Dad vs Videogames 🎮

Finally got my hands on Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve last week. Sharing my thoughts on the game before I lose track of time doing something else, like playing more Ace Combat 8.

First off, the opening cinematics are interactive, which is pretty cool. I don't remember playing a game with this feature. Granted, I don't play that many games. But still, this was cool.

The opening cinematics also have this sort of Metal Gear feel to them. I don't know why, but I like it. It gave me goosebumps when I went through it.

My two sons wanted to play Minecraft together on their laptops. One of them started a world (we're on Forge 1.20.1) and opened it to LAN. The other one could actually see the world listed under “Scanning for games on your local network”, but every time he tried to join, it would just fail.

I tried the following but these did NOT work for me:

• Joining the LAN world from the server list.
• Using Direct Connection with the host laptop's IPv4 address and port (e.g. 192.168.1.187:53935). This used to work for us, but only in the other direction. My younger son's laptop could connect to his older brother's laptop this way just fine. This time around, it was my older son's laptop trying to connect to his younger brother's laptop, and that's when it failed with a “Failed to connect to the server – Connection timed out: getsockopt” error.
• Pinging the host laptop from the other laptop. Ping just timed out too.

Note: This game log was originally written back in 2022. I’m only publishing it now as I work through my backlog.

After getting burned out on PES 2021, I fired up PES 2019 again today. A few matches in, the differences between the two games stood out immediately. Here’s how PES 2019 feels compared to PES 2021:

Gameplay is simply more fun.

Players feel more responsive, and without the constant ball‑shielding animations, everything moves more freely. I even like the dribbling controls better in PES 2019.

Defense is night‑and‑day better.

Without the heavy shielding, good defenders actually get to show their quality. They poke the ball away, intercept passes, and react naturally. The game also helps by switching you to the nearest defender when the opponent plays a long ball—and it does this while keeping your momentum intact.

I have held off on publishing this game log entry for a long time, because I couldn't write it in a spoiler free manner. This entry deals with a major story-line spoiler. I can redact some details and hide them behind a link, but I cannot remove most of the content, because otherwise this game log would not make any sense. So, readers be warned. This post contains major plot-line spoilers.

Character Name: Edgewater Class: Soldier Playthrough: 1st

Uhm… we just got attacked by the Starborn. <See spoiler...> is dead. The Starborn Hunter attacked The Eye first, then came into The Lodge. We had to run away with the artifacts. The Hunter actually decided to let us go. We used the opportunity to try and help everyone at The Eye. Everyone survived except <See spoiler...>. I kinda feel like its my fault.

Every few months, I see a post online (usually on YouTube or Reddit), about someone who has “spent hundreds of hours playing Skyrim.” They talk about the freedom, the exploration, the endless quests, and the world that never seems to run out of surprises. And they can't get enough of it.

I tried to be one of those people. I really did. But it just doesn't work out for me. For one reason or another, I find myself switching to a different game and never really feeling the urge to get back to Skyrim.

My 5 year old son has been playing Marvel Spider-Man for the past few weeks on the PlayStation 4. He greatly enjoys the game and it was going well for him, until the PS4 started throwing out this “Cannot continue using the application/The data for the following application is corrupted” error.

I tried the following solutions but these did NOT work for me:

• Restart the PS4.
• Delete the game and re-install.
• Rebuild the database via the Safe Mode startup.

A battle with a BMW M2. The Lexus RCF, with its brawny big V8, was usually the one passing cars in a long straight. Imagine my surprise when I almost got passed by this BMW M2 on a straight.

Ran into the first tough enemy/boss in the game. It is called the Chromatic Troubador and it hits like a truck. The first fight against it, my party of three (Gustave, Lune and Maelle) were wiped out rather quickly. The next few fights I tried to focus on keeping everyone's health up. Still my party kept getting wiped out. In the fight where I managed to defeat it, I did not focus on healing at all. This is because even with my characters at full health, not being able to dodge 1or 2 of its attacks still renders one of my characters dead. So, there's no point in healing. Plus, healing ends your turn, so you don't get to attack or do anything to help take the enemy down. So yeah, I stopped trying to heal my characters and instead just revived them when they went down using revive tints. I focused doing as much damage as I could using skills. It helps that in this last fight, I've gotten more familiar with the enemy's attack patterns and were able to dodge a majority of its attacks. So yeah, managed to take it down.

Now to keep exploring the Flying Waters...