August 2017

Screenshot Fiesta

sandrian

It’s rather odd for someone who owns a blog to write so little. I’m not really sure what goes on that I can’t really push myself to jump on and write but I just don’t. It’s not that I don’t do anything in my games, to the contrary, I’ve been doing plenty.
However it feels like I can’t convey my thoughts into words or I just can’t find the motivation to sit down and write a proper piece. I’ve been taking screenshots of my adventures in FFXIV and GW2 and I’ve been meaning to post them so maybe I’m just going to make this post a sort of screenshot dump to show you guys what I’ve been doing over the past weeks, because I’ve certainly not been sitting still.

First off a few screenies of the Fireworks during the Moonfire Faire event. I did it on both my characters but took the screenie on my Au’Ra.

Moonfire Faire Fireworks Moonfire Faire Fireworks Moonfire Faire Fireworks

There’s also some pics of Costa del Sol daytime that I took during the event. I really like the tropical vibe.

Costa Del Sol daytime Costa del Sol sea daytime

And then ofcourse I did the Rising event as it was available where I got to meet up with Yoshi-P again and unlock a neat little game called the Cheap Dungeon. I think Square Enix did a wonderful job this time around with the event. It wasn’t terribly long but nice to see the devs thanking us again for our continued support of the franchise.

Found a bug! Me and the Minstrel The Rising Fireworks

As bonus some GW2 screenshots I’ve been taking as I’m leveling up.

Cya next time!

Sunday Summaries #4

sandrian

Hmm. I skipped my weekly sunday post last week. I had a terrible weekend where I was feeling absolutely crap so I couldn’t get myself motivated to do anything, let alone write a blog post about what I’ve been up to.
So instead I’ll just continue telling you about what I’ve done this week, in games and in real life and what I’m planning to do the next.

So first off… Life
Yeah I normally rather talk about games but right now I’m going to take the chance and talk about some IRL stuff. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time the past two weeks. I’m in one of my more depressed moods and thus I can’t handle a lot of things very well. Part of it is caused by continuously feeling tired/sick and part of it is caused by stress over my thesis. I’m still not done yet although I have been taking some steps towards finishing it off. Tonight I’m going to send my final research proposal and then turn my attention to the beefy stuff: results. I downloaded and installed SPSS and it really shouldn’t take me more than a day to grind the numbers.
Next to my thesis I’ve also started an online course teaching me the basics of HTML5, CSS and Java. Seeing as I’m somewhere in no man’s land concerning work and I’ve always had some sort of attraction to IT I decided to bite the bullet and just enroll. It’s a five course specialization that in theory takes place over about 6 months time. However you can work ahead if you want and finish up the courses faster, earning yourself an official certificate from the University of Michigan. Which in turn looks good on my resumé and linkedin. I really feel like I want to head more in the direction of IT and being able to understand atleast the basics will help me with this. I’m not sure if I’d want to be a full time programmer, but it’s nice to know how stuff works atleast. I might even experiment with some things on my blog, who knows.

Now to the more interesting part… Games
This week has seen a mix of various games on my part. I played FFXIV and raided on Sunday and Wednesday. I also committed myself to Bard and finally managed to get her to 70. Due to the class sharing accessories with Ninja I instantly reached ilvl 320 as I dinged, which is quite nice. I also won the Susano bow yesterday evening in an FC event so I’m all ready to play Bard! I really like the AF3 gear so I’m totally going to use it as glamour. I may default to Bard a bit more for my roulettes aswell since I really miss the ranged gameplay and the class is just seriously fun.
Next to FFXIV I also reinstalled Guild Wars 2 this past week and got playing. Due to me being completely out of the game I rolled up a new character, Norn ranger, and just headed off into the Wayfarer Foothills. Which by the way is a really pretty zone. I think this is an ideal game to just run around in a few hours a week for some casual and story driven gameplay when I get overwhelmed or bored with FFXIV. A post with some GW2 screenshots and a post with my Bard to 70 screenshots will probably appear later this week.
On the non MMO front I’ve finally finished Ducktales Remastered and I’ve started a new adventure in Pokémon White 2, which I talked about a bit already yesterday. It’s probably going to be my go-to game on the train next to some fiddling around in the Pokémon Moon postgame. I also jumped in on the I am Setsuna sale for the Switch and may break that out after I finish the whole Pokémon grind. I’m not 100% sure though but we will see.

All in all I’ve done a lot of gaming related stuff this week, which mostly revolved around FFXIV and GW2. Next week I don’t plan to deviate from this a lot except I will have to find a new class to level in FFXIV. I’m doubting between Dragoon and Red Mage purely because I’ve been getting Dragoon gear from my Savage runs and Red Mage is just an exceptionally fun class to play. I know it’s another DPS after I’ve already leveled two, but I don’t really care anymore at this point. The queues are manageable and during the time inbetween I can easily farm FATEs and hunt marks for additional experience. It’s how I did it on Bard and it worked out just fine.
I will also poke around in GW2 a bit to get my ranger up. I want to finish atleast the Wayfarer Foothills this week, which shouldn’t take me too long. I also want to make some progress in Pokémon White 2. Not sure how much time I’m going to spend on it but I hope to be able to beat atleast the first gym there.

In real life I’m going to focus on my thesis and on the IT course. I’m not sure how much time I will actually spend on it but the pressure is starting to really turn on to get this stuff finished and I’m really motivated to do so. It’s about time I’d be done with Uni once and for all.

A Skipped Generation No More!

sandrian

So, I may have talked about the fact that I’m a huge Pokémon fan before but if you haven’t noticed it, I really am. My first game was Pokémon Blue and I have atleast one game of every generation that has ever come out, bar one: the Black & White 2.
At the time I thought it was nonsense to get a game that was in fact the same as another one with maybe a new legendary Pokémon so I never looked much at the generation. Over the years I heard that there were some significant differences between the original B&W versions and the V2 ones and slowly I started to wonder if I did the right thing by skipping this generation entirely. Fast forward to the present and GameFreak is going the same thing to a new series with UltraSun and UltraMoon. I figured that if I was going to pick one of those up out of curiousity I might aswell go back in time and pick up the one generation I skipped in the form of Pokémon White 2. After a bit of searching I had one of my coworkers pick up the game on Wednesday from the town where he lives and I got it delivered to me on Friday.

My first impressions of B&W2 are positive. Even though it’s a 5 years old game the graphics still hold up quite well. It’s the familiar Pokémon recipe and so far the hand helding has been quite minimal. The game really plays into the whole “you need to have played B&W before this” theme with references to two years ago from the moment you start up this game. Unfortunately for me my Black playthrough has been so long ago that I barely remember it. For instance I had forgotten how much of a futuristic/technical vibe they were trying to go with this generation and after the silly island stuff from Sun and Moon this is quite a nice difference. I do realize that all the online features have closed but f or me it’s not really about the cutting edge, I just want to play through the game for the story and to experience the one generation I’ve not played. So if I can do that in the form of beating the Elite 4 and do the postgame content I’m happy. I chose Oshawott as starter this time seeing as I chose the grass starter in my original Black playthrough and I really dislike Tepig and it’s evolutions. Oh as starter it’s a cute little piggy but I really dislike his final evolution and the one from Oshawott is quite doable. This game really wastes no time to get you going either. Your mom is a very proactive person at the start. Apparently she’s friends with Professor Juniper and gets’ a phonecall that she sent her assistant your way with a Pokémon and a Pokédex. Mom then tells you it’s time for you to start your journey. Well okay then, it’s not like I have a choice here?
You meet your rival at the start and you get your Pokémon and the Pokédex from Bianca, who apparently did something in B&W aswell before you’re sent out to catch your first Pokémon and head to the next town. That’s the introduction really. Not as hand holding as X&Y are or SuMo. Obviously you battle your rival at the start but from there you’re on your own.
I made it to the second city, catching a Furrloin and a Patrat along the way and promptly I got ambushed by Alder (who is also from the original B&W) who wants to “train” me. Oh boy. This is kind of where I stopped with the game. It was late and I wanted to think if I really wanted to start this game properly now when I was actually focused on doing the postgame content in Moon. However since I need some inspiration for my blog and I can do a main Pokémon game and the Moon postgame at the same time I’m just going to go ahead with this White 2 playthrough and hopefully make some nice to read blogposts about it, even though the game is old and most people have probably beaten it by now. I still like to talk about it though.

So yeah going to poke around in Pokémon White 2 and talk about it here while also finishing the post game in Moon, and maybe talk about that here. All in all I gave myself enough to do for now and next to FFXIV and my recent return to GW2 I’m pretty sure I’m saturated when it comes to games.