It’s been a while since I’ve done a round up post, and if you’re wondering why this hasn’t been a weekly occurrence lately, I did mention the last time I did one of these posts that I was going to relegate it to “when necessary.” This means I’ll only make a State of the Game post when I have a multitude of titles to talk about and/or haven’t posted in a while. Real life has kept me afk a bit, but mainly when it comes to posting here; I’ve still been playing games of course.

Overall I’ve spent the most time playing League of Legends as usual. There’s been a bunch of news coming down the pipeline, and I have a bunch of links rounded up for your viewing pleasure. First of all, patch 5.13 is about to hit (or already did) and with it there are the typical tweaks and changes, the biggest being the adjustments to the cost of Needlessly Large Rod, which is a main component for most items that AP carries use. You can read the full patch notes here. There was a teaser and a reveal of the newest champion coming to the game, Tahm Kench, along with a Q&A session that will get you acquainted with him. I have already saved up the IP to pick him up when he releases later on with this patch. He’s a tanky support champion, and I look forward to trying him out in that role.

Like the earlier themed events surrounding the Shadow Isles, the Freljord, and Shurima, the newest event coming to League deals with Bilgewater, and there’s some information here. From the looks of it, it’s just a new skin for the ARAM map, which will be called “Butcher’s Bridge,” but still holds to the same ruleset as the Howling Abyss did. However, there is a new game mode that’s coming along with it, including new items, mercenaries and currency. It’s a lot to take in, so you can read more about “Black Market Brawlers” over here.

As Bilgewater is a home to many pirates, it’s fitting that the two most famous pirates of the game get reworks as well. Not only will their character models and skins be updated, but their kits have been tweaked as well. Gangplank has had his E reworked completely, and now has a special currency he can use to upgrade his ultimate. Miss Fortune hasn’t had much done to her kit, save for her passive being changed slightly and her E now activates her passive instantly. Otherwise they’re still the pirate and pirate hunter you know and love. Don’t know if this will bring Gangplank top back to the meta and/or change up the AP MF mid meta, but we’ll see how it goes.

The rest of my play time was pretty equally divided between Fallout: New Vegas and Dirty Bomb. I’ve mentioned them both on Twitter/Couch Podtatoes a few times, but haven’t delved into them much here on the blog, so I guess now’s as good a time as any. I borrowed FNV from my brother-in-law when I went to visit a couple of weeks ago and actually started playing the game there, then just uploaded the save game to the cloud and pulled it back down when I got home. At that point I had only cleared Goodsprings and the next little outpost, still trying to figure out who the hell it was that tried to kill me.

Crappy cell phone pic aside, the Space Suit armor has done me just fine. However, it seems a bit buggy when you are forced to disarm in certain areas but still look like you’re holding a gun. I’ve found quite a few other bugs, and for a game this old you’d think they’d have worked out all of the bugs by now. Overall though, the game runs fine and hasn’t kept me from completing quests or anything of that nature. Soon enough I found myself in New Vegas, where various factions hold sway and I was presented with options to either help out the infamous Mr. House or to take his place. Other factions vying for control also want my help, and though I started my career as the people’s champion, I’ve done some backhanded devious things in the time since.

Spoiler alert, I killed Mr. House and took over his army of Sentry Bots, along with upgrading them in a hidden bunker. Now I’m dealing with Caesar, and a group of assholes who bomb the everloving shit out of anyone who comes near their AFB. Good times. I’m not sure what percentage of the main story I’ve completed, but I’ve already decided to avoid doing all of the side quests because I don’t have access to the DLC/expansions and don’t want to pay for them. So I’m not going for the “total experience” and just trying to complete the game to prepare for Fallout 4.

Dirty Bomb is in open Beta right now, and it’s a team based shooter, with classes and objectives. It’s quite a bit like Team Fortress 2, but with more modern shooter conventions. There really isn’t a whole lot to say there, outside of I’ve been having a blast playing it. This past weekend there was a new game mode that was open for testing, but it basically plays like Counter-Strike, and since I already own that game I don’t see the need for that mode at this point in time. The Objectives and Stopwatch (which is still objectives, you just have to beat the opposing team’s time) modes are plenty so I think I’ll be avoiding it altogether. There’s also a fresh announcement for a new character that’s being added to the game. There aren’t a whole bunch of characters to choose from as is, but the ones on offer feel different enough to keep things fresh. It’s free to play, so if this sounds like your cup of tea you can jump into it right now. I can happily report that there are plenty of people to play with at all hours of the day, so population woes aren’t a thing just yet.

Lastly I’ve been playing a bunch of indie games on my Steam account. Some old, some new, but all fun. Mainly I’ve been playing Ironcast and Basement which I’ve mentioned in past posts, but I also played a little bit of Broforce, Delver, Deep Dungeons of Doom and Nuclear Throne. Many of these titles have had updates since the last time I played them, so it was worth taking another look (especially since they are in early access development). In Ironcast I’ve finally managed to make it to the last boss of the game, but that fucker hits like a truck!

Look at the size of him? It appears that actions you take during the countdown (of days before you have to fight the boss) affect the amount of “ground troops” that will remove some of the boss’ health before the fight, but as you can see despite removing a chunk of his health he still has a hell of a lot more than I do. He also basically one shots your systems, and killed me within a few turns. In the process I opened up another new pilot, but I’m not sure how I’m ever going to actually beat this guy. I suppose that’s why there’s the global experience bar, and eventually it will be easy enough to complete. Time will tell.

Basement is a fun little time waster that recently released in early access and I find it pretty entertaining, but obviously not finished. There is no tutorial, there’s no tooltips that are very helpful, it’s sort of just there. You have to figure out everything yourself. Thankfully it is mostly self explanatory, but there have been times where I’ve wanted to do something that seems like an obvious action, but can’t find the way to do it. For instance, see that little building on the left in the above picture? That was inhabited by police. I started in the building on the right. When I decided to send employees to attack the smaller building, it was so that I could expand my operation. I’m guessing the end goal it to take over the whole street, as it were. So anyway, after sending my employees over and taking over the building, there is no way to send them back to the original building, so I lose out on anyone who dies but then have a bunch of idle hands. You can fire the employees and hire new ones, but that seems counter productive when employees level up over time. So yeah, there’s a great framework here for a strategy/simulation game, but it seems there are features that need to be added to make it truly great. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one for the time being.

Lastly, I spent some time at my friend’s house over the course of the last few weeks and we’ve been playing through the Halo Master Chief Collection co-op. We beat Halo a couple weeks back and are now closing in on beating Halo 2. 3 & 4 are still on the horizon beyond that. I’ll say that there are leaps and bounds in the controls and graphics of each game, but man the older versions show how dated FPS engines can really suck. I don’t think playing these games when they first released would have really changed my opinion either. I find that the story of Halo is basically nonexistent or I just don’t care about it. It comes down to shitty weapons and shitty gunplay. I hope that the newer games help change my opinion, because I feel bad for Halo fans the world-around, as much better FPS experiences can be had elsewhere. I’ll hold that judgement until I beat the others, but I’m not overly impressed.

That’s about it for this round up. See you around.

#stateofthegame #roundup