192 Posts

Battle at Big Rock
Spoiler warning! If you haven’t seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, this post may contain spoilers, so you may want to stop reading now.

Battle at Big Rock was just released and you can view it on YouTube (link embedded in this post). It’s a short Jurassic World film that basically shows a confrontation between two dinosaur species at a camp site and a family caught in the mix. It takes place after the end of Fallen Kingdom, where dinosaurs were released into the wild.

For someone who’s always loved dinosaurs and the entire Jurassic Park/World films, I like this. Stay around for the credits to see more! I’m looking forward to the next film, which I believe is coming in June 2021.

Let me know what you think about this!

The Very First Review of Tale of the White Wyvern!
GregoPeck gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
GregoPeck gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
Tale of the White Wyvern is the first game created by the developers of Cheerful Ghost; Jon Dodson and Travis Newman. It’s pretty much an online text based MMO reminiscent of BBS games like Usurper, and especially Legend of the Red Dragon. The game is rather simple; create a character, do some forest fights, buy a weapon, armor (and now a hat), and increase your character’s class skills. There are three classes to choose from; warrior, rogue, and mage. Each class has their own unique skills. You can increase them by one point with six gems you can spend in Tarbreth’s Adventurer Training. This will increase the daily amount of skill points you have per in-game day. The skill attacks are more powerful than a regular attack, but there are also other skills that can be used. For instance, the mage can use a couple of different offensive magic skills, heal, or teleport (flee). The rogue can now disappear, which makes them invulnerable for a few turns.

In-game days last for 12 hours, starting at 12:00AM (PST) and again at noon (PST). At the dawn of every day, your skill points refill along with your health and number of forest fights. Dead players also get resurrected during this time.

The forest is pretty much where characters will spend probably most of their time. It includes a nice variety of random encounters. Usually, characters will run into a monster or enemy, which they can attack or flee. This is the primary, but not the only, way to earn experience points and gold, which are awarded upon a successful kill. Gold can also be spent to heal in Helga’s Potions and Healing Shoppe. You may also randomly find gems along the way. You can use two to raise your attack, defense, or hit points by one point or save six of them for a skill point in Tarbreth’s Adventurer Training. You are given a limited amount of forest fights per in-game day. There are a couple of ways to temporarily increase your forest fights. You can accomplish this by interacting with the facilities in the new outhouse. You can also interact with an NPC named Crugg.

There are number of NPCs a player can interact with, many of these grant certain bonuses. Crugg can be found in the hidden tavern and will grant the player some temporary extra forest fights. Scarlet, in the inn, will grant the player some experience points. Jon Boyd the bard will grant the player some gold. You will need some charm to get the maximum bonus from these NPCs. Charm can be granted or lost in the forest by an old man or woman, which is a random encounter. You can only get an NPC bonus once per in-game day. However, you can ask John Boyd to sing, which will grant you some temporary forest fights. You can do this and still get the bonus from interacting with an NPC.

Pretty much, the goal is to gain enough experience to advance to the stage where you can no longer train with your master and are then told that you may be able to take on the wyvern. This is a beast that you’ll find in the forest, once you reach a certain level. It won’t appear as a random encounter, nor does it take away from your daily forest fights. Instead, you’ll find a new option in the forest to enter the wyvern’s den. The wyvern is one tough beast. It attacks hard and has a lot of hit points, so you’ll want to be fully prepared before you attempt to take it on, if you don’t want to die. A good strategy for fighting the wyvern is to save all of your daily class skill points for that battle and use them then. You will also need a good weapon and armor. Defeating the wyvern will reset you to the beginning and allow you to chose a new class.

There is a PVP aspect to the game, although I don’t use it. If a person does not rent a room in the inn, they will be in the fields; out in the open and vulnerable. If a person does have a room in the inn, you can still attack them, but you will have to pay some gold in order to call them down. Players who die (not just in PVP) lose some experience points and all the gold they have on hand. So, it’s best to deposit all of your gold into the bank before leaving the game. Luckily, you can acquire interest each day, which will give you a nice little bonus.

Tale of the White Wyvern is a good game to play and it doesn’t take very long to complete your in-game daily activities. It is meant to be played for about 15 minutes. There are a variety of things to do and ways to interact with NPCs and other players. One of the best things about it is that it is completely free. There are no loot boxes or anything you can buy with real money to enhance your character. The development process seems to be on going as Jon and Travis are working to add more things to the game. It’s a pretty bug-free game that can be played on anything with a web browser. You can play it on your PC, phone, tablet, and more. It’s a pretty interesting game and is definitely reminiscent of those games many of us enjoyed on a BBS back in the 90’s. I recommend at least giving it a try. As for me, I play it every day, twice per day, usually near the dawn of each in-game day.

Do Frames Per Second Really Matter?
I recently built a new PC and decided to get a new monitor as well. My old monitor is actually fine, it’s a 24” Dell and I can’t recall exactly what model it is. It’s a 60hz monitor and I decided I wanted to try one with a higher refresh rate. More hertz means more FPS in a game. I got the impression that once you see over 60hz, you’ll never want to go back.

Recently, I bought a recertified Acer Predator XB241H. I have some problems with it, but I’ll not get into that here as it’s irrelevant to this discussion. One feature of this monitor is that it can be overclocked to 180hz. I had no idea you could OC a monitor! It’s a 24” 1080p monitor, just like the one I was using. I think I’ve decided that 1080p is a resolution I’m quite happy with and don’t really see a reason to change. Higher resolutions require more GPU power and higher resolutions decrease your FPS. I have a GTX 1660 Ti, which is plenty of GPU power, although I can’t recall whether or not it can do 4K (probably so). I also don’t think 2K or 4K would look good on the desktop, I imagine it would make icons much smaller than I want them to be. I remember progressing through resolutions as time progressed. Those older resolutions look horrible today (I think)!

Because I’m able to monitor my FPS via counters, I can see that I’m getting more than 60FPS without screen tearing. Before, with the old monitor, I turned on Vsync, because screen tearing was an issue and I hated it. Now I have a Gsync monitor and have it turned on. I am seeing about 10 more FPS in some graphically intense games like Atlas and Monster Hunter: World. My FPS in CivVI has more than doubled, in my testing I saw around 180. Surprisingly, when I tested Minecraft (without Optifine), I saw over 1,000FPS without any screen tearing! Whoa!

Other than having a counter, I don’t feel like I can personally notice or see the difference in FPS. All games I’ve played seem to look the same to me no matter what FPS I’m getting. Although, there is definitely a difference when I’m getting very low FPS. I don’t know at what point that becomes noticeable, but I kind of think less than 30 or even less than 10 is definitely noticeable.

What do you think? Is FPS something you can see and notice with your own eyes without a counter? Does FPS really matter to you? Are you unwilling to accept anything less than 60FPS or another number? Let me know in the comments, I’d like to discuss this.

Who Knew Monster Hunting Would Be So Fun?
GregoPeck gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
GregoPeck gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
A while ago, I was looking into getting a new-to-me game and Monster Hunter: World got added to that list. It seemed to have good reviews and it looked interesting, so I bought it on sale. It remained in my “to play” list until just recently.

Monster Hunter, a Capcom game series, has been around for a while and is very popular in Japan. The game is simple and yet deep. The premise of the game is to hunt monsters, of course. The process of doing this is also simple; prepare for a hunt, hunt a monster, collect and craft items, and repeat the process. This small process may sound boring, especially after a while, but it’s surprisingly fun.

There are many monsters in the game. Each has a distinctive look, behavior, elemental strengths and weaknesses, and item drops. Before you go on a hunt, you’ll want to prepare. As you progress in the game, monsters get to be more difficult and require more preparation. First, you’ll need to equip some gear like weapons, armor, and optionally charms. There are a lot of weapons, 14 to be precise. They range from close range like swords to long range like a bow gun. Each has it’s own unique advantages and disadvantages. Some allow the player to be more mobile, while others are slow, but very powerful.

Armor is divided up into 5 pieces; head, chest, arms, waist, and legs. I think you start out with two; leather and chain mail. You can eventually purchase more armor and weapons. It seems you start out with the basic version of each weapon, so I’m not sure why you would need to purchase any. Weapons and armor are crafted mostly from materials you gather from harvesting a monster you’ve successfully hunted. However, there are usually other item requirements, some of which you can acquire during a hunt or as a reward for completing a quest.

Preparing for a hunt also includes visiting the canteen where you can purchase meals using a variety of in game currencies or points. You can also “oven roast” ingredients and get useful items. Having a meal before a hunt can grant you extra health, defense, stamina, or other bonuses. This seems to be quite useful, especially for higher level hunts. The only downside is that those bonuses are temporary.

There is a multiplayer aspect of this game, in fact it’s pretty much an online multiplayer game. You can of course play alone, but you’re still online. When you start the game and after you’ve chosen your saved data, you can then select which type of online mode you want to be in. You can select what kind of players (like “beginners”) and who can join your game (like friends only). There are other options as well. When selecting a quest, you can choose to “post a quest” or “join a quest.” If you “post a quest,” you can choose how many players can join you; one to four. While out on a quest, if you get overwhelmed you can send an SOS, although I haven’t tired that yet. This will apparently open your game up and make it available for others to come help you. Even if you get disconnected from the online part of the game, you can of course still play the game without online functionality.

There is a story mode to the game and in the beginning, the game holds your hand for a little bit, telling you how to move and how to do different things. There are small tutorials littered throughout the game, which you can view later. Some of these include videos showing you how to do something. However, the game doesn’t hold your hand very long nor does it tell you everything you might need or want to know. There are still parts of the game I’m not too sure about and even finding answers to my own questions related to the game is challenging. This issue is one of the minor things I dislike about the game.

Along with story mode “assigned” quests you can also do optional, investigations, and events. Investigations are interesting, in a way, because they are limited. You can only attempt them a certain amount of times, but there are very many of them. I’m not sure that they actually help advance your Hunter Rank, but they do give other resources like money, items, and research points. Investigations are very plentiful and can include a variety of things such as hunting a certain monster, capturing a certain monster, collecting certain items like flora, and a lot more. Events are available during a limited time and require a certain hunter rank.

There are also tie ins to other games. For one, there’s a set quests related to The Witcher, who appears in the game. I have not yet explored this quest line yet as my Hunter Rank is still too low. In this game, you don’t really level up your own stats, it’s the stats of your weapons and armor that matter. However, there is one stat that you can level up and that is your Hunter Rank. Basically it just means that the higher your Hunter Rank, the more quests you can access, which seem to gradually get more difficult as your Hunter Rank rises.

Research points can spent in the canteen and other places. You get them by completing quests. You can also use your capture net to collect small fauna like insects. You can also get them by interacting with monster tracks. This will allow you to gather more information about a monster and ultimately making it much easier for your Scoutflies to track. Scoutflies are a group of little green insects, that look like dots pretty much, that help lead you to where you want to go. If you’re tracking a certain monster, you can tell them to do so on the map and they’ll lead you to it while pointing out, along the way, monster tracks and other items you can collect. You can also set a way point on the map and they will guide you there.

There are a variety of items you can find during your hunt, that your Scoutfiles will point out to you. This includes flora, which can be used to craft items such as potions, traps, ammo, and other things. Items stored in your pouch will stay with you, while items in your equipment chest can be accessed in town or camps. During a quest, you can access a chest that will provide you with some useful items, usually potions. Although if you’re doing a capture quest, the box will supply you with what you need such as traps and tranquilizers.

The game has some different little other additions. For one, you are partnered with a cat, which is called a Palico. It can use gear as well including weapons, armor, and another piece of gear that has a variety of functionalitites. This item can help you with healing, defense, and other items like traps, which are definitely very helpful on hunts. As these abilities are used, they level up and increase their efficiency, to a max of level 10. Palicos make it so that you’re not alone when you’re hunting. They will fight monsters, too, and can even befriend some monsters, who will join you on your hunt, these are call Tailraiders. I really love the Palico and was glad that I could have a blue one.

There’s also a pig in town that you can pet. I can’t really explain it very well as I haven’t really messed with it. Apparently there is music that plays and you pet or stop petting it based on the music. Once you finally befriend it, you can customize it. Other than that, I really don’t know much about it.

There are a few areas in the game. I’m not sure if I’ve discovered them all, although I think I may have. This is slightly disappointing, because I’m enjoying the game and want much more of it. Luckily, there’s plenty to do and a new DLC.

That new DLC is called Iceborne. It takes place in what looks like a tundra area, but it apparently has multiple mini areas like springs and others. Iceborne is already available for the PS4 and Xbox One. However, it will arrive on PC in January and it is definitely a DLC I intend to get at launch, as I’m really loving this game. It contains new weapons, monsters, areas, and new items. One feature allows you to ride Tailraiders, which you can’t control, but they’ll take you where you want to go.

I am playing this game with an Xbox 360 (I think) controller connected to my PC, but you can also use other controllers. I believe other controllers are also compatible. You can also use the keyboard and mouse and it’s incredibly easy to switch between the two. While using the controller, if you hit a key on your keyboard, the game will display keyboard and mouse controls automatically. If you then hit a button on your controller, it will switch to controller controls automatically. I think this is quite impressive.

I think this is a fantastic game, I only wish there was much more of it on the PC, although the series itself has spanned various consoles and handhelds. I really do recommend this game. So far, it has been cheaper on consoles than PC, but you could wait for a good deal. When Iceborne releases for the PC, there will be a version of it that includes the base game, so you might want to wait until then.

Let’s Talk About Exclusives
https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/EpicGamesStore.jpeg?fit=400%2C225&strip=all
This is a bit of a controversial subject and is kind of a hot topic on the Internet. Unfortunately, there are plenty of flame wars going on and people arguing the points of their opinions. I would like to get some opinions or input from our lovely community. Essentially, I want to know what you think about game exclusives?

The main focal point of this thought of discussion is because there are games that developers have made exclusive deals with the new Epic Games Store. This means that a game may only be sold on that platform. I think this usually applies for only a period of time. For instance, I’m interested in a new game called Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. Unfortunately (in my opinion), this is an EGS exclusive for a year and then it will be available on Steam. This isn’t the first, nor the last EGS exclusive. Another game, for instance, that will receive similar treatment is Borderlands 3.

I read some discussion in the forums on Steam, especially since EGS does not have forums. EGS also doesn’t have reviews, either. There are pretty much two sides to this issue. While I find myself on one side, I can actually agree with many points people on both sides have brought up.

I think ultimately, in the end, my opinion is that these exclusive deals suck, but if I really want a game, I’ll probably buy it where ever. However, Steam is pretty much the dominant digital game platform. Most of my games are in my Steam library. This pretty much means that I’ve grown used to Steam so much that I have a strong preference for having my games on Steam instead of another platform like EGS or any of the others that exist, which are still plentiful. In this, I think it’s mostly a matter of preference. Steam has features that other platforms are missing such as forums and reviews as I’ve already mentioned. My Steam friends list is relatively small, I think, but I still like being connected to those friends in one place. I also like to use the Steam web browser when I’m in game and want to look something up on the Internet. This is very useful for efficiency, quickness, and those games that will crash with an Alt-Tab. Steam also has achievements and I like to get them.

I understand we live in a free market economy and competition among companies is supposed to be good for us consumers. However, that doesn’t mean that we are going to be happy with the competitive or anti-competitive practices of some companies. Sure, Steam is huge and popular and I’m sure it’s incredibly hard to compete with. But, I feel like exclusive game deals mean that developers are going to miss out on some sales because many others are like me and have a strong preference to have all of our games (or most of them) on Steam. I don’t have details of what these exclusive deals mean for the developer. It seems that they might make more money because EGS takes a smaller percentage of profits than Steam. Still, I wonder how many sales are lost simply because people like me strongly prefer our games on Steam.

In a way, I pretty much give console exclusives a pass, but I think this is kind of hypocritical. Ultimately, I would love it if I could play any game I want on one platform, that would make things incredibly simple. Unfortunately, for consoles, if you want to play an exclusive game that means you have to spend a couple or few hundred dollars. This doesn’t quite make sense for playing a single game and I also don’t want to buy a console just for one game. Luckily, there are other games available for consoles and they also have additional functionality, such as Internet media (TV/Movies) streaming and web browsing.

On the other hand, PC gaming is more expensive, because you’ll want to spend more than a few hundred dollars to get a PC good enough to play the games you want, especially if those games are modern. I recently built a PC and spent a few hundreds just on some components alone, like my CPU and GPU. Although, you can do a lot more with a PC than you can a console, but consoles have grown to be more like a PC.

So, what are your thoughts on this issue of exclusive game deals such as the ones we see on EGS? Do you have a preference for which digital game platform to buy games from or will you buy games on any of them? Do you have a strong preference to Steam? Is this an overheated issue? Let me know and please try to keep comments respectful.

Star Trek: Picard
It’s kind of old news revealed recently, this summer, but I want to at least give it a mention here. There’s a new Star Trek show coming out called Star Trek: Picard, based on perhaps my most favorite captain in all of Star Trek. He’s also one of my most favorite characters. The Next Generation was probably my most favorite of the series as that’s what got me into Star Trek. I later watched all of Star Trek, including the original’s animated series, and I love it all.

The trailer shows that Picard has retired and is making wine. He seems to live alone with his dog named, “Number One.” We see a young woman coming to him for help. We also see him open a case that contains parts of TNG’s android named Data. Data is one of my most favorite characters in the series. He sacrificed himself in the last movie and it’s unsure exactly how he’ll return in this show. However, we do see him talking to Picard later in the trailer.

It’s not exactly what’s known about this mysterious woman, Dagh, who’s come to him for help. Picard does apparently go to Star Fleet to request assistance. Dagh is apparently a dangerous woman, who seems to be in danger and we can see her fighting. In the trailer we also see new Romulan and Borg ships. We’ve been told that Seven of Nine will return from Voyager along with the Borg named Hugh from TNG. From what I can tell from the trailer, it seems that the Romulans are doing something with the Borg, I believe they are holding them captive in a prison, which you can see in the trailer. The Borg ship in the trailer looks damaged. But, what exactly is going on in this show is still pretty much a mystery.

It seems clear that Picard will join a new crew in order to help Dagh. One member of the new crew is a Romulan. Romulans don't usually get along with Star Fleet, which makes this character interesting. At first, I thought this character was a Vulcan, but that's not what others have said in other videos I've watched. There are a few other characters, of the new crew, that we get briefly introduced to.

It is not publicly known when the show will come out, but it seems to be “early 2020.” The show will come to CBS All Access. This, to me, is the only negative part as I’m not at all familiar with this service. It seems like Internet streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and Disney + are rapidly growing and it’s hard to keep up with all of them. The one thing I do like about these services is that they usually don’t have commercials, although sometimes you have to pay extra for this. These services are also extremely accessible as they allow you to watch TV shows or movies on just about anything; PC, game console, tablet, phone, etc.

I write this today, because I just watched a video giving some details about the show. I’d recommend watching it, if you’re interested in the show. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/gWYiRwBpdeI

So, what do you think about this? Are you interested? Will you be watching this? Let me know.

Minecraft To Get Ray Tracing
It looks like Ray Tracing is coming to Minecraft. According to an article (https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/render-dragon-and-nvidia-ray-tracing), Ray Tracing will come to Minecraft next year. The video trailer says "Windows 10," so I'm not sure whether or not that means it's coming to the Java Edition or just the Windows 10 Bedrock Edition. Check out the embedded video. It looks beautiful!

This actually makes me regret that I did not recently buy an RTX GPU. Part of that decision was because not a lot of games feature Ray Tracing yet, so it didn't seem like a technology I really cared about at the time. That part of the decision still holds true, although this news today brings me one step closer to wanting an RTX GPU. I also didn't want to spend too much money on a GPU. If I had enough money, I'd love to get a RTX 2080Ti or Super, but they're expensive.

I recently found out (thanks to Travis) that you don't actually have to have an RTX card to play the RTX version of Quake 2. However, with all the Ray Tracing features enabled, it's very difficult to get a decent amount of FPS to make the game playable (on a non-RTX GPU).

What do you think about this? Does this make you want to get an RTX GPU or do you already have one? Let me know in the comment section!

Single Player Mode
I was an early adopter of Atlas. I can attest to it’s less than perfect launch. In fact, I had a terrible time with it. I joined an official server, but couldn’t hardly get any frames per second. It turned out that there were very many players in the world, but most of them were sleeping (they were offline). This caused serious issues which was later resolved.

I didn’t play the game for too long. I enjoyed the beginning of it, starting out, collecting resources to make my first set of cloth armor and tools. Then I had to collect resources so I could build a raft and set out to sea, I had to make sure I had enough resources, including food, for my travel. What makes this game kind of complicated, regarding food, is the need to monitor your vitamin values and try to keep those up. There are four types of food, each corresponding to a vitamin. Vitamins are A, B, C, and D which are (in no particular order) fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat. This meant you needed a stack of each kind to keep your vitamin levels in check and keep in mind that food spoils. You also had to be prepared with fresh water, as you can’t drink sea water. Luckily, the Freeport that you spawn in has a pool of freshwater that you can drink out of and use to fill your water skins (which will leak over time).

I restarted multiple times, but didn’t get very far with progression. I tried to find land, but it was all taken, so I couldn’t build any where. Eventually, I gave up. You can read my original post on the game (https://cheerfulghost.com/GregoPeck/posts/3971/the-most-ambitious-and-most-improved-early-access-game-of-the-end-of-the-year ). However, Grapeshot released a single player mode for the game and I’ve returned to check it out.

It’s a lonely world. Luckily, I don’t actually have to claim any land to build, I can build pretty much where ever I want. I’ve restarted a few times, but ultimately, I found a nice island with fresh water, metal, and other good resources. I kind of feel a bit lucky for finding this island. I started building, but ran into a problem. If you place something like a workstation, or just about anything on top of a wood foundation and then decide to upgrade to a stone foundation, you have to destroy whatever you placed on top of the foundation, before you can place the stone foundation. I’ve submitted this as a bug. This doesn’t happen in Ark, which is pretty much what this game is based on with the same engine, same files, and a lot of other similarities other than being a pirate game. This made me look for a mod like Structures Plus for Ark, which allows you to pick up anything any time. I found one similar called Atlas Architect, which has some stations which are smaller and allows you to pick them up any time.

I would like to tame something, but I haven’t found anything at a high enough level that I want to tame. I think my single player settings will give me a max level of wild creatures that I can tame of 150 and I haven’t seen any yet. Some have been close, but not close enough for me. However, I was able to get started on building ships. I like the raft, but you have to go in the direction the wind blows and it doesn’t contain much space for anything, nor any way to defend yourself from ships of the damned (SOTD). Speaking of them, they are intimidating now. They now can be found in fleets, usually about four, but there could be many more in a single area of the map. I wish there were individuals (as it was earlier in the development of the game), which would let me practice fighting them and be less intimidating.

I built my first Sloop. It took some time to get used to having to manage sails and a rudder by myself. I really needed some crew. Luckily, you can recruit crew member at a Freeport for just 5 gold. Then they’ll want 1 gold every few hours or so. You can also get them by destroying SOTD, they’ll be swimming with the debris of the ship and you can swim up to them, press a button to give them gold, and take them back to your ship. Usually these crew members are at a higher level than the ones you can recruit in a Freeport (which are all level 1). So, I found my way to a Freeport and recruited a few crew. Then I returned to the island where I made my home and built my first Schooner.
I can’t recall at the moment, if my Sloop had canons on it, but I think the Schooner did. I don’t think I used them though, maybe I did try at least once to destroy a fleet of SOTD. If I did, it didn’t go well and I restarted from a backup. I use the same system of backing up my saved data and restoring it when I want, like I do for Ark (just by copying certain files to different directories). After I built the Schooner, I once again traveled to the nearest Freeport to recruit some crew. Then I traveled back to the island where I made my home and started to build my Brigantine.

It was around here, I think, that I found and added another mod. In Ark, I use one that significantly decreases the weight of items and increases stack sizes. I found one for Atlas and was able to collect and carry a lot more resources, which was very important as each new ship requires even more resources. The mod is called Custom Item Stacks. I also had trouble keeping my vitamin levels maintained, so I began using a mod called MultiVitamin, which lets you craft a multivitamin which will raise your vitamin levels to normal. This takes food of each kind and a medicinal herb, but is well worth it. Having a vitamin deficiency will cause you to lose health and eventually die (which will reset your vitamin level, making death actually kind of helpful w/out this mod).

After I constructed my Brigantine, I once again headed to my local Freeport to recruit crew. It was either during this trip or the next that I was unable to recruit any more at one point. Luckily, finding out why wasn’t too difficult with a simple Google search. You can only have a max of 10 level 1 crew members. So, I simply just had to level up the ones that I had, which I didn’t bother with before. They got levels easily enough and didn’t take long to get their first one. I can’t recall now whether or not I tried to fight the SOTD with the Brigantine. Once again, I headed back to the island where I made my home and started to build my Galleon.

The Galleon is huge! The max amount of gun ports on it is 52! It’s definitely a behemoth, which obviously took a while to build. I had some trouble with previous ships where I built the shipyard in water that was too shallow and therefore couldn’t get them out easily. Each ship, by the way, has it’s own size of ship yard. You have tiny, small (I think), medium, and large ship yards. You need to build each to build each ship. This will let you build the skeleton of the ship.

The Galleon has 6 large sails, but doesn’t feel faster than any other sea craft (ships and raft). Maybe this is because I haven’t seen each craft sailing together (which I obviously can’t do in single player mode). However, more sails are supposed to make crafts faster and the Galleon is the fastest (and biggest) ship in the game. After I completed this build, I once again headed to my local Freeport to recruit crew. I ran into an issue with the dinghy. You can build a dinghy dock on your ship. When you get close to your ship with it, you can select the option on the radial menu to have it return to your ship. This will pull it up and put it back where it belongs. There were a few times where I had crew with me when I did this and they disappeared, or seemed to, I may have later found a couple of them. It took a while to hire the remaining crew members I needed to fill my ship. It has a max crew limit of 59, but you can increase that by leveling up a certain stat (ships get experience and level up, too, maybe I should have mentioned that earlier).

This time, I did not return home. I set sail with the wind (if I have no destination, I like to travel in the direction the wind is blowing). It wasn’t long until I ran into a fleet of SOTDs and I started shooting at them. The first time, I beat all four of them, but my ship was damaged and was sinking. I ran out of wood to repair it, so I was heading back to the island from which I came so I could gather more wood. On the way, I ran into a ship wreck and decided to go after it. You can see floating debris every now and then indicating that a shipwreck is below the debris. I had installed a diving dock on my ship as I did before on the Brigantine. So I hoped in my diving suit and went down. Unfortunately, it was night and I couldn’t hardly see nor find the entrance to the treasure chest. I started dying and realized that I was freezing to death. I died, but was able to respawn on my ship and go back down to collect the items I had on my body, but I couldn’t find my body, so I restored the files to the backup I made just after hiring all my crew and before setting sail the last time. I ran into the SOTDs again, but I destroyed them all and I’m not even sure if any of them hit me. This was impressive, but it also takes quite a bit of time and effort to circle back around and against the wind after you’ve sailed passed them. Once they were destroyed, I was able to collect the debris they left behind and rescue one person, because I had one more slot for a crew member. She was level 27, I think, but she disappeared when I brought her aboard via the dinghy. She’s still counting as part of my crew, so I’m not sure where she is. This is where I have finished so far.

Since I’m done building ships, I have a little less to do. I can tame creatures and collect treasure from shipwrecks, flotsam, and the SOTDs I destroy. I can (and have tried to) also find buried treasure using one of the many maps I’ve found, but the damned (soldiers of the damned maybe?) are very over powering. I need to tame a good high level bear to help me take them on. I would like to build a submarine, but it requires me to make three different kinds of alloy (which are basically metal ingots). I have iron and thought I had copper, but don’t and so I need to find more. I know there is an underwater trench you can go to with your submarine. I think one or more of the power stones is there. I think these stones allow you to fight the boss, the Kracken.

There are mythical creatures, too, like the Cyclops. There’s also a dragon and some more things you can actually tame or purchase (in-game not w/ real money). These tames will only last for a limited time though. However, if you defeat them, you can collect something called mythos, but I’m not entirely sure what that’s for.

There is also a DLC map. I think it was not made by Grapeshot, but another individual. I know it’s much smaller than the single player map (which is huge). I haven’t tried it out yet, but I think I’m getting nearer to feeling ready to do so.

A lot of this game was pretty much nearly impossible to do alone before single player mode came out. Although single player mode doesn’t exactly make things easier, you can use mods, which makes things a lot easier. SOTD and soldiers from treasure maps are still numerous and intimidating, although I did find out I can defeat fleets of SOTD with my Galleon. There are videos on YouTube that can show you how to build a good ship (Sloop or Schooner) to beat them as well.

I’m glad they released single player mode, although I wish a few things were adjusted to make things easier (or less intimidating) for the single player. The map is huge and in multiplayer mode (the base mode of the game), each section is run by a server. So the map is actually a cluster of servers you can travel to. Surprisingly, it takes as much time to travel to different places on the grid at the same speed in both game modes, although it doesn’t take very long at all. I think this is impressive, that you can travel to a new server and the switch happens very quickly.

So now that single player mode is out, do you think you might give this game a try? I might actually recommend it now, especially if you like building/crafting, taming, and pirate stuff like building ships, sailing, and sea battles. It’s also a good game for exploring, although it can get boring out there in the open sea. Have you tried to play the game in it’s normal multiplayer mode? What do you think of it? Let me know in the comments, if you want to talk about this.

I may update this in the future as I play more, or write a new post.

Genesis Announced!
Last year, Studio Wildcard (SW) received major backlash after posting a countdown on the Ark website (survivetheark.com), which ended up being an event that had dino skins (based on the new Jurassic World movie at the time) as rewards. Many fans, including myself, were expecting news of a new DLC, we were sure of it, but we were wrong. However, not much later, SW posted another countdown on the website, but this ended up being an announcement of a DLC, Extinction.

I’m not going to spoil the lore of Ark here. If you want to know it, you can find it easily enough on the Internet. However, it seemed Extinction would be the end of Ark, or Ark DLC. There was a subtle piece at the end that hinted there could be more. There were also coded messages, which revealed another location in the Ark lore. This lead many to believe that this was not the end of Ark, as the story was still open-ended.

Recently, SW, posted a new countdown on their website. There were coded messages found on a website, which were decoded and showed SW giving us hints of something that’s coming. The way they did this was interesting and it was also very interesting to see people on the Internet who were able to decode these messages. One of the encoded messages stated, “this is not Ark 2.” People also were able to analyze the webpage code or scipt in Firefox and found a directory leading to a sound file. The directory was called “Genesis.”

It was a day before the end of the countdown and the Playstation store had a new post. It was showing a Genesis Season Pass along with some pictures of the new content. It seemed someone might be ready to lose their job after this leak. However, it turned out to be true. It wasn’t really a leak though. The page was supposed to go up yesterday on 8/8/19. However when for us it was 8/7/19, it was already 8/8/19 in Australia. SW pretty much just laughed about it in their announcement stream.

Genesis is “a new chapter” in Ark. You can see and hear in the announcement video that we are going some where where some one cannot help us, so she creates a cool robot-like thing and gives it her personality. This will make more sense if you’ve followed the lore of Ark, you’ll know who that “someone” is. This robot is called HLN-A (hint here). It’s designed to go along with us on this new journey and help us along the way. It can show us when there’s danger, react to our emotes, and encourages us to do things in the game. It seems it will guide us on our way to the end of the game or content. Surprisingly, this HLN-A is available now if you purchase the Genesis Season Pass (as I did). Right now, it’s pretty much a cosmetic “pet.” It’s expected to become much more of something when the content is released.

We got a look at some pictures, which show off new creatures and new biomes. Two pictures seem to clearly be on the first map, called the Island (in case you didn’t know), but SW says this new content will consist of two new maps. There’s a volcanic biome, ocean biome, and poisonous-looking biome. Part 1 of Genesis will arrive in December, while Part 2 will arrive in “winter 2020.” I assume they mean Part 2 will arrive about a year after Part 1, because SW always released new DLC a year after the previous one. So, this year, just like last year, many of us are back on the Ark hype train.

One of the new creatures was seen near an active volcano and it’s covered in molten rock/fire. This creature doesn’t like water, can be tamed, and acts as a mobile forge (for smelting iron). This is similar to how other creatures work in the game, for example the Giant Beaver acts as a mobile Smithy. Another new small four-armed creature looks adorable, but is Ark’s first shape-shifter. If it eats Element it turns into a larger wolf-like creature. It seems as though it will not turn on whoever it tamed, but can be used in some strategic ways.

Apparently, (as revealed by SW), people have been asking for another creature from the devs for quite a while now. SW stated that they just didn’t have anywhere to put it. This is the new giant turtle looking creature. It functions as a mobile island, you can build your base on it, and harvest the plants/materials that grow on it. It can dive underwater and when it does, it creates an oxygen bubble, so you won’t need to wear SCUBA gear. This creature is massive and as such Genesis will have an ocean biome that this giant can live in, where it can be tamed.

There are a couple more things mentioned by SW, but I recommend (if you’re interested) to watch the stream, which has been posted on YouTube (https://youtu.be/zC7ArMfwz8U).

Last year, I was really excited for Extinction, but was a bit disappointed by it, mostly because of the amount of things that feel nearly impossible to do alone in single player mode. I don’t want to be let down again, but I can’t help but to get excited about Genesis. However, it does make me wish that devs wouldn’t tell us long in advance about something they’re working on and make us wait months or years at a time. Instead, I kind of wish they would just make the announcement when they release the content. The days do seem to pass more slowly when you’re eagerly awaiting something new to be released.

So, what do you think about this? Are you excited? Have you purchased the Season Pass for this? It’s only about $35 and seems like a great value for Ark content released in two parts. Let me know what you think.

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered!
I think this was already reported on here during the E3 stuff, but it's come more to my attention due to a friend sharing info with me on Facebook. At first, I ignored this news. I thought it was just for the Switch (which I may still get) and I believed that the Steam version was "remastered." But, it seems I was incorrect (please correct me if I'm wrong). I played it a few years ago on Steam and didn't have a problem with it, it looked fine to me. Although, I must admit, I never really complained about the graphics. I know the non-FMV stuff wasn't perfect, but kind of blocky/not smooth, but that never affected the love I have for this game. Apparently the "remake" is coming for all (current gen) consoles and on Steam. It might be something I get, I'm not sure, I'll have to wait and see. Hopefully it won't cost very much (I doubt it will).

What do you think about this? Let me know in the comments!

Source: https://www.slashgear.com/final-fantasy-viii-is-finally-getting-remastered-not-a-remake-10579979/?fbclid=IwAR0y521_15LDMOKKNvKLijkTK2w4DBwjuauKMxJ6w0NuTgOe49qilBbsPIs

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