Kind of early this morning as I sit here sipping some coffee.
Labor Day Weekend is upon us and that means, for me, the county fair is also upon us. As a kid I remember it being a wild and magical place full of rides one could only see once a year. Sometimes a new one would make an appearance while an old favorite went to some other lucky city or town to thrill the families of other places. There was always something about walking fairway lined with sketchy games -pop a balloon for a dollar and win a stuffed animal, ring toss for cheap printed mirrors or posters. I used to enter art in judging contest that takes place each time. Different age groups throughout the town would hang hundreds of paintings and photos and drawings. There is of course also the old school vibe of the small town giant vegetable contests. It was always kind of fun to see a pumpkin I could live in at 8 years old.There's even a contest for the tallest weed, which is surprisingly interesting. And many other things: quilts, tapestries, yard sculptures, Lego sculptures, wood work, even clothes all made by locals to be viewed by all. Tons of food booths sporting grossly overpriced pizza and rice bowls and various deep fried things you just might take a second look at all lined the upper walks and each usually loaded with people basically begging to fork over twelve bucks for a hot dog. Above it all is the livestock judging and auctions. The evenings hold the large events. Concerts, destruction derby and a rodeo. It was always four days and three nights of fun exhaustion with friends. I even planned on going this year for the first time in ages but my lady is out of state for a little longer and I don't really want to go hang out by myself there. Not to mention the COVID sized elephant in the room and this county only being about 40% vaccinated. Still, I hope it's a good time for anyone who goes. It's always been a much anticipated tradition around here and even with the times as crazy as they are, I'm glad it didn't get cancelled this year.
Okay let's look at a few game related things here. After all that's the idea behind this, not so much my talking about local small town mish-mash.
It looks like Ubisoft is planning to make a big service out of Assassain's Creed series. According to Blomberg, it's still years from being released and not many details are just kept locked away. But the speculation is that it'll be something like a big world where one could explore any of the connected timelines the individual games took place in. Of course they will likely come with many in-game transactions and I'm sure expansions won't just show up for free. But if you're a fan of the AC series, keep your eyes peeled.
One of my favorite titles is getting a new line of content. SnowRunner is teasing the Year Two Pass and I think it's actually releasing next week starting with season five content. Which is crazy because I'm barely into season four still. This is a driving sim with hundreds of hours of content already, I'm personally well into 500 hours, and it looks like there might be another 500 on the way. seasons and expansions are priced inexpensively and usually come with at least two maps and two new vehicles and loads of tasks and problems to solve. It gets a little repetitive from time to time but there's always a good sense of accomplishment once you reach a goal. Here's the Year Two teaser
Have you found a new GPU yet? Yeah, a lot of us are still waiting as well. I cancelled my order for a 6800XT after months of waiting in line and watching the price go up and up. Well, some availability is becoming more common but it also looks like prices are on the way back up after a mild reprieve. Somehow Dr. S got ahold of two 3080ti's for prices not wildly over MSRP. I'm still looking for a 6800XT but it feels like by time I find one it'll be time for the next gen releases and maybe time for a new system build anyway. Anyway, if you're still looking you might check out discord servers that provide live stock updates and sign up for various notification programs via partner card manufacturers. But be ready to shell out the dollar bills because even though prices came down a bit recently, they're still very disproportionate to MSRP in most cases. Here's some info from WCCF
What are we playing?
Greywolfe: i'm not really here. i'm on my old machine and that's plugged into a tv. so i've actually been playing pathfinder: kingmaker, because i can now read the too-small text. stupid lack of proper font scaling. :( - that and system crash and also victor vran. system crash is pretty ok. pathfinder: kingmaker seems like a game you can just fall into. victor vran seems like a serviceable arpg. however, it does this one thing i absolutely detest: you have maps. the maps have stars. you get stars by completing map challenges. two maps in and it was giving me, "kill x guys without taking any damage" challenges. that's crazy nonsense. stop that, developers.
Scrooloose: Busy weekend but I might try and finish up Plague Tale. I'm also still driving around in SnowRunner just fixing bridges left and right.
Yoda: Got my first piece of PEN Boss gear! Gonna smack some Treants up with that on my mystic prolly all three days of the weekend. So dope