It’s been a very long time since I’ve done one of these, but with my lack of posts as of late, I thought this would be a handy catch-all for the gaming I have been doing, which has been focused mostly on MOBAs, once again. That isn’t news, but it’s still surprising that the genre has been able to keep its grasp on me for so long. It’s also surprising that I’m pulling this column from the grave, after nearly a year (the last time I wrote one, it was December 2015). With that said, let’s jump into it.

MOBAs:

Normally I’d be writing about League of Legends right about now, but I haven’t really been playing it all that much. I started off loving all of the changes that came with Season 6, played some random game modes, played some ranked, and then sort of fizzled out. I still love that game, but I go in waves with it. This is one of the periods where I put it down. I can’t seem to quit playing MOBAs altogether though, and I’m always trying out the next new thing, along with keeping up with my usual suspects. Outside of LoL, the usuals are SMITE and Awesomenauts. Yeah, I still play the latter, and it’s finally happened where the PS4 version of the game is nearly on par with the Steam version, which wasn’t something that was happening with the PS3 version of the game. Awesomenauts Assemble launched caught up, but then fell behind for quite some time, and has recently been patched, so I’ve jumped back into it head first. I already had the Overdrive expansion on Steam from a few months ago, but hadn’t really touched it. I hadn’t intended on purchasing it for my Playstation either, but it was on a deep discount and I knew my best friend IRL still played, so it ended up being worth it. Most of the expansion stuff was included for free, though a small $6.50 donation was required to open the Overdrive characters on PS4. No biggy. He sucks at the game though, so that can be a drag at times, but I still have fun playing with him.

I also got him into SMITE a few months back. I’ve explained how I started that one too on PC but didn’t really care for it, and then somehow got hooked once I played it on the console. With that reiterated, I’ve been focused on earning the trophies for the game, and once those were patched in sometime after the official release (I started playing in the console beta) I had a nice chunk of them already earned. An irritating side note- the PS4 automatically captures a screenshot when you earn a trophy; the waterfall of trophies earned once they were implemented netted a bunch of useless screen shots. Back on point, I have been working my way through god mastery. Having 5 of any of the classes mastered is a trophy each. There’s one for 10 gods mastered. 30, 50, 70 gods mastered. There’s also a multitude of random trophies that I’ve also earned along the way, but as of right now I’m working on the 5 Guardians and 5 Warriors. I have 5 each of Mages, Hunters and Assassins mastered. I think I’m around 17 total gods mastered. Then there’s a trophy for leveling one to mastery 10. So yeah, my work is cut out for me, but it’s been fun playing the game with my friend (and even solo). I should also note that my prior scathing review of the cash shop was slightly unfounded. It turns out you can earn gems by doing the daily log ins, and certain quests, and some skins are also earned through seasonal events, such as the recent summer event where I unlocked a skin for Bacchus, and it was easy to do. So honestly if you’re patient you don’t really have to spend any money, you’ll end up with some cool stuff. And in the event that you do spend money on gems, avoid the damn lock boxes and just buy skins direct.

Other Games:

As I mentioned previously, I am subbed to WoW and I’ve purchased Legion. I’m still standing behind my thought that boosting a character and missing out of much of the content isn’t a great idea for players like myself who never really put much time into the game. The hype train left the station and within hours of Legion’s launch I was basically bored already. I feel like I enjoy the leveling more than I enjoy the end game grinding, but I still want to do some of that as well. My brain tells me that I want to play this game. I want to play Destiny. I want to beat the Witcher 3, and the plethora of other games I have. Then I end up playing SMITE instead, and just go to bed. Having a girlfriend doesn’t help these matters either, because when the opportunity to hang with her arises, I’m not playing games. I’m not complaining about that either, it’s a great problem to have, but I really probably should have avoided adding more to the pile when I should really be playing the shit I paid for months/years ago. But that hype train had me, and I was stuck. I’m still subbed, I haven’t canceled. I don’t intend to either. I am going to play more, but by the time I’m relevant people will be quitting in droves because of the infamous Blizzard content droughts. Like I said before, don’t expect much written about it, but you can definitely check my blog roll for people talking all about it.

I’ve also purchased a few games over the past couple of months I haven’t really mentioned. One of those is Halcyon 6, which is an indie Starship command sim. It’s recently come out of early access and during it’s full release they released a big patch that is supposed to wrap everything up nicely. It’s had good reviews and what I played of it while it was still in early access was fun. It mixes some captain of the ship scenarios (on the bridge), JRPG style ship combat (which sounds weird but works fairly well) and other tidbits that are quite interesting. If you like pixel art indies with a fun spirit, you’d probably like this one.

The other recent indie I picked up is called The Curious Expedition, and that was a title I had on my wishlist for a while, but picked up because it had a minor discount. It’s a rogue like exploration game, and though I’m not really too huge on exploration, it has a fun premise. It’s sort of like Oregon trail, in that you start in one area and move along, but you have more direct control of the path  you take. When you come across settlements or monuments, you’ll get some story bits, some dialogue options, and some opportunities to trade/rest/etc. Once you’ve found the end goal for that particular expedition, the game ends, and you get points that you can use for perks. You then head out again, and this series continues until a winner is determined due to finds. You’re actually in a competition with other great explorers, and they will randomly earn fame each round. Each expedition is random, so there’s some replay-ability there as well.

On The Horizon:

Outside of WoW, and probably more time spent on those pesky MOBAs, I have a few other games lined up that I want to play. I downloaded Hi-Rez’s new game, Paladins, as it’s entered open beta and it looked interesting enough. I haven’t played it just yet though. I also downloaded Duelyst, which I had been following for a long time but hadn’t tried yet, and also due to some of what Eri had said on several episodes of the podcast. It looks great, I just haven’t played it yet either. During the Steam Summer Sale I also picked up the Bioshock trilogy because I haven’t played through any of them, and the remastered editions were just released. From what I hear they’ve been having some bugs and issues on the PC version of said upgrade, so I’ve only downloaded them, I haven’t played yet. Hoping it’s all worked out soon so I can run through them, as I’ve heard nothing but good things. I’m also craving some Destiny… as I’ve not really played it much either, and it’s been in the back of my mind for a long time now… the new expansion also releases very shortly, so perhaps some of my friends will actually be playing. But will they want to help me level up? That is the question.

That’s all for this edition. Looking back on that, it seems like I’ve played a lot, but when I sit and think about it, I don’t spend nearly enough time gaming these days.