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.