Author: Thamara

Categories
Journal Snippets

Witcher

After watching the Netflix adaption of The Witcher, I wanted to read the books and play the games. I had already played about 15 hours in the 3rd game, but I was not fully invested in the mythos there. So I started with the first book, and the first game.

The first game came out in 2007. So it was pretty badly optimised for my new hardware. I endured through it, nevertheless. The story was pretty good, but a little dragged out. The game totalled around 45 hours, if I’m not mistaken.

The first two books (The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny) were relatively fast reads. They’re collections of short stories. The third book, Blood of Elves, which is the first novel, is what I’m reading now.

It’s only after starting to read the books I realised that the events in the games take place after the events in the book series. But that didn’t affect my experience adversely at all.

I’m now playing the second game (Assassins of Kings.) I had some trouble optimising the game for my computer, but things are working fine now. I’ve played about 4 hours, and hoping to play more in the next weeks.

Categories
Musings

Infinite

I just finished Bioshock Infinite, the last installment of the Bioshock franchise. It’s been almost 7 years since this game came out. I didn’t have a good enough computer, or the time, to play it back then.

I knew nothing about Bioshock going in. Since I hadn’t played the previous games in the franchise, I had no idea that it was a commentary on the American way of life, and mostly a critique of it.

I don’t think anyone reads this blog, but if anyone does, I don’t want to give away any spoilers. I can just say that it’s a game absolutely worth playing. You will only spend 12-15 hours playing it. But you’ll be thinking about it for a lot more.

Stick until the end. It will break you.

I will say this: I like to believe that the circle was broken.

Categories
Journal Snippets

The Last of Us

I finished the game yesterday. It was one hell of a ride.

The pacing of the story was perfect. There was action just when you wanted there to be action and then there were heavy emotional moments when you wanted those. It felt more like a movie you could interact with, than a game. 

On top of the story being perfectly told, it was pretty challenging, too. Halfway through, I changed the difficulty from Normal to Easy, because some levels were a little difficult to get through, especially if you broke stealth. 

A sequel will be released in May. I’m looking forward to playing that. 

Categories
Gear

Upgraded

I thought I’d be upgrading to a new 13 inch MacBook Pro, but I changed my mind and got the new 16 inch instead.

I got the base model, but this is still a capable machine. It packs:

  • a 2.6GHz 6-core 9th-generation Intel Core i7 processor
  • an AMD Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory
  • a 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
  • 512GB SSD storage

I’ve set up all my accounts and apps on the new machine now. iCloud and 1Password made it incredibly easy.

I also thought of installing Windows through bootcamp, so that I can finally play the first two Witcher games.

Categories
Musings

Uphoria

On Wednesday, we recorded our first episode with the new podcast setup.

I get excited about things like this. This recording was truly a momentous occasion, not only because we had a brilliant guest, but because for the first time ever we recorded a proper episode with a guest with 3 dedicated mic inputs. Before this, we used to share a mic between us (Himal and I), while the guest had another.

The audio interface we used previously (Scarlette 2i2 – 1st Gen, which I had borrowed from a friend) records audio at 96 kHz natively, while the new Behringer U-PHORIA UMC404HD records at 192 kHz. This should give more clarity to the sound, and I should have more room to play around with level adjustments and such while editing.