The topic of older games I love has come up fairly often in the past couple weeks. The Internet Archive released nearly 2,400 old MS-DOS games to browser, I talked briefly about my history with gaming as part of my introduction to Beyond the Veil, and Tyger over at Channel Awesome did a show about nostalgia in gaming. Continue Reading
The original plan for LFGryph had been to post M/W/F, possibly a few weekend posts. I still like that plan, but my schedule has changed for an exciting reason. As some of you already know, the lovely and witty folks over at Beyond the Veil have welcomed me onto their weekly podcast. For those unfamiliar, they cover gaming/community news and commentary from The Secret World. (Livestreamed Thursdays at 7pm EST, may contain adult language.) I am super thrilled about that, but it does mean I’ve got an extra obligation every week besides offline things and the occasional streaming I was already doing with Tyger and Otterly Gaming. I would like some nights open for my own gaming and, you know, those offline obligations.
As a compromise, I’m going to start using Wednesdays as a casual-blog day to chat about whatever games I’m playing that week. Sometimes it’ll be from my main MMO’s and sometimes one of the single player ones. These won’t be meant as reviews, just casual talk about some of what I’m up to. This also means I can fix a few issues I had with my “Currently Gaming” list. I wanted to have more space to chat about some of them, and I game jump with my single player games enough that it seems awkward to keep a running list.
This Wednesday I’m going to focus on rearranging some things on here and making sure my ducks are in a row for tomorrow, but with luck I’ll be able to start the new plan next week. Thanks for your patience, and have a great day/night/time-of-day!
“I hate that game, it’s such a grind.” I often hear this complaint, and I’ve probably said it myself before. Most gamers can probably think of at least one game where mindlessly running the same missions or fighting the same battles over and over in order to progress soured the rest of the experience. So why, then, am I sometimes a fan of grinding? Continue Reading
Just something short and shiny to pass the word along to anyone who might be interested. I’m not out at the event and I hadn’t been super aware of it until just this year, after all. [EDITED 1/12/2015: Since the event is over, I’m adding this link to the archive on Youtube. Anyone interested in seeing some of the games they missed should check that out.]
I’ve got to confess something. I usually don’t watch or try to attempt speedruns of games. I have a lot of respect for the folks who run them, I think it just doesn’t fit my playstyle. Having said that, I wound up checking out the Twitch stream for Awesome Games Done Quick this week. It’s still going as I post this up. I had vague interest in it just from knowing it was a gaming charity event, but I had a few friends out there as well so decided I ought to check it out.
And holy crow. I know enough about speedrunning to know it takes a lot of planning and practice to pull off, but I’m still being blown away. Watching someone run Super Mario RPG in just under 3 hours is definitely something to behold! Other than the actual gameplay, I’m loving the commentary explaining how they’re doing what they’re doing and why it works. I’ve heard before that speedrunning adds a whole different dimension to the gameplay when you really get into it, and I’m seeing that much more now than other times I’ve tried to watch speedruns. The old gamer lady in me happens to also very much enjoy seeing various “old school” tv’s in the bottom of the frame. 🙂 (I don’t see one on the stream as I’m typing this since they’re playing Dark Souls 2, but I did last night!)
More importantly, they’re doing this to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. I highly encourage anyone interested to go check out the channel and think about donating, if you can.
Games coming up on the schedule include Final Fantasy VII, Super Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for fans of those. 🙂
Hi all, thought I’d give a quick update.
Now that Extra Life is open for 2015, I’ve been able to update the Otterly Gaming page here on the blog with relevant links. Other than occasional posts, I’ll be adding to the page as more plans for the year are made.
After this week, I’m going to settle into posting on Mon/Wed/Fri, leaving the weekends open for the possibility of posting if something comes up that I want to talk about. Continue Reading
EDIT: [As of 8/8/15, I will be joining team OtterDown for this year’s event. Team Otterly Gaming will still be running, by all means check ’em out on the big day! 🙂 ]
Today’s post is partly to announce that both my own page and my team page (Otterly Gaming) for Extra Life 2015 are live. My friends in The Secret World, the “other otters” of team Otterdown, have also opened their 2015 page – I’m fully expecting otterly fabulous hijinks out them as well. 🙂 The big day for the 24 hour marathon is November 7/8, so mark your calendars now. It’s something that’s important to me; I’m sure I’ll be posting about it more than once. I have some fun stories I can tell from the last few years…
Today, though, I want to talk a little about Extra Life and why I’ve participated for the last three years. I’ll warn you that it’s a messy topic for me this year, feel free to jump to the last two paragraphs if you’d like the TL;DR version. Continue Reading
I had a different plan for this post. The holiday events in The Secret World just wrapped up the other day, and DC Universe Online tweeted that they were extending theirs until January 12. I wanted to talk about winter holiday events – the types of events that various games put together, and then a bit about how much I appreciate it when they clearly put a lot of effort in. I took massive amounts of screenshots and had an idea of how I wanted to approach it.
Then, something cool happened during a pug (Pickup Group/Game, random players as opposed to a group of folks who know each other) in The Secret World. It’s something that has happened before but gives me pause each time it does. I don’t want this blog to turn into only “be nice” stories, but I’ve seen a few friends lament a lack of “players doing cool things” stories online. In the interest of talking more about what players are doing right, I’m going to tell my story, and save the event chatter for a different post. As a sidenote – I’m amused that the one dungeon I forgot to get screenshots of is the one involved in this story. 😛 TSWDB (awesome player-run TSW site) has some under “2013 – Krampusnacht” for those interested. Continue Reading
I’ve added a “Currently Playing” page to the “About Me” section; adjusted some of the color scheme and layout, and added a new pic to said “About Me” section. I’ve also added Tumblr share buttons for all you folks who use that.
I was planning on updating with more things, but it’s been return of killer tooth pain the last few days so I’ll be taking my time on that. I’d also hate to completely miss the last few nights of The Secret World’s holiday event. ^^
I would like to keep to an update schedule of at least 3 posts a week, but again, this tooth stuff is cramping my style here. I won’t have any kind of set schedule until I’ve at least got that taken care of. Thanks again for your patience and your time! 🙂
I was chatting with a friend today who’s gotten into livestreaming. If anyone reading this is unfamiliar with the term, it means (in short) to broadcast something live online – in this case, playing video games. The audience can chat with each other and the host through text in realtime; it’s becoming even more common as consoles start adding the option.
It’s always an odd topic for me to discuss since I very rarely run my own stream. I’m gaming on a laptop and that just tends to make it a pain for me. On the other hand, I watch and/or join in other livestreams enough that it’s something I certainly have thoughts on. So, with the caveat that I’m not claiming to be a professional at something I do very rarely (at least, rarely on my own), I’m going to at least list some of what I’ve learned and advice I’ve heard from others. I’m calling it “thoughts” rather than advice, because really that’s all this is. Continue Reading
While I was doing my thanks you’s for the new year, I mentioned “awesome gaming communities” more than once. A good community is important to me when I’m deciding where I’m going to spend my time. I’ve always said I deal with enough jerks offline, I don’t need them during my game time, too. Just calling a community “awesome and win” isn’t very descriptive though, so let’s talk about something my favorite gaming communities have in common. Continue Reading
LFGryph 