Will you just look at the list of games played over the course of this week!? It was absolutely fantastic! Look at all the variety!? Look at it! Look at it! (SpongeBob reference there. 🙂 ) In truth the majority of it was mostly circumstance as it were, but I do love some of the variety! I’ll admit I’m a bit worried about trying to keep pace with the now 3 survival games we have in the list: No Man’s Sky, 7 Days to Die, and Conan Exiles. I love all 3 games, but they can be a bit rough on the amount of time it takes to progress, and trying to juggle 3 seems more than a tough challenge. (Technically there are 4 as Outward is effectively a survival based game as well). I am rather proud about the size of the crew we had available for 7 Days to Die mentioned below! It’s rare we get that many people in one game these days. And I love me some 7DtD! Ultimately the week/weekend was a bit of a somber note for me as I had two bouts of tummy issues (curse you paprika and peppers!), but even still, I managed to have fun and adventures with friends and family! You might note Thursday’s game play was a bit lacking, but we still managed some great times. Just away from computers, consoles, boardgames and what have you. We were at my sisters for a cookout, some fireworks, and family time!
Days played: Monday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: On Monday evening, my wife and I managed to complete our play through of the epic fairly tale adventure that is: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake. You can read more about the completion of the game on our website, here. It was a fantastic adventure, albeit, a sad ending. Even still, my wife and I enjoyed the game immensely! I will say it ended quite a bit faster than I had anticipated.
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Friday
Players: Hobbit
Comments: I had an early morning gaming session in NMS on both Monday and Tuesday! I have done similar gaming sessions in the past, although they have become quite rare for me these days. In both cases, I managed to just work on attempts to find a new place for my main head quarters. I’ve decided to track bases based on head quarters (HQ) and outposts (OP) for easier management. Outposts will usually just be a method for me to get to a planet with something I could use easily, while HQ bases will be larger and serve more than just that purpose. OP’s will be mostly a small prefab base. I think my first HQ will also consist of mostly prefab parts, and I’ll experiment with another ‘regular build’ at some point later on. On both days, I played for a bit before the work day started, and might have had an opportunity later in the evening to play around, although given the other scheduling even still (and if so) it wouldn’t have been long.
Late Friday night, after our 7 Days to Die shenanigans had come to a close, I logged into NMS and started work on my new headquarters base! As is my typical fashion, I lost track of time and ended up working on that base until the wee hours of the morning on Saturday. Is that the sun! O…M…G! I managed to get everything built and wired, although in hindsight I’m going to rewire the two alloy based rooms I placed in the middle of the prefabbed square rooms I put up. I need more lighting in both of them, and the current configuration would need to be reapplied for that to be feasible. In truth the wiring is an atrocity, but given the ability to hide the wiring, I admit, I’m just going to do that and not worry with the extra work of placing them appropriately as the base is large enough where that could easily add a couple extra hours of work.
Days played: Tuesday, Wednesday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: My wife and I initially had another game picked out to start our Tuesday evening. Unfortunately, that game didn’t quite make the cut. She didn’t care for the gameplay and camera angles, and in truth, the dynamic style shared split screen was wrecking me. Outward Definitive Edition was the next game Qvaid had in mind, and so our adventure began anew with Outward. We started out in the tutorial for a bit of a rocky start. Our skills were not working in the tutorial for our Xbox controllers. We decided to just scrap the attempt in the tutorial and see if hopefully the game performs better in regular play. Although it does seem like we might be a bit further down the story line before we can test the other skills and magic assignments for the buttons. We are hopeful that it will pan out in our favor. We didn’t manage to get too far in between the time on the previous game, the tutorial, and a start at the game. What little bit we did play through was certainly fun!
On Wednesday evening, my wife and I were back at it again in Outward. I picked up the The Soroboreans DLC, as it was on sale, and we seem to be enjoying the game. It is certainly a challenge, and we are in a bit of a struggle to survive, no doubt. Still there is fun and adventure to be had, and we are trying to make the most of it! We are still not far enough progressed to know whether the issue with the Xbox controllers will be present later, but it’s an ordeal we shall have to deal with once the time comes and we get more skills and magic to use later on. It’s a new experience, which is always fun especially at the start of the adventuring. Sadly, with the way scheduling worked out, we didn’t really manage any more time this week as we have in the past few. We had quite a few extra nights where we managed to sneak a bit more time in. Ultimately that is partially my fault as I worked on my HQ in NMS on the one night the gang called it early.
Days played: Wednesday, Thursday
Players: Hobbit
Comments: I was up early Wednesday morning for a start at a game I have often thought of playing: Hogwarts Legacy. Error (my son) gifted me this masterpiece recently, during the Steam Summer Sale! I did get a bit of a later start, as I walked through the WB link to the Harry Potter Fanclub site, and got my House sorted, wand, patronus, and profile setup. Ultimately, I felt it added a bit more to the starting experience, albeit, some frustration ensued until I setup an account for both wbgames and the fan club. Once all that was in order, I managed to get some time in before I had to call it to start my work day, which was a bit earlier than usual today. Such is life, no complaints. I mean you got to have them bills paid to play them games, amirite!? 🙂
Error and I logged some time on Thursday morning-ish while we prepared for an evening with the family for the 4th. Granted the game is single player so we were not playing together per se, but we still played none the less. In truth, I wasted the majority of my time playing with a puzzle I found in one of the rooms, and ultimately we didn’t have a lot of time to spare before things got busy and we had to log out.
Days played: Friday
Players: Error, Eldon, Falken, Iron, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: On Friday we had a relatively large crew of people in the server hosted by Iron! We were getting close to a horde night, but with the long days we have set on the server, we didn’t manage to make it to said time frame, albeit we got close. Iron and Falken had plans for the weekend, and said they probably wouldn’t make it back on, and after everyone called it a night, I logged into said server and created scripts to: Shutdown the 7 Days to Die Dedicated Server, swap the serverconfig.xml files so we can go from 4 hour days to 1 hour days, and reboot the server. From that point other scripts I have setup starts the 7 Days to Die Dedicated Server back up, and we play the horde night, then everyone logs out and we can hit the script for the 4 Hour Days which does the same thing, but swaps the config back for 4 Hour Days. As it were on this particular horde night, we were ultimately not prepared. Falken managed to login earlier on the day on Saturday and hide in a tunnel away from our encampments to get us passed it. Since more than half the crew already stated they wouldn’t be on, the remainder of us put our focus into a game Kilen was wanting to fire back up.
I couldn’t help but mention two funny stories that occurred. At some point all but one of us was literally thirsting to death in game. Turns out my son had found a water filter mod for the helmet/head gear in the game. He was fully hydrated out questing while we were making attempts to get a horde base ready on the wire. After I finished up I joined him and was also fully hydrated! The remainder of the group used the communal water filtering helmet after we returned. On that note, in my haste to log out, I ‘thought’ I put the helmet back, but it was still on my character. Iron got dysentery while attempting to drink from said communal water helm and was sure to let me know about his misfotune! Fret not! I logged back in and put it back, and even told him about the red tea in the supplies to help cure his aliments! 🙂
Days played: Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Eldon, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: Kilen purchased Conan Exiles and Isle of Siptah for Error (my son) and fired up a server for us to play on. Error, Eldon, Kilen, and myself pretty much spent a good portion of Saturday rolling through CE. Eldon later purchased the game and DLC Isle of Siptah after watching several of us stream it in our Discord Channel. We had quite a few great adventures! Eldon called it at some point to spend some time with his wife, Error called it a bit on the early side as the kids had woke him up early on Saturday, and I ended up calling it a night fairly early myself as I was sleep deprived from the night before and running out of steam.
On Sunday, Error, Kilen, and myself (Hobbit), logged back in for some more Conan based adventuring. Sadly for me, I was having some stomach issues which likely stemmed from accidental exposure to paprika or peppers of some sort (again as I had issues on Thursday), and I was afk for the majority of the adventures to be had. I ended up calling it earlier in the evening on Sunday and passing out early for a closure to the weekend. Error called it right before I did, and Kilen was left to his own devices for the remainder of the evening.
