Category: Games

Not Particularly Final, Actually

My interaction with the sprawling multimedia beast that is the Final Fantasy franchise is rather limited. I played the 10th game installment for a while but didn’t finish. I avoided watching the infamous 3D CGI movie from a number of years ago. The most direct and long-lasting experience I have with a Fantasy which is Final (but is it really?) started when I signed up to play the critically acclaimed (yadda yadda) MMO, Final Fantasy XIV.

Then I stopped. Then, a year or so later, I picked it back up again. Then I stopped again.

Now, even more years later… I’m back? Probably maybe?

Meet Amber Ellidee, a miner and part-time monk (who also dabbles in goldsmithing), seen here contemplating another in a long series of fetch-and-talk-to quests along the massive Main Scenario Quest line…

Back in the day I started a new character on a new server every time an online friend said “Yeah, I’ll be happy to help you get through those pesky required dungeons!” Cue the chirping crickets sound effect. That’s a main part of why I kept bailing on the game: Enforced partying with strangers. More often than not the strangers you get tend to be hardcore into the game and lack anything resembling patience for anyone who doesn’t already have the ~~dungeon~~ duty mechanics down pat, let alone their skill rotation completely mastered. Off-putting, that.

Now, though? The game provides NPC helpers! And they do their jobs! Including staying out of telegraphs! I can solo those duties! Music to my ears, I tell you what.

I still prefer mining and crafting (no, not like that) but at least I can progress the story on my own terms. And, for now, I think I shall.

8 January, 2024
Satisfactory: The Planning Stages

The second-best time, I’ve learned, to plan your Phase 4 shipment production for the Space Elevator in Satisfactory is about 250 hours into your session. The best time to plan your Phase 4 yadda yadda is before you start the game.
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6 January, 2024
Satisfactory: Employee of the Planet

I met my goal. By year’s end 2023, I made it all the way through the Phase 4 parts shipment. Look!

This officially puts the “ChooChooingScenery” savegame sequence to bed at 299 hours 45 minutes accumulated play time. Coming up in mid-January: I… haven’t figured out what I’m calling it yet but it’s a new savegame with a very particular focus, and I also want to sort out how I can turn it into more regularly-scheduled material for this here not-a-blog.

Wait for it! It’s coming! It should be fun!

29 December, 2023
A Steam-y 2023

End-of-year retrospectives are as common this time of year as wadded up balls of wrapping paper thrown aside in frustration while trying to wrap presents. I’ll be putting together my thoughts on some of the music released during this calendar year later on, but I was reminded this afternoon that Steam’s fancy “year in review” results are now available, so let’s take a look-see.

Sadly, most of those 4 new games didn’t connect with me very well. Better luck next year, game studios! My attention is valuable, after all!

Checking out the full document may be entertaining for you, but if you’d rather just get the high points in summary: I played a lot of Satisfactory, I spent a couple months getting back into Skyrim pretty heavily, and I used my PC to play Gems of War & Ascension a few times (usually I play those on the tablet).

The amount of Satisfactory I played will come as no surprise to regular followers of this site. (Hello to both of you!)

No kidding?

Over 170 sessions, nearly 70% of my entire time spent out of all games from my Steam library. Yeah, that tracks.

But that’s not the whole story, is it? I play games which aren’t on Steam, after all. Like Honkai Star Rail (my main mobile game), Fire Emblem: Three Houses (several years on and I’m finally winding down on that one), Fire Emblem Engage (for a few months there, anyway), the beta for Palia (the 3D Stardew we keep hoping starts to gel), the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV (just getting back into that very very recently), and a few other odds & ends besides.

That seems like a lot of games, but again, remember that Satisfactory (and HSR) are getting the bulk of my attention… as do books, TV shows, music, and so on. I’m a “gamer” but only in the mildest, most casual sense of the term.

And that’s fine!

I hope you’ve all had fun this year, and I hope you have increasing amounts and quality of fun in the year ahead.

19 December, 2023
Satisfactory: I Lumen-ate

On Tuesday, the 14th of November, 2023 the 8th major update to Satisfactory arrived in Early Access, after spending months in the Experimental branch to shake out the worst of the bugs… most of them, anyway. We have a few things to talk about with “U8” but today we’re going to focus primarily on the new engine’s support for something called “Lumen” and how that makes an already-pretty game even prettier.

I took this screenshot within the first two minutes of enabling Lumen while at the Final Destination site. Just a purely random view and it shows off the new lighting so well! Dang this game’s pretty.
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19 November, 2023
The State Of Games – Late Oct 2023

I’m passing a lot of my time playing games lately, a mix of new and really-very-old. Let’s run down the list a bit, shall we?

Not visible in this screenshot: All the stuff I crammed into too tiny of a space. Out of sight, out of mind!
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22 October, 2023