Month: February 2019

Life in 2019

Izlain2 Comments

It’s been a couple of months since I did an IRL check-in and because the amount of blogging I’ve been doing has tapered off a bit, I thought I’d take some time on my Sunday evening (which is actually Wednesday, but such is life when you work at a 24 hour establishment) to talk a little bit about what’s been going on. First, a quick recap:

We decided to move away from LA due to crazy cost of living to a more inland location which is a place I had lived a good portion of my life. This happened back in September of 2018. We knew that we were going to move by the end of December, and though I started looking for work starting back in September, I didn’t really get much in the way of progress going until December, in which I took a few days off of work to come out here and have some interviews. I essentially applied and had the interview for my current job all within the same month, but I didn’t have any solid answers about if I actually got the position by the time we had moved out here. Things were tense. Money was tight.

I kept looking for work, but then in mid-January I was called by my current employer who asked me to go in for a drug test. I was told I would be contacted by Backgrounds next, but the call didn’t come for a couple of anxious weeks. Once I received that call it was time to produce documents, get finger printed and jump through any other hoops they deemed necessary. Thankfully I passed all of the tests and was hired at the beginning of this month, and well, that should explain some of my absence.

I work a graveyard/early morning shift. The position is salary so there are days when I get to go home early and still get paid for my eight hours, which is a plus. There’s paid benefits, retirement, etc. The hours aren’t great but the salary is decent and cost of living is way down compared to where we were, so all in all its a move in the right direction. My girlfriend has managed to get some income as well, so we are doing well again, and the stress that I had has been relieved. My schedule however is another beast. I’m pretty much used to it by now, but it is a daunting task to go to bed in the afternoon. Sometimes I come home and take a nap followed by a waking period followed by another nap before I get up at 2 am to head in to the job. Other times I stay up until the evening and then get one bigger chunk of sleep. Neither has really been a preference, and being able to have that flexibility means I can always get things done or sleep, whichever comes first.

So bottom line, I appreciate your patience with me, I hope to get back into the swing of things, but blogging on the regular is hard when you don’t have as much time to play games to blog about. I had one advantage at my last job and that was the ability to occasionally blog at work, which will never happen here. It’s not a big deal though, I have had major life changes many times over the life of this blog, so I know I’ll settle into a new routine and find the balance once again. I haven’t had as much time to game/blog, but I have been doing some stuff, so I’ll break that down for you now, as it should outline near future posts.

I didn’t have the financial ability to attend the prerelease for Ravnica: Allegiance due to the above described scenario, but having an income again means the ability to dink and dunk my way into more Magic Cards. I still have a dozen or so decks in the works and I’m always finding cards from the new sets to brew around, or cards to add to my existing decks. As such, I purchased a Fat Pack, the Guild Kits and some extra packs from the new set, and I’m happy with the purchase. I happened into Teysa Karlov and Judith, the Scourge Diva which are two decks I’ve written about recently wanting to build, and the guild kits are excellent ways to supplement your collection along with packing in cool dice, stickers and pins. My girl also got me one of those mystery cubes they sell at the box stores and I got a handful of cool cards out of that as well.

I started a big MTG card organization project. I had done this is the past where I separated all of my commons/uncommons into boxes based on colors and took the rares/mythics out and put them into a binder. Over the course of the last few sets, I acquired a good amount of cards that I had thrown into a single box and needed to sort through. I completed step one of this today by getting those commons/uncommons into their appropriate boxes, and now the other box has mainly EDH staples and things I see myself actually using in it. Next up is going through those cards to put them into current decks and those in progress. Then I’ll have to pick the next deck I want to finish and purchase the singles necessary, though I have a wishlist a mile long for singles as it is, just to have them while they’re less expensive than they’ll eventually be.

On the gaming front, I’ve been crawling my way through Resident Evil 2, and haven’t played as much as I would have liked. I intend to play more this evening. It’s been a blast from the past so far, and I intend to share my thoughts once I complete both Leon and Claire’s campaigns. I’ve also played more Apex Legends, but not as much as my best friend. I went to his house the other day and we were taking turns on his account and rolled over level 26, while I’m a lowly 13. Apparently I’ve created a monster, as I was level 4 or 5 when I first saw him jump on. We’ve found another of our local friends that plays as well, so I might just have a dedicated team of three to play with so that’s promising. I have a pretty good knowledge of the map at this point and have had a few dozen kills spread about a few characters. Still have only managed one win to this point though, but I’ve been top 5 multiple times.

A while back on Twitter I bitched about wanting my job to start because I had RE2 and Magic cards and Anthem to buy, and obviously I accomplished the former two things, but I haven’t pulled the trigger on Anthem yet. I still think it looks like a great game, but there has been a fair share of positive and negative reviews along with plenty of opinion on how it could be better or why it’s the worst. I’m completely torn about it at this point, mainly because it’s a $60 title. I could justify buying it with my next pay check, and though some bloggers I trust have said good things, I’ve also fallen into this trap before with games like No Man’s Sky or Monster Hunter World. I don’t want to end up regretting the purchase, so I’m still on the fence. Plus, I haven’t completed the last two Bioware games, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda are still on my hard drive ready to go… perhaps I should finish them first?

Honestly, I don’t know what’s going to happen. At this point I’m just enjoying myself as much as possible in my free time, and I’m hoping to get more settled to where I can blog more often and potentially podcast again. Thanks for hanging out while I checked-in. Happy gaming, where ever you find yourself.

The War Report: Death Rattle

Izlain

Shortly after the arrival of Ravnica: Allegiance, I spoke about some of the new legendary creatures I was really excited for. Two of them were from color pairings that I’ve made multiple decks around, so I instead focused on the new Rakdos general Judith, along with the Gruul warleader. Admittedly, those look like fun decks to pilot and I am excited to build them — they definitely fall somewhere outside of my normal wheelhouse, and I love that about this game. Recently I was finally able to purchase some packs of the newest Magic: The Gathering set, and managed to get my hands on a copy of the new Teysa, and I rather enjoy her design.

She’s a 2/4 for 4, which isn’t a bad body alone for the cost, allowing you to avoid smaller burn spells. Teysa has two lines of rules text, and though they are both going to be relevant in my particular build, there is one portion that I want to focus more of our energy on. Teysa is the Panharmonicon of death triggers, much like Naban was the Panharmonicon for Wizards. She’ll double triggered abilities from creatures dying, and this can be a powerful effect however you should probably run a fairly creature-heavy build. I have done so, and first up I’d like to talk about some of our best death triggers:

Death Triggers:

It makes sense to add not only creatures who do something when they die, but also to include some creatures that do damage when other creatures die. Let’s look at our commander’s second line of text: Creature tokens you control have vigilance and lifelink. May I remind you that Orzhov as a guild loves to create spirit creature tokens, which are typically 1/1’s with flying. Now they’ll have vigilance and lifelink, and if they die, creatures like Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat will do not one, but two points of damage and will heal you for more beyond the lifelink. I think this has the potential to be potent given enough tokens, so I’ve included several creatures who create tokens when they die. Elenda is probably the most note-worthy. I’ve also included ways to create more ramp in the form of Pitiless Plunderer, Pawn of Ulamog and Sifter of Skulls. They’ll create mana rocks/dorks for us when creatures die. All of these creatures have some great triggers that our commander can double, so I’d recommend you take a closer look.

Supporting Cast:

Not all of our creatures have death triggers, but they still serve our overall purpose. Here we have a selection of creatures that can remove other problems, give us some recursion for our sac outlets, and can even tutor for other creatures. There’s some card draw with Mentor of the Meek, and a Reassembling Skeleton can be used over and over to create a loop if you have one of those above mana producers and a Zulaport Cutthroat along with a sac outlet. I’m also really digging the idea of Elesh Norn buffing my creatures and destroying opponent’s token strategies, but it will also stack with another new card that I’ll talk about later.

Removal Package:

I’ve included a pretty standard Orzhov removal package, with some single target and board wipes in a variety of flavors. We want to be able to blow up permanents of all types, be it by destroying or exiling. Check the cards for more specifics.

Everything Else:

Some additional ramp and card draw was included with Land Tax, Black Market and Smothering Tithe. They are all sort of dependent on the board state but they will help to keep you from falling too far behind. As I mentioned earlier, I’m also running Ethereal Absolution to combo with Elesh Norn for a nice -3/-3 to opponents’ creatures and +3/+3 to my own, and it has a mana sink for your Black Market built in, allowing you to exile problematic cards from graveyards while creating more spirit tokens. Lastly, I’ve included two alternate win conditions, both of which are pretty situational and probably won’t work. Still, with all of the lifelink and ways to gain life I figure Approach of the Second Sun is a potential win con for stalled out games. Revel in Riches can potentially go off too, if I can get a loop going with the appropriate cards out, or just happen to luck into that many treasures. I think it could happen, but it’s one of those random things that won’t happen too often.

You can see the full decklist here.

Battlerite Royale Leaves Early Access

Izlain2 Comments

After a quick, five month run in Early Access on Steam, Battlerite Royale has hit it’s full free-to-play 1.0 release. I learned of the game prior to picking up a copy, though the purchase price unlocked all champions and gave some founder bonuses, so I’m not peeved about the free-to-play full release. I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve had with the game already, and wrote some impressions on it back in November when I first got started. This isn’t exactly just throwing the game out into world though, as this 1.0 update brought with it some significant changes.

You can read the full patch notes here, but I’m going to take a moment to go over some of my thoughts having played for a few hours post release.

The first thing I noticed that had changed was bits of the UI. There were some new details added, but also introduced is the concept of a “season” which seems to be popular with online multiplayer games as of late. Most lobby based PvP games have something like this where you earn rewards by playing, but if you buy a special pass for a monetary fee you’ll unlock even more skins and things and typically these items are “exclusive” to that season — this creates more desire in some players I’d assume. This season ties in with a new star leveling and season leveling system, which you’ll see more of below:

Quests are of the same “Kill 4 Players or Break 100 Loot Orbs” variety, but newly added are season quests. Complete these and get stars. Get ten stars and move up a season level which corresponds with the battle pass and extra goodies. Basically it comes down to just playing the game and you’ll earn some stuff one way or the other, but there’s an option to throw some money at the game to earn extra rewards. There are also a couple of packs you can outright buy that provide new skins and mounts. Alternatively you can earn in-game currency and buy chests which will get you some skins and avatars and mounts, etc. It’s a typical free-to-play model and I don’t really see a need to spend money to have fun.

Another big part of the new patch was the release of three more champions to choose from. Strangely enough, they are all ranged characters, and that has thrown the distribution of melee/ranged characters off a bit, but I’m sure there are more champions being ported over from Battlerite, along with brand new creations coming down the pipe. I tried all three and enjoyed both Oldur and Taya quite a bit. Pearl seems too support oriented to be viable solo, and it appears that there is still only the option to duo and you have to have someone on your friend’s list to even invite them. I’d imagine that an auto fill for duos or a group queue should be something in development, but I haven’t read anything about that specifically yet.

The map has been revamped a bit, and you can see one of the brand new zones above, and the ice sure is slippery. This is the north end of the map, they also added a new trader’s market zone at the south end and the extra space seems to help you avoid those early skirmishes allowing you to gear up a bit before fighting. There were other tweaks such as the movement speed of characters across the board, and more specific champion adjustments that you can check out on the patch notes I linked to above. Overall I think it was a successful early access run and that the game feels like it’s in a good spot. Outside of adding more characters/skins and perhaps continuing to expand the map, I would only suggest the matchmaking for duos and perhaps a group of 4-5 queue.

If you haven’t checked the game out yet, now’s the time — it doesn’t get any cheaper than free!

State of the Game: Mobile Check-In

Izlain

The last time I wrote a State of the Game round-up post was way back in September of last year. Things have definitely changed a bit since then, and a big part of that was not stretching myself so thin around so many games. I had a backlog clearing spree throughout most of the year but that project lost steam once fall came around. There was football to watch. I was busy preparing for a move. I was playing a game at a time and not really having enough small tidbits to share in this column. Since then I’ve moved, started a new job and have less free time than I’ve had in a while, mostly due to adjusting to a completely new schedule. As such, the blog has suffered a bit and some of my side projects have been delayed further. Whatever the case, there is one thing that has been pretty consistent for the past couple of years, and that’s mobile gaming.

It’s strange saying that. I used to rally against mobile games and thought they were complete trash — and to be fair they were pretty much that for a lot of years. However, things have changed, and there are some pretty decent mobile games out there, you just have to sift through a lot of dog shit to find them. I’ve written individual posts about all of these games, and will link to those original posts if you’re curious to see how my opinions have changed. I’ve also written about a few of these titles multiple times, and so I’m only going to link to the most recent. Then I thought I’d give an update on to my current status in that game, or why it got uninstalled from my phone. Let’s start with the games I’m still playing:

Currently Installed:

Clash Royale
SEGA Heroes
Langrisser

Clash Royale:

Clash Royale is still my favorite and most played mobile game to date. I don’t know exactly what it is about it that keeps me coming back, day-in and day-out, but I have played it religiously for over two years. I’ve tried other Supercell games and didn’t play them long, but this one has staying power. Here’s some brief updates about what’s new:

The last time I shared my deck progress, I only had a couple of max level cards, and the new star upgrades were just implemented. At this point I now have five max level cards, and I’m well on my way towards getting a sixth (bats). Fireball will come next, and I only need a dozen or so more Electro Wiz’s to max it out as well. This has worked well on the ladder, and I had my best season ever last month, when I finally made it to Challenger 3. I’m hoping to get back there and push beyond soon, though the season reset keeps bumping me back down. Lastly, there are player stats I’ve shared, just because I find that sort of thing interesting.

SEGA Heroes:

SEGA Heroes has become my second favorite mobile game, and has replaced quite a few games that came before it. There isn’t much else to say, outside of sharing some progress:

I’ve unlocked all but about a dozen heroes, though they keep adding more. I’ve also promoted most of them to at least four stars and level 20. Those at the top are my most powerful, being level 40 and 4-5 stars. It takes time but it doesn’t really feel like a grind, and that’s probably why I enjoy both of these titles so much. There’s a sense of progression, but the game remains fun along the way.

I don’t have anything new to say about Langrisser. It’s still installed but I haven’t played it in a couple of weeks. I’ll need more time to give any more information. Next up, games that I’ve spoken about in the last couple of years that I’m no longer playing. Click the links below for more information on these particular titles.

Previously Installed:

Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem
Knight Story
Stormbound
Legend of Solgard
Questland
Idle Apocalypse
Paladin’s Strike
Fire Emblem Heroes

The most recent casualty was the Looney Tunes game I spoke of recently. In all honesty I rather liked the game, and it was full-featured enough that I can see one playing it for a long while. The problem is that I liked it for similar reasons to the games already installed on my phone, so it felt like more of the same, and I got bored of doing the same sort of daily tasks in multiple titles. I would still recommend it to anyone whom I thought would enjoy that style of game, but I just didn’t want to check in on it anymore.

Knight Story was a game that I thought looked interesting but got boring quickly. That’s all I can really say, it didn’t last long.

Stormbound was fun, but after beating most of the single player stuff I got bored.

Legend of Solgard had a lot of potential. I really enjoyed playing it and it was on par with engaging me like SEGA heroes, but it really did feel like a grind and like they were time gating things to a point where I almost felt required to spend money. Not cool man.

Paladin’s Strike is a game better suited to a tablet and would probably play much better with one of those mobile controllers. I liked it well enough but I just couldn’t hang with the touch screen controls.

I’ve considered re-installing Fire Emblem Heroes a couple of times now. I think I uninstalled it because I was playing on an older phone and needed to free up some space. Whatever the case I remember it fondly and might get it back soon. Nothing new is on the horizon that I’m excited to try.

So that’s about it, just thought I’d jot down some notes for posterity. I’ll try to get some extra gaming in now that I’m starting to adjust and get the round up post going more often again. Until next time.

Early Impressions: Resident Evil 2 Remake

Izlain

Another full remake in the style of the recent Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy or the 2017 Shadow of the Colossus (we also know about Final Fantasy VII and Crash Team Racing re-dos coming soon), this year we finally get our hands on the treatment for Resident Evil 2. It’s not the first game in the series to be remade (there was a newer version of the original game created years ago), but it happens to be one of the strongest entries in the franchise, and when I first heard about this in 2016 I knew I’d want to play it. Unfortunately, due to moving and looking for work, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get myself a copy when it first came out. I figured I’d wait for a sale and get it later on this year, but then my lovely woman gifted it to me for Valentine’s Day (thanks babe!).

Let me first note that I have only put in about 3-4 hours so far, so these are early impressions, but I can still elaborate on the pros and cons that I’ve seen so far.

1998 was a long time ago. I was sixteen when this game released, and probably a little bit older before I first played through it. You’ll have to excuse me if my memories of the original game are a little fuzzy. It’s likely that I’ll talk about not remembering something, or thinking something was different and perhaps it was just like the original. I have to say that the game feels new and different simply because the over the shoulder camera view from games 4-6 is back — a difference from the locked cameras of the original, and the latest game in the series that moved to first person camera. One thing that immediately stood out to me is the introduction. It feels completely new, as I don’t remember starting out at a gas station before hitting the Raccoon City Police Department; I just remember a short scene and then being there. Perhaps that’s just my memory playing tricks on me. The graphics are pretty amazing though. They’re similar enough to Resident Evil VII in quality, and as I said having the free look camera allows you to see all of the little details.

Before long you are at the front of the RPD, as expected. The game progresses from this point (and to the point I have played so far) as a sort of mixture of nostalgia and a whole new experience. We’ll go with “New Nostalgia.” The mood feels appropriately apprehensive but there haven’t been any jumpscares that I can recall. I’ve felt anxious for sure, but I sort of feel like I know what to expect at the same time.

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The gore level seems to have been turned up a notch, even compared to some of the newer titles. Obviously they didn’t have the technology to pull off these visuals back in 1998, but even in the 2010’s games it didn’t look like this. I’m not put off by it, zombies aren’t exactly friendly and I want to feel the tension even if I am not jumping out of my seat.

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What’s most familiar is the item box, typewriter and inventory/crafting systems. I remember spending plenty of time having to micro manage my inventory while exploring the game the first time around, and this remake is no exception. You’ll find keys, puzzle-solving items and supplies as you comb through the police station. Mixing herbs is back, and a new system for crafting bullets is in place. Your knife now serves the purpose of being able to directly slash enemies and get past certain barriers, it can also help you out of being grabbed by an enemy by giving you a counter attack. The police station feels familiar in that it looks to be laid out in a very similar fashion, and certain set pieces are reminiscent of the original. However, it does feel that this is a completely different place. My memory tells me to watch out for the Tyrant, and there will be parts outside of the police station, but I’m not sure if I’m mixing up my games at this point.

Whatever the case, I’m very happy with this remade edition of one of my favorite Resident Evil games. At this point I have just found the shotgun and encountered my first licker. Good times! I hope to be done with Leon’s campaign within a week and on to Claire’s after that. By then I should be able to afford a copy of Anthem! I’ll be back with more thoughts once I’ve completed the title.