looter

Game Releases of 2023

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One of the things that I often do at the beginning of a year is to try and project out some of the things that I think I might be interested in on the upcoming release radar. I’ve not done that at all this year because I have been overwhelmingly obsessed with the current Path of Exile league. I thought it might be interesting to peer into the future and talk about some of the games I am interested in that have release dates for the common year, or at least look likely to release in one form or another. The further into the list, we get the more likely these things are to be bumped because they don’t have firm dates associated with them. There are going to be some big titles missing from the list that you might feel is important, because this is a deeply personal outing. For example the new Zelda game, I will likely ignore it until the emulators can run it and I can disable weapon durability because that construct ruined the first game for me.

Atomic Heart – February 21

Atomic Heart is one of those games that I have been amped for since I first saw it in a trailer presentation. It looks like a soviet block spin on the Fallout games, with weird robotics and psychic phenomena. I am largely on board for all of this. I fully expect it to have some jank but also I’ve played and loved Bethesda games so I am mostly used to that. I’ve played the Metro games and they were for the most part a giant mess, and I still enjoyed them. I have high hopes but also they have been tempered by past experience with games wanting to be the Russian Fallout.

Star Wars Jedi Survivor – March 17

Jedi Fallen Order was one of my favorite games when it came out. It proved to me the possibility of what a “soulslike” game could be if it had a difficulty slider. If you want the Dark Souls experience you play it on hard, and if you want just a fun narrative romp you play it on easy. I played the game happily on easy and enjoyed the hell out of the experience. I am looking forward to another outing as Cal Kestis, and I really hope that at some point this character is going to intersect with some of the Disney live shows because it seems too damned good not to use given that Cameron Monaghan is right there ready to go.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores – April 19

I am throwing this out here because it has a fixed date, but I have to be honest… I am not sure if I will play this when it releases. I never actually finished Forbidden West, and in large part, it is because I don’t really play consoles that often. I would far rather do what I did with Zero Dawn, and play the expansion whenever the PC release comes out because playing this game with a mouse and keyboard is so much more enjoyable than playing it with a controller. We will see if I stick to my guns on this one, and while I enjoyed HFW it is nowhere near as compelling as the first game for me. Everything about how Aloy moved and controlled was so much better, but the story was just less interesting and didn’t really push me forward as fastly. Don’t get me wrong I loved all of the world-building and I look forward to playing this on PC whenever it releases there.

Redfall – May 2

We got new gameplay yesterday in the Microsoft presentation, and I have to say I am probably more interested now than I was before. It feels like this is going to be interesting as a completely single-player game, and also really interesting as more of a co-op Left 4 Dead type experience. I am going to have to sort out ways to be online at the same time as the rest of AggroChat folks to be able to experience this together. It honestly reminded me a bit of how State of Decay 2 feels, where you have bases that you operate out of and then go out into dangerous areas to collect resources and complete missions.

Diablo IV – June 6

I am throwing this on the list because I am very interested, but also very conflicted about it. Blizzard continues to not exactly be an exemplar for things that I want to engage with right now. I was hoping that by now we would be further along in the Microsoft acquisition and that Bobby Kotick would be on his way out the door. I want to play this, but I am not sure if I can play this. What is there looks interesting so far and I am very interested to see how a “post Path of Exile” Diablo game operates. I was burnt so heavily on Diablo Immortal as was pretty much everyone else, and my confidence levels are lower than they normally would be.

Final Fantasy XVI – June 22

I am exceptionally bummed that this is a PlayStation Exclusive. I would far rather play this on the PC full stop and it is dumb that I can’t. That said there is no way in hell that I am not going to play a mainline PC game that was crafted by the same team that gave me the FFXIV story experience. ARR to Endwalker was the best Final Fantasy experience I have ever had, and as a result, I am completely going to “day one” this game and probably “no life” it. I am in fact an acolyte of Yoshi P, and am willing to sign up for any nonsense that he is involved with. I mean it looks fucking gorgeous so there is also that. I am going to have to drag my PS5 back upstairs so that I can have undivided access to it.

Arc Raiders – TBA 2023

We’ve not seen a lot about this game since the Game Awards in 2021, but recently it has apparently been confirmed to be a 2023 release coming to Playstation, Xbox, and PC including Gamepass. I mean I love me some looter shooter action, so you know I am going to check this out regardless of how non sequitur using a Robyn song about masturbation is for the trailer. I loved the 1970s gritty science fiction vibe about it that a lot of games have been adopting. We still don’t know a ton about how the gameplay is going to unfold but this is firmly in my wheelhouse so I will be watching as a proper release date is assigned.

Hellboy Web of Wyrd – TBA 2023

I love Hellboy and I love the art style of Mike Mignola so I am completely onboard with a game that features a reasonable adaptation of both. We have no release date for this but it is supposedly coming during the calendar year. I kind of expect this to be a shorter very narrative-focused game. It has a Steam page that appears to be active, so here is hoping that it comes out on PC at the same time as everywhere else. This does not exactly seem like the sort of game that Sony would pay for exclusivity to.

Nightingale – TBA 2023 ???

We got an updated trailer for Nightingale at The Game Awards, and it gives me hope that maybe we will see it this year. This is probably the title that I consider to be the most likely to slide to 2024 however given that we’ve not really seen anything resembling public testing. If this was active, I figure by now someone would have broken NDA and leaked some footage of it. Because we have not seen that, it makes me think that it might still be “in progress” to a point of not really being ready to ship soon. I was deeply suspicious of this game until it was confirmed to be a purely PVE experience. I am going to play it when it comes out because I am here for the victorian gaslight-type setting.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty – TBA 2023

This is another one that I question if we are actually going to see this year. CDPR has had a less-than-spotless record lately with being able to release things in the timeframe that they originally expect. We’ve heard that this is a bigger DLC than all of the DLC for Witcher 3 combined, and I know for certain when it lands I will be starting over Cyberpunk from scratch in order to be able to play my way through this seamlessly with the rest of the content. I love Cyberpunk 2077 and I cannot imagine that I won’t also love this expansion content.

Alan Wake 2 – TBA 2023

This game was announced at the 2021 Game Awards and so far we have not gotten much more information on it than this original trailer. At the end of this trailer, it shows a 2023 release date, but given the radio silence so far… I am not sure if that is going to be a realistic date given that everything takes slightly longer than anyone originally expects. When this game drops… I will stop whatever I am doing and play it. Last year’s journey into the “Remedyverse” has turned me into a dedicated fan of their particular style of narrative fiction. I am excited as hell to see what a Remedy game looks like post-Control which for me at least was their magnum opus. I am hoping to see even more blending of the settings and maybe have Jesse Faden play a role in this game.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn – TBA 2023

I am throwing this game on the list because it looks interesting, and I know for certain it will be a Game Pass title when it finally comes out. That lowers the bar of entry enough to make me want to give it a spin. It looks like a souls-like, and I don’t exactly have a great track record with those. I don’t go in for frustration gaming. If I am playing a game for the story, I want to see the story play out without a lot of false steps. If I am playing a game for the mechanics, then that is a totally different type of experience for me. I’ve never really managed to bridge the gap in a souls game to where I actually care about the mechanics and I mostly have played them because I am curious about the world. Flintlock looks really cool but I am also throwing it a bit of side-eye, but will check it out for free when it launches on GamePass. There are a bunch of titles that I opted not to include. Destiny 2 for example has a brand-new expansion landing on February 28th for example. However, I’ve grown away from that game because I hated the content vaulting removing a bunch of things I loved, and have never really reached a point of forgiveness. I’m also deeply interested in Death Stranding 2, but somehow doubt we will see it released this year. These are the games that I am looking forward to the most, but given my track record, there are going to be a bunch of things that spring up along the way that catches my attention. What games are you looking forward to the most this year? The post Game Releases of 2023 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Anthem Demo Weekend Two

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Anthem Demo Weekend Two

Outdoor cat has officially been fed so I can now sit down and start trying to compose my feelings about Anthem Demo weekend number two.  The first “VIP Demo” weekend was for folks who had pre-ordered the game and I will assume a certain batch of influencers that were brought to that special EA event to record footage.  You can scroll through my thoughts about that weekend in a post I made last week, but for me and most of the AggroChat crew it was a buggy and often times unplayable mess.  However there was enough good there laying just underneath the covers to make me interested and quite honestly miss playing the game.  So while I was not on nearly as much as I could have been… I played a significant amount of Anthem this weekend.  I managed to get in a Stronghold…  this games version of a Strike and spent a significant amount of time just roaming around and doing World Events and the little mini-dungeons that are available off the segment of the map we had open to us.  It galvanized my desire to play this game… and largely reinforced my decision to keep playing the “shootymans” class the Ranger…  who appears to be a really amazing single target dps class.

Anthem Demo Weekend Two

What I want to talk about the most however is what a difference there was between the first and second weekends.  During the first weekend it was a constant struggle to be able to play this game…  and in the second….  everything just sorta worked flawlessly.  Sure there were some minor glitches like for some reason our javelins would not load on the “reward” screen.  Additionally I have never actually seen the full suit prep sequence because the game kicks me over to a loading screen when I assume that sequence is designed to make us ignore how generally long loading into an area takes.  However what was gone was the need to keep closing the game with task manager and loading back in to successful get into a mission.  I could just play the game as it was intended to play and this made me way more open to grouping up with friends given that it was a predictable sequence rather than a struggle to get all four players into the same instance.

Anthem Demo Weekend Two

I’m very impressed with how communicative Bioware has been during this whole sequence…  and more than that I feel heard.  We all for the most part universally complained about how bad Mouse and Keyboard Flight/Swimming felt….  and they acknowledged that yeah… it feels less than optimal.  These changes are apparently already in the “live” build of the game, but what is even better is that they have started giving us a run down of things that will be fixed before the initial EA Premier launch on the 15th and what will be in place by the 22nd.

  • UI Clicking on visible options in menus fixed for 15th Feb (except social which is 22nd Feb)
  • Navigating Menu tabs with Q and E instead of old keybindings fixed for 15th Feb
  • Forge rotation speed with mouse improved – 15th Feb
  • Scrolling with mouse wheel wont zoom your javelin AND scroll the menu (will be contextual based on where your mouse is) – 15th Feb
  • D-Pad will show as keyboard bindings – 15th Feb
  • Turning off Motion Blur in settings now works (decoupled from post processing) – 22nd Feb
  • HDR toggle available – 22nd Feb
  • Camera Shake slider added – 22nd Feb

I’ve said it before but I believe that Bioware feels the pressure that this launch has to go fairly flawlessly, given the perceived failing that Andromeda was.  The whole multiple launch dates thing does not do it any favors, especially considering that a lot of the issues that plagued Andromeda were fixed by the end of that first week.  EA has a bad habit of shredding game studios, and the whole teasing a Dragon Age game…  I think is more insurance than anything else to try and keep delaying that decision.  If launch goes like last weekend however I think we are going to be just fine, and what I really want is the same level of communication that they are giving the community to continue into the first year of the game.

Anthem Demo Weekend Two

I really do think that Anthem might be the game that can finally blended the different looty shooty genre players together.  There is enough here to intrigue the Destiny players with a rich and interesting lore and the Ranger class being essentially a “Destiny” class where it is mostly gun play with a few abilities.  There is also something here for the Warframe players that want move movement and ability spam…  and the Storm and the Interceptor fill those roles nicely.  Then there is a class for the player who just wants to be a big freaking mech in the form of the Colossus.  What is better is that gameplay feels more enjoyable when you are running with a pretty decent mix of the four classes.  Ranger as far as we can tell is going to be the class that has the highest single target damage…  so great for boss killing.  Storm is the battle tactician that takes an overwatch position over the battlefield and can effect large swaths of it with its abilities.  Interceptor is the fact melee shredder that is probably going to be excellent at grabbing objectives and avoiding taking damage.  Then you have the colossus which is the king of staying alive…  as was seen this weekend when Ashgar absolutely saved the day by surviving long enough to start bringing us all back up during a stronghold.  They all have their key niche and all feel great when played together.

Anthem Demo Weekend Two

Ultimately I progressed my character as far as it probably could have been during the Demo.  I managed to upgrade every slot to a level 19 rare item and my final build was an Light Machine Gun for my main weapon… a Marksman Rifle for my secondary to melt anything at a distance like snipers.  Then I would run poison darts to act as my primer… that also doubles as a debuff that causes me to just deal extra damage to that target.  Frag Grenades after trying a bunch of different options seems to be my detonator of choice, and also a decent crowd sweeper.  Then muster point is what I was running as a damage boost for helping to burn down those big mobs.  As far as components I was running one to increase Frag damage and another to increase LMG Ammunition, and it was a build I was pretty damned happy with.  I could in theory go for a max damage build by picking up the devastator sniper rifle, but I never got one of those to drop for me and did not see it in the crafting tables.  I also settled in on the above paint scheme which is pretty much the colors I tend to choose in any game that gives me the options.

Anthem Demo Weekend Two

Towards the end of the weekend they started an event that caused Primals to spawn in large numbers and frequency… so I managed to get in and take down a few of the bigger ones.  In fact I was fighting one of the big primals when the servers went down, so no clue what loot might have dropped.  Weirdly the game let me keep fighting, so I am guessing part of the world is cached on the client itself?  This gives me concerns when it comes to what hackers are going to be able to do to the game…  but without a PVP element I am not entirely certain how much it will effect me.  I am a little saddened that it sounds like while my weekend was smooth and flawless…  others that had a flawless previous weekend…  started encountering disconnect problems during this test.  I’ve now played 16 hours worth of the Anthem demo and can say that I am looking forward to starting on the 15th.  If you have not already picked up the game…  you can pony up for a month of Premier…  which gives you a discount that you can then apply to your preorder…  and will also give you access to the full game on the 15th instead of the 22nd.

So my awesome readers…  are you picking up the game?  Will you be joining me on the 15th or are you waiting on the 22nd…  or are you just going to take a hard pass?

Unintended Stealth

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Unintended Stealth

I had every intent last night of going home and working on my Deathknight.  This week the world boss is The Soultakers, which finally allows folks to unlock the hidden frost appearance.  I had been enjoying my newly humanized Deathknight after years being a Worgen, but had largely been taking my time in pushing through the levels.  However with the promise of an artifact appearance waiting on me, the goal was to get home and push as hard as I could to get to 110 before the week was finished.  Recently they patched the game to make all artifact appearance drops from world bosses a 100% drop chance.  Apparently however there is a giant asterisk looming behind that statement.  What I am hearing now is that in order to get the appearance you have to be artifact knowledge rank four, which is completely impossible for me to actually obtain during this week, at least without the impending catch up mechanics.  So instead I went upstairs to try and solve another issue.  According to my friend Squirrel, apparently I have not been online on PSN in over thirty days…  so after some back and forth we determined that I had apparently inadvertently set myself to appear offline.  For awhile now I had seen a red X beside my portrait in the PS4 menu, but I always just assumed that meant I had a flaky connection.  However apparently on my profile page I hit the wrong thing and flipped myself into some sort of stealth mode.  After fixing that… I also started getting updates as to what my friends were doing, so when Squirrel joined a party I decided to hook my headset up and join as well.

Unintended Stealth

The plan for the evening was supposedly a Hard Mode Wrath of the Machine, but due to the holiday messing with everyone’s raiding plans… it was just Squirrel, myself, Jex and Havel that were available.  The original thought was that if we could somehow muster the folks that we would end up running a normal to show me the ropes.  Instead we just ended up completing various crap that I had sitting undone.  I am the worst at actually grinding through quests, and the Gjallarhorn was something I tried when I was sitting at 340ish and found maddening.  There are wave and waves of exploding shanks that have this nasty way of sneaking up on you when you are least expecting.  I would ultimately end up getting blown up and failing out… and unfortunately this is one of those quests where you have to complete a bunch of stuff if you die at any point.  The goal originally was to pester someone to come help me, but I never got around to doing it.  Last night they were willing to help and I was more than happy to knock a quest out of my inventory.

Unintended Stealth

Similarly I had been sitting on the Thorn quest for at least a week now, having completed the last of the crucible kills during the recent Iron Banner.  In order to do this one I needed a key, and had never actually finished the Sepiks Perfected strike quest…  which rewarded a key.  So next up my friends set about to helping me complete this quest.  Unfortunately I have not actually spent any time with the gun, but seeing as I never got the year one variety I have always been curious just how it feels.  There was a time where I used hand cannons above pretty much any gun, but the short range and ammo capacity nerfs have ended up with me favoring other things.  If nothing else I might throw this up on my hunter and be the stereotype, even though this version of thorn is significantly defanged from the original.

Unintended Stealth

Lastly when I opened the chest to pick up the Thorn, I managed to pull a pretty sweet new sniper with significantly higher light than the one I was using.  I like the super high damage archetype of snipers, so this has already seen some use given that it is solar burn week.  We attempted a random heroic after completing the Thorn quest but for whatever reason I failed to get credit from my Future War Cult quest.  I am super thankful to all of the help that Squirrel and Jex were willing to dish out last night, and I really want to figure out a time when I can hang out properly and do more Destiny stuff.  I knew I missed them, but I didn’t realize how much until the middle of last night hanging out killing baddies.

Unintended Stealth

by

Unintended Stealth

I had every intent last night of going home and working on my Deathknight.  This week the world boss is The Soultakers, which finally allows folks to unlock the hidden frost appearance.  I had been enjoying my newly humanized Deathknight after years being a Worgen, but had largely been taking my time in pushing through the levels.  However with the promise of an artifact appearance waiting on me, the goal was to get home and push as hard as I could to get to 110 before the week was finished.  Recently they patched the game to make all artifact appearance drops from world bosses a 100% drop chance.  Apparently however there is a giant asterisk looming behind that statement.  What I am hearing now is that in order to get the appearance you have to be artifact knowledge rank four, which is completely impossible for me to actually obtain during this week, at least without the impending catch up mechanics.  So instead I went upstairs to try and solve another issue.  According to my friend Squirrel, apparently I have not been online on PSN in over thirty days…  so after some back and forth we determined that I had apparently inadvertently set myself to appear offline.  For awhile now I had seen a red X beside my portrait in the PS4 menu, but I always just assumed that meant I had a flaky connection.  However apparently on my profile page I hit the wrong thing and flipped myself into some sort of stealth mode.  After fixing that… I also started getting updates as to what my friends were doing, so when Squirrel joined a party I decided to hook my headset up and join as well.

Unintended Stealth

The plan for the evening was supposedly a Hard Mode Wrath of the Machine, but due to the holiday messing with everyone’s raiding plans… it was just Squirrel, myself, Jex and Havel that were available.  The original thought was that if we could somehow muster the folks that we would end up running a normal to show me the ropes.  Instead we just ended up completing various crap that I had sitting undone.  I am the worst at actually grinding through quests, and the Gjallarhorn was something I tried when I was sitting at 340ish and found maddening.  There are wave and waves of exploding shanks that have this nasty way of sneaking up on you when you are least expecting.  I would ultimately end up getting blown up and failing out… and unfortunately this is one of those quests where you have to complete a bunch of stuff if you die at any point.  The goal originally was to pester someone to come help me, but I never got around to doing it.  Last night they were willing to help and I was more than happy to knock a quest out of my inventory.

Unintended Stealth

Similarly I had been sitting on the Thorn quest for at least a week now, having completed the last of the crucible kills during the recent Iron Banner.  In order to do this one I needed a key, and had never actually finished the Sepiks Perfected strike quest…  which rewarded a key.  So next up my friends set about to helping me complete this quest.  Unfortunately I have not actually spent any time with the gun, but seeing as I never got the year one variety I have always been curious just how it feels.  There was a time where I used hand cannons above pretty much any gun, but the short range and ammo capacity nerfs have ended up with me favoring other things.  If nothing else I might throw this up on my hunter and be the stereotype, even though this version of thorn is significantly defanged from the original.

Unintended Stealth

Lastly when I opened the chest to pick up the Thorn, I managed to pull a pretty sweet new sniper with significantly higher light than the one I was using.  I like the super high damage archetype of snipers, so this has already seen some use given that it is solar burn week.  We attempted a random heroic after completing the Thorn quest but for whatever reason I failed to get credit from my Future War Cult quest.  I am super thankful to all of the help that Squirrel and Jex were willing to dish out last night, and I really want to figure out a time when I can hang out properly and do more Destiny stuff.  I knew I missed them, but I didn’t realize how much until the middle of last night hanging out killing baddies.