Random Sunday Post

I’ve been struggling a bit today about what I wanted to write.
After watching the finals of the Mid Season Invitationals of League of Legends this morning I wanted to talk about the e-sports scene and how Korea seems to be miles ahead of the rest of us, and why this influences games in general.
Then after reading Belghasts post about being burned out on blogging, after an earlier post by him earlier in the week about being burned out on MMO’s, I wanted to write a bit about that subject aswell. Not that I’m burned out on blogging myself, au contraire, I have so many things I still want to talk about, they are just not necessarily all game related.
A few hours later I read a tweet by one of the LoL shoutcasters I follow and I wanted to write about how it must be the weirdest experience ever to get famous with games and have thousands of fans (and haters). How to deal with all of it and how happy I am to be relatively anonymous.

Yet I just can’t seem to find the right words to fit these topics. I’m struggling to grasp the essence to what I really want to say, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because they are all subjects that are hard to deal with, maybe because there are some other more important things I want to talk about first. I don’t really know.
All I know is that there are a lot of things happening right now that I just can’t really seem to grasp and thus I’m not sure on how to write about these things either. The ideas are there, however I can’t seem to put my words properly on paper.
Perhaps this is the true essence of having a so called “writer’s block?”.

Flipping The Switch

As I went to the gym last Thursday I felt like I needed to change up my life. I visit the gym every so often, really not enough to produce a nice result and most of my weight loss from the past few months has actually come from changing my eating habits. Getting more health problems and just not being happy with myself in general I decided to get in touch with a Personal Trainer via the gym I workout at. Lo and behold he returned my email yesterday and we have made an appointment for next Thursday. I really hope he can get me on track with my weight loss goal, because I’m just really sick and tired about how I feel and look for a very long time now.
Being only 1.60m tall and weighing 72 kg is a lot. For a healthy BMI my maximum weight should be 60 kg and ideally I need to be around 55. So as you can see I’m already 12kg above what I should weigh as maximum and 17 kg above my ideal weight. So I set my goal to lose 15kg over the summer, boiling down to about 5kg a month. Seeing as I’ve been able to lose 7kg in one month the moment I started my job working for the mail I’m positive I can reach 5kg a month with daily workouts, provided I do them right. It’s a really big step for me to take. I have the motivation this time around and with someone helping me out I’m sure I can do it. I’ll keep you guys updated!

Breakdown
In other news, work has been awful. With our team coordinator gone I’ve had to step up a lot seeing as I’m the person with the most knowledge besides her in the team. Monday was a real bitch with lots of issues that needed to be solved, so I was happy when I was mostly off the hook on Tuesday and Wednesday. Yesterday however, we were already with less people than normal. An hour into our regular workday one of my coworkers started experiencing extreme chestpains. We rushed her to the resident company doctor who contacted her own GP. Although her symptoms weren’t bad enough for her to be taken to the hospital, we did have to take her home with a prescription for heavy painkillers. So off she went and suddenly I was alone and the entire planning of the day got turned upside down. I’m pretty sure we didn’t do a lot of things we should have done, but with a medical emergency I can’t really blame myself or anyone else that our day was more or less in shambles. This did result into me just collapsing into bed after dinner (I hadn’t been sleeping well at all the night before due to my room being 25 degrees) and waking up at 00.30 feeling very confused as to where I was.
It’s not really healthy to be this tired and needing this much sleep, but yesterday kind of broke me. Although I love my job and I hope to stay there for a long time and slowly work my way up in the company, I notice that I just need vacation and relax. Luckily it’s only 3 more weeks untill I have two weeks off, so really looking forward to that.

Tieing in with this work fatigue is that my desire to game has been reduced to nearly zero. I’m just really too tired to pick up anything and having to think. Thus I’ve spent most of my free time watching game streams or just resting, hoping that the permanent tiredness will go away. The fact that I have a three day weekend now might just encourage me enough to put atleast some time into a game, seeing as I have a bit more time to spend.

The Good
Now not to be a negative nancy throughout this blogpost, I do have some good news to share. Well good for me atleast.
Ever since I got my driver’s license about 6.5 years ago I’ve been driving around in my father’s car. I had one small accident where I scraped the nose of the car across the wall, damaging the paint, but other than that I’ve been accident free. Now he and his girlfriend have bought a new car for themselves, to drive in, meaning that I will more or less have our old car for myself. Of course there are restrictions, but knowing I can just take the car whenever I want without having to ask first is really nice. It shaves off a lot of time when it comes to visiting some of my friends (45 mins drive vs 1.5 hours with public transport) and it gives me some freedom to pick people up myself, instead of always waiting to be chauffeured.
So yeah, some more mobility is very welcome and I’ll definately make use of it!

All in all I hope I can use this weekend to get some desperately needed rest and relaxation and find my gaming vibe again. There’s many things I still want to do and it helps if I can get myself to just log in and go.

Pokémon Day!


Unless you’ve virtually been living under a rock, Nintendo made a few announcements about the new and upcoming Pokémon games, Sun and Moon, today. They officially released the release date for both Japan/US (November 18th) and Europe (November 23rd). I already have it bookmarked in my agenda and have the Moon version pre-ordered.
With the announcement came a look at the three new starter Pokémon. I made my choice immediatly, I’m going for Rowlett the Grass/Flying Pokémon (first time for that type combination too!). The visuals you saw in the trailer so far looked stunning. Game Freak decided to go with an Hawaiian theme for this game and I’m very curious to see how it pans out. Ofcourse this means I will have to hurry along and finish my other Pokémon games before this new one hits. Which means figuring out where I was in Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and finish atleast the Elite Four and Delta Episode on that and finally get to play through Pokémon X completely. And yet here I am playing Pokémon Blue.
I’m not sure why I’m enjoying that emulator much more than the newer games, but I think a lot of it has to do with childhood nostalgia. It’s also a much harder game compared to the newest installments and everytime I advance it feels like I’ve overcome a real challenge. Right now I’m at Vermillion City beating some trainers along the route down there and waiting to board the S.S. Anne so I can get my first HM: Cut. Having traded with my co-worker (who owns Red) I’m now the proud owner of an Oddish, Ekans and Mankey. All Pokémon normally unobtainable in Blue. I even put Mankey in my standard team of 6, replacing Nidorina, and take it to face the S.S. Anne and subsequently the third Gym with me.

Work, Fatigue and New Lipstick
I wish I could come up with a better, more hyped up post about the Pokémon announcement and delve a bit deeper into it, but the truth is I’m just very tired. Having slept badly for two nights in a row, getting less than 6 hours of sleep in, I have felt like a zombie all day. Having to go to your job while the only thing you want to do is lay your head on a pillow and sleep isn’t the most fun to do, especially since Tuesday is usually a messy and busy day for us… I was happy when I got out at 17.00.

The happiness to come home got strengthened by my two new lipsticks arriving. I may have mentioned it before but I’ve become hugely into make-up over the last few years and have now switched from the common retail brands to the more exclusive brands as my skill with applying make-up goes up. It sounds so very cliché but I do really  notice the difference between lipsticks and foundation between the shelf brands and the prestige brands. So seeing my two new MAC pink lipsticks in a neat box today made me really happy. I’ve already packed one to put on for when I go to work tomorrow, it’s a soft baby pink, and the other one I tried on right as I got home. It’s a bright pink and I love it. Next to looking great they also smell great so I really have no regrets from this purchase at all!

All in all the Pokémon announcement coupled with my lipsticks finally arriving has made my day a lot more positive than I imagined it would be getting up this morning. Now I just need to make sure I get to bed in time and the world will look much brighter when I wake up tomorrow…

Hype?

With the announcement of the new Battlefield game it feels like the internet has exploded once again. Set in World War 1 it seems Dice is catering to a call coming from a big part of the FPS community that they want games going back to the past instead of games that look to the future.

Personally I wonder if it’s good to “hype up” games like this. I feel like the gaming community is hopping from one game to another. Creating massive expectations only to be disappointed in the long run. I’ve seen it happen to so many games and expansions now that I don’t even bat an eyelash anymore when another game get’s marked as “the next big thing”. We’ve all seen what happened to Destiny, The Division, Warlords of Draenor, ArcheAge. They were all games who promised to do something different, something new. Something worth spending your money on. In the end they were all disappointments in one way or another. Destiny didn’t deliver what they had promised at launch, basically being a ghost of the previews of the game given earlier. The Division had an amazing launch but fell off after people started to reach max level. Their first real added content was a major disappointment, not to mention the countless and countless of cheaters and hackers and bots in the Dark Zone. It really makes the game unfun to play.
Warlords of Draenor had a great launch but turned out to be Blizzard’s most disappointing expansion yet, next to Mists of Pandaria. I hope and pray that Legion won’t suffer the same fate, but I’m fairly skeptical. It’s why I can’t get really excited for the expansion and I actually shy away from all the information that’s being spread by people playing the Alpha. I’m happier if I just go into the game completely blank and then experience everything for the first time, like I used to do.
And now we have Battlefield. I’m personally not a fan of the genre, although I did play Battlefield 3. Shooters in general make me nervous and especially ones that are more PvP oriented. One of the few reasons I can stomach Divison and Destiny is because PvE is such a big part of the game, that I can just avoid PvP entirely and still enjoy my experience. So I’m not hyped up for this game at all, which might be good for my wallet in the end.

What is hype?
I want to take things a step further and say that I’ve honestly not been really hyped for any game release for a very long time. There’s a few games I really want to have, Ratchet and Clank was one of them, but I’ve not been scouring the internet for every breadcrumb of information about X game, intensifying my expectations and excitement about it releasing. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really grow up as a gamer, maybe because it’s just not in my nature to get excited about stuff like this. It’s not just games where I don’t have this. I’ve never been super excited to see X movie coming out either or X show. The only thing I can be excited about are books. I can’t wait untill the 6th installment of a Song of Ice and Fire comes out, like I couldn’t wait to get my  hands on the new Harry Potter book all those years ago.
But hyping up games? It’s not in my nature. I will look forward to a new installation in the Pokémon universe, I will look forward to a new World of Warcraft or FFXIV expansion coming out. I look forward to a new Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy game. But that’s about it.
Instead I get excited when I know I’m going on vacation. Or when I know I’m going to see a concert, or visit a special event, or meet up with a friend I haven’t seen in a while.
But games and their hype? I will never really understand.

Creative Blogger Award

Today, or well technically yesterday, the lovely Chestnut of Gamer Girl Confessions nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award. Apparently this means I have to write a post! I’m not fuzzy about it though since I’m still laying low on the gaming side due to being tired and not wanting to hurt my wrist more than I already have. So here I am writing this post instead!
I got in touch with Chestnut during the Blaugust month last August and I’ve been following her blog ever since. I love how passionate she is about Wildstar and I would probably play the shit out of it in her guild, if I wasn’t literally on the other side of the globe. Which makes me sad. Not having the same timezone sucks!

  • So yeah, apparently this CBA comes with rules.
    First one: thank the person that nominated you for being nominated (thanks Chestie!) and include a link to their blog (points up).
  • Second: Post five facts about yourself.
  • Number three: Nominate 15-20 ppl of your own (never going to make that)
  • Fourth: Notify the ppl you have nominated
  • Last: Post the rules so everyone will know what to do!

Now that we have that out of the way…

Fact number one
I am notoriously bad with finishing games. Like really. I will buy a game, play 3-4 hours of it, will love it to death and then shut down and never look back. I have so many games lying around with a few hours into them that I want to finish but never do… And instead of going through my backlog of games I keep buying more and more. I’m a disaster!

Fact number two
I am addicted to Diet Coke (or Coca Cola Light as it’s called here).  I can’t go without it for even a day. Although I have brought down my daily intake to two glasses a day now I still can’t seem to just stop drinking it. I guess it’s the combination of caffeine and coke!

Fact number three
Even though the post count on this incarnation of the blog goes back to 2013 I have actually been blogging longer than that. My old blog is deleted however, so I can’t really look back on what I did before Aeternus Gaming, but my blogging career stretches back way into 2011.

Fact number four
I’m actually a very huge lover of make-up despite having bad, dry skin. I’ve invested a lot of money into building a decent collection and my favourite make-up item is lipstick and lipbalm. Especially Baby Lips by Maybelline has been a bit of an obsession for me and I have about 7 of them lying around my room and bags. But lately I’ve been buying more expensive brands, branching out into MAC and Clinique.

Fact number five
If my ex didn’t introduce me to World of Warcraft I probably wouldn’t be a gamer right now. Before WoW I would only casually game in the form of some Sims or Zoo Tycoon. WoW became a real addiction and even though I play much less than I used to in general, it actually turned me into a Gamer and, consequently, a Gaming Blogger. So thank my ex for me being here!

Now onto the nominations. I actually don’t have that many people I follow, but the few I do haven’t been nominated as of yet (I think?)

Missy of Sparks in the Horizon
Belghast of The Aggronaut

So that’s it folks! Hope you enjoyed the read.

Taking Mandatory Breaks

When I was young, I used to practice gymnastics. A lot of my teammates used to train with either wrist or ankle straps on. I was one of the latter uses. I had weak ankles and would bruise them fast. Luckily for me the balance beam, bridge and floor parts weren’t an issue as that’s more acrobatics and balance than speed and strenght. The jump however was my big enemy and I would often bruise my ankle by either sprinting up to the trampoline or board or landing wrong after my jump. So whenever I had to practice that particular part or perform during a gymnastics match I would make sure my ankles were taped in properly so stuff like that wouldn’t happen.

Fast forward about 15 years and I’m at risk for injury once again, only this time it’s my wrist and it’s caused by excessive usage of the mouse. Especially now that I have landed a job in datamanagement/IT I notice that I can’t really game as intensively as I used to and that I need to pay attention to the signs my body gives me way earlier than I’m used to.
I got confronted with this very hard after a four hour playsession on Diablo 3 last night. Now ofcourse Diablo is a very mouse intensive game so getting your wrist hurt is easier there, but honestly it really quite scared me. The fact that my wrist still seems to hurt today only emphasizes that taking regular breaks in gaming is very much necessary. Not only because it’s better for my wrist, it’s also much better for one’s health in general to not sit down for hours at a time.
Even at work I get up every two hours so I think I really want to enforce that policy during home play aswell.

It’s not just the wrist. I notice my back and bottom start hurting after a while aswell. Sitting is literally causing harm and I don’t want that. So even though I want to do all these things in all these games, I also need to take things in moderation. Especially when I notice it’s taking it’s toll on my body. And right now on some days it really is.
I guess getting older really is starting to show. I remember playing for hours straight on World of Warcraft when i was 20 years old. I just can’t do that anymore. And in a way, that’s a good thing.

Flooding

Literally getting my feet wet
When I came home on Wednesday evening I was in for a nasty surprise. Getting upstairs and into my bedroom after dinner I discovered quite an amount of water on my bedroom floor, courtesy of a leak. A combination of a partially clogged gutter near my skywindow and a ridiculous amount of marble sized hail proved to be a fatal combination to handle for the outside works thus “flooding” my room with water.
Luckily for me the area with my bed, desk and clothes closet was spared, thus leaving me breathing a sigh of relief as I saw all my electronics being intact and not having to deal with a wet bed. The only real victim of this whole ordeal has been the rug I used for under my deskchair, which is now sitting in the outside garbage bin because it was completely soaked. It didn’t give up without a fight though, seeing as it left behind quite a big chunk of rubber remains that I have for the most part scrubbed off the floor yesterday.
All in all not the best two days for me personally.  I have been quite sore all over today due to having to scrub the damn rubber off the floor and assisting my dad with maintenance work on my roof. Having to hold a tilted skywindow over your head for about 20 minutes is a real test to your arms, can tell you that much.

Picross Madness
I posted earlier this week about My Nintendo, Miitomo and the rewards program and mentioned that I had gotten The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess: Picross game.
I really love Picross. It’s one of those games that has you think about your moves and keeps your brain healthy. Combine it with a game series I’m really starting to get into and you have a gem of a game. I’m currently over 2/3rd of the way completed when it comes to the game. There are three modes of play: Picross, Mega Picross and Miicross.
Picross is the original game with the numbers and squares. You can opt into hints or not and after the inital tutorial there are 45 puzzles to complete ranging from 10×10 squares to 20×15 squares.
Mega Picross is the same puzzle buildup only with a twist in the puzzles themselves. Instead of having rows and colums seperately with numbers they have replaced some of them with numbers that span two rows or colums at the same time, making the puzzle a bit more challenging to complete (See picture below, it’s from Pokémon Picross but the same idea).

The last play mode option, Miicross, is a very large picture broken up into about sixty 10×10 puzzle grids. Solve them all and you unlock the picture.

So far I’ve completely solved the normal Picross mode and the Miicross and am now steadily working my way through the 10×10 grids in Mega Picross mode.
I find it a really nice puzzle game to play. I play it at home to relax after work or when I just don’t feel like starting up any of my machines. It’s also a nice way to spend the 15-20 mins on the train every day, making me be at my destination before I even notice.
The music is nice and not too annoying when played constantly and the graphics, as far as they matter, look good. The only downside so far has been that with the bigger puzzles the squares you need to tap to fill in get smaller and especially around the bottom edge of my screen it sometimes doesn’t really tap the right square, causing me to make an error and thus giving me a time penalty.
Time is  a thing is this game in so far that if you go over 30 mins in solving a puzzle you will not unlock the coloured picture. Going over 30 mins has proven to be almost impossible though, unless you keep on making mistakes so they have been really easy with that.

All in all I’ve really been enjoying this game and I feel like it’s a very good way to spend my first 1000 platinum points of the My Nintendo system. I’m currently saving up to get WarioWare Touched aswell, because free games are always awesome! And it will leave the programme at July 1st. With harking in around 200 coins every week though I should have that game on my 3DS in no time at all and have room to get both the Mario and Donkey Kong themes for my 3DS aswell.

Dietary Restrictions and PS4 Time

Last few weeks I’ve been slightly pigging out when it comes to food. March is a ridiculous month when it comes to birthdays so every weekend I was stuffing my face with all types of snacks, crisps, cake and other shit. Obviously this is bad when you’re trying to lose weight, so I’m putting myself back on some dietary restrictions. Trying to eat healthier (get some fruit instead of candy) and just eating less in general. I’m aiming for eating around 1200-1400 calories a day, mostly because 1200 is the minimum amount you  need to eat to keep on feeling healthy, and I don’t want my body to go into starvation mode.
Next to dietary restrictions I’m also trying to set some rules on my money spending habits. I’ve been spending a LOT of money on my new Wii U and getting games for it… So I should lay low for a while and stop spending. I’ve given myself a budget of €100 to spend each month on games and/or make-up. Seeing as Ratchet and Clank comes out in a few weeks that’s already some bucks gone, so I really need to think about what I want to buy next to that.

Seeing as it’s Easter, and I managed to get 5 days of free time due to lucky scheduling, I’ve been spending a lot of time just playing games. I can finally sit down for a longer time and get stuff done, instead of getting 2-3 hours of playtime in on a weekday where you can barely do a dungeon or mission in a game and then you need to start watching the clock to log off. I’ve also taken the opportunity to binge watch my way through Daredevil season 2 (which I loved) and start watching Jessica Jones (which I don’t nearly love as much). All in all I’m really using this elongated weekend to relax, play and get some “me” time in.

Sandrian Noble 19/03/2016 13:59:22

PS4 Shenaningans
I’ve been spending a lot of time playing on my PS4 in various games. Mostly FFXIV and The Division and I’ve been making some steady progress in both games.
In FFXIV I finally managed to get my hands on the Vath flying mount and oh my god it’s adorable. I really like the didgeridoo type of sound when it makes as I’m flying everywhere and it just reminds me of a really weird seahorse.
The Vath itself have been a silly but cute beasttribe. It reminded me in many ways of the Borg in Star Trek, and Square Enix did it’s best to incorporate some clear references to them aswell. I’m kind of sad that the Vath and Vanu Vanu appear to be the only beast tribes for this expansion, although you never know with Square Enix and maybe they will let us rank up with the Moogles aswell? Who knows.

Tom Clancy's The Division™_20160314230045

Division seems to be the hot game of the moment right now and ofcourse I couldn’t stay behind in playing it. Although I might not be as fast as most people playing, I’ve been making some steady progress. I really love roaming around in New York discovering stuff. I like taking my time and going into buildings and alleys and collecting all the random little lore bits, instead of just rushing ahead through the story without giving other things a second look.
I’m currently level 15 and roaming around in the Clinton District. I won’t deny that due to the nature of the game I’ve almost thrown my controller through the room in frustration multiple times. Shooters aren’t really my main genre and even if this is a more tactical one, I die a lot and am pretty bad in weapon handling.

The only real downside to Division for me seems to be the female character creator and the fact that lady characters absolutely look godawful if you give them a headpiece to wear. I’m really disappointed about this. Although Ubisoft clearly tried to attract a wider audience with this game, I wish they would actually not just give us variations of butch lesbian haircuts to choose from. Not to mention the seriously weird ass options you have for Caucasian female faces.
Ohwell.

 

Terror… Again.

Today has been surreal.
After the attacks in Paris a few months ago the world was shocked. Europe was shocked. It confronted us with people who had been operating in secret, in our supposedly private and safe world. It showed us that no matter how safe you think you are, there is always some lunatics willing to kill innocents for no good reason at all.
The last few weeks I’ve been eyeing the situation in Turkey, how there too innocent people fall victim to things they shouldn’t be involved in in the first place. The Turkey conflict has an extra dimension though, since they are in active conflict with the Kurds who default to guerilla tactics since army wise they will never win the conflict.
I look at the innocents getting caught and my heart bleeds. I don’t understand, and I will never understand, why innocent people need to get caught in the crossfire.

When I got the news about the attacs on Brussels this morning I was shocked. I have a good friend stationed for work there so the first thing I did was send him a message to make sure he was safe, and he was. After more news popped up things got more and more terrifying. Two explosions at the airport, another one at the metro network. All still in Brussels, but I couldn’t help but think that if I wanted to, I could take the train and be there in 1.5 hours.
When the first news arrived that here in the Netherlands around the Schiphol area they had locked down a trainstation and stopped multiple trains my initial shock began to turn into genuine fear. Schiphol is a major airport hub here and it’s really easy to get to from Brussels. What if they planned to come here too?
Luckily nothing actually happened, there were a few false alarms and thing were handled mostly correctly and quietly. But the fear never really ceased for me.

I’m terrified. I’m worried. I’m angry and I’m alone. I’m not questioning where the next strike will happen, because I’m positive my home country is one of their targets aswell. But I am wondering when, and that thought alone is enough to keep me terrified for a very long time.

I Need Energy Pills

Sunday evening, 21.00. We finally come home from yet another birthday. March is a really busy month and I haven’t had a weekend to myself at all. I notice I’m tired once again, a state I’ve been in for a very long time now and it’s starting to annoy me. All I want to do is sit on my ass and stare at my PC or tablet screen, not really doing anything useful.
I come home like this every day after work. It’s a crazy job with lots to do and at the end of the day I’m completely exhausted and happy to go home. But then the actual real struggle starts: staying awake and making use of my evening. I’ve been considering going to the gym after work, mostly because people say you get energy back from working out. However due to the fact that I still live at home, by the time I get to the gym it’s 20.00 because dinner comes first. At 20.00 I really can’t be arsed to haul my ass to the gym for an hour, come home, shower and then essentially head straight to bed. I want to spend my evening in a more fun way, so that’s out of the question.

I’m trying really hard to not lie down on bed after I get home or after I have eaten. I know that if/when I do, I’ll immediatly fall asleep and won’t wake up for the next 40-60 minutes, and after I do I only feel more tired than I was before.
So yeah, right now I could really use some energy pills to keep me going during the evenings and my day off. I have set many goals for myself this year, both on and offline, and I’m not really getting to any of them due to feeling tired all the time.
I’ve tried adjusting my food habits, and it has helped a bit. For now I just want to get into a rythm for my evenings so that I can relax after work, but still get stuff done without feeling like I just want to head to bed the moment I get home.

I think I also really need to enforce not taking my tablet or phone to bed with me anymore. It keeps me up for too long, the light makes my brain think it’s not sleeping time yet and I notice my sleep quality is much better if I just lie down and attempt to fall asleep, instead of scrolling through whatever website or app for an hour before my eyes finally fall shut. Because when I get a good night’s sleep, I wake up after 8-8.5 hours on my own, feeling rested and ready to take on the day. Instead of waking up and feeling like I just want to go back to sleep again immediatly.