Tag Archives: Overwatch

Gaming Round-Up: Diablo, BioWare, NextFest, and More

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Grab-bag time.

Diablo IV

My warlock is tormenting by a vision of Lilith in Diablo 4.This has really been the month of Diablo for me, with Diablo IV taking up almost all of my gaming time. I’ve poured my pretty extensive thoughts on the game into some Massively columns that should go up in the coming weeks, but I want to briefly cover it here as well.

As you’ll read over on MOP, I mained a warlock for my first run through the campaign, but now that that’s done, I’m letting my altoholism run wild. I deleted almost all the myriad characters I made during the various trials as I’d put no thought into customizing them and felt no attachment to them, so now I’m making a fresh round of characters. The one exception is a druid, whom I did put some effort into.

I initially skipped the side quests and optional objectives for most zones, so I’ve decided to assign a character to clearing out each remaining zone. I’ve assigned a sorcerer to Kehjistan, a paladin to Hawezar, a necromancer to Nahantu, and of course my druid will do Scosglen. Most likely I’ll save Skovos for when the amazon class releases. I also have a barbarian and a spiritborn I created for reasons I’ve already mostly forgotten, but I don’t plan to play them much, if at all. I will probably make a rogue at some point, too. I want to throw knives at people.

It is a bit crazy how much power disparity there is between classes, at least at low levels. We’re talking “coughing baby versus hydrogen bomb” levels of imbalance here. I’m playing on higher difficulties as is my wont, and my paladin is struggling to survive even basic fights on expert, while my necromancer is just obliterating everything on penitent. If I wanted to I could probably just stop pressing buttons entirely and let my minions deal with everything.

A cutscene featuring my new necromancer in Diablo 4.I maintain very conflicted feelings about Diablo IV, as you’ll see when my columns on it go live, but as I’ve always said, ARPGs are like pizza. Even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. There’s a lot of joy to be found in smashing hordes of demons, now as it was in the past.

BioWare’s end

This is of course the big news lately. I feel for the people who’ve lost their jobs, and I hope they find new work quickly, but otherwise I’m surprisingly empty of strong feelings on the closure of what has historically been a favourite studio.

As someone who stayed a cheerleader for BioWare much longer than most — I adored Andromeda, enjoyed Anthem, and didn’t hate Veilguard as much as some — it’s a bit odd to me to see everyone suddenly changing their tune. I’ve seen nothing but pessimism and hate towards BioWare for so long it’s hard not to feel like the current outrage over their closure is a bit hypocritical.

I didn’t have a lot of hope for their future prospects, either. I’m really only excited for more Mass Effect if it’s a continuation of Andromeda, but given the unjust hate towards it, that was never likely. I don’t see how you can continue the Milky Way story without it being a bit of a mess.

All good things, Shepard.Now that we’re getting leaks about what they were planning for the next game, a lot of it does sound promising, but it’s easy to say your game would have been great when it was just an idea in early development. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf sounded amazing too, and look how that turned out.

I certainly wouldn’t be unhappy if the crusade to save BioWare somehow found success, but I think my hope is better put towards other companies continuing their legacy by creating other games in a similar vein. That’s more exciting to me. I was never that attached to Mass Effect as a universe; I just like the way they tell stories. Please be good, Exodus.

SlopFest

I played a few demos in the latest Steam NextFest, or SlopFest as it has been crudely but accurately dubbed by the wider community. Between the wildly inaccurate tags on so many games and the flood of AI garbage, it was pretty painful trying to find anything worth playing.

The most noteworthy demo was that for ArcheAge Chronicles, but that’s going to be the subject of another Massively Overpowered piece, so you’ll have to wait to hear my thoughts on that.

A city devoted to Athena in the Theos: Cities of Myth demo.I also put a decent amount of time into Theos: Cities of Myth, a spiritual successor to the ancient Greece city-builder Zeus: Master of Olympus, which I loved when I was a kid. Theos has that same familiar gameplay loop with some nice quality of life improvements, like being able to set patrol paths yourself, but it did feel a bit low budget for my taste. The lack of voice acting was a big bummer, as the goofy voices were a lot of what made Zeus so charming. Still, I did end up playing the demo for longer than I expected. I put it on my wishlist, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to actually buying it.

Next was old school RPG Wyldheart. I wanted to like it, but it just felt too low budget and janky. I only played about twenty minutes of it before I decided it wasn’t for me.

Finally, there was Silberheim Evolving Card Game. Another one I really wanted to like as it has a strong emphasis on story and some lovely card art, but it’s also lacking voice acting, and more importantly it was just fiendishly overcomplicated. I love card games, and learning this one gave me a headache.

Eternal

Speaking of card games, I haven’t talked about Eternal in a while. While I never fully stopped playing, I did scale back drastically. I’ve been very burned out, and it’s a bit stale as the game is in semi-maintenance mode, with only the weekly story chapters for new content. Even as someone who loves video game story, these aren’t exactly riveting, and the new promo cards they offer are usually too niche to be exciting.

A very buffed Icaria the Liberator in Eternal Card Game.

Neuron activation.

I have been having a bit of a resurgence lately. I’ve been trying to build some new decks, though I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. There’s more I’d like to try, but it’s so hard to earn legendary cards, and I’ve already got most of what I’d want at other rarities.

So far I haven’t had any big hits. The Clockroach deck is strong, but boring. I made a stealth deck that’s moderately fun and moderately effective. I just made an Elysian singleton-ish deck using Archmagister’s Portal and Sacred Tableau that seems kind of neat.

This is old news at this point, but my proudest achievement so far is making a good Elven tribal deck. You might think that would have been one of the first things I tried to do, and you’d be right, but it took a long time and many attempts to make one that’s actually good. There’s a lot of Elf cards in Eternal, but they were never designed with any overarching mechanical identity, so it’s hard to build an all-Elf deck that’s any good.

What I finally settled on was a Shadow/Primal/Time deck that uses relics to buff flyers and unblockables. On paper it seems like the sort of thing that would be way too convoluted to work, but it’s actually proven to be probably my most consistent Gauntlet grinder. Trust in the shadow.

ZeroSpace

Try as I might, I’m struggling to maintain my interest in this. I’m glad they added Xol to co-op, but like everything else about the game, they’re so incredibly unfinished. Posted a bunch of feedback on their reddit if you’re interested.

The Xol commander Anrubic in ZeroSpace.ZeroSpace has good ideas, but their complete inability to prioritize which ideas to focus on will be the death of them. They’ve spread themselves so desperately thin that nothing is even close to finished, let alone polished. What I wouldn’t give for a well-funded, competently managed Blizzard style RTS.

The future

For now I’m still happy grinding away in Diablo IV, but I’m not sure how long that will last or what I’ll do after. I want to play some more New World while I still can. I still play Overwatch Stadium here and there, though that increasingly feels like more a source of frustration than fun. I’m still on the fence on if I’ll buy Age of Empires IV’s Raiders of the North at launch or wait for a sale. Will be back to WoW at some point, but I’m not in a rush for that.

I keep seeing posts about Deadlock popping up on social media, and I’ve seen it often compared to Stadium. It’s starting to intrigue me. It’s got that some magic Overwatch has where every other character I see from it feels like the coolest character I’ve ever seen. Does seem overwhelmingly complicated, though, and I’m not fond of MOBAs (Heroes of the Storm is the exception that proves the rule).

I think I’d like to give Deadlock a try, but I should probably let it cook a bit more first. I’m hoping its rumoured PvE mode comes to pass; that would definitely have my attention.

Gaming Round Up: Lost and Found, Blizzard Games, and More

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Continuing the efforts to do these more often and thus keep them to a manageable length. Let’s talk about what I’ve played lately.

Lost and Found: A This Bed We Made Story

Sophie sails into the sunset in Lost and Found: A This Bed We Made Story.In the “pleasant surprise” department, we have this standalone expansion to Canadian indie narrative game This Bed We Made, which I played and mostly enjoyed aways back.

Lost and Found is very short — I finished it in a single session that ran a bit under two hours — but entirely pleasant. It’s more of an extended epilogue than anything. While it still deals with some heavy topics, it’s overall much lighter than the original game. It feels like a bit of a response to how difficult it could be to get the best possible ending for the original game. The point of Lost and Found seems to be to let you know that no matter what, things worked out okay for Sophie in the end.

It’s almost a little too saccharine, but Sophie is such a lovable character I’m not going to complain about her getting the chance to sail off into the sunset. Especially with how bleak the world can be these days, a nice happily ever after felt like a lovely palate cleanser.

Despite this seeming like it’s intended as a conclusive end, there is also what seems like a teaser for another story at the end. That’s a bit of a confusing choice, especially as it’s a teaser that seems only relevant for one romance choice (is it a different teaser if you romanced someone else?), but at the same time I can’t say I’d be sorry to continue Sophie’s adventures in the future.

World of Warcraft

An Amani tomb in World of Warcraft's new Coiled Isle zone.I’ve just re-upped my subscription to play through the new Curse of Ula’tek patch. I’ll probably write up some detailed impressions of the new stuff for Massively once I’ve played more. So far, I’m finding the amount of stuff to catch up on after just a two month break absolutely exhausting, which is the subject of another Massively column I just finished writing.

The first few days back in WoW are always the least fun, though. It always takes a couple days for the Stockholm Syndrome to reassert itself. I imagine I’ll feel better about it in a few days.

Not planning any big changes to my roster or approach this time around. No plans to level any new alts or otherwise shake things up majorly. I plan to back burner the demon hunter a little, and I may not play the death knight at all.

Since farming transmog is my main longterm goal these days, a lot of what I focus on is determined by which tier sets I best like the look of. This tier, that’s monk and warlock. I wanted to show my monk some love anyway; haven’t played her that much so far this expac. She’s been my choice to play through the new campaign.

StarCraft II

The achievement for completing 500 brutal co-op missions in StarCraft II.

Honestly I’m surprised I didn’t already have this achievement, but then I did play mainly on hard for the first year or two.

Even with my growing burnout with co-op described in my last round-up, I did end up getting good use out of that co-op XP booster. I finished re-leveling Alarak and Zagara, finally got Swann to cap, and prestiged and releveled Fenix to try out his Ahkundelar talent.

It did feel a bit like a chore at times, though. It remains true that my passion for co-op is flagging after all this time. I did have a little more fun with Fenix. Partly he’s just generally more enjoyable than the others, partly it’s that Ahkundelar turns out to be a pretty fun talent.

It does feel a bit cheesy because it’s one of those prestiges that’s pretty much just the base commander but better. Even with the longer cooldowns, you’ve still got Fenix available for pretty much every major fight, so you’re just playing with a super buffed hero with no real downside. Fun power trip, though.

I remain hungry for a new Blizzard style RTS. I’m a bit fatigued of the breakneck pace of SC2, but I still want something faster and flashier to balance out the slower pace of Age of Empires. Even with the news it’s supposedly funded to 1.0, I’m not super optimistic about ZeroSpace’s longterm prospects. There’s a rumour of a new Warcraft RTS in production, but I’ll believe it when I see it, and I’m not sure Blizzard can equal the greatness of its past efforts in that genre these days. Godsworn is great, and I’m impatient for it to finally leave early access, but it is built more as a one and done campaign experience.

I increasingly fear we’ll never see the likes of StarCraft II again.

Overwatch

Despite my rage over Stadium’s abandonment, I still play it, though less often than I did. I don’t know if you’d call this a silver lining or salt in the wound, but I figured I had nothing left to lose and made one last attempt at learning D.Va, and, well…

My weekly report from Overwatch, showing a high win rate for D.Va.Don’t want to jinx it, but it’s been a couple weeks of (admittedly light) play, and my overall career winrate on her went from about 45% to around 55%. That’s a pretty decisive turnaround.

I’m not even sure what’s making the difference. I changed up my build some, but it’s hard to believe that would make such a difference. I’ve been using the new options to buff her in pilot mode so I’m not a free kill when de-meched, and I’m abusing Three Tap Tommy Gun, which seems pretty good even after its nerf. Don’t think it’s really securing any kills for me, but it’s good at applying pressure and farming ult charge and Stadium cash. I also find Martian Mender has been helping a lot in the late game; D.Va moves around so much it’s hard for her healers to keep up, so the self-sufficiency is welcome.

The Division: Resurgence

Not much to say about this, but I’ll include a note of it for the record. Usually after I write an impressions piece for Massively, I stop playing once I’ve got enough thoughts for a column, but I liked this one enough to keep playing for a week or two. It’s very much a mindless time-waster, but it serves that function well.

I probably would have played more, but the story is clearly just there to tick a box on a features list, and as always I struggle with motivation to keep going when I’m not invested in a game’s story. Still might go back and finish it at some point, though.

Always good.The First Descendant

Not actually playing this right now, but I did want to make mention of it. They’ve just released their new season with the final showdown with Karel. It’s pretty clear by now that the developers don’t know what they’re doing and aren’t likely to improve, but even with the story as bad as it is, I still kind of feel like I should see the Karel arc to its end and get some closure.

Not sure when I’ll get around to it, though. Between Curse of Ula’tek, upcoming Age of Empires DLC, and the impending Western release of Aion 2, my dance card is looking pretty full for the next month or two.