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Pretty Good Hat

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I had such a good experience playing Ashen last night that I want to share. (I mentioned playing Ashen in my week notes.) It has an inventive multiplayer mechanic that pairs the player with another player at approximately the same place, if one is available. If one isn’t available, you get an NPC companion, who is often quite competent but sometimes prone to disappearing or falling off ledges.

Last night in a new area – a dark, winding, flooded canyon – I was matched with another player1. Even with fast travel, the game does such a good job with art and environments to create a sense of being somewhere new, dangerous, and far from home. My new companion appeared at just the right time, as I approached a small camp of several strong marauders by myself. Together we handily took them out, and then we carefully moved along gangways from platform to platform high over the water, fighting enemies and finding quest items and treasures nearly in unison. They went down once and I revived them; later they returned the aid when I was surprised and overwhelmed, appearing with a flurry of heavy blows to finish off the enemies swarming me.2

Ashen screenshot; the player’s character in a cloak stands on a cliffside in the sun, facing a cityscape that recedes to a huge capitol-shaped building on the far ridge. The color scheme is muted pastel and autumn leaves on the scattered trees, which the player hasn’t seen since the first area of the entire game.

We progressed for a long time, maybe 30 minutes, silent companions leapfrogging from small patches of light and safety back into skirmishes. At a chokepoint in the route, far into the uphill journey, I was long out of health renewal items and getting nervous. We faced one final cluster of tough enemies and then pressed up a very long corridor, to emerge finally into bright daylight, in a brand new environment, in sight of a fast travel monument. We were safe! This was a really cool semi-social adventure that perfectly showed off the game’s theme of finding hope – and help – in a dark place.

  1. Real players are identifiable because their movements are a little more unpredictable. The loop often goes, “great, I have a partner, are they real or — oop, they just ran away, they’re real. ↩︎

  2. Each player only gets a single revival between rests at monuments, so this put us each in a vulnerable position going forward, ratcheting up the tension. ↩︎

Weeknotes #/n

It’s been a few weeks since I posted one of these, and this certainly feels like a weird moment to try to pick up the habit, again. But while I sit with some truths perhaps it helps to mark a few other more quotidian things, from this week and the handful prior.

this month in Destiny?

  • After a couple of long sessions on opening weekend and then one final run at the boss the following week, I made it through the new dungeon with some pals. Since then, the grind of an hour here and there has been a nice diversion. The episodic story progression is a little thin right now, but the gameplay loops feel pretty solid.

R stuff

  • I’m doing some real-work package development for the first time, building some tools to make it easier to jump-start Quarto notebooks and presentations. Having experimented with my own utility packages, I’m happy how much I could get done in just a couple of hours, thanks to {devtools} and {use this}.
  • My Posit::conf talk from this year is online! I was lucky to be part of a session with some smart and thoughtful data folks, and I’m proud of contributing something I’m feel good about. You can find my talk in the full directory over at the Posit blog

reading

  • The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

other games

  • Metaphor: reFantazio — I’ve never played a Persona/Persona-like, so this is a new experience for me. I’m enjoying the storytelling, combat and banger soundtrack!
  • Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders — I had a great time with the downhill biker original, and this version of that game, but on skis, seems like a lot of fun. The demo is free on Steam and, so far, equally controller-breaking as the original.

misc

  • Ever go to the record store in search of a particular album, but they don’t have it so you come home with four different albums instead? No? Just me?
  • The weight of org-mode kind of accreted around my cognitive carapace once again, and so I’ve been trying out Obsidian. I may write up a little more later; I’m finding it to feel modern in ways that I like, flexible and effective at organizing some notes and to-dos while staying under the radar of my “constantly tinker” impulse.
  • RIP Ward Christiensen, one of the founders of the BBS.
  • RIP to Omnivore, too? Disappointing to see a solid read-later product go the way of AI huckster-chasing.

That’s what I have for now. it’s a rainy Seattle weekend and it’s nice to be inside and cozy — but still looking forward to a good walk, later.

An overhead view of a man standing at the head of a fallen gryphon, sprawled on its side with its lion head at his feet.

Last night’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 adventure: got lost in a cave system and stumbled into a gryphon that my party fought for what felt like hours, and finally defeated. It just felt epic.

A flaming capsule hurtles toward earth in. Helldivers 2 screenshot. The tip at the bottom of the screen reads ‘when in doubt, simply shout FOR DEMOCRACY and charge into your problems.’

Really having a good time playing Helldivers 2 the past couple of weeks. It’s a good mix of goofy, difficult and utterly chaotic.

An image of an email containing several thumbnails of Destiny 2 game videos.

My personal OneDrive account is connected to my Xbox, and for years and years the only thing in it was game clips and screenshots. So once in a while I get an “on this date last year” sort of email from Microsoft, and it’s always full of nothing but Destiny 2 clips, mostly PVP and mostly Iron Banner. (Some of them are bangers! Every once in a while I’m good at this game.)

Screenshot from Against the Storm, showing a crowded village center. There is a cozy hearth surrounded by shelter buildings and a large red warehouse building tucked tightly within a forest.

There’s a whole meta campaign layer to Against the Storm, but I’m pretty perfectly content to just make little villages where my lizards can bake pies and cozy up by the fire.

I played the demo of Lamplighters League yesterday. It’s a fun mix of real-time stealth and turn-based tactics that looks like a great adventure in the full game. The demo is available for another couple of days, so consider checking it out, gamers!

I chanced across this old post about how my kid played Breath of the Wild, recently. Well, they’re keeping up that style: they started playing Elden Ring last week, and beat the game today. One week! I’m months into that game and nowhere near finishing it. All this, after starting Tears of the Kingdom weeks after I did, totally bogarting my Switch and beating the game after profoundly breaking all its mechanics to their will.