Posts

Showing posts from November, 2015

Fallout 4

So, yeah, it's more Fallout. Honestly, I find the sense of (perhaps somewhat grisly) humor that seemed to be woven into the earlier games to be weaker. Otherwise, it's Fallout 3 + 10 years of in-world time, in a slightly different location. There are a lot of references to the previous (number-wise) game. In fact, a one-off little quest in 3 where a person from the mysterious "Institute" sends you off to find a synthetic person has become a core conceit of 4. The combat mechanics are a little better than before. VATS only slows action greatly rather than totally pausing it - which has ups and downs. The non-VATS shooting, though, is much more precise and player-skill-based. I understand they consulted with another studio to help with that. Exploration is about the same as before. There's the additional aspect of being able to set up and maintain settlements (Farmville Fallout?), which is... a bit clunky, but does add something. I'm still not sure if the grea

The Man in the High Castle

It's one of those books that frequently shows up on a "science fiction you should have read"-type lists, and with some publicity over a TV version (being put out by Amazon, I think it was?), it came to mind again, so I figured I'd give it a try. I knew it involved an alternate-history Earth in which the Axis Powers won World War 2 and the US was split between Japan and Germany. I knew it involved a book written by the title character that detailed an alternate(-alternate) world in which that wasn't the case. I... think I expected something with more happenings . Time travel! Action! Revolution! That isn't what I got. There are a few notable events in the book, including a couple seeds of change that could lead to big things. Mostly, though, the narrative follows several characters through their loosely-connected and intersecting lives in a way that seems more a meditation on how society and culture shape perspectives. There's a lot of reflection on t

Twisted Storytelling (and Black Ops 3)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is normally not even a game I'd give a second look. Big-franchise first-person shooters these days are built heavily around multiplayer and have a reputation for single-player campaigns that are short and/or lacking in other ways. BO3, however, came out just in a time frame where I looked a little more closely than usual - still not enough to buy in, but I ended up watching a campaign play-through. In the end, I'd say it was interesting enough for me to watch, but not so interesting that I feel I would have rather played it myself. It did, however, get me thinking about ambiguity and unreliable narration in stories. These are things that can add a thought-provoking slant on a story, but only if they're done well. The Sixth Sense qualifies in my mind as "unreliable narration" to good effect. Inception was more fun than mess to me, and definition ends on an ambiguous not that's option to audience interpretation. Both of these cause

Games

Okay, time to take a step back from stressing about deleted email accounts and breathe. What I can do directly about that is done anyway... So, there appear to be some neat little cosmetic toys out for the 11th anniversary of WoW in-game, but I don't see anything that makes me want to log in to get it. I'm also waiting on checking out the new content in FFXIV. GW2 has... settled some. I'm less grumpy about it, but it's also losing a little of the HoT luster. Mostly, I'm just not spending much time with it on a daily basis right now. I still did guild missions on Sunday, though some of them are a bit buggy right now. The first raid comes out this week, and it's appearing that I'll miss out on that for the foreseeable future. I'm interested enough that I would try to do it, but my schedule doesn't line up well with others'. ARIN picked up a guild hall Saturday (and let me say that's so ridiculously-much easier with one maw spawn per wave th

Shadows of Self

So, back when I read The Alloy of Law, I thought the faux-Western age deserved more fleshing out and the stories introduced there were not finish. Well, apparently I wasn't the only one to think that, as Shadows of Self is a sequel. Reading it nearly four years later sort of sucks, but Sanderson had to go finish The Wheel of Time and whatnot, so what can you do? The main story is decent, with appealing characters and action. The setting and systems (magic) are still interesting. I would have to say that the primary antagonist could have played things a lot smarter by not saving an ace in the hole until the very last minute. But overall, it works reasonably well and it's still good to see the destructive do-gooder Wax and his cohorts again. It's neat to see kandra characters as well. But the part(s) I find most fascinating involve the grander scheme of things. The once-mortal god Harmony is fallible, and very aware of it, admitting he might have made things "too ea

GW2: Heart of Thorns p4

The occasional game crash doesn't bother me much. After spending close to an hour on event chains leading up to actual victory of a reasonably difficult challenge, having a game crash only to get back into a map instance that does not have those event rewards unlocked is... frustrating. Beyond that... I'm seeing issues from a personal perspective with goals and progress the game offers. The goal targets offered by the game are mastery unlocks. The progress is... ugh... It takes hours and hours of play to get enough XP at this point for each one, and it's all repetitive stuff running off the event schedule in the system. I don't feel like I have any real control or much choice of direction, and most of it's feeling a grind. I look forward to some guild missions in a little while, so there's that, but otherwise my drive is definitely faltering. I wish there were more story content to sink my teeth into, but I think I have reached just about the end of the cu