Week End – Trion, GW2

Weekly news and observations.

In The News

In surprise news, Trion acquired Gazillion’s assets. It’s not all that surprising, actually. After their implosion, I would think Gazillion was selling everything at a deep discount, so why not pick up a whole library of a competitor’s source code? Trion also seems to be trying to turn themselves into something like SpatialOS, which, again, why not? It sounds like they’ll be renting out the technology they already use and maintain for their own games. The gaming industry is more about building game engines now than building games anyway. It’s turning into another record industry, where the artists (the game makers in this case) are the least important part. (Note: That might be a cynical viewpoint.)

Living World Season 4, Episode 3 went live in Guild Wars 2. There were some initial problems. I logged in and played through the first chapter/phase/part/whatever on Thursday and had no difficulties. See all previous comments regarding Guild Wars 2. There’s no need to write a new post. Nothing has changed. Whatever they spent extra time to work on is not evident to me. I myself spent a bunch of time editing out all of my sarcastic mutterings about the story and gameplay from the video I recorded. But it’s new and free, so there’s that.

The Fractured Kickstarter is live. For those who might be considerably less jaded than I am. I pretty much have a no-Kickstarter-games-ever-for-any-reason policy, unless I personally know the people behind it.

I think The Crew 2 is out now. I think it’s an MMO of some sort. I’m actually not sure about either of those things.

Defiance 2050 had an open beta last weekend, but I forgot about it.

My Week

The Dark Souls Remastered Casual Nostalgia Tour continues, but with considerably diminished hours due to controller fatigue and two rather irritating bosses: Manus, Father of the Abyss, and a stupid Black Dragon named Kalameet.

I’ve never defeated Kalameet before, and in fact, I quickly learned that I’ve barely ever tried before, because the mechanics are completely foreign to me. The “casual” part of the tour is definitely over with this guy. On the one hand, it’s very exciting to have a new thing to look forward to in Dark Souls, but on the other hand, there is potentially hours of trial and error ahead of me as I figure out how to actually defeat this monstrosity with my puny not-especially-good-at-combat Faith build.

In other weird news of interest to nobody but myself, I figured out how to record PS3 gameplay with OBS and a Razer Ripsaw. That means, you guessed it-because it’s that thing surely everyone wants to do in life-I can finally record a blind playthrough of Demon’s Souls! I’ve been waiting about three years to do this.

It will be doubly blind because the online servers for Demon’s Souls shut down earlier this year, so I won’t be able to see any player messages warning me about all the tricks and traps and secrets that surely infest every corner of the game. There is also that controller fatigue to consider here. The PS3 controller is not any easier on my already-aching hands than a PS4 controller. It’s really sort of depressing because every single game I’m interested in playing over the next couple of months is a controller game.

Bird update: The flycatchers abandoned their nest outside my back door earlier this week and vanished. :( I have no idea why. I’m learning that it’s really a terrible idea to become invested in wild birds and their nests because it’s mostly an object lesson in coping with unrelenting helplessness and uncertainty.