http://www.downtimehours.com/

It isn't much of yet but I am moving this blog over to http://www.downtimehours.com/.  See you there.  :)

RAWR!

The Secret World started with a patch.  I'd remembered Nosy said something about getting a pet. I went to the store and saw that I could claim a Blood Raven.  I was not sure if that was the pet but I claimed it anyway.  It occupied me a bit while the patch downloaded.  A lot of people complain that games are constantly tweaking themselves.  I don't mind.  The complexity levels and the way that players make sure to find new ways to break the games are such that they need to work on improving themselves.  Otherwise, you have the stories I keep hearing from the players of Day-Z that people have hacked the servers and come to screw over others games for the lulz.

Or something.  I should read their user agreement.  A few years ago one game company took control of your immortal soul when you signed the agreement.  You never know what you are getting into.

When I last left the secret world I was trying to work my way through a multi layered side quest.  I've been on it for quite a while as that it involves killing the demon things that run around in the water.  I've spent a lot of time positioning myself and trying to lure the various  creatures away from the rest of the swarm sot hat I can kill them one by one.  Each one is a battle.  Each time I kill as many as the tier tells me to kill it tells me to kill X amount of another type.  I worked on this for a few hours (I'm very slow at killing things) and finally logged off after I died.

The kill x amount of items mission proved to be very boring.  I logged back in to finish it.  I was a bit nervous because when I last played I was dead in the water.  When I respawned this time I was in, a thankfully clear patch of water. I was able to lure the witches over and beat them down.  I then had to kill another set of things.  I died that time.  Yet another run back to my body I finished and then it told me to go kill the boss.

This part I was worried about.  I ran into the area where they said the boss was lurking and as I got there I saw someone die to him.  This did not make me feel very confident.  I found a little island in the water and stood on it. I don't know why.  The water is only waist deep at the deepest that I have yet found and I don't know if you can swim or not yet.  I had immediately ran into the water to find out when I started playing but so far no deep spots.

I decided that this was the perfect opertunity to summon the Raven that I got (I think its my pet) and see what happens.

Okay.  Well.  Uh.  It follows me and it doesn't drown.

So, off I took a few deep breaths and decided that now was the time to fight the big boss thing.  The side missions and wandering have been good for me.  I'm mildly less squishy depending.  I have no fighting skills. I button mash like a pro but it is getting the job done.  The big boss thing wanders around and I followed it a bit and waited for it to wander into a bit of a clear spot and attacked!

Eeep!  Smashing buttons all over the place! I am on fire for some skill build up like was suggested by one of my fantastic commentors.  Now I just frantically hit everything I have there and hoped for the best.  This is why people have multi button mouses.  I don't need that in Eve!

Rawr!!

P.S.   I will be migrating this blog to my word press account as part of my project to move into my own domain.  This should be the last post here.  The posts are synced up with wordpress so if anyone has this bookmarked, move said bookmarks and subscriptions.

CivCity:Rome

Some games stay fun even as they age.  I recently picked up CivCity:Rome on Steam.  I have the CD but it was nice to have a copy on steam where I can play on any of my machines whenever I wanted ot.

CivCity:Rome is a world builder game.  You build a city, you have some tasks to do, and its funny.  I first heard of it on X-Play when they gave it Four stars and poked fun at the "We need more slaves" dialog that happens when your city is large enough.

CivCity:Rome is not a spectacular stand out game in anyway.  Its very simple.  The graphics are cute more then stunning.  Watching mountain lions (who look like African lions) chase down your people and kill them as they haul their wood is amusing.  Putting up watch towers instead of fire towers and watching your city burn while you scream at the watchmen to put out the fires is... well that may just be my mistake.

It is not a deep game but its a lovely way to relax and play.  I find myself yelling at it a lot.  More so then most games.  "The baker is right there get yourself bread!"

I needed a break from the MMOs and the thinking and drama that comes along with them.  Building some cities, listening to them complain about the warehouses and stagger drunkenly though the streets as I race against my drunken citizens to get my wine sold for trade is amusing and a great way to mentally chill out a bit.

We've recently purchased a ton of games from steam.  I am going to go and work my way through the Prince of Persia series (sands of time, warrior within, two thrones).  That is an amazing story when strung together and one I look forward to writing about.

Imagery - The Secret World

I started with a bag of popcorn to keep me company.  I then had to add a demanding kitty that wanted to be in my lap.  It is hard to kill zombies when a kitty is nuzzling your eye but I made it happen.

I notice that a certain type of Zombie called a Servant of One Death tends to hang around inside of the compound a lot.  They seem tough and I've helped kill a lot of them. I don't know what they do or why they are all over the compound.  Since they are sometimes chasing people I guess it is part of some mission string I have not yet reached.

I also just learned that I can make the chat window a bit smaller by dragging it down.  Yay.  Since no one is talking to me I'm not very interested in the channel and what people are saying.

I've picked up the hard type missions to see how they go.  I randomly found this mission chain and picked it up.  I haven't started it other than looking at the first bit to see what I am supposed to do.

So far I've been successful with the other "hard" type missions I've tried.  I don't think they are hard, hard maybe?  The side missions are easier in general then the main storyline mission.  I'm not in a sewer being eaten by something terrible while confused.

Plus, I now have a sword.  This makes me innately awesome.  I'm thankful for that because I am terrible at almost everything else.  Understanding the magic trees and the various spells and such things.  However, a lot of the technical stuff is secondary.  You can still just play the game and see what happens and that is the ride that I am on for the most part.

Wow.  This game has some pretty brutal imagery for those that are used to pretty, fluffy bunnies.  I don't think that is a bad thing. I also had my first really good battle. I died the first time.  But the second time I positioned myself and used my distance skills to wear her down.  It was great.  She also got stuck on an object and that allowed me to work on her while she tried to get to me.  She got around it but I love that the landscape hinders the NPCs.  I got so worked up that I MISSED the goal and had to fight the stupid thing again because the goal object had a timer.  Who knew?

But I finished it.  I have another mission that I can't find the next step to.  I seemed to have not looked at an object I should have and now I don't know how I got the mission or how to get rid of it.  I'll have to look it up.  For now, it's not a big deal.  I'm sharing popcorn with the cat and listening to Deputy Andy tell me some even more soul killing terrible things about his father   But, I got a mission out of it and while my soul may be a bit less innocent then it was a few minutes ago I have stuff to run off and do.

My next quest starts out with "see what you can do" and it sounds like a sabotage gig. I'm excited.  I'm getting good at moving around the zombies outsides.  Sometimes I totally fail and get chased still but now thanks to my sword I can mow them all down most of the time.  However, I reach my goal and my next order is to kill the things in the way.  That's not stealthy.  :(  And they respawned when I took too long!

I died a lot.  Over and over again trying to fight this thing that vomited green nastiness on me that wasn't one of the things I had to kill but kept spawning beside one.  Ugh.  I finally killed them but it was terrible and I stopped counting after the 10th time I died.  I've also discovered that there is some type of award system for finding the glowing yellow honey combs in square   If anyone is into that kind of thing it's kind of an exploration award mixed with a collection award.

I did a few more side quests and decided to wrap it up for the evening.  I dumped some skill points into my combat abilities and improved my damage some I think.  I'm still getting stomped rather easily.

I did take a picture of this stunning young lady.  When Nosy Gamer did a review he commented on the choice of clothing. Clothing does not seem to carry stats so how you dress is personal choice. It is not the normal the more powerful you are the less clothing and more breast your female character has to show.

For this shot the difference between our two female characters amused me.  I was like blue shirt! (blue is my favorite color) and cargo pants in urban camo! So great.  This is something I'd wear IRL.

Running With Sharp Things - The Secret World

Nosy Gamer told me that there were free items in the Item Store for the Secret World.  On my way to starting it, finally this weekend (Eve really does keep me occupied) I saw the button on the launcher and decided to look.  It took me a moment to find the claim item button and see what was there.  A bunch of stuff, some clothing, a bird, a drink, and some supposedly awesome newbie weapons.

We shall see if I have a sword now. If not, I left the game last time having earned two skill points which should be enough to buy a starter sword from one of the shops. I think.  I haven't spent much time with the market concept.  I have broken items and I need to fix them.  I also really, really need to figure out how to heal myself or something.

I wound up logging in and running back to the start to get a sword.  When I made it back to the zombie town I have been working through I figured out how to get my free stuff in which there was a better sword.  Sigh.  Oh well.  I dumped some skill points and the AP things into some sword stuff and now I am a bad ass!

Okay, I almost died but look at all that dead stuff!  I'm still working through side missions.  I have learned that you can redo some of the simple and easy ones over and over again after their cool downs.  I picked up one of the very first ones when I ran back into town and dropped it off for free experience pretty much.  I'm not sure how I feel about that but if someone is more interested in things like experience then playing the game that might work for them.

I wound up doing two more quests.  One I again went to google for help instead of banging my head against a wall. It was for a code.  I need to do these quests less broken I think. I didn't remember from when I last played what the clues even where.  Breaking up quests or missions or whatever they are called like that is a bad idea for the future and I will resolve to do them on days when I have time.

I also did a gather quest which rendered me dead to firefighters again.  I am even on fire during the cut scenes.  It must be one of my fire skills. I still don't know why I ran around burning but I do.

I'm still engaging in a lot of group help. If someone is being mobbed by zombies I step in and assist.  People seem to do the same for me.  I've never yet talked to anyone but the mutual help thing seems to be working out.

I'm finding the cut scenes easier to deal with.  Now I know that I'm going to get one when I start someones mission string.  I'm not just walking into them every time I go close to a NPC.  This has allowed me to relax and focus on the story some more.  This one zone that I am in feels absolutely enormous with a lot to do.  The sound effects are also really good.  The zombies are pretty zombie acting and you don't have to just cut your way through things.  With cautious movement I can often achieve goals around zombies much stronger then I am.  I feel rewarded for thinking.

After I gathered everything and turned in this quest I had to go and kill things on Eve. That occupied the rest of my evening.  :P

The moral of the story is: Swords are good. I wish it had been more clear at the start that I could have picked multiple weapons.

The Quest for a Sword - The Secret World

My body, thankfully, wasn't trapped inside of the instance.  It was laying on top of the sewer when I ran back for it.  A discussion on Twitter with Nosy Gamer had me going to look for a bladed weapon to use since my magic wasn't cutting it.  I then found out that I needed skill points I didn't have so I ran back off to find some side missions to work on for skill points.

I need something to do!  I decided that because you are sent to the sheriff's office first that will be the best place to go to find some basic missions.  So far, they seem to be ranked normal, easy, hard and such things.  I assume that I will die to everything so I wandered around until I found one ranked normal.  The story is about defending the sheriff's office from the zombie attacks.  It seems that ritual sacrifice was pretty common in this town before the zombies.  What?  Okay.

I'm not sure that I understand the group instances. It seems that these events are shared but each person has a task.  So you can help people kill things but you also need to kill a certain amount in the help.  The game spawns tons so there is plenty for all.  The impression I get is that these are social but singular quests.  I'm not sure but it was helpful when someone ran up to assist me killing this big rainbow monster thing.

Thankfully someone random ran up and shot at it a lot with me.  It died and I finished that little mission string.  Phew.  I felt pretty good and now I had a skill point.  I needed two or three to go and buy a sword so I looked around and found a story chain to find missing people.

The first person was easy, he was hanging out in a church that seemed to be pretty anti-zombie.  The next ones were not hard but they were dead or zombies.  The one that really kicked my ass was the one at the firehouse.  Let me tell you, when firefighters become zombies they become ass kicking zombies with hatchets.  I died half a dozen times over the course of the quest to the firefighters.

After they finished kicking my ass I finally discovered the last guy, died yet again and accepted another story line to find food.  This time I wound back up with the firefighters and died another two times before I collected everything from their fire station.  I am very good at running around dead now back to my poor body.  I did stumble across a woman's body with a message on a cellphone.  I was trying to figure out where I needed to find a keypad but got distracted with dinner and such things and work tomorrow.

I'll play some more this weekend.  Hopefully with a sword to supplement my inadequate magical abilities.

The Grey

The Grey by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers

The Grey - E-Book
The Grey - Movie

Genera - Current Fiction, Wilderness Survival

I was talking to Titus on Eve the other week about random things that spiraled into a conversation about my lack of connection to common popular culture.  Titus had been trying to explain something to me using movies.  I’d never seen any of the movies he kept referencing.  It made for an odd conversation because I couldn't understand any of his analogies.

Our discussion wandered to the movie The Grey.  I’d never seen it and he really felt that I should see it.  I do not really enjoy watching movies anymore.  I’m down to a visit to the theater once every other year or so.  I decided to offer a compromise and meet halfway.  I’d try to read the books to the movies he discussed if they had books.

I found the Grey on Amazon.  The original movie came from a short story.  The author then expanded the short story some.  Its not a long book by any means so I picked it up an gave it a try.
I will be unable to rate this book any higher then 3 stars (out of 5) and this is why.

The book itself isn't bad.  Its not my daily cup of tea but it’s a solid read and interesting in its approach.
What I do hate and what will never make me recommend the book to anyone else is the way that it portrays wolves.  In the story, the wolves are these death dealers that hunt the group down and pick them off.  It is glossed over as “This is their place and they don’t want us here.”  It is complete and total rubbish.  Wolves do not behave in the manner portrayed by this book.

Portrayals like this is why people hunt down and slaughter predatory animals like wolves and sharks (Jaws anyone?  The author deeply regrets writing the story as he did).  I’m actually disgusted by the blatant misrepresentation of wolf behavior in this book.  I ranted and ranted and ranted.  Titus will probably never recommend another book to me again.

I don’t think he means it.  In some ways, the wolves are probably some type of symbolism or the incarnation of the harshness of nature.  I don’t care.  It’s a terrible disservice to them.  I will say that the quality of the book is enough to have stopped me from raging and deleting it.  Plus I promised that I would read it, so I continued.

Its not a happy story.  There is no happy ending for everyone.  Its bleak, and stark and the people suffer a lot.  I could not relate to the main character.  He had issues before the story happened and he had issues during the course of the story.  Issues that I couldn't see myself having due to personality differences.

The writing style is first person current.  I find that one of the harder styles to slide into.  It gives the feeling of sharing the persons moment to moment.  If there is a disconnect between the reader and the character in the story it only heightens the disorientation of viewing things through someone else's eyes.

For the fact that I couldn't relate to the book and that I am enraged at the portrayal of wolves in the book I don't think it is a bad book.  I won't read it again.  I'm sure someone who is more interested in the symbolism of nature and futility represented by the wolves in the story may enjoy it much more then I did.  Also, someone who liked the movie will get more out of it then I.