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No Man’s Sky Next

What is starting to feel like a yearly return, I find myself once again back in the realm of No Man’s Sky. In a clear sign that Hello Games, and the gaming community, are more content with the game than early on, the second year only brought 1 content update, whereas the first year brought 3. I don’t entirely mind… diminishing returns and all, it’s the second year and while I am sure it sells a decent amount with each update, they probably sell fewer units with each update. I wonder at what point they decide to add an expansion or DLC, and I wonder how that would even look.

But I digress, the latest patch is 1.5, nicknamed Next and it is kind of a doozy. Probably the #1 most requested feature was added… multiplayer. And I’ll be honest I don’t care about that one too much. It’d be nice to play with someone, but I don’t really have any friends who would play the game, and I don’t particularly want to get randoms. Even without the multiplayer, I felt it was a really big update.

First off… the space things that they added. They added Frigates that you can hire that will fly around your freighter and give you defense power from pirates. But you can also now send the Frigates out on missions to get you resources and money and such, which is a nice touch. I have only marginally experience Freighters since the update and I do think the main pathway is less confusing than it was and the base building seems more sensical. Speaking of which, they sort of overhauled space stations. Now, instead of a couple of tunnels with tiny rooms, each having a couple of creatures. Now they opened them up and they include more creatures to interact with, a space suit customizer, shops, mission givers, and a teleporter. It feels a little more fleshed out which is appreciated. And lastly, they added ringed worlds. Yes, ringed worlds! I think they are a little more common than I’d like, nearly every system has at least one, but realistically they are pretty common in the real world. and they are gorgeous both in space and on ground.

Speaking of Bases, they enhanced bases on the ground as well. They added new parts, and now you can build more than one base, AND you can build them pretty much anywhere, and they can be pretty large as well (they used to be limited to like 250 parts or something). I’ve seen pictures of people building bases under water, in cave systems, and even on crashed freighters. With this ability coupled with portals, I can totally see myself building a network of worlds that get me any resource I want and are beautiful. This has gotten me FAR more interested in base building than I was previously. Previously, I was resigned to just build a base in my freighter, because although you could take a portal to the planet easy enough, I may as well take the base with me. Now I can do both.

They renamed pretty much everything and re-working crafting as well. Overall, I think the name changes were good. I like that I need oxygen to recharge my suit instead of thaumium for instance. Overall, the materials seem to make more sense than they used to (Platinum is actually fairly rare, instead of growing out of plants!). I also think that the crafting changes were good as well. It added a real progression to crafting. You start by crafting in a portable refiner, then move onto Medium refiner, and finally heavy refiner. I haven’t gotten too advanced into crafting to get into the nuts and bolts, but on the outside looking in, it looks much better.

They also made some tweaks to terrain generation. Overall, I think when people go looking at planets, they are much more appealing in general. I personally think that there is more variation in land formation. However, many people have noted that there is less variation in color schemes. Before you could find bright yellows and pinks all over the place, it was kind of like going to a world painted by splatoon inklings. And generally, this was more problem then good. People often complained about the eyestrain, so of course once they fix that people complain that there isn’t. Can’t win I guess. I will say, that I think the bigger complaint is that while all in all it’s better, people still want the occasional super bright colored planet. I’ve seen people complain that they only ever see red, green and grey colors, but I do get the occassional lush planet with blue grass and yellow & pink plants and it is marvelous when I do. I do think it happens, but it could probably happen a little more. They also took out the resource pillars that were common in the game previously, probably for the best, but I admit I miss the pillars sometimes. I like that they aren’t everywhere, but it’d be cool if every now and then you ran into a planet that had pillars of gold. I think the key point to take away is that what they were doing previously was only bad in its frequency, if they made them uncommon to rare planets, these things still hold a draw.

Lastly, they added third-person view and improved graphics. It seems like every major release comes with improved graphics, and it is always appreciated because it makes a beautiful game even more beautiful. I really like the added third-person view (and the character customization!). I am not a huge fan of first person so this was a nice addition, though I do admit, it took a little time to adjust to targeting what I’m shooting at. I kind of wish they had character customization parts that you could unlock, maybe they do, or maybe that’s in the plans for the future. I don’t know.

One thing I have to say, is that usually at about a month of play time the novelty kind of wears off and the grind gets annoying. So it will be interesting to see how that develops over the next couple of weeks. But an interesting point to note is that my last play through ended at about 20 hours. This kind of ended prematurely, I wasn’t quite bored of the game yet, but because my ship spawned in the ground I rage quit. In my current play through I am at 17 hours, and honestly I am getting more excited to play the game more as I go on. I have some neat plans that I hope to execute fairly soon <>. And I don’t think I’ve had this much excitement about the game in previous attempts this far into it. I feel as excited every time I sit down as the last and it is the same excitement I had before the game was released. Is the game perfect? Far from it, but this is pretty darn close to what I had imagined at launch. I look forward to seeing what Hello Games does in the next update because I honestly have no idea where they will go now.

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An open letter to my doctors

In 2016 there were 20,000 deaths attributed to Opioids. Funny thing about that stat. If someone dies to a heroin overdose but has an opioid in their system, they count the person in both categories. There were 15,000 deaths attributed to Heroin. Another interesting stat. There were 45,000 deaths that same year attributed to suicide. People with chronic pain are twice as likely to commit suicide than someone without chronic pain. Which means to say… had 30,000 of those people had access to Opioids, there’s a good chance many of them would still be alive. Now we are telling people with chronic pain that they should remain in chronic pain because some idiots overdosed… do you think the suicide rate will go down or up due to this decision?

People have overdosed on things for decades… that’s not going to stop just because you make opioids harder to come by…. I mean a key point here is that 15,000 people died in 2016 due to Heroin. Is heroin legal somehow? What doctor is prescribing Heroin? People are dying from it nearly as much as from Opioids yet, it’s harder to come by even now than opioids.

The worry that as I get older I will need pain relief more and using it now will desensitize me to the point where it isn’t useful in 15 years. This begs the question… how will I get to 15 years without it?

If you really don’t want me to have opioids, then find me a real alternative. Not this Lyrica and Tylonel crap, that I’m sorry if you people think actually was going to work, you need to go back to school because I could have told you otherwise (and have). Why hasn’t CBD oil been put on the table? What about PAMs? Are any drug companies looking for human guinea pigs for pain drug experiments? If there truly is no other drug besides tylonel and opioids for pain, then we really need to go the route of opioids because that is the only option.

I agree that doctors need to be more careful about who they give opioids to and why. But it’s darn right irresponsible to force a chronic pain patient into pain. Moreover, it’s just mean. I don’t know what I have done to wrong you, but whatever it was, I sincerely apologize for it. I would not wish this sort of pain on anyone I have ever met, I must have done something woefully wrong to warrant this backlash.

Please stop punishing me for what others did with Opioids… it isn’t right. You are causing me a severe amount of pain, and I just can’t take it anymore. This needs to stop and it needs to stop now. I am begging you… help me.

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Game Boy Mini?

News has recently come out that Nintendo has registered a trademark on the Game Boy. First off, Nintendo didn’t have a trademark on the Game Boy? But more importantly, this seems to indicate that Nintendo is likely going to release a Game Boy classic after the success of NES Classic and SNES classic.

Honestly, this is one that I could do without. The reality is that many NES games are difficult to play with modern technology being what it is. Game Boy with it’s 4-bit grey and black graphics and minimal gameplay… it’s honestly not that good. There are very few games that I would consider classic. In fact, the Game Boy is a system that I decided not to collect early on… partially because it is hard to store & display the games, and also because the games just aren’t that good.

But it seems Nintendo is eyeing Game Boy over going the N64 route for its next mini series (probably partially due to the difficulty of emulating the N64). So I feel the need to put out what I think should, or will be on the Game Boy Classic. I am going to make the assumption that the Game Boy Classic will actually be a Game Boy Color Classic. And keep in mind, this is likely going to be every game worth playing on the game boy plus a few that aren’t.

  1. Color – Ok, not a game, but the games chosen for the Game Boy Classic would be best if Nintendo offered a color mode. Whether it was an actual color remake of the graphics, or just a lame color lense that the Game Boy Color had (Now it’s light blue and dark blue instead of grey and black!).
  2. Pokemon Crystal – The Game Boy Classic is going to have a Pokemon game, how can it not? It’ll be interesting if they just give the straight game or if they have some way to do pokemon trading. Regardless it will have one… Whether they go with Classic First gen or do second gen is the key. They could be super annoying and have a Blue Game Boy and Red Game Boy, but I think they would sidetrack that issue by going with Crystal which is considered one of the best Pokemons of all time. It’s also not an easy version to get your hands on.
  3. Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX – Another no brainer. This game was a sister game to Link to the Past, and is pretty good. Doing the DX version means that owners would get a full colorized version with a bonus dungeon.
  4. Tetris – I’m not sure how the rights to this game work. But what is the Game Boy without Tetris?
  5. Kirby’s Dream Land – So far every Classic has come with a Kirby and this was the best one on Game Boy.
  6. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins – 2 was better than 1. Neither is as classic as console Marios.
  7. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 – Better than 2 and actually a decent game in its own right. It’s unfortunate Wario hasn’t really had a decent release since.
  8. Metroid II: Samus Returns – I don’t think this game was great in the first place and I don’t think it held up either. But, Metroid has name recognition and Nintendo recently did a remake so this makes sense.
  9. Final Fantasy Adventure – This was actually the first Secret of Mana title, but Square didn’t think Americans would understand having a game with a different name? No idea, still it was pretty good.
  10. Final Fantasy Legend II – Second was better than the first, these were true Final Fantasy games.
  11. Donkey Kong Land – Making a clone of a console game and throwing Land at the end of it was pretty common… Again.. name recognition…
  12. Pokemon Pinball – OK… I doubt the GB Classic would come with rumble, and honestly that was kind of the truly revolutionary thing about Pokemon Pinball… that being said, it was a solid little pinball game.
  13. Dr. Mario – Puzzle games do a better job with the test of time because they don’t need great graphics and simple is sometimes better.
  14. Mega Man V – Generally thought of as the best Game Boy Mega Man… I could see them throwing a dart at a board and just picking whatever one it lands on.
  15. Shantae – So Shantae has had a rebirth thanks to a pretty good kickstarter. How epic would it be if Nintendo decided to approach WayForward to get it on the GB Classic?
  16. Gargoyle’s Quest – GQ 2 on NES and Demon’s Crest on SNES are generally well thought of, but this was a solid game in its own right. Neither of the other two were good enough to make it onto the other systems, but there’s not a ton to choose from on the GB and this game turns out to be one of the better on this system.
  17. R-Type DX – Shmups are great, R-Type was an amazing series and this one was in color. This may have issues due to the fact that the company who made it is no more (I don’t even know who owns R-Type anymore), but it would offer a nice bit of variety to the system.
  18. Mario Tennis – Good lord  this series has been around long enough to be on the Game Boy? Why yes it has! Again, the system  needs some variety and even though you don’t generally want to load too many of the same faces, Mario Tennis is fun.
  19. Kid Dracula – The other systems had Castlevania, this system should have the game that made fun of Castlevania.
  20. Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters – Why? Because why not? Kid Icarus is one of those series that people love to want but it turns out the games aren’t great. Still… this would maybe appease some people whining for the series, may raise awareness of the series, and at the very least is a series Nintendo owns that isn’t in the Mario or Pokemon universe.
  21. F-1 Race – Ok we have hit the bottom of the barrel, but when I was looking around for inspiration on this list I noticed that this game was actually the 16th best selling game on the system. I don’t remember it at all, but it sold about 3.5 million units and was published by Nintendo. Even though it sold a lot, I think this would be a great obscure game to add that gives the system variety.
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Back to YouTube

Last Sunday, I released my first YouTube video in over a year. It took quite a bit of work to get this video posted. Far more than I had originally thought it would. And now that it’s up, it has taken even more effort refining it once posted, and getting video number 2 up (which was originally intended to go up Thursday, and now I’ve delayed until Sunday). Now I realize that not posting in over a year, is a big no no on YouTube, but I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to get back up and running! I mean, I had made more than 200 videos previously, and though it was varying degrees of quality, I had quite the groove going. I figured since I’m in this bit of YouTube re-discovery, I would share some of my experiences with everyone.

First of all, though I started with my subscriptions, I’m basically starting from scratch. I had previously used Vegas 12 to edit my videos, I moved to Vegas 14 for the first video and the second video is causing me issues so I am trying out Adobe Premiere. Even if I was able to stay with Vegas, I feel like I’m  having to relearn how I did everything. My first video was extremely basic, no outtro, no real intro, no cards used, nothing. It was as barebones as I could make it, and I probably should have followed that for the second video, but I wanted to get my video quality at least back to where I was before (in fact, I was improving it in some cases). It’s amazing what you forget!

I also had many issues actually recording. I started recording last Friday evening and kept having to start over. I had always used Mirallis Action! As my recording studio of choice, but I recall towards the end of my previous youtube tenure, that I was having issues with it for some reason in one of the later releases. So I had bought an Elgato Capture Card in hopes of not only getting a device that worked, but also decreasing the amount of processor time used in capturing. Well unfortunately, for some reason the voice capture kept on glitching out in Elgato, so I would finish my recording job and load it, only to find it was ruined, and then have to start over. It wasn’t until a move to playing No Man’s Sky on the PC and a switch to using Audacity to record voice did I solve all my issues. Long term, I don’t like this solution and in the future I will have to re-dedicate some time to getting it better. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any method to hit record for both programs at the same time, so there is a little lag that I need to adjust for when editing.

Onto the bright side of life… it’s been a slow week at work this week. Why is that good? I have spent a lot of time this week researching how I can improve my channel. This has made me re-look at how I had been dealing with SEO on my channel and videos. Over the week I have been fine tuning everything and I think this has already gained me some returns, even though the changes didn’t begin being made until 3 or 4 days after I published the video. I went from around 10 random keywords that related to my videos and channels to about 20 in each and the new keywords are much much more refined than they used to be. I then went back and looked at my description and started fine tuning that as well to make it more keyword dense.

I have also discovered a couple of applications in TubeBuddy and VidIQ that I have found to be tremendously helpful. Both of these are freemium services and chrome extensions that you can sign up to that analyze your channel and give you reminders and suggestions on how to improve your channel. They have a ton of stuff hidden behind a pay wall, and their pay wall is pretty pricey (Starting at $10/month and goes up from there). I honestly can’t imagine paying for either one because I think they are so cost prohibitive, but I see what they have and I’m kind of tempted. Still, even without paying, they are extraordinarily helpful, especially the VidIO extension. I now can go to competitor’s channels and see who is linking to them, what keywords they use, how they are ranked in those keywords, and it even tells you subscriber counts in the comments for everyone. Very helpful stuff, have loved the added info and am using it where I can.

I still have a lot of work cut out for me, but I do feel like I’ve made progress. In episode 2, I am working on getting a decent intro up and running as well as a basic outro. Going forward, I want to get a better outro, and even refine my intro further, get better music for them both (right now I’m relying on Google’s music, but I think I’d be better off using free music from somewhere else), I also kind of want to improve my banner for my channel, though I’m not sure how, and I would like to get a better logo that can actually be used in the intro. On top of that, I want to refine my recording process to make that easier and figure out better ways to promote the channel to get the growth going (YouTube is kind of like a snowball, the more subs/views you get, the faster it grows, so early going it’s a struggle unless you push it).

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Return to No Man’s Sky

It has been a fortuitous week for me and No Man’s Sky. I saw the game on sale at Humble Bundle last week and decided to pick it up again to see how it is with the Foundation and Pathfinder updates. Today, they released the third major patch… Atlas Rises. I’m sure the timing of that sale was not a coincidence but it seems weird coming into it again right before a major update like this. Overall though, even before 1.3 (the newest patch), I kind of decided I was going to return to the game after 10 months of inactivity. And I felt it was worth giving a sort of review here to explain why.

First, probably the biggest thing to me, is that the game feels more diverse. I looked through the 2 major patch notes and it does look like they made additions to plant and animal parts, and made some major world generation changes. The overall result of this is that, I did get a better sense of each world being different. And even more important, I was stepping foot on more planets that seemed to have life on them. Unlike before where it seemed like almost every world was a barren wasteland with a random animal roaming around it. Even when I found myself on a barren world, there were features on it, which made it seem different than other worlds. I appreciate this a lot.

It isn’t perfect. There is still a general sense of same-ness to the worlds, but it isn’t nearly as bad as it once was.A personal pet peeve of mine, still exists… diversity within the same planet. And honestly, I don’t think that one will ever get fixed. To me it is weird that an entire planet basically has the same environment. There are certainly patches where it differs but by and large if you are on a planet it looks a certain way everywhere on that planet. Looking around the NMS reddit, and the one most requested update for 1.4 is to focus on flora and fauna to give even more real planets, and I couldn’t agree with this more. There are other wishlist items I have, but this would make the game feel complete to me.

You can also tell that a major rebalance of the game has occurred. This happened in a number of ways. First, resources. I’m not sure what exactly was already there and what is new, but I do believe that Hello Games has reclassed their star systems and resources so that the hard to get to systems have more rare resources and few planets, whereas the easy to get to systems have more planets but fewer rare resources. I also think they went and basically added logic where each planet in this type of system will have X common, Y uncommon and Z Rare resources. And I feel like they may have created rarity in the first place. Before it seemed like Gold and Copper were everywhere, but these seem far less common than they used to, and honestly this is appreciated. They’ve also added a whole bunch of new resources, I think around 20, since launch. And on top of that, they’ve created barriers to harvest, which I know some people are annoyed by, but the reality is that it helps give you a sense of something to work towards. Now I need an Advanced Mining Laser to mine Titanium, which makes sense. I actually wish there was one or two more mining tiers than just normal and advanced. There is also a Hazmat Glove that you need in order to harvest certain plants. Again, nice touch.

Then there are starships and your multi-tool. Instead of everything just being random, Hello Games has added classes and rarity to both objects in No Man’s Sky. Starships come in Shuttle, Fighter, Explorer and Hauler now. Each class has different looking ships, and each class has bonuses. For instance, Fighter ships do bonus damage when in a fight, but generally have small storage holds. Haulers get bonuses in storage and shields. Explorers get bonus to their Hyperdrive engines. And Shuttles get no bonus but tend to have more storage than Explorers and Fighters. And then there is rarity. Each ship has S, A, B, or C rarity, in that order from most rare to least. Increased rarity means increased price, but higher chance for more storage and it also gets an increase to the bonus that the class provides. So a C class Fighter will do up to 20% bonus damage, but an S class Fighter can do more than 50% bonus. Multi-Tools have been given new weapons that you can install on them and have their own specializations. They can be a Pistol (Mining bonus), Rifle (Damage Bonus), Experimental (Scanning Bonus), or Alien (A mix of bonuses). Like the starship, it has the same rarities that affect how much bonus you get, and I would also guess how many slots for modifications the item has.

I mean, all that is really just restructuring of what was there. And the reality of it is that those additions do a ton for the gameplay loop. They give you things to work for. The new rarity system also gives you more want to go back out there and find the “perfect” starship or multi tool. Resource balancing gives you more reason to explore the galaxy to find rare and exotic resources so that you can build enhancements to your gear that are more powerful. All this leads to a better overall experience… and it doesn’t even get into what they really added.

And that is Bases, Freighters, and Cars. Bases allow you to personalize your home base, increase your storage space, allow you to farm certain resources, and even automate harvesting nearby resources. Freighters allow you to get into and purchase those big ass ships that you always see flying in the distance. They are super expensive so it gives you something to save up for, and it looks like in 1.3 they are adding in classes for freighters too to give more variety and make you now want to find the perfect freighter. Freighters share storage with your base and can carry up to 9 starships and even more cargo than before. So now you can go and get a bunch of starships to make your perfect fleet for your situation. I’m less sold on the cars, I think it’ll be nice for exploring your world and getting more storage while doing it, but I don’t know the limitation of that buggy. They also added the ability to create race tracks and race other player’s track which is a nice touch but I’m unsure how interested I am in that, but I like that it is there.

And now… 1.3… The big flashy thing they added was Stargates which let you portal from one planet to another, if you know the address. This alone is pretty awesome, but they also added 30+ hours of story and lore, a fourth race, new buildings and base parts, crashed freighters, new farming branches, and NPC missions. All of this again, fleshing out the universe that much more and giving the player more to do.

I’m actually kind of excited for the game again. And unlike the last time, the game is already out! I can go play it! I have been playing it for about a week now and still enjoying going in and exploring more. I am probably going to restart with 1.3. And I’m probably going to YouTube it like I said I was going to over a year ago. It seems surreal that the game took an extra year, but it feels like it is finally starting to live up to its promise.

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E3 2017 Thoughts

Microsoft Xbox One X E3 2017 Conferance

I was originally going to write about E3 broken down by the three major console manufacturer’s but on second thought I decided it was a rather boring E3 this year so I’ll break it down to a few paragraphs instead.

First… Microsoft. They decided to price the XboneX at$500 targeting less than 10% of Americans…. good job? I guess the 90% will live on knowing Microsoft doesn’t care about them. Oh well,  I wasn’t all that impressed by the graphics in the games they showed off as “exclusive” anyway. They also kept touting the “most powerful console ever made” joining previous generations with…. WiiU (if you consider it last gen), PS3, Xbox 1a, N64, and the Atari Jaguar…. ummm ok. Am I the only one that notices the trend? Outside of the XboneX… they really didn’t have a whole lot, probably because the biggest upcoming games they had, they’ve cancelled leaving a ginormous hole in their library, not to mention all the defecting third parties. I think I am mostly looking forward to Cuphead on this console. The backwards compatibility with the original Xbox 1 was also pretty interesting and surprising. But I have no games from that console so it doesn’t affect me at all. It feels like a wild attempt at trying to get more games on the console… I’m sorry  Microsoft, but the Virtual Console hasn’t actually helped Nintendo a ton.

Sony…. I don’t even really remember much of what they announced. Horizon expansion? Oh Uncharted, I thought that game was Tomb Raider for the first half of the trailer, they really need to consider putting the titles in the corner or something. God of War looked really good. And… wait that was pretty much it. Not showing off Final Fantasy 7 Remake or Kingdom Hearts 3, or anything new really. I actually kind of thought they’d announce the PS4 Pro having a new price point of $349 just to mess with Microsoft, but I guess they decided on having a console $100 cheaper being very similar in graphics was good enough.

Nintendo showed a bunch of stuff we already knew about. Except they actually had I would say the 3 biggest announcements of the show with Metroid Prime 4, a mainline Pokemon, and Mario + Rabbids. All 3 had been rumored. I thought Mario + Rabbids looked amazing, I didn’t have much hope for it when rumors started flying early this year but I think it looks like a solid game. I will say that this show made me far more interested in Mario Odyssey. The hat possession looks really cool and some of the worlds look very unique as well. It reminds me a lot of Super Mario 64 mixed with Banjo Kazooie mixed with Kirby. I’m actually likely going to get it. Oh and praise be to Xenoblade, which despite pre-E3 rumors is sticking to a 2017 launch date.

Oh and there’s Assassin’s Creed.

I mean I would say any year that doesn’t have a major console being shown off is going to be a down year, but then… Microsoft had one… and this was actually the first year at E3 for the Nintendo Switch. So why did this year’s E3 seem so….. boring?

And I leave you with this year’s winner of E3… Devolver….