13 Days' Round-Up

It's been about two weeks of fairly varied play.


Varied play beginning with the Battlefield 1 beta, which I thought was entertaining, but ultimately left me questioning why. This was followed fairly close on by some Battlefield 4 play, after EA made all of the DLC free for a short time. Also entertaining, but I can never quite get over the sensation that I would get more out of playing another game.


Final Fantasy IV is still serving for Japanese practice, but I've put only a little time into it since the last post. My party talked to some people in Fabul, and are about to depart there on a ship, bound for Baron once more, if I understood properly.


Castle of Illusion, the Mickey Mouse platformer, or more precisely the recent remake of the original, was to be pulled from sale due to a licensing issue, so I picked it up very cheaply before it disappeared, thinking that my daughters would probably enjoy it, or watching me play it, at least. It's a little beyond their game skills at this point. This is actually a very good game. I am not familiar with the original, which I think was a Sega Genesis game, but I knew this version was well regarded going in. I can see why. First, its gorgeous. The locales are varied and vibrant, and perfect for Mickey. Second, the platforming is also very well done. Mickey controls well, and the levels are put together in a good, fun way. I was impressed.


I've been bringing together a small, high quality library of games for my 3DS(s), including a game I had not played since 1998 and in the meantime has become, I feel, one of the most over-celebrated games of all time, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Nevertheless, I felt it deserved a place in my collection, so I picked up the 3DS remake, which is 99% the same game, but with some good tech and usability improvements. I do maintain it is widely over-appreciated by nostalgia junky fanboy manchildren, but it is still a very good game. I've played through the first few sections of it, and I'm on my way to Death Mountain now.


Another recent addition to my 3DS library is Mario Kart 7, which, alongside the original Mario Kart on SFC, I have been playing some of along with Mia. She still can't drive, but she's kind of learning.


There's a new video game CCG, a Hearthstone-like, out now called Duelyst. The twist here is that instead of just putting cards out on a table, cards summon creatures onto a tactical grid where positioning is a very real factor in how fights turn out. I thought the art looked nice, and so was interested to begin with, but 20 free card packs through a Humble Bundle newsletter promotion tempted me into actually downloading and trying out the game. It seems like a cool thing after a few practice games, and I'm happy to have an alternative to Hearthstone, which I do not particularly relish going back to play more of, even while I recognize the near inevitability of such a thing, given how well Blizzard supports their games in the very long term. Perhaps Duelyst will attract enough of an audience to remain on the scene for a while. I wouldn't bet on it, though, regardless of the game's quality.


Speaking of Blizzard games, I have also been spending a lot of time indeed with World of Warcraft. I have my Death Knight at level 100 now, and I am enjoying the Legion content a good deal. The Death Knight class-specific and spec-specific content has been really cool so far. It's a novel experience to be more or less current with the game for the first time ever, and I'm looking forward to playing to the cap and beyond.

Never Gonna Get Hooked On Adventure

That's my only supposition based on my repeated attempts to get into games in the graphical adventure genre.


Most recently, I tried The Blackwell Legacy. It fared better than some, but within a couple of hours I got to a part where I couldn't readily figure out what to do next, and gave up. I don't plan to go back, not to this one, at least. I still have 3 other Blackwell games to try out sometime in the future. I was kind of enjoying the characters of Rosangela and Joey, I'll admit. And I do enjoy the Wadjet Eye graphical style and musical choices, as well.


I got Mia (5) to sit down and try out SFC Mario Kart the other day. She of course doesn't really get the whole concept of driving, acceleration and braking, etc., but it'll come to her in time. She wanted to play as Peach, and expected I'd play as Mario. I obliged, though I always used to go with Koopa Troopa when I played the game as a kid on SNES.


In Final Fantasy IV JP edition playthrough news, I got over Mt. Hobusu and recruited Yan into the party. We're saved right outside Fabul at the moment.


No Man's Sky-wise, I was able to hunt down about 5 black holes and make my way closer to the center before too many resources and modules were burned. I finally had to set down on a planet to start the rebuilding process. Maybe I'll finally try to get a ship upgrade. Maybe not. I did already sink a lot of resources into the better warp drives for the one I have. It would probably be worth it at some point, though.


In WoW, I am continuing to level up (94 now) and do quests in Draenor. I have yet to move on from Shadowmoon Valley, though. There are a ton of quests to do there. At this rate I probably won't get more than 2-3 zones through Draenor before I head off to the Broken Isles for Legion content. I am definitely looking forward to that.

Backlog Patrol Round 2

Well, I decided to hop back into the backlog this week with another A game on my second trip through the alphabet of gaming. I played some ARMA: Cold War Assault, which was originally released as Operation Flashpoint. While I'd never played an ARMA game before, I had played an Operation Flashpoint game (Dragon Rising) in the past, and knew sort of what to expect--a relatively realistic military simulation, at least in comparison to something like Battlefield or Call of Duty. It delivers on that point, if its age and contemporary tech level and conventions hinder it somewhat.


What I was not prepared for, though, were the cinematics, especially the introduction to the Resistance campaign of missions. Someone there at Bohemia Interactive was clearly inspired by filmmaking techniques and giving that sort of thing a go in their game scenario design. The choices of camera angles, blocking, direction, and music were all pretty striking, especially for a game of that era. It was wild. Are all the ARMA games like this?


I made some progress on my Japanese FFIV play through, getting through the antlion cave bit with Gilbert (Edward in the US version) and Rydia to get the cure for Rosa's sickness. She's now joined the party to be with Cecil, and next we're headed over a mountain to try and prevent Golbez from getting any more crystals than he has already.


I made some progression through No Man's Sky, as well, gearing up my ship and exosuit with upgrades that make it easier to get to the black holes on the way to the center of the galaxy. That game has a way of grabbing me and holding onto me for as long as I can possibly make a session last.


In World of Warcraft, I'm playing through all the quests in the first zone of Draenor, gathering stuff for my garrison and learning what's going on with the Draenei there as the Iron Horde rises. I'm about halfway through level 93 to this point. I think I'm finally starting to accept that I'll never see the whole of Azeroth and the outlying areas, and that I should be okay with that. No one sees the entire world they live on or does everything possible in life, do they? It's more about where the journey does take you, and the paths that you yourself choose, at the opportunity cost of choosing others, that determines who you are.