Most of the last week of game time has been with Path of Exile. I've made it to Act II. It's very good, but on the whole I still think Diablo III is the best in the genre. Path of Exile seems to stubbornly stick to some things Diablo II did, which over a longer play time, end up being more hassle than they're worth. Things like no easy item comparison, inventory woes, limited town portal and identification scrolls, and the pre-Adventure Mode model of re-running the campaign ad nauseum at endgame. I haven't verified that last one, to be fair, but that seems to be the case from what I gather. At the same time, while I admire that it's doing something original with its skill system, I feel like Diablo III's solution is better for keeping builds coherent and themed to the class you are playing. Path of Exile characters seem like they could kind of mix and match abilities from outside their starting class range. These are small things on the whole, but in the context of the genre and epically long play lifetimes of these games, they end up making a difference. I do plan to continue playing PoE, though, to see if my hunches on all this bear out.
Hexcells Plus is more of the original with a few new rules added in. It fairly quickly ramps up in difficulty from where Hexcells left off, but it's still all completely logical and fun to play. I'm on the 5th of 6 sets of puzzles, now.
I've had Spiral Knights stuff in my Steam inventory for years now, since I first played that game back in 2011, I believe. I came across it on Steam last night and decided what the hell, let me check this out again for a bit. It's a kind of basic action-adventure dungeon crawler sort of thing, somewhat arcade-y, and presented in a very colorful, fun way. Honestly, though, games that cover these same bases for me are very plentiful, so after just a short time I was satisfied I wasn't missing much by not playing the game. And the stuff is still in my Steam inventory, still not showing its icons correctly. I had thought that at least would be fixed.
Kerbal Space Program is a game that's been around for a long time now, that I have always thought I should pick up and play, but have never really felt like doing so. Well, I went through the first tutorial the other night. I guess I'll probably do more.
Showing posts with label Path of Exile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Path of Exile. Show all posts
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Friday, August 18, 2017
Dragon Quest Who?
I have forgotten about Dragon Quest VII this week, drawn to some things new
and shiny.
First, I finally tried out Path of Exile for the weekly GameBytes stream on Monday. It’s really setting a hook in me. The game is very much cast in the mold of Diablo II, though it does do a few pretty original and interesting things, like making your active skills contingent on finding and slotting gems into you gear in various ways. In a very real way, your gear determines how you can play, not just how effectively. I also like the enormity of the passive skill chart, which reminds me more of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid than anything else.
There are a few little quality of life improvements that I miss from Diablo III and the Torchlight series, but it’s nothing that breaks the deal, at least not at this point. I’ve only put a few hours in yet, being maybe halfway through the first act, if that. I’m definitely going to be playing more Path of Exile, though, a lot more, in all likelihood.
On sale for under a dollar on Steam this week was Hexcells, an elegant little puzzle game I’d had wishlisted for years. I could not pass it up, and I’m glad I did not. This game borrows from Minesweeper and Picross to create a very clever and very addicting rule set in which you look at an arrangement of orange hexagons and determine which should be marked blue, and which should be destroyed to reveal numeric and positional clues about the adjacent hexagons. My favorite thing about this game is that so far it seems mathematically impossible to get stuck without a way of working out the next move you can make with certainty that you won’t make a mistake. At times you start to think maybe all that’s left is to blind-click something in the hopes that the odds are in your favor, but in actuality if you start looking at the situation from different angles or toward different ends (I don’t know which one it is… which ones do I know it definitely isn’t?), you can always find a logical toehold.
I pretty quickly finished and perfected every level (there are only 29, I believe) in the first game, and bought the rest of the series. I’m playing Hexcells Plus, now.
First, I finally tried out Path of Exile for the weekly GameBytes stream on Monday. It’s really setting a hook in me. The game is very much cast in the mold of Diablo II, though it does do a few pretty original and interesting things, like making your active skills contingent on finding and slotting gems into you gear in various ways. In a very real way, your gear determines how you can play, not just how effectively. I also like the enormity of the passive skill chart, which reminds me more of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid than anything else.
There are a few little quality of life improvements that I miss from Diablo III and the Torchlight series, but it’s nothing that breaks the deal, at least not at this point. I’ve only put a few hours in yet, being maybe halfway through the first act, if that. I’m definitely going to be playing more Path of Exile, though, a lot more, in all likelihood.
On sale for under a dollar on Steam this week was Hexcells, an elegant little puzzle game I’d had wishlisted for years. I could not pass it up, and I’m glad I did not. This game borrows from Minesweeper and Picross to create a very clever and very addicting rule set in which you look at an arrangement of orange hexagons and determine which should be marked blue, and which should be destroyed to reveal numeric and positional clues about the adjacent hexagons. My favorite thing about this game is that so far it seems mathematically impossible to get stuck without a way of working out the next move you can make with certainty that you won’t make a mistake. At times you start to think maybe all that’s left is to blind-click something in the hopes that the odds are in your favor, but in actuality if you start looking at the situation from different angles or toward different ends (I don’t know which one it is… which ones do I know it definitely isn’t?), you can always find a logical toehold.
I pretty quickly finished and perfected every level (there are only 29, I believe) in the first game, and bought the rest of the series. I’m playing Hexcells Plus, now.
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