Monday, May 11, 2015

Bloodborne (PS4)

Got my first platinum trophy:

Final stats (level 152):

57 hours:

WARNING: Expect some spoilers especially locations and bosses.

Every year there is usually one or two games that really stand out.  Last year it was Shadow of Mordor which I 100% it.  This year so far it's definitely Bloodborne.  This is the first game on anything playstation that I got 100% of all the trophies.  I even completed NG+ (new game plus).  I own all the souls game but Bloodborne is the first one I ever played.  The reviews and opinions of friends were so positive I just had to give it a shot.

- I heard it was hard but I wasn't sure what to expect.  I mean I beat Ninja Gaiden on the original Xbox so I kind of had an idea.  What I didn't except was how punishing the starting area would be.  There was no easing you in the game.  I banged my head for a good solid 2 hours.  I even beat the executioner guy which didn't even drop a blood gemstone (I think it's like 50% chance).  I have to say don't be scared away by the difficulty.  This game is mostly fair and you do get better over time.  You can see it in the results.  It's just so incredibly rewarding when you beat a particularly difficult area or boss.  I soloed every boss battle all through the main game, NG+, and chalice dungeons except for the NG+ version of Shadows of Yharnam since I wanted to test out co-op.  Man, that made the fight trivial.  So if you are having a hard time don't be afraid to ring that bell.  It's your game and your money.  Play it however you want.
- I ended up choosing the axe.  After I got use to its timing I loved it.  I used it pretty much all the time only briefly experimenting with Ludwig's Holy Blade, Blades of Mercy, and Tonitrus.  I stuck to the pistol mostly.  So when picking your main weapon you want to consider other things than just raw damage scaling.  Timing is very important as in how long attacks take to swing or charge up or how frequently you can attack.  This also ties into how stamina efficient the move set is.  Spacing and reach is important too.  Finally, what I think is really critical is stagger and knock down.  This allows you to create space and give you time to heal, disengage, or just run away if need to be.  It gives you options during combat.  I found the axe a really good mix of all the above things (mostly in 2 hand mode) but every weapon is viable in this game so just find one that matches your desired style and then build you character around it.  I went for mostly a pure strength build while keeping an eye on soft and hard stat break points.
- The pistol and the blunderbuss is a bit of a toss up.  Pistol is a bit faster but the blunderbuss has a wide spread so it's easier to hit your target especially a fast moving one.  At first it seems like you could never miss when you are locked on target but in alter enemies especially the quick ones they can definitely dodge your shots.  I was two handed axe most of the time so I didn't gun parry all that much except on a few encounters.
- Learning to work within the limits of the camera is a whole challenge by itself.  Learn which bosses where it's better to fight locked on or unlocked.  For most fights I stayed locked.
- I used every resource available to beat this game.  Knowing what you need to do and executing it are still very different things.  Here are some of my favorite resources:
Fextralife wiki: This site has everything like detailed maps, weapons, npc quests, trophies, chalice dungeon info, etc.  I especially like this progression table.  It gives you a great idea of what to tackle next and what is optional without much spoilers.
- Nice world map that shows lanterns and how all the areas are connected.
- Amazing 90 page lore document.  Kotaku UK also has a nice shorter summary.  Yeah, I really had no idea what was going on when I finished the first time so these lore articles really helped.
- The basic combat loop is just really tight and satisfying.  The sound your weapon makes as it digs into flesh, the blood, all of it just makes this a gory but satisfying experience.  The dodging mechanic works well and requires good timing.  The health recovery system promotes aggressive tactics.  The bosses have reasonable tells in their attack animations that you can learn and for the most part don't require super human reflexes to dodge (though a few do).
- I understand the design decisions about losing your blood echoes permanently if you die a 2nd time without recovering them first.  It does create quite a bit of tension.  My life is stressful enough without added stress from games.  Plus, I hate losing progress.  So I sort of save cheated.  I had 2 usb flash drives hooked up to my ps4.  The cool part of bloodborne is you can pretty much save anywhere at anytime and it remembers the exact position and state of the game.  So if I complete a particularly hard section of a game or I'm at a boss for the first time and I need to practice on it I save my game by exiting to the title screen then backup the save game to a usb flash drive.  Then, if I die I can just restore my last save game from usb back to system.  It's also nice to use when learning a new boss and you just burned through 100 blood vials learning the fight.  Instead of having to farm those back I can just restore my save once I've learned the boss and beat it without burning through too many of my consumables.  Hey, the game/system lets you do it so I'm going to use every advantage possible.  Too bad the game doesn't allow you to have multiple saves per character.  There's still incentive to do well because the load times are pretty bad.  It was better after the latest patch but still pretty bad for such a death heavy game.
- I'm usually not a completionist but on this game I was.  There were a few things I missed on the first play through that I had to pick up on NG+.  You might want to review all the NPC quests especially ones dealing with covenants.  There is usually a strict order of things and there are specific events that will prevent you from completing quests if you hadn't already completed previous steps.
- If you want all 3 endings you might want to read up on that and what is required.  You'll also want to create a save backup before the point of no return if you want to easily get all 3 ending trophies without having to play through multiple times.
- I missed some of the hunter tools in the late stages.  I would review those and see if you missed any before you cross the point of no return.  You're there when ummm everything is on fire.
- You won't get all the weapons either until you do the chalice dungeons.
 - There is exactly one blood rock in the main game that lets you upgrade a weapon from +9 to +10.
- You can get another blood rock in some depth 5 root chalice dungeons but you have to pretty much finish the chalice dungeons to unlock that.  It's a pretty big time commitment.
- There is one living string in the main play through that is important if you plan to do the chalice dungeons.
- The non-root chalice dungeons are NOT random and there is a pretty strict linear progression.  I would recommend saving depth 3 and greater for NG+.  The end goal is to kill the queen.  On step 6 most people say Isz is easier than Lower Loran so that's what I did.
- So I found a few bosses particularly difficult.
- Cleric gave me some trouble since it was my first experience with a souls game boss.
- Blood starved beast was heard and taught me to gun parry.
- Martyr Logarius was probably the hardest boss for me in the main game.
- All of defiled chalice dungeon was really really hard.  It was the hardest part of the entire game for me.
- The queen was actually pretty easy.
- One of the main things insight does is make the game harder (lower resistance to frenzy, enemies have new abilities) on multiples of 15.  So if you want to keep the game as "easiest" as possible keep your insight below 15.  I'm a wuss so I just bought bolt or fire paper to keep my insight around 11 at all times.
- Out of the 57 hrs of play time about 3 hrs was probably dedicated to echo farming to help put me a bit ahead of the level curve.  I really didn't start farming until first floor lecture building (works from the side room too which is they way I prefer to do it).  Lower mensis near the lantern isn't a bad spot either.  I also farmed a bit in layer 1 Great Pthumeru Ihyll Chalice.  Right at the lantern there is a big dude you can kill.  With all 3 moon runes equipped I made about 33K echoes per run.  Just use bold hunter's mark and repeat.
- The hand lantern affects stamina.  Actually, a few things do.

Highly recommended.  I can definitely see this being my game of the year.  It's a system seller IMO. I think I'm done.  I don't have any real desire to grind root chalice dungeons or do pvp.  I guess I'll start working my way backwards through the rest of the souls games.

Toward the end of my first play through I decided to start saving some of my boss fights to youtube.  Obviously these are pretty spoilerly.  Here they are in the order that I got them.














































Thursday, May 07, 2015

iClever Himbox Bluetooth 4.0 receiver for the Car


So I picked up yet another bluetooth receiver for the car.  This one is a pretty nice upgrade over my previous one (miccus).
- bluetooth 4.0
- This hooks up to the AUX input on your car stereo so make sure you have one first.
- Plays nice with my pebble watch!  It no longer cuts out my music.
- Louder and better sound quality
- Turns on/off with you car and automatically pairs back up.
- Voice prompt telling you that it is connected.  This is a nice bit of confirmation.
- It also doubles as a hands free set as the puck is also a mic.  It comes with a magnetic adhesive disc for mounting.  I didn't use it as I just leave this inside my center console.  You also use it for basic playback controls.  My car already has hands free bluetooth built in so all I really want is the a2dp support.
- On my iPhone 6 it just shows up as another audio source for phone calls.  So my phone is paired to my car and the Himbox at the same time.  So it was simple to continue to use my car for making and receiving calls.  For this reason I didn't test the hands free part of the functionality of the Himbox.

Highly recommended.  Good price, good quality sound, solid set of features, and reliable pairing.

Mountie and Duet


Mountie and Duet



Here is a pretty neat and portable solution to get a dual monitor setup for your macbook.

Mountie is a $25 clip that allows you to attach your ios device to the side of your macbook.  It consists of spongy grippy clips that hold on to each device with a stabilizing bar running in between them.  It comes with a few different sets of pads of different thicknesses to accommodate different mac/ipad/iphone models.  I'm using a macbook pro 15 mid 2014 along with an iPad air 2.  The clip is really easy to attach and remove.  So that's kind of cool on it's own.  But it gets really neat when you pair it with Duet.

Duet is a $16 universal app.  I know it's pretty pricey but worth every penny.  I picked it up when it was on sale though.  So this lets you use your iOS device as a second monitor for you macbook.  There have been several similar apps that use wifi but this one has one big difference.  It's connection is done over the lightening cable.  This gives you incredible performance, reliability, and visual quality.  Your iPad will look and respond just as if you had a small secondary monitor attached by hdmi or thunderbolt.  This is a great portable/space saving dual monitor solution that's great for travel, on the couch, or if you just have limited desk space.

Highly Recommended.  On a table the iPad works well in both portrait and landscape orientation.  On your lap I find landscape to throw the balance too far off to feel all that comfortable or stable.

Best way to mount an external hard drive on a laptop


Spider Mount

So with pretty much every laptop coming with a SSD these days (or you are upgrading to one) the lack of large of amounts of storage is pretty apparent.  The good news is most modern laptops have usb 3.0 ports which gives you the full throughput that portable 2.5" external hard drives can deliver.  The biggest issue if you use your laptop on well your lap is it's pretty inconvenient to have this hard drive tethered to your laptop which doesn't easily move around with you.

So I started looking into different ways to attach the hard drive to the back of the lid of the laptop.  I've tried suction cup hooks like you can find in craft stores.  There are some Christmas wreath hangers that kind of work but are rather large and the hook is the wrong shape.  The idea is to suction cup the hook to the hard drive and then hook it over the top of the laptop screen.  Plastic hooks are obviously preferred to prevent scratching.  Also, it has to be small enough not to obscure the screen.  Then if the angle/curve of the hook isn't right the hard drive won't hang right.  Also, it's pretty easy to knock the hook off the laptop or the suction cup could release.  Overall, it was a pretty horrible solution.

Next I tried those thin rubbery sticky pads used to hold cell phones to car dashes.  Those kind of work but were hard to remove and as the stickiness wore off the hard drive would fall off.  This was an even worse solution with strong possibility of damaging your hard drive from a fall.

Finally, I found a solid solution I REALLY like.  Those little rubber coated flexible spider mounts are perfect for the job.  They are really inexpensive like these for $2.55.  Those ship from china so it takes a few weeks.  Search around amazon and you can find some prime ones for a bit more.  Look at my photos to see how you should bend them to wrap around the hard drive and create 2 hooks on the opposite end of the usb port.  When bending sharper angles like for the hooks you might want to use some pliers.  Just be careful with these cheaper mounts because you can actually have the metal underneath poke through the rubber outer coating.  The rubber coating makes it safe to use and grips so it doesn't slide around.  You can bend all the little legs to fit almost any hard drive and any laptop.  Now, when you get up or move around with your laptop your external hard drive moves with you.  For hard drives I really like the Seagate Backup Plus slim 2TB for around $89.

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

5 minutes with the Macbook 12 inch (2015)


So I happen to be in the apple store replacing my old iPhone 5.  The screen was starting to separate from the body due to battery swelling.  It's apparently a thing with the early made iPhone 5. Anyways, they replaced it in all of 10 min.  Gotta love apple support.

Anyways, I went to check out the macbook 12 inch.
- Amazingly light.  Weighs the same as my old ipad 3 and almost as thin
- The 12" form factor is smaller than my 11.6" cheapy acer windows laptop.
- Butterfly switches on the keyboard DO make a different. It feels really good for such a low profile keyboard. I did several rounds of typeracer.  I was at an awkward angle but still managed 75 wpm.
- The new touchpad really is amazing.  It feels like it's clicking but nothing moves.  I did it over and over again for my brain to try and process what is really happening. So weird but it totally works.  3 different levels of force adjustable in settings or you can go back to touch to tap if you want.
- Fired up quicktime.  Played a hobbit trailer.  Tried out the force touch thing to increase ff or rewind speed.  Works well.  Feels great
- Messed with the usb type c connector.  it's a nice reversable connector BUT not magnetic so with something this light if you catch the cable you'll yank the laptop right off.

Overall I was more impressed than expected.  It feels pretty responsive in my limited testing but that octane score isn't great.  My work laptop gets 29,142.  My acer c720 chromebook from last year is around 10-11K.  So 2 things I would want: Faster cpu option and at least 2 usb type c ports.  If it had those then this would be my favorite laptop by far.  For smaller projects it's probably fine but I could see it being frustrating for compiling larger projects.