I’m a day late for the round up this week, mainly because I spent yesterday watching playoff football and then totally spaced it. Speaking of which, in my last “By The Numbers” post I accurately predicted two out of the four games correctly, but I really think the Cowboys should have lost to the Lions, but you probably already heard about the controversy if you happen to follow professional football.

Anyway, this week, just like the past couple of weeks, has been a bit busy so I didn’t spend a whole lot of time gaming. I managed to check out a game that’s not new but I had never played before, along with spending some time in some of the usual titles in my rotation. I still haven’t gotten back to Legend of Grimrock or Divinity: Original Sin despite meaning to play them each and every day. I’ve hit this wall where I’m more focused on real life stuff and less focused on gaming — waves that I go through periodically. We’ll start with the game I’ve played the most through the week, Nuclear Throne.

Nuclear Throne has been in Early Access for a year, and I’ve had it since early 2014. It’s a fantastic game, and there have been continuous weekly updates making it even better. A new feature was added not too long ago, called a Daily Run. Because the game is a Rogue-like and uses procedural generation for the levels, a daily run is a randomly generated level that everyone who plays the game gets to participate in. You only get one life though, so when you die, depending on how you do you’ll end up with a rank amongst all the other people who played that same level that day. It’s an interesting concept to say the least. I have been doing that almost daily, and otherwise just playing the game over and over again. I still have yet to complete the game, but I did manage a new personal best, and it happened to be during one of those daily runs. I recorded some video of my playing (I actually streamed it then ported it over to YouTube), and managed to capture that awesome run. Here’s the video:

I left a comment on my channel there under the video, as at the beginning I had to mess with some settings and my daily run starts later in the video. You can click the times in my comment to jump to the appropriate places in the video. I’ve been having fun despite basically playing the beginning stuff over and over again. Like any Rogue-like, this is how it goes, yet this game remains appealing whereas others have become boring after a time. I’m curious to see how many more changes occur before the game is officially released. Also, the devs decided to give every owner of the game a free copy to give to a friend. I’m still holding onto my extra copy, as no one I’ve asked was interested and no one responded to me on Twitter about it (save for somebody random, and I’d prefer to give it to a friend). So if you would like to try out this game, drop me a line and I’ll give you the copy.

The game I played that I had never tried before was none other than Planetside 2. I never really gave it much thought in the past because I had played the original, and though it had it’s moments, it got boring rather quickly. I also was more into traditional MMOs at the time. Between then and now I also tried Dust 514 which is rather similar, and though I enjoy the idea of an open world shooter, most of those which I have played have bored me (read: Planetside, Dust 514, Defiance, Firefall, the Battlefield series). I’ve always been more into the lobby shooter, which most FPS games have, where you can drop in, get to the action and log off when you’re done. Still, I heard people talking about it and saw a post over on Welshtroll’s blog about it, and decided I should give it a try, it’s free after all.

The game is pretty cool. I like the sci-fi feel, I enjoy the gun play, the vehicles seem pretty cool, but there is definitely an overwhelming amount of information thrown at you with little explanation. Planetside vets will probably feel at home, but the tutorial for complete noobs only describes parts of what you need to know. Welsh was nice enough to tell me he would give me a run down on everything, but I played it when he would have been sleeping so I was running blind. I ran with the Vanu Sovereignty because their mission statement appealed to me. I mostly played a light assault class, and my name in game is Izlain of course. I managed to play for a couple of hours and ran around the map trying to contribute, but ended my session without a single kill, capture, anything. It was a fruitless effort.

The game is pretty, but it does seem to bog down my system when I get into a really crowded area. Running around by myself was fine, but the warzones tended to slow me down, hampering my accuracy, and I think that’s why I didn’t get kills or do much. That and trying to figure out everything. Driving around on ATVs was pretty fun though:

Another time I’ll have to check out the flying ships, that seems like it would be a blast. So Welsh, if you’re reading this, let’s coordinate a time to run together!

Otherwise I spent a little bit of time in Diablo III, just running around with the Hardcore Monk in Act V, gaining a couple of levels and getting through a few missions. He’s still alive and kicking, I think I might actually get him to the level cap without dying! I hope I didn’t just jinx myself. I also played my Wizard a bit too, just doing a couple of bounties and rifts and he’s gained a few more Paragon levels. Nothing too fancy, just slow methodical progress in between playing other things.

Lastly, the Snowdown event is still happening in League of Legends and I’ve been playing the Poro King game mode. I’m about to hit 6300 IP so I’ll be able to buy a new champion but with the choices I have remaining, it’s getting harder to choose which champion I want to buy. I basically have most of the ones I really want. There are still a few left on my list, but eventually it will be to the point that I’ll be buying champions just to “catch em all.” I’ve only been playing here and there, not as religiously as I was in the past month. I’m basically waiting for the new season to begin so I can start practicing again, pick a handful of champs to roll with, and hit the ranked queues. I’m going for gold this season!

That’s about all for this week. Til next time.

#stateofthegame #roundup