Category: Gaming

Observations,mistrust chronicles and exploits

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Digital Blood sports

In less than 3 days the Second Life effect has kicked in.  Playing The Division as a 4 player squad commits you in a different way than any single player game ever could.  Firstly, there is the session commitment where it would not good form to quit unexpectedly.  Unfortunately, this is often the case if you pay attention to your physical life and a 2-3 hour session is broken in the middle of a mission so you can bath the cat WTF.

Skill level

A strong feeling of ‘must do better’ strokes your ego as you seek to improve your abilities and skills so you can bring a brilliant experience to the team.

Enough is enough

Knowing when to stop as a team without bad feelings is key as well as actually playing with like-minded people.  Of course, this just relates to titles where you have full voice chat enabled.

Lost in the crowd

Titles like Star Wars BattleFront give you the mass experience when 20+ players can jump in and out of games without it really getting too personal.

Warping space and time

There’s a real distortion of your physical world and you could easily miss important events like Weddings and such.

Heading back to my safehouses

For now, I’m deleting The Division to focus on more self-paced titles.

Slept in the daytime, no meds today

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Carry me

I jumped back into Tom Clancy’s The Division after seeing that one of my high talent streamers was in the early ranks.  Joining a squad is the best way to succeed in this title and even though I have fairly decent guns and gear it felt like I was being carried up the Dark Zone ranks.

There are so many areas IRL that I need to be carried.

At times the sheer weight of being the decision maker all the time is simply too much.  I gladly followed the squad leader into battle and occasionally performed well enough for team mission success. Back IRL I’m using new strategies and staying healthy.

Tom Clancy’s The Division – trying to avoid getting melted

Get off my back, I can’t carry you anymore

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Excuses to stealth

At age 14, I strategically used Valentines Day to anonymously share my feelings with girls I fancied or admired in class and watch from a safe distant never revealing myself in person.

Today it’s almost impossible to be truly anonymous and successful hiding is actually frowned upon as freakish and creepy.  The same techniques to surprise a Loved One can be used to destroy, mislead or corrupt without trace but It comes down to moral intentions and belief systems. Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to bring out the undetected schemer in you.

Stealth: The ability to reach and/or kill your target without detection.

Stealth mood is one of the most satisfying gaming strategies built into a wide genre of titles, in fact, many games award or punish you based on your stealth skills.  I’m rather addicted to stealth IRL and in my digital playgrounds, the best penetration testers often adopt this mindset to their core.

“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”  Kali OS

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Where’s my money, Man

I’ve set this year’s PS4 budget at $1000 considering I still have a nice library of older games and a PS4 Plus subscription for free games. Life is a bit of a Blind Play through right now as there are a lot more unknowns going on than usual. By summer I need to be money OP on my US operations taking off the pressure from sunny Brighton.

How do streamers manage their operational budget?

Investing this much on gaming a year isn’t a trivial matter and has a significant impact on friends, family, work and what not.

Software  Hardware  Cost
 PlayStation 4 Pro 1TB Console  $400.00
 Headset  $60.00
 PS4 Plus  $60.00
Overkill’s The Walking Dead  $60.00
FarCry 5  $60.00
Last of Us 2  $60.00
Death Stranding  $60.00
Days Gone  $60.00
Detroit – Become Human  $60.00
Indie titles x 5  $100.00
Total  $980.00

The second life should be able to co-exist with the physical world and in my case, the strategy is to work them in parallel with minimal crossover.  So in practice, my gaming community would never be mentioned to non-gamers.

Keeping the worlds apart is pretty challenging as “people…usually women” are pretty quick to voice their unwanted opinions on gaming and why I do it.

Zero hours gameplay still in progress

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Shiver me timbers

Two big titles are going head-to-head over the next few weeks in the Person versus Person (PvP) squad environment.  Following a classic Pirates of the Caribbean theme the games tap into our natural urge to hunt for loot as a crew.

Seas of Thieves is a Microsoft exclusive while Ubisoft launch Skull & Bones on all platforms.

Sailing in your own ship creates a natural team bond where members can’t really wonder off and get killed.  Decisions on which quest to tackle or where to go are done over team voice chat so get your microphones ready.  Time will be the killer resource you need to play either game as you’ll probably need to commit to a loose schedule and gameplay duration, this sits well with any streamer.

Microsoft exclusive title

I signed up for the Skull & Bones Beta so let’s see how they stand up.

Ubisoft Cross-platform High seas adventures

Twitch channels followed – 135