Welcome back! The holiday weekend is coming to a close, and that means it’s back to games and back to blogging. I think now is a good time to give you guys a conglomoblog with details on what I’ve been up to and where I see things going in the second half of 2015.
Right now there just isn’t a log going on in the MMO sphere. MMOs really are my bread and butter, but over the last two years I have really embraced other avenues of gaming. I’m hoping to see 2016 be a year for MMOs, but that’s a discussion we’ll likely have 6 months from now. In terms of MMOs, you know I am still playing on the EQ progression server and dabbling in ESOTU.
What I’m playing
My two main go-tos right now are Assassin’s Creed Unity and Splatoon. My wife and I are playing Unity together and easily over 25 hours in with a bit more to go. She loves the history, and I love the gameplay of being an assassin in a semi-open-world. I have to say though that Unity is lacking compared to Black Flag and the Ezio series. I just bought Assassin’s Creed Rogue on Amazon (on sale for $9.99 on PS3); Rogue came out at the same time as Unity but received no marketing at all and is actually heralded by many reviewers as one of the best in the entire series. I will definitely write up my thoughts on Rogue upon playing.
Splatoon remains some of the best fun I’ve had on a console. Nintendo has provided continual FREE updates to the game since launch including more weapons, maps, game modes, and special events. The word I would use to best describe Splatoon isn’t a technical term like “FPS” or “Shooter” — Splatoon is a playful game. I hope the attention Nintendo has given to the online game here translates into their new online service coming soon.
Where I want to go…
I’ve decided just now as I write this to hold off on telling you in this post my plans. I’m going to turn that into a post for tomorrow morning. I’ll just throw a teaser in here and say it’s something I have wanted to do for some time but haven’t had the time or the freedom to do so until now.
Definitely looking forward to the rogue write up, I really loved black flag, though I have skipped out on most of the alternate AC games and only played the 1-4 ones, but I have been itching a bit for that kind of gameplay again.
Personally I have been playing the stuff I picked up on the steam summer sale (which included some stuff that I don’t even remember if it was on sale but I found while browsing.) I have found myself moving back towards RPG’s or Strategy games mostly, spending quite a bit of time playing through Shadowrun Returns and Dragonfall DC and some mods for them, as well as a LOT of time on europa universalis 4.
And lastly Grim Dawn, a nice little ARPG that I believe is still in early access but just released close to their last beta and expected to be fully released this year. Not sure if you have tried it but it’s by a lot of the same team that did Titan Quest and the class system is almost identical though the classes themselves are different. It’s kind of a post apocalyptic fantasy setting with the early melee weapons being things like scrap sword and sawblade axes, weapons cobbled together from the remains of civilization. I’ve been enjoying it quite a lot.
I have had the Grim Dawn early access purchased for over a year now. I played for a few hours back then and decided to just hold off until the game launched.
I remember seeing Grim Dawn about a year ago. I held off on buying it but I will probably try it once it is released.
Oh, and PoE’s new expansion releases July 10th. Going to be a total revamp. New UI stuff. The passive tree gets even crazier. You can socket it with gems now. Tons of new skills and items. I’ll be playing on the Warband league when that comes out.
And Diablo’s new patch is in testing. Go go ARPGs, lol.
@Keen: Ya, I had been holding off for awhile but I saw they had released the final act and seems like most everything but the final class is done or close so gave it a try. Really enjoying it.
@Gringar: Ya ARPGS are looking up, each one is a different flavor as well so it’s easy (at least for me) to play them all. Though I have a hard time playing PoE for a long time, for some reason I don’t like that all of the classes can use the same skills and the same skill tree.
im playing Albion online now and is awesome.
i dont remember if you played the 1st alpha but this 2nd alpha is better and the game is the perfect sandbox for UO fans.
I feel like I’ve played Albion Online for like 2 years now. I know that I got in during the early waves of public/press invites. I really, really enjoyed playing.