My eldest heads to college on Monday. We’ve been closing out the last bit of summer with a rewatch of the Lord of the Rings movies, which renewed interest in Fate of the Fellowship.
With two recent games in, we finally won one! Aragorn pretty much made a beeline to recruit some dead allies and then poked at a number of other armies leaving Mordor, Legolas largely hunted around southern Mirkwood before a surge of enemies from the east despoiled his home. In answer to the tragedy, he was able to rouse Erebor and gain his revenge, obliterating the offending army. Gandalf helped the fellowship along, but then doubled back to keep the balrog from becoming a problem, only to turn up rather paler and lead Lorien’s troops to Isengard, buying the hobbits and Gollum enough time to dispose of some antique jewelry. In all of that, both the Shire and Helms Deep fell to shadow, but everybody stayed pretty chill about it because Merry and Pippin sang a bunch of drinking songs.
Choosing a fellowship who complement one another and avoiding situations where someone gets stuck without anything useful to do seem like they were key to helping this game go more smoothly.
I’m trying to knock off all the challenges in the Cascadia app and a couple of the last ones on Expert are just brutal. One of them seems mathematically impossible, but we will see. I have 3 to go to complete all my challenges.
My irl friend downloaded Elden Ring for his Switch 2 and the rat fuck dragged me back into playing this stupid goddamn game which is gonna make me rage slam my Legion right through a window. Fuck this game. Anyway, brb, gotta kill this group of mobs to get to the next site of grace.
Same. I love xcom so this game might scratch that tactical tbs itch. But right now I just started gta v for the first time. Got caught up in the gta 6 hype.
I sometimes feel like maybe I’m missing out, but I have little to no interest in GTA. I remember buying GTA 3 when it released but back then it was a pretty novel idea. Open worlds like that weren’t common and the shock value was fairly novel, too. These days giant open worlds don’t excite me because we are over saturated with them and I also know I’ll likely get bored of it fairly quickly. I need a little linearity and direction these days. I also personally hate playing as the worst of the worst. I don’t mind games that let me build a character either or good bad based on my choices but I just hate the idea of wallowing in every vice/sin/crime imaginable. Again, I know I’m in the majority there, as well. And the shock value no longer exists because we’ve seen it all in games at this point.
I sunk 4 hours yesterday on Series X and I love it.
I liked XCOM 2 a lot, but I don’t consider myself an expert. I generally love the gameplay but I do not like the hub/recruitement/upgrade part and always felt the recruits too impersonal.
I’m playing Z-Com on hard (after reading normal was a tad easy, not sure I made the right choice) and I loved every second of it. Now at work and I can’t wait to play more this afternoon. You can create anyone you want but I’m sticking to the ‘story characters’ which are awesome (both for a game and for a Star Wars good movie/series). Surprisingly the story is great so far, with great acting.
Presentation is sublime imho, but a little rough (you can notice textures loading sometimes, not sure how it’s on PC).
I know I could have waited next Xmas to buy it for a lot cheaper and with more time to play…but I couldn’t resist and I’m glad I did.
It’s way more aggressive and cinematic compared to classic XCOM, which I like a lot too.
EDIT: I wanted to add that Z-Com plays and feels a lot like Midnight Suns more than XCOM.
In what way if you don’t mind me asking? I adore the UFO games and the XCOM remakes but my deeply ingrained disdain for all things Marvel/DC has made me avoid Midnight Suns.
I hate Marvel or superheroes in general so my time with Midnight Suns is limited, but in Z-Com you do not have fog of war as well and charcters are way more important and preminent compared to XCOM where story is just the emergent gameplay one.
Here is a bit of a mix between XCOM classic gameplay and a proper RPG frame (think Mass Effect).
In the den you have (great so far) convos that can have choices and start special character missions, besides all the usual things like char progression, weapons modifiers, char recruitements, med bays etc….
Actually….I must confess I always HATED the hub part in these kind of games but here I’m looking forward to it considering the great dialogues and story advancements….which is really an unexpected thing (it was my biggest fear).
It’s also very user friendly….you can respec for free anyone, anytime you want…so you can mess with various options anytime you like (you can even change species of your characters).
Despite having a lot of options around cycle 10 (the game tracks your time every mission) it’s not daunting or convoluted as in other games I loved in the past (notably Xcom and Gears Tactics).
Yesterday I sunk another 4 hours in the game…can’t wait to continue…tons of things open up and the story and characters really got me.
My son: “Dad, all the kids at school are playing Wild Rift. Can I try it?”
Me: Orders a new battery case for my phone, checks the date of the LoL championship to watch it together, spends the afternoon reading up on current builds.
Bought Hades on Steam a couple of months ago because I wanted to play it on my Deck. I’m bad at the game despite having played a bunch on Switch and mobile–I think I’ve only beaten the second floor once. But I didn’t understand how bad until I watched my son, who just got a Steam account when he got a new laptop for college, beat the game on said laptop in about 35 minutes, which he said was a slow run.
Using &!#%?!! mouse and keyboard controls.
So I’m not sure I’m still playing that game. At least I got to see the endgame once …
I am not big on 100% a game. The occasional HZD or HFW not counted, but I AM big on lore, plot and character interaction….have beaten it 4 times. Still 6 wins short of seeing/reading/hearing the full picture….so hang in there…..us?
I am currently on Grim Dawn. Turned out that when I played it the first time, it was the base game only - no expansions. I ran my own build, finished it on Normal and kinda parked it.
this time around I have all the expansions and am following a guide - wow! So amazing
These looter arpgs and their loot systems really make or break.
When playing original Diablo, it was numbers go up. Higher level, more stats, made sense. Felt linear. Diablo 2 was similar. WoW, while not an arpg, was the pinnacle - ilevel above all else - then stat mix.
These days, playing PoE and Grim Dawn - builds are more about specific item or mods first, then level. The builds are complex maps of interactions.
I find the barrier to entry on these games really high - but when you find the combo it feels like a cheat code.
It was bad timing the new Grim Dawn expansion the same week as a new PoE season. I just started a new character on Grim Dawn and was just about done with standard but then switched to PoE. I usually just play a PoE season for a week or two, but this season was so good for me that I only stopped playing a couple days ago because I played so much I have trashed my hands.
I have not done that on an ARPG in a very long time. And I would have still been playing the new PoE season otherwise. Although it is not new anymore.
I have been out of work, so that made it possible. But I start a new job next week, so less playing.
In the meantime, I went to something more low key, Rimworld. But once my hands get some rest, I will likely go back to Grim Dawn soon. It is a great game that I have played a lot over the years.
One big minus of my focus to play on couch not hunch(ing over keyboard and pc) is that the console version of Titan Quest 1 versions aren’t complete ( missing one expansion and lots and lots of missing bug fixes), Grim Dawn (from the makers of Titan Quest 1) isn’t on Switch or a PlayStation, no Titan Quest 2 or PoE 1 and 2 in sight.
Funny that I am currently tearing trough Diablo 4,3 and 2 right now solo on my couch and TQ1 in coop with my brother ….and still think about playing Grim Dawn for real….first world problems are a PITA
Edit:
Still thinking about buying the bundled Borderlands 1,2 and Presequel for a third time this time on switch and force my brother to play it with me in coop. I have Looting on my brain!
Still got looting on the brain. Any experiences with Grim Dawn on the Steamdeck?
Before this expansion was announced I was thinking the game was winding down support. And a couple years back I tried it in the deck…..and it wasn’t really optimized with controller and handheld UI in mind. Has that changed? Since they stated the XBox port sold atrociously and they will never port to PlayStation and Switch my hopes are they smoothed things over with the deck?
