24) Natalie’s Adventures with Streaming

Post published:11/25/2018
Post category:Rundowns
Reading time:5 mins read
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Two weeks ago, prior to having a bit of a meltdown over the sheer amount of things I need to do, I played through the first stretch of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey using Google’s Project Stream service. While I personally found the game to be the same sort of highly detailed yet ultimately unmemorable open world fluff that has come to define so much of AAA gaming, and positively groaned as I briefly sifted through the microtransaction riddled storefront, I did find the performance of the game over my 50 mbps internet to be quite impressive. While I could tell that there was some degree of latency with my actions, the quality of the service did convince me that streaming is a viable option for gaming in the future, as, well, it worked.
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Rundown (9/30-10/06) Backup Your Backup’s Backup!

Post published:10/07/2018
Post category:Rundowns
Reading time:7 mins read
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Something I really have not addressed in the 6 years I have been doing this (yes, really) is my stance on the physical vs. digital debate. The argument often seen here is between the permanence of physical goods versus the convenience of digital goods, with the arguments against each reflecting the alternative’s benefit. A la, physical goods can be cumbersome, and require install times and such, while digital goods are temporary licenses that could be revoked in many instances.
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Rundown (9/09-9/15) Bonk This Bank!

Post published:09/16/2018
Post category:Rundowns
Reading time:17 mins read
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This is such a petty thing, but the way Pokemon Bank subscriptions are handled really bothers me. At first I thought that if your subscription lapsed, you could more or less indefinitely recover your stored Pokemon, but no, they are erased from the server after a while, and then they are gone forever, which is utter nonsense, especially considering how renewing one’s subscription works. You need to wait until you have 14 days or less left on your pass before you can extend the subscription, and if you forget, say goodbye to whatever is in there. No email notifications, no nothing. I have a near complete Pokedex (I missed Marshadow a while back), a box of shinies, alternate forms, and a Ditto with 3 perfect IVs in there. Do you know how upset and fundamentally broken I would be if I were to lose all of that? More than a goldarn smidget.
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Rundown (6/11) E3 2018: The Busy Day

Post published:06/12/2018
Post category:Rundowns
Reading time:23 mins read
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By the time I have published this post, I have dragged myself through a 13 hour day of work and school, wherein my free time was spent feverishly catching up on the press events in a vain attempt to remain current with the news, before going to bed and spending the preceding morning catching up on everything before the next day of news picks up. It was a rush to get this post out, but as is always the case with E3, I would not have it any other way.
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Rundown (5/27-6/02) Much Ado About Pokemon and Info Dumps

Post published:06/03/2018
Post category:Rundowns
Reading time:12 mins read
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I mentioned before that I utterly love gaming history, and all of the odd bits that come attached with it, and one of the greatest fascinations for me as a child was the development of the second Pokemon game, originally entitled Pokemon 2, before being renamed Gold and Silver. Basically, the game was extensively delayed, reworked, and refined over three years before it finally came out, and a lot of things changed in that time, with said changes being evident thanks to a 1997 Space World demo. Well, said demo founds its way onto the internet… 21 years later, and a lot of details about the original rendition of the game were made available, including map data and many unused Pokemon designs.
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