This last week I spent most of my time playing games I’ve already made posts about, but also doing the usual session based grind. I’ve spent some time trying to further some other creative endeavors, such as starting up a podcast and possibly setting up a streaming schedule. I’ve also been toying around with more recordings, and I’ll be posting one here shortly.

As far as the Podcast goes, me and my partners had a brainstorming session early in the week and we have decided on a name for the show, and a general format scheme. We’re actually going to do some practice recording sessions soon so that I can start learning to edit. Depending on how that goes, we might record our first show next weekend for release on the following Monday/Tuesday. I’m really looking forward to doing this and I hope that we get a good response.

As far as Streaming goes, I’m just toying with ideas of potentially finding a schedule and perhaps even a theme. However, I am limited a little bit due to this machine not exactly being new, so I can’t exactly stream anything that I want. With that said, I was thinking of focusing on Hearthstone or maybe even Roguelikes. This is still in the works and might come down the pipeline.

Lastly on the creative front, I don’t think I mentioned that I picked up the RPG Maker Humble Bundle that was going on last week (It’s over now). For a buck I got RPG Maker VX Ace and a couple add-ons, plus games made with the software. I always thought it would be cool to put some of my ideas into a game, and I’m very fond of the old school JRPGS. It turns out my good friend Doone has had the program for a while and seems to already know what he’s doing with it. As a result, he proposed that we work on something together. I threw him an idea I had for a comic book or maybe a novel, and he seems to think it’s good enough to make something out of. I have yet to use the program as I have been focusing on other things, but I plan to have a virtual sit-down with him in the near future to learn. Ok, now that that’s done, on to what I’ve been playing:

Hearthstone: It’s been more of the same, where I wait a day or two so that quests pile up, then I go ahead and clear a few, run an Arena and then wait a couple more days. I haven’t had any good cards from packs, and I’m anxiously awaiting the expansion from which new cards keep getting teased. Aside from that, here’s a video of my last Arena run, or at least part of it. I had a decent Warlock deck and went on a 6-0 run before losing to a Druid. I called it a night at that point, but I will continue that run at a later time (and will let you guys know so you can see the rest). I actually did commentary throughout, but there’s a chunk of like 5-10 minutes near the middle where I must have moved my mic into a bad angle, cause you can hear breathing, and that’s rather annoying. So you can mute it if you like, I won’t be offended.

Awesomenauts: I have been playing on the console with my roommate again, and the other day we just could not be stopped. We literally played probably 10+ matches and won every single one. As a result, I have risen through the leaderboards that much more, and have broken into the 800 range. That’s officially the highest I’ve been. On the PC side, I’ve made a couple of friends from playing, so I’ve had some group time there as well. However, the leaderboard system works a bit differently, so I’m stuck with a rating of ~12000 (as opposed to the rating of ~17000 on the console). I haven’t been able to dominate as readily, partly due to the increased tactical difference that extra nauts bring, but also because of balance changes that occurred between the time of release and now. Basically, things that are stupidly OP in the console version have been fixed on the PC version, disallowing me to utilize those. But it’s ok, I still have a lot of fun and I don’t necessarily need to be at the top (just close!)

League of Legends: I didn’t play a lot of league, but I did get some games in with my Brother-in-law and a couple of the NBI peeps. Mostly I played Mirror Matches, but that game mode is coming to an end soon. I enjoyed that more in the first few days than I did later on though, because some of the champions are just not suited for that mode. Try playing as one of ten Tarics, and you will feel my pain. It also seems to point out that there are far too many people who don’t know how to play anything but a few of the champs. I realize that the game isn’t played in a hardcore fashion by everyone, but some people just don’t know how to play anyone. I have played the game casually for a few years. In that time I can say with a certain amount of confidence that I can play all but 10% of the champions well. Even in that 10% of champs that I don’t play well, I still at least contribute a little something to the team. I actually saw a player literally stand still and let themselves die, and then stand in spawn the rest of the match because he “didn’t know how to play that champ.” The kicker was that he didn’t even tell me that when I was bitching about him being AFK. His friend had to speak for him. I realize it’s a game mode that’s supposed to be “for fun” but I still think that people need to try at least, or else they ruin four other people’s fun. Also, the Pentakill album released. It’s pretty good. Go download it.

The Forest: Awesome game. Go check out my full post.

Shadowrun Returns: Another great game, for completely different reasons. My playthrough starts here.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: My Dad gifted me a copy of this game a couple of months ago, but due to my obsession with Diablo III at the time, I didn’t want to play it. After I was done with D3 it was still hard to see the point in playing it because I was kind of burnt on the action RPG thing. It doesn’t take long to realize you’re doing the same shit and expecting different results <— definition of crazy, btw. So this game collected dust. I was motivated to play it for another reason than just pure boredom, but I’ll get to that in a bit. When I fired this up the other day, I was surprised that it supported a controller. I probably wouldn’t have even known had I not already had a controller plugged in (as I never unplug it). Rather than unplugging and playing with keyboard and mouse, I decided to try out the game with the controller (I’m really lazy). I was amazed at how well the control scheme worked for the game. It actually feels like it was designed for a console. I’m curious if the sequel does the same. Anyhow, it’s steampunkish, and based on old Transylvanian lore. Or something to that effect. Really, I didn’t care, it was just fun to blast things with guns and then charge into the fray with a huge 2-hander. The game does some things differently than traditional ARPGs, and that’s a good thing in my book. Still, I see this as a game I blow through once and move on from.

Warframe: A gift I received for all the work I put into the NBI was a gamer gift card. It was used for multiple online games, and served as a means for someone to gift me in-game cash, to a game of my choosing. After perusing the list of mostly Korean MMOs and other F2P titles I had little-to-no interest in, I found out that Warframe was supported. I had been seeing things about the game recently on Steam and around the net, so I thought I’d give it a try, and dump the money there if the game suited me. The game does suit me, though it’s lore and design is a little weird. Still, ignoring that and just admiring the pretty graphics and solid gameplay mechanics, I found a game that’s a co-op shooting dream. It’s been a lot of fun and the Platinum earned via that card was nice for buying more Warframes (playable suits – think characters) and appearance stuff. Mostly everything is supposed to be available via in-game blueprints, but now I don’t have to wait for one of them to drop for me, as I got a little head start. Now I just need some friends to join in (hint hint)

So I’ve fallen into a new pattern of selling off the Steam Trading Cards. At first I was hoarding them, only selling off the doubles, but I have since decided that I could care less about them, and selling them for $0.10 a piece is still better than them virtually collecting dust. I’ve probably made close to $10 already, though I’ve spent that (was how I got the Forest for next to nothing). This is also the real reason why I played Van Helsing, and a motivating factor to play a couple other games in my library that I haven’t yet. Those cards add up over time, and sometimes Steam sales are pretty damn cheap, so it’s easy money for when something good pops up.

That’s it for this week. Happy Gaming.