Charongreed

I'm a big fan of Tactics, and bought the android version and was pretty happy with it. It comes with a double confirm system on by default to make sure you don't mistap something and regret it, but I found I rarely had any problem with it and ended up turning it off. Its also faster than most other versions because it speeds up summons (and magic animations, i think?). Uses battery like a motherfucker though.

Final Update, I hope: as of 1:21 this morning, I have access to Extraction again. So to recap: I proved my system can run it and that I have paid the money to access it (both things Ubisoft knows without asking me, since Ubisoft Connect gathers user data and I connected my Xbox account, the explicit purpose of which is to show my Game Pass subscription status), and after going back and forth with support for 5 emails which ended with providing them access to my account, they then took (not counting the weekend) 3 days to hit the button that let me access it again. I even sent another email Monday evening making sure the account validation thing they had me do didn't break and they were waiting for that. Maybe that was it- spite, since I had the gall to ask why I hadn't heard anything in so long.

And, I'm gonna guess that when my sub runs out again next month, I get to repeat this process again. I think that might be all the time I need to get what I need out of Extraction and go back to pretending Ubisoft doesn't exist.

Update: I now have to verify my email address to prove its really me? Starting to feel like they're just throwing up every roadblock they can think of, and also this email is from someone else than the first one? But at least he claims this is the last step. Also, burning the midnight oil, I figured after 6:00 I was encouraged to go and fuck myself till Monday.

@imhungry sometimes its hard to hit save after you make edits I guess? Bet that second conversation was fun. Hopefully they didn't make you prove it the second time.

OK, so I like Extraction. Got its problems, but I dig it for the most part, and free with Game Pass is a great price for it. But ya boi ain't rolling in cash right now, so I usually buy Game Pass a month at a time and grab it again for a dollar.

Turns out, that fucks up Extraction pretty bad. Specifically, when your Game Pass subscription runs out, it detaches the game from your account, reasonably, works that way with EA's thing too. But when you resub, it doesn't automatically reattach, and you don't have the option to do it manually. So the only option is to go to Ubisoft's support system and have them manually reattach it. Its real dumb, but you can give them the benefit of the doubt that it hasn't been out long and its the first time they've done this. Its a problem of their own making, but not the easiest to solve I guess.

But now the fun begins. Ubisoft wants a dxdiag(reasonable, I guess?) and MSInfo(yo what the fuck?). They even have helppages to walk you through sending them this information, which is good because I have never been asked for my MSInfo fucking ever and had no idea how to export it. So once you've sent them more information than you get from a keylogger, they inform you that they work on business days and they'll get back to ya. Sure, whatever, I'm not gonna be that guy and say you gotta work through the weekend.

But, they got back to me pretty fast with this gem:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Ubisoft Customer Support.

We are sorry to hear that you are experiencing this.

To help us look into this further, are you able to provide a screenshot of the receipt showing that you re-subscribed to Game Pass?

What we are looking for can be found here:

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/purchases-and-rewards/article/accessing-your-microsoft-proof-of-purchase/000062049

Kind Regards,

Ubi-Poseidon

I gotta admit, the balls of it had me stunned for a bit. They even have a goddamn help page for it. Would have been cool (cool-er? Less shitty, actually?) if they told me they wanted it before I submitted the ticket but here we are. I did the thing, so I guess expect an update.

Saying you're tired of all the negativity and then going into the forums to post more negativity but about specific people where they can see it makes no sense to me. Are you trying to publicly shame them, or looking for an echo chamber in the middle of the fan club? Is this the modern UGH I'M CANCELLING MY DESCRIPTION AND HERE'S A RANT WHY

I disagree with any and all of the duders at times. Jeff G didn't give Godfall a good try, Jan tried to say pit bulls are mean, people are gonna say and do stuff you don't agree with. I wish everyone had the same introspection and thought that Austin Walker did, but wanting them to fake being intellectual or care about issues they have no interest in is the opposite of what I want. I'm here because I think they're good people who care about this industry deeply, and I don't need them to agree with me on everything to feel that way.

There are a million people on youtube and/or twitch who need support because they're trying to do what they love if you're looking for someone to agree with you.

I'll second Spookin With Scoops, especially the Blair Witch game. The original phantasmagoria is pretty great too, as well as this little masterpiece. Slender: The Arrival was a lot of fun with Ryan riding along.

The first that springs to mind is Duke Nukem: Zero Hour for the N64, but carrying the Duke name it probably doesn't count. A bunch of From Software's pre-souls work is amazing and underappreciated (the Armored Core series straight up has souls combat in it, Otogi and Otogi 2 had real level destruction, Chromehounds was almost an mmo) but people liked those even when they were current. I adored Jet Force Gemini, but Rare was enough of a name that the people who gave it a shot knew that it was good.

I guess mine would be Phantom Crash, for the OG Xbox. It was a really fast mech game that sort of took place in an arena, but it had a ton of customization, including different animal AI partners and the ability to make pieces of your mech lighter or heavier (heavier pieces did more damage but were slower and had more armor, lighter pieces shot faster and had less armor) and a weird almost visual novel style story that played out in little scenes randomly as you moved between the map screen that served as the out-of-match UI.

The only youtuber I keep up with is Gameoliodan, a super chill Australian dude who mostly plays MMOs. He reads all the dialogue(with voices!) and does all the quests, its super relaxing and he seems like just generally a great dude.

I love Fallout 76, but that comes with some big caveats. Fallout 76 is more of a weird test bed for Bethesda to figure out how online games work than a full game on its own (its effectively Fallout 4 with a bunch of shit added). West Virginia is the weirdest, most fun world they've ever built in a fallout game, and one of the more recent updates makes it easily explorable at any level. But the whole game is also built around the mostly cosmetics storefront that you can spend real money in (by buying currency). You do get enough to buy stuff you want, but the grind is real. The multiplayer aspect is almost always ignorable, apart from a few select situations where pvp can be forced on you. The basebuilding is basically just imported from 4 but with some new weird features, and they've taken most of the penalties out of the survival stuff. Also since its an online game, it doesn't have a developer menu or mods, which is a gigantic bummer.

More or less my takeaway is that 76 is cool, but if you're more interested in The Pitt its actually from a Fallout 3 expansion, that I guess they're revisiting? Or telling the story of how it got that way? 76 goes on sale regularly and is on Game Pass, so if you're determined to grab it you don't have to drop full price on it.

Sea Of Thieves, I've spent a ton of time in it and accomplished quite a lot by playing through game pass, but the ever hanging threat of someone coming along and ruining the fun because they get off on it always ruins my memories of it. It does so much so well, but when they announced they were never going to entertain PvE servers I finally lost my taste for it. I dream about what could have been (especially if it had been a Fallen London game, holy shit) and still feel the urge to go back, but being told flatly that they believe having your adventure ruined by assholes is part of the core design leaves a bad taste in my mouth too big to overcome.