My gaming moods lately

 Lately I've had a ton of different games going ... more so than normal .... but I've found my gaming mood all over the place lately. Partially because I've been stressed and my work schedule has been unsettled. Normally I don't have a trouble working nights, and I don't this job would really have been any different except for timing and other life issues. Traditionally it would take me about 2 weeks to fully get into a the over night schedule, but this job started and right as the 2nd week was ending Daylight Savings smashed me with a baseball bat .... I'm not going to rant about DST here, I think I've rambled about it before over on Path of Bones in any case ... needless to say IMO it is a dinosaur that needs to die and be turned into fossil fuel. One wouldn't think that something like that would through such a wrench into things, but disrupting a schedule just as it's getting into routine just messes with the head a lot more than you would expect. On top of that, I also had looming jury duty ... meaning I'd potentially need to, for a day or a week possibly more, completely swap myself back to a 'normal' day schedule ... again just as I was getting settled. 

Jury duty was canceled (no jury trials for the week that I had been tapped for so they told us not to report the Sunday before) ... but in anticipation of the possibility I had partially swapped my schedule so that the Monday wouldn't have been so drastic, but then other things came up Monday morning and ... I'll just say kidney stones suck.

What does any of this have to do with games? Directly, nothing, but where I was going was that I've had a lot of different styles of games that I've been juggling, and while they're all things I traditionally like, I'm not usually this scattered. Warframe, one of my go to long time games (Free to play and if you haven't tried it, I recommend it without any reservation ... hands down the best Free-to-Play model I've ever encountered, constantly evolving and adding new content and a dev and community team that I consider one of the best in the business.) It is, however, very fast paced and can be intense, so when I'm tired or stressed I can find it over whelming. So I've been playing other things depending on my mood. 

No Man's Sky is another long time favorite of mine and I've been putting in a good bit of time in it lately. A much slower pace than Warframe, and centers a lot more on exploration and discovery. It had a bit of a rough launch back in 2016 when it launched because a lot of people listened more to Sony marketing and/or heard some of the developers 'We want to' as 'We're going to' because they wanted the feature. Many of those did eventually make it into the game and, much like Warframe they have continued to grow, improve, and add to the game even though it's now nearly 10 years old. 

If you're not familiar with the game it is a sandbox Sci-Fi exploration game ... you wake up, find a ship, and begin to explore the galaxy ... no seriously I mean the galaxy:

Each of those dots is a star you can warp to and that is just a small section of the spiral galaxy in the upper left. I don't remember how many systems there are but I highly doubt anyone could possibly explore them all in a lifetime ... and ... if you make it to the center of the galaxy you can go to a new galaxy. Space flight, planetary travel ... on foot and vehicles ... space and atmospheric combat ... base building ... and story and lore to find along the way. Oh and fishing and underwater exploration as well ... with an aesthetic based off of the pulp sci-fi book covers of the 60s and 70s it has a charm that no other game like it has matched (imo). [Elite Dangerous matches the scope over all but is a more realistic sim focused on space exploration with minimal planetary interest, and you can't land on all of the planets.]

On the flip side ... you have Monster Hunter. I've mainly been playing Monster Hunter: Rise on the Nintendo Switch, but I also play Monster Hunter: World (and the Iceborn expansion) on PC. If you're not familiar with the franchise, you are a hunter tasked with going out and hunting down and slaying (or capturing) massive monsters resembling, dragons, dinosaurs, thunderbirds, oversized snowbunnies, and ... you get the point. 

  

 

(Top - Monster Hunter: Rise (promotional screenshot), Bottom - Monster Hunter: World (from a recent hunt of mine))

The monsters are no push overs and can be very challenging to virtually impossible solo (unless you're very over geared for the fight), but the game is usually intended to be played in a group (something I rarely manage to do) and in world you can fire SOS flares to have other hunters join your hunt to help out. As there's no PvP and you all get your own rewards usually the worst thing that happens is you get a really high level player that over powers the hunt making you feel a little useless. 

I've heard Monster Hunter described as a Souls like for people that don't hate themselves. And in some ways that is accurate. Monster Hunter has very limited invulnerability states like a lot of games do while dodging or animating (often referred to as I-Frames) which is to say that if you're dodging and the attack hits ... you get hit. Likewise the 'hit boxes' of both you and the monsters are very tight to the mesh so to hit (or get hit) you have to hit. Everything goes both ways of course and I have rolled right under a bite, or the animation of my attack missed but because my character was bent over the monsters tail lashed right over my head in a sweeping attack that would have knocked me sprawling. As such, much like the Souls games, it does come down to learning the 'tells' of the monsters and anticipating their attacks, and a well timed weapon blow can interrupt them, just as them hitting you while you're winding up will interrupt your attack.

Monster Hunter: Wilds just released recently and I'd love to be working my way through that, but I have enough games and I don't need to be buying new games. Besides, if I did by a new release at the moment it would likely be Space Marine II before anything else.

 How does this come up when I'm looking to relax? Well, the fact is that while I often get frustrated, the feeling of a successful hunt is a large part of it, but even if combat can be very hectic it rewards precision and patience more than button spamming. The over all pace is methodical and a well done hunt does to some degree feel like a dance, as well as a triumph of the small hunter over the massive monster. Which sometimes I think is a good thing to be reminded of.

Then ... Then there's Ale and Tale Tavern. A cozy tavern keeper game that my wife and I have recently become slightly addicted to. You play as the new owner of a run down tavern in the middle of the woods and you need to get it cleaned up, and open it back up. Serving customers, growing crops (to serve to customers), hunting boar (to serve to customers) and doing quests (to unlock new recipes, abilities, or aspects of the tavern ... or just acting as a fantasy uber eats delivery person to make some extra coin.)

So here we're frantically trying to cook and serve food to customers to keep our ratings up and using the time when we're closed to add tables so we can serve more customers. Now we do have helpers, these little owl people that we've hired to clean and help wait tables. The game recently added the Inn upstairs allowing you to put in beds and rent rooms once you unlock them, meaning you get to add changing and washing sheets to the list of cooking, cleaning, doing dishes, and farming. Still it is incredibly cute, and a lot of chaotic fun .... particularly when you get to the point that you have special visitors that think they have the right to order things that aren't on the menu.....

I've got a lot of games to talk about if I'm being honest. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (An excellent CRPG set in the 40k universe), Civilization VII, Aloft, Satisfactory, Return to Moria, a more in depth look at the games here ... and more ... all I need is the time and energy to write about them.

Time

 I mentioned in the last blog that I don't have the time to game that I used to. It's honestly why I stopped streaming. I'm writing a novel, my wife and I opened our own business, and while I enjoyed streaming a lot I was never going to put the effort in to be serious about it. I enjoyed streaming, playing games and chatting with those folks that came by to see what I was up to, friends wondering what I was up to, new people wondering about the game or just interested in talking. It was fun and, as I live ... shall we say 'off the beaten path' it gave me a bit of socialization that I missed ... the hanging out with friends and playing a game.

 I mean when I was younger, a lot of the games my friends and I liked weren't necessarily multiplayer games ... story driven RPGs, Flight Sims, or a lot of the ones that were were turn based strategy games, but we'd hang out, play, joke, and laugh watching each other, congratulating the player on a great move, or laughing at an epic failure. It was fun, but I never wanted to be a 'big' streamer, a few regulars to laugh and joke with was about it. And with so many pulls on my time, I just had to come to terms with the fact that, unless I won the lottery, spending time on something like that ... something I had no intention of really putting the work in for or really any desire to improve ... wasn't really the best use of my limited time. I still game, mostly with my wife and we have a ton of fun, but there's still something missing.

I'd love to get back to role playing ... but who has the time? Again ... I live at least an hour away from literally anyone I know ... Most of the people other than my wife that I consider friends are in different states if not countries. We could use online systems ... I've used Roll 20 in the past and it's a good system, but still, getting a time that works for a group isn't easy... especially when I am usually working nights.

Monday thru Friday forget it, even if I wasn't tied up with working, sleeping, commuting, or my writing it's not like anyone else would have time to do anything ... not counting that working nights means I would be AT work when most people would have free time in the evening. 

Saturday? Working nights means I often don't get home until early Saturday morning, so half of it is spent asleep, then when I get up I have all of the stuff around the house that I didn't have time for during the week as well as keeping up with business stuff (photos, listings, . I get a little time to chill with the wife in the evening before she passes out having become a *shudders* morning person.

Sunday? I mean technically this IS my free day, mainly that means playing games with the wife and painting, and trying not to think of the mountain of things that still need to be done. Sure, I could arrange time to do things on a Sunday afternoon once in a while, but unless my wife is going to join me, I'd be giving up my limited time with her to do it ... and again ... unless it's online travel time is not to be forgotten, going down to ATL to play games with friends (which I do occasionally if I can get schedules to line up) is a 2 hour round trip, I'm not just going to go down there for a 1 hour gaming session, it's going to be for an afternoon. Likewise I'm not going to ask my friends to come out to me, unless I can dedicate an afternoon of games to make it worth the cost of gas.

Wow ... this got way more depressing than I intended. But it does illustrate why I gave up streaming, just not enough hours in the day, enough days in the week. I enjoy a lot of what I do ... my job, painting, the company my wife and I have started and my writing, but that doesn't mean that I don't miss other things too. I'll keep gaming on Saturday evening and Sunday ... I'll keep plugging away at my book ... and painting my little plastic soldiers .... wishing I had more time to do all of it .... and more time to do other things too.

Dusty here....

Pretty much as dusty as it was over on the Path of Bones .... Which is a shame really. I could have done a lot with this in the 2018 to 2022 span while I was actually streaming. Played a lot of games in that time, had a lot of fun. These days I don't have the gaming time that I used to. Don't get me wrong ... I have soooo many games I WANT to play, but my gaming time is generally limited to Sundays and that's also my model painting time (oh yeah ... btw ... I picked an old hobby back up and I paint miniatures. I also opened up a business with my wife selling those miniatures as well ... so that's most of my time.) 

And as if to emphasize this I've been working on this post for 3 days now (I'm not counting Saturday and Sunday as I didn't write any of it then.... so five calendar days, 3 days of work) Work is getting crazy and to make matters worse I have jury duty coming up in a little less than 2 weeks. But none of that has to do with gaming ... more my lack there of. I did get some in on the weekend, playing some Warframe (which I've posted about before) some No Man's Sky (Great exploration game that fought it's way back from a rough start that was mainly the result of people getting over hyped about things that weren't promised) and some Eternal Strands story driven exploration and monster fighting game. I've also dabbled in Avowed CRPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe which I've been enjoying. If I can whittle out some time I'll likely do write ups on all of those, and there are several others that I'd like to be playing ... Space Marine II, Monster Hunter Wilds to name at least 2 ... but I can't justify paying the price when I don't have time to play the new games that I have (Civilization VI) or old games that I haven't finished (Rogue Trader, Satisfactory, Return to Moria) .... The fact of the matter is ... It's a great time to be a gamer ... and a lousy time to be a responsible adult. 

 Something else I'll likely be doing some here, is talking about model painting and some of that, maybe if I can get my arch-nemesis to dust off his models I'll even write up a blog on a game of Kill Team .... Narrative style.