gamerdad I’m only about a quarter of my way through Murakami’s ten year old novel #1Q84 a work of surrealist magical #scifi that I consumed as an audiobook shortly after it came out, and decided to read the old fashioned way this summer. The author #murakami has been on my shortlist of favoured novelists for a long while and I’ve read most of his library at this point, and in many ways he has served as something of a personal literary inspiration for the types of stories I try to write. The style may not jive with my own writing style but definitely the bigger ideas and plots are a fascination to me and I dig the word surrealism of the journeys they take the reader on. Being a mere 250 pages into 1Q84 it’s escaping my memory where this particular plot is leading, but that just makes the discovery that much more satisfying.

gamerdad I crossed the ten hour mark in the game last night and I’m digging into the multiple side quests as an homage to my classic play style in the original: grind until your characters are overpowered enough to plow through the main plot. [read more...]

gamerdad Of course it may just be a case of new game syndrome but I played another couple hours into the story until I rightfully found myself in the true open world part of the gameplay. As it was there was another hour or so on rails as the story plodded you through a couple more quick tutorials on a few more of its myriad of systems. There are the standard mechanics of levelling and item management, but there’s also a little card game with odd and tricky rules to learn as you challenge npcs in the world. Luckily I won my first real game so I must have followed the explanation well enough. Either way, a few more rails guided me out into the plains and now I’m doing the usual stuff like fighting random encounters and collecting ingredients for portions as I reveal chunks of map. Onwards.

gamerdad I relented and as the second instalment of the Final Fantasy VII remake series went on sale this week I decided to take the plunge and begin my inevitable journey. Ive read and listened to a few reviews by this point so my understanding is that the first act is very much a transition from the on-rails story of part one into the more open world adventure of part two, so playing for the first couple of hours of the game, finishing the familiar story of Nibelheim, I think I’m almost into the open world play that I’ve been hearing so many good things about. I’ve played the original so many times in the last 25 years there was little surprise in the story, though as usual it was pretty neat to see it fleshed out so much more as a kind of extended tutorial rather than just a mid game exposition stage. I was a little confused at the outset by the into step with Zach so I may need to read up on what I missed in bailing on the last game half way thru. But either way, I think I’m enjoying it so far… more than part one as far as my initial vibe check goes.

gamerdad As far as five dollar games on #steam go, Beseige will probably make it back into my pay rotation soon. I read a little review of this that popped into my feed the other day and it caught my attention enough to look it up. It's a little sandbox game where you build little structures to attack the army or camp or castle on each stage. Kind of a hundred different tactics to try kinda simulation, and it sparks that puzzle solving vibe. It’s too bad it is very much not a steamdeck game, definitely a little too clunky for that on the control pad and touchscreen, but as a hide in the basement and play games on the desktop selection, definitely a solid 8 out of ten.

gamerdad I have been playing this dang Simpsons game for nearly 2 years now and if you look at my donut count in the status bar you’ll see that such dedication has paid off. I have not cheated nor done anything unethical to reach that level, merely scrimped and saved and played with a regularity that is the envy of my digestive system. I managed to unlock the various buildings and characters that amplify cash flow and premium currency, and after that it pretty much just flows into place.

gamerdad In between bouts of Fallout, I’ve taken as tour back through Middle Earth and I’ve been listening to this audiobook of the making of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. There’s quite a lot I didn’t know, but even more interestingly it has rekindled my delight in the films again and so I’ve been digging into those and some of the bonus content on my Bluray copies.

gamerdad As I continue my adventure thru the commonwealth slaying beasts and robots and ghouls and super mutants I’ve been trying to break some of my gaming habits, like the rainy day rule, that itch in the back of my head that begs me to be frugal with weapons and ammo rather than just having fun and using the big guns more often. I too often find myself saving up all my precious resources only to find that either I’d way over-prepared or just getting bored of some game before I ever used them. So sure, I was stomping around in my power armour launching missiles at robots, what’s your point. They make big explosions. As a progress note, I took the Castle this afternoon and now we’re cooking with gas.

gamerdad Another few hours and I moved into some deeper exploration and sussing out a few of the deeper missions of the game rather than just building my little empire. I found two more sets of power armor and started the robotics quest in earnest. I built myself a new companion in the form of a little orange robot with laser arms, named Frodo because I’ve been watching Lord of the Rings again and it’s a bit stuck in my craw. All that said my biggest challenge is finding interesting moments to grab screenshots without getting my arse blown away while I move my attention to the photo button.

gamerdad My adventures thru the wasteland continues this week. My build this time has been less of my usual tank and more focusing on the intellectual pursuits, ramping up my base building perks so that I’ve been able to build supply lines early in the game and really focus on the Minutemen story. That said, I’ve as already built out at least two sets of respectable power armors and have done some serious wandering and cleaning up some of the main thru routes.

gamerdad I’m not sure how much effort goes into rebuilding an eight year old video game’s graphical assets, but the folks at Bethesda thought it was worth doing to bring Fallout 4 onto current generation consoles. The free update for those of us who owned the original version and played hundreds of hours prior to the update emerged this week and I installed it to check out the fuss. Maybe it was lucky that after a playthru a few years ago, I’d started a fresh save less than a year back and only really made it thru the first few intro missions, and so I was able to upgrade that save and keep trucking thru the wasteland with a foundation of about 5 hours under my belt. My lack of a 4K tv probably means most of the value of the upgrade is lost on me, tho. Things do seem a bit crisper I will admit and the play seems smoother too, but to be honest I tend to be fairly old school about graphics having grown up in the 8 bit era and played (and loved) games in my youth that were often just line art or CGA 4 colours. Gameplay! That’s the whole point. I appreciate the free upgrade but there’s so much more to a good game than crispy visuals.

gamerdad My foray back into the Tt LEGO-verse has taken me into the vast and nostalgic Star Wars world. #ps5 As with any game it’s good to find the tools early on that support and multiply your efforts, so that I’ve literally dug into to upgrades like the stud multiplier and the bonus radars within the first chapters of my play is probably not surprising. And with all nine movies to work through, I’ve opted for the boring but gen-x approach of release order. Episodes IV and V are in the bag!