda@affirmative or Shadowdancer@kagemaiko today, or anyone else wearing the Apathy Squadron flag.

Remember, if you’re going to be terrible – be terrible in a group.

( This is what happens when people want a recruitment post, but they don’t want to do it – so they told me to get on that. Well, here it is. I hope you’re happy people. )

 

So, if you, for some inexplicable reason, want to join us on our lazy exploration of this fictional universe and the one right next door being invaded by Borg, Star Trek Online is free to play; there’s a cash store but Cryptic made it so that nearly everything in the game can be obtained if you farm enough dilithium so you can sell them for Zen, to buy things from the cash store. Hmm. I guess that means everything can be farmed for. The game is friendly for those people who Just Don’t Have Time to level, like myself. Yay for Duty Officer assignments. Work, slaves! brave explorers!

Ignoble, dishonorable death may be followed by being buried in tribbles.

Ignoble, dishonorable death may be followed by being buried in tribbles.

Be advised that Aff’s Andorian tactical officer is overly fond of explosives, and blew up a moon during a mission. I’m still not sure how that happened.

 

*Screenshots are from a mission called The Tribble With Klingons, and yes it is as cracking hilarious as it sounds. Also, in true Trek format, if you are arsed to do so, players may create their own fanfic missions and submit them to the Foundry, which can be played by everyone in game. Some are incredible in-depth missions which delve deeply into the Trekverse. On the other hand, you may be contacted by Lt. Buffy Summers of the USS Josh Whedon, for help…