Month: November 2018

So one of the things you need to understand about my brain, that may or may not have been evident from this blog…  is that I go through a bit of a cycle when I hear something that conflicts with what I currently perceive as my core interests.  First I rebel against the idea, and then as that calms down…  I go on a sort of quest to understand it.  For example… I have talked about this before but I was an Alpha tester on Guild Wars 2…  and it is the only games test that I resigned from.  It was a super restrictive test that I had to get forms notarized and turn back in, so resigning seemed like the thing to do rather than simply never playing again.  However once the game released I kept throwing myself at it like a puzzle that I simply could not crack.  It took me years to fully comprehend why it was that people seemed to like it so much, and reach a place of peace with the game that allowed me to finally accept that it was just not for me.  Similarly this whole Diablo Immortal thing has caused me to push deeper into mobile gaming, because I feel like it has been this entire segment of the market that I never really understood the appeal of.

Pokemon Go really was the first mobile game that I actually cared about.  It was this specific combination of “everyone was doing it”, mixed with a familiar IP in the form of Pokemon, and also doing some really interesting things with location aware services and augmented reality (even though I largely left that shit turned off all the time).  While I still technically pop it open when I am bored… I am nowhere near as active as I once was.  There are a few PokeStops on the way into the building at work, but I am not going out and actively seeking things to capture like I did when the game first was released.  Admittedly the instability back at launch probably kept this from moving from a thing I casually use…  to a thing I am actively playing…  given that at one point I was going out pretty much every night to catch stuff.

The core problem with Pokemon Go is that it is not an equitable experience for all players.  When I am at work in the core of downtown Tulsa, there is a constant stream of activity…  however once I retreat back to my sleepy suburb there is nothing at all.  I can walk a lap of my neighborhood and maybe encounter two Pokemon, both of which from what I term the trash variety that you commonly find everywhere.  Additionally the focus on face to face interaction made trading just not something that I would ever care about… because most of my friends who play Pokemon are not near me.  So it feels like  game I dabble in but is very much not for me.

Another game that I have recently started playing is The Walking Dead Our World, which takes the general concept of Pokemon Go but applies it to zombie survival.  I’m a fan of the show even though it has figuratively jumped the shark a handful of times at this point.  They have been advertising this game for a few seasons and it finally got me curious enough to download and install it.  The biggest positive I have to talk about it is that it does not shred your battery in the way that Pokemon Go does, nor does it seem to only care about urban hubs.  Out in the burbs there is a constant flow of zombie infestations for me to clear out.  The only negative however is it doesn’t really reward moving around anywhere near as much as it probably should.  I can sit in bed and clear out a half dozen objectives without actually getting out into the community and finding other objectives.  I’ve recently joined a clan or whatever the hell they call them, and it adds another dimension to the game because it feels like I am contributing to larger objectives in the form of a weekly challenge card of sorts that rewards a ton of resources each time you finish one out.  Definitely an interesting game, but also one that I only play because fiddling around on my phone has become my before I go to sleep activity.

I have talked at length about Dragalia Lost being the game that largely convinced me that an ARPG would work on a mobile phone.  While I still enjoy it, I have very much ended up in maintenance mode with it.  I log in each night and work through the daily objectives, then make sure a bunch of stuff is building in my castle before logging out and on to the next thing.  I am not really spending much time actually doing content in the game apart from if there is an event going on.  Once again this game has not really elevated to the realm of “I would rather play it over more traditional games”.  For my friend Grace however, it has and she is spending a good deal more time playing it than playing other titles at the moment.  The truth is the only real reason why I have been playing so many mobile games is…  my phone hurts way less than the switch when I inevitably drop it on my face.

With the Diablo Immortal announcement, there were a lot of folks talking about how it looked like a “reskin” of another game they released called Crusaders of Light.  I decided to check this out for myself, and I guess if you are just looking at the user interface they do look really similar.  Then again most mobile MMOs that I have seen have a very similar interface, and if you think about it most first person shooters these days use exactly the same control scheme.  Games tend to land on a thing that works and then keep doing that thing over and over.  As far as play however it feels more like a mobile World of Warcraft, if I am being completely honest about it.  There really isn’t much about it that feels Action RPG.  As far as play… the controls are not great and the game highly suggests that you auto navigate to your objectives…  which I completely agree with.  However while doing this it feels sorta like the game is playing you more than you playing the game.

For reference I also started piddling around in Lineage II Revolution, which quite honestly does a lot of the same things.  In fact it is probably more so with an auto questing mode that not only navigates you to the target but also starts attacking it.  Weirdly however I find myself liking this title way more than Crusaders of Light, even though it actually asks way less of me to play it.  You can of course go offroad at any point, and I have found myself killing three or four times the number of mobs that a given quest has asked me to.  Again I am largely doing the auto nav thing to make up for the fact that mobile navigation feels so horrible in the first place.  Were I playing any of these games with a controller, then life would be completely different.  Mostly this is all part of my brain trying to grok what trends there are and what is popular apart from the obvious Gacha mechanics that seem to exist in all of them.

The biggest problem I have with mobile games is that I find I burn out of them way faster than traditional PC games.  I tend to cycle through them like a bored toddler, so I do my maintenance gaming in one…  then move on to the next one.  At some point my brain realizes that I am only ever doing maintenance tasks and start checking out of it completely.  I don’t even have Fire Emblem Heroes installed on my phone anymore, nor did I actually make it all of the way through that quest.  Similarly I no longer have Final Fantasy Record Keeper installed, in spite of previously devoting a bunch of time of this “boredom time” to it.  While I am on this mission, I am definitely open to suggestions.  Is there anything you are playing on a mobile device that is more along the lines of a traditional game?  I am not looking for puzzle games like Alphabear, because I already play a handful of those as well.

Yesterday I talked about a few ARPGs I had been playing as an attempt to get the Diablo Immortal thing out of my system.  Since then a handful of you have suggested other games to me, and I thought I would take a moment this morning to talk about a few competitors for the “next great ARPG” crown that I have spent some time playing.  This has always been a genre that appealed to me, so as something new comes down the pipe I tend to check it out at least for a bit.  These projects seem especially popular on Kickstarter because everyone seems to have loved Diablo 2 and wants to build a better version of it.  That can be a positive or a negative, especially considering post Diablo 3 I found it almost impossible to go back and play Diablo 2 again.

Victor Vran

We will start off with the weirdest entry in the list first, largely because it does a lot of things…  not like other games.  First off this is primarily a WASD game with your primary attack being on Left Mouse click and Q and E being secondary attacks and Right Mouse serving to spin the camera around.  It takes some getting used to, and a lot of people prefer to play this with a controller as a result.  However I found it to be an interesting blend of movement that really landed well for me personally.  I wrote a more proper review of this back in 2016, but honestly it is still worth checking out.  I do not currently have this installed but that might be changing soon as it is a good option to dig back into.

Steam Link but also available on several consoles

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr

One of the core problems with Games Workshop licensed games is they vary greatly in quality.  As a result when I see a new one pop up I am immediately suspicious and throwing more than a little side-eye.  However occasionally my curiosity gets the best of me and I try one of them.  This one however was really fun… up until a point which unfortunately for me happens to be the fifth mission.  I have always hated “protect the idiots” missions and in general I hate the tower defense mechanic.  This mission unfortunately incorporates both elements, where not only do you have to survive a wave of assaulting chaos forces and defend a point…  but you also have to keep your idiot guardsmen alive in the process.  If I can get over this frustrating hurdle the game will probably go right back to being a really fun amalgam of Diablo and the Warhammer 40,000 universe that I love.

Steam Link

Grim Dawn

This is probably the best ARPG that is not Diablo 3 if I am going to be completely honest with myself.  The setting is interesting because effectively you are roaming a world after what is effectively a demonic invasion.  It feels as though you are running around a post apocalyptic version of our world, and they get big points with me for including shotguns as a viable and balanced weapon choice option.  This was I believe initially built upon the Titan Quest engine… which is another really awesome but aging APRG.  However the game feels like it has long moved past that and is now sort of its own thing.  I’ve never made it terribly far into the game because it feels very slow paced, which is a lot of the problem I have with most of the “we remember Diablo 2 and wanted to create a better version” games.

Steam Link

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem

Now we enter the realm of the “still in alpha” competitors, with Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem.  This is probably my favorite of the modern ARPGs but it is still very much rooted into the “lots of things are broken” range of games.  It is fun enough to play around with but the last I really played this seriously… there were moments where the difficulty seemed to be stacked against melee characters.  Other than playing a Demon Hunter to rapidly unlock seasonal content occasionally…  if an ARPG doesn’t feel good in melee then it probably isn’t something I am going to stick around for long.  That however was back in February and I am sure they have tweaked a lot of things in the meantime.  I should give it another proper look and see how it feels now.

Steam Link

Last Epoch

Another game from the “super alpha” territory is Last Epoch.  This is one of the ones that Ashgar specifically has suggested a few times, because it does look really interesting.  As a result I took the $50 hit so you don’t have to, because right now that is the cheapest supporter package that grants you instant alpha access.  I played around for a very short time last night, largely because it has two key flaws in my mind… that admittedly may change over time.  Firstly the classes appear to be gender locked, and while that is a super common thing in asian arpgs… it pisses me the fuck off.  Yes I realize both Diablo and Diablo 2 had gendered characters, but we should have moved past that.  Granted again this might just be something they have done before there is not a proper character creator in place yet so I am letting this one slide for the moment.  The other major issue is the fact that movement and basic attack are not the same key…  so as it is set up right now you move with left click and attack with right click…  leading for a really goofy feeling experience.  This is going to be one of those games like Wolcen that I pop my head into periodically to see how it has improved.

Supporter Page Link

Hellgate: London

Now we are going to take a jaunt into the territory of my favorite Diablo game that is not Diablo…  and that is Hellgate: London.  I am one of a handful of people who still carry around a bright glowing torch for this game, largely because I love both what it was… and am wistful about what it might have been.  There are ways to still play the original game, and there is even a modding community to make it look better…  but the above screenshot is from the Hanbitsoft version of the game released in South Korea and occasionally has been available for english speaking players.  This is relevant because on November 15th this game is returning and will be available on Steam.  I really don’t know much about what that is going to entail, other than the fact that we are supposedly getting the base game and all of the expansions that were released in South Korea.  I’ve talked about this so many times, but here is a specific post from 2015 about trying to get back into the game.  Even though this coincides with the launch of Fallout 76… you can damned well bet I will be checking this out on the 15th of this month.

Steam Link

So the only problem is… that I have rattled off a list of alternatives to Diablo 3… but none of them really fully cover the things I like about it.  I love the fast paced and frenetic gameplay that comes when you get together with a bunch of your friends and run things like Rifts or in the case of this screenshot… consume a ring and go fight Greed.  It does a very specific thing that no other game really is doing, that is largely because I love Diablo 3…  not in a begrudging way like so many fans of the franchise have over the years… but I legitimately love all of the changes that were made.  While I loved Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 at the time…  I wholeheartedly love what Diablo 3 became.  Granted that is love of a post seasonal Diablo 3, long after the RMT auction house bullshit was removed and the legendary drop rates greatly fixed.  However it just does a thing that none of the games above are really doing for me, and as a result…  I will still be depressed and disappointed that we didn’t get that Diablo 4 announcement.

That said I am absolutely not one of those people who is going to refuse to play Diablo Immortal.  I am going to try it out but I have huge fingers and mobile screens are tiny…  so I might need to try and figure out a reasonable android tablet option to make it feel not horrible.   I am already running into this issue with Dragalia Lost and some of the other mobile games that I have been dipping my toes into in order to sort of prepare my Psyche for the existence of this thing.  I am still disappointed and still think it was a poor time to make this announcement, but I am not going to rage against it existing… because there is plenty of room for games that aren’t for me to exist in the world.  However it also doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.