Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Giving Thanks for Gaming This Thanksgaming

The last week or so has been a whirlwind tour of many games. Progress updates!


Skyrim - Got back into it with my Nord character, who is by turns a brawny two-hander warrior and a stealthy backstabber ranger. Fence sitting in this way makes the game more difficult in terms of combat, but in the end I should rule all. I have a whole lot of ground to cover, though. I'm not fast traveling at all in this playthrough.


Dishonored 2 - I found the Crown Killer at the Addermire Institute, and solved that affair peacefully.


Hitman - I did the Paris mission at the fashion show for the first time, using a spiked drink to lure the male target into a bathroom, where I drowned him, and then snuck up on and strangled the female target in an empty room, and stashed her body in a corner somewhere before escaping via helicopter.


Dawn of War II - I was really only revisiting this to earn the Steam trading cards and badge. I played a couple of campaign missions and a few rounds of The Last Stand. Can't wait for DoW III!


Assassin's Creed Unity - Jumped back into this in an effort to go ahead and finish it off at some point, after not having played it for maybe a year and a half. I'm about to begin sector 8, having just found out and killed the murderous mutinous Assassin brother. I am trying to ignore most of the ancillary content in this game and just focus on the core story missions, which are all I care about in the series at this point. Paris is nice enough, though.


No Man's Sky - I returned to the game with the recent Foundation update, only to be very quickly overcome with boredom and despair at having to jump back on that resource grind. 45 hours of this was probably enough, I am thinking now. I should go back to Elite: Dangerous, instead.


Hearthstone - A few savage losses and the meager enjoyment felt when winning have put me off it again. And on the eve of the new expansion, as well. I think I'll play more Duelyst instead. I did leave my account with enough gold to do an arena run at some point in the future, though.


World of Warcraft - More Suramar quest progress. I made a few levels of artifact research and upgrades, and got a 5th piece of class armor (of 8). I kind of feel my enthusiasm flagging, but I'm going to continue playing here and there for now.


I should also give a booklog update here. I finished The Honoured and The Unburdened, the Calth novellas, then read the new Eisenhorn short story, The Keeler Image, and have now begun Horus Heresy book 31, Legacies of Betrayal. I'm really looking forward to the next grip of Heresy books, especially book 41, Master of Mankind, just released. Not sure when I'll make it that far, though.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Big Game Weekend

I had several good game sessions this weekend, wherein I really feel like I made some good progress. In chronological order:


Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne - Friday afternoon after I got home but the family had not, yet. I found my way from Shinjuku to Yoyogi park and Shibuya, where I met Chiaki and Hijiri again, and got access to the magical webway to head toward Ginza to meet a human male there, either Hikawa or Isamu, presumably. The game is pretty light on plot, so far, which I think kind of works. You have the odd premise, and a general goal, to either return the world to how it was, or to remake it in whatever way you wish. It's kind of Fallout-like in that regard.


Dishonored 2 - Friday night, late. Made it through the first mission in Karnaca, on my way out to Addermire to meet with Hypatia. Stealth seems harder than in the first game, but then I am playing it on the Hard setting for Dishonored veterans. I've tired repeatedly to engage guards after being caught, but most of the time I end up being killed. That may be because I'm trying not to kill them, but incapacitate them instead. I should probably just retreat and lose them unless there is only one.


Hitman - Saturday evening. Being a longtime fan of the Hitman series, the unanimous praise the new episodic game has been getting finally convinced me to pick it up. The 50% off sale on Steam this weekend helped, as well. At first blush it does seem pretty great. I have played the first 3 training scenarios, and poked around briefly in the first real mission, in Paris. It really seems like everything good from Silent Assassin, Contracts, and Blood Money just brought forward to the modern era. I have never played Agent 47 or Absolution, though I guess I should at some point just out of curiosity.


WoW - I made some more progress through the Suramar quests and a few other odds and ends Sunday midday. I need to focus mostly on order hall resources for artifact research and order hall modifications. I want to finish the thrust of the questing before concentrating on world quests and dungeons and raiding, though. I think there is quite a bit of that left, yet. Suramar got a whole other load of that stuff in a patch, recently.


Duelyst - Sunday night. I had been meaning to get back in and play more of this, especially to contrast it to Hearthstone. I played a couple of rounds last night as the Lyonar(?) faction, including my first match online, which I won. It's a cool game, most definitely. I have to wonder at the size of the playerbase, but I was able to find a match partner right away, so that's a good sign, hopefully. I'll try again tonight and see how it goes.


Hearthstone - Sunday night. Playing Duelyst and chatting with Esteban made me want to hop back in, and I did, after a good long while. As a welcome back, the game awarded me with three free packs of cards and a quick 3-round onboarding of games against easy opponents, I guess to refamiliarize myself. I did all of that and then, again, played a match of ranked online and won, using a Shaman deck the Innkeeper had assembled for me. What a nice guy, what a nice tavern, what a nice game. I'll play more, I'm sure. There is quite a bit of new stuff in the game since the last time I'd played, which was around the time the Goblins vs Gnomes card set was coming out. I think since there has been a grand tournament set, an Old Gods set, and soon there will be a Gadgetzan set.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Playlog: First Half of November, 2016

Dishonored 2 is out now, but I haven't had as much time to play it as I'd like quite yet. I began a game on Hard playing as Emily Kaldwin, and I'm currently beginning the second full mission, the introduction to Karnaca.


Titanfall 2 - continue to play some multiplayer, still have not finished the campaign yet, despite all the positive word of mouth around it. Have enjoyed what I played so far, though.


World of Warcraft - Focusing on Suramar zone quests before moving on to more dungeon running and world quests toward the end of finishing Order Hall and Artifact quests, or what is currently available, anyway.


Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne - Picked this up on PSN on a great sale price last night. I'd like to put more time into it again this time. I never got past maybe halfway in, if that, when I tried it years ago, but I never lost interest in its premise.


The Egyptian Prophecy: The Fate of Ramses - a 3D-in-the-sense-of-Google-maps adventure set in ancient Egypt, one with a sort of magical realism. I didn't get too far in, not caring for the genre, but that's one more off the backlog.


Reading, I'm in the middle of the Horus Heresy novella The Honoured, set in the aftermath of the betrayal at Calth, in the underworld war on that world following the poisoning of the local star.