Ghost Recon Wildlands... Not Just Cause 3.

So i did participate in the Wildlands open beta this last weekend. The game ran well and apart from the usual issues one get with Ubisofts take on P2P servers. In short.. The solution does not really like stress tests. At all... 

Now the game it self is for all intents a more serious (but still as unrealistic) challenger to Just Cause and sadly it falls short. The game has a gorgeous open world and you really feel like you are in a fairly exotic (for a northerner like me) location. The world is open in as so far that you have a big chunk of map to faff about on and a scatter of missions for you to take on in any order you like. In short it is the usual bits and bolts. It is worth to say that the Co-Op functions... When they work.. Are really good and offer a nice group experience. 

So the story pretty much boils down to you and your group of ghosts taking down a drug cartel because they beat up a friend of your friend. There is no real grander picture in this, just some seriously black book shit. I am sure it gets deeper at the later point of the game but i would not expect a games version of Schindler's List. 

You are given a decent amount of customization of your character, from stern military man to something more akin to Jay and Silent Bob, together with a decent slew of weapons and drive-able vehicles both on land, sea and air. So you will be able to play the game pretty much the way you want... .. . As long as that includes shooting members of a drug cartel... No pacifist option here. Now with that said you can not just engage in some casual genocide... Each shot civilian does count and it can end your game. 

Now i did bring up Just Cause before and that is mostly because beyond gun physics the game has a similar wacky and often wonky grasp on how reality works. Cars act like drunk go-carts and the helicopters move like they are drones (most likely because they use the same system for both.) This is not a Battlefield game... Not do i think it strives for it. But in my mind it does the open world worse than Just Cause and if you can stand the silliness of JC3.. Get that and leave this to the crows. 

Oh by the way... The banter in this game is... It is something for it self.. The exact stereotypical  military bullshit steeped in hypermasculinity that one would expect from this sort of fantasy. The word cringe did cross my mind at times. 

In short.. This is not a bad game but there are better games than this in every category it can enter. But if you want a more serious Just Cause 3 with solid Co-Op. Pick this up. 

But i am going to give this a pass. 

Back in my day....

So as i was going through my Creative Cloud account to check up on a few things, i stopped and looked at the list of software that i have at my fingertips. For a short moment i think about how my 18 year old self would have felt knowing what toys that lay in his future. Sure we had Dreamweaver and Photoshop back then too. But compared to the things something like Photoshop is today... It was about a step above hacking lines in to stone. But unlike some people who only can see the saturation of a crowded market and a march of technology that slowly leaves them behind i am really glad for this. Not only does it make my life a lot easier as tools get better and become more affordable, but it acts as a equalizer. 

You see when i was young... Pretty much the only way to get Photoshop was to pirate the living shit out of it. Why... Cost... The product it self was aimed at a professional market and priced as such. At around 10-15.000 SEK it was not only a pipe dream, it was beyond reality. Me and others did reason that pirating it was a victim less crime. It was not like we took away sales from Adobe since we could not even buy the software even if we pooled together. 

Now i like to say that this does not excuse what we did, nor does it actually creates a moral ledge for us to stand on. Now the thing was ofc that outside of Paintshop Pro, Coral Draw and Photoshop there was not much to work with. So we simply did not give a fuck. We where young and brash. Not saying that renting your software from Adobe for a few hundred a month is all that much better. But going by the price of Adobe software in the past the pack i currently have active would run me in the hundred of thousands SEK range, and that is one torture i prefer to have delivered one needle prick at the time. 

Anyway... As i said it is a equalizer because today pretty much anyone can get a computer and a software package that let them work with digital art, and pretty much every smartphone have a camera good enough to at least start out as a photographer och video photographer. The gatekeepers are fading away and that in my mind is a good thing. Sure it is getting harder to stand out and it becomes much more about marketing your self and creating a brand. But at least you do not have to work with stone age tools or steal to get going. Heck you do not even have to bow down to the likes of Adobe, Free software like GIMP and the fairly cheap Clip Studio paint offer really good places to start with digital art and for video and audio there is a plethora of tools. 

I look forward to see what the future holds and i wish the kids of today the best of luck as they try their own wings creating the most amazing things. 

Not particularly much meat in this post, but what is a personal blog worth if one can not indulge in the fancy of thought every now and then. 

Until next time

Stay safe, be kind and play fair. 

Bye.

The working gamers dilemma.

So i was thinking about what to put my limited gaming time budget in to. While i now have the funds to get the games i want (not all at the same time.. but you know.) and also have a computer that can play them i have been putting some serious thinking time in to what game to get. While i still tend to put in a match or a few of OverWatch and i keep a subscription to WoW running for my own amusement.

But beyond that i am for all intents undecided. With the current Humble monthly offering Total War:Warhammer for a really good price. But it eats a lot of time and i am not sure i have what it takes to actually enjoy the game. Heck if i can not find time to sit down with the sims... Total War i think is a bit outside of my league. That is what i really like with Overwatch, casually playing quick matches demands no time from me. Just pop in... bang bang.. shut down.

But looking forward there is of course the next Mass Effect game, i have played through the original trilogy and i am looking forward to this one. But again.. time. It is a must play for me so time will have to be made i guess.

Beyond that it is mostly "older" games, as in games that have been released in the past year or so that simply kicked the arse of my old computer. I have been doing some the Division as i really enjoy the SP part of the game, shallow and not very complex as it is. This does lean me towards looking to pick up Watchdogs2 and while even older still i am really thinking about getting the final installment of the Witcher series again.. solid stuff.

and still i come back to the same old chestnut... time.

It is that old catch 22 like position that you only have the money to play games when you do not have the time... and vice versa. But since i can not live of casually playing the games i want to play... Heck even if i would make a career of Youtube would i have the time to play the games i like to play. That would also in way be to taint the well, as i would be making my poison of choice my job. Not sure how well that would turn out.

But that is i guess what getting older is, the dividing of time and resources. In that way life becomes a most harsh
resource management game. One without save files or resets.

But that is what it is.

Until next time
stay safe, be kind and play fair.