Magic the Gathering: Arena grabbed my attention again after our friend group picked up the cards again. When I dont play modern stuff I’ll boot up my PS2 and play Monster Hunter 2 (DOS) online. Some smart folks brought back a private server for the old PS2 era games. Great Community (MHOLDSCHOOL Discord, also hosts of the Server) and a change of pace.
I finished my second run of Baldur's Gate 3 with the Ghost Recon team. I made sure to finish up some major side quests I passed the first time around, and to avoid spoilers, let's just say that my team was so effective that I got the Interfectorem Draconis achievement in one turn. This was still only on balanced difficulty, but now that I've played through the entire game with this team, I'm confident it would work on tactician.
I also started and finished Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty this past weekend. BG3 really illustrates you how much more freedom that game gives you compared to most AAA RPGs. Cyberpunk definitely accounts for different builds in a variety of ways, but they're all predetermined options for you that the game explicitly allowed for, as opposed to BG3's more systemic approach that allows you to be more creative. So it reminded me how Cyberpunk is a pretty decent RPG, but in a world where we get basically no FPS campaigns anymore, it's just about all we've got on that front, and it does a better than decent job of scratching that itch. There was one mission I didn't care for, and of the two mandatory boss fights, they mostly entailed sprinting around the room in circles until the boss gives you an opportunity to return fire. Other than those complaints though, it was solid. The story was good, the missions were fun, the presentation was excellent; I'd recommend it if you want more Cyberpunk.
I picked up Dungeons of Aether as a second-screen game while podcasts are on. I expected this to be more of a roguelike, but it's not really. I can't say how much procedural generation there is, because I haven't failed a mission yet, but I'm more inclined to just call it a strategy game that uses dice. I'm totally fine with that; it's just not what I expected. The game is pretty fun so far.
I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria with a group of friends. It’s pretty janky at times, but the vibe is pretty fun and we’re all LotR nerds to some degree, so it’s been fun arguing about where the devs were lore friendly and where they colored outside the lines. It’s also nice to play a survival crafting game like this that has no PvP so the balancing can be entirely based on PvE play, which means the grind isn’t anywhere near the level of Ark or Conan. I’d say it’s a more janky little brother of Grounded with a LotR coat of paint and some pretty cool level design.
We had dozens of preorders for Mortal Kombat 2 for the SNES. We got 8 copies in at our Software Etc. and did not get any new inventory for over a month. It was crazy.
PS3 console has to be in the top. New enough that it brought out lots of diverse people. Perfect holiday timing as everyone wanted one and wanted to scalp them. Coupled with general violence it was a wild time.
I got mine camping outside for a couple days. Had to be police escorted to our vehicles. A few minutes prior at a location 15mins away, somebody was shot in the parking lot and robbed for their PS3. That was a typical American experience there…
The greatest midnight launch I attended was GTAV for PS3 at GameStop. They hired a DJ and had it setup just outside the shop and they were spinning songs featured in GTA soundtracks across the series. There were tons of people queued up and the line wrapped around the store. Everyone just chatting about what they thought it would be like.
The one I remember most was while working for a games retailer. The Pokemon Game Boy games caused mayhem. Not enough product and so many angry parents.
A number of games over the years have had that. The only one I witnessed myself (and feel is was more the console release) was Halo. I attended a midnight launch and that was just crazy. I was also working for a retailer at the time of the original Modern Warfare launch which was pretty hectic. We had some people that had be queuing for nearly 7 hours.
Others have been the release of the Wii and the PlayStation 3 which I was also present for.
After the Xbox escapade, I vowed never to bother with those releases but just ended up working for a retailer where it was part of my job.
Throughout the early 2000s to early 2010s most AAA game releases had midnight launches. I remember going to the midnight launch of the first WoW expansion and the queue at my local EB Games at 11:30pm was wild. Never seen so many people in a shopping centre so late. Some of the best memories were hanging out with my family in the queue for the games and the real liminal space energy the otherwise empty shopping centre gave.
The only thing similar these days are people camping out for a new iPhone.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne