Still Slaying

I decided on a male Demon Hunter for my third Diablo III character. He's level 40, now. I've only slowed my roll on Diablo a little in the last month, after finishing up my Wizard's campaign (again), and putting a good couple of weeks into further gearing her up. I'm kind of in an effective holding pattern with gaming, stalling some before we're slated to be blessed with another beautiful baby girl to care for. It's easy to cling to this rather than try to invest too much into yet another game that I may or may not have the time and concentration to finish.

That hasn't stopped me though, from beginning Assassin's Creed Liberation HD, the redux of the ill-fated Vita series entry. It's alright, so far. It has a very AC III feel to it, much like the Aveline DLC that was a part of Black Flag did. It has probably been ported over to III's engine or something. It seems to use a lot of similar art assets. Aveline is cool; this is the series doing what it does, though, and lacking in the massive production values that proper entries get. It's a shame that the only entry with a woman as the player character (and both entries with a black person as the lead) are a kind of afterthought, though--Aveline in the Vita game and Adewale in the now standalone spin-off DLC from Black Flag. I'm only two sequences in. I really would like to finish this up before our baby is born. Side note--and this is completely coincidental and unintentional--we are giving her a name that is shared by a character in the AC series. I'll confirm any correct guesses on the matter.

Dawdling around here and there, and spurred on by the recent announcement of Firaxis' next game, I finally picked up and began messing with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Simply put, it's a Civ game on another planet, but with a more dour and pragmatic bent to the theme. It's Kim Stanley Robinson's Sci-Fi Civilization, perhaps. I need to give it more time, though. I am still in the bewildered-by-UI stage of the game.

I mentioned Toki Tori a while back, and how I did not like it. I gave Toki Tori 2+ a shot, owning it, as you do with PC games these days, and I find that it is a much more pleasant mobile port. Not so blatant about it's roots, in other words. It seems fine, but my daughter didn't seem too into it. Maybe it'll get a few more tries before being uninstalled.

I don't make a habit of talking about iOS games on this blog; probably because I don't make a habit of playing them. I do own a bunch, though, and I probably should give them a fair shot more often. Hearthstone was recently released on iOS, and you might remember me being fond of it during its beta testing. Well, I was--probably a little too fond of it. I think I burned myself out on the game, at least for a while. The iOS version seems to work, but performance was pretty bad even on my ipad 3. Hitman Go, though, is very nice. It's a pleasant surprise. I love the model/diorama look to the game, and the abstraction of the mechanics through making it look like a board game. It's the sort of thing that keeps me from completely dismissing mobile as a platform I don't care about (like I have consoles/handhelds at this point).

On the reading side of things, I recently went back and re-read the entirety of The Walking Dead comics from 1 to 126. Big things are apparently in play for issue 127 and the series' future, and I thought it was a good time to go back for a refresher. It look 2-3 weeks of nightly reading on the Comixology app on my ipad. Now, though, I am in the middle of Roadside Picnic, which is really interesting. It is very S.T.A.L.K.E.R., as it is, of course, the inspiration for that game series. I think I'll go back for more Horus Heresy after this.

Flying the Black Flag

I have just begun to consummate the yearly Assassin's Creed affair, this time with the pirate Edward Kenway. I only put in abut 90 minutes so far, but the broad strokes are of course, very familiar. I'm looking forward to seeing how Edward's story plays out, and exploring what appears to be the goofy extra-Animus conceit of the series, going forward. General impressions of this year's game, the sixth fully-fledged adventure in the series, are much more positive than they were for last year's AC3, which I enjoyed a great deal, constant readers might remember. One black mark that game had, though, was that the primary protagonist, Connor "Ratonhnhaké:ton" Kenway, was always so serious, and just not much fun. He was no Ezio Auditore, that is for sure. Edward, Connor's grandfather, appears to be much more of swashbuckling rogue out to make a fortune and have a good time doing it.

Beyond that, I've just been playing the Spelunky and Hearthstone circuit, for the most part, while advancing my way through Dragon Age II.

I did duck into a couple more DLC modules, 400 Days for The Walking Dead, and Burial at Sea Episode 1 for Bioshock Infinite. Both were enjoyable, featuring interesting new content with the familiar mechanics of the parent game.

I also played, and subsequently decided to be done with (for now), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Battlefield 3. CS:GO is fun, but man, I am bad, and I don't care to put in the time to get any better at it. I'd play more BF3, sometime, but BF4 is already out, and I'd just as soon pick that up and start on it. Which I will, at some point, no doubt.

Slower Than Light

Since the last post, I've been playing:

MGS: PW - no real update
Diablo II - no real update
The Walking Dead ep.3 - good, but went on a little too long
Dota 2 - been random-ing at hero select lately, it's been fun
FTL - awesome space captain roguelike, playing on easy; it's still hard
Darksiders - made a tiny bit of progress, got Ruin, War's horse
Dustforce - skill-based 2D platforming, nice game
The Temple of Elemental Evil w/ Circle of Eight (Desura) - complex, intimidating
X-Com: UFO Defense - complex, intimidating; ancient, clunky UI
Torchlight II - like the first but more, better; playing an Engineer

I need to make another road map or game plan (haha) some sort. I have, and am in the middle of way too many RPGs, in particular. I keep getting into new games and others that I still mean to finish (say Fallout 3) keep getting pushed further and further back in the queue. I really am going to need to crank through to the end of a game or two to finish out this Fall's big games. I'd like to pick up Assassin's Creed 3, Halo 4, Dishonored, and maybe Darksiders II or something else, but as it stands now, I can only buy one more game before I finish something!

Of the games listed above, I could probably power through Lord of Destruction for Diablo II, I might get lucky and beat FTL on easy, and Darksiders could probably be polished off without too much trouble if I put in a concerted effort. Torchlight II is just a matter of time, but it may be quite a bit of time. Beyond that, I'd probably have to dig deeper into the stuff I am in the middle of, and pull out something like Half-Life 2 or Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising or one of any number of other things I have going.

Progress on the backlog has been really slow lately, partly due to being a dad and being busy, but also choosing to spend my more limited time on longer (or endless) games, and other pursuits such as getting in some physical activity, reading, and sleeping on occasion.

Maybe I'll choose something and do an Uninstall this week. It is always nice to knock something off the pile, one way or another.

Uninstall: Bit.Trip Runner

I have too many other games of this sort that I like better. That's it, in a nutshell.

It's been a while since I blogged, and there are a few reasons for that. General business, a move and visit from family, balls-to-the-wall swampedness at work, and Diablo III. Among other games.

I've played quite a few things lately. Thirty Flights of Loving, the game attached to the Idle Thumbs kickstarter, episodes one and two of The Walking Dead, Darksiders, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a little bit of Crusader Kings II and Civ V, and even a couple of things on the ipad. Plus a good amount of both Dota 2 and Diablo III.

I'd love to go into detail about each, and I might at some point, but I can't right now. I just didn't want to let this blog go to seed any further, and I have a trip lined up for the rest of this week, so it seemed like now would be the right time for a quick status update.

I will say that I finished off 20 matches of Dota as Silencer, and I'm thinking of trying a carry next, maybe Faceless Void. I got a nice weapon upgrade in Diablo for a pittance on the auction house that might carry me through Belial, or at least help out with farming act II. I've only played a couple of hours of Darksiders, but so far so good. I'm kind of excited about the sequel to that. The Walking Dead is pretty good, CS: GO seems to me (total CS neophyte) to be a streamlined and modernized update to that game, and CK II is going to need to be revisited at some point. Maybe with that Westeros mod.