Every so often, I decide to watch something on Twitch. It’s usually Friends at the Table streaming something because, if I’m being honest, I don’t much care for watching one person play a video game. If it’s a group of people, or one person is playing but there’s multiple voices involved, I enjoy it more, but I still don’t generally enjoy watching people play games. Friends at the Table is different, though, because my entire familiarity with them is listening to them play games, so watching them play games feels like a lateral move. Another reason I tend to avoid it is because I’m a sucker for “this looks fun!” type enthusiasm. I will absolutely get suckered into buying a game because I saw someone else enjoying it and then wind up not liking it myself because a large part of the fun was watching the other person play it. If I avoid watching streams of people playing games, then I don’t have to contend with wanting to buy a bunch of indie or smaller-studio games that I will never play (like 90% of my Steam library) or that I just won’t enjoy for longer than I watched the person stream it. The rest of my reason for not watching much streamed stuff is that I generally enjoy playing a game more than watching someone else play it. There are exceptions to this, of course, but it’s still generally true. All of which is largely beside the point because I’ve been watching a little more streamed stuff lately than I usually do and I’ve been thinking about buying some new games to fill an incredibly specific and empty niche in my life right now.
Continue readingStreaming
Star Wars: The Acolyte Makes For Great Light Watching
I finished watching The Acolyte last week. Not the week I wrote this, but the week prior. Pretty much two weeks prior to the day this went up. I was watching it in chunks to match up with the Patreon episodes of A More Civilized Age, so I watched shortly after episode 5 came out and then the Friday after episode 8 came out. I’ll admit I struggled a bit with the show initially, but one of the things Austin Walker said in the first episode of AMCA’s covered of the show reframed the entire thing for me in a way that made it much easier to enjoy: The Acolyte is a YA show. Once I started treating it with the same level of seriousness and mindset as I treated most of the CW-type YA shows I’ve seen in my life (which is not many, to be honest), the whole thing felt way more enjoyable (which even applied in retrospect, given that I started listening to the podcast episode minutes after I finished episode 4 of The Acolyte). Once you stop expecting deep character motivations for every decision and can silence the voice in your head comparing the show to Andor, it’s actually quite enjoyable. I’d call it a good show, even, in the way that chips are a good food. It’s not the most substantive thing out there and you can easily find issues to pick at if you want to, but it’s mostly fun enough that none of that really matters. To once again paraphrase Austin Walker from multiple episodes of AMCA, there was enough interesting stuff going on most of the time that I didn’t really care about the stuff that didn’t work (with a few notable exceptions). All-in-all, I’d definitely recommend the show to anyone who likes Star Wars and especially to those interested in stories about how the Jedi (individually) aren’t always good people and how the institution as whole is pretty rotten.
Continue readingEnding 2023 On A Positive Note
I wrote a couple days ago about how I do not really care for all my year-in-review things that have been cropping up all over the place since they mostly just remind me of the incredibly varied and emotionally draining year I’ve had (and I’ve had more of these things crop up since then that just further cemented this unfortunate pattern), but I wanted to take some time to end the year on a more positive note. I spent all year writing about my struggles and what made the year difficult, often in broad strokes that brushed aside all the positive stuff that actually happened, so I wanted to take some time to paint my year in review by connecting all the bright spots in a way I rarely take the time to do. It is, after all, so much easier to be miserable. Still, I think it’s work worth doing before I wrap up 2023 (well, aside from one last piece of Flash Fiction that will be posting tomorrow) and maybe it will help lift my mood as I prepare myself for whatever heaven or hell 2024 will bring.
Continue readingVox Machina Season 2 Is As Violently Messy As This Post Is Meandering
After many months of waiting (I promised to watch with a friend and I do my best to keep my word when I’ve got the choice), I finally watched Season 2 of Vox Machina. These twelve episodes, clearly broken into three-episode chunks with particularly hefty cliffhangers meant to hook the viewer at the end of each weekly chunk of episodes (at least, you know, when the episodes where initially released), cover the beginning of the longest arc of the streamed Critical Role Campaing 1 tabletop game, from the arrival of the Chroma Conclave (an alliance of Ancient Dragons) to the climatic battle against the the first of the four Ancient Dragons that has conquered the kingdom the heroes called home. While much of the first season’s changes were made to adapt the show from a streamed tabletop game to a cartoon, much of the second season’s changes were made to make the story as a whole flow better (on top of continuing the changes required to adapt the story). It even mixes up a lot of the individual story beats from the streamed game of Dungeons and Dragons 5e, but it tells a much cleaner story in doing so. Over all, I have to say I like the cartoon more than the streamed show. Sure, watching a bunch of professional actors play dungeons and dragons is fun, but it is also super time-consuming. They really belabor the various plots, big and small, of a tabletop game in a way that is fun to watch as an on-going streamed game, but not really something that would make an interesting or particularly engaging story in any other medium. While I do hold a special place in my heart for the 100 episodes of Critical Roles Campaign 1 that I watched, I think that adapting the story to a cartoon has allowed it to become the interesting and engaging story I remember rather than the somewhat long and belabored story I have been unwilling to watch a second time and unable to push myself to finish.
Continue readingA Small Streaming Update
During my last several streams (well, okay, pretty much every stream so far since I got back to streaming following my move), I’ve been playing Ghost of Tsushima. It’s a very good game, but it can be a little intense at times, so I’ve been doing my best to monitor my mental health as I’ve played. I wouldn’t want to stress myself doing something that’s supposed to be fun, but trying to stick to a stream schedule means I have pre-appointed times to play the game for certain durations. Unless I skip a stream or break away from the game entirely, I can’t take much of a break.
Continue readingI’m Finally Figured Out My Streaming Schedule
I spent most of my weekend streaming and trying to get back into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It wound up working, thanks to me stumbling from what I thought was just exploring something that looked interesting into recruiting a new sage. I sat down at just before midnight on Saturday with the thought to take an hour, work out how much ground I’d maybe need to go over again thanks to playing my first eighty hours without the sensor, and then do my actual best to reinvest myself in my existing save file. The deal I’d made with myself was that if I put in a genuine effort and still couldn’t get myself caught back up in the game, I’d allow myself to start the game over and then spend most of my stream time doing major quests and storyline stuff while my offline gaming would be exploration, shrine hunting, and resource collection. About four and a half hours later, as I blearily looked out my window at the lightening sky while I finally shut my Switch off, I knew I was back in it for good. Being back into the game felt nice enough that I didn’t even mind royally messing up my sleep schedule during what was supposed to be a proper recovery weekend.
Continue readingI Got Back Into Valheim Again
I dipped a toe back into Valheim during my final stream of May for the first time since January at least. It felt nice to get back to the game, especially when I needed to get my mind off my move, even if it came with a few bitter moments of realizing just how much work I had to do to set up a sustainable base in a new world. I wasn’t starting a new character, after all, I was just starting a new world. My main character has a bunch of good, upper-mid-tier gear since I was in the “I have mastered The Plains but not yet fought the boss” portion of the game on my previous server, so even my casual “running around” gear was powerful enough that I would need multiple crafting station upgrades to repair it. I considered starting fresh with basically nothing but my skill levels, just to avoid needing to streamline basic repair abilities, but that was not very appealing after all my time playing the game. Plus, most of my gear needed a bunch of rare materials to be crafted or upgraded, but almost everything (with two notable exception) could be repaired by a 2nd-tier crafting table and I had all the tools I needed to make that.
Continue readingAdding Streaming To My Multi-Media Creative Life Goals
Since returning from my friend’s wedding, I’ve been streaming mostly Wildermyth (and a little bit of Valheim) when I’ve had the time to actually do a stream on my twitch account. It has been a lot of fun, even if I did spend most of my first two streams using OBS at a horrendous 360p, because I’ve been treating it like I’m reading a story to my audience rather than like I’m playing a game. Sure, there’s some combat stuff that occasionally interrupts the story I’m reading, but that’s usually over fairly quickly. The same is true of the overland movement and map unveiling portion of the game (even if I’ve coincidentally spent way more time managing things than I usually do on account of character hook quests pulling my characters to incredibly inconvenient locations). I spent probably forty-five minutes of every hour trying to keep the character’s voices consistent as I read through storytime and the other fifteen minutes managing mechanics. I’m really enjoying myself, even if it’s pretty difficult to manage audience comments and interactions at the same time.
Continue readingMy Streaming Challenge Is Coming To An End, But My Streaming Will Carry On
Today is the fourth and final update on my streaming challenge: to beat The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Master Mode while only wearing hats. I’ve cleared all the Divine Beasts, beaten all the shrines, fully expanded my inventory by collecting four hundred fourty-one Korok seeds, gotten all the memories, beaten the main plot, defeated Calamity Ganon, and only ever worn clothes when absolutely required to by the plot or circumstance (such as the one or two Korok challenges that require using the Zora armor to complete). I’m also just over halfway through the main DLC questline (which I should finish tonight), and then I’ve got a handful of shrine and side quests to find and complete. I have the Trial of the Sword quest on my to-do list, but that’s still going last since I’ve never once cleared it on Master Mode. It will be my crowning achievement on Wednesday or Thursday evening, should I complete it.
Continue readingBreath of the Wild Streaming Challenge: Still Naked, But No Longer Afraid
I finally did it. I hit the point in my Naked and Afraid: Hats Only Master Mode challenge run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where I’m not getting absolutely destroyed with every single hit. I’m still getting absolutely wrecked, of course, but I can now survive a hit from most enemies thanks to having more than twenty hearts and a few hats with an armor bonus of twenty or more. Plus, I’ve shaken off all the rust and can now perfect dodge or shield parry most hits. These days, I only take hits against difficult foes (like Silver and Golden Lynels, where I REALLY need all those hearts and more armor) or when I’m messing around (like when this horse kicked me in the face because I forgot to properly line up my drop). Hubris is still my number one enemy, but I am now reminded of why that is. Turns out I’m pretty good at this game when I’ve gotten back in the swing of things. Between buffs, critical hits, and managing weapons, there is no foe outside my reach.
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