I have to admit I got caught up in the Halo hype last night like so many other players. The key difference for me is that I have never really been a Halo aficionado. I never owned an original Xbox and I first played the game with the pretty tragically bad PC port that came significantly after the fact. At the time I thought Unreal 2 was a much better game and doing a lot of the same things that Halo was. However there are times when you see how much a franchise means to people that you respect, and you desperately want to understand what they like so much about it. This is why I keep throwing myself down the path of Halo games and trying to figure out how to flip the switch inside of me that makes me love them.
With the PC release of The Master Chief Collection, Microsoft has opted to dole the games out one at a time rather than giving us all of them at once like exists on the Xbox One. The first game up is Halo Reach, which came out in 2010 and is in theory the second game chronologically, centering around the defense of a planet called Reach. That is pretty much all I know about the game because at this point I am only two missions into it. The controls do not feel amazing by modern standards and the voice acting in 2010 was significantly lower fidelity than what we are used to today as well. Both of these things lead me to bounce out pretty early last night on the campaign.
The core problem that I always have with Halo is its weapon system. There are weapons that feel good to use, but they are generally the Spartan weapons and while out in the field you can never seem to find ammunition for them. This means you are going to ultimately have to keep throwing away the gun that you like and picking up some random piece of trash just to survive. This gameplay feels awful to me, and I am super thankful that Bungie went on to create Destiny… a game largely focused around playing with amazing feeling weapons. I appreciate that Halo exists because without it I wouldn’t have gotten Destiny, but I am still struggling to glean what makes the game so magical.
Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem
On a whim I decided to reinstall Wolcen the other night, because it had not significantly played the game since February of 2018. At that time I believe my assessment was that the game was “very alpha” which is my polite way of saying it is a buggy and formless mess. In the months between then and now the game has completely changed into something that is extremely playable, and to the best of my understanding has at least one act completely finished. There is also a planned launch in January, which would indicate to me that we are getting pretty close to its final form.
The end result is a game with a pretty solid storyline and good voice acting, as well as combat and systems that feel pretty polished. Gone is the complete free form system and instead one that sort of nudges you into one of three paths largely centered around melee combat, ranged combat or magical casting. However you can at will jump off the rails and go in whatever directions you want to because in theory there isn’t much difference between these paths at the beginning of the game. You pick up spells while roaming through the world and these serve as your abilities. Each one has specific weapon requirements, leading your way down those three paths for the most part.
Combat feels solid and fluid and a seemingly good blend of difficulty, where it is absolutely easy to sink into but can be punishing if you are not paying attention to your surroundings. There is a dodge system bound to the space bar and it follows a pip based system giving you 4 charges of dodge before you have to wait for them to regenerate. Shocking to no one I am largely centered around a melee build and have an interesting blend of abilities including: a leap attack, a charge, a death grip, a warcry shout of sorts and a big hammer that I slam down dealing AOE damage. The interplay between abilities feels really good and they have added little perks like you automagically charging into combat with your primary attack as a gap closer if you were out of combat.
The gearing system all seems to more or less be standard fare for an ARPG, with the added element of wearing armor of a specific play style giving you extra attribute points for that play style. So ultimately your “build” becomes a combination of your skills that you use, your talent picks and the items that you happen to be wielding… all of which sort of adding up to a total character identity. I’ve more or less stuck to heavy armor which greatly increases my resistances, but there have been moments when a significantly better item drops of another armor family, and I was able to freely swap stuff around to fit the need.
I know Grace also has Wolcen and at some point I would like to group up with her and see how the group play feels. Ultimately that is going to be the make or break for the game, because while I enjoy playing an ARPG solo… there is limited life in doing that. We come together each Diablo 3 season because group play is fun and rewarding, and while I want to see the story play out in Wolcen, unless it also has rewarding feeling group play I am not sure if it becomes a real option for the long haul.
For several months now I have been using the Hori Split Pad Pro product for the Nintendo Switch. When I first got it I was asked by some of my friends to write up a review and it has taken me several months to actually get around to doing that. Since September I have exclusively used these “joycon replacements” with my switch and as a result I have some things to say. This is not a paid product review as I shelled out the same $50 for these that anyone else would have to, and in truth I had to wait a freaking long time for them to finally get back into stock. My pair is an import from Japan and they released in early October here in North America.
My Eternal Problem
I have stupidly huge hands and that fact makes most controllers fairly uncomfortable for extended play sessions. The above image is something that I took this morning and is me gripping a knock off Xbox One controller that I had handy. This has been a subplot in my life for years, trying to find something big enough to be reasonably comfortable and I think in part why I shun controllers so often over keyboard and mouse. One day I will write a post about my favorite big hands controllers, but for now you have to realize that my hand absolutely engulfs the joycon and there is no way in hell that is actually ever going to be comfortable. For awhile I used the Satisfye grip, which does a good job of making the joycons work well enough, but it also makes the entire package extremely heavy and not exactly ideal for playing for example while laying in bed.
Weird Controller to the Rescue
The setup itself looks nonsensical as compared to the original joycons, but in practice it feels pretty good. Imagine if someone took a pro controller and chopped it in half and then put one half of it on either side of the switch’s “tablet” screen. What I did not expect however is how much lighter it makes the overall unit. The joycons themselves have quite a bit of weight to them, and the Split Pad Pro is pretty much just a plastic shell with the necessary PCB and buttons and has removed the rumble motors (which is a positive to me, I hate rumble) and also lacks the ability to use Amiibos (which I only really use when playing Breath of the Wild for free stuff). It also trades the four individual directional buttons for a proper d-pad that while a little squishy feels perfectly fine for fighting games on the go.
The first oddity you encounter however is that the controllers themselves are roughly twice the height of the tablet screen, leaving you with an awkward lip as they opted for the tablet to sit flush against the back of the controllers for better ergonomics than flush with the face. It looks a little odd but once I got used to it never really bothered me. One of the problems I have had with the base joycons is that the clips that attach them to the rails on the side of the tablet portion have never felt amazingly solid. This might just be a side effect of the weird manner in which I have to grip them in order to play, due to the aforementioned stupidly large hands. However it always feels like if I gripped too tightly at the wrong moment that I could snap them off.
The Split Pad Pro connects way more tightly to the sides of the unit and has these little blocks that extend out over the tablet and then out from the back allowing you to set the unit down without placing stress on the joint. The overlap however also has the side effect of making the entire connection feel much stronger than it does on the traditional joycon setup. When holding the unit with a single hand it feels like it is a single fused piece and doesn’t have any of the natural sway that the joycons tend to have when doing the same thing. There are mappable buttons on the backside of the controller, but as there is no wireless connection between the two you are limited to only mapping functions that exist on a single side, making the paddle on the left side a little useless.
The unit still docks perfectly fine with the Split Pad Pro attached, allowing you to flip between playing on screen and in handheld mode easily. The funny thing is that while I have owned these joycon replacements I have spent way more time playing in handheld than I have docked. Previously I had almost exclusively played the Switch through dock with a Pro Controller I would say 99.9% of the time. It is funny how having a comfortable grip that does not add significant weight to the unit has changed the way I actually use it. Whereas I used to use my Tablet exclusive for a little gaming before falling asleep, I am now also using my switch and have taken to charging the unit in the bedroom as opposed to the dock. I really should get one of the Best Buy docks for the bedroom, since they are much cheaper and appear to have solved the issue that bricked so many units previously.
The Negatives
Now that I have gushed about how much I love this controller at length, I guess it is time to talk about the negatives. First off while I personally call these a JoyCon replacement, they are not really that at all because they are not wireless. You cannot use them independent of the tablet unit and in order to keep the price and weight down they sacrifice all of the internals that allow for RFID, Rumble and Gyroscope functionality. This means that in Breath of the Wild for example you will be unable to complete any of the puzzles that focus on rotation things with your JoyCons. Additionally any sort of aim through moving the controller functionality is likely not going to work if they rely on the JoyCon gyro instead of the one build into the tablet (which most games seem to).
The only thing that really bugs me at any point is the fact that because they are not wireless they also do not support the ability to wake the console with a key press. This is a dual edged sword because on the positive this means you won’t be accidentally waking the device up while carrying it around in a bag you will however be required to press the recessed power button any time you want to turn it on. You can also tap the screen, but I seem to never actually do this because I more or less forget that the Switch is touch compatible. Another negative is that they have used cheap rubber buttons for +, -, Home and Capture and they feel awful to push. They function fine but they just dont have a satisfying click to them. Similarly most of the buttons feel a little mushy and are not as satisfying as I would like them to feel, but personally this has not bothered me too much because I got used to the Hori FPS Plus controller on the Playstation 4 which has very similar buttons.
The Rundown
If you have large hands and struggle with the size of the switch Joycons… then I would highly suggest you check this controller out. If not this then at least check out the Satisfye grip, which will give you some of the same benefits but also make the unit significantly heavier. If your preferred method of play is to detach the joycons and set the tablet somewhere, then this is squarely not a product for you. If you prefer the Playstation style controller pattern of having the thumb sticks in line with each other, then it is also probably not a product for you as this is the Xbox style staggered stick design. If you are on the fence, this makes it feel like you have an actual controller attached to your switch, and with that the sticks give you a much better range of movement making almost all games i have played with it more comfortable to control. Skyrim for example felt awful to play with the limited range of movement that the default joycon thumb sticks have, but is rather enjoyable with the Split Pad Pro.
I would love to see Hori release a version of this product will full joycon replacement support, adding in all of the missing features. However I think I would probably still be using the ones I have currently as the reduced weight of the total unit makes a big deal to me since I am playing it while laying on my side in bed so often. Holding the default configuration in that manner always ends up with one of my hands getting tired, and with the Split Pad Pros I don’t even notice the weight of the unit. I am super happy this product exists, and after roughly 3 months of play I am not sure I could go back to the default joycons at this point.
Over the Thanksgiving break I spent most of my time playing Diablo 3. I go through these periods at the beginning of a new season where I play hard and heavy for a few weeks and then taper off once I have achieved whatever goal I thought I wanted to achieve for the season. This time around Blizzard put a Tyrael themed Goblin pet at the end of the process and as a result I ground my way to the very end. This was supposed to be the season that I learned the joys of playing a Wizard, but I have to say I am just not a big fan of that class. The highest I managed to get my Wizard was a solo Greater Rift 60, and now that I am in the post seasons journey I might try finishing out the set I was going for and seeing how well it plays.
My friend Grace bailed me out and helped me power level a Demon Hunter and get some of the basic gearing that I needed. This ultimately was the class that I finished the Seasons Journey on and has rapidly become the class that I am the most familiar with. Effectively it and the Thorns Crusader are pretty much my favorite ways to play Diablo 3. I should branch out more, but when I find something I like I end up sticking to it. On the Demon Hunter I effectively ran a variant of the Unhallowed Essense Multi-shot build that you can find on Icy Veins. The most important part about playing the build is never stopping long enough to get hit, because you are still relatively squishy… but Demon Hunter has the mechanics to keep that from happening whereas I felt like the Wizard lacked them.
I’ve seen a bunch of friends dipping their toes into this season, and because of this I thought I would spend this morning breaking out the most cogent advice that I have. I have to credit Grace for starting me down this path initially, but the single best thing I did to improve my gameplay in Diablo 3 was set a keybind for “Force Move”. This effectively gives you a key that pressing it down moves your character towards your mouse cursor. I highlighted the keybinds that I am going to be talking about in the above image but the first one is that when I hold W my character moves towards where my mouse cursor is allowing me to move the mouse to steer rather than relying on the sometimes sloppy click to move. This is important because it allows you to be moving independent of any other actions you might be taking with your character and rapidly change directions as needed.
The next important keybind is that I bound my first skill slot to space bar. This is where I put my movement key on whatever class I happen to be playing. So on Barbarian this would be Leap Attack or Furious Charge, on Demon Hunter it would be Vault, on Witch Doctor it would be Spirit Walk, Wizard it would be Teleport, and Crusader it would be Steed Charge. It is plays on a key that is super easy to spam because you are going to want to be moving as fast as possible most of the time especially when dealing with higher level Greater Rifts.
You are probably questioning why I have Action slot 2, 3 and 4 bound to 7, 8 and 9… and I have to admit this is a fairly new revelation. I play with a Logitech G600 gaming mouse with a keypad on the left hand side. For me the most natural and comfortable keys to hit are in the 7/8/9 row as that seems to be where my thumb naturally rests. That means I can comfortably move up to hit 4/5/6 or down to hit 0/-/= without really interrupting my play in MMORPGs. Most builds involve putting your most important abilities on Left Mouse and Right Mouse and then anything you just want to keep hitting periodically on keybinds 2/3/4. I find it takes me out of the action less if I am hitting these on the mouse as opposed to trying to reach them on the keyboard while holding the W key to be moving forward. Ultimately you sorta have to figure out what feels best for you, but for me this works.
The truth of playing higher tiers of Diablo 3 is that standing still is going to kill you. You effectively need to stay in constant motion to be able to avoid the cavalcade of nonsense that is being thrown at you as far as ground effects and missiles headed your direction. I find it way easier to do this while staying shifting around the battlefield and in order to do this effectively you need to be able to move independent of you performing any attacks. Similarly there are a bunch of attacks that are effectively skill shots requiring you to swing your mouse cursor around in a specific direction and I find this easier to do it I am doing so without worrying about what directional inputs I might be sending my character. Keybinds made Diablo 3 feel so much better and I need to see if I can set up something similar in Path of Exile to maybe fix some of the bad feelings I have towards that game.
As far as my late game seasonal journey, I have had a decent amount of luck with Primal Ancient drops. I aligned these in the order of which I got them, and the one I got from clearing my first 70 Greater Rift is the Nemesis Bracers, which are usually a cube item… but I wound up shifting up my build a bit to accommodate them. The most important drop was my Primal Ancient Yangs which I managed to get by re-rolling a spare Yangs over and over trying to get an Ancient and then somehow winning the Jackpot. The St. Archew gloves are mostly a throw away drop, but I got them on a character I will be talking about in a few minutes making that a little bit more viable. Lastly I got a Primal Ancient piece of the Unhallowed set which blends perfectly into the build on the Demon Hunter.
At the beginning of the season I mentioned that I had never played a Wizard or a Witch Doctor before and apparently this is the season where both of these have been remedied. Grace mentioned that since we are both done with the seasonal journey that we should roll a couple of “Chicken” build Witch Doctors to do some nonsense farming with. I leveled a Gem of Ease and ground up the Witch Doctor yesterday afternoon for fun. I have to admit while I don’t have anything close to a final build, the leveling build I am running is rather enjoyable. The class as a whole feels like this weird blend of the Necromancer and the Demon Hunter… both of which classes that I greatly enjoy. So I can see this being enjoyable.
I’ve only managed to get up to Torment VI with the character, but right now I mostly need the rest of the Helltooth Items and the weapon set that makes the Chicken build work. More or less this is going to be the thing that keeps me invested in this season, and I may even dust off the Wizard and get it moving again. Weirdly at night I am going from playing Diablo 3 on the PC to laying in bed and playing Diablo 3 on the Switch for awhile as I play up a seasonal Barbarian there. Apparently I am in the zone as far as it comes to playing Diablo, and I am sure this will last right up until the point that the new season starts in Destiny 2.
I am weak. After reading yesterdays post, Grace offered to boost my Demon Hunter and I grabbed hold to that notion with both hands. As a result we spent most of last night boosting and gearing while she worked on leveling her gems. I somehow managed to collect the vast majority of the gear I need for an Unhallowed Multishot build. In theory I still need a Ring of Royal Grandeur which I only found out last night can be gotten through bounties. I should hopefully get one while doing the bounties needed to get Avarice which is my new goal. I also need Wraps of Clarity, but eventually Kadala will pay out here and give me them. The most important item I need I believe is the Dead Man’s Legacy, which I am honestly going to focus with Blood Shards before anything else.
So the first Rift took me into my low 20s, but high enough to be able to craft three pieces of Cain’s gear with which I equipped the biggest red gem I could make into the helm. I also at the suggestion of Grace equipped my Gem of Ease into a weapon and then pretty much rode the express elevator to 70. The funny part about doing this is that the game gets real confused and backlogged with those level up ability granting messages. I took this screenshot to illustrate the problem… notice my character is 46 and the game is just now congratulating me on reaching level 28. I think it took three rifts in total at T6 to get from 1 to 70, and for most of it I barely had any gear equipped and was just hanging out at the entrance until Grace transitioned. A few seasons back I boosted up a Witch Doctor for her in a similar manner so I don’t exactly feel guilty, but regardless I am super thankful for her exceptional effort and willingness to continue doing nonsense.
I managed to push the Wizard to a solo Greater Rift 60, which isn’t horrible. The problem I realized is that I just wasn’t actually having any fun playing it. The amount of grinding ahead of me to get all of the stuff this season, on a character that I was not enjoying… just seemed like an insurmountable gulf of misery. So I am once again back on my bullshit and playing the cheatiest class ever… the Demon Hunter and one of the cheatiest builds… Multishot. I tried a Solo GR70 this morning and failed, but I was seemingly really close. Once I get some levels on my gems and once I finish swapping out Royal Emeralds for Flawless Royal Emeralds… I should be in a good place to push higher. I think also once I get a RoRG it will increase my speed significantly when I add back in the Captain Crimson’s items into the mix.
I would have gone faster, but we paused when my wife got home to do some cleaning and in the process I decided to set up our Christmas Tree. We have cats and as a result we don’t put up a large tree, but instead a small one that goes on top of the entertainment center. The star is a little wonky, but it cycles through rainbow colors when I get around to replacing the battery in it. Christmas lights make me happy and since I will be spending a lot of time this weekend hanging out downstairs grinding in Diablo 3… I decided it was a fine time to get things set up so I could enjoy it. I realize it is a little early for some people, but whatever.
Since I probably will be lazy and not post much over the coming days, I hope you and yours have a Happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful for each and every one of you who has enriched my life over the last decade and some change. If you are not having Thanksgiving tomorrow… then I guess I wish you a happy Thursday and Friday, because you absolutely deserve to have good days too.
