Catching Up
April Fools Day is pretty weird when you think about it. I'm not sure if it's my own age or society's shifting in general, but everything feels so much more serious these days than I remember in my youth, draining any fun from the day. Alas.
There are still plenty of scattered corporate entries across the internet that range in levels of amusement. WoW has its fake patch notes. A number of other games do cutesy pitches for variants. I found the Lego brick finder app entertaining for how awesome it would be to be real. Rainbow Six Siege (which I don't even play) seems to be doing a week of pink pastels and unicorns in game as a "Rainbow is Magic" event.
I think the one thing that I saw that I would rate the "best" of the year was Corsair's "Game Launcher Launcher." The delivery in the video was just about right and it's especially timely satire with the Epic Store controversy in the PC gaming community. You probably have to be at least a little invested in those goings on to really "get it" though.
Odd dreams last night. I recall fragments of a city that has appeared numerous times in my dreams over the years. I recall a many-hour road trip with a friend.
The last one I recall a bit more of, though it is even more baffling - being the female companion to a male mobster/underworld type. He headed some family/organization. I had some sort of seer-like ability to see the future that I was using to guide him out of town after a recent event drew a lot of attention. We stole a nearby pink Prius, acknowledging it wasn't very low-key, but only taking it to a parking lot at the edge of town to take another vehicle before leaving. We also set up some meeting with a few other sub-bosses to discuss how things would be run in his absence while everything cooled down, though I don't recall much more...
I haven't been reading a lot of books of late, but picked up Maledicte as being just-interesting-enough to try. I also may have figured something to weed out some of the hosts of LitRPG material clogging my Amazon recommendations - searching through books in actual print. I can purchase e-books for convenience, but by browsing books that exist in physical form, it gets a lot of the self-published... well... crap (not that all of it is crap) out of my way.
That said, Maledicte has enough notable typos that I'm a little surprised it exists in paperback. I went in expecting dark fantasy and that's probably accurate enough. It has cut throat court politics! Except those are incredibly forgiving at convenient times.
Ultimately, it's a tale of revenge and manipulation in which a young street rat couple is broken up. The boy is the bastard of a noble who steals him away for use. The girl goes out for revenge to get him back and kill the noble who took him, somehow pledging herself to one of the "dead" deities of the land, but gets caught up in machinations of another noble who wants to use her to further his ends. She plays a young man entering into court. A lot of people are killed. The reunion is not entirely happy. More people are killed. Etc.
I kind of like the divine possession/contract aspects, those they aren't entirely consistent or thought-out in my opinion. I sort of want to like some of the scheming that goes on, but honestly most of it feels about a subtle as explosives. Overall, it's really only okay, I think. It certainly doesn't encourage me to read the follow-up, which looks like it focuses on a less appealing main character.
The Division 2 continues to be entertaining enough at around 60 hours in. I managed to reach the current maximum of world tier 4 over the weekend, which means completing all the missions and strongholds (though another stronghold is coming out this week with another world tier). I still wish for more narrative story and I'm sure it would be more fun playing with friends. The core gameplay works well, though. The loot is plentiful. Exploration feels rewarding and the map feels littered with things to do. I feel my interest waning a bit, but if I stopped playing right now, I would have to say I got my money's worth and have generally enjoyed.
I'm a little saddened to hear it may not be selling well. I wonder how much of that may be due to not selling on Steam versus the relative glut of looter-shooter games on the market currently.
There are still plenty of scattered corporate entries across the internet that range in levels of amusement. WoW has its fake patch notes. A number of other games do cutesy pitches for variants. I found the Lego brick finder app entertaining for how awesome it would be to be real. Rainbow Six Siege (which I don't even play) seems to be doing a week of pink pastels and unicorns in game as a "Rainbow is Magic" event.
I think the one thing that I saw that I would rate the "best" of the year was Corsair's "Game Launcher Launcher." The delivery in the video was just about right and it's especially timely satire with the Epic Store controversy in the PC gaming community. You probably have to be at least a little invested in those goings on to really "get it" though.
Odd dreams last night. I recall fragments of a city that has appeared numerous times in my dreams over the years. I recall a many-hour road trip with a friend.
The last one I recall a bit more of, though it is even more baffling - being the female companion to a male mobster/underworld type. He headed some family/organization. I had some sort of seer-like ability to see the future that I was using to guide him out of town after a recent event drew a lot of attention. We stole a nearby pink Prius, acknowledging it wasn't very low-key, but only taking it to a parking lot at the edge of town to take another vehicle before leaving. We also set up some meeting with a few other sub-bosses to discuss how things would be run in his absence while everything cooled down, though I don't recall much more...
I haven't been reading a lot of books of late, but picked up Maledicte as being just-interesting-enough to try. I also may have figured something to weed out some of the hosts of LitRPG material clogging my Amazon recommendations - searching through books in actual print. I can purchase e-books for convenience, but by browsing books that exist in physical form, it gets a lot of the self-published... well... crap (not that all of it is crap) out of my way.
That said, Maledicte has enough notable typos that I'm a little surprised it exists in paperback. I went in expecting dark fantasy and that's probably accurate enough. It has cut throat court politics! Except those are incredibly forgiving at convenient times.
Ultimately, it's a tale of revenge and manipulation in which a young street rat couple is broken up. The boy is the bastard of a noble who steals him away for use. The girl goes out for revenge to get him back and kill the noble who took him, somehow pledging herself to one of the "dead" deities of the land, but gets caught up in machinations of another noble who wants to use her to further his ends. She plays a young man entering into court. A lot of people are killed. The reunion is not entirely happy. More people are killed. Etc.
I kind of like the divine possession/contract aspects, those they aren't entirely consistent or thought-out in my opinion. I sort of want to like some of the scheming that goes on, but honestly most of it feels about a subtle as explosives. Overall, it's really only okay, I think. It certainly doesn't encourage me to read the follow-up, which looks like it focuses on a less appealing main character.
The Division 2 continues to be entertaining enough at around 60 hours in. I managed to reach the current maximum of world tier 4 over the weekend, which means completing all the missions and strongholds (though another stronghold is coming out this week with another world tier). I still wish for more narrative story and I'm sure it would be more fun playing with friends. The core gameplay works well, though. The loot is plentiful. Exploration feels rewarding and the map feels littered with things to do. I feel my interest waning a bit, but if I stopped playing right now, I would have to say I got my money's worth and have generally enjoyed.
I'm a little saddened to hear it may not be selling well. I wonder how much of that may be due to not selling on Steam versus the relative glut of looter-shooter games on the market currently.
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