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Archives for January 2017

In My Digital Hands

January 24, 2017 by Tony Leave a Comment

I didn’t get in on the ground floor with the Resident Evil series. My first foray into the series was the RE remake on the Gamecube but I never finished it. When Resident Evil 4 hit, however, I was instantly hooked and RE4 kinda became “my thing” around these parts. I have played through RE4 more times than I can remember on more than one system. The Mercenaries (in RE4) is easily the greatest minigame ever and I will snap your neck H.U.N.K.-style if you say otherwise.

I ran through Resident Evil 5 co-op with my bro-in-law. That was a fine game and all but it didn’t capture the RE4 magic. I skipped Resident Evil 6 altogether (although it’s patiently waiting in my Steam Library for whenever I feel like loading it up). Early buzz has been positive for Resident Evil 7. I am ready.

I am also going to try my hand at this streaming thing. Nick (aka Subotonic on Twitch) has had the Twitch game going for a little while now, but it’s my turn to give it a go. I’ll be doing some late-night RE7 streaming, starting tonight hopefully. If you want to follow along with my antics, throw me a follow on Twitch and turn notifications on. Then tune in and watch me get skurred from all the scary bad guys!

Filed Under: Gaming Tagged With: RE4, RE5, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 7, Streaming, Twitch

What we’ve been playing

January 11, 2017 by Tony Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, so I figured now would be as good as ever to talk a little bit about what we’re playing:

What Tony is Playing

I declared 2017 to be the year of finishing games, and that is what it will be. I kinda, sorta wished I didn’t pick two huge, sprawling games to start with, but that’s where I am.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is the first one to get attention and I’m now committed. It carefully follows the Bioware Way of Doing Things™ — a huge over-arching storyline, a group of disparate characters to amass as a companionship (each with their own storybranch that can be completed or completely ignored) and sidequests out the wazoo. Sometimes very incongruent to the storyline, like in Mass Effect 3 when you took time out from stopping the impending Galactic Annihilation to go find some idiot trader’s lost shipment. It doesn’t makes sense that I should take some flowers to some elf’s dead girlfriend’s grave when the Devil himself is coming for The Maker’s throne, but if it’s going to net me an inquisition agent, I guess I’m going to drop off these dang flowers.

But the main story is keeping me engaged and like a good page turner, I’m going from quest to quest with very little extracurricular activities. As a whole, this game and this world is polished. While not as open-world-y as Skyrim, DA:I feels enormous.

I don’t know where I stand, completion-wise, in DA:I. I also don’t know how complete I will play through the game. I reckon I’ll do most companion quests and put a huge dent in all the other sidequests, but I don’t know if I’ll 100 percent the collections or not. But for now, the Inquisition is coming together quite nicely, thank you very much.

When DA:I is finally vanquished, Fallout 4 will be the next to go.

I decided to finally take the plunge and join the rest of the Crew in Overwatch. The Black Friday deal pushed me over the edge, and even though I was very hesitant to give the game a try, I’m really enjoying it. I am not what you would call a good keyboard and mouse guy, but the game is forgiving enough to feel like I’m doing something right. Most of the time I have no idea what is going on, but I am starting to feel comfortable playing a few of the heroes, including Junkrat and Soldier 76.

Diablo 3’s newest season started last Friday, which will probably get some attention from me when I’m tired of the Dragon Age slog. It still counts as finished game, even if I’ve “finished” it a dozen times already, right?

What Nick is Playing

I hit the wall with video games a few months ago.

Nah, I didn’t just hit the wall; I hit the wall and then detonated, splattering myself across the surface, of which I have only just recently started scrubbing off the residual effects from such an event.

I have grown weary of stats, of leveling up, of painting the map. Stealth and pacifist runs bore me to tears. Frantic and bombastic runs quickly lose their lustre. I grumble at action point mechanics and chance-to-hit percentages. Crafting can be tedious and dull, as is sifting through caches of gear to equip that one item that has a mere 3% more fire dmg or whatever.

The thought of applying myself to have to learn a new game gave me boulder brain. I had spread myself way too thin.

Enter: Euro Truck/American Truck Simulator.

These titles have been the personal anchors during this weird and stupid and turbulent time within my hobby as a gamer. Driving trucks through the stretches of the Nevada desert or through the serpentine fjords of Scandinavia cleansed my gaming palette.

I find these games to be very soothing, enhanced even more so by my own iTunes playlists. All the commotion and static and heaviness of IRL fades to nothing in the rear view mirror. No ingame pressure. No crafting. No endless NPC dialog trees. No competition. It’s just you, your 20 tons of cargo, and the open road. And I come out on the other end with a clear, de-cluttered head and with jangled nerves settled – slowly rebuilding my desire to venture into the video game world once again.

What James is Playing

My gaming has been less as of late, there’s a post coming about that by the way. =)

Erryday I’m playing some Marvel Puzzle Quest so that’s my staple and go to when I need a fix. Otherwise, my time is being divided up between Dota 2 (the 7.00 patch changed a lot of things for the better), Overwatch, and Diablo 3. I’ve started up a Demon Hunter for Season 9 and I’m 100% sure I’ll get him to a higher level than my previous attempts. I’m feeling like I’ll be playing more Diablo 3 for a while. I kind of felt that Diablo bug starting to creep back in.

Filed Under: Gaming Tagged With: Diablo 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Euro Truck Simulator, Overwatch

Weekend Gaming

January 6, 2017 by Tony Leave a Comment

It’s the first full weekend of 2017, so what’s on tap? What gaming do you see in your future?

For me, I’m declaring 2017 the year of finishing games. I have so many hanging storylines that it’s practically fringe on the Pile-of-Shame leather coat I wear. I decided late last year that I was going to wrap up at least one of the triple-A titles that I had started. So that meant I went back to both Fallout 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition. I did a quick review of quest journals and reacquainted myself with where I left things and resolved to bring both games to a close. The initial plan was to alternate playing the two games, an hour of Fallout here, an hour of Dragon Age there. Seemed like a good plan at the time.

What actually happened was that Dragon Age dug its claws in deep. It took me a couple hours to get my bearings and to remember what I was actually supposed to be doing but now I’m up to speed and I’m in the process of bringing peace to Thedas once again.

Initially, I was focusing solely on the main thrust of the storyline, racing headlong into finishing the game and moving on. I had amassed all the companions and had found a team that seemed to work really well. Then, as I worked through the story dialog of each companion, I realized they were asking me to complete personal tasks for them. It was Mass Effect 2 (which is currently free, BTW) all over again. The companion quests have me revisiting parts of the map I had moved on from, encountering NPCs that previously shunned me now being open to my quest to amass an Inquisition of formidable proportions.

So this weekend is going to be mostly Dragon Age for me, perhaps with a little interlude to check out the Diablo 20th Anniversary events going on in Diablo 3.

What are you playing this weekend?

Filed Under: Gaming Tagged With: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fallout 4

January Releases

January 3, 2017 by Tony Leave a Comment

For the new year, we’re playing around with the format of the list of games coming out this month. In the past, we’ve just listed the games with a little commentary. This month, we’re trying a more graphical approach. The Steam section requires a little work, we’re not quite sure how to do that, since Steam doesn’t have box art. We’ll figure something out. If you have any feedback, please let us know in the comments! On to this month’s releases:

Microsoft Xbox One

Week of January 10th

Week of January 24th


Nintendo Wii-U

No new releases.


Nintendo 3DS

No new releases.


PC

Week of January 10th
Illyriad
Alien Shooter TD
DED

Week of January 17th
Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach
M.E.R.C.
Urban Empire

Week of January 24th
Tales of Berseria
RESIDENT EVIL 7

Week of January 31st
Disgaea 2 PC
Conan Exiles


Sony Playstation 4

Week of January 17th

Week of January 24th


Sony Playstation Vita

Week of January 17th


What are you picking up this month?
(Note: As always, all Amazon.com links have our affiliate code embedded in them. If you purchase something through our link, we get a little commission. It’s appreciated.)

Filed Under: Gaming

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