Good Morning Friends! Among my inner circle of friends is a concept called "Bel Luck" where I apparently have preternatural control over random number generators. Sometimes I believe them... like yesterday's pull in #HonkaiStarRail. I also talk a bit about my further adventures in #Diablo4.
Good Morning Friends! Last night I finished the campaign in #Diablo4 and this morning I share my relatively spoiler-free thoughts about that experience. I largely talk about the game from a mechanical and story point of view as I have yet to experience any of the end-game content. The game is a mixed bag.
Good Morning Friends! Yesterday I lamented whether or not I would be able to catch up to the end of the #HonkaiStarRail story before the 6/6 content drop... and then suddenly was finished. I talk about some of the themes of the game that I am enjoying and also talk a bit about my #Diablo4 plans.
Hey Folks! While I am technically not really blogging due to the holiday, I did spend a bit of time recording some footage from #HonkaiStarRail and talking through playing Simulated World Two. It runs a bit long because even while on sped-up autopilot... it still takes about twenty minutes to chew through the content.
Evil Wizard is a linear #ARPG that injects humor into every corner of its world and, with a framerate change, this is a great game to play on the #SteamDeck!
Evil Wizard was provided by the publisher for review. Thank you!
Good Morning Friends! This morning I talk through my "Squirrel" build in #LastEpoch which is technically stalled out on "Wolves" since I have yet to find the unique helm that generates the squirrels. I also share some gameplay that I recorded over the weekend of me playing the build in its current state. I'm back in Last Epoch leading up to the 0.9.1 patch coming this week.
Good Morning Friends! I hope you had a most excellent weekend and that you too managed to walk away from the #Diablo4 testing with an #Ashava kill. I sort of accidentally got in on the last round of Ashava kills before the test period concluded. I talk a bit about some of the minor improvements and more about my general frustrations with the game.
Friends... I dove down a deep rabbit hole with this blog post. It all started when @carthuun made an innocent comment yesterday about time played to see seven tabbies in POE. It ended with a lot of spreadsheets and charts tracking my time spent playing ARPGs... or at least the ones I could easily get hours for.
Good Morning Friends! I return to my #PathOfExile nonsense with some ramblings about how much I have been enjoying my Explosive Arrow Champion character. The previous video that I shared was of a brand-new character with minimal passive tree points... and was admittedly a bit on the slow side. This morning I include a new video of the current state of the character.
Good Morning Friends! There are a bunch of mechanics in #PathOfExile that I have largely ignored because the game as a whole has a bit of an information overload problem for new players. This morning I talk about venturing forth into Forbidden Flesh and Flame Jewel territory, and also my exploits of failing at the Vorici Calculator.
BKOM Studios and Paizo are proud to reveal Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults, the first-ever co-op Hack and Slash ARPG based on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game!...
Diablo Immortal has some of the most beautiful loading screen art I've ever seen in a game. The other Diablo games do too in some ways, but these are just BEAUTIFUL.
Also, the game is free to play, which is cool, and it doesn't have in-game ads or anything. I feel like it's the most fun, immersive mobile rpg I've ever played. You'll need a strong phone to run it, though. It's big and resource heavy. I have a new Samsung S21, these are screenshots from that. My old Samsung S7 could NEVER have run this properly.
I really want to enjoy top-down ARPGs like Diablo & Grim Dawn, but I don't know what it is about these games & how my visual processing works but they usually turn into just a chaotic riot of noise on screen & I often lose track of where my character is or find myself shooting uselessly at my pets & allies.
And if I'm playing with my spouse or a friend & I'm not navigating & just following.... I totally lose track of where we are & what we're doing. Just button mashing.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
Apr 20, 2023 - Day 110 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 120
Game: Seven: Enhanced Edition
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Dec 1, 2017
Library Date: Jan 30, 2019
Unplayed: 1541d (4y2m21d)
Playtime: 26m
Why not a twofer?
It seems a lot of the games I'm playing are mashups of other genres.
Seven: Enhanced Edition is a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk isometric stealth ARPG.
I'm not sure that the parts gel together that well. The graphics are great, the ability to run, jump, climb, and zipline from place to place, and then pickpocketing someone to get a key to enter a new area is kind of fun... but the isometric view makes it somewhat tedious.
When trying to navigate in a stealth game, I want to be able to get a full idea of what's going on around me.
The game has a function that allows you to scan an area using your cybernetic eye, but it disconnects from your position to scan, which feels like it takes away any sense of anchoring that view, relative to where you are.
It's not a bad game, it feels like once I get through what appears to be the introduction it may develop further, but I get so anxious, and becomg so very methodical and careful in stealth games, it kind of takes the fun out of it.
May 18, 2023 - Day 138 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 154
Game: Elex
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 18, 2017
Library Date: Dec 1, 2022
Unplayed: 168d (5m17d)
Playtime: 66m
Elex is a third-person open-world "sci-fi" ARPG. Apparently.
The game opens with a narrator drawling the story of the planet Magalan, and the terrible disaster that befell them, leaving them in a post-apocalypse that feels like the designs of Skyrim, Fallout, and Destiny 2's EDZ got put in a blender, but the devs decided to roll their own gameplay.
They kept the aspect of Fallout's "collect all the things just in case" gameplay, but while I managed to collect a stash of stuff, an hour in I still have no idea what to do with any of it.
Combat feels mushy, and the mobs I've run into feel overpowered.
...and then there's the voice acting. Our protagonist is a gruff emotionless white guy who's been done wrong, and left to die by his faction. Early on, he meets a character from a different faction, and the conversation itself felt like a grind.
To call the voice acting wooden would be an insult to trees.
Unfortunately, I think Elex is another game that might have been interesting in 2017, but suffers in comparison to everything that's come since, and there's little here that makes me want to keep playing.
Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults - Hack & Slash ARPG (www.kickstarter.com)
The first-ever co-op Hack and Slash ARPG, based on the renowned Pathfinder Roleplaying Game! Set to release on PC (Steam & GOG).
A Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults Hack & Slash game coming to Kickstarter! (www.youtube.com)
BKOM Studios and Paizo are proud to reveal Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults, the first-ever co-op Hack and Slash ARPG based on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game!...