Hi there,
It’s been a while again. I usually aim for a target of 100 posts a year and the advent posts of recent years have vastly helped out with that goal. It’s been another rough seeming year though and I think I’ve been heavily burnt out by what’s happening in the outside world and also what’s been happening at work over this past year.
I’ve been able to change the work thing but the outside world situation isn’t going away any time soon, mostly due to People. It would be good to get outside in the world again, amongst friends and to do things that have been held off on for far too long. But with things occurring like Omicron, I really don’t know who to trust. I certainly don’t trust the people who have started knocking on the door asking for money for services, without a mask on. They’re going round the neighbourhood doing that, talking to all the people, in proximity, how do they know that they haven’t picked up the latest nasty ?
Nope. If they can’t offer that small show, then it’s an automatic sending away. But that’s me getting into ranting again … I had deliveries yesterday and the other day … Today it was :
Inside there are cookies and cream marshmallows, with a special black as coal coating. I haven’t opened the sealed bag that they’re in yet (more marshmallows arrived and I’m in the salted caramel ones) but I can report fluffiness inside the bag and they don’t photograph well against that black chair.
They’ve closed their doors for a Xmas break now but I’d highly recommend Naked Marshmallow Co (not sponsored). They make tasty things, they also have a toasty thingy which is something that would give health and safety people a nightmare or two. The other delivery is for something that is around my age …
This was one of those random things I saw advertised and I was a huge fan of the setting that the series Space 1999 was in, I couldn’t resist this one. (Setting was incredible, the scripts were awful). This is an extensive technical manual with descriptions of the moon base, the ships, the technology, the people. I’m 74 pages in, which is most of the bit about the base and I’ve been loving that so far. Next section is about the ships. It’s from the Gerry Anderson store … but I’m not going to provide a link there because their marketing emails are a bit too incessant.
There was also an event a couple of weeks ago now …
That was the Drew Wagar farewell to Elite event and it could well be the last time a lot of those pilots appear in the game. I might not go back in either (having bought X4 and wanting to check that one out). It’s not so much a matter of being mad about what they’ve done to the game, it’s more like severe disappointment.
We’re all looking for a great space game … but what they did in April was to give us a really poor first person shooter style thing tacked on to the space stuff. They broke some of the space stuff along the way, the big thing for me was them breaking the lighting and to some extent, the different possibilities we had for finding varied and interesting places to land in. Places seemed all the same after the expansion, with the light either being washed out white or just invisible in black. But the worst aspect is that screenshot above needed to be done in the old version of the game, the expansion still hasn’t been rolled out to consoles and the player base is split between those who log in to the Odyssey expansion not being able to instance and fly together with the pilots who are still on what’s now the base game.
So all in all, the experience became a bit meh and it came time to look to different things. Like setting up an interstellar pizza delivery service in X4. You can’t do that in Elite, even with a fleet that reached 47 ships, I can only control or use one at a time. Whatever you do in the game just doesn’t matter. In Eve, you can set up a spaceship manufacturing base … indeed most of the Eve ships are player built. Player interaction matters. In Elite, it just spawns it in when you buy or deletes it when you sell. Doesn’t feel right. In X4, you can hire pilots who then use your ships to mine, trade, escort or other things.
I do need to be a bit better physically though before really diving in to X4. I remember having issues last year as well, where I had an extended time away from Elite again. Currently it’s build up of damage in my shoulder, which has got fairly sure. The Idle Champions game hasn’t helped there …
Idle Champions is an idling game … where you have the game going in a window and it pretty much does its own thing while you’re doing other things. So it’s been active for a considerable amount of time since I went back into it last week. The longer it’s active, the more monsters are mown down by your people and all of the monsters drop gold. The gold goes to upgrades for your characters. The characters have a variety of equipment as well which helps in various ways. My latest character is Shandie, in a festive outfit in the centre of the formation. She’s all about speeding up the game so you get to the objectives quicker.
The game is built up around stories which have chapters of 50 areas at a time and when you’ve completed a chapter, you can go through again in free play or a number of variants which add conditions like faster monsters, less champions or randomised events. It’s curious for me due to the theorycrafting that goes into where everyone is in the formations you select plus I want to see the stories. Oh and when the chapter of 50 areas is complete, the characters go back to the start and do it again with monsters that are harder to mow down. When you hit the “complete” button and reset, the gold earned goes towards a Favour score, with that determining how fast you get gold in the next runs.
It’s a curious and odd game. It’s also free, although you can buy power by spending money on crates with them. You could get the same items by playing the game for a (very very) long time too. Anyway, the theorycrafting aspect has drawn me in again. The formation above is a bit of a mess but there’s a lot of room for picking different champions that work with each other for synergies.
Anyway, been in that one a bit too much over the last week.
I started up another Deus Ex Mankind Divided run, just before the Idle Champions addiction hit again. It’s a good game, it would be great to see a third title with the protagonist Adam Jensen. It feels like they left it with a bit of unfinished business that could do with closing out.
I think that’s it for me for tonight though. Have a great winter break everyone, hopefully you get to see people, stay well, have lots of food, relax and come back in the new year stronger and happier.
Stay safe, be well.
PS Addon – had my booster jab. Hurrah ! It took a couple of days for a headache to go away afterwards but that could have been headaches I’ve been having anyway (don’t think my two pairs of glasses are fully aligned). Get your booster if you can !