It’s been a minute, and I’ve found that I rather enjoy doing these round up posts from time to time. I don’t know why I go in the waves that I do, where I end up doing something for a long time and then fall out of the habit just to pick it back up again. It does look like bringing this column back around has at least kept this blog alive so to speak. It also helps that it’s football season, so those by the numbers posts are some easy filler. And I realize it’s just filler, because most of you could give two shits about football but hey, it’s my blog. 😛

I have much to cover, so I’ll just get right to it. More blog posts to follow this one, so stay tuned. In the recent past, I’ve spoken about the majority of what I’ve been playing, so none of this should come as a surprise (unless you haven’t been keeping up with ol’ what’s his face). The primary games I’ve been playing are still SMITE, WoW, and the mobile game Tiny Tower. As those are the most recent games I’ve made full on individual posts about, let’s start there, shall we?

My progress in SMITE has been slow going, but I’m still managing to play at least a game almost daily. League has been phased out at this point. I’m not even going to attempt to raise my rank there, and if I do start playing it again it will probably be during the next preseason in a month or so. Awesomenauts has taken a bit of the back burner as well, mainly because I only really play it with my best friend, and the last few times we played it was frustrating enough to just outright quit. I love the guy, but man is he bad at the game. Rather than taking it out on him, I’ve just been playing more SMITE more often, and he’s at least halfway decent at it. I still haven’t managed to earn the trophy for 5 warriors mastered just yet, but I’m only shy one or two at this point. Outside of that, I’m account level 23 and have the same amount of gods mastered. It’s going to take a long time to get one up to mastery level 10, and to master 70 gods, but the platinum trophy is definitely doable and something I’m going to continue to work towards. I’ve also been focused on completing all of the Odyssey 2017 quests as the become available. The Japanese quests were completed that week, and this past week the Chinese questline opened up. I have two left to complete and then it will be back to waiting for the next pantheon to open up. Either way it’s been fun having these psuedo tasks to do, despite the fact that I’m really just playing the same old game.

WoW has been slow going as well. I’ve basically put my entire backlog on hold, and have been primarily playing these two games. When I’m in the mood for PvP I play SMITE and when I feel like a mindless level grind I play WoW. My Warlock just hit level 40 the other night, and I’m sitting in the Western Plaguelands, about to head East. Soon I’ll get to the portions of the game that I’ve never seen and that’s exciting enough to keep me subscribed and trudging along. I’ve plenty of created alts including my boosted Rogue, but I think I’ll see the entirety of the game prior to fully diving into Legion. This has worked for me. I have yet to play with anyone outside of using the dungeon finder, and despite all my complaints, the game is fun. So I play it. It’s the weirdest thing, just letting go of all of your preconceived notions, all of your past opinions and just playing the game in front of you. You really can enjoy nearly anything once you give it a chance. But man that other side of me is screaming that “I HATE THEME PARK MMOs” the entire time. Someday I’ll play Crowfall and forget these dark times.

Slow and steady seems to be the trend this week. I’ve progressed to the point of having 38 levels in my Tiny Tower along with 70 bitizens. Floors are costing nearly a million coins. Most of my shops have bitizens in their “dream jobs” and I’ve upgraded every shop to level 4 at this point. It’s the same tedium over and over but it helps kill time when things are slow at work, on the toilet, you name it. I can perform a couple of actions and then go about my business. I see how this works for most mobile games, but this one literally takes zero effort or brain power and yet stays enthralling. It baffles the mind but works.

The only new addition I have to talk about is a new indie game that’s currently in Early Access on Steam called Battlerite. It’s from the creators of the game Bloodline Champions, which some of you might remember me talking about circa 2011. When I finally weaned myself from the teat of whatever MMOs I had been playing at the time and was looking for something completely different to sink my teeth into, I stumbled upon MOBAs… Most of the rest is history, and League of Legends was the game that stole my heart, but I remember actually enjoying the control scheme for Bloodline Champions moreso than the more contemporary click to move of LoL and others in the genre. There was a bit of a lack of depth with the original game though, and this sequel of sorts has that same sort of lack of depth, but it seems that they have ideas that have yet to come to fruition, and that’s okay. Basically it’s a 2v2 or 3v3 arena brawler, similar to Arenas in WoW in playstyle, though lacking gear customization and the need to level. It’s MOBA combat at it’s simplest, yet complex enough to be a blast. Instead of buying items, you get cards between matches. These become your build of sorts. You can customize the characters, but it is only cosmetic. There are also mounts, which really don’t make a lot of sense, but are cool nonetheless (this is how I felt about the mounts in HotS too). Honestly, it feels lacking in some areas, but given that it’s in Early Access and there are already new characters being developed, there’s a good chance that the amount of possible interactions will be great enough that the gameplay doesn’t get stale. But I think it might suffer in the long run due to the lack of a macro game. Time will tell I suppose.

And that’s about all for this week. Happy gaming, friends.