Recent Entertainment
Let's see...
Guild Wars 2 remains mostly a couple-hours-a-week thing to do guild missions on Sundays. At some point, maybe I should take on Mordremoth again, but there won't be much drive for me to do anything until there's more story-related content. I've played even less WoW in recent months, though will probably still try out Legion when it releases. The Warcraft movie, though has... done virtually nothing to garner interest from me. Go figure.
The Division has become a better experience in general after the last couple patches and some more serious anti-hacking measures. I'm still not a fan of the dark zone, but can stand it in small doses and now there's a good bit more to do (and gear to be found) outside in the rest of the map, which is good.
I played through Wolfenstein: The New Order, which was surprisingly good. It lays on the feels a bit thick over the course of the game, but it plays well and the story (though melodramatic) is still a cut above FPS fare in my book. On the other hand, Overwatch looks great, but the lack of single-player components pretty much pushes it off my table. I watched a playthrough of the new Doom, which manages to be better than I expected, but too frenetic in play for me to want to take on directly.
Recent mention of a Steam sale on The Elder Scrolls Online (which isn't as good as some sales elsewhere, I've found), has made me reconsider that. I played in beta, and while it had some promise, there were also serious issues and a lack of anything that really made it special. From my understanding, most of that carried over into release. That's been a couple years now, though, and the game no longer relies on subscriptions. I'm a little put off by how DLC like the thieves'/assassins' guilds are additional purchases, but I can't help thinking the game might be worth trying out again by now. Even if playing solo, it should have plenty of content for the money. I'm still giving that some thought.
Meanwhile, in some of the slower periods at work (feast or famine, I tell ya), I've taken to watching the occasional anime series. With subtitles and sound off, I'm clearly missing some of the experience, but it's a chance to watch stuff I wouldn't otherwise.
My favorite thus far of the current season is Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. It's like a mashup of feudal Japan, Snowpiercer, zombies, and steampunk. It also feels and looks a lot like Attack on Titan, which shares some of the creative team as I understand. But while AoT delves into the bleakness of the setting and starts spinning out conspiracies with little payoff, Kabaneri focuses (so far) on a core group of people and solid action. The world still seems pretty bleak, but that aspect is played up a bit less. Part of this may be that it seems to be original animation rather than a manga adaption.
I've also started following Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, which is... sort of like someone mixed the school-student-pulled-into-fantasy-world cliche with a dose of Groundhog Day's time travel. The protagonist finds getting dropped in a fantasy world with no applicable money and not much in the way of skills (can't even read/write the language) kind of sucks. But, he gets drawn into some adventures... only to die a rather ugly death at the end of his first day. Then he comes to and the day hasn't happened yet. There's exploration of different choices and some learning as he tries to escape that cycle. Several episodes in, he's managed to get out of his first loop, but the conditions of his death/return are still not entirely clear. It gets a little tighter focus on relationships with others (who naturally don't remember what he does) and repercussions of choices than outright action, but I'm finding it far more interesting than your usual slice-of-life show.
I also took a peek at Twin Star Exorcists, but it's going to have to do something special in another episode or two in order to keep my attention. A male lead who's incredibly powerful, but reluctant to be a hero? A female lead who's highly skilled, prideful, and has the whole tsundere-thing going on with the male? So far, it's just too cliche to grab me.
Guild Wars 2 remains mostly a couple-hours-a-week thing to do guild missions on Sundays. At some point, maybe I should take on Mordremoth again, but there won't be much drive for me to do anything until there's more story-related content. I've played even less WoW in recent months, though will probably still try out Legion when it releases. The Warcraft movie, though has... done virtually nothing to garner interest from me. Go figure.
The Division has become a better experience in general after the last couple patches and some more serious anti-hacking measures. I'm still not a fan of the dark zone, but can stand it in small doses and now there's a good bit more to do (and gear to be found) outside in the rest of the map, which is good.
I played through Wolfenstein: The New Order, which was surprisingly good. It lays on the feels a bit thick over the course of the game, but it plays well and the story (though melodramatic) is still a cut above FPS fare in my book. On the other hand, Overwatch looks great, but the lack of single-player components pretty much pushes it off my table. I watched a playthrough of the new Doom, which manages to be better than I expected, but too frenetic in play for me to want to take on directly.
Recent mention of a Steam sale on The Elder Scrolls Online (which isn't as good as some sales elsewhere, I've found), has made me reconsider that. I played in beta, and while it had some promise, there were also serious issues and a lack of anything that really made it special. From my understanding, most of that carried over into release. That's been a couple years now, though, and the game no longer relies on subscriptions. I'm a little put off by how DLC like the thieves'/assassins' guilds are additional purchases, but I can't help thinking the game might be worth trying out again by now. Even if playing solo, it should have plenty of content for the money. I'm still giving that some thought.
Meanwhile, in some of the slower periods at work (feast or famine, I tell ya), I've taken to watching the occasional anime series. With subtitles and sound off, I'm clearly missing some of the experience, but it's a chance to watch stuff I wouldn't otherwise.
My favorite thus far of the current season is Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. It's like a mashup of feudal Japan, Snowpiercer, zombies, and steampunk. It also feels and looks a lot like Attack on Titan, which shares some of the creative team as I understand. But while AoT delves into the bleakness of the setting and starts spinning out conspiracies with little payoff, Kabaneri focuses (so far) on a core group of people and solid action. The world still seems pretty bleak, but that aspect is played up a bit less. Part of this may be that it seems to be original animation rather than a manga adaption.
I've also started following Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, which is... sort of like someone mixed the school-student-pulled-into-fantasy-world cliche with a dose of Groundhog Day's time travel. The protagonist finds getting dropped in a fantasy world with no applicable money and not much in the way of skills (can't even read/write the language) kind of sucks. But, he gets drawn into some adventures... only to die a rather ugly death at the end of his first day. Then he comes to and the day hasn't happened yet. There's exploration of different choices and some learning as he tries to escape that cycle. Several episodes in, he's managed to get out of his first loop, but the conditions of his death/return are still not entirely clear. It gets a little tighter focus on relationships with others (who naturally don't remember what he does) and repercussions of choices than outright action, but I'm finding it far more interesting than your usual slice-of-life show.
I also took a peek at Twin Star Exorcists, but it's going to have to do something special in another episode or two in order to keep my attention. A male lead who's incredibly powerful, but reluctant to be a hero? A female lead who's highly skilled, prideful, and has the whole tsundere-thing going on with the male? So far, it's just too cliche to grab me.
Comments
Post a Comment