Good Morning Folks. I have to be blazingly honest here… I did not have it on my punch card that we would be getting an expansion for Diablo II this year. However, we got exactly that as part of the Diablo anniversary celebration, and it was a shadow drop, meaning I have already played a bit of the brand new class in Diablo II, the Warlock. I have to say it is pretty freaking awesome, at least in the early levels, it feels wildly overpowered. Granted, you can only really have one minion so far, but I am sure that changes over time. You summon up your demon goat buddy, and he proceeds to lay waste to everything around you, while you bop things over the head with your floating weapon. I think the floating weapon thing is honestly a really nice touch because it differentiates this class from other classes that start out feeling like they are shittier versions of the Barbarian… looking at you, Druid.
What is wild about this is that the Warlock class is coming to three games in the Diablo franchise. It’s a bit of a bummer that Diablo III is left out of the love here… but I feel like probably it and Diablo 1 both got dropped for the same reason, they do not have a shiny new client built with modern development technology. We already have the Warlock in Diablo II, but it is coming to Diablo IV at the end of April and to Diablo Immortal in June. Not that I give much of a shit about Diablo Immortal, but I will probably be playing whatever season coincides with the April 28th start date of the Warlock drop in Diablo IV. I will always be down for more Minion gameplay coming to games. So far, at least it feels pretty solid, and it has actually made me want to play some more Diablo II Resurrected. Generally speaking, D2R gameplay is way too slow for my tastes these days, but it might be fun to do at least a full playthrough on the Warlock.
In other news, we got a new Lunar New Year event in Destiny Rising, so maybe it is not entirely out to pasture fully. I lack the cultural significance of all of the stuff that coincides with Lunar New Year events, but they often are big deals in Japanese and Chinese games, and so far, that seems to be the case here as well. Essentailly the normal Frontline events are being replaced with new encounters with the red and gold fireworks themes. Doing these earns points towards the larger event that is going on, and will ultimately also earn you pulls for the reworked version of Ikora. I played three rounds or so of Frontlines yesterday and had a reasonably good time doing it. This is mostly a pretty chill activity and is exclusive to Jiangshit Metro, aka Space China. Is it massive and new and exciting? Not really. However it is something and I have to give them credit for it.
Yesterday evening, we got a new State of Play event from Sony, and probably the biggest news for me personally was the upcoming release of Death Stranding 2 for the PC. Sure, I have a PS5 and could have played this game at any point I wanted to, but I greatly prefer playing open-world games with a mouse and keyboard whenever possible. The PC release of the first game dropped during the height of covid lockdown, and it was extremely poignant as we were all adjusting to a new way of life, much in the same way as the characters in the game were. I’ve never been a massive Kojima fan, but I did really enjoy the quirky lore of the world in this series and look forward to seeing more of it. I may have also developed a crush on Fragile, and am interested in seeing more of how things progress in this world. Troy Baker’s character in this series is also completely batshit crazy, and I am interested in seeing just how over the top he is in this version.
Next up, we have a really freaking cool-looking Castlevania game from some of the folks behind Dead Cells. Not that I necessarily have much to say about this, other than the fact that I will be playing it when it drops. At least based on the trailer, I would guess this is more in line with Castlevania 1 and 3, and not a more role-playing game experience like 2 and Symphony of the Night. I tend to prefer the Castlevania RPG games where you level up and collect gear and such, but it does not mean that I don’t appreciate the more standard platformer style games. It might be a bit more modern platformer than I would like, but we will have to see how it plays. Games like Silksong tend to require a level of manual dexterity that I no longer have with a controller.
We also got more gameplay of Control Resonant, and while I still mourn the fact that we are not playing as Jesse… I love this weird shared universe and will be here on day one regardless. I am really looking forward to just how kooky the world is going to be, given that we are apparently playing with gravity and surfaces. It seems like the corruption of the Oldest House has spilled out into the real world, and I guess New York is suffering as a result. I love the visuals, so this should be a heck of a lot of fun.
Lastly, we got another video update on Tokon Fighting Souls, and while I am not as big a fighting game player as I once was, this game looks like a lot of fun. I am all on board with playing Magik in a fighting game. I am super pumped that Steve Blum is doing the voice for Wolverine as well. I hope that means he will be doing the voice of Wolverine in the game that Insomniac has been working on as well. Anyways, it should be a lot of fun, and will likely look beautiful in blazing 4k on the 65-inch television that I picked up not too long ago. At some point, I really need to hang up a curtain rod so I can put up some blackout curtains over the awkward round window in the livingroom.
There was honestly a bunch of other interesting stuff announced yesterday, so if you have the time it might be worth watching it in the background while doing other things. Either that or, at a minimum, hitting the PlayStation YouTube channel to see if there are any trailers that stand out to you. After showings like this, it really hits home just how far Microsoft is falling behind in this race. They conceded the PlayStation 4 generation, and as a result, lost the generation when everyone shifted to digital purchases. It is going to be nigh impossible to claw their way back from this, especially when Sony keeps dropping banger exclusives left and right. I will probably never be a console-first player, but I doubt I buy another Microsoft console because I have barely used my Xbox. Going forward, I will probably have a Sony console, a Nintendo console, and then my PC for everything else.
Anyways. Was there anything you were super pumped for in the State of Play? Have you been playing the Warlock in Diablo II Resurrected? Drop me a line below.
The post Demonology for Fun and Profit appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Yesterday was Geoff Keighley show of madness known as The Game Awards, and I was motivated to watch because there was a Path of Exile II mtx to be farmed as a twitch drop. I stuck around and watched the entire thing because if I was already a few hours into it… I might as well see the end. Prior to the show we had seen rumors swirling around Diablo IV and the fact that the Paladin was going to be previewed… which is why they had such a god awful league start time of starting up after the show finished airing. What I did not expect was the fact that they shadow dropped the entire Paladin class, pending you were willing to preorder the next expansion. The only sad thing about this… is that because they so hamfistedly planned their league start to stomp right on top of the much more exciting Path of Exile II league start… that I am not sure how many people are actually going to care about this. Blizzard has always had this way of trying to piss on the news from other studios to steal their thunder… but I hate to tell them that they are no longer the massive juggernaut that they once were. Path of Exile 1 and 2… and hell even Last Epoch are doing way more exciting things than Diablo IV is… so they will always be relegated to third or fourth fiddle when it comes to the ARPG community.
I of course fell for the madness and pre-purchased the expansion so I could poke my head in and try out the Paladin. So far I would say this class feels way more akin to the Diablo III Crusader than it does the Diablo II Paladin. The naming is largely just semantics and determins which of the holy orders the character comes from in lore more than anything. I am not shocked they went back to the Paladin as the name, but I am happy that they seem to be following the pattern set forth by the Crusader. That was probably my favorite character from Diablo III, and it makes me wonder if there is going to be an equivalent to Thorns Invoker in this game, which was my single favorite build. Right now I am leaning into the lunge attack that acts as a gap closer and the orbiting hammer throw that shatters into more hammers when it hits things. So far it seems plenty strong but I will be curious to see what endgame builds end up looking like on this class. However I am probably only going to play this over lunch, because once POE2 drops I am going to be focused on that.
Now you are going to get a bunch of trailers and me talking about them. The thing that I am absolutely the most hype about is Control Resonant. The only downside there is that it does not appear like we are playing as Jesse Faden this time. Instead we are going to be playing as her brother. Something has gone horribly wrong at The Oldest House and Jesse appears to be missing. So now we get to go on an adventure to save reality…. and I am so fucking here for this. I love Remedy games, and quite possibly… they are the studio that I now look forward to the most when they drop something new. They are a surreal feast of visuals and the storytelling and lore goes so deep that it feeds my hunger in those departments too. All of the Remedy games are connected… even though they cannot officially be so due to the weird history of how they released titles for various studios. If you ever want to deep dive into this madness… I highly suggest you play everything they have ever released.
In things that I absolutely did not expect… we are getting a sequel to the Knights of the Old Republic games featuring one of the folks from that era Casey Hudson. I have so much hope pinned on this nonsense, and the thing that bolsters me is the fact that it is not coming from Electronic Arts. I realize this is probably five years out at this point… but I can have hope… please god leave me with some shreds of hope. Knights of the Old Republic will always be one of my favorite games to have ever existed, and it is my favorite Star Wars era. I want to be positive about something for once.
Pivoting from the remants of Bioware… to a spiritual successor to Bioware… we got another trailer for Exodus. The disappointing thing about this is that we now know this is not coming until 2027. This game looks amazing and feels like they are leaning hard into the Mass Effect formula. Please god let this be good, because I also need this. Bioware is in shambles, and I have very little faith that Mass Effect 4 is going to be any good. I am okay with starting fresh with a new franchise and new characters to care about…. but what I really want is that good good ship of fools gameplay that Mass Effect provided. Give me a ship, and an interesting crew, and a bunch of cool missions to go on. Let me romance weird aliens and line the halls of my ship with all manner of miscreants. I am probably going to be there on day one if they manage to pull off even half of the joy that was Mass Effect 2.
So something you need to know… is that I fucking love Ma Dong-seok. I have loved him since Train to Busan, and if you have never seen that film… stop what you are doing and go watch it now. Wierd Yakuza adjascent game featuring Ma Dong-seok as the main character? Sign me the hell up. That is all honestly.
Another game that I did not know anything about going into the show was No Law. Mostly I am here for the cyberpunk dystopia. It seems to be some sort of a shooter, and depending on how that plays out I am here for it. Mostly I am just into the visuals of this game. I am hoping it ends up being fun, and not chock full of weird microtransactions and AI Slop since it is coming out from Krafton.
There is a “somehow sebulba has returned” meme floating around and it is delightful. A game that I did not know that I needed was what feels like a spiritual successor to Star Wars Pod Racer on the Nintendo 64. What is cool though is it seems like it is not just pod racers, but also featuring a bunch of speeders. I love a good big dumb racing game, and I am hoping this provides. If nothing else the visuals look really cool.
For the most disturbing game trailer, that goes to Larian for their next Divinity game. They are supposedly taking everything that they have learned making Baldur’s Gate III and then bringing that home to their own Divinity setting. So expect a rich isolemtric CRPG with a truly staggering number of choices. Maybe this will prompt me to actually go back and play Original Sin 1 and 2 so I can get caught up on the lore of this setting. I played Divinity 1 and 2 and loved them, but never could seem to get into Original Sin. If you needed a trailer where children revel while a man is burned alive… while also simultaneously a bunch of random people are fornicating in the front row… you might need to get your head checked. Regardless it was certainly memorable. I loved Baldur’s Gate 3, and I have loved various other Larian games in the past so I am hoping this brings me back into the fold.
Another thing that I did not expect is that we are getting a Total War game set in the Warhammer 40k universe. This is especially confusing because we are just about to get another Dawn of War game, which is also an RTS. It seems like these two games would cannibalize audience from each other. It could simply be that Dawn of War 3 is much closer to release and this is much further out, and we won’t be seeing the Total War game for a few years. Either way I am interested. I’ve heard the Total War Warhammer Fanatasy games were great, though I have never played them.
The last game that I am going to highlight is Highguard, which is a really quirky looking competitive shooter. It sort of reminds me of a bunch of other games that I have played in the past mutated into a single experience. I am not entirely against competitive shooters, but I want the playing field to be level if possible and for there to be other objectives that we are focused on rather than just racking up kills. My favorite competitive shooters were the Enemy Terrritory series with both Wolfenstein and Quake games set in it. This sort of feels like a spiritual successor to that where you seem to be focused on holding objectives and setting up attacks like the siege tower that is built that the group is obviously escorting across the map. I am really interested to see how this plays it. It screams hero shooter to me, and that is ultimately going to determine how much I like it… because if you keep having to buy the latest and greatest hero it is going to limit my joy for the long term.
If you missed the show they released a 4k 60fps version this morning, but be warned it is a 3 hour and 35 minute long commitment. These shows always overstay their welcome, and while I had fun for the first hour or so… I was mostly just wanting to hit the fast foward button from that point on. You truly are better off just checking the YouTube page the next morning and cherry picking the trailers that you want to watch. The award portion of the show always feels like an afterthought, and there is generally one game that wins everything… for example I am pretty sure that Expedition 33 won every award it was up for. I like that there exists something like this, that is now the focal point of the gaming year…. especially with E3 long dead and gone… but in truth I would rather have an event like this once a quarter… that is half as long than have this one big dumb stupidly long event at the end of the year.
Did you watch The Game Awards? What games were you excited about that I did not cover? Drop me a line below.
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Morning Folks! I hope you had a most excellent weekend. This weekend I decided to take a break from my Path of Exile and Audiobook norms and play through Alan Wake II. Currently, the game is available on consoles or for PC on the Epic Game Store… given that EGS helped publish the game I am questioning if it is ever going to make its way to Steam. I guess some background… while I enjoyed the story of Alan Wake, I did not suffer through playing it all the way to completion until the Control DLC hooked me enough to want to see it for myself. I had issues with some of the fiddly gameplay more specifically the flashlight gunplay. At this point I have played Alan Wake Remastered, Quantum Break, Control… and because I was super hooked on the Remedyverse Alan Wake II was probably the game I was looking forward to the most this year.
Does it stick the landing? Yes very much so, but I will warn you the beginning of the game is a bit of a slog as you are going to be back in Bright Falls fumbling through the twilit darkness with a pistol and a flashlight. This time around you are alternating viewpoints between Saga Anderson an FBI agent and partner to Alex Casey (aka Max Payne but Rockstar owns that character), and Alan Wake while trapped in the dreamlike malleable reality of the Dark Place. You can in theory play ALL of the Saga segments aka “Initiation” or all of the Alan Wake segments aka “Return”, but I chose to shift back and forth between the two of them… essentially doing one Saga and then the next Alan Wake until I reached a point where the game warns you that you are reaching the end segment.
One of the things that Remedy has been playing with in all of their games, is the seamless integration of full-motion video with rendered action sequences. Alan Wake II is the game that finally nails this formula as you are constantly subtly blending video and game sequences constantly. Sure there are still world televisions and projectors showing short-form video, but the game goes so far beyond this. Unfortunately, I can’t really give you the most concrete example of this because it would likely spoil the experience. There is one Alan Wake level that might be the best thing I have ever played through in any video game. The Ashtray Maze from Control was a thing of beauty and a real masterclass in level design… but the “We Sing” mission takes this to a whole new level. It will be an absolute shame if this game does not take home several awards at the “Keighlies”.
Remedy learned a lot of lessons while creating Quantum Break and Control and you can see these out on display here. Sure the gameplay isn’t necessarily as tight as a dedicated shooter, but it works so much better than the fumbling attempts made in 2010 with the first Alan Wake. The set design, however… is phenomenal. The Alan Wake segments center around him attempting to rewrite a book in order to find his way out of the Dark Place. As a result, he can go to his “Writers Room” and change set pieces and motivations, which then trigger transformations of the scenes that you are playing through. While extremely surreal, this leads to some truly interesting puzzle-solving behaviors as you are trying to figure out which version of the world you need to be in to progress past obstacles.
Saga has something similar in the form of her “Mind Place” a spot you can return to at any time and sort through details she has collected. You place these on the wall in the stereotypical thumbtacks and red string manner, but correctly placing elements end up unlocking dialog elements and changes your current in-game objectives. This is either going to be something you find really cool or something that frustrates you endlessly, because without placing certain items on the investigation board… you won’t have specific interactable objects appear in the world. There are dialog prompts that will not appear unless you have done the work in your Mind Place in order to reach the logical leap that triggers Saga to ask it. I do somewhat wish there was an “autoplace” option, because if you have somehow fumbled your way to a solution without using the investigation board… the game will do this for you to close out a case.
The best thing for me personally about the game is that it continues to expand out the shared Remedyverse. For example, there is a lot of involvement in the plotline by the Federal Bureau of Control, which gives hints towards the current state of that game universe as I am sure we are heading to Control 2. There are plenty of name-drops from the history of the past games… and I am pretty certain that Sherrif Tim Breaker is supposed to be Jack Joyce from Quantum Break, and similarly Warlin Door is a reference to Martin Hatch from that game as well. The awkward thing about the Remedyverse is that some of the ties will always be a bit tentative because Remedy does not own the rights to a handful of games. Max Payne for example is owned by Rockstar and Quantum Break by Microsoft… and while everyone is pretty certain that Alex Casey is Max Payne that revelation will never quite be as concrete as we might want.
The highlight of the game for me however is the return of Ahti the Janitor. In Control, we ended that game pretty sure that Ahti was some sort of god or at least a multi-dimensional being. Alan Wake II does nothing to dissuade us of this line of thinking as Ahti appears both in The Dark Place and Bright Falls interacting with Saga and Alan. Ahti is a hero from the epic poem The Kalevala (also name-checked in the game) and Ahto is the Finnish god of the sea… so I feel like the Ahti we interact with is somewhere between these. In Control Ahti talks about wanting to go on a much-needed vacation, and I am wondering if the events of Alan Wake II are in fact that “vacation” because he knew he was needed here to see both sides of this tale to its conclusion.
So the question I have been asked already is whether or not I feel like you can enjoy Alan Wake 2 without having played through the rest of the Remedyverse. On a surface level yes, I think you could enjoy yourself or at least enjoy it from the aspect of a very well-designed game. However, it won’t mean as much to you as it has to me, given that you will be missing a bounty of subtle references to the greater Remedyverse and the events of the past. I don’t think this game requires the understanding of these to make your way through the story. It explains enough detail as needed because a lot of your perspective comes from Saga an outsider to Bright Falls and Alan Wake who has had his memory damaged and is very much an unreliable narrator. What you are left with is a very well-crafted and honestly scary game, but if you have bounced off other remedy games… then Alan Wake II might not be for you.
While I am taking this break from Audiobooks, I plan on playing through a handful of other narrative games but for the moment… this is absolutely my game of the year. I mean as I said before I am already sold on the Remedy style of storytelling and feel like this is probably their best game to date. While I enjoyed the action combat of Control more, the storytelling here is phenomenal. They really have nailed blending live-action sequences with game sequences and making the combination greater than the parts. The game as a whole is very much an experience that needs to be played to be truly appreciated.
The post Alan Wake 2 Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Do you ever find yourself not taking action because you can’t wrap your brain around exactly how you want to do something? This is something that has plagued me my entire life as I sit back and overanalyze a situation and end up just postponing actually doing anything. If I am under pressure I am extremely good at making snap decisions, but when I don’t feel that sense of pressure… I tend to sit on something indefinitely without actually ever taking action. So much of my life, I put myself into situations that artificially cause that pressure and tension… so that I actually go through with things.
For example I’ve had an additional camera for our security system for two years now, but never quite got around to figuring out how I wanted to mount it. Yesterday I decided that I would mount it by the end of the day… and in truth, it took me all of ten minutes to do it. However, I spent two years at least once a week mulling over what angle and position I wanted to mount this damned camera when in truth it doesn’t really matter that much. Its entire purpose was to let us watch Tripod, the three-legged calico that has been living in our backyard for going on three years. I put it up and it is finally serving this purpose… and also letting us know that apparently Splotchy, the cat that is patiently waiting on Tripod to finish eating… is back hanging out in our yard again. I think while phantom (the cat we found his original owners for) was around he had made himself scarce.
Last night I made marinated boneless pork ribs and stovetop stuffing and sat down after dinner to play some more Quantum Break. Yesterday I have to admit I was not entirely sold on this game but felt obligated to see it through to the end. Yesterday however the game hooked me and by the time I got through the fourth chapter I am honestly on pins and needles to see how this all shakes out in the end. I have to give credit to Remedy for a handful of things. Firstly they make extremely interesting landscapes for your characters to roam around in. Even in Alan Wake which was basically a blue-toned rainy woods simulator… there were some absolutely stunning setpieces. Control was a visual feast and each time you discovered a new area you were introduced to some situation that should not be able to exist in the real world.
The other thing that I have to give them credit for is creating very interesting stories. A time travel story is something that has been done so many times, but they managed to figure out a way to make this feel fresh. I guess another aspect of this is that they seem to be able to capture really great acting performances both with in-camera live-action sequences worthy of a high production value show and in the orchestration of assets to create very believable digital actors. I mean I have been impressed by acting performances in games before, but always it was in the voice-over delivery… never really in the digital manifestation of those actors in video game form. Sure there is a noticeable difference… but it feels natural when you shift between the player-controlled digital sequences and the live-action denouement at the end of each chapter.
It is extremely likely that I am going to wrap this up in a few hours this evening, and now I am not really sure what I am going to roll into next. Right now I am thinking probably Ghost of Tsushima, which I left in a very partially completed state on the PlayStation 5. My goal for today… like my goal of putting up the camera yesterday… is to stop calculating how to do it… and just move my PS5 setup downstairs to live beside the Xbox Series X. Ultimately this NEEDS to happen before Horizon Forbidden West launches next week. Essentially most of this single-player gaming has been me in a holding pattern until that game releases, but I have been greatly enjoying this time.
One of the core problems that I have playing MMOs is the constant sense of FOMO that they instill in the player base. There is always some new thing that is coming around the corner and will only be available for a limited amount of time. Be this a new season in Destiny, a holiday event in FFXIV, or the feeling of needing to do your daily chores so that you don’t fall behind in World of Warcraft. It is the aspect of those games that I like the least and honestly, over the last few years, it has been one of the major turn-offs. Instead of making me want to engage and no-life something until I have ticked all of the boxes… it makes me want to check out completely and not even participate.
Playing all of these single-player games has made me realize that more or less they are completely immune to FOMO. The game exists as it is and the experience will more or less be the same if I play it tomorrow or if I play it three years from now. They are experiences that happen on my schedule and on my terms. There is no need to rush around and make sure that I get this thing done by this deadline… because the game will always be there waiting on me. That is not to say that I don’t want to play MMORPGs anymore, but this week and watching the zeitgeist scurry around Lost Ark has made me realize that maybe just maybe I am done for a while. I greatly enjoyed the story of Endwalker and I do want to return at some point and play more… but I also don’t really feel like I am on a specific timetable for that.
The post A Land Without FOMO appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
