Gamings
Friday night, we got back into our offline Aeranos fantasy RPG game. We hadn't gotten together since before the holidays, so it's been a while. It was good to game again, and it feel like a productive session. I'm so ridiculously proud that my character went toe-to-toe with the possessed captain of the guard, who seemed to be a PC-level warrior, and held her ground - while pulling her punches no less. But the victory was definitely a team effort. Not that our heroes have yet cured the plague or gone after the local lord. One thing at a time, right? Maybe two.
It was not a particularly good WoW weekend for me. Saturday, we were missing all our regular healers, so raiding on a serious (or even Ulduar half-serious) level was pretty much out. We tromped Onyxia and that was about it for me.
I also hit the point in the legendary quest chain that asked me to score a victory in each of two MoP battlegrounds. That sucked. It reminded me of everything I dislike/despise about (WoW) PVP. I'm not fond of competitive play. I hate loss of character control (which happens a lot with all the crowd control and death). I don't like being made to feel like my personal contributions are meaningless, and that's more the case when tossed into a battleground with nine strangers. Basically, that form of gameplay is all frustration for me and no fun. On my third run of the mines, the Alliance players managed a victory. The temple battleground... ugh. I had to stop and leave the game for a while after a few losses. It was on my seventh run through there that I was finally part of a victory. So that's done, and I hope I don't have to dust off my PVP gear ever again. Was the frustration worth an extra gem socket on my current weapons? Not really. Worth being able to progress on the quest chain? Apparently. The other part (defeating a boss-character in Dominion Point) I completed just by virtue of being there when four other people were attacking him and taking part - long fight, but doable.
And now it's been mentioned that patch 5.2 is targeted for release in about two weeks. That could always been pushed back, of course, but it feels pretty soon. Still, better sooner than later in most cases.
GW2 was sort of quiet for me this weekend. I helped out with another personal story quest Sunday night. That was after the GW1-flashback-inducing time spent getting a couple people caught up to the location of that quest to join in, even if their own personal stories weren't to that stage. Just another night, no personal progress on anything over the weekend.
And I've been playing Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. It's been an entertaining trip back to those characters and settings. Picked up by a new studio, the game seems to have transitioned well to PS3 for the most part, with things looking good and moving well. The story picks up pretty much right where 3 left off, taking Bentley's mention of making a time machine and running with that as a central event. The one real down side: area loading times are... long.
It's been fun so far. There have been a few moments that utterly cracked me up. The difficulty is a little uneven in an old-school way: most of the game is easy, then the bosses are... "hard" in the sense that they require you to learn a pattern, and there's almost no way to get through some of them the first time because of that. The costumes are pretty neat, and playing as several Cooper ancestors is a cool change of pace. The characters, relationships, and banter are all strong.
There's one particular plot twist that... well, I saw the basics of it from the beginning of the chapter, but not some of the details. And it had... some impact. I'm not sure whether I think it was a good or bad choice. Still pondering that some as I continue on...
It was not a particularly good WoW weekend for me. Saturday, we were missing all our regular healers, so raiding on a serious (or even Ulduar half-serious) level was pretty much out. We tromped Onyxia and that was about it for me.
I also hit the point in the legendary quest chain that asked me to score a victory in each of two MoP battlegrounds. That sucked. It reminded me of everything I dislike/despise about (WoW) PVP. I'm not fond of competitive play. I hate loss of character control (which happens a lot with all the crowd control and death). I don't like being made to feel like my personal contributions are meaningless, and that's more the case when tossed into a battleground with nine strangers. Basically, that form of gameplay is all frustration for me and no fun. On my third run of the mines, the Alliance players managed a victory. The temple battleground... ugh. I had to stop and leave the game for a while after a few losses. It was on my seventh run through there that I was finally part of a victory. So that's done, and I hope I don't have to dust off my PVP gear ever again. Was the frustration worth an extra gem socket on my current weapons? Not really. Worth being able to progress on the quest chain? Apparently. The other part (defeating a boss-character in Dominion Point) I completed just by virtue of being there when four other people were attacking him and taking part - long fight, but doable.
And now it's been mentioned that patch 5.2 is targeted for release in about two weeks. That could always been pushed back, of course, but it feels pretty soon. Still, better sooner than later in most cases.
GW2 was sort of quiet for me this weekend. I helped out with another personal story quest Sunday night. That was after the GW1-flashback-inducing time spent getting a couple people caught up to the location of that quest to join in, even if their own personal stories weren't to that stage. Just another night, no personal progress on anything over the weekend.
And I've been playing Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. It's been an entertaining trip back to those characters and settings. Picked up by a new studio, the game seems to have transitioned well to PS3 for the most part, with things looking good and moving well. The story picks up pretty much right where 3 left off, taking Bentley's mention of making a time machine and running with that as a central event. The one real down side: area loading times are... long.
It's been fun so far. There have been a few moments that utterly cracked me up. The difficulty is a little uneven in an old-school way: most of the game is easy, then the bosses are... "hard" in the sense that they require you to learn a pattern, and there's almost no way to get through some of them the first time because of that. The costumes are pretty neat, and playing as several Cooper ancestors is a cool change of pace. The characters, relationships, and banter are all strong.
There's one particular plot twist that... well, I saw the basics of it from the beginning of the chapter, but not some of the details. And it had... some impact. I'm not sure whether I think it was a good or bad choice. Still pondering that some as I continue on...
Comments
Post a Comment