2019

The Witcher Netflix Teaser

July 20, 2019 by Naithin 1 Comment

Just a quick one today. Even though the Netflix series is based on the books rather than the games, I think it’d be fair to say the interest levels in The Witcher series are high.

If you’ve only played the games and are wondering where his other sword is — it’s on Roach. Equipping both swords simultaneously was a game convenience not core to the books!

Well there we go then. Still titled a teaser, but we have the first real trailer for Netflix’ The Witcher series. Although I suppose honestly, the ‘teaser’ descriptor does fit. It isn’t your typical spill-all Netflix trailer after all, so you can at least watch it without much fear of major spoilers.

But it also wasn’t enough to really create a clear picture for me on whether it will be amazing or utter crud. It could just sit right in the middle as an average show, but I’m not convinced that will necessarily be the case either! The budget seems to be there which is nice. But otherwise… Unsure!

Blaugust Reminder

If you haven’t yet signed up for Blaugust, go ahead and do it now! Sign-up is necessary for the event, but it’s a super quick and easy Google form.

Belghast’s Blaugust 2019 Information Post (Belghast is the creator and host of the event)
Direct Sign-up Link — Newbies are those creating a brand new blog for the event, or those who have been running 6 months or less. If you’ve been running 2 or more years, consider putting yourself forward as a Mentor!
Invite to the Blaugust Discord

So come along and get involved! 😀

Blaugust 2019 is Coming!

July 16, 2019 by Naithin 2 Comments

So I don’t want to alarm anyone unduly, but August is almost here. Fricken August! I’ve clearly been too wrapped up in this current July business to really give it much thought. But there is cause for excitement, folks! The title of this post may’ve given it away to the astute readers. But in case you missed it:

Blaugust 2019 is coming! It’s almost here! Run around in circles flailing your hands in the air like you just don’t care! (But secretly you really do, because Wooooo!)

Ahem. Sorry. I missed it last year you see¹, since I only came back to blogging in January. A mutual friend of Bel and I let me know about it though when I did, and I’ve been kinda excited for it ever since.

What is Blaugust?

Blaugust is the brainchild of Belghast, over at Tales of the Aggronaut — it started life as a challenge to bloggers to go a month posting each and every day for the month of August.

Over time it morphed, and last year settled into an amalgamation of events old and new. There is still the element of aiming for a post a day — but there are tiers of achievement below this too.

Newbie Blogger Award – You did it, you created a new blog and by god we are going to sing your praises for doing it!
Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2019.
Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2019, go you!
Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2019, you are a badass!
Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted every single day during the Month of August 2019 and deserve accolades.

One of my favourite inclusions is the old² ‘Newbie Blogger Initiative’ that used to be run by Syp of BioBreak quite some time ago, and you can see this reflected in the first tier. The NBI was all about encouraging those who had perhaps been reading along for a while to get involved with a blog of their own and to refresh the lifeblood of the blogger pool somewhat.

For full details on what this is all about, what other events have been rolled in, how to sign-up and how to jump on to the Blaugust Discord check out Bel’s post here. (Please do consider the Discord invite, by the way! While most of us come from a gaming background — it is a reasonably diverse crowd with authors, to gamers to tech writers, so come and be welcome!),

Additional Callouts! 😀

I don’t know that I’ve actually acknowledged it here actually, but a few months ago I found essentially a whole other circle of gaming blogs. It was really quite the thing. Like discovering alien life in some respects. (Sorry! I mean this nicely, honest. xD)

So while I don’t yet know everyone, or even a great deal of the people in this new ring of gaming/geek blogs — I’d like to pass on a specific tag for this to Kim of Later Levels and Angie of Backlog Crusader. While tagging them specifically, please know that Blaugust is for everyone. Blaugust certainly has its origins in the gaming sphere, but is open to all types of blogs. So! If you happen to see my post on this and have any inclination to participate, please do! 😀

Perhaps this will be of direct interest, or perhaps it might be to some of your readers — Blaugust is an amazing time to get involved with the blogging community more generally, and perhaps this is a great opportunity for making some gaps between our communities too!³

Belghast has even been kind enough to create a bit of a media kit to help out. 🙂

Humble Bundle: July 2019

July 7, 2019 by Naithin 4 Comments

The June bundle was one of the few I paid for early in order to gain access to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice early. I then ended up putting it aside most of the month anyway in favour of Moonlighters (also in the bundle).

I’ve now given Hellblade a try and oh my. I’ll almost certainly post more on it later, but even just up through the first major boss encounter (there is a choice on first actually, I went with Illusion)… Unmissable gaming experience I think.

Which makes it a either a shame, or of no importance — depending on the perspective you choose to take — that the rest of the month’s bundle is… Less than amazing.

But first, what’s been headlined for the coming bundle?

August Headline Titles

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

I invested a good number of hours into this when it came out early last year, but hoo boy it was rife with bugs. I’ve been keeping an eye on the patches that have since come to rectify the situation and it seems now might be a good time to give it a go.

If you don’t already own it, the humble bundle for the coming month is likely a really good bet.

Surviving Mars

Safe to say I won’t be paying early for this bundle. I own Surviving Mars already as well. It’s developed by the guys behind Tropico 5, but published by Paradox and seemingly following their DLC model. (I.e., early and often).

How much that bothers you is up to you. I find it makes it very difficult to get into their titles after they’ve been out in market a few years — but as a player who gets in early (and I’d still say that’s the case here) the frequent updates and adaptations to the gameplay is really quite appreciated and can extend the game’s lifespan well beyond normal.

Revealed Titles

OK, maybe I was a little rough in my opening. Mechanicus looks like it might actually be worth a look. Seems to be a Turn Based Tactics game ala XCOM. And what might surprise you — it certainly surprised me, being a licensed Warhammer game as it is — it has been well received and rated ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ on Steam.

…I just didn’t think that happened for WH licensed games.

Anyway, Road Redemption is the remake of the old-school Road Rash. I feel that if you played the original this one is likely going to be an amazing nostalgia trip. But I didn’t. And this looks relatively unappealing me as a result, I think.

As for the others… eh. Love is Dead has a bit of a ‘cute’ premise I guess. Seperated by undeath as zombies, re-unite your family in a puzzler type environment. 60 Parsecs is a point and click adventure, which if done well can be right up my ally. This one is rated well — so I’m not saying it doesn’t — but the art style is quite a turn-off to me. And then NAIRI is a visual novel.

Time to Loot Journal: June 2019

June 30, 2019 by Naithin Leave a Comment

I don’t think I’ve provided an update on my work situation since the May Journal, so here we go. I’ve ended up not leaving after all. I had put my hand up to leave in order to take a look for something new out there. I needed a change, and if it saved one of my team from redundancy in the process all the better.

I’d signed the papers and it was a done deal — but then in the last couple of weeks before I was scheduled to go I was presented with an opportunity to take up a significant new challenge on a brand new product portfolio.

Pretty exciting, with a lot of new tech to learn and play with! Which is exactly what I was after. 🙂

Blog this Month

Published 10 posts this month, down 2 from last month. This was maintaining a fairly consistent 2 posts a week, although this one will make for the third post this week. Originally I had wanted to run 3 posts a week, but with how I currently run things that has turned out to be unsustainable.

How do I currently run things? Well — I think a separate post on that is forthcoming, but the gist of it is that I haven’t really carved out any time in my life for blogging. It has simply had to fit around out.

In any case, this post will make for 80 published posts. By the end of August Time to Loot should be sitting slightly over 100 posts, which I think will make it my most posted to blog — although still a fair while off longest running.

Most Viewed Posts

So my prediction of the Heart of rage post lasting in top spot for another month was true. That also probably wasn’t the most terribly difficult prediction to make. But last month I also wasn’t sure whether it would hold much beyond that.

I think now that next month we’ll see the HoR post fall into at least the second place spot.

Games this Month

Rank	Game	Hours	% Gaming Time	Change
1	DoTA Underlords	28.3	35.3%	New
2	Nioh	25.3	31.5%	New
3	Final Fantasy XIV	7.5	9.3%	↓1
4	Forager	5.9	7.4%	New
5	Borderlands 2	5.7	7.1%	New
6	Moonlighter	4.9	6.1%	New
7	Dark Souls: Remastered	0.9	1.1%	New
8	Slay the Spire	0.8	1.0%	New
9	Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem	0.6	0.8%	Returning
10	Baba Is You	0.4	0.5%	New

There was a total of 80.4 gaming hours this month, up 51.3 hours from May. Back to an almost ‘normal’ mid-90’s figure. Well. What I’m taking as normal anyway, but that was only based on two months (March & April) of data.

Where things get a bit more interesting is that the correlation between total active time on the computer and gaming time was broken this month. Total active time was only 176.1 hours, down 27 hours from even last month. Down a bit over 70 hours as compared to a ‘normal’ month.

Gaming made up 45.6% of the active hours, up 31.3% from May.

Now in graph form! While the data set is still very small, the current month is still quite an apparent anomaly. I think I can explain it though. In the previous months, my wife and I were using this computer to watch shows on as well, inflating the active time. This month we’ve been more likely to use her laptop or my Surface in bed to watch things instead. Because it’s frackin’ cold. Seasonal effect, it’s real! 😉

DoTA Underlords

I mentioned earlier discovering DoTA Underlords, bouncing off initially and then coming back for more. Way more. DoTA Underlords has filled that niche of game that can be played quite comfortably while watching a show, browsing, or being otherwise occupied on the other monitor.

I made it up to Smuggler III so far as rank thus far, but don’t let the fact that the multiplayer is ‘ranked’ scare you off. No-one is really looking at your play, you only vs. the other players in your match via AI controlled units in fact. I don’t know much longer I’ll keep playing it heavily– but I appreciate that it exists!

Nioh

My play time here has fallen away in the latter half of the month. I was hoping to play it multiplayer with my eldest son some more, so I halted my singleplayer progress while he catches up.

But uh… It’s taking him a while. Mostly because he still plays so much Fortnite. Please excuse me while I scream into this bag for a little bit. 😉

I’m at the beginning of the third island now, whereas I believe my son still has at least one more main mission on the first island.

Final Fantasy XIV

I’d hoped the launch of Shadowbringers would be a bit more exciting for me personally, but it has certainly been held back by the fact I know I still have so. much. more. to do on the ARR MSQ before I even get to see the last expansions, let alone this one!

No doubt I’ll still get my way through things, but it isn’t something I’ve been heavily investing time into as you can see.

Forager

The perfect skinner-box game. I wondered at first whether it might have a bit of a pacing issue getting started.

And it might — especially if you don’t know the general direction in which to head to unlock automation. But once you get it, things start ticking along very nicely and it is a very difficult to put down game. I think I said I was going to call it at around level 20, didn’t actually stop until around level 25 because I kept unlocking cool new technologies that I ‘just wanted to see’.

It’s still under quite active development too, only single-player right now but co-op is on the roadmap.

Borderlands 2

If you didn’t hear — Borderlands 2 released a new DLC this month with story that directly ties into the forthcoming Borderlands 3. ‘Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary’.

If you add it to your account before July 8th or there abouts — it’s free. It did highlight though how poorly some of the gameplay concepts of Borderlands 2 have aged. Don’t get me wrong — we still had a blast playing through it, but hoo boy. Bring on BL3!

The Others

I talked about these already, and recently — so I shan’t go into too much detail again.

The first main callout here is that I added Slay the Spire to my list of acquisitions from this Steam Sale. I’ve only played one round of it so far in which died horribly in the 2nd chapter/area, but did at least beat the first boss! 😉

The second is that Wolcen received a fairly hefty content patch. Act 1 is back in the game. But at least so far it is utterly unrecognisable from the ‘Act 1’ we had in the Alpha. Whether the story strands will ultimately rejoin or whether those old strands have been cut and tossed to the wind I’m not entirely sure.

It’s still very much a case of, ‘Only buy if you wish to support the developers’. But it looks great. Some of that early promise which has been missing (in my opinion) since the transition from the Alpha to the Betas is finally starting to make an appearance again.

E3 Gleanings So Far

June 11, 2019 by Naithin 4 Comments

February 11th 2020 cannot come quickly enough.

While perhaps not feeling as quite on the outside of things as UltrViolet of Endgame Viable, I can relate. Normally E3 is a time of vast excitement to me, even from around the other side of the world with no plans on physically attending. The announcements, the new trailers, the slew of release dates — it’s all awesome stuff.

This year things have felt a bit different. The excitement levels seem dampened compared to normal. I’ve taken a browse of the trailers, and while I’m sure there is absolutely still stuff to be found, things I’ve missed…

There just doesn’t seem to be any new announcements to truly spin up the hype-drive. There wasn’t any game that I didn’t already know about that excited me, this time around. There are certainly games I’m interested in, case in point being Ori and the Will of the Wisps trailer above. It isn’t the best of the Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ trailers by any stretch, but now we know when it’s coming, and it still looks and sounds¹ amazing.

I also managed to catch the new Cyberpunk 2077 trailer featuring Keanu Reeves (and an April 16th 2020 release date) which was awesome, but with or without Keanu this was a title I was excited for.

I was hoping the Ubisoft press event would give some information on the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Ragnarok — the Vikings themed entry to the series. After how much joy I managed to extract from the recent Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, I really hoped to hear more about how they’re improving on the new AC formula. I wonder now whether we’ll still see this in 2020?

In any case, for a much more complete overview — Belghast has done a fantastic write-up already on the Google Stadia, EA Play, Microsoft and Bethesda events here. I had missed seeing Darksiders Genesis before Bel’s post — but taking a look at it now? Sigh. It looks to be carrying on the legacy of disappointment begun with Darksiders 3. But in an even more low-effort way.

If you haven’t played Darksiders 2 yet — definitely do that. It had a remaster a few years back which keeps it looking fairly fresh. It’s an epic adventure, mixing elements of the Metroidvania-style games, with a bit of Zelda, a bit of Action RPG and a dash of Devil May Cry. Definitely play it. Just… Stop there. 😉

Ghostwire Tokyo might be interesting? Just too little shown to be sure. The concept is intriguing though. Anything leap out and grab you guys?