So anyone that knows me knows how much I absolutely LOVE The Librarians. It’s my comfort show. I have no idea how many times I have rewatched it because it’s something I do constantly.
Anyway! I was apprehensive when they announced this sequel because how could it ever live up to the OG show?
I’ve seen the first two episodes now and I have thoughts. Spoilers under the cut 🙂
Continue readingShadows has released and 107 hours later I have Platinuumed it.
Love the hideout so fun getting to place the buildings/some decor and then run around and see everything where I put it.
The game is so pretty. The level of foliage for the trees is insane. It’s so dense and the blossoms are gorgeous. The lighting, riding through the forest is just a real wow.
I think the combat is pretty deep. There’s lots of builds you can do with the gear, engravings and mastery points (I have seen some videos). I don’t understand the combo thing, and I wasn’t very good at anything ‘complex’ but I did manage to make the smoke bombs work a couple of times on Naoe. I never did manage the vault which was sad because it looks really cool. I did eventually managed to block (sometimes) which is better than at the start of the game haha.
I do find games like this addictive. I like collecting and finding all the things, completing it all etc. it feels good to get a clean sweep. I said that I wish Mirage had been longer and considering I paid about the same for it, as I did for Shadows, and I still have some things to finish up and there’s the free DLC coming Shadows is much better value.
Having both Yasuke and Naoe play so differently was fun. Evie and Jacob played basically the same in Syndicate. They had great personalities, I loved the banter between them (Naoe and Yasuke are much sweeter with each other). Yasuke isn’t an assassin, he’s a tank and his leaps of fail are funny. It’s a completely different combat style.
Anyway I have been obsessed with it since release (obviously) so how does the ranking go now?
But before I do I want to talk about Origins. I said in the previous update that I was pissed Steam had bricked the game and I refused to rebuy it as I was so mad. That’s been true for most of the time but just recently I have softened. I nearly got it on the last PS 85% off sale. Call it nostalgia I don’t know but I always have loved the Egypt setting. I’m not sure whether to include it in the ranking or not. I did have about 60 hours and finished the main campaign, but it’s been a while and Steam bricking it has made for complicated feelings.
Ranking:
1. Syndicate
2. Origins
3. Shadows
4. Rogue
5. Black Flag
6. Mirage
Anyway this is what I am thinking. I said I still had AC3 and Liberation on the list but ehhh, I also said that they were free so I wasn’t going to stress it. I got Freedom Cry the DLC addon to Black Flag and I want to play that. I also still want to play Odyssey and Valhalla. I don’t know where the time goes. So I still don’t know where they will rank but I suspect Odysssy will go high.
However! With how Mirage and Black Flag are sliding down the list I am feeling a bit weird about it. I just like these games and the whole franchise has the same aspects (which is why I like it) and so it’s hard to say X is better than Y. They are all good.
That just leaves Unity as the only game post-Black Flag that I haven’t played and I’m starting to get tempted by that as well. I have always dismissed it as unplayable due to the bugs and reports vary. Some say it’s been fixed now and others say it’s still bad. I don’t know maybe I will try it.
Until next time – hopefully not another year or two or I will be having to talk about Hexe! 🙂
So I did the ‘year in review’ and then forgot to come back and set out my goals. That doesn’t mean I forgot to set out my goals (I set up my progress thread on WriYe) but it’s helpful to record them here. I often add extra context (aka rambles) and that’s helpful when it comes to write the year in review – not that I want to think about the end of the year!! Honestly years disappear far faster than I am comfortable with already.
In my ‘year in review’ post I said I would come back to two topics:
– Readers
– A side project
I’m not going to address these directly but I haven’t forgotten and they will be included in this post.
So this was a quick year, huh?
Seriously how it got to be end of December is mystifying. I feel like it was just last month it was January. Anyway, it is the end of the year which means it’s time for a retrospective, time for the usual introspection. I bring up in tabs the review I did last year, and then the goals post (which I actually made this year). I quote myself and go over how it went.
How did it go?
So I don’t usually comment on stuff but SoulSoBreezy posted a YouTube video about the datamined ‘18 gilded cap’ from delves for season two. He invited comments and I had thoughts.
My first argument was basically that I don’t think there should be a cap at all.
NO delve specific cap. That’s what I think. I mean I started the season running 8x delves every week to max vault. I did that for like a month on my main and then I didn’t need to anymore. I did it sometimes on an alt but truthfully I didn’t have time. For someone that just does delves? Let them play! Equality. Fun for everyone.
I raid. My guild gets Ahead of the Curve every tier. In The War Within I switched classes (from Prot Paladin —-> Prot Warrior) and tried M+ for the first ever time. I’ll only run guild groups and we don’t have a regular M+ time slot like we do for raids, so I will go weeks in between runs. Currently sitting at about 2.2k score.
I say all this to establish my ‘bonafides’ because I feel like the argument for “cap of 18” is to somehow ‘pacify’ players that raid/M+ and that feels like absolute nonsense to me.
Continue readingJust found this in my drafts. I forgot to finish it haha.
So player housing huh? Did anyone have that on their bingo card? Honestly no I wasn’t expecting it. I figured they’d have to have an announcement of something for the 20th anniversary but I pegged my expectations a lot lower, I was thinking a new allied race. I remember reading an interview with Ion I think and he said player housing would take so much dev time, that it would only be something they’d do if they were effectively ‘sunsetting’ the game. Like you can have player housing, or you can have new raids/dungeons. I mean that was the joke when garrisons happened. They actually put a gravestone in the garrison of ‘Ray D Tear’ or something like that.
Part of me is worried. I mean are subscription numbers dwindling so much they need to pull out the ‘big guns’ like this? On the other hand content pace seems to be increasingly massively (I can’t keep up!) so it’s not like they are slowing down on patches. I don’t get the vibe of a game sliding into retirement. Maybe it was simply that they wanted something super big to celebrate 20 years and it doesn’t get any bigger than player housing!
So I picked up Lego Horizon Adventures yesterday because of course I did – it is Lego + Horizon!
I love the Horizon games. I have a bit more of a “love hate” feeling with the Lego games, but I always get drawn in because Lego. I think I always think I will like the game more than I actually do. I have a very fond memory of playing the first Lego Marvel Superheroes game. I still miss Marvel Heroes because there is just something soothing? I don’t know if that’s the word but I like running around places like Avengers Tower, or the X-Mansion. For Star Wars I like that I can be Hera or Sabine from Rebels because I don’t know, I feel closer to the media I love that way? It’s hard to explain.
Anyway I probably didn’t need this preamble ^^ but I just wanted to explain how I was both looking forward to the game but also expecting to be disappointed. All Lego games I have before I have dipped in and out of over long periods of time because I just feel so meh after the initial “shiny new thing” has worn off.
So what about Lego Horizon Adventures?
Continue readingSo this months WriYe blog topic is – What’s on your writing bucket list? Which one is the most achievable?
I think that’s an interesting question so first let’s define ‘bucket list’. A quick google kicks back:
“a number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during their lifetime.”
Now I think there are two keywords there ‘have’ or ‘accomplish’ – this isn’t pie in the sky dreaming. It’s not thinking “man I would super love to write the screenplay for the movie and have it gross a billion dollars” (to be honest I don’t think I would actually like that, but it was the most over the top thing I could think of as an example). It’s still talking about ‘hope’ but it’s more of a realistic dream, akin to a ‘to do list’.
So what is my ‘realistic’ dream?
Well obviously making a viable career as a storyteller. I’m not taking big bucks, just enough to pay my bills. That’s all I really want. Is this achievable? – That’s the rub because there’s two conflicting parts to it. 1) I control because it’s about producing a product, 2) I don’t control because it’s whether anyone likes or buys it. I can do my best to produce a quality product, I can do everything within my power marketing-wise etc. and it could just not work out. There is no guaranteed ‘win’ button when it comes to a creative career.
How about achievable then?
Basically this is everything to do with hard work and personal persistence, and nothing to do with anything external. I never wrote a list but I am trying to imagine what writers might put on it, and things like “write a novel” or “write a million words” or “write a story that cracks triple digits” or “write a novel in a month” etc. those all seem like challenges or milestones – and I have already done them.
I think the big challenge I have left is basically “write a complete series”. I have a lot of first drafts littering the place. I have written various drafts of book two’s (I even wrote some of a book three once). I have a lot of plans and notes and outlines etc. but I have never written a complete series. This is definitely my big goal moving forward.
What else?
There’s probably a LOT more stuff. Honestly I don’t imagine I will ever stop writing so hopefully I’ll have years to write dozens of stories. Anyway I’m going to leave it there for now, before I get too carried away with imagining all those potential fictional universes (remember I need to finish my current series first).
October’s Blog topic for WriYe is – Your favorite writing playlist. Who’s on it?
Now I haven’t done the blog topic every month but I quite liked this one because I always have music playing. I have stopped playing music when playing video games, and instead just listening to the integrated sound track. Partly for immersion/appreciation and partly because I listened to one playlist (as it was the playlist of th moment) so much when I was doing dailies in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms (Pandaria) that I can’t hear those songs now without instantly flashing back. Which brings me to my first point!
I don’t exactly have a writing playlist
For the most part when writing I listen to the music I’m in the mood for, aka the ‘music of the moment’. The albums, artists etc. that is my focus right then. Now there are limitations to this, for instance even when I was really into the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds musical soundtrack, I never wrote to it because that would have been weird – it already had a strong association. Also sometimes the vibes are wrong. I can love the music but it’s just not what I need for how the book is feeling. Sometimes the music has to match my mood – do I need something high energy, something easy on the ears, an old favourite etc. – or do I need it to match the mood of the characters/scene?
BUT I do have some “writing associated” music
There is a Shinedown song “How did you love” which I will forever associate with my big novel series that I’m currently writing. I think the line “cause castles crumble, kingdoms fall and turn into sand” hit first but honestly the vibes of the whole thing match really well.
Another song which had a line that made my head snap round is “Fly on the Wall” by Thousand Foot Krutch = “the other night / I had a dream / it was a world full of kings and queens / but it was cold / dark as the night / we were the fire on the moonlit skies / we were divided / we were the same / and we were free but we all wore chains”. In fact for a long time the first book was called ‘Divided’ and the series ‘Divided Destiny’. That’s not so now but it still again fits very well.
Finally there was an attempt at a ‘writing music’ playlist to try and condition my mind. If that music was playing = it was time to get to work. I picked Apocalpytica because instrumental is supposed to be better for that kind of thing. The result? Well I certainly associate it with the novel I was writing at the time (a crime/time travel thing) but otherwise that experiment didn’t last.
Anyway I love music. My headphones are among my most valued possessions (I’d never survive the grocery store without them). I definitely like to have it playing when writing but just not often anything in particular.
So I finally finished watching Star Trek: Prodigy last weekend. Don’t worry I binged it on Netflix the day it dropped (I just didn’t watch it as it streamed). I wanted to savour it because it might be all we get and that is damn sad.
Anyway! As good as Star Trek: Prodigy was (seriously watch it, you won’t regret it) this ramble is only tangentially related to it.
Right or wrong nostalgia is riding high in media right now. Some hits, some awful misses. We also need new stuff and shouldn’t just recycle existing IPs but that’s a whole other post. To keep it zoomed out, I think there is an element of human nature that likes more stories in worlds we already love. I’ve seen posts explaining why people love fanfic vs. reading new original novels for this reason. They already love the characters, they are invested. There is a warmth and certainty to it. When this is done in media it can go horribly wrong. If something is revisited and done badly there is like a taint… I’m getting off topic.
Continue reading