Tag: video games

In which I know nothing

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Not to continue harping on this, but while it will tell you that it has been four days since I have uploaded anything to my YouTube channel (smash that subscribe button!), what that actually means is that I have acquired new equipment in the last few days and the complexity level of my setup has jumped a thousandfold. What was previously hit this button on your PlayStation and maybe make sure there’s not a fan running while you’re streaming has now grown to not only include my computer and a separate little piece of kit, but three different software packages, all of which appear to do the exact same thing but in just different enough ways that overlap isn’t helping, and I’m trying to decide which one I like the most sort of at a base level so that I can start learning how to use it. Because before, the stream didn’t look or sound all that great but there were only like four things that I could adjust, so at least I knew I was streaming at the highest quality I was going to be able to.

Now, there are fourteen million things I can adjust, and I’m also not really quite used to the tv yet– and it took a minute for me to realize that what was showing up on the television was actually not related to what was showing up on my computer monitor (in other words, if I adjust the brightness on the TV, that’s not changing anything on the stream) and so now I not only need to get the tv looking right for me but I need to adjust twelve thousand different things– some of which I’m not even sure what the settings do— so that it looks and sounds good on stream.

Meanwhile, turn off the fan while you’re streaming, you dolt is still something I haven’t quite internalized.

Anyway, what I’m doing is a lot of “adjust settings, upload a three-minute stream, delete three-minute stream” thing, and I’ll do my best to not talk about this too much more until the site is actually ready for prime time.

Sure, this is a great idea

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I still need to move the microphone, which is currently pinned back in that corner, but this is the setup I’m looking at right now, which my wife described as “whatever comes after ludicrous.” That’s a perfectly fair assessment; I have lost my mind, and being this close to that screen is going to blind me in short order, I think. The PS5 is going to end up to the left of all the dice on a little table; I will need to acquire a little table, however. And clearly I need some more Funko Pops.

The angle the primary monitor is at isn’t as ergonomically sound as I’d like either, but I’ve got plenty of room to move my body and my keyboard so I’m facing it directly when I’m typing; I don’t think this will lead to strain, but we’ll see.

And, just for scale, the previous secondary monitor was the size of the TweetDeck window that’s currently displayed on the TV. So, yeah. I’ve clearly lost my mind.

In which works are in progress

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, video games2 Comments

Still thrashing about trying to come up with a good name for the YouTube channel; there is now a temporary name and two streams up, both of which I’m slightly dissatisfied with for various reasons but I have Plans to fix that. That said, you should go there, and … smash? that subscribe button? I’m unsure of the proper verb. I think Subscribe buttons are smashed but I can’t be certain.

The bitmoji is probably temporary too, but I need some sort of temporary branding to go with my temporary channel name, so.

Why not just go with existing names? Well, I sort of want this (and probably my TikTok account as well, which is due for a rename) to be something I can cross-promote from here but still be something that isn’t a problem if my students discover it. I spent a moment thinking about just calling the channel Infinitefreetime Gaming, but I did an experimental Google on the phrase and it leads straight back here. Infinitegametime already exists and infiniteplaytime sounds like it’s something for small children. I could keep Luther Plays Games and just play it off as not wanting to use my real name– that is my grandfather’s name, after all, so it’s not as if I don’t have any connection to it– and so long as the word Siler doesn’t appear anywhere it ought to be fine. But I’d prefer a third choice. Possibly something making fun of my advanced age. Who the hell knows.

I spent six hours today in a Zoom meeting for my real job, which bounced back and forth between being useful and tedious depending on whether we were in breakout rooms with people from our school or listening to the presenters. Every alarm I have started going off early in the day, when one of the presenters called on someone to read the slide being displayed on the screen out loud, and then interrupted her after two sentences so that she could call on someone else to read more of it. I was not called on, but I hope y’all don’t think I’m bullshitting when I say that my mic and camera would have stayed off if I had been, and to hell with any social consequences. We’re adults. That shit borders on sin. I don’t know how the hell we’ve been conducting everygoddamnthing over Zoom for over a fucking year and people still think that kind of unbearable nonsense is the way to run a meeting.

I also got to put aside one of my projects for this summer; I’ve discovered that the earliest I can take my math test for my National Board certification is April, and as a lifelong procrastinator I’m sure as hell not going to start studying in June for a test I’m not taking for ten months. So that’s exciting. It gives me more time to plan for next year and work on other shit. It means when I do start studying I’ll have to do it during the school year, but something makes me think that’s not going to be all that much of a problem. We’ll see.

OKAY SO I GUESS WE’RE DOING THIS

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Reviews1 Comment

First things first: this is the new YouTube channel, which right now is only barely real. I have managed to confirm that I have at least a basic understanding of how everything works and is a test video and a semi-real livestream that no one watched except for my son in the last few minutes, but I natter on to myself throughout it just for the hell of it. I have some calibrating to do on the TV, which is too dark right now; I’m not sure if the actual video is too dark as well because one of the things I don’t know is how precisely YouTube replicates what I have on the screen.

I also need to make some branding decisions; right now the channel is just called Luther Siler, because that’s how YouTube defaulted things; I’m considering adopting an entirely separate identity for this so I can share it here and with my kids if I want to. Or maybe I’ll lose interest next week and you’ll never hear about it again. Who knows? Not me!

If you do happen to watch the video and have any questions or comments– particularly about whether you can actually hear me as I ramble on– definitely let me know. Preferably as a comment on YT which will count as engagement. Also, if you have any clever names for the channel, let me know.

We finally got around to watching Raya and the Last Dragon last night, which you might have guessed from the telltale “Raya and the Last Dragon” graphic at the top of this post. Verdict: I liked it, but not enough to write a full blog post about it? It’s not up there with my absolute favorite Disney movies (Aladdin) or my favorite new-Disney movies (Frozen) or my favorite Pixar movies (Incredibles and Finding Nemo) but it’s a solid second-tier Disney film for me, where I won’t necessarily actively seek it out to watch but I’ll probably end up stumbling over it and watching it again in the future, that sort of thing. The character work and the animation are great (the character work is really great, actually) but the story itself stumbles a little bit, especially since it more or less starts off with the main character having to find the Infinity Stones. You’ve got to be really careful with any story structure outside of a video game where the character has to track down X of something before the story can start, and in this particular case I’m not even convinced that a lot of the conflict was necessary. But I liked it, and it jerks at the heartstrings appropriately, and it’s the only Disney movie I’ve ever seen where I can honestly say that the fight scenes were super cool. Check it out.

I just wrote a review about a book where I kept using the word “delightful” and emphasizing how heartwarming and life-affirming the book was, so naturally my next choice for reading material was Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is about the intertwining lives of two women in Kabul during the waning years of the war against the Soviet Union through to the rise of the Taliban.

This is the third of Hosseini’s books that I’ve read, and I think it’s his third actual novel, following The Kite Runner and And The Mountains Echoed, and … like, I love Hosseini’s books; the guy is a brilliant author, but his books aren’t exactly there to be enjoyed? That’s the wrong verb; it’s not what they’re for, and going from the candy-coated big gay happiness pile of The House in the Cerulean Sea to this was whiplash-inducing, to say the least. You already know most of what the story’s going to be like from the words women and Kabul and Taliban, and it’s not going to turn out that the two women are superheroes who beat the hell out of the Taliban or anything like that. Nah, they’re going to have miserable, oppressed lives, and the story ends on a happyish note but only after several decades of horror.

Is that a recommendation? I dunno. Hosseini is a brilliant writer, as I’ve said, but I kinda threw this book into my brain without thinking beforehand about how it would affect me, and I might have put it off for a while longer if I’d thought about it more.

Today, in totally unnecessary

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

This setup, which I have no intention of making permanent, is what happens when I realize I have a 43″ TV in my bedroom that is not ever used– has been sitting there not even plugged in for months, in fact– and decide to see what happens when I try and use it as a secondary monitor. I have been tossing around the idea of moving the PS5 into the office so that I’m not monopolizing the TV that’s in there with my nonsense, and this won’t be the TV I use if I actually do that, but it got me wondering. My iMac is a 27″ 5K monitor, and the previous secondary monitor was mostly used for TweetDeck or for keeping videos running on while I did other stuff on the primary monitor. If I use this one, the resolution isn’t as good as the primary but the size overwhelms it, so … I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing right now.

Maybe I use this TV as a monitor and buy another one for the table behind me to play on.

God, I need a summer job.

An essential Returnal update

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

Y’all. I am having fun with this one.

Returnal has one major problem and one major annoyance. The major problem is the saving thing. It is absolutely crazy that there’s no way to take a break in the middle of a run. Go ahead and wipe everything after dying just like you’ve been doing; hell, set the save functionality at the Reconstructors and charge me Ether for them if you want to, but there’s got to be a way I can quit and go have dinner like a human being or, hell, go to bed on time without risking a run.

The major annoyance? Maybe not that major, I dunno, but Trophies are borked to hell and back, and for people who are known to be completists like me, that’s aggravating. I’ve beaten one particular boss three times and the trophy for beating him hasn’t popped yet. I assume it’ll show eventually, maybe after the next patch, but right now it’s pissing me off.

(If you don’t understand a single sentence of the last two paragraphs, forgive me; I don’t have any friends or even online acquaintances who share my video game habit so my only real option is to write on the blog. I can’t even get anyone to bite on Twitter. You’d think at least a handful of the nearly eleven thousand people who follow me there would be a gamer, but you’d be wrong.)

Beyond that, though, this is one of the most fun shooters I’ve ever played, right up there with Horizon: Zero Dawn, which is probably my favorite shooter of all time. The controls are just beautifully executed on a technical level, and this game shares some DNA with the Dark Souls series, in that at least so far everything has felt fair. Like, don’t get me wrong, everything and everything and everything wants to and is able to kill your ass, and absolutely will kill your ass, but the word “bullshit” has escaped my mouth very few times during some very long runs, although there’s been a serious difficulty spike in the most recent area I’ve gotten to. The weapons are all great; everything that I’ve used except for the starter pistol has been my favorite weapon for at least a little while, and the pistol’s not bad, it’s just … y’know, a pistol, which isn’t remotely as fun as, say, the weapon called the Rotgland Lobber.

I love my Rottie. Love it.

The story is another thing that is holding it back from my usual BEST THING EVAR enthusiasm, but it’s possible that I’ll feel differently once I finish the game. There was a hell of a mid-game twist, but they’re leaning heavy into what-the-hell-is-going-on-here and it remains to be seen whether I’ll think the story is coherent once I’m done with the game. I will, of course, update again at that time.

I know you don’t have a PS5, and don’t buy one just to play this, but if you get one, you should probably pick Returnal up with it.

A current and timely post

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I have been playing Returnal for the last several days, a game that, at least currently, does not allow you to save. And as I’ve been playing I’ve been thinking about the roguelike genre, which sort of incorporates constant player death into its story model, and thinking about some spoilers that I’ve heard about Returnal’s late-game story, which I won’t repeat here but which touch directly on the idea of “you” dying over and over again in a game.

And that got me thinking about Bioshock, one of the best games I’ve ever played, and a minor tweak that could have made it even more amazing.

Spoilers for Bioshock, a game from 2007, follow. Have a divider:

Bioshock has one of the greatest mid-game twists I think I’ve ever encountered. It’s basically a first-person shooter, and your character is exploring this underwater city, and you’re taking instructions and direction from this guy somewhere in the city who is talking to you over a radio. At about the midpoint of the game, you encounter the guy who has basically been your adversary throughout this journey so far, and after a whole lot of exposition that I’m not going to go into, this guy, wanting to control his own destiny, tells you to pick up a golf club and kill him with it. Well, asks, actually, specifically using the phrase “Would you kindly” in setting up the question.

And at that point it’s revealed that would you kindly is a trigger phrase that has been implanted in you, and that you’re conditioned to obey any order that follows that phrase. And the game flashes back for you to your ally using that phrase several times in directing you to go to certain places and do certain things throughout the parts of the game that you’ve played– all of which you’ve done, because that’s how video games work. Characters tell you to do things, and you go and do them. There have certainly been times where I, the player, didn’t necessarily want to do a thing that someone in a game was telling me to do, and there are games where player choice is a big part of the game itself, but you’re gonna play along, because the nature of gaming itself demands that you do so.

And so, here you are, with a golf club in front of you, your other weapons disabled, no way out of the room, and you literally cannot progress in the game unless you obey orders. And in the game, it’s presented as a question of free will, and whether free will even exists, and meantime here you are, the player, and you’re literally 100% in control of this fictional person’s actions and 100% constrained by the rules of the world the game has set up, and it absolutely blew my mind when I first played it all those years ago and frankly it still has a lot of impact.

And it just hit me this morning how it could have been better.

What if, instead of forcing you to kill the guy to proceed in the game, the game gave you the option to just … cut to credits? And then the game was over? The whole game is this extended meditation on free will and choice, right? So why not give the player to make the choice to disobey their conditioning, and by “their” I mean both the character and the player, and refuse to kill this person, but at the cost of not being able to play the game any longer? I mean, obviously you can always do multiple runs, but you’d still have to play through the whole first half again. Just being offered the chance would have taken what was already an amazing gaming moment and elevated it into the stratosphere.

It would have been unbelievably awesome, and I wish they had thought of it fourteen years ago, instead of me thinking of it now.

In which we have a problem

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

On the one hand, something has finally dragged me away from Skyrim, although I’m not remotely close to finishing the game and will be going back to it sooner or later. Skyrim is just that big, if you’ve never played it, that a month of four or five days a week play has gotten me maybe halfway through it. If I’m lucky.

On the other hand, the game that has dragged me away from Skyrim is Returnal, otherwise known as the game where you can’t save, and I just had a pretty successful run (I finally found the sword, and I beat the first boss for the first time) that took nearly two hours, on a night where I legitimately had a handful of other things I would like to have done. I was having fun, mind you, and I don’t necessarily begrudge the game the time, because it’s immensely satisfying to play– but I would like to have quit after, say, an hour of that successful run to go do something else, and come back to the game at some other time. I’m only typing this now because I finally got killed a bit of the way into the second level and thus was able to get up and walk away.

They’re gonna have to fix this, I think, for this game to be viable. The basic gameplay loop is a hell of a lot of fun, and I’m going to get more efficient at it as I play more and get better, but tonight was about as long as I ever have to play at a stretch (he said, ignoring the imminence of summer vacation) and they’re going to have to build in a viable way to put the game down and walk away or I’m really not going to be able to play this for much longer.

I had a whole thing planned here as a follow-up to yesterday’s post, but it’s almost Goddamned nine already, and I guess I’l let you wait until tomorrow and tell you how my Cheating Solution went. I expect to leave work tomorrow with every student I have angry with me.