MyNameIsAtticus

Today's game is some more AC Shadows. For the main screenshot i went with a photo i took of these Fox Cubs playing together that i did for one of the collectibles. One thing i didn't realize until now is that by collecting these, you get the same animal as a pet for your hideout. So now i have a few fox cubs along with the dozens of cats i have populating my base.

I bumped into the foxes while continuing the main story, which the target i did opened with a fight on a foggy bridge. It makes me wish i got a proper stealth section with the fog instead of the fight, but the fight was still pretty cool, especially because i couldn't tell enemy types until they got closer.

I also got this action shot while fighting. It's addicting to take these, and plus this gives a little more context to what it looked like on my end (while still looking pretty good imo).

After the duel on the bridge, i had to break into a fort to blow up gunpowder supplies before taking out the Target. During this mission you get introduced to one of the Allies and one of Naoe's love interest options. She's really cool because she uses a rifle. This mission was a bit short (only about 2 missions long instead of the usual 4), so we didn't get as much character time with her as i would have liked.

After that i rode into the castle to continue Yasuke's story. This mission takes place right after Yasuke becomes a Samurai. It was a very traditional Ubisoft mission, and by that i mean they stay true to the AC Formula of "Follow the NPC". I never usually mind these, but it's hilarious to me how many of these Ubisoft seems to include. Luckily they added a "Follow" option you can use which will match pace with the NPC. So gone are the days of either moving to slow or too fast.

The mission took you into the castle. And inside was this art museum you got to walk through. There was no incentive to look at them all, but i had fun going through and looking at them. My favorite piece was a rifle which apparently nearly killed the Monarch, which he then "decorated to remind himself that life is fleeting". It was pretty looking, and as someone with a bit of amateur woodworking experience, i enjoyed appreciating the wood used on it.

I finally got around to finishing the target in AC Shadows that i was stuck on. It really shouldn't have taken me as long as it did, but i got sidetracked with some other stuff and then got distracted. The screenshot above is from one such distraction where i took a detour to kick a guy off a building for an Achievement called "This is Japan, Actually". I climbed this tower and kicked the guy off as Yasuke, and when i climbed up the railing to get down, Yasuke peered over as if to check if the guy was dead.

Another distraction was climbing to the highest point on the map. I wanted to head up there and get a screenshot. I climbed up there at just the perfect time because the sun was setting. I got this shot of Naoe looking off into the distance with the sun behind her.

Finally, after that i went back to the main story and went after the target. One mission had me escorting someone via boat. And it ended at the shrine seen above at sunset. It was a fun little pace breaker that wasn't boring.

After that i was ready to go after the Target. The mission had me meetup with Yasuke, and the meetup spot was this Kunai that Yasuke left, which Naoe amusingly describes as "cute". I decided to try and get a macro shot of it for fun, and the screenshot above was the result.

Finally, starting the actual Assassination, it has you approach via boat. I chose to disembark and take a underwater cave to get to the target. The whole mission was a lot of fun and it reminded me a lot of the older AC Game's assassination missions. I ended up using the foliage to sneak past only killed two people. Along the way there was a bonus assassination target, and i used him as a diversion by throwing a Kunai to kill him. Once the enemies flocked away to search the area, i dropped down and approached the target's location, finishing the mission and the target.

After that mission, the first year concluded, and it wrapped back around. I was sad to see Winter go, but i was about ready to welcome Spring too though because the Icicles added a challenge to stealth.

One last screenshot i wanted to share was this one of Yasuke charging through a door. I wasn't really sure where to fit it in but i liked it and wanted to share it.

Today's game is Palworld. I completely forgot i even had this game until today. A friend gifted it to me on launch, we played once or twice, and then it never got touched again until today when I decided "what the heck" and reinstalled it to take a break from Shadows and invited my friend to play with me. I think one of the reasons it got dropped so quickly is that when it launched i was just coming off of playing Ark for a bit. It honestly shares a lot more with Ark then Pokemon. One upside over Ark though is that it isn't a horrendous 120 GB Base Size (and it looks and performs decent too on my rig, something Ark still struggles with somehow). I got this picture of Cevin (pronounced like Kevin) doing yoga while relaxing in the hot tub to help treat his depression until i get medicine for him. I gave him sunglasses to help him feel better.

At one point in the day i caught a merchant, which i decided to do after hearing that it was something you could do. I chucked a Sphere at the Wandering Merchant and caught him first try. I felt a little bad though, so i just kind of let him be. He gets free room and board. I nicknamed him "Pretty Boy" and I just let him kind of do his thing without supervision. Here he is collapsed in the rock quarry for some reason instead of going to his bed.

He seems to have a preference for gardening as that's all i ever really see him do, usually with the Large Penguin helping him. Honestly, i get the gardening part. If I got to spend my days on an island doing kind of whatever, i'd also spend my evening's gardening probably.

I also caught this large Cat and made a saddle for it. It seems to have a preference for just deciding that Gravity can fuck off and letting me hover 4 feet off the ground. I nicknamed it Khoshekh after a cat who hovers 4 feet off the bathroom floor in a podcast i listened to a long time ago when i was younger. Despite thinking this penchant for hovering is funny, i probably should file a bug report since this game is in early access and i doubt this is intentional.

I also caught this large one, which i nicknamed Kallie. I went with Kallie because it's like Callie, and Callie is such a fun name for a cat. She's turned out to be my heavy hitter so far because she can do like 3 different types of damage.

I had so much fun taking pictures of the Pals in my base, that i forgot to actually take pictures of my base. Rest assured it's a nice place, with a small little house for all my pals and all the facilities. Since i don't have a screenshot of that, instead above i provided one of an oil rig i raided at the end of the night before i went to bed. This entire thing is right next door to my base, but i'm pretty sure it wasn't there launch day. So from my characters perspective he just woke up one day and there was a whole ass Oil Rig there.

Side note, yesterday's post was duplicated for some reason, so that's a fun thing i noticed. I'm curious what caused it

Today's game is Zomboid. Me and my friend ended up continuing from our save from last time where we were playing a Dad Rock Band. Sadly i lost my character after he died looking for a car and I ended up making a new Character that's a mechanic. On my way back to our temporary base as my new character i bumped into a large horde along the way i had to fight before they migrated over to our base a few blocks away.

I named my character Wendell Martelli and he's a Trailer Park living mechanic with a love for Wrestling and works at the local Walmart Garage. I went with Mechanic because it will make it easier to start Hotwiring cars when i don't have a key.

To fit my new theme this we settled into a Mechanics shop (also because the space is nice). We scavenged some planks from the windows and barricaded them. I also looted some coveralls to wear to help sell the Mechanic bit.

We ended up having to start working towards getting carpentry up to move furniture because our house is lacking beds. On multiplayer Sleep isn't required, but we want furniture for the immersion aspect. We also intend to get a stove at some point because all we have is microwave.

Generally though, that's all we did. It was an exhausting day for the both me and my friend so it was very hands off and relaxed today.

Today's game is Zomboid. Me and my friend ended up continuing from our save from last time where we were playing a Dad Rock Band. Sadly i lost my character after he died looking for a car and I ended up making a new Character that's a mechanic. On my way back to our temporary base as my new character i bumped into a large horde along the way i had to fight before they migrated over to our base a few blocks away.

I named my character Wendell Martelli and he's a Trailer Park living mechanic with a love for Wrestling and works at the local Walmart Garage. I went with Mechanic because it will make it easier to start Hotwiring cars when i don't have a key.

To fit my new theme this we settled into a Mechanics shop (also because the space is nice). We scavenged some planks from the windows and barricaded them. I also looted some coveralls to wear to help sell the Mechanic bit.

We ended up having to start working towards getting carpentry up to move furniture because our house is lacking beds. On multiplayer Sleep isn't required, but we want furniture for the immersion aspect. We also intend to get a stove at some point because all we have is microwave.

Generally though, that's all we did. It was an exhausting day for the both me and my friend so it was very hands off and relaxed today.

Today's game is Stranded Deep. While i was playing through AC Shadows, i had a friend ask if we could play something. While normally Halo is our go to game for multiplayer, i have burnt him out on that after he created a monster from me (i've legit played a total of 90 current playlist games, and have no intent of stopping anytime soon until i 100% MCC). So we downloaded this, which we've had in our library for a while after i gifted it to him.

I personally have fond memories for this game, even if it's a little cheap and buggy. I remember being younger and seeing a youtuber play the early Access, and i'd tune in like every tuesday just to catch his lets plays. Playing it as an adult though? It feels a bit less magical, still fun to play with friends though. One major complaint outside of the Gameplay though is that this game has the worst implementation of TAA i've ever seen. I'm playing 4k, ultra settings, and everything was ghosting. I ended up saying fuck it and turned AA off entirely.

Me and my friend ended up resorting to tribalism within a day after our unfortunate plane crash (our headcannon is that there in fact was no pilot, and we both were just drunk driving the plane). In this "tribal" society i in fact, did all the work while my friend just relaxed. What a good friend.

I ended up making a Fire for our little rag tag duo to gather around. We ended up catching a fish which we named Harold to make our Duo into a Trio. All was well until my Friend cooked harold and ate him. We put it to a vote and in a total of 2 votes to 0, he got 3 slaps from the communal paddle (seen above).

All was going well, until my friend died to a shark after a run to an island for stones to make my Stove. I ran out to try and save him while his corpse was using the Raft for sick tricks, and i was sadly mauled by the same shark. In my final moments i got a picture of his corpse doing a sick trick on the raft though.

I ended up playing some more Lethal Company with my friends. This is like a once in a blue moon thing to play with all of them, so i'm always to get a chance to hang out. We did a few more missions on the save from last time. The entire time i ended up staying on Monitor Duty due to some past experience making me ideal. While i was watching the monitor i had this bird thing fly in and land on my head. I called him Steven and he kept me company. We also bought a Romantic Table to keep our TV on after last time.

Sadly we ended up losing the save after failing to meet quota and everyone except me dying. We had the worst luck because everytime i went to go Solo something would show up to stop me. (Void of space pictured above)

Our save after ended up faring a bit better. We had to do a tactical maneuver though after we were evicted by bees from our own ship (the invaders are pictured above). One of our crewmates stole the hive and dragged it in, only for him to die and the bees to swarm their hive again. I was crouching outside waiting for our other crewmate to return to so we could escape. I ended up coming up with the plan for him to run in and hit the escape lever while i drew them out. I was fully expecting to die but somehow lived.

Even better than that though, we found an Air Horn (which everyone promptly regretted letting me have). I held onto it until we ended our game session, but lost it at the last second after dropping it to organize my inventory.

I played some more AC Shadows today. I did this fun mission where i snuck aboard a boat and blew up some gunpowder reserves (The ship is in the background of the screenshot above. If you look closely you can see the fire)

Before that, I also visited this island filled to the brim with cats. Just cats everywhere. It was like paradise. I found this one building with a ton of cats outfront.

I found another with a cat getting ready to eat. There were plates all over the island with fish on them, for the cats i imagine.

I found this Calico smiling, which is probably my favorite cat pic yet in a game. Idk though, some of my Mountain Lion pictures from red dead are pretty cute.

Underneath the Island, there's a cave that has a secret mount in it. I heard about it online and decided to do a brief search to see if it was true, Sure enough, it was, and i got a free horse. I got this screenshot of the gorgeous cave after surfacing for air before grabbing it from a chest (because everyone knows that's where you keep horses).

After that, i left the island and hijacked this ladies boat and took her on a romantic boat ride. I ended up going to this big city to chase after the next target. I got to get a nice evening of sailing because the lake was huge. It was almost a 1 km of a drive on the boat. I got the following lovely photo as the sun set:

On my way into port, i drove past the ship i would later blow up. It was massive and took up a huge amount of space. I honestly considered climbing it if i wasn't eager to get back on land sooner:

I eventually made port next to this fishing boat and disembarked, heading into town. I'm quite proud of my parking job. Didn't even strike another fisherman, which is a good record for me:

I had to head up to this sort of palace area as Yasuke to talk to this one lady. Along the way i went through these pretty fields. I'm excited to pass back through them once it turns winter because one of my favorite sites is a big open field of snow. Bonus points if the game lets me leave trails in it.

Finally, after talking to the lady, i headed back into town to blow up the ship. The walk back was way quicker because i slid down the hills, but i took a detour to grab a synchronization point at the castle. As i scaled it, i grabbed a photo of it's gorgeous moat area thingy(?)

I took a break from AC Shadows and played some Halo with a friend today. We did Duos on public matchmaking. We got absolutely destroyed by this Duo like 5 times in a row on different games (they must have been the only other people on our server) but it was a lot of fun. We also matched with this one Duo on Halo 3. It was a bit less fun because it was like they knew our constant position and took us out within a second of spawning, but that's the way multiplayer is i guess so i can't really complain, especially in a game as old as MCC where the Competitive is dead so everyone goes to casual.

We also went through a playlist for fun and also for those sweet, sweet, tokens to buy Xbox gear in the exchange (i just need the OG Xbox to put on my back). We did a multigame playlist and chose Epic FIghts, which took us through a Halo CE level and also Metropolis (Halo 3 kept crashing). The picture above is from that after my friend jumped to his death and forgot that CE has fall damage.

We also did Metropolis, which i trailed slowly behind in a tank. We originally were going to grab the Scarab Gun and soccer ball, but we forgot the important step of the Banshee so we didn't.

I ended up going back to them with the Acrophobia skull and pushed the ball around for a bit. That in fact, did not last long though as i shortly after accidentally blew myself up with the Scarab Gun:

Someone made the suggestion to remove the "until i forgot part", which initially i was hesitant to do for consistency, but after 257 days, i think the chances i forget are slim and i just think it looks better.

I went back to AC Shadows today, and eliminated another one of the Templars (if that's even what they are). One thing I've neglected to mention is the main antagonist itself. (Spoilers). They did a really good job setting them up in this one in my opinion. They're all mysterious masked men, and they're introduced to you at the very beginning when they kill Naoe's father. It's this dramatic cut scene that does an amazing job of:

1. Setting them up as a threat.
2. Introducing why the protagonist is against them in the first place.

The game has yet to elaborate if they're templars or not. Chances seem kind of up in the air though, because the Assassins are called the Hidden Ones either. It seems the name was lost when Naoe's father dies, and with the order in Japan being dead, Naoe kind of restarts it. Only she doesn't know what to call the order because her father left her out of the loop, so she calls it the "League of the Hidden Blade" because the hidden blade is what she has to go off of.

Anyways, the Target i eliminated, had this fun arena setup. When i went into it asked if i wanted to fight him as Naoe or Yasuke. I ended up going Naoe because her stealth is really satisfying (picture above i took during the boss fight). I snuck around the arena and took out all the enemies one by one, leaving only the boss. There was one move i was proud of (which i wish i could have clipped) where i lured an enemy to a Shoji Door and then stabbed them through it before vanishing through a hatch in the floor.

After clearing the Arena i ended up using parkour to sneak around the back of the boss, and then assassinating him. This game still follows the RPG title's "Hidden Blade no longer one shots" rule, but it had made it a little more fair by making it a skill tree upgrade where each upgrade eliminates an extra bracket of health, so there's no longer this annoying grind too get the hidden blade upgraded.

After that, i took Yasuke on a little cross country road trip, all of which the above screenshots were taken on. I took him to meet up with an NPC to start a quest.

Before i did that though, i took a detour to get a synchronization point with Naoe (who's better at Parkour).

Finally though, that brings me to the main screenshot along with the one above which i took to accompany it. I took it after a cutscene and got this really pretty view of the landscape and the sunset. I also had some fun with the photo mode and took a portrait of Yasuke:

Some friends asked me too play Lethal Company with him today, and i decided to do that over a 4th day straight of AC Shadows. The screenshots for this one will be a bit light because i have to go through and manually censor all my friend's info to respect their privacy.

We ended up buying this Disco Ball for our drone ship. It ended up being a constant in the entire playthrough. We had it running the entire time. Somehow it got everyone but me killed, as i assume it attracted the enemy. The TV i bought probably didn't help either though.

Said TV is pictured above. Apparently my friends could all here it through the radio in the game, which was fun because they got to chew me out for watching TV instead of doing my job (it was all in good fun though).

At one point we landed on a moon that was foggy (seen in the screenshot), and immediately my friends i was playing with walked off a cliff and drowned to death. It was even funnier to hear though because one of them radioed in as they were drowning just to announce they were drowning, but it was all muffled because they were, you guessed it, drowning. That's not the only time it happened too. There was a second time where they immediately jumped off a ship and drowned in mud. it hadn't even been a minute before they all died. I had to pull the ship out because i wouldn't be able to get all the scrap alone.

Here's a bonus picture of my friend in a Rabbit Suit

Some friends asked me too play Lethal Company with him today, and i decided to do that over a 4th day straight of AC Shadows. The screenshots for this one will be a bit light because i have to go through and manually censor all my friend's info to respect their privacy.

We ended up buying this Disco Ball for our drone ship. It ended up being a constant in the entire playthrough. We had it running the entire time. Somehow it got everyone but me killed, as i assume it attracted the enemy. The TV i bought probably didn't help either though.

Said TV is pictured above. Apparently my friends could all here it through the radio in the game, which was fun because they got to chew me out for watching TV instead of doing my job (it was all in good fun though).

At one point we landed on a moon that was foggy (seen in the screenshot), and immediately my friends i was playing with walked off a cliff and drowned to death. It was even funnier to hear though because one of them radioed in as they were drowning just to announce they were drowning, but it was all muffled because they were, you guessed it, drowning. That's not the only time it happened too. There was a second time where they immediately jumped off a ship and drowned in mud. it hadn't even been a minute before they all died. I had to pull the ship out because i wouldn't be able to get all the scrap alone.

Here's a bonus picture of my friend in a Rabbit Suit