Oh man is it ever storm prep time today. There's a huge atmospheric river incoming around here set for tomorrow. One hit a few days ago and gave us about two and half inches of water with some snow up higher but this next storm is predicted to hit my area with about eight inches of non-stop rain from Sunday until next Friday, and just above my elevation is expecting anywhere from five to seven feet of snow. I imagine I'll get dusted a little but the real worry is the 60 mph sustained wind gusts. That's beyond gale and nearly hurricane strength. I've got to spend time today making sure things are buttoned down and my wood doesn't get uncovered and soaked. And it's time to hit the grocery store for a supply run for enough to get us past a power outage if that happens. Which is almost certain with winds that high. If you're in CA like me, stay safe, don't go out there and try to drive once this stuff starts if you can avoid it. That much wind and water is almost a guarantee for downed trees and flooding, that includes backed up sewer lines and power lines on the ground as well as potential overrun river banks and wash-outs. Not to mention as little as like three inches of water can wash your car away. Just don't risk it.
Okay let's look at the WRUP highs and lows.
I've been looking forward to Pacific Drive even though I'm not a huge fan of survival mechanics. Lucky for those of us out there that would prefer not to play Tetris with our inventory instead of the game we purchased, Ironwood Studios have taken steps to make the quality of life in Pacific Drive much more convenient. For instance while you're going to have scrounge materials they can be stored and pulled from all your local containers at once. This alone should make inventory management tons easier and let us focus on the main objective a lot more often. PC Gamer has some info on this.
Satisfactory will no longer receive updates in early access. That's because it's finally going get a full 1.0 version and find it's way to release. It's taken five years... Five, to get to a point of 1.0? Why even leave early access at this point? I mean, it's no Star Citizen (let's be real though nothing is), but come on guys. Even better is that you can sign up for a closed beta. Can you feel my eyes rolling from where you're sitting? What's the point? People have been able to play the game for five years. The beta testing should be well done. Stick a fork in that beta. Unbelievable. Anyway, here are some words on that from GamesRadar if you're a fan.
Hexworks has finally fixed backup saves in Lords of the Fallen. I had to put the game down because I was pretty sick of feeling insecure about playing. Every time I started the game there was a pretty good chance it would crash at some point and that could mean losing play time because I'd have to potentially restore an older save from my desktop. I mentioned a while back that I entirely lost my first character after about thirty hours of play and since that point I had just started copying my save folder to another location every time I ended my session. Now I have a couple of characters that are nearly level 200 each and I just decided I would stop playing until a real solution was found. Hopefully this means I can pick it back up because Lords of the Fallen is a pretty damn good souls like with excellent level design and game play. This is an issue that should have been fixed a long time ago. Here are the patch notes from Steam, included are a ton of fixes and checks including the ability to remap your game pad keys. Also something that should have just been available a long time ago, but here we are.
In perhaps one of the most important issues of 2024, both Kit Fox and Ghost Ship have taken a stand to add the tag "Dwarf" to Steam. The idea is that tagging a game with dwarf will tunnel fans of dwarf games to dwarf content easier. Kit Fox, the studio behind Dwarf Fortress and Ghost Ship behind one of my favorite extraction shooters, Deep Rock Galactic have stated that "...dwarves who stand together are slightly taller than before". The point has been made by PC Gamer that this undermines the tag system on Steam as the plan is just to manually add the hashtag dwarf to games in hopes that Steam will just eventually make it official. They go on to equivocate though because of course the tag system doesn't mean a lot in some cases anyway as all tags can in fact be used in all cases. I actually remember when Dark Souls 3 was tagged with "dating sim".
That's it from me this time. Again, stay safe in this coming storm. It's promising to be a rough one. We'll see you all next week.
Games anyone?
Greywolfe: i am now post-gaming in voice of cards. there's not /much/ more i need to get done, so i that means i get to start in on my four in february. been thinking about the list and it's likely along the lines of: lake, beyond eyes, beyond the frame and untitled goose game. these are all games i've been very curious about for a while, now.
Scrooloose: I'm hoping to finish up Prey. This game holds up, give it a run through if you've never done it. SnowRunner just released it's last expansion of year three and I'm still trucking along.