Tag: video games

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When I’m streaming live, watch it embedded right here, or visit me on Twitch! Please consider donating to Extra Life by clicking here.

What Is It?

Extra Life is a fundraising program that benefits Children’s Miracle Network hospitals in many cities. Every year, they designate one day to be a 24-hour focus for these fundraising efforts, and participants are encouraged to livestream their games.

I’ll be doing so this year for the sixth year this upcoming Saturday, November 3rd. I’d like to invite you and many others to participate in this with me and support my fundraising efforts. Every dime raised is used for direct benefit to children’s hospitals in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

After a couple of years of being too optimistic with my goal, this year I’m making it more achievable. I’d like to raise $1,000 for these hospitals, and I’m going to need your help to do it. You can track how close we are right here:

What Will You Be Playing, and When?

I have a full schedule prepared for you. Until the marathon starts, it’s somewhat tentative, but most of it at this point should be correct. You can find the marathon schedule on horaro.org here.

I’ll be playing a mix of games from various consoles and eras, and for some content blocks, will be joined by family and friends. Please consider joining us and helping us raise money for charity!

How Can I Help?

The best way you can help is by making a donation directly to my fundraising effort. You can make your payment using a variety of methods here. All donations are fully tax-deductible, and all funds are given directly to the hospitals.

It’s also really helpful to me if you watch the stream on my Twitch channel or by using the player embedded above. More people watching helps people find my channel and can bring more interest to my fundraising stream—which can lead to more donations. You can also chat with me live using the chat box, but you’ll need a Twitch account to do so. If you have one or sign up for one, please chat a bit! I love interacting with viewers and talking with you about what’s going on.

I’d much rather you made a donation to the campaign itself, but if you want to donate something like a meal for me and my stream helpers or something to benefit stream quality (I’m in need of NodeCG help), please reach out to me directly. (These donations will *not* be tax-deductible.)

Anything Else?

Yep!

For the first time this year, any donation of $10 or more via my Extra Life fundraising campaign will be entered into a raffle for a prize. The prizes are detailed in the schedule for the event. The prize you’re entered for will depend on the block during which you donate; if you are hoping for a specific prize, make sure you donate during the appropriate block!

Some rules and disclosures regarding raffle prizes:

  • Donors are eligible for raffles by donating a minimum of $10 during the block for which a prize is offered. All raffles will be conducted off-stream after the event has concluded.
  • Raffle prize winners will be contacted via email.
  • Raffle prizes are subject to change or removal prior to the start of the event.
  • Prize winners located outside North America may be offered prize substitutions of equal value, depending on shipping or customs costs required.
  • Prize winners who do not wish to share their address for prize delivery purposes will be offered an alternate prize selection at the event’s discretion.
  • Family members of the streamer (me) and/or those people appearing on-camera during the event will not be eligible for prizes.
  • Donations prior to the start of the event will be eligible for the first prize in the schedule.
  • Any prizes that are unclaimed will be re-raffled to another donor from the same time block, or if no donors remain, the money for purchasing those prizes will be returned to the prizing sponsor.
  • Raffle prizes are courtesy a donation from Thrivent Financial and their Action Team program.

If you have any questions regarding prizing, please contact me and I’ll be happy to answer them for you.

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From the daily reset yesterday through the daily reset today, Bungie made a special preview of Gambit available for all Destiny 2 owners to play and experience. I won’t spend a bunch of time explaining the mode, but in very brief terms, this is how it works:

  • Two teams of four compete to defeat enemies, “bank” resources those enemies drop, and then defeat a boss that appears after enough of those resources have been collected and banked.
  • The teams play in maps that don’t physically connect to each other—your team of four has its own PvE space during the activity.
  • As you bank resources in specific amounts, this sends enemies to your enemy’s side to temporarily prevent them from banking their resources.
  • If you die without banking those resources (called “motes”), your team loses those resources completely.
  • At various points throughout the mode, each team can send over a single player from their team to the other side to engage in PvP and attempt to frustrate the other team and cause them to lose resources or progress.
  • The game is played to best-two-of-three rounds.

The mode is a public matchmaking playlist, so if you don’t enter with a pre-made team of four players, the game will add players to your team in the same way that Strikes or Crucible matches are queued. Gambit has its own playlist slot next to those activities in the Director:

I’ll work on a guide for playing Gambit later, but in the meantime, while there are still a couple of days left before Forsaken launches and the mode is available to all, I’d like to talk about what I enjoyed and what I didn’t.

Continue reading “Thoughts on the Destiny 2 Gambit Preview”

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With patch 2.0 to Destiny 2 this past Tuesday, the way weapons and ammo are organized within the game has fundamentally changed. It’s been confusing for some people, so I thought I’d try to explain it, if possible.

To start, here’s the easiest way to look at it:

  • The slot a weapon is in and the type of ammo it uses are no longer the exact same thing
  • The top two slots determine what ammo a gun uses based on the type of weapon, not based on the slot itself (white or green ammo)
  • All weapons in the third slot take the same type of ammo (purple ammo)
  • Ammo bricks now drop differently, with white ammo being most common, green being less common, and purple being the rarest

If pushed to write this in one sentence, it would be: weapon slots and ammo types have been decoupled.

Trust me: that’s the easiest way to phrase it I can come up with right now. If you want to learn more about the system, keep reading, and let’s talk about Destiny 1 and 2 and their weapon and ammo systems and how they have evolved.

I’d like to know more about this!

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Hey, friends!

A couple of things I love are going to join forces in a Twitch stream this upcoming Tuesday, starting around noon Central time and extending until Whenever I Feel Like Stopping:

  • With Extra Life weekend coming up in a few months, I thought it a good idea to do some early fundraising and get the ball rolling
  • Destiny 2: Forsaken launches around that time and I’ve taken some time off to play through it right away with my son, live on stream

I would love it if you would stop by and support the stream! Load it up, hang out, chat a bit, and if you feel generous, donate to my Extra Life campaign for this year. All proceeds donated via my Extra Life page go directly to local children’s hospitals and are tax-deductible.

Watch us run through the story of Destiny 2: Forsaken, experience the new Gambit game mode new to the franchise, or just stop by and chat neat-o Destiny stuff with us while we explore!

If you can’t attend directly, if you would tell your friends and families we’re doing such a thing, it would be greatly appreciated. More eyes on what we are doing means more possible donations to help sick kids in the St. Louis area.

Here are the important links for the event:

Thank you so much for your consideration!

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If you were looking for a Season Four info dump, this week’s update from Bungie has you covered. As always, you can find their original post here, and I’ll do my best to re-summarize the information for you and provide some commentary.

It’s a lot. Let’s get started.

Continue reading “Talkin’ TWAB: Weapon Changes, Economy Updates, Eververse…”

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There’s not a ton to boil down for you out of this week’s This Week at Bungie, but what’s there may be significant for you. You can find Bungie’s original post here.

What we do have is a lot of statistics, and some data regarding Year One weapons as we roll into Year Two in four weeks. Solstice of Heroes is well underway at this point, and I hope this week’s update finds your armor grinding underway (or not, if you’ve chosen not to pursue it).

Continue reading “Talkin’ TWAB: Numbers—Numbers EVERYWHERE”

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At tomorrow’s reset, Destiny 2 players start celebrating the Solstice of Heroes event—the culmination of the first year of Destiny 2 and a send-off leading into the release of Forsaken and the start of Year Two.

Part of Solstice of Heroes includes the Moments of Triumph, which are specific bounties you can complete for your Destiny 2 account for completing various activities throughout the first year of the game. The initial Moments were made public on July 7th, but a group of them remained hidden and couldn’t be completed until Solstice starts tomorrow.

I previously revealed these hidden goals here and explained what they are and how many points towards the maximum score they would provide. But in this guide, I’d like to cover the entirety of the Moments of Triumph and what they’ll provide to you when you earn them, so you know where to focus your attention for the remaining five weeks of Season Three and Year One.

You can also read up on Bungie’s official guide to Moments of Triumph and how they will work here. The deadline for completing the Moments of Triumph is 28 August 2018.

Continue reading “Moments of Triumph Guide: Celebrating Year One of Destiny 2”

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An updated Development Roadmap, incoming changes to power progression, sandbox changes, a new Crucible Labs test, and a bonus info drop from Game Informer—this week was pretty loaded with information.

The posts referenced in this update are:

Here’s what you need to know:

Continue reading “Talkin’ TWAB: 26 July 2018”

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Destiny 2’s Solstice of Heroes event doesn’t start until next Tuesday, the 31st of July, but thanks to some API information that’s already been added to support the event, we can take a look at the requirements for progressing the armor set unique to the four-week-long celebration.

If you don’t yet know about Solstice of Heroes, Bungie’s post announcing the event is here.

Continue reading “Solstice of Heroes: Armor Progression Guide”