Smashbomb, A Great Social Network For Reviews

When I first found Smashbomb, I believe it was via a Facebook ad. I admit I was skeptical of it at first, but I decided to check them out. As I read their statement on what they were about, I found myself intrigued. Basically Smashbomb pointed out that fake reviews are a growing problem and that it is far too easy to engineer false positive reviews. Smashbomb stated that they are a social platform that allows its users to research and discover things based on recommendations from people they know, trust, and respect rather than anonymous reviews from people who may not be trustworthy. So Smashbomb is a social site where you can rate anything such as video games, movies, books, and more.


It is free to sign up for Smashbomb and the site itself is completely free to use. The layout design for Smashbomb is nice and simple making it easy to navigate. There is little to no loading times between pages and items are easy to find. You can easily find categories that you are looking for and there is even a help page with several helpful articles for any questions you may have such as getting started or how ratings work. Speaking of ratings, the rating system on Smashbomb is easy to understand and is rather clever. If a person rates something a 7 or higher it is a smash which is great, but if they rate it lower than a 7 it is a bomb which means it is not good. It is not difficult at all to add a rating for whatever you're reviewing. There are two ways to do this. You can click on the Rate It button on the item's page itself which will bring up a  bomb icons scale (there are 10 in all) and click where you want your rating to be whether it is a "smash" or a "bomb" on the scale. The second way to review an item is to click on the rating scale and add what is good or bad about it as well as write a full review if you wish. It's completely optional. Just a note about writing a review; you can't just write a couple of sentences. It is important to write a clear and concise review offering nuanced viewpoints about why you loved a product or why you didn't like it. This allows others from the Smashbomb community to get a better idea about why they should check out a book, play a video game, or see a movie or why they should avoid it.


If you don't see an item you're looking for in your search category or get a message that the item does not exist, you can add it easily via Smashbomb's create button. When you do this a window will pop up where you can add the title, description, and year it was released. Smashbomb's admins will check it manually and if they approve it, the item is added. It doesn't take long for them to check at all. I myself have added a few books and video games that did not show up in a search. When a person likes your review they can give you kudos points. You can also earn kudos points by contributing to the site in a positive way such as giving quality reviews. Kudos points are good for unlocking badges, entering giveaways, and unlocking certain admin features to name a few things. Higher kudos points offer great things like qualifying for better giveaways.


You can follow people on Smashbomb as well. Why follow people on Smashbomb? Following people on Smashbomb is a great way to discover people who have interests similar to yours and if you really like their reviews, following them allows you to see their activity when they review something. This is also a fantastic way to gain some followers because in general most people will follow you back. There are also social groups on Smashbomb called Orbs. Orbs are communities for people with similar interests and anyone on Smashbomb can create an Orb. For example, if you are passionate about books and would love to discuss them with others you can create a book lovers Orb and invite people like your followers to join.


Smashbomb also has a fantastic app that you can get on iOS and Android phones. The app is just as easy to use and navigate as the website. I find myself using it pretty often when I'm out and about because it is so great to use. The fact that Smashbomb itself is incredibly user friendly on all fronts is a big plus with me. Smashbomb overall is a great social network for reviews. It is refreshing to see a company that truly understands the meaning of community and the importance of full transparency. You can also give them feedback about things on the website and the app whether it is good or bad. You can follow them on social media and they are quick to respond and interact with everyone. The Smashbomb team does a great job of listening to everyone in the community. I think Smashbomb is amazing because of all of this. I have been using Smashbomb for two years now and I love it. It is a wonderful community that is very welcoming with a great team of people running it. Be sure to check out Smashbomb for yourself and sign up for free here: https://smashbomb.com/
Thanks for reading. See you at the next adventure!



*I stream the games I love on Twitch. Come say hi! https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Kingdom Hearts III An Amazing Adventure With Friendship

It took so long to get here, but once Kingdom Hearts III was here I was ready to play and explore all the worlds. It felt incredible to be traveling with Sora, Goofy, and Donald again. The opening song was incredible and the introduction to the game starts off well, hooking you in immediately. There are a couple of familiar worlds such as Olympus and Twilight Town which act as tutorials for the battle controls and exploration aspects of the game. 

Sora hangs out with Hercules. 

The battle system for Kingdom Hearts III is great. Combat is fluid, easy to follow, and fun. You can easily swap between keyblades, use your magic abilities, and use your items. Level grinding is not a chore because the battles are so much fun and the worlds that you explore make them even more so. My personal favorite was Toy Story because Sora fit so well in that world and there some pretty fun battles there. 

Having fun with battles in Toy Story. 

Another fun aspect to battles that was added in the game are the attraction flow attacks. These are not just stylish and fun, they are also pretty powerful special attacks. You can take out many enemies with these attacks so there is no downside to using them at all. My personal favorite was the pirate ship because it was a blast spinning around taking out tons of Heartless. 

Use attraction flow attacks to take out your enemies.

The user menu is easy to navigate and is quite user friendly. You can easily equip keyblades, items, and accessories as well as organize everything easily. The moogle shop is back too and you can synthesize and craft items that you need as well as upgrade your keyblades. 

The inventory menu is nice and neat. 

Another new addition to the game is the gummiphone. This is a cute little nod to social media things like Instagram. You can take photos with the gummiphone and there are even some photo quests where you need to take pictures of specific things in order to get various rewards such as items and munny. In between loading screens you get to see Instagram style posts from the gummiphone that reference the characters, story, and events. It's a nice touch to the game. 

Instagram style posts from the gummiphone. 

There are also mini games that you can play on your gummiphone. You have to find the code for them which are hidden in various worlds. When you do, you can play a variety of mini games that look like old school Nintendo gameboy games. They all feature Mickey and Sora with games like catching eggs or flying a plane to grab mail. They're silly fun and add that extra bit of whimsy to Kingdom Hearts III. 

You can play all these mini games on your gummiphone. 

If you're not in the mood for gummiphone games, there is also a cooking mini game that you can play. In order to play, you need to have ingredients for all the recipes. These are easily found in all the worlds you visit during your adventure. Once you have some ingredients you can bring them to Remy (the rat from the movie Rattatouille) and try your skills at the cooking mini game. The cooking mini game is fun, but there is definitely a learning curve to it. If you go too fast or too slow, you fail and you can lose all the ingredients you found. It takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it you can make a ton of great dishes and Sora and friends can use them to up their stats. 

Practice makes perfect with the cooking mini game. 

The world map is pretty easy to see and you can swap between the maps fairly easily. Once you discover a location you can fast travel there which makes things easier. I do wish there had been a few more worlds, but I was pretty happy with the worlds the game had. Everything looked amazing and it was clear that they really wanted things to be done right. 

The world map in Kingdom Hearts III.

There is one thing that I absolutely detested in the game however and that thing is the gummi ship. I have never liked the gummi ship in any of the Kingdom Hearts games. The controls for them in my opinion have always been terrible and I always dreaded gummi ship battles. That has not changed for me with Kingdom Hearts III. While the controls have improved quite a bit, I still found myself struggling with them. Having to fight the controls to fly the gummi ship is not a good time. I also didn't like the fact that I would be forced into gummi ship battles before I could land on worlds. I truly feel that the gummi ship should have been optional. This is the only thing I did not like about the game. 

I am not a fan of the gummi ship. 

I blazed through Kingdom Hearts III because the game itself was an amazing adventure and I couldn't wait to save the world with friendship. The story was great, the worlds were so much fun to explore, and there were so many heartbreaking and heartwarming emotions throughout this adventure. Kingdom Hearts III did a fantastic job of making me care about all of these characters and I was a little sad to say goodbye at the end. Having one thing I didn't like about the game and loving the rest of it speaks volumes about how fantastic I think the game is. It was definitely worth the wait. See you at the next adventure! 

This was an amazing adventure! 

*Kingdom Hearts III is available to play on the following platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One

*Come hang out with me on Twitch as I stream games like Kingdom Hearts III: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Mother Gamer Plays Dragon Quest Builders

I know. How could I have never played Dragon Quest Builders before? There are so many games out there to play that I miss quite a few so I play them when I can. I was intrigued by Dragon Quest Builders because it was clearly not a traditional Dragon Quest game. The plot takes from the original Dragon Quest as a parallel world where the hero accepts the Dragonlord's suggestion of each one ruling half the world which turned out to be a trap. The hero is defeated and the world goes dark and is overrun by monsters. This is where the legendary builder comes in. You can play as a male or female builder. The first chapter introduces you to the game mechanics. Basically this is Dragon Quest meets Minecraft. Your job as the builder is to gather materials and rebuild the land of Alefguard from the ground up and revive it and bring the light back to the world.

The builder starts her journey. 

The tutorial is fairly straightforward showing you how to gather materials. Once you have the materials needed, you need to build and craft items. There are various NPC's that give you quests which are things they want you to build ranging from a crafting forge to a kitchen. This is also how you find crafting recipes for things. When you have the right materials you can build all these things and as you do this, your base levels up. 

Use recipes to build things and rebuild the world. 

When you go out to the world, the game doesn't really show you where to go. This can be good and bad. It's good because it encourages a lot of exploration and finding things on your own, but it is bad because sometimes it can be a bit frustrating trying to find the location of a quest and it can feel like a lot of time is wasted trying to figure out where you are going. You can switch the map to an eagle eye's view with a white flag that shows where your base is and a Q for the quest marker. You have to do your best to follow your compass, but it's not perfect. You just have to try to be patient and do your best to navigate until you get where you need to be. 

You can use this view to see where your base is. 

There are moments in the game where the monsters will show up and wreck your base. You have to fight the monsters in order to defend your base. Sometimes the fights are intense with four to five waves of monsters with a boss monster at the last wave. Once the battle is won, you can rebuild everything that got destroyed. The game isn't too punishing when this happens making rebuilding pretty easy. 

Fighting monsters is rough, but you can rebuild easily.

While I did have fun playing Dragon Quest Builders, there are things I found to be mildly irritating. Sometimes the difficulty spikes in battles could be incredibly frustrating. The solution to this of course is to constantly build and upgrade your base. The other thing is having to constantly watch the hunger meter. This is represented as loaves of bread next to your health meter. If it gets to zero, your health starts dropping. You have to constantly forage for food or fish and use the kitchen to cook meals. Honestly, this broke the game immersion for me. Having to constantly worry about not starving and having to stop building just to go hunting for food was not fun for me at all. It was an annoyance and I wished I didn't have to constantly do that when I wanted to focus on gathering materials and building spiffy things. 

Hunger meter is low, time to go fishing!

There are four chapters in Dragon Quest Builders each in a different region. I did find it odd that when you went to each new world you lose everything and have to start over again from scratch with your weapons, tools, and materials. Getting food and healing items first is a priority so you can explore and build without too much hassle. You can re-learn the recipes in each new region and you also get new materials to build with. If you need a break from the main story, there is a free build mode which allows you to build to your heart's content with no monsters anywhere. You have at your disposal all the recipes you learned in the chapters, you can build whatever you like, and you can share it with your friends. Free build is a nice break from the main game and the only limits are your imagination. 

Dragon Quest Builders is a fun game, but there are points of frustration in it with the unbalanced level spikes which is why I took breaks from it often. However, the story is interesting and there are some great nods to the Dragon Quest lore itself as well as some reveals about the builder and various characters that add more depth to the story. To me, free build is where the game shines because it was so much fun just running around and creating whatever I wanted. It is a fun game that encourages creativity while enjoying a good story. See you at the next adventure! 

Ready to build more things. See you at the next adventure!

*Dragon Quest Builders is available to play on the following platforms: Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, and Nintendo Switch

*Come hang out with me on Twitch while I play games and we talk about mental health. Everyone is welcome! https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Mother Gamer Plays Stardew Valley

I know it's odd that I had never played Stardew Valley before, but there are so many games that it takes me time to catch up or choose a game I want to play. A friend suggested I check out Stardew Valley because they knew that I love the Harvest Moon games. I was intrigued so I got Stardew Valley and I started playing. When you start the game you can play as a guy or a girl who has inherited a plot of land with a house from their grandfather in a place called Pelican Town. It looks like a cute 8 bit game and you can pick out the color and style you want your clothes. You then get to choose from five farms the style of farm you want to play the game depending on your style ranging from a beginner farm to a farm with extra foraging. The farm is overrun with boulders, weeds, and tree stumps. You need to clear these out in order to restart the farm and plant crops.

Starting on the beginner farm with a few crops. 

When you are working on your farm you have tools that you can use in your inventory. The controls for the farming aspect of the game are fairly easy to navigate. You can also talk to the villagers and there are twelve possible people that your character can date and then marry. You can give a gift that they like or love, but you can only give them one gift a day and two gifts a week. You have to wait until the week resets usually on Sunday in order to give them gifts again. You also can talk to the other NPC villagers and sometimes they will have requests for items such as crops from your farm or items you can find foraging. 

All the tools you need for farming in your inventory. 

Farming isn't the only thing you can do. It's clear how Harvest Moon inspired Stardew Valley, but Stardew is very much its own game in the best way. You can run around to the forest or to the beach to forage for things such as berries or seashells which you can sell. You can also explore the mines to get stone, ore, and minerals you need for crafting. Be careful though, because there are monsters in the mines and you do have to fight them. This is where the nearby Adventurer's Guild comes in handy because you can buy weapons and accessories to help you battle the monsters. The monsters drop items as well that can be sold and used for various items in your crafting. 

You can go fishing too and fishing is a bit of a challenge. There is definitely a learning curve to fishing and it took me a bit figure out the controls. Fishing is not really my favorite thing in the game because of that steep learning curve, but once I got the hang of it it wasn't so bad. That's the beauty of Stardew Valley. There is no pressure and no time limit to do everything all at once. You can take your time with it, relax, and have fun. 

Trying out fishing in Stardew Valley.

Once you get the hang of everything, you get a rhythm down for all the things you want to do. You can grow different crops in the seasons and when Winter comes you can forage and explore the mines. The mines save your progress every five floors which is pretty nice. You can also get to know your neighbors and you do get some heart events with your love interest at varying points in the game. 

Getting the hang of this farming thing.

You don't have to just plant crops, you can also raise animals such as cows, chickens, goats, and sheep. This gives you more things you can sell like milk, eggs, and wool. There are also festivals you can go to. The calendar for the seasons are twenty eight days with two festival days. The festivals are a lot of fun ranging from a dance festival to a spooky Halloween festival. These are a great way to break up the farming stuff and it gives you a chance to talk to all your neighbors while enjoying yourself. I love Stardew Valley. It is a wonderful game that is fun to play and quite relaxing as well. I can't wait to check out the other farms in other playthroughs. Stardew Valley is a great game that offers a lot of fun, with beautiful music, and a love of gaming. If you love games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing you will enjoy it. Now, I have more exploring in the mines to do. See you at the next adventure!

Having fun at the Flower Dance festival. 

*Stardew Valley is available to play on the following platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Playstation Vita, iOS, and Android. 

*Come hang out as I stream Stardew Valley and other great games: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Slightly Different, But Lots Of Fun

I love the Assassin's Creed series as past Mother Gamer blogs have shown. While there were a couple I wasn't so thrilled with, I have always enjoyed the stories and exploration the games have offered. The recent Origins definitely captured my heart with all the incredible ancient Egypt history and lore. When Odyssey was announced I was pretty excited because it was going to be set in ancient Greece and I could not wait to play it.

Odyssey is a bit different from its predecessors. The story is set at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war; an ongoing struggle between Sparta and Athens for dominion over Greece. This opens up a lot of interesting places to explore and dialogue options. At the beginning of the game you can choose which Misthios (mercenary) you want to play as; Alexios or his sister Kassandra. It really doesn't matter who you choose because the story is essentially the same for both so it's just a matter of whether or not you prefer to play as a man or a woman.  For my first playthrough I went with Kassandra.

Kassandra starts her adventure. 

Right from the start, Odyssey hooks you in with an action filled introduction and sets the scene for the story. After that you meet the character you chose; in my case Kassandra and you get a brief tutorial on how the gaming controls work. You also get a mount with this and those controls are pretty easy to navigate. Once you have the hang of it, you can get started on your journey with the main story and the vast amount of side quests.

This is where Odyssey differs a bit. There is more of a role playing aspect to the game with you being able to select different dialogue options while talking to people. You can choose to be cutthroat, a mercenary with a conscience, or ridiculously flirty. Yes, with some of the NPC characters be they men or women Kassandra could have flings with them. Don't worry, nothing overly graphic is shown, but it is definitely heavily implied. Your weapons are different as well. There is no assassin's blade here. You have a precursor artifact weapon in the form of a spear and the options of daggers and swords. You also have a bow and arrows which are quite useful for fighting at a distance.

Have a horse for your travels!

As you level up, you gain ability points which you can use to unlock certain skills to enhance your fighting and stealth from the following three categories in the skills menu: Hunter, Warrior, and Assassin. It is beneficial to unlock these because they are incredibly useful in battles against your enemies. There are also ship battles which bring back memories of Black Flag. The ship battles are challenging, but they are so much fun. You can upgrade your ship to make it a force to be reckoned with. Upgrading the hull is definitely a must so you can ram the heck out of other ships and take little to no damage. You need a crew also of course and Odyssey has an ability where rather than assassinating targets, you can knock them out and recruit them to join your crew. 

Unlock abilities in the skills menu. 

The running theme for your protagonist is all about family. This is where you are introduced to the mysterious villains, The Cult Of Kosmos who have a hand in much of the conflict in Greece all for power. You have to travel all over the world map to find clues about each cult member in order to reveal their true identity and the location of their main hideout. Once you have those, you can find them and take them out. Be wary however, some cult members are heavily guarded and quite the challenge to fight. This is where Odyssey's notoriety system comes in. The more crimes you commit i.e. murder (come on, you know that's what assassination is), the more likely it is that someone will put a bounty on your head. Then you find yourself relentlessly hunted by bounty hunters with very colorful names. The bounty hunters are no joke and if you do not plan out your strategy and tactics, they will end you. There were some who had lions and they would tag team the crap out of me which could be more than a little frustrating, but that's part of the challenge. Two ways around this are offing the person who put the bounty on your head or paying off the bounty. If you have the coin, you can pay the money and the bounty will go away. 

Besides the main story, there are a ton of side quests and conquest missions to do. Sneaking around and taking out guards in a fort can be difficult, but rewarding as you take everyone out and diminish that nation's power. Looting the treasures, burning the supplies, and taking out the captains completes that area and will show you a meter with their power depleting. Once you have completely drained their influence, you get a conquest battle option. You get an epic battle between Spartans and Athenians and you have to take out all the captains during this battle in order to win the conquest. There were times where I totally screwed up and a guard saw me and then I had to brawl my way out among five or six of them. That was a whole other adventure in itself. It definitely raises the stakes when that happens and makes Odyssey feel like a whole new game. 

Getting caught by guards sucks. Time to brawl my way out!

My favorite thing to do in Odyssey was exploring. I loved discovering new areas and hanging out in ancient Greece. Climbing up to the tops of high buildings, cliffs, and statues just to synchronize the map and see the view from a high vantage point was pretty fantastic. No two areas were alike and there was always something new to see. Some of the small side quests were hit or miss at times, but I was never bored at all. There was always something to see or do. 

An eagle's eye view of ancient Greece.

There are a variety of armor and weapons choices in Odyssey. As you progress, you can upgrade to better armor, weapons, and crafting materials. If you have a favorite armor set, when you upgrade you can glamour the armor to look like the favorite set. Again, this adds a role playing aspect where you can actually gather materials and craft weapons and armor in the game. This is also true for your ship. You can choose a variety of sails, ship designs, and even tailor your crew with characters from past Assassin's Creed games as your lieutenants. 

If you're looking for more challenge with your challenge, there are legendary beast and mythological  monster fights you can do. The locations of each legendary beast is marked on your world map. With the monsters, you happen upon some of them doing certain quests. This was how I accidentally discovered the fight with Medusa. These fights are insanely hard and Medusa seemed to be the hardest one of all. I got my ass handed to me quite a few times before I finally won. It is vindicating when you do win because they are so difficult and you have to be constantly thinking about your tactics and theirs. The fights absolutely keep you on your toes, but man what a thrill! 

Medusa fight is crazy! 

When you see the world map, it can be a little overwhelming with how vast it is. Areas you have already explored will be highlighted and areas that are not unlocked are grayed out. The map will also show you what level each area is so you can level grind and plan accordingly. I had fun unlocking the areas and receiving contract quests and bounties which offered lots of drachmae and sometimes item rewards such as armor. 

The world map is huge. Get out there and explore! 

While I loved Odyssey, there were issues with the game. One of the big things was I was one of the unlucky people who got the game breaking bug of the game dropping frames and freezing completely in enemy fort areas. I had wondered if it was just me so I looked up the issue and found that many others had this issue with the game also. The solution Ubisoft offered was to close the game completely and restart the game. That's more than a little irritating. While the voice acting is good, there were strange audio issues with the voices being off sync and delaying at times. In spite of those issues, I still had fun with Odyssey and loved the game. Even after the main crux of the story is finished, there's still so much left to do with legendary hunts and searching for precursor relics and the upcoming DLC. Odyssey is slightly different from the games before it, but it is lots of fun. Now, I'm going to get out there and do more exploring. See you at the next adventure!

Off to more adventures! 

*Assassin's Creed Odyssey is available to play on the following platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC

Come hang out with me as I stream games like Odyssey on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Adventures In Twitch Affiliate, Learning How To Do Things, And Twitch Etiquette

Fairly recently I started streaming on Twitch with PS4 broadcasts. I found that I love it. As the saying goes, it's not work if you love it. After a bit of time, I got Twitch affiliate and while that may be no big deal to most people, it was a big deal to me. This meant that all the hard work I had been putting in to build a community that is welcoming to everyone where we can talk openly and honestly about mental health brought a lot of good people who appreciated it and followed my stream and continued to stay. I can't even begin to tell people how much that means to me. I have done my best to be kind and welcoming to everyone who pops in and chats in my stream and I'm starting to get regulars now which is a very cool thing.

One of the big things on getting affiliate is being able to have emotes for the people who do a paid subscription to the channel. For affiliates, we get one in three categories: tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. I immediately thought of my dear friend tifad0esart who is a fellow streamer and does fantastic art streams. I asked her to design the emotes for my channel. I was delighted when she said yes and informed me later that I was actually her first ever commission for Twitch emotes. I am so happy that I got to work with her and the emotes she designed were perfect. I went with a little dragon who is basically the mascot for my twitch channel and we named her Amethyst. Tifa did a fantastic job designing the little dragon emotes and showed me how to upload them to Twitch. So for tier 1 it is Amethyst waving hi, tier 2 is Amethyst sip, and tier 3 is Amethyst with a yarn heart and the knitting needles in the heart like a little arrow.

Tier 1-3 Amethyst emotes look great!

I had to wait for the emotes to be approved. I was lucky that they were approved in a couple of days. Sometimes it takes a little longer if Twitch gets a ton of emotes submitted for approval. A couple of days later, the little dragon emotes were approved and ready to use on the channel. I was happy that so many people loved my little Amethyst dragon emotes. I had also uploaded them to my Discord channel so that people could use them there as well. 

After that, it was time for sub badges to the channel. These are basically cutely designed little badges next to the person's name in chat who have subscribed and after a certain amount of time of them repeatedly subscribing every month, the badge can evolve to a different badge i.e. a leveling up badge if you will, so it goes three months, six months, and a year. Tifa offered up the great idea of my sub badges being cute little dragon eggs that start out as a normal dragon egg and then gradually hatch over time. I loved the idea and Tifa got to work on them. She was fantastic about listening to what I wanted and how I wanted everything to look so the final result when they were finished looked perfect. I was delighted by the response from everyone about them and again, I uploaded these to the Discord so everyone could use them there alongside the Amethyst emotes. 

The lovely sub badges designed by Tifa. 

I have had issues with my stream, mainly technical. Sometimes our internet drops and with a PS4 broadcast when that happens, it ends the broadcast so I have to restart the stream. It's an incredibly frustrating feeling for me when this happens because it means my stream is in two videos. I am grateful to everyone in my community who is understanding about it when it happens and who offer words of support and kindness. I know I need a capture card for streaming from the PS4 and eventually the PC, but capture cards are expensive and I need to save up money until I can afford to buy one.

This means it will have to be straight broadcasts for the most part. The thing is, that issue caused me to look up and learn how to do workarounds with no capture card. One of the things is remote play with the PS4. Ron was very helpful with helping me figure out how exactly to do it. Remote play is not perfect. Essentially it is streaming twice, from the PS4 to my PC, and then to Twitch using OBS. There is a slight delay and some games work better than others depending on how much information is in them. I have streamed a couple of things using remote play; Dragon Quest Builders and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. One of the issues is the capture window is small in remote play so I have had to make adjustments. Another is the encoding overload issue which can cause small lag spikes. I have done my best to make it work, but it's not a perfect fix. It has been a good lesson for me though in learning how to do things and do my best to keep thinking of ways to improve my streams. This was also how Ron and I discovered my PC needs more memory so that's one of the first things that will be upgraded and then the capture card. 

A cute picture of me knitting by Tifa.

I have learned how to do raids, hosts, and how to make people mods. I have learned how to time people out when they're trolling and how to ban them too. Luckily that has only happened a few times and I'm grateful to my community for having my back. I have learned the Twitch etiquette too and yes, there are etiquette rules. One of the big things of course is to always do your best to be kind. Being awful to people just because you can is not the way to go and many streamers won't put up with it and will let you know right away by either timing you out or banning you. Another is that if you are in a person's stream to not self advertise. It's considered incredibly rude. So how do you get people to your channel? Make friends in the community. No, really. Hang out in other streams, chat with the streamer and other people, hang out, and just have fun. When you build those friendships and are genuine, it makes it a pleasant experience for everyone. This is where hosts and raids come in also. Raids are a nice way to spread the love to other streamers, bringing people from your community to theirs and introducing them to someone new or someone you really like. Sometimes if the streamer raided you really likes you and appreciates you, they will give a shout out to you and invite people from their channel to go follow yours.  Hosts on your channel show that you like this streamer and if people would like to go directly to their channel from yours and check them out, they can. 

One of the best nights I had was just chilling out and playing Dragon Quest Builders. It was a nice night just chatting with everyone and I was just myself. That's a big thing too. Always be yourself. It got a few people to follow and I was truly touched that they liked my community enough to follow my channel. When I was done for the night and we raided my dear friend Makarimorph, a lot of people came with me after I had spoken about how kind he has always been to me and to others, that he is just a lovely person who is about fun and positivity. I was very happy to see that a few of the new people who had followed me and came with me for this raid, followed Makarimorph too. This is how you build a community, being there for each other, and supporting each other. 

Social media is another way for letting people know about your streaming channel. Twitter seems to be the big one. I do use the Mother Gamer twitter for the channel when I am streaming. A lot of streamers also have Instagram, Facebook, and some also do YouTube videos. For example, Gooperatives does a lot of great Let's Play videos on YouTube of games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Makarimorph has a lot of great Warframe Eidolon tutorial videos on YouTube. Of course, having a Discord channel helps as well. This gives your community a chance to hang out with everyone after streams as well as make new friends to play games with like Warframe. 

The rest of the etiquette is pretty much common sense. Don't be hateful to others, don't be a bigot, and don't be racist. It's a good idea to read the Twitch TOS just to get a feel for what is and is not allowed. This also applies to a streamer's channel. Read what the rules are on their About Me panels or check out their chat rules in the chat box settings. Follow the rules and do your best to be kind. 

It's been quite the adventure with streaming and I'm truly enjoying it. Sure it's been a little stressful when things don't work the way I expect them to or my stream has technical issues, but I am lucky that I have a great support system with Ron and with the people within my community. When I stream I am having fun and I am enjoying chatting with everyone whether it's hearing about their day, what they think of the game I'm playing, or talking about favorite books. Doing this and running my knitting shop has been quite an adventure and I'm looking forward to continuing it and celebrating every milestone as it comes. Special thank you to my husband, Ron who has been with me for every step of these adventures cheering me on and here's to many more adventures together. Thank you to my dear friend Tifa for doing such an amazing job on the emotes and sub badges. You are so talented and just an amazing person. Thank you to everyone in my community who has been so supportive and kind while I've been navigating this adventure. I'm still pretty new and learning all the things, but thank you for being here and helping me to build a community that is all about being kind and supportive. It means a lot to me. Thanks for reading everyone. See you at the next adventure! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it!

Tifa's designs of the dragon emotes. See you at the next adventure!

Come hang out on my streams here: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Check out my dear friend Tifa's art stream channel here: https://www.twitch.tv/tifad0esart

Mother Gamer Plays Maple Story 2

It's been a long time since I played the first Maple Story, but I was ready to try out Maple Story 2. The game is free to play and looks like a super cute anime world complete with all the anime characters. Making my character was pretty easy. There is a lot of customization so you can make your character to your liking. Next of course comes the job classes. There are nine different job classes to choose from. So your options are: assassin, berserker, heavy gunner, knight, priest, archer, runeblade, thief, and wizard. I decided to go with heavy gunner because it looked interesting to me. Also choosing which server you would like to be on comes up. I went with NA East because that has more people on it and a lot of my friends are on that one. After that I was ready to play the game.

My super anime heavy gunner. 

There is a bit of a tutorial showing you how the controls work. I have issues with arthritis in my hands so I use a controller often while playing games on PC. I was thrilled to find that Maple Story 2 is quite compatible with a gaming controller, so that is what I used while playing the game. It was very easy to set up and map the abilities to the controller. The world of Maple Story 2 is huge. There are a ton of main story quests and side quests to do. Exploration is definitely encouraged. Load times for the game are fairly decent so you can get to and from different areas pretty quickly. There are dungeons you need to do for the story quests and these are fun to explore offering experience and rewards for your job class. 

Fighting a boss in a dungeon. 

There are group dungeons and raids as well. While you can solo some of the story dungeons, it goes a lot faster in a group. Raids are much more challenging and having a good group definitely helps. There is a daily reward cap of 10 dungeons and a weekly reward cap of 30 dungeons. Once you hit the cap you don't get any more rewards until it resets weekly on Fridays at midnight UTC. Whichever you like doing, they are a lot of fun. The dungeons and raids are colorful areas with a variety of cute anime style enemies as well as interesting story elements. 

There are lots of colorful dungeons like this one. 

If you need a break from running around dungeons, there are also tons of fun mini games. The game will give a notification of a mini game happening like Dance Dance Stop and you can click on it and you will be whisked away to the event. Participating in these mini games gives you experience on your character and if you win you receive rewards such as a Kay coin which can be used to spin the Kay's Event Wheel for a chance to win accessories and consumables. The mini games are a lot of fun and a nice break from grinding. 

Everyone having fun playing Dance Dance Stop.

There are mounts in the game for getting around that great big world. Some you get as a reward for completing certain quests and others can be bought with varying currencies such as merets. Each mount varies in speed, riding options, and unique run cycles. Certain mounts can only be used on land or sea. There's a variety to choose from and getting them is half the fun. 

I can ride around on a giant duck mount!

An adventurer needs a place to hang their hat so you do get a little starter home in Maple Story 2. You get a tutorial on how to decorate your home, how to build things in it, and how to place items. You can customize your house however you like and some people have even expanded their houses. The creativity is endless and it's very cool to see how many different housing styles there are. You can also buy a plot in various areas and build a house. If you have the funds you can set up your pad and make it great. 

Exploring my starter home. 

That's not to say that Maple Story 2 doesn't have problems. The biggest thing are all the bots. Bots seem to be the bane of every MMO's existence. Unfortunately the bots are rampant in the game. They are on every map and now some of them are invading the dungeons. It can be incredibly frustrating seeing the constant spam from gold sellers as well as how obvious they make themselves when running dungeons. Nexon has made a statement that they are aware of the issue, that their GMs ban them as soon as they are noticed and have an automated system. They have admitted that the problem is the bots create a weird combination and generate accounts too fast. They stated that because of this they are working on ways to combat the bots abusing their system. Hopefully they will have a fix for it soon. The other issue is some of the elitist players. That's not to say that everyone is like that, but there are some players in the game that feel that just because they're behind a screen they have a right to be rude to others. This is what the block button is for and it should be used accordingly. You can report harassment as well, but that should really only be used for extreme cases. Having friends to play with in the game definitely makes it better. 

Overall, Maple Story 2 is a lot of fun to play. There is so much to see and do that it can be a little overwhelming, but luckily it's a game that allows you to be as casual or hardcore as you want to be. I love that I can hop on the game and play for an hour or two and hop off. Maple Story 2 is great for playing by yourself, but more fun with your friends. It's a big colorful world with lots of fun to be had. Get out there and explore! See you at the next adventure!

See you at the next adventure!

*Maple Story 2 is available to play on the following platforms: PC

Come follow me on Twitch and hang out for some gaming streams: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer