It's been a busy enough summer that I haven't been able to keep up on the writing side (save for a Catalinapost) so here's a mega-synopsis.


With season passes and weeklong gaps between summer school/camps, Dani has done a few laps of the zoo. The 9:00-10:30 timeframe is perfect - no crowds and most of the animals are actually doing stuff:

• The cheetah trotted laps
• The rhino played with a 50-gallon drum
• The polar bears walked around
• The cougars crunched on bones and came up to the edge of their pen

Of course, the splash pad is great too.



Chrissy, Ted, and Mom came down for some beach time and a trip to Legoland. We've done every coaster now and the little one finally got to drive on the renovated racetrack.



There have been a few birthday parties and a Derrick BBQ



Jack and Jon came down for a few days. We did beach trips, pool time, and a full loop of the Safari Park.



Between events and outdoorsy stuff: making submarine crafts, Legos/Duplos, and - of course - some technical analysis ͥ .



Chrissted, Jes, and I pulled off an unlikely win in the final month of Pandemic Legacy S2. We hadn't unlocked Oceania so we didn't have a ton of red city cards. We managed to get one and cycle it between the discard pile and Sasha who was tasked with performing the delivery (vague for spoilers). Even so, without some excellent shuffle luck with our improved infection cards I don't think it would have ended well.

Dani inherited the leftover stickers. The colorful character pictures weren't all that impressive but she really loved the city population stickers that could be used to enumerate her various animals. When she asked what the game was about I dodged the zombie/death parts and explained that because of a sickness everyone has to move to floating cities on the water to be safe. Her response, "So it's like the cat game?", referring to Stray where a global pandemic forces everyone into giant domes.


The work crew finished up our Scythe campaign. I've done well with the Legacy games but I was complete trash at this one. Next up is Elder Scrolls, followed by Clank Legacy 2 when Chase gets back.


I rambled enough about video games last time but had a couple cute pics of the kid organizing PS5 boxes and walking around a nonviolent part of AFE.


I did not jump at the opportunity but it looks like this year I'm moving up from AC to Head Coach. The US Soccer coaching license material was not horrible but mostly targeted at U8s and above.

Moment of unzen: the instructions were to click back to the previous slide to see an arbitrary cone layout, then drag each cone to match it.

In the days before platinuming video games was a thing, we had unofficial achievements that didn't show up in an online profile. One such achievement was the then-daunting challenge of gathering all 120 stars in Mario 64. My last few weeks in gaming felt a bit like that star chase.


In the past couple of months, Dani and I worked through the Sackboy main game, beat Vex, and unlocked the challenging bonus world. The 275 dreamer orbs required to access the final level reminded me very much of Sackboy's spiritual ancestor (Mario 64, in case that wasn't obvious).

Considering the difficulty of some of the time trials, I was relieved to find that you don't need all of the dreamer orbs in the game to reach the 275 mark.


Anyway, Sackboy has been a wonderful experience for both of us. While the game's difficulty quickly became too much for the little one to handle solo, the drop-in/drop-out mechanic and visual appeal of the game kept her engaged.


I was briefly alarmed when Scarlet appeared to have suffered an on-camera death by Vex's hand. Luckily she's a "tough old bird" and didn't leave me needing to have any tricky conversations. I also managed to contain the expletives induced by having the analog-pressure R2 button perform the binary grab/no-grab duties.

Co-op

Since the kiddo was fully invested in the entirety of Sackboy, she earned her very own controller.


With two controllers we could take on the half-dozen co-op levels. Dani mastered the jump-throw quickly but we needed to call upon Mommy and even Grandma for a few of the trickier parts.

New game=

We then started a new game with Dani's profile. She's confident with jumps, getting better about being around bad guys, but wants to be carried through parts that require timing.

New game-

We checked out Sackboy's predecessor, LittleBigPlanet 3 since it's also on PS+. LBP3 has many of Sackboy's mechanics but in 2D. It's also creepier and considerably more British.


Over in the Forbidden West, Aloy no longer has need for failed hot air balloon experiments because she has a Sunwing. The Horizon late game has all the goodies: flight, top-tier machine overrides, and story:


Much of the core game is semi-aimless exploration and Ubi tower-clearing, so the third act is a welcome change.

From my last HFW post:

Me	It made sense to bypass the purps ͥ and aim for legendary gear that would carry through to the final fight. Turns out, these aren't easy to get either. Some weapons are rewards for finishing the collectibles/challenges scattered throughout the map (rebel outposts, ruins, races, etc.).

The arena gear is still beyond reach for me but I've slowly upgraded the infiltrator outfit and the Tenakth Tactician clothes that remove the machine override timer (happily, even if you switch to them post-override). The Sun Scourge is pretty good for elemental damage and I've picked up a few sidequest- and completion-related legendaries. Upgrading looks like a huge grind, particularly when many are gated by taking down a Fireclaw/Frostclaw (bear) without shooting it in the chest.

Story progression (spoilers)

The Ted Faro bunker sequence had some compelling elements - dark themes and riffing on Silicon Valley megalomaniacs (/Bond villains/Adrian Veidt).


Horizon's dialogue is largely bland, conversations conclude ways that are obvious at their outset. That said, the Tilda sequence was well-written and provided some lore that was considerably more interesting than "my tribe is trying to heal the land through song" or whatever.

Also

• Climbing El Cap
• San Francisco
• Two Idiots One Keyboard ͥ but with holograms

Mine and J's Shadow of the Erdtree campaign has concluded on the doorstep of Promised Consort Radahn (the final boss). I'm considering a solo run at him after some item-gathering and confidence-finding.

Ancient Ruins of Rauh

In Elden Ring it's easy to turn left at a fork in the road and completely forget to come back and go right. Such was the case with unlocking the expansive Ancient Ruins of Rauh. Rauh wasn't my favorite area but it was a welcome alternative to bouncing off of the unfinished optional bosses that I'll mention below.

On the subject of mandatory bosses, Romina had J ready to toss Shadow of the Erdtree straight out the nearest window - not helping the matter is that due to time zones one of us makes use of stimulants while the other can sip frosty depressants. After collecting some erdleaves I gave Romina a try with my second-bestie, Black Knife Tiche and succeeded after a few attempts. It certainly helped that I finally looked up what Revered Spirit Ashes are. Romina was definitely harder when we went at her in J's game but we eventually took her down.

That left only the final area...

Enir-Ilim (spoilers)

Enir-Ilim looks and plays a bit like Crumbling Farum Azula which, for me, is one of the more iconic parts of the base game. It could be argued that the iconic areas of Elden Ring are actually the lake of rot, the subterranean lake of rot, and - of course - the pool of rot in the rot castle with the lady who has a rot flower AoE.

Since I am a glass-of-rot-is-half-full kind of guy, I choose to remember the nicer areas like the floating castle, the huge gothic castle, the volcano castle, and all of the places you'd find message saying "Behold, gorgeous view!"

Where was I? Oh yeah, Enir-Ilim is SOTE's final gauntlet ͥ climb from the lowly cliffs of Rauh to the final boss arena. It has all of the important gauntlet elements:

• Linearity with a few loot nooks
• Tough NPC duels
• Clusters of weaker enemies
• Snipers and traps

I enjoyed the Enir-Ilim ascent and yet, considering the difficulty of Elden Ring and the bosses bookending Enir-Ilim, it could have been more of an endurance challenge (longer, fewer/no save points). Certainly I'd trade 50 boss retries for a few EPIC TOWER ASCENT failures.


At the end of the climb is a battle between the tarnished and each questgiver whose arc was completed. Most are foes, some are allies. The NPC brawl wasn't a cakewalk but since invading characters don't have the frustrating mechanics of bosses, it felt like the closest thing to a fair fight in all of Elden Ring.

Back down

When we reached Radahn's fog door it was late in the evening for one of us so we checked out his cinematic and got quickly destroyed. We've heard/read that Radahn is difficult to an unfun degree so we moved on. I'm planning to give him the ol' college try, though, hoping that Tiche and being overleveled(?) will win the day as it did with Placi.

Tooling up

Wiki comments on Radahn gave me a few laughs, some tactics, and a decent shopping list. The consensus seems to be that Radahn can be beaten by hiding behind a shield and getting the occasional poke in. Easier said than done, of course, but fetching the black knight shield took me to an area I had missed.

Ultimately, one's Radahn build is an exercise left to the reader, so it's important to consider his vital stats:

• 40% damage negation across the board except 20% against pierce and 0% against holy in phase one (back to 40% in phase two)
• Equivalent susceptibility to all ailments (immune to madness and deathblight, of course) except more susceptible to scarlet rot in phase one
• Does standard, pierce, magic, fire, and holy damage as well as bleed

The fextralife comments section offered some tips and options:

• Use rot pots to do ninety seconds of DOT ͥ
• Have Miqella's great rune equipped to overcome a charm effect
• Have stamina buffs to block combos
• Use Black Steel Greathammer
• Use Deflecting Hardtear which gives spontaneous guards, lasts five minutes, and is acquired from the Scorched Ruins Furnace Golem
• Tank aggro while Latenna whittles him down, Glovewort Crystal Tear increases summon damage by 7.5% for three minutes

Optional bosses

Since Romina wasn't horrible with Tiche and Dryleaf Dane in my ranks, I hopped around the unbeaten optional bosses from our DLC campaign:

• Gaius was unpleasant. Since his charge is nigh-impossible to dodge, Anvil Hammer (below) saved my bacon with its blocking ability. There are a half-dozen scadutree fragments on the other side of Gaius so I persevered through many attempts to get the loot
• I fought Putrescent Knight without Thollier since I'd already been to Enir-Ilim. It didn't matter, Tiche is a beast.
• Scadutree Avatar was doable in two tries with the Anvil Hammer and a mimic
• Metyr also went down easily with Tiche
• Summons aren't allowed against Jolan and Ymir so I guess my summons aren't hard carrying

With my dex at 80 and a fair number of points in str, the Anvil Hammer was viable.

I never had a good fire weapon so I used the finger ruins remembrance duplication to finally get the Blasphemous Blade. Yes, choosing this weapon originally is a no-brainer but only if you've done your research.

Dragons

Dragons are completely irrelevant to my build but why not? Senessax gave me a little trouble but Bayle was easy at level 200 with Ahab and Tiche.

A couple more screencaps

Messmer, Cerulean Coast, Sealing Tree:



Me and J are cautiously optimistic about Borderlands 4 but need some gaming between now and then. We've read good things about Abiotic Factor - namely that it's a survival game without the annoying elements of a survival game. The trailer and first ten seconds of it felt very Half-life-y. Alas, my Windows/gaming boot is suffering from some weird issues related to Steam or unnecessarily-invasive Razer software.

We'll jump into this one as soon as we finish the last chapter of...


Aliens: Fireteam Elite asks the question, "What if Left 4 Dead took place in the Alien universe?" Because the Left 4 Dead games were so so so good, many have asked a similar question, including the creators of Vermintide 2, one or more of the Warhammer games, and the unofficial L4D sequel Back 4 Blood. Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic also borrow heavily from the core gameplay of L4D.


Regarding the question posed above, I think the devs just said "yes, of course" and got to coding. Zombies were replaced with aliens, special infected were replaced with larger aliens having identical abilities to their undead predecessors (charging, leaping, tanking), cities were replaced with spacecraft and ruins. Considering how resilient the xenos are in the films and horror games, its a bit weird to mow down swarms of them in AFE but that's the kind of thing one can get over.


Weyland-Yutani androids constitute a third faction that change up the combat from point defense to cover shooter.


AFE is actually more like Back 4 Blood than L4D2. There are upgradable weapons, character classes, and special abilities. Equippable 'challenge cards' modify the gameplay and provide bonus rewards.


The left L4D games didn't really have a story, narrative depth came from environmental sequences like Ellis's ramblings, Whitaker's cola search, the Midnight Riders, and Jimmy Gibbs Jr. AFE has a story that is on-brand with the Alien franchise and yet since you're primarily just running and gunning, the only indications that you're in a story are the occasional expository environments/radio messages.

The tldr

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is an upgrade on the classic Left 4 Dead experience. Yet it somehow doesn't feel like one. Regardless, I'm happy to give it a playthrough.

		Can I type whatever I want?		Dani
Me	Sure.
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	I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith made sushi? Yeah, his mom took him to a sushi place for his birthday and he didn't want to go, but he turned out he LOVED it, man. But it's like 10 bucks a su-sho in one of them places, so Keith figures, "Hey, how hard can it be to roll up some raw food in seaweed," right? As it turns out, it's hard. Now, they say experience is the best teacher, and experience taught Keith that if you ever eat three pounds of raw chicken, it kills you. Now luckily, Keith's brain went into self-defense mode and started shutting organs down to head the chicken off at the pass, and the doctors were able to get 'em out before his heart stopped. But to this day, Keith has no sensation in his right foot, and he doesn't recognize his own brother Paul no more.	�
	From Ellis in Left 4 Dead 2 (pic unrelated)