Hello there intrepid travelers from far away places, come forth to the warmth of my hearth and share in these hearty Tales. Tales from lands far away; of strange places and people, of amazing animals and events. Of me sitting in front of a computer and mostly playing games.
My anime addiction continues on this week and I was wondering what to watch.
I’m back up to date with Sword Art Online 2 and those last two episodes (7 and 8) were great. The main characters in this series Kirito and Sinon have an interesting relationship and it’s great how she isn’t some one dimensional girl placed in for the shows stipend of boobs. In game she’s confident, strong and talented and outside a far more uncertain but it’s the background of the character that makes these two personalities interesting. A coping strategy that seems to have become something so much more.
I really enjoy how he’s beginning to play with others about his appearance. before it was more a nervousness about it, especially around the `hulking brutes the game is comprised of. Now it seems like a joke, a little personal subversion that is rather amusing at times to see. It’s a little bit of a play on that act like a girl to get in game advantage idea that’s been going around for some time and while that could have been a rather irritating point it’s showed in combination with the lewd comments and behaviour towards Kirito.
At the show is still very much focusing on the big bad storyline which was a failing of the first season. I want to know more about the world, it’s mechanics. I want to see more open world faction fighting and just general trade and interactions. I guess I can wait till Log Horizon comes back for that but I do like the world Sword Art Online always tries to present, it’s just mostly hidden from view.
I’m also caught up on zankyou no terror and this is a really amazing anime as well. It Follows these two boys who escaped from a government facility of some kind and their effort to, I think uncover the truth but also gain a little notoriety. The started out as good willed terrorists but now seem to be trying to unravel the forces pitted against them.
Now the premise isn’t that amazing I guess but it’s just the way it’s directed and produced. It isn’t particularly exciting compared to other animes, no flashy visuals and fight scenes but it maintains a sense of tension throughout the shows. Stunning artistic vision, amazing direction of scenes and a rather witty and verbose dialogue. Go see it, right Meow! ORRRR
The other anime I watched a bit of involved an adolescent with immense untapped power that was only revealed after an event with a certain antagonistic force and who has been kept in the dark on it by their current care giver. Hmm.. that doesn’t exactly narrow it down much does it. It was Eureka Seven because MECHAS! I have gotten a few recommendations on twitter over the last couple weeks and I’m definitely going to get to them as well but this one caught my eye.
So far it’s ok, getting that feeling of deja vu from it all though as the general theme of the show is very common. Gundams fight other gundams in big aerial battles. The actions scenes aren’t that length though and right now it is exploring the characters and crew far more, their personalities and motivations and while Renton is still a bit of a whiny baby (aren’t they all) the show still has a good pace and some interesting stories.
Now for da games
I succumbed into buying another early access a game, a personal promise broken but one I knew I wasn’t going to keep anyway. Nom Nom Galaxy is a management style game from the pixle junk crew which I’ve been watching for a while and it was half price on the Humble store soooo.
So far it’s a decent game, decent but it seems still missing a few features that might extend play like you know, most early access games. The Base game involves you soup making base amongst a planets and then sending this soup of to hungry mouths elsewhere. The base building is fairly limited but with an emphasis on simplicity in design as you have robots staffing it that don’t have much of an ai. You place down corridors, soup machines and rockets.
From here you both collect ingredients from the planet by exploring and digging and then bring these back to your machines with different combinations making different soups.
The management part involves setting up up functioning system of supplying ingredients for the soup. This by farming some ingredients you find that grow bigger and give multiples of the ingredient that can then be harvested or souped. This takes a bit of time to get right as you need to rely on a variety of ingredients and continue to harvest and plant each day of play.
To break this up there are certain moving animal places to harvest occasionally that make more rewarding soups but can’t be relied on. Sometimes there are alien invasions as well and the bigger your soup base gets the more come and if they destroy your main building well… no soup for you!
It’s a surprisingly fun game but a lot more different than I thought. I’m kind of used to these kinds of games just involving you to make a base, balance the mechanics of in put and output and then leaving it to run and grow. This requires far more busy work than most of those having you go out to collect, kill, protect and farm each and every game day. The robot minions do help in this, if you’ve planned well but for the most part it’s still up to you to watch them as well.
straight bases work well
The issue is that there is very little variability. the things to build are rather limited as are the ways you upgrade and manage. There just needs to be something more there but I’m not so sure what. Bigger bases that can sort of self manage to a certain amount. Variation in buildings. Different sort of defence types. Just ways to upgrade your character more meaningfully. There might be a little something different to the later planets so we shall see.
Overall it’s fun but still in the needs work column.
I jumped into Terraria for a time to continue my large building project. I stopped porting over gear for now and am building a few more boats as well as the start of the Fishing town. It’s fun being creative like this but I’m finding my builds a little bit simplistic.. needs more something. Oh and if you have ideas for a boat type I’d be willing to try.
I also checked out the Christmas event for the first time with a group and that was tough, a lot harder than the halloween one. We didn’t come anywhere close to finishing the all the waves but we did end up killing a couple of those spectre bosses and gained some sweet lootz. Doing this though it really shows just how unoptimised my character is so I might just have to make an extra effort in the week to come to get some more of the end game gear set up… lots of farming involved.
The other was of course Diablo and leveling a couple of my Hardcore characters, none of which are at cap yet so I really have to make more of an effort I think. I did purchase the expansion and am so far loving all the extras it provides, well, I haven’t actually played the extra bits of content but I did start a crusader character which has the ultimate ERI SMASH moments.
I did nearly lose my witch doctor which made my heart leap out form my chest, I had finished up with act 2 a while ago but was busy farming it to be more ready for the next area. I was going through one of the maps when some regular blue elites came at me and I was a little too complacent. A stood still and began my barrage of spirit barrage and the elites, which were those large sand lizard things surrounded me to the point I couldn’t move. Antoher set of elites, those buzzy dragon flies started shooting at me as well and my health was dropping fast.
I couldn’t remember if i’d slotted in the spirit vessel passive either which would enter me into the soul realm on what would be a fatal hit… health dropping cooldown on potion still active and as that was seriously going down to the bottom I killed one big lizard and was able to slink through the gap, backing off a bit to heal further up again. It was intense and that’s what I love about hardcore mode.
This week also sees the 2.1 patch hitting the server two which comes with some great new additions. of seasons of play (trust blizzard to iterate on the Path of exile competition), leaderboards around this as well as new rifts and gear. It looks like a great big patch that should see more playing a bit more than usual. Might try and keep up with the guild for this first season, which starts on friday us time… so my saturday.
And dats it. Expect a lot of Diablo for next week, maybe an mmo of some kind and I’ve been hankering to get back into Project ZOmboid again.
Have fun all and may your innate power be unleashed in a time of need