On Becoming a Casual/Console Gamer

Let us reflect upon my lack of posts on this site. In addition to well, losing interest in MMOs and blogging in general in favor of other activities, I have realized that I have become mostly a console and casual gamer? The majority of all games that I have played have either been on a console (PS4 and Switch) or on iOS (roguelikes + board games. The iPad is great for board games and stuff like that).

I never would have thought that it would come to this, but I now see the appeal of sitting back in one’s easy chair, in front of a large TV + sound system, with a cat on your lap and controller in hand instead of in my computer chair in front of my desk. I spend so much time in front of the computer at work nowadays, it’s nice gaming in a different type of environment, if that makes any sense.

Also if we are being honest, my computer is getting a little old at this point and because we kind of like going outside instead of living in front of the computer, we would rather allocate entertainment funds into travel and other hobbies rather than dropping a grand or two on new gaming machines. So, kind of in the awkward situation now where if a new game comes out, might as well just get it on console because, reasons.

Odds and Ends: Quarantine Edition

I had honestly forgotten that this site even existed for a period of time but suffice it to say, I have much more indoors time now to poke at my blogs and personal projects. So as such, I have taken it upon myself to post more regularly. Here’s the catch though, I started a personal-ish blog a while back and have been posting there. So if anyone is interested in mostly non-gaming related nonsense: Here is is.

I have been actually, kind of wondering what to do with this site given that it’s never updated since I’m not really that much into MMO gaming anymore. I have decided that, so long as the domain renewal on hokage.org is available and not unreasonable I might as well just keep it since I’ve had this domain for almost 20 years.

I guess we should count our blessings that between all of the streaming services available, all of the video chat options, and all of the games that are out, there is quite a bit to watch/do/and play even if we can’t really go anywhere too incredibly interesting. So here is what I have been playing as of late:

  • Animal Crossing New Horizons: If there ever was a time for a new Animal Crossing game it is now.
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake: I haven’t finished FF7R yet, but I am pretty sure that I am approaching the end portion of the game. Really enjoying seeing both Midgar and the characters really fleshed out. There are a couple of portions of the game that feel a little padded out but as a whole, I hav been having a lot of fun playing it.
  • Slay the Spire: So, the Switch update was finally released a while ago (with the new character) and I haven’t had a chance to play it because of the other games on this list. Favorite game of 2019 by far. Such a great game.
  • Dwarf Fortress: I still play DF, but in an on-and-off basis. Current fortress was just promoted to Mountainhome. Trying to find the hell layer with a massive amount of lava later exploration. Have find adamantium! No luck on hell.

Odds and Ends: I Still Exist

Hah, long time no post. In short, I started using the other domain as a personal blog and then more-or-less fell out of interest with blogging in general. Kind of want to write on the other blog, but kind of don’t know what to do with this one. I mean, I’ve had this domain for over a decade and a half… I think it’s more of a, we don’t play nearly as many computer games anymore thing.

That said, we are currently continuing the cycle of: Resubscribing to WoW for the current expansion, playing for a few months, and then probably quitting for another two years when the content gets overly grindy. No BlizzCon this year because November is going to already be a pretty packed month, but maybe next year.

[Disney World] Min-maxing Test Track

TL;DR: We were vacationing this past week in Orlando. Our goal was to hit the high score on the Test Track leaderboard in which we had almost achieved (matched it at 230). I am pretty sure that the score cap however is 232; I haven’t seen any indication online or in the actual attraction that it can go any higher. We ended up riding test track 3 times, each with the following score: 208, 222, and 230. I am not quite sure where we lost 2 points, I suspect that it was either a screw up when drawing the contour of the car or wheel size. It is worth noting that only higher scores will override the current leader. If you want to stay on the board, ride early.

There are a total of four categories: Power, responsiveness, capability, and efficiency. Your overall score will be the total of all four categories combined. So, the trick is to max out your overall score not just a particular category.

For vehicle type, choose the sports car on the far left. When drawing the contour of the car, you will want to draw something resembling a normalish car shape (small curve for the hood, larger curve for the body). It should resemble something like this:

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When sculpting the car, make the tail as tall as possible (drag it to the upper left). For length and width, make the car as short and wide as possible. The hybrid engine is by far the best choice as it gives you an additional accessory slot.

For accessories, the trick is to use the selection that nets you the most overall gain. It doesn’t matter what category it boosts so long as it offers the most points. So for example, if accessory #1 offers +2 power but accessory #2 offers +6 capability and -2 power, you will want to go with accessory #2 because the overall gain is +4 (vs +2). The max amount of point gain for accessories seems to be 20 (front +3, hood +4, side +2, top +2, rear +3, tail +6). Same deal for the wheels. I am not sure if there is an ideal ratio for wheel size.

Odd and Ends: The Warcraft Movie, FFX, Etc

So apparently, having low expectations would be the secret to enjoying most films. We saw the Warcraft movie the other week. My husband criticizes the plot, stating that it was disjointed (among other things). I would go so far as to wonder why anyone would go into this film expecting a plot in the first place. That said, I did enjoy watching Warcraft quite a bit but mostly in the way that one would enjoy pornography: Fun visuals, makes the MMO bits tingle, not exactly War and Peace quality writing.

At least half of the enjoyment was the novelty of seeing in-game locations fleshed out in cinema form, which was legitimately pretty neat to see. If you aren’t a fan of the Warcraft franchise, specifically World of Warcraft then you should probably either skip this movie or at least wait until it is out on Netflix or something. Independence Day 2 on the other hand? That was a truly bad movie. It was clear that not enough liquor was consumed before hand.

Final Fantasy X HD Remaster
I purchased Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD off of Steam last week and have been playing it on and off between Overwatch matches and other stuff: The English voice acting is pretty bad and the random encounters are barely tolerable. Otherwise, it is as fun as I remember it being. In all honesty, given that it has been literally a decade and a half since I had last played it, I don’t remember a whole lot about FFX other than it being one of the ‘good’ Final Fantasy games. Overall, it is a pretty decent remaster:

  • You can choose between either the original PS2 soundtrack or the orchestrated remaster.
  • If you prefer the Japanese audio, there is a mod to enable it. The audio files are already there but for whatever reason (copyright?) there isn’t a way of enabling it aside from using a mod.
  • Graphic look pretty slick
  • Blitzball! :3

FFRK
I was hoping to pull Cecil’s BSB but ended up pulling Celes’ SSB, Kefka’s cloak, and a few other things. Not what I was hoping for but Indomitable Blade is a damn fine consolation prize. I can muster just enough mithril to pull a couple times on banner 5 when it releases tonight. I wasn’t able to complete the FFX U+ Cid Mission; Or more accurately: I wasn’t interested in S/Ling for hours so that mission will just have to be “the one that got away” I guess.

Odds and Ends: April 2016

My new personal project for April and onward is to consistently run and/or lift at least 5 days a week instead of sporadically jumping on the treadmill once or twice a week. I am considering moving the HTPC into the spare room so that I can watch Hulu/Netflix on a screen larger than the iPad/my phone while I run. Still no Overwatch beta invite though at this point it is not that far from release I guess.

FFRK: RNGesus be Praised
I went into SSBfest and the FFT challenge event expecting bupkis and came out of it with everything that I and really wanted and then some. In any case, I am almost certain that I have permanently exhausted my luck reservoir but now that I have both SG and Shout, I think I am okay with that. First World Problem: Since most of my Roaming Warriors were either Sentinel’s Grimoire or Stone Skin II, I now need to redo my entire list. What a pain in the ass.

FFRKlolRNG

Stardew Valley
This game is such a time sink; I don’t in any sense mean that in a negative manner. I am currently at the end of Fall during my first year. The farm, though rather small is mostly automated; Growth seems to be dictated by how many sprinklers I am able to craft. Alex, my chosen marriage candidate has recently accepted my bouquet. I actually haven’t picked Stardew Valley up in a few weeks. I feel as if it is one of those games that I will cycle in and out of as personal interest dictates.

My Plants
I am very pleased to see that the small sad looking lithop leaf double spawned. It was shriveled for quite some time, so I was pretty sure that it was going to die. I guess it just took longer to split for whatever reason. Unfortunately, I haven’t done a very good job of taking my plants in from the rain so I suspect that a few of them have gotten a bit too much water. The soil that they are in does seem to drain and dry out pretty fast so they should be okay.
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Black Desert Online
I caved and scratched a very faint but present itch. More posts to come.

[Gardening] My Succulent Collection

I have noticed recently, that as I grow older (more specifically, as my free time shrinks), the less I am interested in gaming in front of a computer. I guess that isn’t really a bad thing, but it is probably the reason why I post here about once a week at most.

Now that the weather is getting warmer, gardening can ensue. We have been in the house for a little over a year and the backyard is still kind of a mess, aside from my small corner of potted plants. Truth be told, one of the reasons for my love of succulents is the fact that they require very little maintenance. The primary reason of course being that they look cool/weird. Here are a couple of plants from my succulent collection that I am particularly fond of:

Echeveria (Elegans?)
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I am pretty sure that these succulents are in the echeveria genus, but I am not 100% sure what species. They are from my wedding bouquet and grow/flower like crazy with very little maintenance other than placing them in a spot that receives sun and splashing them with water once in a while during peak hit in summer.

I have noticed that one of the flower stalks is infested with little black bugs. The bugs likely seem to be isolated to just one stem and have not returned since pruning them off.

Lithops (Living Stones)
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Before Winter (October) and after Winter (March). When I had purchased these plants at Lowe’s, I didn’t have high hopes for them surviving through the Winter because the looked a little bit scarred or possibly split from overwatering

The leaf on the top right was unfortunately munched on by a rabbit and died as expected. The leaf on the top left looked pretty bad, but has a new leaf emerging. I am very pleased to see a double spawn out of the big leaf on the bottom.

It rained a lot in 2015 (for Southern California which is to say, not much by everyone else’s standard) and I wasn’t very diligent about moving the water sensitive plants to a covered area, so we’ll see how they do. The soil does dry fairly rapidly when in full sun.

Fenestraria Aurantiaca (Baby Toes)
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Have been looking for these on and off for a while and happened to find them the other week during a plant sale when we were out and about. I had a decent sized pot of these growing up, pretty sure that they died due to over-watering.

Odds and Ends: February 2016

I have been on a mild Final Fantasy binge lately that may or may not have been at least partially inspired by my fixation with Final Fantasy Record Keeper.

Final Fantasy Tactics
This title went on sale on the App Store a long-ass time ago and has been shamefully sitting on my phone untouched for well over a year, if not more. Given that Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced is one of my all time favorite handheld titles, I am unsure why it has taken me this long to finally play this game. I actually own the PSX game; I think it was gifted to me like 15 years ago and chance.

The great thing about turn based mission based games is that they are very easy to pick up and set down as time dictates. As such, FFT is now my preferred lunch time and couch time game. Decent plot, fun game, decent port, despite the fact that it hasn’t been updated in about two years. I haven’t played Final Fantasy Tactics A2 either. I may treat myself after beating this game

Final Fantasy Explorers
Final Fantasy classes and abilities + Monster Hunter + Basic MMO grinding = this game. It’s a grindy handheld action RPG with a plot that is vague at best. I like it, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Dwarf Fortress
I have played through several fortresses at this point. In regards to Outpost Stizashoddom from my previous posts: Ultimately, Kol the Possessed One ended up going insane because I was unable to construct a metal forge to fulfill his needs. He was promptly smothered to death by his peers, thus ending both his murderous rage as well as his short life. The fortress was forced retired after accidentally digging a staircase wrong and trapping/starving the only dwarves in the fortress with a pining pick. It unfortunately, created a situation in which I was literally unable to do much of anything.

My second fortress survived a while longer, including long bloody winter in which a third of the population was killed during goblin siege. They held out but never fully recovered and perished the following year during a second siege. Ultimately, my downfall (one of them) was not having a self sustaining source of water during the winter. Future fortress incarnations were built on a map with a river or some constant source of water. Still need to work on building a pump/reservoir system.

Odds and Ends: January 2016

Both Christmas and New Years were awesome. This week has also been awesome albeit cold and rainy; More so the latter. As a whole, there has been more media consumption than gaming lately.

Steins;Gate
The Internet really seems to like this show. Steins;Gate gas a decent plot and fairly original as far as anime goes at least. The story ties most everything together and wraps itself up neatly. The characters are average to mildly annoying as they all seem to over exaggerated tropes.

If there was one thing that I really disliked about the series it would be it’s pace: Steins;Gate takes about 10 episodes to really get started. Given that it is a 24 episode show, that would be about half the series. Overall, if I had to give it a rating I would say that it is either a solid B or a B-.

Undertale
This game was my one and only purchase from the Steal Sale. I am having trouble getting into Undertale but I have only really dedicated a grand total of 30 minutes to the game so there’s that. Today was supposed to be a play Undertale, clean the entire house, do errands day. It ended up being a watch #AGDQ2016 on Twitch and play with the cat day.

The Walking Dead Season 6
Caught up with The Walking Dead. You know that you have been watching too much of this show when you start using free head space to evaluate the structures around you for their zombie resistance rating.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I was planning on writing on a lengthier post on The Force Awakens but… holidays. As a side note, I think we have passed the point in our lives where we are willing to attend any movie midnight showing unless there is a strong social incentive. So like old people, we attended the first showing of the day at the local theater on the Saturday after it was released. Without spoiling anything: Movie nitpicks aside, went in with very few expectations, came out thoroughly pleased.

Merry Christmas

First Christmas in the new house and first time that we have purchased an actual tree. I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas before getting ready to cook. Whatever you do today and whatever you celebrate, may it be filled with happiness.