Better Thursday
Feb. 25th, 2021 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThe hormones have calmed down, and work wasn't quite as irritating as a result. Got a decent lunch break, got some more roster maintenance and phone calls done -- had to e-mail our credit card people again, but that's just freaking standard at this point. And I didn't have the same problems as I did yesterday getting out of the building, so yeah. Call that a win.
And I did pretty well with the evening checklist as well --
1. Get in a workout: Check! Feeling better today, so it was back on the bike and back to Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I caught back up with Grills as he attended to his needs and his kit over at Longfellow’s – drinking a ton of water, storing a bunch of weapons and armor that he didn’t need, upgrading his new Powered Combat Armor Left Leg (can’t quite get it up to max, but second-best was nothing to sneeze at), and getting in a good night’s rest. He happily showed off his visually completely-unbalanced armor set the next day, running around to show just how slowly his Action Points go down and how fast they increase now that he’s upped his Endurance, taken a bunch of perks to increase refresh speed and whatnot, and gotten this Powered gear. It’s very nice and gives me ideas on where I’d take Victor’s build (if, you know, I could get into the damn game). There was also a moment while he was doing this where the game gave him a prompt to talk to Teddy Wright, even though Teddy was nowhere nearby, but – Bethesda. We know what they’re like.
Anyway, with that all sorted, Grills headed back to Far Harbor to check out the latest upgrade to the defenses (Mirelurk carapaces dotted about all the spikes and metal), then talk to the Mariner to receive her last quest – come with her on one last big adventure to hunt the Red Death, a mysterious monster that lures ships to their doom on some island out in a far corner of the map. Grills, who quite likes her, happily agreed to go with her, and after shooting down Captain Avery’s objections, sailed his boat to the island where the Red Death made its lair.
Its teeny, teeny lair, as the whole point of this quest is that the Red Death is a tiny Bloodrage Mirelurk who has extra-glowy eyes that basically serve as the opposite of a lighthouse – ships, puzzled by this red beam out of nowhere, go to investigate and sink. The Mariner was heartbroken by the revelation, while Grills could barely keep in his laughter. Aware that she was looking to be a hero to the Harbormen, though, he encouraged her to play up the fight and make the whole thing a legend – she wasn’t keen, but figured it better than some of the alternatives. Grills punched the tiny Level One Mirelurk to see if it would even fight back – it did, a BIT, and the Mariner shot it. Grills dumped it in the ocean so its still-glowing eyes wouldn’t be a bother, and they sailed back to Far Harbor to receive their hero’s welcome. The Mariner managed to awkwardly stumble her way through a few lies of omission regarding the monster, earning some cheers, then had a very heartfelt conversation with Grills about what to do with her final days – she was still thinking of setting off to sea quietly, before her time came. Grills encouraged her to leave a legacy, something to be remembered by, and they parted ways as good friends. I really like the Mariner – she’s another one of those characters I wish the game would let you hug. I suspect Jon wishes you could too.
Enough of that sappy shit, though – Jon’s got stuff to find if he hopes to complete his quests. After a quick off-camera stop back at Longfellow’s, Grills was on the move again, going to a certain hotel in the south to grab some nuclear launch codes which I suspect will be important in how he resolves the main conflicts on the Island. Main problem is that these codes were surrounded by many powerful Super Mutants, including a good number of Primuses. (Primi? Jon wasn’t sure either.) Jon managed to handle the ones outside okay, taking shots from afar, and blowing the head off a sniping Legendary – I left him and Grills inside the hotel, working their way to the codes so they could book it the hell out of there. XD Looking forward to seeing more!
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Good solid page – Alice has FINALLY learned that she’s a vampire, and has accepted help from Smilin’ Jack, because any good protagonist worth her salt should go through the tutorial. :p We’re right on the verge of part one – drinking from random strangers on the street. XD You do need to heal up that hole in your chest, kiddo. At least the Kiss being pleasurable should help with any guilt?
3. Keep up on YouTube Subscriptions: TECHNICALLY half a check because I only watched one out of the two – but I ALSO cleared out three videos in my Watch Later, so I’m going to count it as a full check. See below –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin and his community destroying Minecraft through mods! Basically there’s a mod for Minecraft that’s similar to the one he tried for Skyrim – chat can summon in stuff and apply effects to his character – and he ran it during a stream. The Twitch Chat promptly proceeded to MAKE HIS LIFE HELL IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. Seriously – in addition to the constant spawning in of horses, they were also constantly spawning in Ender Dragons, Withers, and Creepers. Kevin could barely MOVE at the beginning before dying! I don’t know HOW he managed to get the wool and wood necessary to make a bed, but he did, and then somehow managed to get a boat and sail away to new lands! Not that it helped him. . .even his attempts to make an underground base were constantly stifled by various spawns, and chat just straight-up killing him. The only reason he got ANYTHING done were a few friendly faces giving him diamond pickaxes and the like. Fortunately, one of the things he got done was find a load of diamonds in a secret lava cave – a self-imposed challenge he was probably a BIT too happy to complete. XD Poor Kevin. . .I kinda wanted to give him a hug after that.
B) Then, because the other thing in my Subs was the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast, just dropped and just over an hour long (and will require a proper well-thought-out comment from me instead of a mini-shitpost), I decided to wait on that one and instead clear a few OXBox and OXtra videos out of my Watch Later! Had a few lists, after all, including:
I. “7 Failed Videogames That Were Too Ahead of Their Time” – video games that had at least the germ of a good idea, but were limited by the technology constraints when they came out. For example, Resident Evil: Outbreak, a four-player co-op game about escaping a zombie-infested city that came out five years before Left 4 Dead – and five years before good internet. Or Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, a horror game full of scares, sanity effects (before Amnesia: The Dark Descent), and playing as historical figures (before Assassin’s Creed – and doing it better too) that unfortunately sold poorly. Or APB, an open-world co-op crime shooter that could have been GTA Online if it hadn’t been kinda shit despite being super expensive to make. What I’m saying is, there’s a lot of genuinely good remake possibilities here, people.
II. “7 Superheroes Betrayed By Their Own Crappy Game” – yes, superheroes who deserved better than the games they got! . . .and Halle Berry’s take on Catwoman, who absolutely deserved the game she got. XD But yes, while a lot of these were terrible movie tie-ins (the Thor and Daredevil tie-ins being especially bad – Chris Hemsworth was EXTREMELY wooden in the former’s voice-acting), there were a couple of original terrible games, like Spawn having a tank control horror, or the Fantastic Four suffering from a very poor side-scrolling beat-em-up. Not to mention poor Aquaman, whose video game didn’t even get properly animated cutscenes. . . Basically, if you want superheroes in good games, you could probably do worse than sticking with the various LEGO adaptations.
III. “7 Ludicrous Death Traps You Escaped Easily” – video game death traps that weren’t as deadly as one might think. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines got a shout with the Fu Syndicate “dungeon,” where your fledgling is subjected to a number of tests to determine how best to kill a vampire. As Jane puts it, the Mandarin mainly learns “don’t let your vampire bring their gun into the course.” XD There was also a raised-floor spike trap from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion that is only deadly if you’re an NPC with one hit point; an acid trap from Monkey Island 2 that can’t kill protagonist Guybrush because, well, he’s telling the story to his love interest after the fact; and Wheatley’s “death option” from Portal 2 where he tries to convince you to just let yourself be dragged into a crusher via a conveyor belt because you’re getting close to his lair and he figured he’d give you a choice. (Though, really, the best one is at the beginning, where he tries to talk you into a pit, and you get an achievement for letting him. XD) Not deadly, but very funny.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: . . .Check? There actually wasn’t any asks or threads or anything on my Valice Multiverse tumblr – the only one that needed an update – so I just found some fandom stuff to reblog. Counts, right?
Not too shabby -- now to answer my DW comment and head to bed. Got one more day to get through before the weekend! ...and then a Saturday full of chores and taxes. And a Sims 4 patch (which seems to have been them getting some custom content creators to add some of their stuff to the game, and the revelation that "Kit Packs" are going to be a thing, because they're now testing the waters to see how small they can make a pack before we'll stop paying for it?). Hopefully it's not the kind that shatters Sims CC. . .we'll see. Night all!
And I did pretty well with the evening checklist as well --
1. Get in a workout: Check! Feeling better today, so it was back on the bike and back to Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I caught back up with Grills as he attended to his needs and his kit over at Longfellow’s – drinking a ton of water, storing a bunch of weapons and armor that he didn’t need, upgrading his new Powered Combat Armor Left Leg (can’t quite get it up to max, but second-best was nothing to sneeze at), and getting in a good night’s rest. He happily showed off his visually completely-unbalanced armor set the next day, running around to show just how slowly his Action Points go down and how fast they increase now that he’s upped his Endurance, taken a bunch of perks to increase refresh speed and whatnot, and gotten this Powered gear. It’s very nice and gives me ideas on where I’d take Victor’s build (if, you know, I could get into the damn game). There was also a moment while he was doing this where the game gave him a prompt to talk to Teddy Wright, even though Teddy was nowhere nearby, but – Bethesda. We know what they’re like.
Anyway, with that all sorted, Grills headed back to Far Harbor to check out the latest upgrade to the defenses (Mirelurk carapaces dotted about all the spikes and metal), then talk to the Mariner to receive her last quest – come with her on one last big adventure to hunt the Red Death, a mysterious monster that lures ships to their doom on some island out in a far corner of the map. Grills, who quite likes her, happily agreed to go with her, and after shooting down Captain Avery’s objections, sailed his boat to the island where the Red Death made its lair.
Its teeny, teeny lair, as the whole point of this quest is that the Red Death is a tiny Bloodrage Mirelurk who has extra-glowy eyes that basically serve as the opposite of a lighthouse – ships, puzzled by this red beam out of nowhere, go to investigate and sink. The Mariner was heartbroken by the revelation, while Grills could barely keep in his laughter. Aware that she was looking to be a hero to the Harbormen, though, he encouraged her to play up the fight and make the whole thing a legend – she wasn’t keen, but figured it better than some of the alternatives. Grills punched the tiny Level One Mirelurk to see if it would even fight back – it did, a BIT, and the Mariner shot it. Grills dumped it in the ocean so its still-glowing eyes wouldn’t be a bother, and they sailed back to Far Harbor to receive their hero’s welcome. The Mariner managed to awkwardly stumble her way through a few lies of omission regarding the monster, earning some cheers, then had a very heartfelt conversation with Grills about what to do with her final days – she was still thinking of setting off to sea quietly, before her time came. Grills encouraged her to leave a legacy, something to be remembered by, and they parted ways as good friends. I really like the Mariner – she’s another one of those characters I wish the game would let you hug. I suspect Jon wishes you could too.
Enough of that sappy shit, though – Jon’s got stuff to find if he hopes to complete his quests. After a quick off-camera stop back at Longfellow’s, Grills was on the move again, going to a certain hotel in the south to grab some nuclear launch codes which I suspect will be important in how he resolves the main conflicts on the Island. Main problem is that these codes were surrounded by many powerful Super Mutants, including a good number of Primuses. (Primi? Jon wasn’t sure either.) Jon managed to handle the ones outside okay, taking shots from afar, and blowing the head off a sniping Legendary – I left him and Grills inside the hotel, working their way to the codes so they could book it the hell out of there. XD Looking forward to seeing more!
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Good solid page – Alice has FINALLY learned that she’s a vampire, and has accepted help from Smilin’ Jack, because any good protagonist worth her salt should go through the tutorial. :p We’re right on the verge of part one – drinking from random strangers on the street. XD You do need to heal up that hole in your chest, kiddo. At least the Kiss being pleasurable should help with any guilt?
3. Keep up on YouTube Subscriptions: TECHNICALLY half a check because I only watched one out of the two – but I ALSO cleared out three videos in my Watch Later, so I’m going to count it as a full check. See below –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin and his community destroying Minecraft through mods! Basically there’s a mod for Minecraft that’s similar to the one he tried for Skyrim – chat can summon in stuff and apply effects to his character – and he ran it during a stream. The Twitch Chat promptly proceeded to MAKE HIS LIFE HELL IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. Seriously – in addition to the constant spawning in of horses, they were also constantly spawning in Ender Dragons, Withers, and Creepers. Kevin could barely MOVE at the beginning before dying! I don’t know HOW he managed to get the wool and wood necessary to make a bed, but he did, and then somehow managed to get a boat and sail away to new lands! Not that it helped him. . .even his attempts to make an underground base were constantly stifled by various spawns, and chat just straight-up killing him. The only reason he got ANYTHING done were a few friendly faces giving him diamond pickaxes and the like. Fortunately, one of the things he got done was find a load of diamonds in a secret lava cave – a self-imposed challenge he was probably a BIT too happy to complete. XD Poor Kevin. . .I kinda wanted to give him a hug after that.
B) Then, because the other thing in my Subs was the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast, just dropped and just over an hour long (and will require a proper well-thought-out comment from me instead of a mini-shitpost), I decided to wait on that one and instead clear a few OXBox and OXtra videos out of my Watch Later! Had a few lists, after all, including:
I. “7 Failed Videogames That Were Too Ahead of Their Time” – video games that had at least the germ of a good idea, but were limited by the technology constraints when they came out. For example, Resident Evil: Outbreak, a four-player co-op game about escaping a zombie-infested city that came out five years before Left 4 Dead – and five years before good internet. Or Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, a horror game full of scares, sanity effects (before Amnesia: The Dark Descent), and playing as historical figures (before Assassin’s Creed – and doing it better too) that unfortunately sold poorly. Or APB, an open-world co-op crime shooter that could have been GTA Online if it hadn’t been kinda shit despite being super expensive to make. What I’m saying is, there’s a lot of genuinely good remake possibilities here, people.
II. “7 Superheroes Betrayed By Their Own Crappy Game” – yes, superheroes who deserved better than the games they got! . . .and Halle Berry’s take on Catwoman, who absolutely deserved the game she got. XD But yes, while a lot of these were terrible movie tie-ins (the Thor and Daredevil tie-ins being especially bad – Chris Hemsworth was EXTREMELY wooden in the former’s voice-acting), there were a couple of original terrible games, like Spawn having a tank control horror, or the Fantastic Four suffering from a very poor side-scrolling beat-em-up. Not to mention poor Aquaman, whose video game didn’t even get properly animated cutscenes. . . Basically, if you want superheroes in good games, you could probably do worse than sticking with the various LEGO adaptations.
III. “7 Ludicrous Death Traps You Escaped Easily” – video game death traps that weren’t as deadly as one might think. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines got a shout with the Fu Syndicate “dungeon,” where your fledgling is subjected to a number of tests to determine how best to kill a vampire. As Jane puts it, the Mandarin mainly learns “don’t let your vampire bring their gun into the course.” XD There was also a raised-floor spike trap from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion that is only deadly if you’re an NPC with one hit point; an acid trap from Monkey Island 2 that can’t kill protagonist Guybrush because, well, he’s telling the story to his love interest after the fact; and Wheatley’s “death option” from Portal 2 where he tries to convince you to just let yourself be dragged into a crusher via a conveyor belt because you’re getting close to his lair and he figured he’d give you a choice. (Though, really, the best one is at the beginning, where he tries to talk you into a pit, and you get an achievement for letting him. XD) Not deadly, but very funny.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: . . .Check? There actually wasn’t any asks or threads or anything on my Valice Multiverse tumblr – the only one that needed an update – so I just found some fandom stuff to reblog. Counts, right?
Not too shabby -- now to answer my DW comment and head to bed. Got one more day to get through before the weekend! ...and then a Saturday full of chores and taxes. And a Sims 4 patch (which seems to have been them getting some custom content creators to add some of their stuff to the game, and the revelation that "Kit Packs" are going to be a thing, because they're now testing the waters to see how small they can make a pack before we'll stop paying for it?). Hopefully it's not the kind that shatters Sims CC. . .we'll see. Night all!
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Date: 2021-02-27 07:08 pm (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy8ERa_ioEA
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Date: 2021-02-28 04:26 am (UTC)