Hiatus to the Boonies

I'll be heading out on my yearly trip to visit family out in the boonies. I'll only be gone a week this time, so if there's a lapse in video, it should be a short one. I've finished uploading Commander Keen 4 and am continuing to upload Diablo 3 and Sonic 2006 as I complete them. Trying to determine how I want to prioritize video in the future as recording has become a lot more difficult with less time and an increase in background noise. I may have a way around this if I cheat and record audio separately. I'll have to run some tests and see if it's realistic.

Meanwhile, exposure to sick children gave me a head cold, so I've been sitting on a recliner for the majority of the past week. Had to make a hasty exit near the end of our D&D session this past weekend because I was nearly choking to death. It was great. I got back to see we had found something nasty to fight. Right after I accidentally navigated myself into navigation.

Other than that, my life has been pretty dull. I need a new park with street racers or something to entertain me. All I have here are people who call the police when my dog barks and passive aggressively tell my brother that one of our cars is parked wrong on the street and it would be a shame if someone called bylaw on it.

You know. Petty stuff vs semi-terrifying action.

Oh and crows. There are a lot of crows here.

AFK

Pretty much describes me most of the time these days. At least D&D is typically scheduled a few days in advance so I can ensure I'm available for those times. This past month has been a little chaotic as work has changed, I'm still not feeling 100% and a lot of random family crap has come up. Long story short, my household has new people in it and that has been an adjustment. The good news is I have a semi-regular video release schedule going and I'm currently working on Sonic 2006 when I can.

If I can, I'm going to try and sit down and just finish the Diablo 3 run with Mesk and HKS cause that really needs to get done. We also haven't played Divinity either since last year. Heh.

More recording with Shauna coming up soon hopefully. I may have mentioned it before, but she's going to be producing the LP we're currently working on (Lucius) as I have like video projects to keep me busy for the next million years.

Or until we all die in a nuclear holocaust in the near future. Either one.

(I definitely mentioned Lucius before because I have a tag for it...too lazy to look it up now)

Missing Out

Due to health related issues and other things happening this weekend, I unfortunately won't be attending Comic Con this year in Calgary. I'm a little sad to be giving up my ticket, but I think it would have been tiring for me overall. I also just, don't have the money this year. There's a couple of the media guests I wouldn't have minded seeing and I'll miss my browsing and costume spotting, but I'll just have to leave that fun for someone else this year...

Dishonored 2 is almost fully released as well as Pillars of Eternity. I'll probably start releasing Diablo 3 and Commander Keen 4 after this (both of which aren't actually done and I really need to make the push to do that). If I have the time and motivation as well, I would like to marathon the rest of RE7 editing and just finish that series. I know I've been really slow on it, and I apologize on that front.

As for what I've been doing the past couple weeks, see above health issues comment. I may not need to leave after all early May as plans are changing in light of recent events. Either way, I'll do my best to keep up with recording, D&D and editing. I have some background things I'm working on as well, but I'll keep these a secret for now as I have enough long over due already.

I have videos prepped on YT up until May 3. Until then I might not do much as I'm a little bummed out by a few things. There may be a break after May 3 depending on how I'm doing at the time, but new series will be starting likely mid-May.

Literally the Last Roll

Started a D&D one-shot over the past couple of weeks and it's going well despite not being able to kill goblins. Oh and this:

Mesk broke rule 1 and tempted fate. I already used my inspire to avoid a trap sooooo now we're wandering around in a snowstorm. It was literally the last roll to get us back to town and end that day's quest. Now we're probably going to get eaten by wolves or something.

Been making a significant effort to get two projects that should have finished months ago uploaded and released. I'm also teasing a couple new series over the next couple weeks, including Diablo 3 and Divinity OS 2. LIS Before the Storm is fully uploaded (aside from the Farewell episode which I didn't get because apparently I didn't get the deluxe version of the game and you can't just buy the episode on its own...).

In addition I am one level away from completing Commander Keen 4 and having that ready for upload. I may be missing for a couple weeks at the beginning of May as I might not have access to computer/internet for awhile. I may schedule video for this time or just start up again when I return.

Toasted Profiles

So I'm playing Diablo 3 again after something like 7 years of not touching it. Mesk and HKS are running through it with me on a fairly high difficulty, so naturally HKS is the only one doing any real damage and I'm dying in hundreds of hilarious ways. Regardless, we're still in Act 1 and I'm something like level 40 and still doing minimal damage to enemies that have literally millions of hitpoints in health. Looking forward to when I post that to all the comments concerning why we're playing on that difficulty, why I picked that character and those abilities etc.

The thing that really gets my goat concerning Diablo 3 is that it's responsible for toasting my MeGUI encoder profile settings again. I started up the game and HKS and I were waiting for Mesk, so I decided to do a recording test because I screwed up so many of the Divinity recordings by NOT checking the mic was working properly and balanced. So I minimized the game, noting that things were acting a little weird, and checked the file. It was fine, so I re-opened the game and was just met with a frozen menu screen. It remained frozen for about 2 minutes so I figured the game crashed.

I pull up task manager and try to kill the process. It gives me a vague dialogue about the game, then the application is removed from the task bar.

But it's still in task manager and I can't relaunch the game. I try to kill the Blizzard launcher + the game which was still apparently running and I get an error saying that I can't do that because I "don't have permission." Like hell I don't.

So I continue to try and force it, and eventually everything just dies and all I have is HKS and Mesk talking to me on two black screens. I can't talk to them at all, so after a minute of trying a bunch of things to recover I just hard reset the entire machine to finally end it all.

I have NEVER had an application do this to my computer or outright deny me the ability to end a program by saying I don't have permission. I'm not even entirely sure how a MENU screen in a so-called Triple-A game caused this by minimizing the application.

At the time I had Sony Vegas and MeGUI running because I had been doing video work (not to mention a bunch of tabs in my browser I was still working with). I didn't reopen these immediately as I was trying to get back into the game and get it to work.

Eventually I launched the game again and had it work for a few hours. I died to skeletons a bunch of times, ran out of hard drive space and called it a day. At this point I decided to encode the video I had edited and prepped. I open up Vegas fine, but when I got to open MeGUI I get met with 200 SEPARATE ERRORS that I had to manually click through as every single one of my presets and profiles and previous jobs were corrupted and toasted. Apparently hard resetting the computer killed them all.

So now I have to hunt down my back up of the profiles and get MeGUI completely configured again to my settings.

Thanks Blizzard.

Major Sadface

So...last night about 30 mins before midnight, something rather unfortunate happened to me on Diablo 3. I just put in my new graphics card, was all excited that pieces weren't missing from the floor, left for about three minutes and returned to find out my character had no money. I was hacked and had all my gold stolen. I had close to 200,000 gold and now it is all gone. Apparently this has been happening to a lot of people, which really sucks and is another good reason not to have constant online play. I never opened my game to the public. Some douchebag hacked in, stole everything and left. Funniest part is was he was in my "recently played" list, so I reported him. I don't even care if I get the money back, I just want him punished. Strange part is, I'm not even angry, I'm just really sad and disappointed. It feels like someone beat me up and took all my lunch money. So right now, I am Major Sadface:

So next time you hackers feel like stealing, just remember this horrifying image of despair. Maybe the thought of its existence will petrify you and stop you from bullying anyone else.

Fear the sadface.

Okay, Last Post about Diablo

For now...

I finished the game last night. I have to admit, in my frustration I was probably a little unfair to the game and the system, but my opinions still stand. My final thoughts on the story is that it is cheesy and clichéd, has epic cutscenes, has a neat little twist near the end and was way too short. When you calculate how long each act really took me, I'd say the game only takes about 6 hours to complete (if you don't backtrack, if you spend little time in town, if you don't die and if you don't wander around exploring). In fact, you could probably do it in less time. It's a little bit sad, but makes sense as in the real appeal to the game comes with the later, harder levels of Hell and Inferno. 

Co-op play is really the seller here, which I never expected. I hardly read anything about D3 before its release (probably should have since it may have eliminated some of my frustration...but maybe I wouldn't have bought it...who knows). I really enjoy it and I didn't think I would. I've been teaming up with a lot of my friends, which has made the game a lot more difficult (and chaotic). The story and details get a little lost, but it changes the game. It also makes all the encounters a lot more silly than when you're playing on your own.

In the end, I'll say it's a good game, it's worth a buy and has good aspects to it. Was it necessary to make? Probably 10 years ago when it was still fresh and welcome. Am I glad I have it? Yes. The story suffers, but the graphics, gameplay and co-op are way better. 

So no more complaining or analyzing it...back to my regularly scheduled blithering about Dungeon Siege.

Bored

So I'm going to take this opportunity to rant about Diablo 3, because I am pissed. I was going to wait until the end of the game to withhold my judgement, but I need to vent a little bit. I also seem to be the only person save maybe...one that seems to have negative opinions of the game so I apologize for my bitter old veteran speech.

Let me make this perfectly clear. The one aspect that REALLY gets my knickers in a knot is the ONLINE ALL THE TIME gameplay that Blizzard seems to think is necessary. This is bull shit. This means that if I want to play online, alone...as in single player without anyone else (if that wasn't already clear), I have to be signed in to my battle.net account and be logged in to a server 100% of the time. 1) The servers are always overloaded. 2) My internet connections sucks. 3) My laptop sucks. 4) Blizzard is a cash whore. OH DID I SAY THAT OUT LOUD? No you idiot this is text. God.

Seriously though, I can't play any session without the game lagging to the point where it is unplayable. The fact that I need a constant internet connection is not an asset. This means I can't play if I do not have access to the internet (to my knowledge). Maybe there's an offline mode, but I have not heard of one. If there was, I would have just set it to that in the first place. Not only that, once I add friends, they always know when I'm online, can see everything I do and there is no longer any anonymous activity. You have your full name up there 100% of the time. This is a problem for people with names like mine. I am the only one in the world with this name (again, to my knowledge) so I can't just add random strangers I know from YouTube and such without worrying about some creeper stalking me online. I see why this was done, there are good aspects to it, but this isn't going to stop trolls or people exploiting the system.

Now the actual game when I can manage to play for 10 mins without lagging out, getting disconnected, having the server go down or other stupid internet related problems, is horribly cheesy. I can't believe how cartoony it has gotten. Actually, scratch that. I knew it would get this way. Blizzard has a "style" now. We don't want dark. immersive, story-centred games. We want casual, silly games that makes Blizzard lots and lots of money! Yeah I get you're trying to appeal to a wider audience here Blizzard. I get that you want the game mechanics to be smoother and easier to understand (though I don't get why you had to hide away the option that allows you to take personal control over your skills and abilities). I get that you have the choice to take the story wherever the hell you want (no pun intended), but really, who did you honestly make this game for?

Think about it. After so many years, why make the game at all? For its fans. You didn't need this game for money. You have the World of Warcraft cash cow for that. So why make Diablo 3? I assume they wanted to appeal to that group of us that have a particular fondness for the game, but when the original developers of the game have long moved on...why bother? I'd almost prefer to be left with the masterpieces that they were. They are far out-stripped by a lot of games today. Games today have come a long way and...well they ARE much better. The games piss people like me off because I have a nostalgic love of the old games, and the new games do not meet the standards I have for the series. This is why I don't believe in remakes. I don't believe in continuing a series a decade after. It doesn't work for its fans. AND THAT IS WHY YOU MADE IT. Granted, there are new comers to the field. Well good for them. Make a new game. Keep the same universe if you want, but don't try to continue the story. Don't try pass it off as a continuation of the same series. TRY SOMETHING ELSE. This is why you were good in the past Blizzard.

Okay, so now that I've had my rant (and feel only marginally better), what's good about the game? Well, I'll admit that the social aspect is one of the only reasons I'm still playing after all my frustration. It has given me the opportunity to play with people that don't obsess over being the best or getting all the greatest items. It has given me the opportunity to spend quality time with people that I haven't seen in ages. Most of all, it's just fun to talk about all the crazy stuff in the game, the cartoony and cheesy story and how epic the cutscenes are. Yes, the cutscenes, as always, are fantastic. Cheese aside, Blizzard really gets you interested in the cutscenes. They are well done, high-scale and all round enjoyable. You forget that the plot is one of the lamest, cliched stories ever created by humanity. I watched Act II's cutscene last night (yes I'm only on Act II of normal...see the above rant) and man was it good. had my attention.

The voice acting is all over the place. Some of it is great and some of it is EXTREMELY bad. The queen at the end of the first act is pretty bad and Cain sounds like he's voiced by a young guy pretending to be an old guy (though I shouldn't be so critical after hearing how bad my voice acting its). the music is wonderful. Say what you want about Blizzard games, but no one can say they have terrible soundtracks. I love the music in these games and I'm glad to see it's just as good as it used to be.

Lastly...the cheesiness kind of works for it. Once I get over the fact that this game actually scared the shit out of me when I was younger and many of the bosses were actually intimidating, it's super hilarious. I love the physics and how bodies just cartwheel through the air at the slightest provocation. Dropping chandeliers on demon's heads and crushing others with logs. I'm playing a wizard right now and I have to admit I enjoy zapping dudes. That, and I have a GOD DAMNED LASER. Everything is better with lasers. That and I giggle constantly at how chill everyone is about demons and the forces of Hell cropping up everywhere. The Blacksmith ends up needing help killing his wife at the beginning and right after he's all "time to get back to work...now where's that darned apprentice..."

Overall, the game angers me, but it has redeeming attributes. I will continue to play it. I already have plans for a Barbarian after my wizard so that's cool. I just really needed to get that out, mostly because the hype that that game is getting from my friends and the general gaming community is just so blown out of proportion. Need a bit of a counter-balance every now and then. In return, I will try to relax a little and just enjoy it for what it is....grudgingly.

Hmm...

I may need a new graphics card on my rendering and video production computer. It's powerful but...

So I'm playing on my laptop instead, which turns items pink and lags like crazy. At least the game is playable...and often hilarious. I'll have video footage for this...not a full LP, but lots of random stuff. Prepare for bodies to cartwheel majestically through the air in comical fashion.

Diablo 3

Well...I have a lot of mixed feelings on this one.

Sitting here waiting for it to install, and I honestly don't know what to think about this game. On one hand, it's super nostalgic for me. Diablo 1 and Warcraft 2 were two games I was extremely addicted to when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I played these games A LOT. I've always had access to video games (my parents were gamers themselves on all the old systems), but these were the first "grown up" games I played along with Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Keeper 2 and Myst. I never really got into Starcraft until Jr. High when I made some new friends. I also played a lot of Diablo 2 when it first came out.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of issues with Blizzard games. They have irritated me beyond all reason, have made some decisions that I have not agreed with, and made it extremely difficult for me to play even if I had 100% legitimate copies and accounts (long story behind a lot of those). I've also had a lot of major life events revolve around these games that have effected me both in positive and negative ways. Recently, they have been rather negative. Sounds strange, but it's all been normal to me. Regardless, I can't play Starcraft without immediately becoming frustrated, nervous or angry, I have no desire to play Warcraft 3 (and DotA and all its clones) for the same reasons and haven't touched Diablo 2 in three years.

So in the end, Diablo 3 is a game I feel I need to play to come to terms with some past issues and I hope to have a little fun along the way. Problem is that I can't begin playing with a clean slate. It's impossible. This game's got a lot of baggage and weight to it, but I'm hoping that it'll be fun. Different people worked on this one, which concerns me, but I have no opinion thus far as I've only watched someone else play the beta.

I'm planning on playing a wizard first (the magic classes in these games have a special place in my heart). I'm also kind of playing that class out of spite (long story there that I'm not going to get into here) I'm really interested in Monk and Demon Hunter, but those will have to wait. Anyway, here's to a new chapter and a lot of fun times.

It is extremely unlikely that I will play any multiplayer games with anyone, but I may change my mind.