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.

Giving Thanks for Gaming This Thanksgaming

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Big Game Weekend

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Playlog: First Half of November, 2016

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


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


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


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


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


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

Warcraft Booklogsta Spook-y Mechany

I finally finished off Altered Carbon, the cyberpunk noir novel starring Takeshi Kovacs. It was pretty entertaining. There are a couple more books with the same character, but I'm not sure I'll read those. It's a big bookshelf and booklog. I'll go back to some Horus Heresy material soon, but I'm also in the middle of a couple of other things, one being the Warcraft chronicle.


Speaking of Warcraft, much of the last couple of weeks I have spent plowing through the remaining quest lines of the new Broken Isles zones. At some point I'll run out of the authored stuff and into a sort of endgame phase where what's left is to either do PVP, more hardcore PVE, or seemingly repetitive World Quests, which it seems are procedurally generated. I'm not sure how much of that I'll be interested in doing. I do like how podcast friendly the game is, though, and I would enjoy finishing off my Artifact!


I mentioned Endless Legend previously. I went back and completed the tutorial to re-familiarize, and then jumped back into the game I was playing before. I feel a little more acclimated to the game now, but it'll definitely take more time to satisfy myself. I haven't even finished one game yet.


I seem to have stalled out in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I finished a bunch of side objectives in Detroit and have been sent elsewhere to a mission, at this point. Some sort of industrial location. I forget what the objective is.


New on the agenda as of late is Titanfall 2. I lucked into a copy at no out of pocket cost, so I have been giving it a go. I'm two missions into the new single player campaign, which is fun, and I've played a few rounds of multiplayer, too, which is also fun. I'll put more time into this for sure, even though I feel more and more distant from the FPS genre as time goes on.

God from Endless Warcraft

Amplitude's Endless series of games was on sale on Steam the other day, and it occurred to me that I still wanted to play more of Endless Legend, and that I could economically substitute that in my rotation this week as compared to purchasing the newly released Civilization VI, even when accounting for the 10 bucks' worth of DLC I purchased to bring me more up to speed with the state of the game. I thought I should probably replay the tutorial, since it had been a while, and I don't think I ever finished a game when I played it, previously. I'm about 45 minutes into that tutorial now, I think.


I also began Deus Ex: Human Revolution over the last week or two. I should have played this game sooner, because it seems to have aged kind of roughly. The graphics are below my expectations for a game of the prior generation, and there are ugly 720p loading screens and CG cut-scenes everywhere. The play holds up, though. I suppose it's pretty timeless, since it feels more or less identical to that of the original Deus Ex, which released in 2000, if I'm not mistaken. The game has style, too. A roundly mocked style, admittedly, but a style nonetheless. I happen to like this genre, known to some as the immersive simulation, so I'll keep playing it, but I don't know for how long. Dishonored 2 will be out in about a month's time, after all.


I also managed to make it all the way to 110, the level cap, in WoW with my Death Knight, Phoenixian, and I'm working through all the questing content in Legion in order to see everything in the expansion and power up my Artifact weapons as far as possible. There are a million things to do in this game, of course, but for my own purposes, I plan to do all of the one-time quests I can, and play through all of the dungeons and raids I can, at least once or twice. Given an abundance of time, I'd also like to go back and explore the rest of Azeroth/Outland/Draenor some more as well. In other words, no end in sight.

13 Days' Round-Up

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Never Gonna Get Hooked On Adventure

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


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


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


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


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


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

Backlog Patrol Round 2

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


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


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


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


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

Dedication and Study

I reached the end of the Atlas path in No Man's Sky, and turned from there to head toward the center of the galaxy making use of black holes along the way to warp me closer and closer in. This is where I am now, still searching for a bigger ship I can either afford or repair, and trying to scrounge enough materials for fuel along the way. I am curious what other mysteries the game holds, and hope to get to the bottom of them eventually. I don't love this game, but I like it well enough.

My SFC copy of Final Fantasy IV arrived last week, and I'm beginning a play through of the game in its original Japanese incarnation, both as a study exercise, and just for fun. I haven't really played the real FFIV, aside from some of the 3D version they released on the DS several years ago. So far I've made it to the desert oasis town where Rydia decides to travel along with Cecil after he protects her from the soldiers from Baron who have come to kill her on their king's orders. Kain is not currently around; he was lost in the earthquake in Mist.

One odd thing about the SFC version is that it's all in hiragana, with no kanji. That makes it both easier and harder to parse, actually, for different reasons.

I made my way back into WoW over the past couple of days, as well, after having focused so much on No Man's Sky for a couple of weeks. Legion releases tomorrow, and leading up to that, there are Burning Legion invasion events all around Azeroth that are great for getting experience and gear. I went from 86 to 90, almost 91, just by participating in 6 of these events, maybe an hour's play. I'm going to milk these for all their worth tonight, which is probably the last chance I'll get, assuming they go away with tomorrow's weekly update coinciding with the launch of the expansion proper.

All These Worlds Are Mine

Several weeks ago a trip to my hometown kicked off a spate of retro game revisiting. I returned home to Oregon with my gaming systems from my adolescence in tow: NES, SNES, N64, and PSX, with a brace of games for each. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get my NES to work, so I traded that and all my games in to the local retro games store. The N64 and its games I just plain didn't want, so those too were traded in. The PSX and a copy of Tomb Raider were redundant, and so also got traded in. I won't miss the NES, and even if I did, Nintendo is putting out the NES Classic 30 games in 1 system later this year, anyway. I do plan on getting one of those.

The only system I kept was my SNES, and since I have a Super Famicom cart adapter, I used most of my trade-in credit on imported SFC games, including Brandish, Super Puyo Puyo, Nobunaga's Ambition, Star Ocean, Street Fighter II, and a Super Robot Taisen game. I also picked up the rare and much lauded Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen, as well as Super Mario All-Stars, which I had had as a kid, but traded in sometime in the past. My SNES/SFC collection also includes Final Fantasy II (US), Final Fantasy V (SFC import), Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, Super Castlevania IV, and I may be forgetting something. I thought I still had The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Final Fantasy III (US), but apparently I did not.

I've been playing some of the first 4-5 Super Mario games, namely everything on the SNES Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World. What great games. Certainly not news to anyone reading this blog, but it should be stated, still. They're genius. My older daughter is just beginning to cut her teeth on these and other games, and they still make a great entry point to the hobby. Not that I'd push her into it or anything, but she naturally wants to try things she sees me do (for now; she's only five). It'd probably be for the best if she never got into gaming, at least not to the extent I have.

Anyway, Super Mario Bros. I have to say, I really prefer the 16-bit 're-masters' of the NES games. I like that there are backgrounds to SMB and The Lost Levels. Mia seems to like SMB3 for the world map, along with Super Mario World.

I am still playing World of Warcraft, though I haven't much over the last week or so, since I've been busy with the games to follow. I've decided to go for the exploration achievements, and already have them for base Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend, and I'm working on the Cataclysm zones while queuing for Cataclysm dungeons. I'm still level 86, and I hope to get through the rest of the Cataclysm Heroic dungeons before leveling out of them (if that happens; I'm still not sure).

Eisenhorn: Xenos came out last week, and is a video game adaptation of the novel, which I did greatly enjoy reading several years ago. Gregor Eisenhorn lives in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and is an Inquisitor, which makes him a sort of government sanctioned Witcher. The game does a pretty good job at adapting the plot and atmosphere of the book, but falters at character development, especially outside of Eisenhorn himself, and unfortunately, having compelling play. What there is mostly consists of Devil May Cry-ish combat in which you use a combination of sword and pistol attacks and combos to kill bad guys. It's merely adequate; and kind of makes one wonder if interactive entertainment is the best target medium for an adaptation of the novel.

I'd always wanted a Mass Effect style adaptation, personally. I still think that would work better. Best, though, would be a 'further adventures of' game, similar to what CDPR did with The Witcher, which of course was also a beloved character taken from a
series of books. His games are not adapting the novels though; they're taking them as water under the bridge, and running from there, and giving the player agency in the story they tell. Eisenhorn: Xenos is ultimately a failure in this regard, though I applaud the effort. I wouldn't mind seeing the rest of the trilogy adapted as well, hopefully with the developer gaining expertise along the way. Maybe then we could eventually get the Witcher treatment for Eisenhorn.

Finally, No Man's Sky. I can't think of another game this year with so much hype behind it. I also can't think of another game that came out to such an apparently baffled audience (perhaps The Witness or Stephen's Sausage Roll counts). Even I was surprised at how NMS went wild of my expectations. I was expecting Elite: Dangerous for casuals. Instead, it's Minecraft in space for casuals who want less to do, and wish to fiddle around with a constrained inventory for hours. Maybe that sounds harsh. That's how I see it, though, and I happen to like the game. Well enough, anyhow. I'm twenty-something jumps into my journey, headed to my fourth Atlas Interface system. It's got a good, solid, if repetitive play loop. I find it pretty chill to play, and I'm enjoying the pulp sci-fi styling and ambient prog rock soundscape. I'm looking forward to getting better ships with more storage, and exploring worlds with more interesting features. I hear they get more wild as you near the center of the galaxy. I don't know if I'm headed that way or not, though.

Worlds Fantastic and Gothic

I made it once through the entire alphabet in my backlog culling!

The Z game this time around was Zeno Clash, a Source engine first-person brawler in an outlandish fantasy setting that you might describe as iron age punk and tribal. It was surprisingly engrossing until the point where I hit an encounter that had multiple phases and lost it. I didn't want to repeat it. Brawlers have always been fleeting in terms of enjoyment.

I'll restart at the top of the alphabet soon.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclsia arrived in the mail recently. This may be the last DS game I ever buy. I only played a short portion of it so far, but I was surprised at how much higher the production values seemed than what I remember of the other handheld SotN-like Castlevanias of the GBA and DS libraries. I'll be popping into this game now and again whenever the bug strikes.

World of Warcraft wise, I've settled back into my Frost specialization after a brief stint as a Blood Death Knight, tanking. I wasn't prepared for the pressure of tanking the first time I'd set foot into many of these dungeons. I'd much rather take it easy and just be along for the ride as DPS. I'm at level 84, now, and running around the Cataclysm zones, and soon to move off to Pandaria after I hit 85. The content keeps getting better as I move from expansion to expansion, if not in enormous leaps and bounds. WoW is a fun RPG.

Big Level 75!

WoW - I hit the big landmark level 75 with the Death Knight, Phoenixian, last night. In FFXI, that would actually be a big thing. WoW, however, will soon have a level cap of 110, so in fact I'm still just a no-name schlub working my way through Northrend quest by quest, zone by zone, dungeon by dungeon. I still find the problem of not needing all this runway to achieve my takeoff. I'm not even fully through two zones and I'm halfway through the Wrath leveling curve.

I guess I shouldn't complain; but if there's all this world out there to explore, and most of it is rapidly becoming rather pointless to do so in, I'd prefer to have some kind of guidance about what the best parts of it are. Maybe instead of just following the quest breadcrumbs around from place to place I should actually hoof it around the zones finding the most interesting or attractive locales, and then choosing to do the quest chains in those areas. It's not like I need to pay any attention to what the gear rewards are at this level. And anyway, running dungeons will keep me outfitted as well as I need to be.

This week saw the release of the big pre-Legion patch 7.0.3, which streamlined a lot of stuff including character attributes, specializations, and talents. The big impact for my Frost spec Death Knight is the loss of a few talents now siloed into the Blood and Unholy specs, the gain of a few new ones for Frost, and being forced into dual-wielding for as long as I remain thusly specialized.

I have no real end goal in mind for this game, other than perhaps getting to 100. At that point maybe I would go ahead and buy the expansion and carry on up to 110. I am still enjoying the game, though, so I suppose I'll continue on for now. I can see myself wrapping up Wrath content, or at least hitting 80 and moving on from it, at the very least.

Xenonauts - I decided to get back to the backlog thinning mission by playing a game whose title begins with an X. Xenonauts was a Kickstarter-funded game, one that I backed several years ago. It was an X-Com remake before Firaxis remade X-Com, and hews much, much closer to the original game than the official reboot. It's good, and well executed, but I think I prefer the more modern take. Even that one, though, doesn't hook me like it does other people. I put a couple of hours into this game before deciding that I'd seen enough. At least it's there in case I ever decide I do want to go back and play the original X-Com, but made more modern and user-friendly. It does stand well apart from the official reboot.

King of Dragon Pass - I'll mention this game because even though I play the iPad version, it does have a PC version which is pretty much the exact same game, as I understand it. KODP is a role-playing game in which you lead a tribe or clan of settlers newly relocated to the titular geographical area. You are a leader, and have to administer your people's hunting, farming, diplomacy, warmaking, religious practices, and so on. The object of the game is to survive and thrive for ten years and be made king. It plays out like a text adventure or Twine game, just menu after menu, choice after choice. It's interesting, and you can kind of pick it up or leave it at any point, like many Civ or grand strategy titles, with little or no commitment to the actual victory conditions.

Out-leveling Outland

I've only played more World of Warcraft over the last week. It's nice and relaxing, which feels good in this relatively hectic time for me.


I've managed to hit level 67, only progressing very far into two zones of Outland so far, Hellfire Peninsula and Terrokar Forest. I finally had to ditch quests in the latter zone so I could move on and see more zones before over-leveling my character. I'm going to Nagrand next, which looks like a pretty nice place to grind out some XP.


I've been using the dungeon finder a lot, too, which is a pretty great addition to the game. Through its magic I'm able to see more places and more of Blizzard's encounter designs in the game with very little effort. A plus, in my book, and another factor contributing to making the game a relatively frictionless joy to play. I'm not too concerned with my gear, especially while leveling, but I have a few pieces found in dungeons that I wouldn't, otherwise.


I'm more interested in specializing my Death Knight appropriately. Frost is probably the spec most suited to my path-of-least-resistance play style, but I think I may want to change to Unholy going forward, which is probably more in keeping with my character Phoenixian's inspiration, the Phoenician, Fulgrim, Primarch of the III Legion Emperor's Children in the Horus Heresy. Then again, the Blood spec might align more with Fulgrim, and Unholy with Mortarion, Primarch of the XIV Legion Death Guard. Maybe I should go Blood; I'm not quite sure, yet.


How much longer with this tour through Azeroth last? I don't know!

Blizzard of Id

Most of the last week I've been playing WoW, questing my Death Knight through Hellfire Peninsula, and using the group finder to run dungeons. Dungeons seem like the way to go for quick advancement in terms of XP, gold, and loot, but they can take a while to do and be repetitive, in addition to being potentially challenging for a loosely organized ad hoc group full of players of questionable skill and experience, like myself. It's nice to see the content, though, and have a shot at better loot. I'll probably continue run them as I quest my way through the levels.


I'm still just learning what the Death Knight class is for and how best to use its skills and properly outfit it. I also had a flying mount I was unaware of until I went to buy what I thought would be my first. I could have been using one for a couple of levels now, but no big deal. Re-familiarizing myself with this game is a gradual process. It would be really cool to level up to the cap and play the next expansion while it's current, though!


Speaking of playing games while they're current, I am still playing Overwatch, some. My enthusiasm has cooled a little on it, but only because my leisure time is a zero sum game, and I'm presently more excited to play other things.


Last week was the 20th anniversary of the release of Quake, one of several id Software masterpieces. Machine Games, the studio behind Wolfenstein: The New Order, released their own episode of Quake levels to commemorate the fact. The mod goes by the file name "dopa" which, it's anyone's guess what that means, but the levels I've seen so far (the first three) are very well done, and very much reflect the best of the original game, while adding new surprises, as well. I absolutely love Quake, and so this is a welcome freebie. I was thinking of purchasing the official expansion packs for the game through Steam, as well, but maybe those can wait.

A Return to Azeroth

Aside from a little Overwatch, of which my consumption has dropped a good deal since the first couple of weeks, it's been all Warcraft universe games since finishing up Dawn of War II: Retribution.


I'm most of the way through the Undead Scourge campaign, the second of 4 in the base game of Warcraft III. Arthas is now a Death Knight, and serving multiple masters to bring the demons of the Burning Legion into Azeroth. One is the Lich King, one is Tichondrius, a demon himself serving Kil'Jaeden, and then there is also Kel'Thuzad, a necromancer he's working with to bring Archimonde into Azeroth. See, Archimonde and Kil'Jaeden are second only to Sergeras in the history of bad guys in the Warcraft universe.


Warcraft III has actually been fair in terms of difficulty to this point. It's not to the level of intensity that StarCraft, or especially Brood War, got to. Not yet, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if that came later, particularly in the Frozen Throne expansion. I'm planning to finish the Undead campaign soon, though I may hold off on proceeding further until I clear a few other things off my plate.


Being immersed in Warcraft stuff lately put an odd notion in my head, namely that I should go get back into WoW, at least briefly, to see how that game is these days, and to soak up a little more of the series' essence. I reluctantly subscribed, again, to the game. I have no real idea how long I will play it this time.


I first went back to my Orc Warrior, but quickly remembered what a mistake it was to have created him on a PVP server when, out of nowhere, someone materialzed behind me and one-shotted me, leaving me in the dust. He might have been a Rogue. Either way, this was outside the Horde settlement on the shores of Northrend, and I was minding my own business about to turn in a random quest. To hell with PVP.


I resolved to create a new character on a non-PVP server, not wanting to pay the $25 to move an existing character over on top of the $15 I am paying for at least one month to play the game. I thought it would be interesting to try a Death Knight, considering the section of Warcraft III I had been playing concurrently, so I created one--a human formerly (and to be once more) of the Alliance.


The Death Knight intro segment is interesting. You start out at level 55, indicating that your character really did have a past as a heroic member of your faction, now resurrected in the service of Arthas, himself now merged with the Lich King. The Scourge under Arthas is laying siege to the Scarlet Crusade-held lands of eastern Lordaeron, and you have a number of quests that familiarize you with the way the class works while furthering the Lich King's goals in the area. One of which, it turns out, is to draw out one of his enemies from the kingdom of Stormwind. Our hapless protagonist eventually is used as a sacrificial lamb, basically, alongside a bunch of other Death Knights and lieutenants of Arthas, who then rebel at such treatment, and are welcomed back into the fold, whether Alliance of Horde. I made a trip to Stormwind and met with king Varian Wrynn to make it official, then decided to put myself to use in Outland, where the Burning Crusade content awaits.


I thought it was a neat little self-contained episode. Having been through Outland once already, I'm not sure I want to do it again, unless the difference of faction and the intervening years of game development come together to make it more interesting than the first time around. I'll give it a go, and if the questing seems dull then maybe I'll try running dungeons. It would be nice to make it on to the real content beyond.

Shifting Into Autumn

It's hard to recall everything I've played since the last entry, but it mainly comes down to three things: Spelunky, World of Warcraft, and Tomb Raider.

WoW, you say? Indeed. Blizzard offered to comp me a free 7 days, so I took them up on it, toodling around a bit in Outland, bringing my Orcish Arms Warrior into line with all the major talent changes that had taken effect in the three years since I last played, and leveling up to 68, which is the perfect level at which to ditch Outland and head to Northrend. My Orc is waiting there right now for my next free play session.

WoW, while kind of neat and mindless, just is not that fun. The pleasure derived from WoW, for me, is more about exploring the world and filling XP bars. I can barely stand the redundant combat of your prototypical MMORPG anymore. Maybe it would be better if I gave my life to the game and joined a full-time raiding guild, and really took it seriously. But that is not me anymore. I demand to play on my own scant time, and more often than not, I'm playing solo.

I've dipped into Spelunky for the daily challenge almost every day for the last two or three weeks. That is a truly great game. Truly difficult, and truly addicting. As much as I've played it so far, nearly 150 attempts, the farthest I've gotten is to the third level of the jungle, or 2-3, only the 7th level. And that was from starting at the Tunnel Man's shortcut to level 5. I wonder how good I can get at it, if I continue.

In an effort to wrap up and try a few other 2013 releases, I concentrated the last few days on finishing off Tomb Raider (the current release). I actually really enjoyed that game, far more than I imagined I might, and more even than the two Uncharted games I've played, which I found overrated to some degree. Tomb Raider is just plain fun to play. Lara moves around the world really responsively, and is very well animated. The game is also very attractive, visually, and ran at a rock solid 60 fps the entire time on my mid to low-range PC. The combat was always fun, and never actually wore out its welcome, which is remarkable, thinking about it. I also really, really like the new Lara Croft. She's actually a believable human being, here. She may be a bit of a climbing and shooting wunderkind, but that is hardly the most outlandish thing happening on the island the game is set on. I have very few complaints about Tomb Raider, and those mostly center on how limply the plot wraps up in the end, and the completely over-the-top and uncalled for amount of grisly gore present in the game, a lot of it presented in Lara's various bad death animations. I could have done without those oddly out-of-place bits, if I'm honest.

So, Fall is here, and the season for new major releases is really already in full swing. There's not a lot that I care much about this year, though. There's Assassin's Creed IV, and not a whole lot else. I'll probably end up with GTA V and Watch_Dogs at some point, and maybe a PS4 sometime in 2014, but I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of other big Fall releases that I am excited about, this year. Oh well, I've still got a tremendous backlog, of course. I think I may try to polish off the Half-Life 2 series next.

Normandy. Requesting permission to dock.

The arrival of Mass Effect 2 is imminent. I am more excited for this than I have been for a game in quite some time. I've been unable to buckle down and concentrate on any one game, so I've been futzing around with a whole lot of them. In no particular order:

WoW - I jumped into this for a bit to see if I could re-kindle the flame. No luck. I did a daily quest and then jumped into an instance and immediately did not want to be there. The group wiped, I logged out at the Spirit Healer, and uninstalled. Maybe I'll be back for Cataclysm.

Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers - This was on sale for $5 on XBLA, and I bit, being a long-time player of Magic in my junior high and high school days. It's a very basic take on the game, bordering even on too simple for a seasoned veteran like myself, but the core mechanics are still solid and fun. To another Magic player, I'd liken it to playing with stock starter decks right off the shelf. I'll be back around to this one here and there. I like it.

Canabalt - I just bought this on my iphone today for $3, and it's pretty cool. You're a guy running across the rooftops of a city under attack from big alien Voltrons (or something). The guy runs, and you tap the screen to make him jump over obstacles and gaps. Very simple, very addictive, great music and art. I'd put this one up there with Drop7 and Galcon. It's a perfect game for the platform.

Sins Of A Solar Empire - Galactic 4X RTS. Basically, you control a galactic empire. It seems incredibly deep, and I only brushed the surface of the 4 tutorials available to beginners. I like what I've seen so far, though.

Borderlands - This game has always given me issues with my graphics card, and after tinkering around with some settings this weekend, I booted up the game to stress test my setup, and ended up running through a couple of leftover quests with my Playthrough 1 clear-saved character. This game gets F-U-N right.

Far Cry 2 - I had a couple of hours to kill and still wanted to stress-test my machine, so I loaded up this beauty and ran through a couple of objectives. I am constantly amazed by how good this game is when I go and play it. Why haven't I been able to stick with it? It's so immersive and atmospheric. I was stalking through some high grass with a high-powered sniper rifle last night, picking off my target's guards one by one, remaining unseen, and it felt great. I love this game.

Shattered Horizon - This is a PC FPS I've been playing a lot lately. It's set in space, and you're a mercenary astronaut taking part in multi-player only battles for control of various asteroids and mining bases in the debris of an exploded moon that is orbiting Earth. You have full 360-degree movement, which makes for some really bewildering firefights. There's nothing else really like it, and it's really fun, not to mention gorgeous.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - I decided to finally see what the multiplayer is all about in the COD/MW series, and I have to admit that I'm surprised; it's really good. The gameplay is fast and frenetic, the frame rate locked at 60 fps, and death even quicker than that. It also does the carrot-on-a-stick routine as well as any MMO. That next unlock is always just a few more games, a few more kills away. Let it be known: the hype is justified. I've been back to this game almost every day the last week or so.

Aaaahhhhhh. That's better. Now that I don't have all of these impressions clouding up my mind, I can hone my focus in on Commander Caroline Shepard's next outing. Can not wait.

Onward, To A Lean 2010

Here's to thinning out the pack and adding onto it as little as possible in the coming year. 2009 has been nuts, but I think I'm just about caught up to where I need to be (for now) in terms of looking backward. There are plenty of games of '08 and '09 that I haven't even gotten around to picking up yet, but until I finish off some of what I've already bitten off, their status is iffy (Dead Space, Batman, Mirror's Edge, et. al). There are others I will definitely get (Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed 2), but those too will have to wait.

I've got one completion in the bank as of now (Borderlands) and that's going to buy me Mass Effect 2, I think. If I can manage to knock off some more of the games I'm halfway into (Yakuza 2 is a prime candidate), then I'll start thinking about others.

Meanwhile, I've been distracted by Demon's Souls and Planescape: Torment, and there is little chance I'll be finishing either of those anytime soon. I follow my heart, though. If I feel like dropping a weekend into WoW in the middle of the Fall release feces tornado, then by the Great Old Ones, I shall.

P.S. Far Cry 2

That's A Lotta Games

Just since the my last post, I have picked up Bioshock, The Chronicles of Riddick, Titan Quest, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Halo 3 ODST. Granted, the first three of those were only $5 each (and Bioshock was a double-dip just for the sake of having it on PC), but my stock of games is getting large. I wasn't able to hold off on Halo 3 ODST, being a both big fan of the series and genuinely interested in this slightly different take.


Perhaps the three aforementioned $5 PC titles harshen the perspective, but ODST is, by all accounts, not the value proposition it could be at $59.99. I bought it anyway, since the conception of the game I had in mind was, ultimately, worth my $59.99. Did I mention how big a fan I am of Halo? I've only spent an hour or so with the game so far, so we'll see where I come down on this one in the end. In the worst case scenario, it's probably one "for fans only."

I'm struggling to remember much that I've been playing over the past few days. World of Warcraft comes to mind. I must have sunk a couple of hours in, since I'm sitting at level 65 now.


There was a level of Pixel Junk Eden I played through and got another "spectra." That game is great just for the visuals and music, putting aside the fun and unique play it offers.


Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was released on PSN for $6 last week, and 12 years of curiosity finally overcame me. It's a top-down isometric action adventure, just like I thought. Its pretty fugly by today's standards, too. Graphics from this era in particular just do not hold up the least bit. 2D games from years prior still look great, though--see A Link to the Past, Secret of Mana, etc. Otherwise, after an hour or so, it seems pretty competent if not great, and the plot is halfway intriguing. So, all in all, it's not bad for it's time, I guess.

Finally, STALKER. I spent more time modding it this week than actually playing it. A bit of searching around led me to a mod called STALKER Complete 2009, which basically takes the existing game and makes it look 10 times as nice and makes some nice changes to fix niggling little things that bothered players in the original version of the game. Almost nothing game mechanic-wise is messed with, so the game retains it's unique air.