Sunday, July 21, 2024

Latest gaming updates

 Per tradition... Russia, Israel, Hamas, all of their leadership, and some of their populace, could really benefit from some horribly painful/itchy STDs in their lives, at a minimum.

Here at home, though, things are mostly more pleasant, if you set aside the obscene heat courtesy of climate change, the similarly-obscene political climate, and the odd assassination attempt.  So... yeah.  Well, focusing on games for a bit, here's a few items in no particular order:

  • A bit over 200 hours of playtime later, I've finished two runs through Book of Hours.  Two runs, because there are multiple endings - the "easy ending" (which is likely the most relatable for ordinary, everyday people that would be attracted to this game) and several "true endings" that take significantly more work to get.  I've enjoyed my time with the game, but, at a minimum, I want to take a break from it before I even think about diving back in.  It's one thing to let a game lead you on for hundreds of hours, but quite another to go in knowing that's what it will take, when there are so many other games out there.
  • Looks like I never mentioned - I got air conditioning in this year, in the form of a heat pump (and not a moment too soon)!  Once I verified it was able to keep up with the peculiarities of my house, I finally went ahead and upgraded to an XBox Series X.  So, I now have access to all of my XBox One games, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs on the same machine I use for streaming and current-gen games.  Oh yeah, more power too, theoretically, but it's not like my old Series S demonstrated any issues there.  Side note, Amazon has really gone downhill - I tried being cheap/responsible and buying one of their "in stock" refurbished Series X units from them, only to have them not ship, then try to move the delivery date on me on the day it was supposed to be delivered.  In the meantime, Best Buy put their new units on sale for nearly as cheap, but with a gift card attached as well, so that's where I went.  Yay, capitalism?
  • Since I was testing capabilities, I went ahead and put in the disc for my XBox One version of No Man's Sky.  Side note:  Wow, looks like I haven't posted about that game since 2017, and there have been a fair few patches since then.  Good news, it looks to have auto-upgraded to the Series X version, so yay there.  Bad news, the latest patch hasn't gone live on the XBox ecosystem yet, so... I guess I'll give it another proper go, if/when I see it update.
  • Well, assuming I'm not still embroiled in The First Descendant, of course.  Saw my brother putting in hours on this game over a couple of weekends, so I figured it was worth giving a go.  Briefly, it's mostly Warframe with a bit of Destiny thrown in for flavor.  It's decent enough for a grinding game, maybe lacks a bit of polish here and there (particularly in the localization department), but easy enough to spend a few hours in at a go.  Naturally, I'm waiting for the free-to-play cash spike to hit... but the battle pass, I'm not seeing anything I care about in the paid section so far, and I was able to negotiate Warframe's monetization to my satisfaction back in the day, so... maybe?
  • If not, I've certainly got a list of "not worth picking up Game Pass for this, but I'll check it out when I get Game Pass next" games that's grown large enough that, maybe, I'll just get a month of that to winnow that list down.  Or, I've got backlogs on various systems, or, or...

Well, that's where I'm at games-wise at the moment.  Stay safe, stay sane, stay hydrated!

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