This week I spread my gaming time around more than I have in the past few. I played some PC games, and also dove into some of the Playstation Plus offerings for the month, along with finishing off one game, and playing another that a friend of mine let me borrow. It’s been pretty sweet, having multiple titles keeping my attention, but I have also been out and about socializing so that takes up time as well. So where to begin?

We’ll start with the Playstation side of things. I ended up finally going back and beating the Duck Tales Remastered game. I had been on the last level as it was, but for whatever reason didn’t get back to finishing that up until yesterday. I had been on my PS3 playing various games anyhow, saw it, and remembered that it was almost completed. So the last level was kind of a bitch, only because you have to make it through the level, beat a boss, and then race to the finish in a platforming spree, all on 2 lives. Not super difficult, but annoying when you don’t complete the whole thing and have to do it over again. With the game finally complete, I removed it from my hard drive.

I played some Rogue Legacy, as it was one of the freebies, and I already knew I enjoyed it. The trophies/achievements will definitely take some time though. I knew I already had a few on the PC side of things, but having to start over from scratch means doing some of the same things again. I managed to earn one, just for playing a character that had no traits, but that’s after having played through 20+ lives. No other trophies came my way. I did manage to get some recipes and gear/runes equipped, along with opening up a couple of classes and the ability to lock the castle. I found the first boss again, and though I beat him on the PC version, haven’t managed to down him yet on this version. I’ll get back around to it eventually. I think it actually plays slightly better on the PS3 than it did on the PC, and it seems like the perfect Vita game.

I was pleasantly surprised by the new Thief reboot that was another Plus freebie. I had read reviews of the game, including things some of my fellow bloggers had said about it, and the overall gist was that it fell short of what made the original such a great game. From what I remember of the original game, this one is similar, though a little more linear. The missions tend to be pretty straight forward, though there is some room for you to choose how to go about what you do to complete the level. I only made it a few missions in, so I assume it opens up more as the game goes on, as the first couple of levels were pretty constricted. I do like the fact that there is an emphasis on stealing stuff (not something I remember doing much of in the original) and the different gadgetry is still very much a part of the game. It does feel a little more cinematic, having more cutscenes and dialogue, but we’re talking about remake of a game from almost 20 years ago, these differences are bound to be apparent. Overall, I enjoyed the time spent with it, and will definitely try to get it finished in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe.

A long time ago, my best friend lived in a beach town down south. He had many friends out there, but eventually moved to the shitty little town that I lived in. He stayed in contact with some of those friends, and one of them used to come and visit us while we were still roommates. I have had him as a friend on PSN and have had his number for years, but we rarely saw each other. Well, it turns out that since I’ve moved to LA, he also moved within 15 minutes of me. I just found out about this a couple of months back, and we have been seeing each other here and there. The other day I went to his house and ended up checking out the PS4, PSVita, and XBOne. I had never played any of these systems before, and I have to say I really want to get my hands on a PS4/Vita really soon now. The Vita is an impressive system, the only downfall being its size. I was playing  Street Fighter X Tekken against him, and after a few matches my hands started to hurt. I suppose this is something that could be rectified by more use, or perhaps some sort of peripheral. Still, I loved the system. I also loved seeing next gen consoles in action. Later, he told me that he had a PS3 copy of South Park: The Stick of Truth and was really talking it up. He said that he wasn’t playing it anymore, and that I should borrow it, which I did.

Not only is it a spot on recreation of South Park, with the signature characters, humor, cursing, and ridiculousness, but it’s a surprisingly solid RPG experience as well. It reminds me of a cross between JRPGs and Costume Quest. In the picture above, I’m the character with the blue hoodie, and the guy below me is Butters. The other guys are Elves whom my group is at war with, trying to regain control of the Stick of Truth. It’s basically the Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter South Park episode, but stretched out into a whole game. So the battles play out in turn based fashion, like FF games, but it has timing integrated into it, where you have to hit certain keys when flashes appear on the screen to do more damage, or hit a button when being attacked to block part of the damage (this is the part reminiscent of Costume Quest). There’s much more to the combat system (including throwing poop at someone, which earns you a trophy), but that’s all I’m going into for now. Just know that if you can stomach South Park and enjoy JRPG systems, you’ll enjoy this game. For being a title I wrote off thinking it would be retarded, I’m now glad that I’ve given it a chance.

On the PC side of things, I jumped back into H1Z1 after having taken about a week off from it. There had been issues with the loot for a while and after they fixed it, I had a really stocked up character, but then the Devs decided to do server wipes, so that character disappeared along with all of his gear. I had intended to get on and do an air drop beforehand, because it was said on Reddit that air drop tickets would be topped off at 3 again (so I’d basically get to test it out without losing anything in the process), but I didn’t end up getting on that day. Bummer. So the other day I decided that I would get on with my freshly rolled character and go do an air drop. When I tried calling it in, I was met with this message:

I knew I had read about this somewhere, but apparently that means I’m either on too small of a server, or I ended up on too late at night. Either way, that was frustrating. I’m going to try again soon, because I want to see just how much that really changes things. I was watching some videos on YouTube earlier, and I’m now very interested in trying out the Battle Royale, because it sounds like a pretty awesome game mode. Basically, you don’t have to worry about hunger or hydration, and the loot is limited to weapons and storage space (backpacks and stuff like that). A huge amount of players start in the world, and then the world shrinks. As it gets down to the wire, a toxic gas cloud creeps in and kills more off. Eventually the last person standing wins. They also remove Zombies so you just have to worry about players. A nice change of pace. Here’s another screen shot, just because. I think the game is pretty.

Lastly, I’ve still been playing League of Legends, and I have focused all of my energy into playing ranked games. As I wrote before, I had dropped to Bronze III, and was working my way back up. I managed to get promoted back into Bronze II, and I have gone up and down a little at this point. I think I should be able to get back to Bronze I (where I started the season) by this time next week, if I still get in about the same amount of game time. I really want to get to Silver and get away from the terrible idiots in Bronze! But, just to share, here’s a snapshot of my terrible stats:

You can also check out all of my ranked games over here on the official site. Those games can then be clicked on and you can see stats for everyone from the game. It seems like most of my losses come from either someone feeding or leaving, the team wanting to surrender and basically giving up, or when I have a terrible game and do any of the above. In most cases I have done pretty well, but there have been some games where the loss was my fault, I have to admit. Anyway, no where to go but up. Overall I have had the most success while playing support, with Morgana being the best (I’m 5-1 with her) and then Braum (4-2). Surprisingly I haven’t had as much success with Sona this year, but I have won a couple of games. I’m also surprised after having won so many normal games with Maokai, Wukong, Cait, Corki and Pantheon that I only have a couple wins between all of them. Circumstances I guess. That’s all for this week.

#stateofthegame #roundup