Categories
Gaming

Covideo Games

Note: I started working on this post before the killing of George Floyd, and took a break from it to get some of the included video content. In the events of the last week, it feels like the national conversation has shifted from talking about COVID-19 to police overreach and the Black Lives Matter movement. I don’t address that in the post and I don’t feel like it’s appropriate to talk about with my “hurr durr video games” content, so I leave the original post unchanged.

I decided a few weeks ago that my COVID “support the economy” purchase would be a gaming laptop. I’d been interested in one for a while and with no other way to play Half-Life: Alyx, I figured it’d be a good time to spring for one, seeing as how there is little else going on during my copious free time, except for blogging, apparently. Oh, and yardwork.

I ended up getting a higher-end model of the Alienware m15 R2, after I figured out I could stack a fairly generous $600 off discount with an education discount and a 10% off promo code. All this to say, they just spec’d and are on the verge of releasing the Alienware m15 R3, but that’s how it goes with gaming gear.

I haven’t owned a gaming PC since I built my own, but that was back in 2013 when Ashley and I lived in Boston, and I picked the parts up from the Micro Center on Memorial Drive. Since then I’ve only owned consoles, and when I fired up the Alienware I was pretty blown away by the performance. They’re not even paying me to write this!

Since deploying games as a service seems to be going mostly pretty well for publishers and consumers, the obvious play was to download some games from my pre-existing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, and while I was at it, I signed up for Origin Access.

But what games do you play during a pandemic? As an older gamer, my bar for “this game feels like work now” is pretty low, and exacerbated by the stress of pandemic life and trying to raise a baby.

I want to use my brain, but I also kind of want to be a vegetable. Naw mean? This means Monster Hunter World is still a hard no, but I do have some recommendations for some feel-good, low-stress fun.

1. Old Arcade Games

I’ve always been a fan of these and a lot of them still hold up, especially the good stuff from the Neo Geo era. We can dive more into that in a later post, because it’s something worth exploring, but in general, the good Neo Geo stuff just has a…look. You know how Donkey Kong Country for the Super NES came out in 1994, but if you play it today, it still looks pretty good? SNK and associated developers employed a lot of talented artists. Check out NMK’s ridiculous Zed Blade, also from 1994:

Why does this work? Well, if you look at the 16-bit renaissance, the vast majority of these games aren’t actually using 16-bit assets, so if you’ve tried to play CrossCode (which is on Game Pass, but strangely only for PC), it looks like an SNES game, but…spiffier. A lot of this newer stuff looks like it could’ve originally come out on the Neo Geo.

2. Gears: Tactics

I’ve never been able to get into XCOM, the game/work barrier was always just high enough that despite a few attempts, I bounced off. Gears: Tactics has simplified a few things, complex…ified…a few things, but has turned up the fun factor and made a very Gears feeling game in the process. At the same time, due to the turn-based nature of tactics games, it scratched a nostalgic itch. When I was younger, my dad used to paint miniature pieces and we’d play the games in his basement with dice and a ruler. His setups were pretty elaborate, like something you’d see at MIT’s tech model railroad club back in the heyday, with terrain, mountains, obstacles, etc. If you’re familiar with this kind of thing, you already know how to play a tactics game.

Anyway, Microsoft had to pull off making a tactics game that employed the Lancer chainsaw, and boy howdy!

My experience with Tactics is that it hasn’t been all that difficult, but I did just wrap the first boss, and the fight got pretty tense; I didn’t lose any heroes, but skated just barely by to finish him off on the first go. The boss fights are asynchronous, so your team of 4 characters against a single, very powerful foe. I actually had to turn off reruns of Miami Vice for that one. (One complaint, the “across the bridge” fight leading up to the first boss goes on a little too long.) The enemy variety has picked up after the first boss and it’s an excellent game to unwind, along with a glass of your adult beverage of choice. Gears: Tactics is PC-only (for now), and doesn’t seem too demanding, my new hardware runs it buttery smooth on Ultra Settings.

3. American Truck Simulator

I have played many an hour of ATS while listening to Marty Robbins, the Giant Bombcast, or Dan Carlin. don’t have a crazy setup for ATS, and am happy with using an Xbox One controller. Even if this is not typically your bag, if your car has been sitting in the driveway and you need to hit the road, give ATS a shot.

4. Just Cause 3

Just Cause 3 got a bad rap, its launch marred by a litany of serious performance problems on consoles. Square Enix has done a pretty good job patching a lot of that out for console, and I was able to get a copy of it from Square Enix’s “here are 54 games you probably won’t play, but it’s for charity” sale earlier in the month. I still get some hitching on PC, but for the most part, it runs great, and runs very well on my PS4.

If you’re not familiar with JC3, the premise is this: you play as a Latino Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the game is basically 1985’s Commando. Rooty tooty, boom n’shooty as you try to cause as much destruction as possible to overthrow a corrupt government.

Also, you get a mech, because why the hell not?

5. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

It demands your attention, so Crockett and Tubbs will have to wait while playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps, but it deserves to be on this list. When you’re stuck inside all day, Ori gives you a sense that you actually explored something and saw something new. It has a beautiful, outdoorsy art style, moving soundtrack, and relaxing vibe. Wisps, especially compared to its more straightforward predecessor, takes a few pages out of Hollow Knight‘s book, but in general is a lot more forgiving with extremely generous checkpoints and no punishment for failure.

I am playing Wisps on an Xbox One X on a 4K monitor with HDR, which my laptop doesn’t have. In my opinion, HDR goes farther in a game than it does in a movie, and if you have access to the same setup, Wisps is a benchmark for why HDR in games is worth the investment.

Honorable Mention 1: Legends of Runeterra

LoR is a mobile DTCG (digital trading card game, I just made that up) in the same vein as Magic: The Gathering that introduces some new elements to freshen things up. I’ve enjoyed playing a round here and there, but as a mobile game I haven’t dove in too much.

Honorable Mention 2: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

By hours played, I’ve put more time into CoDMW than any other game in the last 6 months. I’m decent at the multiplayer, and finally finished the campaign and enjoyed it. At a 7-ish hour length, I realized how so many “open worlds” are full of filler content that really isn’t all that good. Still, it’s heavy stuff, and it took me a while to get into the campaign. The torture scene could have been left out. MW’s multiplayer/online community is surprisingly tame, and I much prefer the lower-stakes plunder mode than the more traditional battle royal mode in WarZone.

More to come, but that’s what’s been keeping my free time occupied in the last few weeks. If you have a further suggestion, please do leave a comment below.

Categories
General

What About a Different Approach?

After multiple weeks of being in varying states of anxiety and dread over the new house, which seems to be a common condition amongst new homeowners, it finally hit me as I looked out upon our front yard: we are just going to have a crappy yard for a while, and that’s OK.

"I’ll just rent a core aerator, then do the whole lawn, then fill in all of the weird puddle spots with dirt, then I’ll get a seed spreader, then I’ll get a reel mower, then I’ll put some fertilizer down, then, then, then, then." Then what, my yard will look like Pebble Beach at the Masters? No. I’m not even a golf guy, best I can do is double digits at Topgolf. I’ve been keeping it mowed and put fresh mulch down around the trees; I’ve already left the better part of a dozen lawn bags at the curb, and I just found an encroaching patch of poison ivy, which apparently grows everywhere in NoVA. Luckily, this isn’t my yard in the picture, but I did find this patch growing in the neighborhood.

Aside from the PI, it’s probably time to take the "don’t do it all at once" advice seriously. Things are stressful enough as it is; maybe this is the attitude to take toward COVID. When you’re already under a lot of pressure, it’s easy to succumb to "whataboutism." Whataboutism is bad at work, because you end up "talking" more than "doing." It’s also bad because it leads to a lot of negative self-talk. I started getting stuck in this weird loop of feelings, where I would feel a certain way, but then end up comparing my feelings to someone else in a worse situation, and then I would feel worse for that comparison. Ex:

I’m under a lot of pressure because my wife is trying to work, I’m trying to work, and we have a baby.

But what about the people who lost their jobs? Their situation sucks even more than mine.

What about the people who lost their jobs and have kids? Their situation is even more sucky.

Man, I feel like an asshole now for thinking that this sucks!

What do you do about this? In a mindful moment, I can say, this is how I feel, how does this feeling serve me (or not), but invariably, this leads to more negativity about the situation of other people. But I’m trying to be mindful! Argh! This is just more "talking" and less "doing," right? Is all hope lost? Certainly not, the curve is well flattened and people have shown an impressive respect for social distancing; the road is long, sure. Now that we know that, let’s, as Jim Collins puts it, "confront the brutal facts."

Here are the brutal facts: almost everyone’s situation is shitty right now, and will be for a while.

I can be mindful in a conversation about COVID while also asserting my own feelings, and I shouldn’t have to stress out about that. I don’t need to qualify "my situation is rough" with "and yours is worse." I can let them tell me how they feel from their perspective and be an active listener. I can support local businesses and restaurants. I can take time for myself to reflect. We feel how we feel, and have little control over it. The journalist Robert Wright describes this phenomenon in Why Buddhism is True as the "not self." Perspective, like people’s COVID situations, is unique. Once I start to consider my own brutal facts, my own perspective, a lot of that negative self-talk seems to fade away. Stressful? Yes. Manageable? Yes. We are all doing our best.

And for myself (or not self) – what about just doing what I can (outlined above), forgetting the small shit, spending time with my son, and having a crappy yard for a while? That can be the beginning and the end of the what-abouting. Can I cure my yard rightnowtoday? No. COVID? Absolutely not. In fact, I probably have a better shot at curing COVID than my yard. Local takeout? Yes. Off to Chick-Fil-A.

Categories
Home

The Joys of Homeownership

Well, it’s been a hell of a time these last several weeks. We’re in the midst of a global pandemic, we just bought a house, and we have a burgeoning 7-month old. The homebuying process has been…enlightening? Terrifying? Anxiety-inducing? (All of the above.)

Things real estate agents like to say about buying a home: "pay yourself," "build equity," "wealth generation."

Things I like to say about buying a home: "pay other people, a lot, to do a lot of work to your house, that you just bought," "watch all of your money disappear," and "wealth destruction."

OK, I’m being dramatic. We spent 3 years saving for a 15% down payment for a house in Northern VA, which is a lot of money. Came to 3 days before closing, and this is when stuff is getting real with COVID and the fed slashes interest rates. We ask our bank to cut our rate, and they actually do it. 3% for 30 years baby. What starter home? The net result of this is that our mortgage, even after property taxes and homeowner’s insurance, is significantly less than our rent was in Arlington, and we have just under 2x more space. That’s all good.

And I do think, despite our dishwasher being broken, our stove being broken, a moisture issue in the basement, and finding out that we need a new roof, that we got a pretty good deal on our newly renovated 50s rambler. It’s a dump, but it’s our dump. Says the insurance adjuster (probably the only person in this entire process who has no personal financial opportunity to gain here) who looks at the roof after we saw some shingles land in the yard: "I think your inspector missed some things." No shit.

That’s the rub of this whole thing, the full effects of the worst and best parts of capitalism are on display. Surely, you would think, that home inspectors are impartial observers acting in your (the buyer) interests, until you consider that if every home sale were busted by a bad inspection, there would…be no home inspectors, because every home would sell as-is. It is kind of mindblowing, because everyone only gets a piece of the pie if the sale goes through; Smith’s invisible hand nudging everyone involved toward closing. The more you think about it, the closer you get to having an aneurysm.

When you rent, you don’t really notice anything. When you buy, you notice everything. Like, everything. You’ll see a 1mm crack in the paint. It all becomes very real. I guess that’s why it is…real…estate.

We’re getting settled in. We wanted the newly-finished basement to be an office and TV area, potentially a guest room, and we’re getting pretty close to making that a reality. TBD on the moisture, but it’s in a bathroom that wasn’t redone as part of the renovation, and we think a bad downspout (that we have since fixed temporarily with an old shower curtain and some duct tape) was the culprit.

The better half put a bunch of stuff on the walls and it’s starting to look like a home and not a house, which I think is all anyone could ask for. I was able to convince her to let me buy and put up a Kelsey Smith print, which if you’re into the vaporwave/retrowave aesthetic, you might already be familiar with her work even if you don’t know it.

Finally, the City of Fairfax seems like a great place to be, and we look forward to getting out and about and supporting some of the local restaurants when things go back to normal, so 2027, basically. All the more time to work on a dedicated Tim Allen Home Improvement "EEEUGH?" button, amirite?

Categories
General

Back in the Game

Well, we’ll have to see if this ends up being another cadaver in the Joe McMahon blog graveyard or not. When the pandemic got started, I figured I’d do something productive with all of this time at home, and went into buying/renewing a hosting package. In considering some domain names I thought joemac.io would be a good choice; when I checked on its availability, it was already taken by some other, more proactive joemac. Then I got the email from namecheap that my domain, my domain, joemac.io was up for renewal.

Oh. Nice job, past me!

At that point, taking this as a sign, I bought one of namecheap’s shared hosting packages for a year. With everything we have going on, with the house, the baby, the move, the pandemic, job stuff, and more video games than ever, I figured it was time to find a positive/creative outlet for some of my pent-up neurotic energy. So here goes, hello (again) world.