Victor Vran
Games of the Decade: 2015
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
For years I had heard wonderful things about the Witcher series, but I found them somewhat obtuse and difficult to get into. Maybe if I had played the original when it first was released it might have made a difference, but trying to make it with modern expectations was a nonstarter. I found the interface to be deeply cludgy and confusing. When The Witcher 3 released I was not expecting much from it based on my past experience with the earlier two titles, but I got a free copy with a new video card and gave it a shot. What I found was a deep and rich world that I really enjoyed exploring. I’ve not gotten anywhere close to actually beating the game, but it is on that list of titles that I keep meaning to restart from scratch and play through again. The recent release of the Netflix series is re-igniting that desire so maybe I will spend some time over the coming days giving it another shot.Dying Light
Dying Light is one of those games that is almost impossible to explain without actually experiencing it. At its core it is a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse, but it is much more than that given that there are rich systems where you gain favor with various factions of survivors. The other aspect that is hard to explain is how important movement is to this game. It is a game that takes parkour to the next level as you try and find a path to run on that is safe from the endless hordes of the undead in the world below. There is always this tentative balance between staying in safety and dropping down into the places where you need to scavenge materials from. The total package is wildly enjoyable and now that the game has been out for quite some time you can pick it up on the cheap. If you missed it the first time, well worth grabbing especially since there is a sequel in the works for 2020 release.Victor Vran
If you have read this blog for very long you will know of my deep affinity for “diablo-likes” and ARPGs in general. One of these that sorta slipped under almost everyone’s radar is a game called Victor Vran, where you take the controls of a Van Helsing like character that hunts demons and monsters. What makes this game interesting to me is that it has really good WASD controls and extremely interesting level design that works in old fashioned Wolf 3D era “secrets” that can be unlocked to find both new paths and troves of loot. The combination makes for a compelling action RPG that in some ways reminds me of early Isometric shooters like Crusader: No Remorse. You have a wide variety of attacks and special abilities and the levels are hand crafted instead of procedurally generated. This leads to a more structured game-play experience but also somewhat harms the replay value. This is now out on even more platforms including the switch, so well worth checking out if you too are a fan of ARPGs.Fallout 4
I love the Fallout series and have since I first played the original back in 1997. The Fallout community tends to have two distinct branches… those who hold up Fallout 3 as the best title and those who hold up Fallout New Vegas in highest regard. I like aspects of both but tend to fall into the New Vegas camp. Fallout 4 was not exactly the game that either of those factions wanted and as a result it tends to be a fairly divisive title. For me… the aspect that I love about it is Base Building, which is the nail in the coffin for other games. I love feeling like I get to have an effect on the world by linking together disparate groups of refuges into a larger community. When I play this game I more or less ignore the story-line that is forced upon you, and the constantly limiting choice paths… and instead play a game where I am rebuilding the wasteland. I am pretty great at making up my own story when I find the current options distasteful.Where Bel Was Mentally in 2015
2015 was the year that I went to my first video game convention in the form of Pax South in San Antonio. I got to hang out with my friends Ashgar and Rae and explore all of the nonsense that makes up a Pax while also doing various press meetings. I managed to abuse those connections to sneak them into a gameplay session for Gigantic which was probably the game of the show that year. If you start on the right side, the faces that are pointed towards the camera at the screens are me, Ashgar, Rae and then hovering above Rae and explaining the abilities is Lonrem. It was a pretty good year, that started with a bang. I greatly miss going to Pax South each year, but the timing just hasn’t worked out since 2018.Week in Gaming 1/17/2016
It has been awhile since I have done one of these, and of the various failed columns that I have tried over the years…. I think this one is the best for me personally. Â Sunday is a rough day in general, in part because I wake up and have to finish up AggroChat and get it out to the various locations. Â As a result it helps to have a fairly formulaic option I can lean on when I am not feeling super inspired. Â As a result I am leaning once again on the Week in Gaming series just to talk about a bunch of stuff I played this week.
Pax South Hype!
I am starting to get super excited for Pax South. Â Last year I had various companies ask me for a business card, and I was somewhat kicking myself for not having any. Â I mean I guess part of me never really thought that having a business card for a blog and podcast was a good idea. Â This year however I have gotten my ass in order and if everything works as intended the cards will arrive at the beginning of next week. Â I only ordered 250 because I could not in any circumstance think of a reason why I would need that many. Â The design was done by Rae and was originally intended to be our Pax Prime cards, but since we were denied media access to that convention they never actually got made. Â I resurrected the idea because I thought it was pretty slick. Â In the original design each of the hosts has their own color, and given that I love green I latched onto that one. Â As far as a back design I went with something simple because I felt like it needed something on the back…. Â and in truth that is the crux of our thing… Â daily posts, weekly cast. Â If you are also going to be at Pax South let me know, I would love to meet up with everyone that I can while I am there.
Undertale
I have some mixed feelings about Undertale so far. Â On one level I really like the game and it feels like something that is going to be an interesting experience. Â The negative is I absolutely HATE the combat system. Â I hate mini-games, and while I was corrected last night on the podcast…. I am sorry but that isn’t a real combat system. Â Part of me just wants to run away from every single fight so that I don’t have to do it. Â I mean granted I was using arrow keys and maybe that makes it worse than it actually is, but I just hate the concept of breaking out of an otherwise fun old school RPG style game…. Â and having to deal with move the heart to avoid shit. Â For now I have essentially abandoned the game, in the hopes that some distance will in fact make the heart grow fond. Â Essentially I love everything else about the game… other than the combat system. Â This might be one of those games that is more enjoyable to watch.
Victor Vran
I’ve already talked about this game quite a bit throughout the week but I feel like it still deserves additional mention. Â The only negative about this game is that I started playing it essentially the week before a bunch of other things that I wanted to play happened. Â My hope is that once the recent infatuation with Warframe and Diablo 3 Season 5 have calmed down, I can return to this and play my way through the main story some more. Â I really want to see what multiplayer feels like in the end game experience. Â Playing it was fine for me… but essentially locked the other players that I was dragging along with me… out of some of the experience of interacting with the voice floating around in your head. Â If you are not partaking of the Diablo 3 Season 5 madness…. and still want a ARPG fix… I highly suggest you check it out.
Warframe
This game…. Â is so good and I am kinda kicking myself for never really giving it a proper attempt at playing. Â I have downloaded this game numerous times in the past on the PC, PS3 and PS4 when I saw other folks in my various social media timelines talking about it… but never actually tried it. Â I guess in my head I had this absolutely misrepresented as to what sort of game it was. Â With a super generic name like Warframe… I kept getting it jumbled up with the other game Warface. Â Warface being a super generic Call of Duty/Counterstrike style PVP shooter. Â So in my head I equated Warframe to a PVP experience… not this deeply nuanced cooperative PVE experience. Â There are so many aspects of this game that remind me of an MMO, but not necessarily in the traditional sense. Â The game as a whole feels like this amalgam of Destiny, Phantasy Star Online and Tribes. Â If that combination sounds like something you would be interesting, I highly suggest you check it out. Â I think I was largely luckier than most in that one of the freebie mechs, the Excalibur is right down my alley. Â I am slashing everything with my space ninja ways, and really enjoying myself. Â For those curious, I have pretty much set down roots on the PC, and while I might give it a shot later on the PS4, I have no real intention of moving at the moment as the AggroChat crew seem to all be playing it.
Diablo 3
The floodgates for Diablo 3 Season 5 opened on Friday at 7pm and from that point until 10:30 or so my time I was running around in a group leveling like mad.  At this point I have managed to get to 68, which puts me behind the curve of folks like Grace that are 70 with over 150 paragon levels.  That however is fine by me, because I am just happy I am almost to the cap with at least one character.  I am going to be interested in seeing what the various challenges are that unlock the various seasonal rewards.  What makes the season play so addictive to me is the fact that it mimics a MMO launch.  Everyone on your friends list for a period of time is playing Diablo 3 and excited about it, as though they were playing a brand new game.  So you have a few weeks of focused play, and then don’t feel guilty at all when you shift back to playing other games until the launch of the next season.  This focused excitement is really fun to experience, and this is technically my third season so far.  There is part of me that wishes I had gotten on board with the concept earlier.  My goal today is to finish up my Crusader and then probably focus on some more Warframe.  Hopefully all of you readers out there have had an equally fun week, and Pax South seriously could not get here soon enough.
Pumpkin King
The Hammer
All day long yesterday I had been craving some more Victor Vran, so when I got home last night… I fed the animals… fed myself… and plunked down on the couch to play some more.  Firstly I have to say how nice it runs on my aging gaming laptop.  For many games that I would want to play downstairs… like Dragon Age: Inquisition or Fallout 4… they simply do not run well on the dual 650 video cards that the laptop has in it.  This game however looks gorgeous and runs at a solid 60 fps, which makes me happy.  Granted graphically it is a much more simple game than the ones I rattled off, but nonetheless it makes me happy.  While roaming around last night I found this crazy boss fight, that spawned after taking down several other bosses in an area.  Upon defeating the specter it announced that if I would only spare him…  I could have access to his truly rare wares.  When I opened up the vendor window I saw my very first purple weapon…. the Pumpkin Hammer.  So I proceeded to liquidate everything in my inventory except my handful of favorite weapons… and was barely able to afford it.
It is every bit as cool as you might imagine. Â Firstly you are running around with a giant jack-o-lantern on a stick which in itself has a cool factor. Â To add to the effect however, when you hit anything… Â it spawns a pumpkin bomb on the ground… which moments later then explodes taking out more stuff. Â The only negative here is it actually cost me an objective last night. Â The objective was to take out a handful of monsters with the hammer… problem being that in one case at least the pumpkin bomb went off and finished off the monster and as a result it did not count. Â So that is something to watch, but what I like about it is the fact that the attack animation seems much faster than the standard hammer. Â It hits for slightly less than my previous hammer, but since I am able to hit more often it balances out in the end. Â Other than the hammer the ghost sold a few spells, that also looked pretty great… Â but after bankrupting myself I could not afford anything else. Â From the sound of the message it seems like the creature appears at random in various levels, so hopefully I can build back up my gold reserves by the time I see him again.
Guyver Time
Warframe and I have this strange relationship… where I have downloaded it for PC, PS3 and PS4… Â but never actually played it. Â I’ve seen friends on my various social media timelines playing it for ages, and been intrigued. Â The problem being that I apparently had the wrong impression of what sort of game it actually was. Â In my head I had this filed away as some sort of PVP experience, when in truth it is largely a PVE team based experience. Â Over the weekend Ashgar and Tamrielo discovered the game, and Monday night I was going to join them. Â Unfortunately there were some complications…. namely that for whatever reason my ISP could not connect to Warframe.com or any of the game servers for a period of time. Â As a result I instead spent the entire night playing Victor Vran and had a blast doing so. Â Since I spent the evening on the sofa, it meant that I needed to download the client again, and about half way through the evening I switched games.
So far I have to say I am pretty impressed. Â I am only running the game at 720p because I didn’t want to have any possible frame rate issues on the laptop, however the game itself looks gorgeous. Â In many way its missions remind me of the missions from Mass Effect 2 and 3. Â The most fun I had was this mission we did as a group where we entered a ship, triggered an alarm and then tried to hold out as long as we could. Â We managed to make it up until the point that the ship started spawning in waves of level 5 mobs… Â at which point we retreated to the extraction zone and held that tunnel for as long as we could before making a break for it. Â Towards the end these firebombing mobs started coming in and we damned near lost Ashgar. Â I myself came precariously close to dying a few times, only to get revived in a similar fashion to how you can players in Destiny. Â All in all it was a really good experience, and I think honestly the Excaliber warframe suits me pretty well. Â I like the blade, and for my main weapon I ended up choosing a bow. Â Later I spent a little money on the game and got some upgrades and now my secondary weapon is a heavy double firing pistol called the Kraken. Â I also spent some time making the suit look more “me”. Â Look forward to playing more over the coming weeks.