Yeah, it’s a little under three months since last now, but it’s all good. I’ve been doing fairly well, too.
I’ve ended up sleeping on the couch so much – since it’s also a sofa-bed – that I actually upgraded one of my sons bed by giving him mine. Before, he and the youngest one had a Kritter each, but I figured since I dont really use my bed anyway, and the boy really loves that bed, why not? As an added bonus, his Kritter bed could be carried over to their moms house, for our youngest to use, since there he still had a travel crib to sleep in. It’s one used for toddlers up to three years old, so it’s technically still fine, and he’s been pretty happy with having a real bed at her place now.
This actually opened up a lot of space in my living room, so now there’s actually a play-area here. The furnitures that took up space in the middle of the room now stands where the bed used to stand, so there’s just a large spot on the floor the kids can play on – and play they have. I’m still finding toys everywhere.
Speaking about toys, I got a tip from the kindergarten that there’s a toy called “Plus Plus” – it’s like a building block toy shaped like two connected plus-signs. I know my youngest kid have been very fond of wooden blocks and duplo and regular lego, even though he’s just about to turn three, and apparently, at kindergarten, he spends a lot of time playing with Plus Plus. So, I ordered a 150 set box that arrived yesterday and I gave him the box. As soon as he saw the box and understood what it was inside, he almost teared up with joy and got so excited. I dont recall I’ve ever seen him that excited from a gift before. Then I opened the box, and he and I played with those toys for over an hour. He was so happy. His mom also told me that he’d been very excited over a toy in one of those toy-magazines, apparently called Magical Magnet – it looks something like this. I’m not sure if it’s the colours that got him excited or if he understood it’s a type of building block toy. But building toys seems to be his favorites.
Perhaps I should invest in more of them – meccano and the likes – as he grows older.
As for my firstborn, it seems as if crafting supplies and PS games should do the trick. When I got my PS5, I handed over my PS4 to use, and even created an account to use, but now I need to get the kid a couple of games as well. But colour pens, box cutters, tape, glue.. those sort of things should work out.
As for my soon-to-be five year old, he seems to be following in the footsteps of his older sibling. He’s very fond of drawing – both on tablet and with colour pens and crayons. He’s very interested in playing games as well, and he’s been allowed to play on my PS5 a couple of times – mostly Astro’s Playroom, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles and Bugsnax. He’s still in that place where he doesnt know what he wants to play, just that he wants to play, so he’s switching games almost more than he’s playing them. I also got him Sonic Racing, because I figured that a racing game might be fun for him, and he loves Sonic. Sonic the movie, Sonic as a character, Sonic youtube clips, etc. I dont see the appeal – the movie was good, but I’ve never liked Sonic myself. But hey – he does. That’s the important thing.
As for games, I admit I still havent finished Demon’s Souls. I still have that swamp area left and the final boss, but I’ve just been too busy, and when I’ve had time to wind down and play something else, I’ve actually been playing Elden Ring. I did a bit of a boo-boo when it comes to that though, I pre-ordered it on PC at first, last year, I believe. Then closer to the release, I read there was a type of hack for the Dark Souls games, an RCE (Remote Code Execution) that could potentially brick your PC. I was not happy about that thought, and noone knew if it was possible to do that on Elden Ring as well.
So, I pre-ordered it on PS5 and have been playing it there since. I did try it out on PC, but I had a bit of issues there, so I swapped over to the PS5. Apparently, they’ve fixed the RCE-thing, but I’m not taking any chances. I want to play with people, invade, get invaded, and while PS5 isnt a hundred percent fool-proof, it’s still way better than PC. So, it’s been a waste to buy it on PC, you might ask? No, not really, because I might actually get to mod a FromSoftware game ever later this year. Elden Ring PC will be modded through Grimrukhs mods, and I will ofcourse be playing offline in that case. So PS5 will be the online gaming experience, and PC will be the offline Survival Elden Ring experience.
By the way, all my Elden Ring playing I’ve been streaming – except for like 10 minutes of invading at one point – and I’ve compiled it all over at my Youtube, in case you’re interested. We dont know if there’ll be DLC’s for this game yet, but if there is, this is the character I’ll be using to check it out. I have so far been doing everything that I can, I’m still level 150 – which isnt that terribly high, people are talking about 125 being the “max meta”, and at 150 I’m able to get several stats up to a decent level, without necessarily min-maxing. Also, I have these stats I do, because I use gear that needs them just because I like the gear – not because it’s an “optimal build” – that’s why I “need” the level 150. Though, I’ve seen people level up to 180 on their first playthrough, and some even up to 200-210, so 150 is actually fairly low, considering. The playlist will be updated in the future if I keep playing on that character, so keep an eye out!
I will also be doing a separate playlist on Youtube for my offline Grimrukh Survival streaming when I start streaming that, but you should know that the quality would most likely drop on that one. I dont have a dual PC setup to play on/stream on, so I’m both running the game, the mods, and the streaming stuff on the same PC, so it’ll most likely be a bit…choppy, unfortunately. But it’ll be there!
As for other games.. I’m still looking at Diablo 4 announcements, and it actually does seem like they wont release until a few years. I had kind of hoped they showed up early development when they started to share, but it seems as if that was actually current. Which means it’s actually earlier in development than I had hoped. It’s still very basic. They released a few videos showcasing areas, and it does look good. But it was just that – areas. It’s no real gameplay implemented, and while there was a couple of mobs placed, it doesnt seem there’s an AI added yet. Sorry for the link-spamming, but I feel like it’s only fair if I give you people a chance to see for yourself. Although, to be fair – the Diablo IV dev team have been open about this being a pre-alpha development, but I just…hoped they’d be further along in that alpha.
I’m still looking at New World from time to time, but there’s just so many small things gone wrong I just lost interest. There was so many bugs preventing trades, gold accumulation bugs that caused entire economies to spiral out of control, and other small issues, that I eventually just lost interest. I still think it’s one of the better MMO’s out there – sure, WoW is larger and are arguably better, but to me less interesting. It’s still one of the most immersive ones, to me, anyway. It’s just sad it has that many bugs. And bots. And.. well, I lost interest. They did implement a new weapon though, a blunderbuss, which was kinda fun. But I tried it out and it was kinda buggy. About a third of the time I shot, at point blank, I was still missing, and some of the skills could either go used with no CD, or have their CD start counting without me getting the skill used. It’s still a horribly coded mess. It’s a shame, because I had such high hopes, and I would’ve stuck with it if it was good.
I mentioned Vampire Survivor in my last post, and I still play it. It’s still not 1.0, but I’ve got 28 hours into it already. I mean, it might not sound like much, 28 hours over the last few months, but since it’s not intended to be this huge game, it’s actually pretty decent amount. It’s actually really fun, and since it’s just around £2/€2.4/$2.5, I highly recommend it! I just hope they’ll eventually release it on PlayStation, because it’s actually very easy to play with a controller anyway – almost easier than a keyboard or mouse, in my opinion.
For now though, I’m mostly waiting for Warhammer 40’000: Darktide to play with a couple of friends, and until then I dont know really what I’ll be playing. Something might come along, or I’ll revisit some older games I own – like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout.. that, or I’m thinking of getting both the re-released Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance – the old Black Isle/Interplay from 2001 that got re-released a few months ago, as well as the new Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance that came out last year. Even if it pretty much “bombed”. Both of them runs something along the lines of £47/€55/$58, so I will most likely not pick both of them up, and I think I’ll wait for a sale, to be honest. But me and the 14 year old would probably have a lot of fun playing the old Baldurs Gate one. I still have a lot of memories from that game.
Or, I’ll pick them up in October, when I’m finally free of my payment plans! That will free up a couple of hundreds each month right there.