Elden Ring, 34 Hours In

 

It may be running on an antiquated engine, but I'll be damned if Elden Ring isn't one of the most artistically impressive games I've ever played.

Fromsoft games have a reputation for being incredibly difficult. Having played through the Dark Souls trilogy, I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate. I soloed Dark Souls, only beating the game because I turned my character into a brick shithouse complete with a fully upgraded Great Log and Havel the Rock's impervious armor. In Dark Souls 2 I increasingly relied on online Summons, which teleport a human player into your game to help with a boss. In the final game of the trilogy, I think I only beat about four bosses without coop. So the game is only as difficult as you make it, really. Fromsoft games aren't Bioware titles--there's no opportunity for conversational role playing--but the freedom to make a character rivals tabletop RPGs. That's the appeal for me--playing Elden Ring is like playing DnD in that I never know what I'm going to find out in its fantastical world. Add in combat mechanics that From have been refining for decades, and you have the recipe for one addictive game.

Let's go over some of the changes from Dark Souls. From have added Spirit Ash Summons, which are upgradeable ghost npcs that you can call to help with most bosses. This greatly decreases the difficulty, in my opinion, which is a good thing. You don't have to use Spirit Ashes, but they're available and prevent one from grinding their head against a particularly difficult boss. And believe me, there are some ridiculously hard bosses in this game, with movesets that you'll struggle to memorize, just because of the shear number of enemies. From also let you change the scaling and special move of your weapon penalty free at bonfires (Sites of Grace in Elden Ring). Have you been rocking a bloody katana and find yourself up against an enemy immune to hemorrhage? Switch its scaling to Quality (dexterity) or Magic if you have the intelligence points. Also new is Torrent, a goat-horse capable of double-jumping who you'll use to make your way across the vast expanses of Limgrave and its surrounding lands. Did I add that From have included a jump button?

Despite the changes, Elden Ring is still fundamentally Dark Souls. Patience is rewarded, and most enemies have to be defeated with a careful back and forth. My character so far is a knight wielding a plus ten blood uchigatana and the beast crest hunter shield, with a bit of pyromancy on the side. Fun times, although the inventory could be tweaked (it's a pain to have to switch between four or five items just to find the right flask). The fact that you're not being constantly directed with quest markers is awesome, but Elden Ring could stand a little more direction. Quests (or what passes for quests in Elden Ring) are very easy to miss. This is a game that requires a little internet investigation, in my opinion, in order that you don't miss some things.

I stayed away from Elden Ring for a couple months after hearing about the numerous technical issues that plagued the game upon release. Despite featuring technology that looks decidedly last gen (the game's art style is amazing, but it looks like a higher definition Dark Souls), Elden Ring has problems maintaining 60 frames per second on the newer consoles (did I mention that it's locked at 60 on pc?). On pc, shader compilation stutters often result in one second pauses. These issues were replicated across many different systems and occurred on high-end hardware as well as lower end systems. However, I haven't encounter many stutters at all, and the game has maintained a frame rate of between 50 and 60 fps 99 percent of time (except for the forest around the Bellum Highway where it inexplicably cratered). I think this is because I'm running the game on a pcie 4.0 drive (albeit in a 3.0 slot) and Windows 11. I initially installed Elden Ring on my sata ssd with Windows 10, and I encountered frequent stutters. So having a fast hard drive and the newest version of Windows will greatly improve your experience.

Elden Ring is recommend to those who enjoy action RPGS and expansive worlds that are meant to be explored with little direction. Screenshots below:

  

Tech Ramblings: A 5700 xt/3700x Combo is Surprising Capable at 4k

 

 Odyssey looks good at 4k medium settings, although there are some textures missing on yonder hills.

If you hang out around certain corners of the internet (reddit), you might think you need a 2000 dollar plus computer to play at 4k. Not true, internet! My two year old pc featuring hardware that's about three years old at this point is perfectly capable of gaming at 4k, provided you're aiming for 60 frames per second and are willing to turn graphical settings down below Ultra. In a very scientific experiment, I took a ten foot HDMI cable and hooked it up to my 4k 55 inch tv and then booted up some games. Here's what I found.

Elden Ring was up first. Although not a particularly well-optimized game, I found that it played pretty similarly at 4k medium compared to 1440p maximum, albeit with a few more dropped frames. Frame rate is capped at 60 fps in Elden Ring, but I did notice drops more, since I was playing on a tv without veritable refresh rate. Still, it played well and looked great, the only real noticeable difference being an increased rate of pop in as you approach objects.

For Halo Infinite, I used the medium preset as well as the dynamic resolution feature (min and max frame rate), which I set to 60. There aren't many differences between medium and ultra in Halo, that is, unless you're analyzing comparison screenshots. The drs wasn't readily apparent, and the game held 60 fps even in the open world areas. This surprised me quite a bit, since Infinite has a reputation for being unoptimized. I think the game was designed to be used with drs, and it's good enough that you'll not notice it on a decent machine. I didn't try native 4k, but the X Box Series X can't do 60 fps at 4k native in Halo either, and heavily relies on drs, according to Digital Foundry. I think a 3700x/5700 xt combo stacks up pretty well against the next gen consoles, which makes sense, considering similarly powered AMD hardware is in both machines.

Forza Horizon ran beautifully at 4k High settings, keeping a steady 60 fps. This is a fun game to play on a big screen. I also tried Assassin's Creed Odyssey. To keep a steady 60 fps, I had to reduce settings to the medium preset. I also turned adaptive anti-aliasing on, which is actually an upscaling feature tied to the framerate limit. Medium settings at 4k looked great. My general impression is that an increase in resolution generally looks better than higher graphical settings at a lower resolution. 1080p ultra doesn't looked as good as 1440p medium, just like 1440p ultra doesn't look as good as 4k medium.

Now I wouldn't purchase three year-old hardware if I were building a gaming computer to pair with a 4k monitor, but I wouldn't break the bank on a 3090 ti for 1600 bucks. This is more a reminder for myself than my non-existent computer gaming audience. Hop off the hedonistic treadmill and the upgrade wagon. Save that sweet cash for essentials, like your housing payment and gasoline.

Elden Ring is one of those games where medium quality settings don't look that different from max.

New Video: Teenage Idol

 

I'm going to start doing acoustic solo performances for Youtube, just because I think some of my songs translate well to doing the Dylan thing, and it's super easy and doesn't require a bunch of time, which I don't have a lot of. Teenage Idol is one of my favorite songs, written years ago for my band Theme Park Mistress. It sounds vaguely like a Buddy Holly type ballad, although the lyrics are sardonic, as is my style. The quality is rough, but who doesn't like a little hiss in their audio recordings?

Weightlifting: Juggernaut AI, Week 22

 

With only 44 days to go before my meet/test day, I'm pretty happy with Juggernaut AI. Sure, it could be cheaper (35 bucks a month), but I'm confidant that I'll hit most of my previous PRs, especially in the bench and deadlift. My squat is feeling better now that we're moving into heavier weights and less reps. The first Strength block started with 6 reps for the main lifts (5 for the deadlift, which is always one rep less than the squat and the bench), then decreased to 5, and then finally decreased further to 4 (3 for the deadlift). The assistance work is also supposed to get heavier, with fewer reps, although I still try to keep in the 8 rep range. I feel as though the volume is very manageable now, whereas during the hypertrophy blocks I was often struggling to finish my workouts within an hour. This is the longest I've ever done a program, and surprisingly, I have no desire to stop and try something else. So all in all, I think Juggernaut AI is a smart way to train, and a great option for those with 35 bucks to spare. It's refreshing to just have a program laid out for you, because as a 36 year old man with a job and kids, I have very little free time. Recovery is also incredibly important, and being able to easily dial back the volume is a great option to have (check out the screenshot above for an example of the daily readiness assessment). I'll report back with my final results 44 days from now.

Couple more random observations:

--The more equipment you have, the more exercise variations you'll have access to, making it easier not to get bored. I really need a pair of heavy dumbbells for my work gym so that I can do incline dumbbell presses. Having a pulldown attachment is nice. By the way, I randomly busted out 20 pullups the other day and it wasn't even difficult, so that's an achievement, eh?

--the warmup is a good way to assess soreness, but I often skip it and just do a bunch of light squats or benches.

--training in high humidity is probably the worst environment you can train in. It's been hot and extremely humid, and even some easy days have been made a lot harder by all the sweat dripping down my face.

--every once in a while the app will randomly decrease my bodyweight down to 100 lbs. It's a pain to increase it, because you have to hit the plus button about one-hundred times. That's the only bug I've encountered, although my buddy claims that the app has reset him back at week one (he's also skipped a bunch of training sessions, so that might have something to do with it).

An Exercise in Futility

 

I spend way too much time here.

Why argue with idiots on the internet? I don't know. I guess it's because I'm really frustrated with the state of America and how it seems as though we're ceding all control over to madmen and thieves. Below is an argument I had with a Creationist in the paleontology subreddit in a post about the Creationist Museum's ownership of an Allosaurus specimen. For anyone unaware, the Creation Museum is a batshit "people lived with dinosaurs" con-job located in Kentucky close to where I live. Don't give those fuckers and their anti-science agenda any of your cash.