Redwolf's Journal (continued)

There's a definite appeal to the "building up" portion of games. It's often perceived as integral in RPGs (though you could have a roleplaying game without advancement). It draws players in for strategy and survival games. It's there in mobile gacha games. And yeah, I kind of love it. It can only last so long, though. Either you reach a point of equilibrium. In survival games, you reach a point where resources aren't so much of an issue. In a strategy game, the building up and advancing slows and is replaced by war with neighbors. In an RPG, you reach a cap of levels and gear. Or the game scales with you, in which you may be able to advanced "infinitely," but it doesn't matter because the opposition advances with you. I'm approaching 200 hours in Warframe, and I haven't actually hit that moment yet. I've run into a few "soft" roadblocks that blocked progression for a few days while I had to build up. I've now made it

You got your Guardians of the Galaxy in my Thor. Your got your Thor in my Guardians of the Galaxy. Hmmm... This works! It definitely feels like Guardians (and perhaps Deadpool to some extent) opened the superhero movie genre up to more comedic influences. The Thor movies thus far have been pretty straight and standard hero stuff. This one had a much more fun and funny bent to it. There are still stakes (Ragnarok) and such, but Thor is more self-depreciating than he used to be and everything around him flows in a more amusing way unshackled from Earth. It works so very well. So we get a larger-than-life superhero movie with cameos, conflicts, bright colors and awesome characters. It's got lots of action and lots of things to laugh at. It's fuuuun. I feel like if I'm going to see Justice League (which I'm undecided on), it's going to be partly to compare and contrast... but I don't think JL can measure up.

I played a fair bit of Destiny 2 over the weekend, completing the campaign and story missions. I haven't done any organized multiplayer, but soloed my way up to just over power level 260 and picked up the popular MIDA Multi-Tool. So, what do I think? Well... The story has ups and downs. The campaign feels like a "big thing," but ends up feeling a bit short. Maybe more would have felt like unnecessary padding, but things roll pretty fast through the "you've lost your Light" and the "time to take the fight back to them" phases. The Earth zones feel sort of baseline. Titan felt a bit dull - I kind of like uncovering the arcology, but powering up ocean platforms is "meh." Io itself felt kind of week in general, though I probably find the Vex to be the most interesting enemy faction. I enjoyed Nessus most of all largely because of the guiding/contact NPC, Failsafe. The game does a decent job with it all, but I do find myself still wishing I

Ah, a nice, restful weekend. I felt like I needed that after "cramming" for Halloween and all the other little stuff that came up last week. It was nice to sleep in and get an extra hour (for as much as I dislike Daylight Saving Time in general). This morning, I even had some dreams of being in a strange Aliens follow-up where a few more people survived the movie. The group was diverted to a world inhabited by friendly non-humans with a human science base, and we marines (plus Ripley) were sent to look for a possible insurgency, but ended up getting drawn into this science base that seems like they might be experimenting with xenomorphs. Alas, I woke up before any real payoff. BlizzCon over the weekend, and the new WoW expansion was revealed: Battle for Azeroth (BfA? hmm... not a good acronym this time, ah well). I am... not excited. It took me a little consideration to figure out why, but I think it largely boils down to: 1) We've come back to the faction war befo

With the big project consuming much time and focus out of the way, I look back toward games a bit... I've still been getting a little time here and there into Warframe . While it can be a little grindy at times, it hasn't burned me out. It's generally fun to play. And I've actually managed to get everything together to make my first constructed (started with Excalibur initially and Frost Prime from a Twitch freebie) warframe: Ivara. That's a little exciting because it's one of a handful of frames that have stealthy abilities. Using it will mean learning some new ways to play trading off Frost's higher armor and awesome bubble shield for invisibility. I'm eager to see how that plays. Some would say the game is brave for unlocking new aspects for players only after so many hours of playing. Frankly, I think it has more to do with the iterative game design. Either way, it's unusual. As for new, I decided to buy Destiny 2 . I haven't managed muc