Mawd

Well for starters I was introduced to it through friends in closed beta and while it wasn't something I spent lots of time with I was kind of prepped to enjoy it more as the beta opened. I think a large amount of the reason is that it relies so heavily on tracking aim which is something I've developed through playing NS2. In DB players have more health and also move faster than other realistic gun style fps like say CSGO so being able to follow their strafe and maintain a consistent aim is a lot more valuable than say keeping your xhair at head height and waiting for that clutch head shot (which is still a rewarded skill since headshots crit). Movement is also similar to NS although I think I prefer NS' more since DB's movement range kind of fell short of my hopes (I wish the parkour let you have the kind of range you can get in TF2 than a [still valuable set of trick jumps]). There's also a few similarities to TF2 as a class based shooter with a higher than average movement range and TF2 is a game I used to enjoy a lot while part of me wondered what it'd be like to have a couple of regular conventional weapons. Finally well with the Oceanic casual and competitive Natural Selection 2 community reduced to a single 18 slot server with no support for higher skilled scrims or leagues (we just wrapped up our fourth and likely final season) it's nice to be playing a game that rewards the skillset I'm most invested in (and I find the most enjoyment in) with people/friends (we were a tight knit bunch) I've come to know well. I've never really had the patience for Counter Strike or the consistency to enjoy it and I tend to focus on one shooter at a time. Plus after spending so much time invested in multiplayer fps to not have one just feels off. It's also hurt my enjoyment of regular single player fps although that might change with a quasi old school resurrection that games like Doom could bring.

I guess I'm on yer hit list then. Look its been a long day and I'm sorry I spoiled the movie.

Well after one of the main trailers spoiled what could have been a huge plot twist I kinda took the view that most people were there for big dumb robot action and the chance to finally see a good Terminator movie. But whatever.

I think I might be in love with Dirty Bomb.

Oh man it really is time to revisit the Grant Morrison treatment of Superman. I caught the first few minutes of Man of Steel the other day. The boy and I thought its future art-style couldn't shake off Warhammer 40k comparisons. Anyway we saw Terminator Genisys and enjoyed it. It certainly does enough to let me forget the previous two instalments. Also we rewatched In Bruges with his fam. gah I love that movie. In Other Other news I'm really excited for another Ennio Morricone score in a western film. I mean I'm not expecting anything to topple what his Once Upon a Time in The West score is to me but damn am I thrilled.

Fantastic day. Went to the Zoo, Weta Workshop (got to hold props from LoTR and guns from District 9, and saw the fully functional Halo Warthog that speeds up to 100km and can travel 50km sideways), then had a great dinner with our fam and blobbed and made plans. Back to studies tomorrow; it's been a good three weeks off.

While I probably don't remember enough of Bulletstorm's enemy variants to argue against equivocating its personal score/combo system to DMC or Bayonetta style games I think that while DMC might have trashy marionettes it also throws in mobs that significantly force you to alter your positioning and tactics either because of an aoe, overshield, or some kind of hit and run ability. In all three games the player chases a personal score using tactics that they have chosen but aren't there many more sources of combo interrupts generated by the mechanics in DMC and Bayonetta than Bulletstorm? Well even as I type that I think this opinion is likely inaccurate but does represent my feelings at this time at least. Anyway as I said earlier I'll happily play games that involve wading through trash. Of games that chase skill ranks like Heavenly Sword, God of War, DMC, etc. some of my favourite moments still involve the arenas where your only job is to kill as many 'basic' mobs as cool and as fast as you can. As for rpgs where you walk into a linen closet and come across two skeletons that have half a broom and four copper between them I'm rather mercurial as to whether I'll be frustrated or if I'll invent a backstory about two desperate people who hid and died in a linen closet. The 'trash' I've been most annoyed with lately are the packs of wolves or dogs I stumble into every few yards in The Witcher 3

Personally I'd consider a game like Bullet Storm to consist mainly of shooting through trash that sometimes win by attrition or environmental dynamics.. Then again years of mostly playing multiplayer fps has coloured my vision on what makes for challenging enemies in fps. In other news I'm enjoying the new 2.0 expansion to Path of Exile a whole lot. Which is funny since its fairly easy to build yourself to a point that practically any enemy bar some (usually specific to your build's weakness) is trash. But that progression does take some to a whole bunch of hours invested to get to that point.

Yeah it was ghastly. I didn't spend too much time with the simulator tbh -I'd already had my fill of that grisly impression of what the shrapnel shells could do from the text descriptions and the resin inlaid shell cross-section. The simulator itself reminded me of the 'kill cam' shots from the tank mode of War Thunder and the descriptions of the wounds left behind reminded me of playthroughs of Dwarf Fortress. It's one thing to read a combat description of DF but to actually have an injury report presented in the context of real life left me sickened. Coming down from that exhibit I'm reflecting on the amount of pride part of my family has for having served in many of the wars and areas of conflict NZ has been involved in since The Boer Wars. I was already distanced from their pride because of NZ's role as a Dominion of Imperial Britain throughout much of that time and other reasons (the killing ones for starters). But I'm starting to question whether participating in a war should sooner be seen as a source of shame rather than pride because of the cost of dooming so many people to die for ideals that honestly were frequently dead on arrival. I can understand a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" mentality and the yearly celebration of the soldier's 'sacrifice' to attempt to make up for the 'sin' of sending them to war in the first place. But I can't quite come to grips with concepts of pride and glory stemming from war. Maybe a pride of a fashion from going through hell on earth so others don't have to. But I still think it should be tempered by remorse. Eh I don't know. Maybe I'm not giving those family members enough credit seeing as the older members have certainly experienced being affected by war more directly than I ever have. I think for now I still support friends and family who choose to join the armed forces. I know many of them have been deployed as part of a civil disaster relief force in places like Samoa and Christchurch. Even when they haven't they've most commonly gone over to the Solomons and East Timor; states that as far as I know had fallen into strife and part of my ideals (and possibly ignorance?) see their deployments as helping to bring stability to stricken places. ---- I've been kicking around the idea of one day making a game that exists as a cross of Valiant Hearts, Darkest Dungeon, and Dwarf Fortress (not the violently detailed bits, the management and emotional states bits) and I think recapturing a part of my experiences from today will filter into that. I might end up re-framing the game around the civilian or non combat participants of war and how their interactions with the combat is affected by the ongoing war and their human interactions. I've been skimming "non violent mechanics in video games" discussions for a short while now and this might be a smart way of dealing with topics like war without (direct) player enacted violence.

My boyfriend's family came up to Wellington to visit for the first time (we usually see them down South) and we had a nice day visiting Te Papa Museum and just hanging out and catching up which was cool. At the museum though we went to see a free exhibition on Gallipolli featuring something like 2.5x life size dioramas of people from the war and they had hair on their arms and realistic looking skin and they were all designed by Weta Workshop. What really struck me though was just how harrowing the exhibition was. Going in I was feeling really chirpy and within a few minutes of being there I lost my smile as I just became totally absorbed in the stories and realities of that terrible war. Y'know at some points the trenches were under 16ft across and the stairs to the main positions were caked in blood and ugh wow it was just so much horror (which feels weird to say since I feel I understand that war is horror I'm just not sure I've ever empathised this much with the experiences/realities of war). I've been to a fair few military exhibits but I've never been to one that went this far to humanise and ground the conflict through the accounts of the soldiers. If anyone's interested in what war in Gallipoli was (may have been?) like for New Zealanders Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone (who has been described as having symbolised/lived the Kiwi experience of WWI) has an excellent diary entry of the first days of landing here. Also here's a review of the exhibit with pictures of the dioramas: Glorification or commemoration; a moving, disorienting exhibition at Te Papa. Anyway we're off to maybe the zoo, maybe another war museum (it'd be interesting to see how affecting their exhibits are), maybe to explore the rest of Te Papa (in 5 years I haven't had the time to explore beyond the first floor!). But we are definitely going on a tour of Weta Workshop tomorrow afternoon which I'm reeeeally excited for. Then we're having a big dinner with (my) Mum, Ben, + his family, and I which'll be super cool.

New Beach House Single.

I think I've found a new fave.

I get the sentiment but Stryder did that really well. When you first come up against certain new enemies you get to fight them in a boss style arena and it's a really nice build up with a lot of tension to then see the same bads appear later in the game as part of the normal mix. That game did also have regular special bosses that you only fight either by themselves or at one point three at once which might not be your thing but I think the multiple appearances of those 'special' bosses gave them more character and provided more time to find them interesting/get to know them. I think the Devil May Cry series did something similar to that as well. Even just when giving say the marionette demons a boss style introduction. Anyway I think the reasons are reasonable enough to include some type of grunt enemy. I don't really like inventory clutter and I'm especially loathing it in the Witcher 3. I think it makes sense to have a rank and file bad guy but maybe people need to treat them more like swiss army knives instead of treating grunt progression likes its just a matter of giving them more armour and a smidgeon of damage. I think Divinity Original Sin balances enemy encounter's feeling trashy or challenging rather well. As for an actual opinion of should trash mobs be in games.. I don't want them in my dungeons and they're pretty groanworthy in rpgs (unless there are environmental dynamics that let the encounter feel tense). But I'll pretty happily play something like Dynasty Warrirors or Warframe where the game mobs are 99% trash.

I think we can also talk about how the nuance of the movement system affects combat as well. Like CS:GO has tight movement but very little movement goes on during a duel because of how much it will throw off accuracy. Meanwhile look at two scouts fighting in TF2 they're A-D strafing to the max and taking advantage of their double or triple jumps while going full tilt with shotguns that don't have a lot of innacuraccy when fired at speed. Or look at an Arena Shooter like Quake where people trick jump, rocket, and wall limb to the technically fastest speeds and still find time to pause for a perfect 360 blink-and-you-miss rail gun snipe. Though I still feel the movement + combat paradigm strongest in NS2 since as an alien you're fighting melee vs guns and often using weird angles and the strength of your a-d strafe to stay alive and bite the bipeds. Or look at Dirty Bomb which has about a dozen different player classes moving at different speeds and allows everyone to do at least two wall jumps allowing people to trick jump their way across the map while shooting at no real amount of decreased accuracy.

Being a skulk in NS2 is my favourite. (NS2) Marine movements is pretty good too. Although Tribes and Reflex also have really good movement.

I've only recently tried out 2-d metroidvania style games. Dipped my toes into 4 or 5 and now it's just a matter of waiting for Mighty No 9, BRotN, and Slain! to come out. Of the ones I have tried I think Stryder is the fave. Setting about it theme and aesthetic is just too fun. But what I'm really looking forward to is Hyper Light Drifter but I've heard more comparisons to Zelda than M-Vania which'll be neat since I've never Zelda'd due to a decided lack of Nintendo growing up.

Hrm. Maybe watch an explanation or two and look at some game footage? Marine is the natural choice of the new player but they often don't check their corners or keep an eye on their ammo (good aliens wait for a reload to bite). Aliens though is very fun but you have to learn to jump on walls rather than run on the ground. The most common alien usually has to pack marines to kill them because marines can receive meds anywhere on the map. But they can take on lone players when ambushing. There are quite a few active EU and US servers of varying skill levels. But there might still be one or two players who throw off the team balance but there's also likely a few new players about. NS2 was in the steam sale so for the next few weeks new people will be checking it out. If you do pick it up feel free to ask me questions. Also most servers will help out newbies who stick their hands up.

Sooo it's not sharing a server? Aw I hoped it would.

Maximising your time as sniper often involves sneaking past enemy lines to where they don't expect you. When you try to snipe head on frequently you'll find they can evade or countersnipe you easily. As for armour infantry can spend certs to maximise DR against specific damage types. Take Flak armour if you're sick of rockets and nades. Take Nanoweave armour if you're having trouble against small arms fire. With Heavy Assualts the guys with the rockets, and shields; while you do see that class spammed a lot but you can counter them easy with smart use of cover. If you're Light Assualt though you're best used attacking the enemy at odd (usually elevated) angles. As for guns out-ranging you all of the guns are side grades. if it makes up for it in range it probably sacrifices something else.

I'm not sure if you fancy PS4 people get a squad join button but you should consider linking up with people. You can find action alone or just with friends but some really cool options do open up with squads and platoons. I havent been on to see a decent Armourside push recently but they're magical when you do see them.

Well I mean it wasn't perfect. There were factions that ebbed and flowed with events. We had drama too sometimes. But most times at the end of the day the people and teams I knew regularly were competitive people who enjoyed balanced matches But would also hang out for a bit at the end of the match hanging out or partying up to play other games together. We had our share of salty players; and a few of the kind of 'classic' Australian server personalities were around. But most people in the comp scene had a level head. A lot of our players were older too (above 25). There weren't many women around who were open with their gender in pub servers But the few I've seen around who are don't get crap about it afaik. We also had some kickass female leaders as captains and shotcallers of various teams. I think solidarity came from the game being so unique. Players always became super co-dependant on each other because the enemy could always be ignored for their base. Unlike say CSGO you're not going to end up with a clutch player who could 1v5 the enemy team or save the entire game because they're over-watching one alley. You always have to be conscious of the attack and defence or you'll just be outplayed. So you had to talk to each other and say what you planned to do, you had to call out where people are and as a captain you always had to make the effort to recognise players for the contributions and offer advice on how to improve. Some teams just played to win and they kept most of their social interactions to the top level of players But even those guys could be super fun and friendly at times. Ultimately I think it came down to how we all loved the game feel and how emotionally rewarding that game could be and how much we enjoyed playing with people who took a steep learning curve game and devoted the time to be consistently good and competitive at it. But the community drifted because people picked up other games they wanted to 'git gud' at. Also the game has always created a lot of performance issues for players and while major fixes were coming to the shooting mechanics for many it was too little too late. Plus the Community Development Team only recently acquired their own patch testing servers so no new patches have released since the start of the year. Also the game was plagued by server problems because it's built to run servers on gaming CPUs rather than what's usually cost effective for server hosts meaning that players either paid huge amounts for unstable servers or tried to run their own servers which was equally expensive. Some of our best servers came from someone hosting it on the Monash University network for quite a few months.. Anyway the last dedicated server host had to move and between his life stuff, the last tournament, and the disappearance of all competent Australian servers Ausns2 is pretty extinct. Hah sorry for chewing off yer ear about it this is a nice way to vent. Anyway it's not all bad. There have been community meetups and if I'm ever in the right part of Australia I'll probably hang out with an ex team mate or two. Also I've played with a lot more NS2 vets in games like Dirty Bomb recently and I've been invited to party with them for MM games a few times and who knows in a few months I might be pugging in Dirty Bomb. Here's hoping this game has a larger lifespan than ~two years; if not well Overwatch will be good. Right? So a PUG in my context is a 6v6 match where players assembled in voice comms first and were committed to playing a match (a human and alien round) of NS2 once the pug began which generally meant consenting 30-60 minutes of your time. At 12 players two people would stick their hands up and become captains (usually also the commanders during the game)and after establishing players relative skill levels these captains took turns to pick the best players in a format that generally ensured teams were balanced. Then everyone played one map and at the end of the game we went back to the 'ready room' in the pug voice channel for another match. When teams weren't balanced sometimes we played on but we might also call the match early, or repick. Pugs are a level below scrims which are clan/team vs team matches usually agreed in advance. Thing is if you took a 6 player pug team to one side of a 14-20 player public server you were probably destined to kill the server in 1-2 games. Oddly enough Pillars of Eternity has been that for me recently.

I'm a bit fuzzy on the details but it basically means that you can experience romantic and sexual attraction to all genders which goes beyond man, woman, or genderqueer, etc. in scope. The top google result put it better: "not limited in sexual choice with regard to biological sex, gender, or gender identity."

Also just made it to skellige. Reeally pretty. A thing that's quietly annoying me is how many characters I can have meaningful interactions defaulting to a dumb set of npc says while you're out of the quest. Idk it feels weird within the context of the game sometimes.

Speaking of The Adventure Zone does anyone here follow other rpg tabletop game podcasts?