Well here we are about five weeks into our social distancing regime to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I've been playing more video games lately, to help pass the time. It's not so much that there's more free time, since I am working more or less the same hours from home, or even that I've slowed down other leisure activities significantly, I've just taken some of the vast amounts of time I'd spent reading and painting and playing 40K and diverted that into gaming, instead.
The most significant play totals have been in going back to Elite Dangerous for a week or so, and also in returning to my XCOM 2 campaign, as a kind of refresher and point of comparison to XCOM: Chimera Squad, which was unexpectedly announced last week, and is coming out tomorrow.
I had the urge to fly through space some, so I went and concluded the expedition I was on in Elite, doubling my net worth. The next step will be to get a Guardian tech piece for my frame shift drive, to enhance my jump distance for the future. I want to go farther, faster.
My return to my suspended XCOM 2 campaign (still my first) has brought a lot of good momentum to that effort. It feels like I'm on the upswing of a campaign that could turn out to be a winning one. With enough missions turning out positive enough results early on, and smart tech advancement, I could maybe pull it off. We'll see.
I also told friends I'd play Diablo III season 20, and The Elder Scrolls Online with them, and so I have dipped back into both of those, as well. I have been having a good time with both, so I might put in a little more time with them soon.
Otherwise, I've been keeping up with Ring Fit Adventure since getting that for my birthday a couple of months ago. It's pretty decent as an in-home workout, and has a mildly interesting JRPG style adventure to work through, as well.
I've also put a little more time into Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and that is one that I really do need to get back to. Especially considering its being a spiritual successor to one of my all-time favorites, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
There was also a little time put into Magic: The Gathering: Arena, but not much to speak of. I think I'm still doing the tutorial stuff.
Actually, I've spent more time by far playing both sides of tabletop games of 40K that I've been setting up, using my two armies, White Scars Space Marines and my Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard) Planetary Defense Force for Icthyos Rho VIII AKA Tundra Bastion. That is a fun and interesting excercise, and very good practice for learning all the unit and weapon profiles and various ins and outs of the game rules in a stress-free, time-unconstrained environment. It's also incredibly mentally taxing, and takes many hours to get through a large game. I'm currently working on painting up a few new units before I do that again.
Showing posts with label Elite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elite. Show all posts
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Space Exploratin'
Something got me thinking about Elite Dangerous again, and I am back on my longest exploration jag ever.
I am coordinating my trip using the Elite Dangerous Star Map site, and I have resolved to explore the outer arm of the galaxy, to the galactic south of Sol. As of right now I am over 8,000 light years away from humanity's home system, looking for a way to cross over from the Perseus Arm where I am now, over the sparse field of stars between it and the Outer Arm, into what is known as the Outer Arm Vacuus.
I'm not sure where else I want to go after this jaunt, which will no doubt take a while. But as far as I know, I already have one of the best ships I could possibly get for exploration, so I don't see any real need to head back to the populated bubble for an upgrade. Though that would be the wise thing to do after vising thousands of systems.
I kind of would like to explore the entire outer rim of the galaxy. I wonder how long that would take.
I am coordinating my trip using the Elite Dangerous Star Map site, and I have resolved to explore the outer arm of the galaxy, to the galactic south of Sol. As of right now I am over 8,000 light years away from humanity's home system, looking for a way to cross over from the Perseus Arm where I am now, over the sparse field of stars between it and the Outer Arm, into what is known as the Outer Arm Vacuus.
I'm not sure where else I want to go after this jaunt, which will no doubt take a while. But as far as I know, I already have one of the best ships I could possibly get for exploration, so I don't see any real need to head back to the populated bubble for an upgrade. Though that would be the wise thing to do after vising thousands of systems.
I kind of would like to explore the entire outer rim of the galaxy. I wonder how long that would take.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Twaddling About
I don't really know where my head is with games lately. I suppose I need to just continue to focus on one thing, like I have been with FFXIV until the last week or so, when I deviated from the path. I went and dawdled in several things, but I may get back to Eorzea while my last couple of free weeks is in effect, before I have to take the sub plunge or not.
Grand Theft Auto III - I really wanted to hear the soundtrack and run around this iteration of GTA again, for the first time in about 17 years. It's still pretty fun, and I find the simplicity of the game refreshing. Granted, I have yet to play GTA V at all. I should get that at some point.
Minecraft - Similarly, I just wanted to jump into a world and waste some time poking at things without thinking too much about it. I dug deep into a mountain and that's about it.
No Man's Sky - It had a big update recently, and I thought I should check that out. It still seems too survival-oriented for me, like one big festival of gathering up stuff from a list to process into other things to give yourself even the barest improvement in quality of life. At least there's a new story thing that is kind of interesting, and the visuals are very nice. It's still no Elite: Dangerous, though.
Elite: Dangerous - Speaking of which, I had a craving for some deep space exploration and serenity, so I got in here and ranged out a few thousand light years to double my liquid assets by selling exploration data at a far-flung outpost. I have my next expedition planned, as well.
FFXIV - I'm working my way through the main story quests of A Realm Reborn. My character is a level 41 Warrior now. I'm still enjoying the game. I think I'll pick it back up tonight.
Grand Theft Auto III - I really wanted to hear the soundtrack and run around this iteration of GTA again, for the first time in about 17 years. It's still pretty fun, and I find the simplicity of the game refreshing. Granted, I have yet to play GTA V at all. I should get that at some point.
Minecraft - Similarly, I just wanted to jump into a world and waste some time poking at things without thinking too much about it. I dug deep into a mountain and that's about it.
No Man's Sky - It had a big update recently, and I thought I should check that out. It still seems too survival-oriented for me, like one big festival of gathering up stuff from a list to process into other things to give yourself even the barest improvement in quality of life. At least there's a new story thing that is kind of interesting, and the visuals are very nice. It's still no Elite: Dangerous, though.
Elite: Dangerous - Speaking of which, I had a craving for some deep space exploration and serenity, so I got in here and ranged out a few thousand light years to double my liquid assets by selling exploration data at a far-flung outpost. I have my next expedition planned, as well.
FFXIV - I'm working my way through the main story quests of A Realm Reborn. My character is a level 41 Warrior now. I'm still enjoying the game. I think I'll pick it back up tonight.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Emily Kaldwin Retakes the Throne
You can safely assume I'm always dipping into Elite Dangerous, Diablo III, and Spelunky here and there. I may not mention them every time, going forward, but they do seem to be ones I regularly revisit for a top-up. Since the last post I've flown some in Elite, discovering new worlds, and I believe ran some bounties in Diablo III.
I am also still working on Hexcells Infinite, too. I'm getting near the end of the pre-made levels, and maybe the ends of my skill level with the game. Or maybe I just need more sleep before loading it up the next time.
Most of my game time over the last week has been spent finishing up Dishonored 2 ahead of the Death of the Outsider. I maintained a low chaos world state up through the very end of my play through as Emily, and did most or all of the non-lethal and optional 'better' ways of eliminating targets.
Perhaps my favorite was the mission A Crack in the Slab, which involves going back in time to prevent a mining magnate from witnessing the séance that brings the witch Delilah back into the world from the void, a sight which drives him mad and leads to the gradual deterioration of Karnaca and the Dust District in particular. Another good one was replacing in office the Duke of Serkonos with this body double, which seems a little far-fetched, but was also a tidy solution to the problem of his rule. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't find a non-combat way of making Delilah unconscious in the final mission, but I probably just wasn't trying hard enough. I was trying to finish the game while wrangling kids.
Dishonored 2 really seems like a game you are meant to play through multiple times. Not only are there two characters you can take through the game, but each has so many different skills that it's probably impossible to see everything without doing two or more runs through each, especially considering the varying world states you might want to see. I might like to do a Corvo run at some point, being a little more lethal, since that kind of seems more in keeping with his character. I never finished my second Corvo run of the original Dishonored, either. I should go back and do that too. Then I'd also want to replay the Daud missions, as well, since they connect to Dishonored 2 much more directly than the first does.
I really like this series, and I have Death of the Outsider queued up and waiting. I'm excited to get into it.
I am also still working on Hexcells Infinite, too. I'm getting near the end of the pre-made levels, and maybe the ends of my skill level with the game. Or maybe I just need more sleep before loading it up the next time.
Most of my game time over the last week has been spent finishing up Dishonored 2 ahead of the Death of the Outsider. I maintained a low chaos world state up through the very end of my play through as Emily, and did most or all of the non-lethal and optional 'better' ways of eliminating targets.
Perhaps my favorite was the mission A Crack in the Slab, which involves going back in time to prevent a mining magnate from witnessing the séance that brings the witch Delilah back into the world from the void, a sight which drives him mad and leads to the gradual deterioration of Karnaca and the Dust District in particular. Another good one was replacing in office the Duke of Serkonos with this body double, which seems a little far-fetched, but was also a tidy solution to the problem of his rule. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't find a non-combat way of making Delilah unconscious in the final mission, but I probably just wasn't trying hard enough. I was trying to finish the game while wrangling kids.
Dishonored 2 really seems like a game you are meant to play through multiple times. Not only are there two characters you can take through the game, but each has so many different skills that it's probably impossible to see everything without doing two or more runs through each, especially considering the varying world states you might want to see. I might like to do a Corvo run at some point, being a little more lethal, since that kind of seems more in keeping with his character. I never finished my second Corvo run of the original Dishonored, either. I should go back and do that too. Then I'd also want to replay the Daud missions, as well, since they connect to Dishonored 2 much more directly than the first does.
I really like this series, and I have Death of the Outsider queued up and waiting. I'm excited to get into it.
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Regulars
I finished off Hexcells Plus in the last week, and have gotten into Hexcells Infinite. I've been lucky enough to not mis-click too many times, and I got the achievement for perfecting all of the levels in Plus. I'm looking forward to doing the same for Infinite. I tore through about 5-6 levels pretty quickly the other night.
In Dishonored 2, I played through the Clockwork Mansion level. I'm not sure what I expected, but so much was made of it that I was a little underwhelmed, to be honest. It is a cool design, to be sure, but I think it might have had more impact if I hadn't thought to expect to be blown away. Regardless, I am maintaining my low chaos world state, even if my stealth skills leave much to be desired. I noticed that I had begun this game on Hard difficulty, which I am now thinking was a mistake. For a first time through, especially in a game like this, Normal is probably better. I made the mistake of assuming that because I'd played a lot of the first Dishonored that I would be in tip-top shape to take on the sequel, not taking into account that I might spend months away from the game between levels.
I made a similar over-estimation of my capability in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, insisting on playing on Classic difficulty, and then never yet being able to complete a campaign. Well, I got the urge to play more again (XCOM 2: War of the Chosen just released), and decided to abandon that ongoing campaign and begin another in the expanded game, XCOM: Enemy Within. This time I'm sticking to Normal difficulty, albeit still on Ironman mode and with several of the "Second Encounter" options flagged to make the game more interesting. These seem like they can impact difficulty as well, but in both directions, as opposed to only making it harder.
In Elite, I made my way back to the bubble to pick up a second Auto Field-Maintenance Unit, and while there was able to fairly quickly rank up my Engineer relationship with Felicity Farseer to the point where she would do fifth-level upgrades on my Frame Shift Drive, meaning now I can jump nearly 46 LY at a time from star to star, where before I was only able to jump about 34 LY. Now I'm out exploring again, having dropped by Betelgeuse just last night. I'm angling above the galactic plane now, and directly out to the galactic east, thinking to explore some of the apparently empty regions out there to begin with. Maybe after that I will swing wide around back toward the core and the Colonia region. This would be months' worth of playtime, though. Who knows what might happen in the meantime, especially with a large game update not too far over the horizon. 2.4, which I believe has been dubbed "The Return" is going to be pushed out before too long, according to Frontier Developments.
In Dishonored 2, I played through the Clockwork Mansion level. I'm not sure what I expected, but so much was made of it that I was a little underwhelmed, to be honest. It is a cool design, to be sure, but I think it might have had more impact if I hadn't thought to expect to be blown away. Regardless, I am maintaining my low chaos world state, even if my stealth skills leave much to be desired. I noticed that I had begun this game on Hard difficulty, which I am now thinking was a mistake. For a first time through, especially in a game like this, Normal is probably better. I made the mistake of assuming that because I'd played a lot of the first Dishonored that I would be in tip-top shape to take on the sequel, not taking into account that I might spend months away from the game between levels.
I made a similar over-estimation of my capability in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, insisting on playing on Classic difficulty, and then never yet being able to complete a campaign. Well, I got the urge to play more again (XCOM 2: War of the Chosen just released), and decided to abandon that ongoing campaign and begin another in the expanded game, XCOM: Enemy Within. This time I'm sticking to Normal difficulty, albeit still on Ironman mode and with several of the "Second Encounter" options flagged to make the game more interesting. These seem like they can impact difficulty as well, but in both directions, as opposed to only making it harder.
In Elite, I made my way back to the bubble to pick up a second Auto Field-Maintenance Unit, and while there was able to fairly quickly rank up my Engineer relationship with Felicity Farseer to the point where she would do fifth-level upgrades on my Frame Shift Drive, meaning now I can jump nearly 46 LY at a time from star to star, where before I was only able to jump about 34 LY. Now I'm out exploring again, having dropped by Betelgeuse just last night. I'm angling above the galactic plane now, and directly out to the galactic east, thinking to explore some of the apparently empty regions out there to begin with. Maybe after that I will swing wide around back toward the core and the Colonia region. This would be months' worth of playtime, though. Who knows what might happen in the meantime, especially with a large game update not too far over the horizon. 2.4, which I believe has been dubbed "The Return" is going to be pushed out before too long, according to Frontier Developments.
Monday, August 28, 2017
He Wrote, Fastidiously
I feel the need to include almost everything I play here for some reason.
This weekend I was kind of hopping back and forth between a few things. Quickly, I played a round of Spelunky. One did the trick at the time; I wasn't really feeling in the mood after all.
I also made it through a few more levels of Hexcells Plus, though I'm beginning to get frustrated by the finicky nature of the mistakes and perfect or not status of round completion. I want them all to be perfected, but I don't want to have to redo a long level over a mis-click or careless jumping of the gun. Not that I have a better design solution; I guess maybe I just wish there was no achievement I need to get for doing so. I guess the flaw with the game is that it's possible just to click without any regard for how many mistakes you make to finish levels, though if you did that, you wouldn't earn enough points to continue on to the next level grouping. Maybe just removing the achievement in question would fix this compulsion, after all.
Speaking of compulsion, I'm back in Elite: Dangerous again, determined to get a good exploration run in. I want to go to Sagittarius A*, and I think I'll swing by the Colonia region on the way. It's (as far as I know) the only inhabited region of the galaxy outside the main bubble around Sol. I'm re-learning the game on 360 pad, now, having tired of breaking out the flight stick every time I wanted a quick session of a few jumps from star to star. I managed to get about a thousand LY (about 30 jumps) outbound before a series of mishaps made me want to return to the bubble. I need a second Auto Field-Maintenance Unit for a real journey out into the black. With that and an SRV, it should be possible to be entirely self-sufficient for a very long journey like the one(s) I want to embark on. I'm also wondering if there's anything else I can do to eke out a little bit of a longer jump range, though I may already be to the point where that's not very feasible in my Asp Explorer. I definitely want to keep a shield unit with me as insurance, and even losing that would probably not add too much to my max jump range.
Lastly, I'm taking it upon myself to finish Dishonored 2. With Death of the Outsider coming in just over two weeks, I want to be caught up and ready for what may be the capstone on the series. I'm not sure how far into the game I am, really. I'm going to what I believe is the fourth main mission, the Clockwork Mansion. I understand there are fewer missions in this game as compared to the first, but that each is longer or at least wider, and may then take more time to get through.
This weekend I was kind of hopping back and forth between a few things. Quickly, I played a round of Spelunky. One did the trick at the time; I wasn't really feeling in the mood after all.
I also made it through a few more levels of Hexcells Plus, though I'm beginning to get frustrated by the finicky nature of the mistakes and perfect or not status of round completion. I want them all to be perfected, but I don't want to have to redo a long level over a mis-click or careless jumping of the gun. Not that I have a better design solution; I guess maybe I just wish there was no achievement I need to get for doing so. I guess the flaw with the game is that it's possible just to click without any regard for how many mistakes you make to finish levels, though if you did that, you wouldn't earn enough points to continue on to the next level grouping. Maybe just removing the achievement in question would fix this compulsion, after all.
Speaking of compulsion, I'm back in Elite: Dangerous again, determined to get a good exploration run in. I want to go to Sagittarius A*, and I think I'll swing by the Colonia region on the way. It's (as far as I know) the only inhabited region of the galaxy outside the main bubble around Sol. I'm re-learning the game on 360 pad, now, having tired of breaking out the flight stick every time I wanted a quick session of a few jumps from star to star. I managed to get about a thousand LY (about 30 jumps) outbound before a series of mishaps made me want to return to the bubble. I need a second Auto Field-Maintenance Unit for a real journey out into the black. With that and an SRV, it should be possible to be entirely self-sufficient for a very long journey like the one(s) I want to embark on. I'm also wondering if there's anything else I can do to eke out a little bit of a longer jump range, though I may already be to the point where that's not very feasible in my Asp Explorer. I definitely want to keep a shield unit with me as insurance, and even losing that would probably not add too much to my max jump range.
Lastly, I'm taking it upon myself to finish Dishonored 2. With Death of the Outsider coming in just over two weeks, I want to be caught up and ready for what may be the capstone on the series. I'm not sure how far into the game I am, really. I'm going to what I believe is the fourth main mission, the Clockwork Mansion. I understand there are fewer missions in this game as compared to the first, but that each is longer or at least wider, and may then take more time to get through.
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Phases
After a good week and a half or so, I decided to shelve Elite once again. I made some pretty good money pretty quickly, at least by the standards I'm used to. The problem with Elite is that it's too easy for me to pour a whole evening in, to the detriment of other hobby and leisure activities. As much as I like the game and would like to wander the galaxy, I do have other aims for my free time.
Arguably first among my gaming concerns over the last week or two has been Dragon Quest VII. For someone with minimal experience with the series, having played some the first on NES, and otherwise only having played DQVIII on PS2, albeit to completion, I have felt oddly compelled to collect as much of it as I could, across the Super Famicom and DS and 3DS platforms. VII was previously a PSX game, but last year got a nice remake for the 3DS. It's known for being very long, around 100 hours, having a slow pace, and having allegedly bad graphics and releasing so late in the life of the PSX that the PS2 was already solidly in the market and about to enter its prime.
The 3DS remake seems to have fixed those issues, or addressed them as well as you might assume possible with the limited horsepower available to it. Random battles are gone, replaced with a compromise in the vein of Earthbound or Chrono Trigger, where the enemies are visible on the map and if you actually run into them, you fight. The graphics have had a total overhaul as well, but I suspect I might actually prefer the PSX's when I get the chance to finally play it, having never picked it up in its original incarnation. I just ordered a copy from eBay. As far as playing the game, it's a solid RPG in the classic Japanese sense, being one of that genre's cornerstone series. I've long been a fan of the genre, of course. This game feels very comfortable.
Something brought me back to Torchlight II this week. An unexpected, inexplicable urge to play more of the game I only got perhaps a quarter into when it first released, if that. Maybe it was being effectively done with Diablo III's content without being rid of the siren's call of that type of game. Whatever the actual reason, I have it re-installed and I've picked up my Engineer at level 28 and begun the experience and gear climb once more. It's fun.
Arguably first among my gaming concerns over the last week or two has been Dragon Quest VII. For someone with minimal experience with the series, having played some the first on NES, and otherwise only having played DQVIII on PS2, albeit to completion, I have felt oddly compelled to collect as much of it as I could, across the Super Famicom and DS and 3DS platforms. VII was previously a PSX game, but last year got a nice remake for the 3DS. It's known for being very long, around 100 hours, having a slow pace, and having allegedly bad graphics and releasing so late in the life of the PSX that the PS2 was already solidly in the market and about to enter its prime.
The 3DS remake seems to have fixed those issues, or addressed them as well as you might assume possible with the limited horsepower available to it. Random battles are gone, replaced with a compromise in the vein of Earthbound or Chrono Trigger, where the enemies are visible on the map and if you actually run into them, you fight. The graphics have had a total overhaul as well, but I suspect I might actually prefer the PSX's when I get the chance to finally play it, having never picked it up in its original incarnation. I just ordered a copy from eBay. As far as playing the game, it's a solid RPG in the classic Japanese sense, being one of that genre's cornerstone series. I've long been a fan of the genre, of course. This game feels very comfortable.
Something brought me back to Torchlight II this week. An unexpected, inexplicable urge to play more of the game I only got perhaps a quarter into when it first released, if that. Maybe it was being effectively done with Diablo III's content without being rid of the siren's call of that type of game. Whatever the actual reason, I have it re-installed and I've picked up my Engineer at level 28 and begun the experience and gear climb once more. It's fun.
Monday, July 31, 2017
Elite: Moderately Dangerous
I felt the siren's call of the great unknown expanse call me last week, and I had to head back out into the black.
Elite: Dangerous is once again ensconced on my hard drive, and CMDR Count Elmdor again flies the entirely disinterested skies. I came back from some time away to find that it is now possible to make a decent amount of money relatively quickly by running transport missions for goods and passengers. I had been thinking to outfit a trader vessel to make money for the eventual purchase of an Anaconda, but as it turns out, I'm reluctant to give up my Asp Explorer, as Exploring is my real calling to this game.
Having discovered a solid new way of making money, I ground out a bunch of missions and credits that way before deciding it was time, once again, to roam the vast emptiness outside the bubble. I had to turn back before long, though, realizing I had forgotten an important piece of equipment. I had made the conscious decision to forego the SRV or any cargo bays this trip (which now that I think about it might be a mistake), but I did need to go back and get a repair module in case anything breaks down while I'm out on my own.
It was here that I discovered that the selling of exploration data has also apparently gotten a buff. So, I'm in a pretty good place right now. I already have one of the top ships in the game for exploration, based of max jump capacity. My favorite occupation in the game pays well, so after some time out exploring, if I'm lucky I might come back with enough saved up to make the big upgrade. Time will tell.
I might end up ranging a ways out and then coming back for another ship or loadout. Right now, though, I'm putting Elite back on a back burner and focusing efforts elsewhere.
Elite: Dangerous is once again ensconced on my hard drive, and CMDR Count Elmdor again flies the entirely disinterested skies. I came back from some time away to find that it is now possible to make a decent amount of money relatively quickly by running transport missions for goods and passengers. I had been thinking to outfit a trader vessel to make money for the eventual purchase of an Anaconda, but as it turns out, I'm reluctant to give up my Asp Explorer, as Exploring is my real calling to this game.
Having discovered a solid new way of making money, I ground out a bunch of missions and credits that way before deciding it was time, once again, to roam the vast emptiness outside the bubble. I had to turn back before long, though, realizing I had forgotten an important piece of equipment. I had made the conscious decision to forego the SRV or any cargo bays this trip (which now that I think about it might be a mistake), but I did need to go back and get a repair module in case anything breaks down while I'm out on my own.
It was here that I discovered that the selling of exploration data has also apparently gotten a buff. So, I'm in a pretty good place right now. I already have one of the top ships in the game for exploration, based of max jump capacity. My favorite occupation in the game pays well, so after some time out exploring, if I'm lucky I might come back with enough saved up to make the big upgrade. Time will tell.
I might end up ranging a ways out and then coming back for another ship or loadout. Right now, though, I'm putting Elite back on a back burner and focusing efforts elsewhere.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Out of Sorts with My Sort
I've been in a strange place lately with gaming. I don't know if my tastes are changing and evolving, or if I'm just getting tired of my usual things, or what. I have had a hard time drilling down into things lately, things that should really most definitely be my sort of thing. I'm trying to just go where my whims take me, though, and trust that I'll get to where I need to be that way.
So far, this has led me directly back to The Last of Us. I've always had issues with the play in Naughty Dog's Uncharted series, while yet still wanting to play through each for their cinematic aspects. The same goes for this game. I've decided to take another run at it, having lost the save of my first attempt. I'm about 2 or 3 hours in, and not quite back to where I had left off previously. I'm trying to look at it like a dramatic TV series as opposed to the kind of video game I typically enjoy, because it (and the Uncharted series) excel at aspects of the former, but are deficient at aspects of the latter. Maybe I can buckle down and get through this game with that mindset.
Super Mario World - I want to get through this on my SNES with my daughters. It seems harder than I remember, though. I wonder if lag on my HDTV might be to blame. Probably not, it's probably just faulty memory and degrading motor skills, though. I made it to the Vanilla Dome, though.
Skyrim - I wanted to play some yesterday, but wasn't too attached to any of the quests in my log. I am still not sold on either side of the civil war going on here, either. I figured I would chase down the next leg of the main, dragon related quest, then, to compensate for my jack-of-all-trades approach to character specialization with some draconic superpowers. I walked halfway across the province to a barrow, having small adventures along the way.
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition - Long story short, it is still a dull action roleplaying loot game, but one that has been nicely spruced up by its new publisher, THQ Nordic. I wish them success in future endeavors.
Duelyst - I played a few more puzzles and practice matches. I don't have too much more to say other than I'm using this to substitute for Hearthstone for the time being. I need to get into it at least to the point where I can appreciate the 20 booster packs I got for it.
Elite: Dangerous - I made a conscious decision to get away from playing this game and try to find things that are more novel in the same space. There may not actually be a real replacement for it, but at the present, I just can't justify spending any more time in it without investigating alternatives.
Assassin's Creed Unity - I just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't care about the plot, and I wasn't looking forward to Syndicate at all. Uninstalled. Maybe I'll be back with the next incarnation of the series. I am planning to see the upcoming movie, but I don't have high hopes for it.
WoW - Filling out my trilogy of quit games this entry. My flame with the game has run its course this time around, and longer and brighter than previously. The Suramar quest grind and lack of additional zones to explore finally bored me, and the idea of powering up my artifact even more, while attractive, was not ultimately enough to get me to play enough that I felt it was worth the subscription.
Finally, I began Obsidian's new 3/4 view party RPG (not Infinity Engine), Tyranny. I'm only a couple of hours in, but it seems very cool so far. I'm enjoying the very gray territory the decisions I am making are in, being a sort of enforcer for a conquering power as the conquest winds down, bringing the conquered lands and people into compliance. The emperor Kyros seems like a really bad guy from afar, capricious and uncaring. The whole setting is very reminiscent of 40K and the Horus Heresy.
So far, this has led me directly back to The Last of Us. I've always had issues with the play in Naughty Dog's Uncharted series, while yet still wanting to play through each for their cinematic aspects. The same goes for this game. I've decided to take another run at it, having lost the save of my first attempt. I'm about 2 or 3 hours in, and not quite back to where I had left off previously. I'm trying to look at it like a dramatic TV series as opposed to the kind of video game I typically enjoy, because it (and the Uncharted series) excel at aspects of the former, but are deficient at aspects of the latter. Maybe I can buckle down and get through this game with that mindset.
Super Mario World - I want to get through this on my SNES with my daughters. It seems harder than I remember, though. I wonder if lag on my HDTV might be to blame. Probably not, it's probably just faulty memory and degrading motor skills, though. I made it to the Vanilla Dome, though.
Skyrim - I wanted to play some yesterday, but wasn't too attached to any of the quests in my log. I am still not sold on either side of the civil war going on here, either. I figured I would chase down the next leg of the main, dragon related quest, then, to compensate for my jack-of-all-trades approach to character specialization with some draconic superpowers. I walked halfway across the province to a barrow, having small adventures along the way.
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition - Long story short, it is still a dull action roleplaying loot game, but one that has been nicely spruced up by its new publisher, THQ Nordic. I wish them success in future endeavors.
Duelyst - I played a few more puzzles and practice matches. I don't have too much more to say other than I'm using this to substitute for Hearthstone for the time being. I need to get into it at least to the point where I can appreciate the 20 booster packs I got for it.
Elite: Dangerous - I made a conscious decision to get away from playing this game and try to find things that are more novel in the same space. There may not actually be a real replacement for it, but at the present, I just can't justify spending any more time in it without investigating alternatives.
Assassin's Creed Unity - I just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't care about the plot, and I wasn't looking forward to Syndicate at all. Uninstalled. Maybe I'll be back with the next incarnation of the series. I am planning to see the upcoming movie, but I don't have high hopes for it.
WoW - Filling out my trilogy of quit games this entry. My flame with the game has run its course this time around, and longer and brighter than previously. The Suramar quest grind and lack of additional zones to explore finally bored me, and the idea of powering up my artifact even more, while attractive, was not ultimately enough to get me to play enough that I felt it was worth the subscription.
Finally, I began Obsidian's new 3/4 view party RPG (not Infinity Engine), Tyranny. I'm only a couple of hours in, but it seems very cool so far. I'm enjoying the very gray territory the decisions I am making are in, being a sort of enforcer for a conquering power as the conquest winds down, bringing the conquered lands and people into compliance. The emperor Kyros seems like a really bad guy from afar, capricious and uncaring. The whole setting is very reminiscent of 40K and the Horus Heresy.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
New Arrivals Appear on the Scene
Two new contenders for GOTY have appeared this week! Devil Daggers and Talisman: The Horus Heresy. Here are my top 4 2016 releases thus far, in no particular order:
The Witness
Firewatch
Devil Daggers
Talisman: The Horus Heresy
Just so I don't forget what actually came out this year that I have played. It is paramount that I have a definitive, rigorously considered GOTY each year, of course.
What I have been playing lately:
Rocket League - a few matches the other night. There really is something great about a 5 minute round of something as a palate cleanser or itch scratcher. This game is really lots of unadulterated fun, too. The production values are nice and crisp--Rocket League is just a great package all around.
Elite - I'm back to long-range exploration as my main modus operandi. I took a trip our to the Merope system in the Pleides nebula the other day to get a first-hand look at the "barnacles" that have been found out there. Getting to the system was a cinch in my exploration-optimized Asp, but getting to the specified coordinates on the planet was a real bear. It was a very cool thing to do, though. After that I returned to civilization to top off my hull repair, sell data, and dove back into the abyss. I'm working on a roundabout way toward VY Canis Majoris, this trip. I should mention that I also made a trip to Betelgeuse before going to Merope. Betelgeuse is very near the settled bubble, and an impressively large star. Unfortunately, like an idiot, within just a few light-seconds of a dock to sell that data, I decided to check out a Distress Call instance. Never again. I was torn apart by multiple assailants with no provocation and before I could even get my FSD more than a third of the way charged. And this was with 5D shields! Live and learn, and that was at least a million credits down the drain, figuring in re-buy costs.
Mass Effect 3 - I cured the Genophage, and won the support of both the Krogan and Turians in my galaxy-spanning war on the Reapers. It sounds like a real feat, but it only took less than a couple of hours. I have a lot of side quests to be doing, and I'm going to have to mediate a conflict between the Quarians and the Geth at some point, I know. There's still a lot of game left here. I should finish it before going to Japan for a few weeks in about a month's time.
Devil Daggers - This game came out of nowhere, as far as I'm concerned. I first saw a screenshot of the title screen on twitter, and then it was everywhere. It's Geometry Wars but in Quake, in a nutshell. The single round, one hit death, survive as long as you can play of the former in the perspective and motif of the former. The object of the game is primarily just to survive as long as possible, and presumably also to collect as many red gems as possible, which are dropped by certain enemy types. I'm guessing collecting enough will trigger some sort of power up. This game is very difficult, and very addicting. It is also very, very intense. It's a blast, as I love the feel and look of it. I'm currently at the top of my friends' leaderboard, though there is only one other person on it, with a time of 62-some-odd seconds.
Talisman: The Horus Heresy - It's Talisman Digital themed in my favorite Warhammer setting and characters. I was naturally going to pick this up, loving the license and liking the game well enough. I've played 4 games so far, trying out different characters, who all have unique traits. There is a very heavy luck component to any game of Talisman, this one being no exception. In my last game as Konrad Curze, I wandered around the periphery of the board barely accruing any strength or resources at all, where my partner Angron (this version is team-based, rather than a free-for-all) snowballed early and rolled right through all comers to slay The Emperor very quickly and win the game for us. It's only lightly interactive, and mostly dependent on dice rolls and card draws, so strategy is less emphasized, but I enjoy a game of Talisman here and there, and as an unrepentant Horus Heresy enthusiast, I'll be playing this game quite a bit in the future, I think.
The Witness
Firewatch
Devil Daggers
Talisman: The Horus Heresy
Just so I don't forget what actually came out this year that I have played. It is paramount that I have a definitive, rigorously considered GOTY each year, of course.
What I have been playing lately:
Rocket League - a few matches the other night. There really is something great about a 5 minute round of something as a palate cleanser or itch scratcher. This game is really lots of unadulterated fun, too. The production values are nice and crisp--Rocket League is just a great package all around.
Elite - I'm back to long-range exploration as my main modus operandi. I took a trip our to the Merope system in the Pleides nebula the other day to get a first-hand look at the "barnacles" that have been found out there. Getting to the system was a cinch in my exploration-optimized Asp, but getting to the specified coordinates on the planet was a real bear. It was a very cool thing to do, though. After that I returned to civilization to top off my hull repair, sell data, and dove back into the abyss. I'm working on a roundabout way toward VY Canis Majoris, this trip. I should mention that I also made a trip to Betelgeuse before going to Merope. Betelgeuse is very near the settled bubble, and an impressively large star. Unfortunately, like an idiot, within just a few light-seconds of a dock to sell that data, I decided to check out a Distress Call instance. Never again. I was torn apart by multiple assailants with no provocation and before I could even get my FSD more than a third of the way charged. And this was with 5D shields! Live and learn, and that was at least a million credits down the drain, figuring in re-buy costs.
Mass Effect 3 - I cured the Genophage, and won the support of both the Krogan and Turians in my galaxy-spanning war on the Reapers. It sounds like a real feat, but it only took less than a couple of hours. I have a lot of side quests to be doing, and I'm going to have to mediate a conflict between the Quarians and the Geth at some point, I know. There's still a lot of game left here. I should finish it before going to Japan for a few weeks in about a month's time.
Devil Daggers - This game came out of nowhere, as far as I'm concerned. I first saw a screenshot of the title screen on twitter, and then it was everywhere. It's Geometry Wars but in Quake, in a nutshell. The single round, one hit death, survive as long as you can play of the former in the perspective and motif of the former. The object of the game is primarily just to survive as long as possible, and presumably also to collect as many red gems as possible, which are dropped by certain enemy types. I'm guessing collecting enough will trigger some sort of power up. This game is very difficult, and very addicting. It is also very, very intense. It's a blast, as I love the feel and look of it. I'm currently at the top of my friends' leaderboard, though there is only one other person on it, with a time of 62-some-odd seconds.
Talisman: The Horus Heresy - It's Talisman Digital themed in my favorite Warhammer setting and characters. I was naturally going to pick this up, loving the license and liking the game well enough. I've played 4 games so far, trying out different characters, who all have unique traits. There is a very heavy luck component to any game of Talisman, this one being no exception. In my last game as Konrad Curze, I wandered around the periphery of the board barely accruing any strength or resources at all, where my partner Angron (this version is team-based, rather than a free-for-all) snowballed early and rolled right through all comers to slay The Emperor very quickly and win the game for us. It's only lightly interactive, and mostly dependent on dice rolls and card draws, so strategy is less emphasized, but I enjoy a game of Talisman here and there, and as an unrepentant Horus Heresy enthusiast, I'll be playing this game quite a bit in the future, I think.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Play Salad
I've been into a ton of different things in the past few days:
Firewatch - I finished it. It was alright, overall, but I didn't end up liking it as much as I anticipated. Maybe I was just not in the mindspace for this type of thing. The high points are the style of the game's art and believable characters on display, though I don't quite buy that it is set in the mid '80s when the characters speak the way they do. Something about it just seemed off. Hiking around the nature areas was nice, but got old kind of quickly, and I was soon dashing everywhere, and dashing through to the end of the game.
Torchlight II - I'm not sure why, now, but something made me want to go back to revisit this game, as I felt like we had unfinished business. I feel like I'm finished with it now, though. I realized while playing it for a while that I wasn't particularly in love with either the play or the world in this game, and my time would be better spent elsewhere.
Borderlands 2 - Same story here as above. I haven't been able to get into Borderlands 2 for whatever reason, after a couple of tries. I played all the way through the first and all the DLC for it, and while I do enjoy the combat in these games, the randomly generated guns don't really do all that much for me, and I don't particularly like the world they've built here, unique though it is. I could play any number of other shooters and probably eventually find one that clicks in a way that this one doesn't.
Tomb Raider II - Another game not really on my backlog, since I did play all the way through it back at release on the original PlayStation, but that I did want to revisit. I bought the entire collection of Tomb Raider games on Steam a while back, and I want to try each of them out, for a while at least. I never played past the second when these were contemporary, nor ever played Legend, Anniversary, or Underworld in later years. The next TR game I played after II was actually the 2013 reboot. I still really like these original games in the series. No other game has done quite this sort of 3D world navigation puzzle with a very well defined move set and a collection of levels planned out so exactly. I hypothesize that the advent of the analog stick cut short this evolutionary path in gaming.
Rocket League - It continues to be a great game to dip into for a few minutes at a time as a break here and there during the day, or in the evening as a warm-up for more serious fare.
The Witness - The more serious fare, often. I've made some really good progress lately. I'm up past 250 puzzles solved now, I think, with 5 or 6 laser beams activated. I really like this game.
X-COM Enemy Unknown - My campaign continues. I'm at a stage where I have to infiltrate an alien base, and I'm just trying to build up resources and prepare my squad before doing that. I don't know if it's time sensitive or not, but it probably is, at least in the sense that alien activity is going to keep happening, and I can never address all instances of it. Eventually everyone will just pull out of the whole X-COM project. One nation already has, Russia, if memory serves.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - I have a game in progress that I am half-serious about completing, and that I keep going back to when I feel like a quick hit of action play and the PS3 is on, usually because Mia and Juno have been watching something.
Elite Dangerous - I finally made it back to civilized space with my tons of exploration data, and sold it, making about 8 million credits, which was enough to bankroll the best FSD available for my Asp, as well as other improvements, and now I'm off out into the black for another run. I don't know where I'm headed, other than to the bottom of the galaxy, and rimward of the bubble of settled systems. One of the new toys I want to test out is my SRV, the rover that can be deployed to drive around the surfaces of planets (rocky and non-atmospheric, for the time being). I need to do more and longer expeditions if I'm going to make enough money to buy an Anaconda or other large ship, and if I'm going to rank up to Elite in exploration. These are long, long, long term goals. I can play CQC mode in between bouts of jump, scan, jump, scan, jump, scan, and so on.
Firewatch - I finished it. It was alright, overall, but I didn't end up liking it as much as I anticipated. Maybe I was just not in the mindspace for this type of thing. The high points are the style of the game's art and believable characters on display, though I don't quite buy that it is set in the mid '80s when the characters speak the way they do. Something about it just seemed off. Hiking around the nature areas was nice, but got old kind of quickly, and I was soon dashing everywhere, and dashing through to the end of the game.
Torchlight II - I'm not sure why, now, but something made me want to go back to revisit this game, as I felt like we had unfinished business. I feel like I'm finished with it now, though. I realized while playing it for a while that I wasn't particularly in love with either the play or the world in this game, and my time would be better spent elsewhere.
Borderlands 2 - Same story here as above. I haven't been able to get into Borderlands 2 for whatever reason, after a couple of tries. I played all the way through the first and all the DLC for it, and while I do enjoy the combat in these games, the randomly generated guns don't really do all that much for me, and I don't particularly like the world they've built here, unique though it is. I could play any number of other shooters and probably eventually find one that clicks in a way that this one doesn't.
Tomb Raider II - Another game not really on my backlog, since I did play all the way through it back at release on the original PlayStation, but that I did want to revisit. I bought the entire collection of Tomb Raider games on Steam a while back, and I want to try each of them out, for a while at least. I never played past the second when these were contemporary, nor ever played Legend, Anniversary, or Underworld in later years. The next TR game I played after II was actually the 2013 reboot. I still really like these original games in the series. No other game has done quite this sort of 3D world navigation puzzle with a very well defined move set and a collection of levels planned out so exactly. I hypothesize that the advent of the analog stick cut short this evolutionary path in gaming.
Rocket League - It continues to be a great game to dip into for a few minutes at a time as a break here and there during the day, or in the evening as a warm-up for more serious fare.
The Witness - The more serious fare, often. I've made some really good progress lately. I'm up past 250 puzzles solved now, I think, with 5 or 6 laser beams activated. I really like this game.
X-COM Enemy Unknown - My campaign continues. I'm at a stage where I have to infiltrate an alien base, and I'm just trying to build up resources and prepare my squad before doing that. I don't know if it's time sensitive or not, but it probably is, at least in the sense that alien activity is going to keep happening, and I can never address all instances of it. Eventually everyone will just pull out of the whole X-COM project. One nation already has, Russia, if memory serves.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - I have a game in progress that I am half-serious about completing, and that I keep going back to when I feel like a quick hit of action play and the PS3 is on, usually because Mia and Juno have been watching something.
Elite Dangerous - I finally made it back to civilized space with my tons of exploration data, and sold it, making about 8 million credits, which was enough to bankroll the best FSD available for my Asp, as well as other improvements, and now I'm off out into the black for another run. I don't know where I'm headed, other than to the bottom of the galaxy, and rimward of the bubble of settled systems. One of the new toys I want to test out is my SRV, the rover that can be deployed to drive around the surfaces of planets (rocky and non-atmospheric, for the time being). I need to do more and longer expeditions if I'm going to make enough money to buy an Anaconda or other large ship, and if I'm going to rank up to Elite in exploration. These are long, long, long term goals. I can play CQC mode in between bouts of jump, scan, jump, scan, jump, scan, and so on.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Steady As She Goes
The Ship is an older entry in my Steam library. As I recall, everyone who purchased the game ended up with a few free copies to give away to others. They were as common as dirt for a while, it seemed. I finally decided to try the game out, since it began with S, and I could at once knock out three separate entries in my unplayed Steam list (The Ship, The Ship Tutorial, and The Ship Single Player). It's a mainly multiplayer game of the type where every player is given one other player to kill, while avoiding being killed by whomever is hunting them. At the same time, your character has various needs that need to be met, such as having to eat, drink, sleep, shower, urinate, socialize, read, et cetera. The game is a balancing act of hunting, evasion, and character upkeep on a Titanic-era ship on the high seas. It's a good idea, and seems to have been executed competently. It's a shame then, that several years on, there are no players on the servers. It does have a functional bunch of bots you can play against, at least to get a sense of how the game is supposed to play, and the single player mode is a sort of campaign-tutorial mélange that seemed to mean well, but lacked a quick save, meaning lots of repetition. No, thank you.
Horizons, the first major expansion to Elite: Dangerous was on sale recently, so I added that to my game and was able to make my first planetary landing on a random body in a random system still several hundred LY outside of civilized space. I don't have a rover yet, so landing is really all I can do, but it was still cool. When I get the feeling, I'll make my way back to civilization and hopefully be able to make some money from my exploration data to then afford one of the rovers. They look like a lot of fun!
Progressing through some of my 2016 planned gaming syllabus, I have been working on both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Dawn of War II: Retribution. I suppose the XCOM2 hype and rave reviews have influenced me some, but I've gained some ground on my Normal Ironman campaign. I still feel overwhelmed and lack satellite coverage, but I may be able to claw my way to success with some luck. I've never made it even this far in a campaign, though, so who can say? I ran one mission in Retribution last week, but it's got me wanting to run more. I'm playing it through as the Blood Raven Space Marine squad this first time, at least. It might be interesting to try some of the other factions, too.
A quick update on The Witness: I keep returning to this game and managing to figure out a little bit, and make a little bit of progress before being stumped and putting it down. Figuring out the rules that govern a set of puzzles is a really nice feeling, though. It makes me want to go back and keep trying until I figure it all out.
Firewatch has just come out, the walk and talk first person exploration and drama game from the new studio Campo Santo, made up of people formerly of Telltale Games, Double Fine, Irrational, Klei, and others, I'm sure, as well as members of the popular Idle Thumbs video games podcast. It features art by artist Olly Moss, whose style is very full of visual wordplay. You play one of those people that goes and spends the summer in a giant watchtower out in the wilderness and watches for brushfires and acts as a sort of deputy park ranger. Henry (his name) has some personal issues and he is in contact with Delilah, another firewatcher, and they talk a lot on the radio while interesting things occur in the parklands. I'm investigating a bit of a mystery at the point I'm at, now.
Horizons, the first major expansion to Elite: Dangerous was on sale recently, so I added that to my game and was able to make my first planetary landing on a random body in a random system still several hundred LY outside of civilized space. I don't have a rover yet, so landing is really all I can do, but it was still cool. When I get the feeling, I'll make my way back to civilization and hopefully be able to make some money from my exploration data to then afford one of the rovers. They look like a lot of fun!
Progressing through some of my 2016 planned gaming syllabus, I have been working on both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Dawn of War II: Retribution. I suppose the XCOM2 hype and rave reviews have influenced me some, but I've gained some ground on my Normal Ironman campaign. I still feel overwhelmed and lack satellite coverage, but I may be able to claw my way to success with some luck. I've never made it even this far in a campaign, though, so who can say? I ran one mission in Retribution last week, but it's got me wanting to run more. I'm playing it through as the Blood Raven Space Marine squad this first time, at least. It might be interesting to try some of the other factions, too.
A quick update on The Witness: I keep returning to this game and managing to figure out a little bit, and make a little bit of progress before being stumped and putting it down. Figuring out the rules that govern a set of puzzles is a really nice feeling, though. It makes me want to go back and keep trying until I figure it all out.
Firewatch has just come out, the walk and talk first person exploration and drama game from the new studio Campo Santo, made up of people formerly of Telltale Games, Double Fine, Irrational, Klei, and others, I'm sure, as well as members of the popular Idle Thumbs video games podcast. It features art by artist Olly Moss, whose style is very full of visual wordplay. You play one of those people that goes and spends the summer in a giant watchtower out in the wilderness and watches for brushfires and acts as a sort of deputy park ranger. Henry (his name) has some personal issues and he is in contact with Delilah, another firewatcher, and they talk a lot on the radio while interesting things occur in the parklands. I'm investigating a bit of a mystery at the point I'm at, now.
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Roleplaying in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
I've been on a real Elder Scrolls kick lately. I've mentioned previously spending some time with Skyrim and Morrowind lately; the latter has given me the slip once again, I'm here to report. Or maybe I'd just rather spend time with its younger, prettier, and more friendly cousins. I think I'll get back around to Skyrim eventually, for the long haul, but in the throes of my recent fascination with the series, I had to check out Daggerfall, the only one of the games I had not played.
It didn't go over so well. I had a better time playing Arena for a short while, as a matter of fact. That's partly on me, though. I didn't RTFM like I knew I should have, and so I completely missed the fact you can look up and down in the game world, and also easily rebind keys. These follies as well as the game's inherent bugginess--my first character spawned knee-deep in the floor, unable to ascend stairs--put me off it sooner than was probably merited. That's OK, though. I have a history of coming back around to this series.
Last, and probably least, I picked up The Elder Scrolls Online in the recent Steam sale. Never was a game less necessary, but that said, there is something compulsive to it's playability. I liken it to junk food, the type of air-injected, sodium-laced carbohydrate empty calorie crap we all know is no good, but can't keep ourselves form engaging with all the same. It's all too easy to just jump right in and grind out some mindless quests and experience points in a bland, non-challenging setting and circumstance, as compared to challenging myself to progress in something requiring thought. I have an Orc Templar who is level 7 or 8, focused on heavy armor and two-handed weapons and healing skills. I guess I'm trying to be a tank, if I ever happen to play with other humans in this game. Since it's subscription-free, I guess that's not entirely implausible.
Jumping into our space ship and engaging our FTL drive, let's get galactic. I'm circling back around to Elite: Dangerous. I've had some podcast listening time free lately, and I still have a long way left to traverse back to inhabited space to unload this wealth of exploration data I've been carrying. I'll have been away so long the game will have shifted around me in my absence. I hope this data is still worth something. There's a new arcade mode to the game called CQC, which they somehow reconcile with your in-galaxy persona via your pilot ranking. I may check that mode out in the next week.
Finally, back to roleplaying, but remaining in the space variety, I'm playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic again. I've never made it more than maybe a third of the way into the game thanks to bugs and attrition, but this attempt is going well, so far.
I'm playing a light side Revan (of course I know the twist), though I have made a mistake or two, most notably proceeding with breaking the law in order to duel to the death with Bendak Starkiller. I was under the impression that killing him was OK, as it was to fulfill a government ordered bounty, but I got dark side points anyway, either due to participating in bloodsport to accomplish the end, or simply for the fact I killed him in cold blood--though wouldn't a hot blooded kill also be giving into the dark side? If killing itself is of the dark side, then why don't I suffer a penalty for all the trash mobs I take down wandering the world? Is it because they are hostile to me before I am to them? Perhaps that's the rationale. Either way, Bendak's blaster is apparently the best in the game, so I'm proceeding with this mistake as part of my character's background. After all, it's the least of black marks in his history.
It didn't go over so well. I had a better time playing Arena for a short while, as a matter of fact. That's partly on me, though. I didn't RTFM like I knew I should have, and so I completely missed the fact you can look up and down in the game world, and also easily rebind keys. These follies as well as the game's inherent bugginess--my first character spawned knee-deep in the floor, unable to ascend stairs--put me off it sooner than was probably merited. That's OK, though. I have a history of coming back around to this series.
Last, and probably least, I picked up The Elder Scrolls Online in the recent Steam sale. Never was a game less necessary, but that said, there is something compulsive to it's playability. I liken it to junk food, the type of air-injected, sodium-laced carbohydrate empty calorie crap we all know is no good, but can't keep ourselves form engaging with all the same. It's all too easy to just jump right in and grind out some mindless quests and experience points in a bland, non-challenging setting and circumstance, as compared to challenging myself to progress in something requiring thought. I have an Orc Templar who is level 7 or 8, focused on heavy armor and two-handed weapons and healing skills. I guess I'm trying to be a tank, if I ever happen to play with other humans in this game. Since it's subscription-free, I guess that's not entirely implausible.
Jumping into our space ship and engaging our FTL drive, let's get galactic. I'm circling back around to Elite: Dangerous. I've had some podcast listening time free lately, and I still have a long way left to traverse back to inhabited space to unload this wealth of exploration data I've been carrying. I'll have been away so long the game will have shifted around me in my absence. I hope this data is still worth something. There's a new arcade mode to the game called CQC, which they somehow reconcile with your in-galaxy persona via your pilot ranking. I may check that mode out in the next week.
Finally, back to roleplaying, but remaining in the space variety, I'm playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic again. I've never made it more than maybe a third of the way into the game thanks to bugs and attrition, but this attempt is going well, so far.
I'm playing a light side Revan (of course I know the twist), though I have made a mistake or two, most notably proceeding with breaking the law in order to duel to the death with Bendak Starkiller. I was under the impression that killing him was OK, as it was to fulfill a government ordered bounty, but I got dark side points anyway, either due to participating in bloodsport to accomplish the end, or simply for the fact I killed him in cold blood--though wouldn't a hot blooded kill also be giving into the dark side? If killing itself is of the dark side, then why don't I suffer a penalty for all the trash mobs I take down wandering the world? Is it because they are hostile to me before I am to them? Perhaps that's the rationale. Either way, Bendak's blaster is apparently the best in the game, so I'm proceeding with this mistake as part of my character's background. After all, it's the least of black marks in his history.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Witchering Busily
It's been a busy few weeks! The Witcher 3 is out, but that's not all I've been playing, believe it or not. I've been bopping around to a number of things without much of a clear goal in mind other than knocking a few things off of the backlog and just having a good time. Thoughts:
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - It's great! It's all I know and love about the series, but more of it than ever, and in the context of an open world. The previous games were open, within a defined space, and ushered you along from locale to locale as the plot unwrapped. So far Wild Hunt appears to just keep opening up and leaving the entire world there for you to revisit as the adventure progresses and Geralt's abilities and capabilities expand. I've put in about 25 hours so far, and I'm really still just getting my feet wet. I'm at level 6, only just getting a grip on the main quests in the Velen region.
Fallout: New Vegas - The recent announcement of Fallout 4 made me want to go back and revisit this world, and I was primed to do so, standing right at the beginning of the Lonesome Road DLC adventure into The Divide, a war-torn and storm-ravaged region to the west of the Mojave wasteland which the Courier apparently has some history in. The antagonist here is a guy calling himself Ulysses, another former courier, one who somehow fell in with Caesar's Legion before apparently falling out again and retreating to The Divide for whatever reason, leaving a trail of clues for our player character courier to find and track him down for some kind of final confrontation. This has been a pretty straight-forward trek thus far, through ruins and missile silos and such. I'm intrigued to make it to the end to see what this is all about.
Elite: Dangerous - Frontier finally made arrangements for everyone to get Steam keys for the game, so I popped on long enough to make sure mine worked and the save transferred over alright. I'm still in my Asp, still out in a nebula far from home. Just this week the Powerplay update hit, introducing a few new ships and the new faction war system. I wish I had more time to delve back in, but right now I really don't, so this is pretty well back-burnered for the time being.
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles - Something recently made me want to play Rondo and Symphony again, and this is the best way to do that. Unfortunately the copy I'm on now is new, a PSN download, and I have yet to unlock the two games I really want to play, and instead am currently limited to the 2.5D remake of Rondo, which is horrendously ugly and manages to feel pretty clunky, to boot. I hope to unlock the two good games soon.
The Chaos Engine - My C game for the GameBytes podcast. It's an old Amiga game, I read. It's very arcade-like, being a top-down shooter score chase. It reminds me of other old top-down games from the NES, like Mission: Impossible or Ikari Warriors or certain levels of Bionic Commando.
Deja Vu (The MacVenture Series) - My D game. This is just Deja Vu, the old first-person adventure game, the same one I remember from the NES, only this is the version made for Macs around that time. It was neat to see it again, but I really have no time for this sort of game these days. Too obtuse, too tedious.
Eets Munchies - My E game. Turns out this is by Klei, who have also done bigger and better things. I'm guessing it's a sequel to Eets Chow Down, which is the name of an XBLA game from several years ago that I remember, but never played. Munchies is clearly a port of an iPad game. You arrange things on a level then hit a button to let Eets navigate the level, going for a all the sweets therein before eating the cake at the end to finish. There are a thousand basic puzzle games like this on the iPad, none of them very interesting, as far as I can tell.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - It's great! It's all I know and love about the series, but more of it than ever, and in the context of an open world. The previous games were open, within a defined space, and ushered you along from locale to locale as the plot unwrapped. So far Wild Hunt appears to just keep opening up and leaving the entire world there for you to revisit as the adventure progresses and Geralt's abilities and capabilities expand. I've put in about 25 hours so far, and I'm really still just getting my feet wet. I'm at level 6, only just getting a grip on the main quests in the Velen region.
Fallout: New Vegas - The recent announcement of Fallout 4 made me want to go back and revisit this world, and I was primed to do so, standing right at the beginning of the Lonesome Road DLC adventure into The Divide, a war-torn and storm-ravaged region to the west of the Mojave wasteland which the Courier apparently has some history in. The antagonist here is a guy calling himself Ulysses, another former courier, one who somehow fell in with Caesar's Legion before apparently falling out again and retreating to The Divide for whatever reason, leaving a trail of clues for our player character courier to find and track him down for some kind of final confrontation. This has been a pretty straight-forward trek thus far, through ruins and missile silos and such. I'm intrigued to make it to the end to see what this is all about.
Elite: Dangerous - Frontier finally made arrangements for everyone to get Steam keys for the game, so I popped on long enough to make sure mine worked and the save transferred over alright. I'm still in my Asp, still out in a nebula far from home. Just this week the Powerplay update hit, introducing a few new ships and the new faction war system. I wish I had more time to delve back in, but right now I really don't, so this is pretty well back-burnered for the time being.
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles - Something recently made me want to play Rondo and Symphony again, and this is the best way to do that. Unfortunately the copy I'm on now is new, a PSN download, and I have yet to unlock the two games I really want to play, and instead am currently limited to the 2.5D remake of Rondo, which is horrendously ugly and manages to feel pretty clunky, to boot. I hope to unlock the two good games soon.
The Chaos Engine - My C game for the GameBytes podcast. It's an old Amiga game, I read. It's very arcade-like, being a top-down shooter score chase. It reminds me of other old top-down games from the NES, like Mission: Impossible or Ikari Warriors or certain levels of Bionic Commando.
Deja Vu (The MacVenture Series) - My D game. This is just Deja Vu, the old first-person adventure game, the same one I remember from the NES, only this is the version made for Macs around that time. It was neat to see it again, but I really have no time for this sort of game these days. Too obtuse, too tedious.
Eets Munchies - My E game. Turns out this is by Klei, who have also done bigger and better things. I'm guessing it's a sequel to Eets Chow Down, which is the name of an XBLA game from several years ago that I remember, but never played. Munchies is clearly a port of an iPad game. You arrange things on a level then hit a button to let Eets navigate the level, going for a all the sweets therein before eating the cake at the end to finish. There are a thousand basic puzzle games like this on the iPad, none of them very interesting, as far as I can tell.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Clear The Deck!
It's been a full several weeks, and I've been doing some podcasting with the Game Bytes crew, Lawman, Killt, and Redeye, to use their noms de plume, as well as tidying up of the game docket. The Witcher 3 releases today, and heading into that maelstrom, here's what I've been playing, in no particular order, and just for the record:
The Witcher - I finished up Side Effects and then played through The Price of Neutrality, as well. These were both pretty good little miniature Witcher adventures using the first game's systems and settings. The former is more light-hearted and comedic, the latter more of the hard-bitten dark fantasy side of the series, complete with hard choices and unforeseen consequences. They were worth doing, but could have and probably should have been folded into the main game somehow. Perhaps in addition to being available stand-alone.
The Witcher 2 - I had last played before they updated the game to the Enhanced Edition, about 4 years ago, so it's hard to really pinpoint what was new, aside from the obvious new cutscenes at the beginning and end of the game, and the new arena battle mini-game and tutorial intro to the game. I saw all of those things, still having an end-game save, and access to the others readily available. What I did not see was a couple of quests added to the third chapter of the game, one available on Iorveth's path, and one on Roche's path. My save was from my latter playthrough, Roche's path, but past the point where the added quest was accessible. No big deal, I think I got the quick refresher I was looking for on the game. I'm ready for Wild Hunt.
Minecraft - My older daughter, soon to be 4, prompts me to play it sometimes. We don't do much but run around looking at animals and random digging, but it's still worth mentioning.
Titanfall - I bought this along with all the full season pass at a heavy discount to play the multiplayer one evening with the Game Bytes guys I mentioned, on a stream, it turns out. It was good fun, but I lack the kind of time it takes to devote to a game like this to really get the most out of it. Plus, it really takes up a lot of hard drive space, which is the one area where my PC is really deficient. I only have about 500 GB in total available after the OS and other stuff is accounted for.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China - I finished it in about 6 hours' play time. It turned out to be pretty cool, overall. The art and presentation was the best part, but the play was alright, as well. It didn't overstay its welcome, which is nice. I only hope one day we can have a full-size AC in this setting, and preferably with Shao Jun starring again. I'm looking forward to the India and Russia games to come in this series.
Diablo III - My Monk is sitting pretty at level 70, and now with a decent compliment of endgame gear, to boot. I've actually dipped into the endgame on this character for the first time since they added Greater Rifts and all that goes along with them--everything since the 2.0 patch, really. It really makes me want to revisit all of my characters to some degree, and I probably will, in time.
Elite: Dangerous - Not much to report here, I'm still in that nebula, still scanning stars, still far from home. I'm not sure when I'll return, but I may weave this game in and our with my witchering in the coming months.
A Virus Named Tom - Pure backlog duty, here. I'm taking a sort of alphabetic approach, now that I have a weekly podcasting outlet. This game turns out to be a riff on Pipe Dream, where the core centers around rotating grid pieces to allow for the flow of electros on a circuit. There are a few added elements, mostly things that make it more stressful, such as having to control a grid-bound character as a cursor for your rotations, and then having to deal with other enemies and obstacles also on the grid, as well as environmental effects that blind you to the condition of the board and the like. Not really my type of thing, but it's a nicely put together package nonetheless.
Blocks That Matter - More backlog duty. I haven't gotten in much time, just yet, but it seems like a kind of combination 2D puzzle-platformer and Minecraft-like. I'll have to give it another go or two, but this also is probably not really my type of thing.
The Witcher - I finished up Side Effects and then played through The Price of Neutrality, as well. These were both pretty good little miniature Witcher adventures using the first game's systems and settings. The former is more light-hearted and comedic, the latter more of the hard-bitten dark fantasy side of the series, complete with hard choices and unforeseen consequences. They were worth doing, but could have and probably should have been folded into the main game somehow. Perhaps in addition to being available stand-alone.
The Witcher 2 - I had last played before they updated the game to the Enhanced Edition, about 4 years ago, so it's hard to really pinpoint what was new, aside from the obvious new cutscenes at the beginning and end of the game, and the new arena battle mini-game and tutorial intro to the game. I saw all of those things, still having an end-game save, and access to the others readily available. What I did not see was a couple of quests added to the third chapter of the game, one available on Iorveth's path, and one on Roche's path. My save was from my latter playthrough, Roche's path, but past the point where the added quest was accessible. No big deal, I think I got the quick refresher I was looking for on the game. I'm ready for Wild Hunt.
Minecraft - My older daughter, soon to be 4, prompts me to play it sometimes. We don't do much but run around looking at animals and random digging, but it's still worth mentioning.
Titanfall - I bought this along with all the full season pass at a heavy discount to play the multiplayer one evening with the Game Bytes guys I mentioned, on a stream, it turns out. It was good fun, but I lack the kind of time it takes to devote to a game like this to really get the most out of it. Plus, it really takes up a lot of hard drive space, which is the one area where my PC is really deficient. I only have about 500 GB in total available after the OS and other stuff is accounted for.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China - I finished it in about 6 hours' play time. It turned out to be pretty cool, overall. The art and presentation was the best part, but the play was alright, as well. It didn't overstay its welcome, which is nice. I only hope one day we can have a full-size AC in this setting, and preferably with Shao Jun starring again. I'm looking forward to the India and Russia games to come in this series.
Diablo III - My Monk is sitting pretty at level 70, and now with a decent compliment of endgame gear, to boot. I've actually dipped into the endgame on this character for the first time since they added Greater Rifts and all that goes along with them--everything since the 2.0 patch, really. It really makes me want to revisit all of my characters to some degree, and I probably will, in time.
Elite: Dangerous - Not much to report here, I'm still in that nebula, still scanning stars, still far from home. I'm not sure when I'll return, but I may weave this game in and our with my witchering in the coming months.
A Virus Named Tom - Pure backlog duty, here. I'm taking a sort of alphabetic approach, now that I have a weekly podcasting outlet. This game turns out to be a riff on Pipe Dream, where the core centers around rotating grid pieces to allow for the flow of electros on a circuit. There are a few added elements, mostly things that make it more stressful, such as having to control a grid-bound character as a cursor for your rotations, and then having to deal with other enemies and obstacles also on the grid, as well as environmental effects that blind you to the condition of the board and the like. Not really my type of thing, but it's a nicely put together package nonetheless.
Blocks That Matter - More backlog duty. I haven't gotten in much time, just yet, but it seems like a kind of combination 2D puzzle-platformer and Minecraft-like. I'll have to give it another go or two, but this also is probably not really my type of thing.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Three Weeks, Five Days, Twenty-Three Hours
That is the approximate time left until The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is released. I haven't thought of myself as excited for this game as I was for the second in the series, but the fact of the matter is that I do a quick calculation of how much time is remaining to allocate to gaming before this behemoth barges into my life and commandeers all of my time.
I've already waved off Pillars of Eternity for the time being, and between my steady engagements of Diablo III and Elite, I'm already unsure I'll have enough time to knock out the other couple of things I've picked up over the last week.
Diablo III Season 3 is under way, and I'm playing a Monk this time around. I've got her (Iskra) up to level 51, so far. I should be able to grind out the rest of the way to 70 before the Witcher 3 hits. I'm liking Monk a lot, so far. It's fast and powerful. It does seem heavy on the passive, healing focus, and aura type skills, though. I'm still not sure what I'll do in this game after I get one of each class to 70. On one hand, I'd like to further refine each of my characters in terms of gear, Torment levels, and Paragon points, but on the other I might like to have a go at Hardcore classes, or future seasonal rewards.
In Elite, I finally scraped up enough money to buy my Asp Explorer, a ship I had been wanting for a long time. I outfitted it as best I could for long-range exploring, and set out on an expedition to several points of interest within the galactic neighborhood. I'm currently still hanging out in the most interesting nebula I've seen so far, scanning loads of Type O stars and black holes. I'm thinking once I'm done here, rather than continuing on to the Bubble Nebula like I'd thought about, that I'll return to civilization to see how much I can get for my exploration data, and go from there. Before my next expedition, I want to be able to hop longer distances at once. Right now I can go about 20 LY at a time, but an Asp at it's full potential should get nearer to 35 LY. That will make traveling from place to place that much faster, and also make it possible to get to more and more remote stars and regions in the less densely populated areas between spiral arms and on the edges and outer regions of the galactic disc.
Elite is going to be my furthest back-burnered of games I consider a going concern, but I'll still be progressing in it, little by little.
As a sort of preparation for the upcoming big release, I'm going back and revisiting the first two Witcher games. I'd like to check out all the additional CDPR content available to both; two side adventures in the first game, and the material added to the second after I'd finished it at launch. So far, I've played through one of the side adventures in The Witcher, a fan-made module called Damn Those Swamps! which was of middling quality. I've begun the first of the CDPR ones, which I believe is called Side Effects, a fully voice acted side story that begins with Geralt trying to get his bard friend Dandelion out of debt to some shady characters in Vizima he owes money to. These are each probably a few hours long.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China came out yesterday, a mostly 2D take on the series, starring Shao Jun, a Chinese Assassin from the early 1500s, who first appeared in the short film Assassin's Creed Embers, where she made a pilgrimage to Tuscany to seek guidance from Assassin Mentor Ezio Auditore in his final days. It's kinda neat so far, with an emphasis on being stealthy, and a very nice art style. Some of the play from the 3D games is a natural fit for this game type, and some not, really. I'm only a couple of levels in so far, but looking to play more soon. Hopefully I can get through this before The Witcher 3 hits, as well. It shouldn't be too difficult. It seems built for replayability.
Kind of on a whim, I began Batman: Arkham City a couple of weeks ago. That game starts off very strong. It's got a very solid feel to it, and an interesting, if not at all believable, premise. Given ample time, I'd play more. We'll see if that should ever come to pass, though.
I've already waved off Pillars of Eternity for the time being, and between my steady engagements of Diablo III and Elite, I'm already unsure I'll have enough time to knock out the other couple of things I've picked up over the last week.
Diablo III Season 3 is under way, and I'm playing a Monk this time around. I've got her (Iskra) up to level 51, so far. I should be able to grind out the rest of the way to 70 before the Witcher 3 hits. I'm liking Monk a lot, so far. It's fast and powerful. It does seem heavy on the passive, healing focus, and aura type skills, though. I'm still not sure what I'll do in this game after I get one of each class to 70. On one hand, I'd like to further refine each of my characters in terms of gear, Torment levels, and Paragon points, but on the other I might like to have a go at Hardcore classes, or future seasonal rewards.
In Elite, I finally scraped up enough money to buy my Asp Explorer, a ship I had been wanting for a long time. I outfitted it as best I could for long-range exploring, and set out on an expedition to several points of interest within the galactic neighborhood. I'm currently still hanging out in the most interesting nebula I've seen so far, scanning loads of Type O stars and black holes. I'm thinking once I'm done here, rather than continuing on to the Bubble Nebula like I'd thought about, that I'll return to civilization to see how much I can get for my exploration data, and go from there. Before my next expedition, I want to be able to hop longer distances at once. Right now I can go about 20 LY at a time, but an Asp at it's full potential should get nearer to 35 LY. That will make traveling from place to place that much faster, and also make it possible to get to more and more remote stars and regions in the less densely populated areas between spiral arms and on the edges and outer regions of the galactic disc.
Elite is going to be my furthest back-burnered of games I consider a going concern, but I'll still be progressing in it, little by little.
As a sort of preparation for the upcoming big release, I'm going back and revisiting the first two Witcher games. I'd like to check out all the additional CDPR content available to both; two side adventures in the first game, and the material added to the second after I'd finished it at launch. So far, I've played through one of the side adventures in The Witcher, a fan-made module called Damn Those Swamps! which was of middling quality. I've begun the first of the CDPR ones, which I believe is called Side Effects, a fully voice acted side story that begins with Geralt trying to get his bard friend Dandelion out of debt to some shady characters in Vizima he owes money to. These are each probably a few hours long.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China came out yesterday, a mostly 2D take on the series, starring Shao Jun, a Chinese Assassin from the early 1500s, who first appeared in the short film Assassin's Creed Embers, where she made a pilgrimage to Tuscany to seek guidance from Assassin Mentor Ezio Auditore in his final days. It's kinda neat so far, with an emphasis on being stealthy, and a very nice art style. Some of the play from the 3D games is a natural fit for this game type, and some not, really. I'm only a couple of levels in so far, but looking to play more soon. Hopefully I can get through this before The Witcher 3 hits, as well. It shouldn't be too difficult. It seems built for replayability.
Kind of on a whim, I began Batman: Arkham City a couple of weeks ago. That game starts off very strong. It's got a very solid feel to it, and an interesting, if not at all believable, premise. Given ample time, I'd play more. We'll see if that should ever come to pass, though.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Pillars
This is a post about pillars, in a way. Two major pillars of my pantheon of games, at least for the past few months, have been Diablo III and Elite: Dangerous. Also, Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's Kickstarted modern successor to the Infinity Engine RPGs of old has been released, and I've played a bit of that.
A few other tidbits, first.
I finally uninstalled Borderlands 2, after giving it another go to see if the hook would set. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's not snagging me at the time being. I may have gotten my fill with the first game, but there's also the fact that I have umpteen other FPS to play, many of which I think I would get more out of for time spent. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, for instance.
I played a little SpaceChem recently, as well. That's a great game, but one that might be too difficult for its own good. I like that about it. I'm stuck on what might be one of the first really genuinely mind-bending puzzles, a level called "No Ordinary Headache." Indeed.
Rather than tool around in Assassin's Creed Rogue collecting miscellany, I jumped back into Shadow of Mordor for that Assassin-like feeling. It's a game that is way better than it has any right to be, as a licensed property. In fact, I think the license is pretty boring, and probably a major reason why I'm not head over heels for this game. It's very solid and fun in the moment, but there's pretty much nothing that actively draws me back to play it over one of my pillar games.
Speaking of which, I leveled up a Crusader to 70 and beyond for Season 2 of Diablo III play. I like it better than Witch Doctor, but maybe not as much as Barbarian or Wizard. Crusader seems designed around the concept an agro-grabbing tank, which I think has limited utility in a game like this to begin with, and then only in multi-player. I would like to try that way of playing sometime, but I wonder if it would be as efficient as going all-out offense. It might require having other damage dealing-centric party members rework their gear to disregard survivability and go 100% damage- focused. I'm not sure if I'll play any more of Season 2. I ran bounties all the way to 70 and then did one rift after that. I might like to run a few more and then try a greater rift, but then I might just wait until Season 3, when I plan to play a Monk to 70 to complete the full set of classes. After that may be when I focus on endgame stuff for each class, and when I finally delve into hardcore mode characters. There is still a lot of Diablo left to play.
Elite recently hit version 2.2, where two new ships were added, the Vulture (5M CR) and Fer-de-Lance (51M CR), both dedicated heavy fighters. I was able to afford a modestly outfitted Vulture with my earnings from exploration and trading, and set out to try 2.2's other big change to the game, buffed bounties. Simply put, the monetary rewards for destroying pirate ships got a big increase, so much so that to me it seems like easily the fastest and most enjoyable way to amass a small fortune. At some point, maybe in a Type-7 or larger, trade might edge it out in CR/hour, but without any of the thrill of combat. I earned over a million credits over the last day in about an hour altogether of hunting pirates at a RES (resource extraction site). That is quite an improvement over earning rates pre-patch, no matter the method. I'll probably crank out a few more million hunting bounties, hoping to raise my combat rating, before putting it all into an Asp for some real big-time exploration. That's going to be fun. I don't know where I'm going, only that it'll be a hell of a trip.
I mentioned Pillars of Eternity at the top of this post, but I really don't have much to say about it just yet. I've created a character, a sort of halfling woman who is a Chanter, which is a class that seems a lot like a Bard from FFXI, with buffs and debuffs. I've only made it through character creation and the first maybe 20 minutes of play thus far, but it does seem very faithful to the feel of games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. I hope to dig deep into this one soon.
A few other tidbits, first.
I finally uninstalled Borderlands 2, after giving it another go to see if the hook would set. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's not snagging me at the time being. I may have gotten my fill with the first game, but there's also the fact that I have umpteen other FPS to play, many of which I think I would get more out of for time spent. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, for instance.
I played a little SpaceChem recently, as well. That's a great game, but one that might be too difficult for its own good. I like that about it. I'm stuck on what might be one of the first really genuinely mind-bending puzzles, a level called "No Ordinary Headache." Indeed.
Rather than tool around in Assassin's Creed Rogue collecting miscellany, I jumped back into Shadow of Mordor for that Assassin-like feeling. It's a game that is way better than it has any right to be, as a licensed property. In fact, I think the license is pretty boring, and probably a major reason why I'm not head over heels for this game. It's very solid and fun in the moment, but there's pretty much nothing that actively draws me back to play it over one of my pillar games.
Speaking of which, I leveled up a Crusader to 70 and beyond for Season 2 of Diablo III play. I like it better than Witch Doctor, but maybe not as much as Barbarian or Wizard. Crusader seems designed around the concept an agro-grabbing tank, which I think has limited utility in a game like this to begin with, and then only in multi-player. I would like to try that way of playing sometime, but I wonder if it would be as efficient as going all-out offense. It might require having other damage dealing-centric party members rework their gear to disregard survivability and go 100% damage- focused. I'm not sure if I'll play any more of Season 2. I ran bounties all the way to 70 and then did one rift after that. I might like to run a few more and then try a greater rift, but then I might just wait until Season 3, when I plan to play a Monk to 70 to complete the full set of classes. After that may be when I focus on endgame stuff for each class, and when I finally delve into hardcore mode characters. There is still a lot of Diablo left to play.
Elite recently hit version 2.2, where two new ships were added, the Vulture (5M CR) and Fer-de-Lance (51M CR), both dedicated heavy fighters. I was able to afford a modestly outfitted Vulture with my earnings from exploration and trading, and set out to try 2.2's other big change to the game, buffed bounties. Simply put, the monetary rewards for destroying pirate ships got a big increase, so much so that to me it seems like easily the fastest and most enjoyable way to amass a small fortune. At some point, maybe in a Type-7 or larger, trade might edge it out in CR/hour, but without any of the thrill of combat. I earned over a million credits over the last day in about an hour altogether of hunting pirates at a RES (resource extraction site). That is quite an improvement over earning rates pre-patch, no matter the method. I'll probably crank out a few more million hunting bounties, hoping to raise my combat rating, before putting it all into an Asp for some real big-time exploration. That's going to be fun. I don't know where I'm going, only that it'll be a hell of a trip.
I mentioned Pillars of Eternity at the top of this post, but I really don't have much to say about it just yet. I've created a character, a sort of halfling woman who is a Chanter, which is a class that seems a lot like a Bard from FFXI, with buffs and debuffs. I've only made it through character creation and the first maybe 20 minutes of play thus far, but it does seem very faithful to the feel of games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. I hope to dig deep into this one soon.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Once Familiar
Once familiar is how I would describe The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. It reminds me quite a bit of A Link to the Past, but spruced up on more modern hardware with more modern design sensibilities. I like how it is analog and runs at a very smooth frame rate. Otherwise it seems fairly stock Zelda so far, save perhaps the item rental system, which if it pans out the way I'm hoping could lend the game an enhanced feeling of freedom over the usual. I haven't really liked a Zelda game in a very long time. I was wowed by Ocarina back when just like anyone, but looking back I can't help but feel it has been overblown, and I don't think I would ever want to replay it. I think my favorites in the series have always been the first and A Link to the Past. Zelda II holds a special place in my mind, but I wouldn't call it one of my favorite games by any stretch of the imagination.
The Homeworld Remastered collection came out recently, and I was given a copy as a gift by my good friend and podcasting buddy Esteban. This is a series I've seldom heard much about, but what I did hear was always very glowing. It's very well-regarded. So far I've played through the tutorial in both the remastered and original versions of the first game. It seems novel, an RTS that is relatively slower paced than most in a fully three-dimensional space setting. I'm planning to delve deeper into the remaster, as time goes on.
My Diablo III Season 2 Crusader is developing nicely. She's level 48 now, I think. This class makes a pretty satisfying brick house. It's neat to be able to just face down everything enemies try to throw at you and almost browbeat them into submission, albeit with a flail or some such. The shield-centric abilities are neat, too. You may trade off some loot-grind efficiency for the feeling of being untoppleable, but I don't mind.
I recently made a long exploring expedition in Elite, cut short somewhat by my desire to contribute to an exploration-themed community goal. I earned over 2 million credits with all my discovery data, and put that into a Lakon Type-6 trading ship, which allows for up to 112 tons of cargo. My Cobra would max out at 60. I've now flown everything up to a million credits in price, and my next ship is tentatively an Asp for more deep, deep space exploration. I may hop into a Viper for some combat play, though, or one of the new ships coming in the next update, if their sticker costs fall in under the 6+ mil required to fly an Asp. Right now my total net worth is probably around 5 mil, but I wouldn't be able to get much out of an Asp without about 8-10 mil for the ship itself and the additional modules needed to make the most of it. It's going to take some hours in trading to be able to afford that.
The Homeworld Remastered collection came out recently, and I was given a copy as a gift by my good friend and podcasting buddy Esteban. This is a series I've seldom heard much about, but what I did hear was always very glowing. It's very well-regarded. So far I've played through the tutorial in both the remastered and original versions of the first game. It seems novel, an RTS that is relatively slower paced than most in a fully three-dimensional space setting. I'm planning to delve deeper into the remaster, as time goes on.
My Diablo III Season 2 Crusader is developing nicely. She's level 48 now, I think. This class makes a pretty satisfying brick house. It's neat to be able to just face down everything enemies try to throw at you and almost browbeat them into submission, albeit with a flail or some such. The shield-centric abilities are neat, too. You may trade off some loot-grind efficiency for the feeling of being untoppleable, but I don't mind.
I recently made a long exploring expedition in Elite, cut short somewhat by my desire to contribute to an exploration-themed community goal. I earned over 2 million credits with all my discovery data, and put that into a Lakon Type-6 trading ship, which allows for up to 112 tons of cargo. My Cobra would max out at 60. I've now flown everything up to a million credits in price, and my next ship is tentatively an Asp for more deep, deep space exploration. I may hop into a Viper for some combat play, though, or one of the new ships coming in the next update, if their sticker costs fall in under the 6+ mil required to fly an Asp. Right now my total net worth is probably around 5 mil, but I wouldn't be able to get much out of an Asp without about 8-10 mil for the ship itself and the additional modules needed to make the most of it. It's going to take some hours in trading to be able to afford that.
Friday, February 20, 2015
The Long Game
I am playing the long game with both Diablo III and Elite: Dangerous as a matter of course, and with Warcraft III just because that is how I feel like handling it.
Warcraft first. I completed the first main campaign, leading the humans under Arthas to Northrend where he claimed the cursed sword Frostmourne and killed Mal-Ganis before returning home to slay his father, the king, and take the crown for himself. Not a very nice guy, Arthas. It looks like the next campaign is Arthas again, this time as the lich king leading the undead in their quest to... well, I don't actually have any idea. I guess that is my incentive to continue the game.
Season 2 of Diablo III competitive play has begun, and I'm leveling up my fifth character, a crusader. So far this class is more fun than the Witch Doctor I played in Season 1, and I may hit 70 faster this time around, leaving time to get more Paragon levels and gear up for rifts and greater rifts. Last time around I hit 70 and bailed, more or less. It probably helps that I started my crusader off in adventure mode from the jump, which is a lot less tedious than the campaign, which I have had my fill of for the time being.
Elite, then. I mentioned my plan in my last entry, and that's more or less what I did--find trade routes and focus on making money until I could afford the best scanning equipment for exploring. I did detour into bounty hunting a time or two, but now I'm off for some serious exploration. I think I might take a few days' trip into the unknown before returning to sell the data, upgrade ship components, and repeat, with the idea to eventually go to the extremes of the galaxy and to afford larger and larger ships. I'm still in a Cobra, which is a good all-arounder, but could already afford a Type 6 for trading if I really wanted. Maybe after this exploration stint I'll get one of those and work up to an Asp for some really uber-hardcore exploration.
Warcraft first. I completed the first main campaign, leading the humans under Arthas to Northrend where he claimed the cursed sword Frostmourne and killed Mal-Ganis before returning home to slay his father, the king, and take the crown for himself. Not a very nice guy, Arthas. It looks like the next campaign is Arthas again, this time as the lich king leading the undead in their quest to... well, I don't actually have any idea. I guess that is my incentive to continue the game.
Season 2 of Diablo III competitive play has begun, and I'm leveling up my fifth character, a crusader. So far this class is more fun than the Witch Doctor I played in Season 1, and I may hit 70 faster this time around, leaving time to get more Paragon levels and gear up for rifts and greater rifts. Last time around I hit 70 and bailed, more or less. It probably helps that I started my crusader off in adventure mode from the jump, which is a lot less tedious than the campaign, which I have had my fill of for the time being.
Elite, then. I mentioned my plan in my last entry, and that's more or less what I did--find trade routes and focus on making money until I could afford the best scanning equipment for exploring. I did detour into bounty hunting a time or two, but now I'm off for some serious exploration. I think I might take a few days' trip into the unknown before returning to sell the data, upgrade ship components, and repeat, with the idea to eventually go to the extremes of the galaxy and to afford larger and larger ships. I'm still in a Cobra, which is a good all-arounder, but could already afford a Type 6 for trading if I really wanted. Maybe after this exploration stint I'll get one of those and work up to an Asp for some really uber-hardcore exploration.
Monday, February 2, 2015
At the End of One Journey, Middle of Another, and Beginning a Third
I played through most of Journey with my 3-year-old daughter Mia beside me, sometimes grabbing the controller and walking in circles. I don't have too much to say about it other than it is pretty, and empty. The perfect thing for a bunch of breathless impressionables to imprint upon themselves in a space otherwise fairly devoid of such. A lot was made of relatively little.
I thought I would dip back into Fallout: New Vegas for some of the DLC, and I even went so far as to cue up one, Lonesome Road, for my next session. Turns out that will probably be on hold for a while.
The brunt of my gaming time over the last several weeks has been with Elite: Dangerous. It's very addicting. I've gone through an exploring phase (Sidewinder, Adder), followed by a bounty-hunting phase (Eagle, Viper), a short detour into mining (Hauler), and now I'm concentrating on trading (Cobra) with the intent to return to exploring once I can afford the best scanning equipment. If I was a bit hesitant to pick it as my 2014 GOTY, any doubt in my mind has since been long forgotten. I may play it off and on for a very long time.
Now, though, I turn my focus back to the RTS genre, to a classic I've never played to date, Warcraft III. Can I hack it? Is it as hard as Brood War? Will I get into the story and then feel like I need to go play WoW more when I'm done? Will this be the game I spend most of the next couple of months on? Answers to all these questions and more to come.
I thought I would dip back into Fallout: New Vegas for some of the DLC, and I even went so far as to cue up one, Lonesome Road, for my next session. Turns out that will probably be on hold for a while.
The brunt of my gaming time over the last several weeks has been with Elite: Dangerous. It's very addicting. I've gone through an exploring phase (Sidewinder, Adder), followed by a bounty-hunting phase (Eagle, Viper), a short detour into mining (Hauler), and now I'm concentrating on trading (Cobra) with the intent to return to exploring once I can afford the best scanning equipment. If I was a bit hesitant to pick it as my 2014 GOTY, any doubt in my mind has since been long forgotten. I may play it off and on for a very long time.
Now, though, I turn my focus back to the RTS genre, to a classic I've never played to date, Warcraft III. Can I hack it? Is it as hard as Brood War? Will I get into the story and then feel like I need to go play WoW more when I'm done? Will this be the game I spend most of the next couple of months on? Answers to all these questions and more to come.
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