daily slice-of-life blog of a Gen-X dad
I enjoyed the Splatoon 3 pre-release splatfest event today. I tried out a couple of new weapons and checked out the new stages. Very cool! And I love the new squidling and octoling characters. They look awesome! I can’t wait for the game to be released next month. I am still going to try to master the splat-roller, which is super-fun.
Mariko is an avid gamer, but just with one game: Tsum-Tsum. It’s pretty much her well-deserved relaxing activity. We all need to decompress every once in a while!
A couple of weeks ago, I received a notification that Dragon Age: Inquisition was on sale, so I quickly bought it and installed. Several years ago I played Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II and finished both of them, which is rare for me with video games. I really enjoyed those two games. When the third game was released, my computer system was too underpowered to play it, so the game slipped off my radar. That was a full six years ago, and in that time, I have upgraded to a more powerful computer which has no trouble running the game at high detail, and I am absolutely loving Dragon Age: Inquisition!
The class/professions I choose for my characters vary, but for years my go-to race/gender in whatever fantasy RPG I play is a female elf. I think they just look the coolest (except in the Elder Scrolls games). This time, I went with a rogue-assassin for class, and I am having so much fun. I tend to play ranged characters (archers or mages), so playing a melee class is new, but I haven’t looked back.
What’s also great about playing a rogue as opposed to a mage is that the armor and weapon design is really cool. Dragon Age has always excelled in this respect, and it’s neat that the armor, weapons, and your character’s customizations all make it into the cutscenes. It’s like magic. I guess I’m old enough to remember when cutscenes were generic and not dynamically generated so this game design is still really neat to me.
What makes Dragon Age so fun for me is not so much the story, but the interactions with the other characters that you pick up along the way. You can have up to three companions in the group (and can switch up the line-up pretty much anytime) and while adventuring, they often have conversations amongst themeselves. Since each character has their own extensive backstory and distinct personalities, it’s fun to listen in on what they say to each other. It also adds to the plot and backstory. so I pay close attention to these conversations. I really love this aspect of the Dragon Age franchise.
Anyways, I think I am still pretty early on in the game, but things just keep getting more and more interesting with the plot. It’s so good. If you have never played Dragon Age before, I highly recommend picking this classic up!
I took advantage of an offer from EA Games to “buy” Sid Meier’s Civilization VI for free a few months ago, and finally got around to playing it. I was actually looking for a distraction from game 6 of the World Series since baseball can be so stressful to me, and so Civ 6 was finally booted up.
What a fun game! I’ve always enjoyed turn-based world strategy games like Age of Empires, but never really got into Civ before. The graphics are excellent, especially running at 1440p on my newish monitor. My computer isn’t the newest, but everything runs smoothly, with no lag and no crashing (so far).
I’ve only just scratched the surface of the game and I can tell there are many different ways to play. But what I like about it is that it seems like a nice game to pick up now and then and try out different scenarios, or even have multiple games going at once. Speaking of games, the Dodgers won, and the World Series drought from 1988 is finally over! 😀
こんばんは。How’s it going?
Today was a long day, but I did a lot of different things. First of all, was breakfast for the kids of Portuguese sausage, eggs, toast for Bay, and tortillas for Koa (actually breakfast tacos). I made do with just coffee as is my norm, and then it was off to Home Depot to buy some filters for our air conditioning vents.
After those were replaced, I took Koa to his band practice, and then I spent an hour changing the oil in my motorcycle. The procedure for my bike is not difficult, but it takes a long time because you have to take off some plastic parts, remove a metal bash plate, drain the oil from two locations, and replace the oil filter which is in a suboptimal location. But it all worked out with just a little bit of spillage on the garage floor. 😀 And it’s much cheaper than taking it to the motorcycle shop!
With that work done, it was time to play some Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. I’m still having fun playing it, but I do have to deal with an annoying login issue, as shown in the photo below.
After maybe a dozen unsuccessful attempts at logging in, it will finally go through and I’ll be able to play. What a hassle! But once I am in, it’s a lot of fun crafting new items and arranging the camp. Very relaxing!
After a couple hours, it was time to pick up Koa, and then we decided to go out for dinner at an Asian buffet. It was actually pretty good, and I liked the fact that this restaurant had a Mongolian barbeque. Tasty! I used to eat a lot of Mongolian BBQ when I lived in Los Angeles, but in Austin I have only had it a few times. The BBQ at the buffet place wasn’t as good as a dedicated BBQ restaurant, but for the price, it was satisfying.
Later in the evening, I decided to go to the theater to see The Greatest Showman. I’m not really into musicals, but I just wanted to see something (using my Moviepass!) and since the theater is less than 10 minutes away, the last-minute decision was perfectly ok. As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised with this movie! I didn’t think it was super, but it was entertaining and good to see on the big screen and with good sound.
And now as I type this, it’s past 1 am so I better get to bed.
I hope you had a nice Saturday!
おやすみ
