Recorded the latest episode of TAG (Talking About Games) last Friday. Episode #10 covered the recent departure of Horizon Call of the Mountain’s Game Director, and I covered the lineage of Firesprite and their relationship with Sony Interactive Entertainment. Additional topics included a Star Wars competitive multiplayer title that has been flying under the radar but is supposedly due to release this summer. The show rounded out with a discussion about XBox’ upcoming summer showcase, and the beginnings of a multi-part thread where I cover the report card of all of the games Ubisoft put on the stage last year at their summer show as part of the prep for this year’s event. My hopes and plans are to now make TAG a more regular thing, targeting a show every four days. So the next episode will be this coming Tuesday morning, 07 May.
I’ve posted on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Season 3 Let’s Play and have one other recorded that I need to post. My slate has a total of nine sessions that I want to do over the next 3 weeks. Two down, seven to go. These sessions are being recorded on the 377 stack, my build running an Alder lake Core i7-12700KF, an MSI RTX 4070 Super, and 64GB of RAM. And using the Elgato Wave 3 mic, Elgato Wave Arm, Elgato Pop Filter & Shock Mount, and Stream Deck XL.
And that’s also pretty much all I’ve been playing. Most nights this past week I’ve gotten started so late gaming that the only thing I had the energy for was CoD. As I turned the corner into the weekend, though, I did get some time to get back to Final Fantasy VII Remake on the PS5. It just isn’t my kind of game, but I feel it is important enough of a title for my to grit my teeth and bear it to trudge through more of it. The combat is interesting enough for me; let’s call it a 78%. Occasionally I find it hits, usually when I am fighting the regular troops and I feel like I have a chance to pull off some neat maneuvers that reward you with applicable eye-candy. Boss battles are largely an exercise in frustration that I feel like I survive but don’t necessarily enjoy. But I guess this is what I have to get through to also play Rebirth.
I also hit a trigger to make sure I am playing my physical games, and pulled out F1 22 for the PS5. I setup the Thrustmaster T300RS Gran Turismo Edition, and let me tell you. Sublime. The mark of a game or, in this case, a series, that has woven itself into my DNA, is one that you can take a long layoff from, and after coming back, with some minimal amount of dialing in settings and tweaking the cfg, fits like a glove. Apparently, I bought this installment in the series, started my season, and then put the disc in a box. SO I picked up with Round 1, practice session 2 at Bahrain International Circuit. Ran into the wall the first time out of the paddock. Spun the car out the 2nd time after restarting the session. Ran with the Maximum Top Speed setup, in PS2, then the Balanced in PS3, and kept the Balanced for Qualifying. Got on Pole. Then went on to place 2nd, after getting into Leclerc and damaging my front left endplate in lap 3. Too early to pit, I stayed on track until my designating pitting +1 lap (I had race length set for 14 laps). I was longer in the pits than planned after punching my turn-in too early. Got back on in 15th, but then moved up to tenth when the other half of the field pitted the next lap. From there I fought back to 4th, where I had to out-fight Lewis Hamilton to get to 3rd and then pulled a heroic outbreaking of Sainz to come in behind Verstappen. It was a great first outing with the new team.
I changed up livery colors after investing in the marketing department before I proceeded on to Round 2 at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Can’t wait for the next session.
Rounding Off Infinity 