From fighting Garuda. I hadn’t bothered to acquire the Garuda’s Gaze 1H sword for Noct. yet, so I farmed her a few times. Since I like blue/grey/dark background tones, this fight works well for me. 😛 Didn’t get any good ones of Prompto, sorry.
It’s probably hard to tell if you haven’t been playing this game a very long time (8 or 9 numbered Alpha’s at least) but visually it has changed much over the years. It was once more obviously voxel-blocked and pixelation in textures was everywhere. Over time (the landscape) is less blocky, the way weather biomes and water work changed, lighting, reflections, textures have all improved a lot. You can have mild “oooh, ahhh” moments, especially in the pre-fab (fixed design) Navezgane map vs. (R)andom (W)orld (G)eneration. I mean, it’s a voxel game, it’s never going to have AAA graphics, and sometimes the improvements are subtle, but if you’re aware and compare from six (or more) years ago, it’s a huge change over time.
RWG worlds are less pretty overall in terms of buildings and terrain, since it’s not a static-placement map. Roads and hills in RWG sometimes do odd things, for example, but you live with RWG quirks in exchange for random-ness. There are of course also ample gameplay changes over time (skill/perk/crafting systems, vehicles, zombies being more threatening). Average difficulty has also ramped up. In the old versions I used to play on very hard settings and would roam the nights piercing zombies like they were water balloons using a rickety crossbow and not much else.
These days with zombie dogs, vultures, wolves, bears, trapped houses, and zombie AI that can dig through dirt and concrete like nothing, I play as a weenie. Sometimes I even turn zombies completely off (you can do that). Partly because it’s not as much of a cakewalk now (at the start of a fresh map at least) but also because as a gamer I’ve simply slowed down (reflexes and much less desire for adrenaline rush gaming).
7 Days to Die is also still quite moddable, either through direct file changes or using other people’s prefab buildings or more complex gameplay-changing mods. I’ve never used a total gameplay overhaul type mod, but I do always alter quite a few things to suit my tastes via file tweaking. Even if you don’t like messing with stuff like that, the default, in-game settings allow a fair bit of flexibility. Do you want super fast zombies or walking zombies? Do you want to turn off the Blood Moon Horde factor or make zombies damage blocks less quickly? Treat it as a building/design/exploration, zero-zombie game? Go ahead. I hope they keep things like that. Flexibility is one reason I keep reinstalling the game now and again.
I do wish they’d finish the game before I die, however. Whatever. It’s fun to play once every year or two, regardless. Oh – and A18 runs even better on my 9900k/2080ti/32 ram system then in A17. I have a mix of Ultra/High at 4k and it’s running a stable 60+ (outdoors). If zombies are off, more like stable 80+. Indoors it’s over 100 fps most of the time. Overall/average CPU use (not core-to-core analysis) barely reaches 30%-40%. The game does have fairly high requirements for running at higher settings on anything above 1080 tho, imo.
I’m probably becoming a little bored with FFXV again, even Anseling. After a while I feel like everything screenshot-wise starts to look the same or something. Would help if I played more story sections perhaps, or used more NPC mods, but constant swapping of save files, mods, and cheatengine tables becomes annoying. I’ve already taken a lot of story screens anyway, but they were posted in the old Imgur folders instead of this blog (linked to in the page headers up top).
Catching up with films/TV and running through Amazon finally looking for bluray’s of fave films. When VHS was a thing I bought tons of those (still have most in storage boxes) and bought a fair number of DVD collections, but I’ve bought very few bluray’s since I now typically stream vs. physical media. Noticed 4k blurays are cheapish these days, perhaps it’s time for a 4k bluray player. Or wait 8-10 more years for 8k. You know it’s coming. A few “8k” tv’s already exist, but there’s no actual 8k content so what’s the point, yet. But an 8k, 75+ inch TV + 8k versions of Aliens or Terminator 2 or Lord of the Rings or some animes … I might never leave the recliner. Or go to a theater again, ever. Not that I go to theaters much at all, already. We’re getting close to buying a new main/living room TV – it’ll be at least a 65-incher this time. That’ll be fun to occasionally game on (might inspire me to buy the new gen. Playstation). Lately I want bigger and bigger screens. I’m seriously considering chucking the 43″ 4k TV that sits *on* my desk and mounting a giant 4k TV on the wall behind my desk for PC use, instead. Super-size me.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on YouTube lately, watching film reviewers, “people reacting to something” videos, and linguist/accent analysis videos. Also, plenty of entertainment stuff like SNL skits and talk show snippets. I came across a short interview with Adam Driver on Stephen Colbert’s show (Adam is a cutie btw) and in the middle of it all of a sudden …
I laughed hysterically almost immediately, because you know what it instantly brought to mind? This:
I had a pic of all the bros camping where you could see the red soles, from the ol’ forum-thread posting days, but I couldn’t find it in my 2,349,104 files so there’s this other old one instead.
I wish they’d line up like this more often. You have to slowllly approach enemies into the edge of the red circle, stand still…then when the red-line timer is up hope they’re close together when combat is force-begun.
Did I do this before? I’m sure someone has done it before. I like the angle better than the one they give you in the actual title screen. He has a tiny almost-smile.
I tried to Ansel the other version of title screen, with Ardyn and his girlfriend, whats-her-name. But their legs/clothing are really awkward looking while lying under the tree when you try to pull out the view. There’s a reason they only show their shoulders/faces I guess. Pfft.