Blizzcon 2018 Snark

November 2, 2018November 2, 2018 Izlain2 Comments

Admittedly, I have a strange relationship with Blizzard. On the one hand, they make amazingly polished and fun experiences. On the other hand, they have dumbed down some of my favorite genres or made entries into said genres that were forgettable. In the 1990’s, Blizzard could do no wrong. From Diablo I-II to Warcraft I-III to Starcraft, I loved their games and thought I would always be a fan of the studio. Years can change perspectives, and people. I am no longer much of a fan. There are games that they make that I still enjoy but I’m not currently playing any of their titles.

Blizzcon is happening, and I don’t normally pay much attention, but as Diablo III is aging quite rapidly, I was thinking there might be some news about the next installment, or perhaps some talk about Warcraft IV. Spoiler alert, neither of those things have happened. An article on Polygon breaks down the “5 Biggest Announcements from Blizzcon 2018” and I have some feedback for each.

Destiny 2 free for PC until November 18th.

Though not actually a Blizzard product, Destiny is a franchise with quite a following. I played the original on PS4, and received the sequel for free via Playstation Plus a couple of months ago. I’m still playing it here and there. I’m tempted by the PC version though, mainly because I play on the PS4 with my friend so progress has been slow going. Perhaps playing on the PC solo will be the way to progress at a faster clip. There was also mention that the latest DLC will actually include the prior DLCs so you won’t have the issue I was having where I had to buy DLC 1+2 to even be able to purchase Forsaken. A dumb business model for sure, but not really Blizzard’s doing.

Warcraft III Remaster

So this is not Warcraft IV. This is however still a great game. What I’m wondering here is if it’s going to be like the Starcraft remaster which was basically just changing the resolution of the old game, or if they are going to do something more. I would love to play Warcraft III again if it has updated graphics. I mean I’d probably play it again anyway, but that thought is less appealing. I suppose we shall see. Edit @8:47pm: Apparently this is a remake, not just an up-res remaster. I am more interested now.

A new Overwatch Character

This game was called Overhype by myself for a reason. It’s not doing anything we have seen done elsewhere. It’s not interesting or unique. I’m surprised we aren’t seeing a Blizzard developed Battle Royale game yet, it’s the new hip thing. No one cares about this.

Diablo Immortal

This is not Diablo IV. Who asked for this? I assume when Activision Blizzard acquired King, they were bound to make some new mobile versions of existing IPs but this isn’t something I imagined. I love Diablo, but playing it on my phone seems unintuitive. I’m betting it isn’t free either, and I’m hesitant to spend money on mobile titles. If it’s free I’ll still probably try it, but I’m not really impressed.

Hearthstone Troll Expansion

I loved Hearthstone when I played it back in Beta. I played through the first couple of expansions too, and was following the meta and enjoying myself. Another expansion came out and the game became too reliant on RNG, I became disillusioned and haven’t played since. Having returned to paper MTG, I don’t see myself ever playing again.

WoW Classic out Summer ’19

Another progression server with a different name. Everquest has done this for years, Everquest 2 got on board, and more recently Rift and Lord of the Rings Online have too. I’m surprised it took this long for Blizzard to do it. Whatever the case I don’t really care. I haven’t played much WoW and I have no real desire to do so now. I’m sure the blogosphere will be alive with posts about it when the time comes but I don’t see myself buying into this unless it’s free with an active sub, and even then I probably won’t bother. I don’t see it living up to people’s expectations.

So another year passes without much to be excited for coming out of Blizzard. That’s my two cents, at least.

King + Blizzard: A Perfect Match

November 3, 2015November 3, 2015 Izlain2 Comments

The news is pretty fresh, so you may not have heard: Activision just bought King, the company responsible for that whole Candy Crush thing. Admittedly I haven’t played any of King’s offerings, much like I ignored Zynga before them. Facebook/browser games are mostly throwaway experiences. From the variety of games I’ve experienced on mobile devices, the same can be said. Timewasters, and nothing more aside from a few rare gems.

I have however, spent plenty of time with Blizzard (and Activision) games. Call of Duty aside though, this is a post focusing on Blizzard and King, and how they are a perfect match for each other.

Unable to claim the title of “the first person to say that,” it’s pretty clear that Blizzard titles are basically accessible and polished experiences you’ve already had elsewhere. Their newest games released in the past few years are easily comparable to other titles in the genre who already had a foothold in the market. As a matter of fact, all of their titles are accessible and polished versions of established genres, but let’s start from the newest offerings:

Overwatch – FPS Arena Shooter, similar to Team Fortress 2.
Heroes of the Storm – MOBA, similar to League of Legends/DOTA2
Hearthstone – CCG, similar to Magic: The Gathering

Those titles alone are painting a picture that goes back to Blizzard’s humble beginnings. I’m sure you can see the correlation between Dune II and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Even The Lost Vikings is similar to other platformers of the era. The big gorilla in the room though, World of Warcraft, is similar enough in its approach to prior MMOs, but added that blizzard level of polish and accessibility.

That isn’t to say that Blizzard doesn’t make good games. I absolutely adored Diablo and still do. It still does it better than most Action-RPGs out there, and it established the “formula” despite taking elements from various action and adventure games that preceded it. We also can’t say that it isn’t innovative to build on what came before, because that’s been the formula for our entire existence. But in this era of all-you-can-eat gaming, standing apart from the pack means doing something different, and copying what is already successful and getting the perfect storm effect once doesn’t mean it will happen regularly or ever again. I think Blizzard needs to start thinking outside of the box, and this purchase could be part of that.

As I said earlier, I haven’t touched any of King’s titles, but I’ve played enough Bejeweled to know what Candy Crush Saga is all about. In doing some reading and formulating this post, I came across this article that sparked my train of thought in the first place. Go ahead and read it. If nothing else, scroll down and look at the pictures. I’ll wait.

Back? So you’ll have seen how King has been taking the Blizzard method of polishing an existing idea to a whole other level. They don’t make a genre more accessible, they straight copy games, change a few assets and call it their own. Then they monetize the shit out of it and call it a day. Their existing catalog of games are all copies of another game, or sequels to that copy. How they haven’t been sued more I don’t know. It’s as bad as the rest of the mobile games market though, in that anything that becomes popular sees a billion straight copies on the market within days. But I digress.

Does anyone else see the correlation I’m getting at thought? It seems these two companies made their fortunes off of copying others’ ideas and putting their own spin on it. It’s only fitting that they are basically the same company now.

I’m just curious to see if this makes the mobile marketplace better, or if the Kingly influence makes Blizzard a worse company in the long run.

Some further commentary from round the blogosphere:

Keen and Graev
The Ancient Gaming Noob
Syncaine

Blizzard and Me

August 6, 2015August 5, 2015 Izlain4 Comments

Blizzard and I have a strange relationship. I was about the biggest fanboy you could be when it came to their early years in the 1990’s. I remember playing Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness back when you still had to run them through DOS. The games were easy to learn but more difficult to master. The original Diablo was also a staple back then, but it wasn’t until Starcraft was installed on my machine that I became a fan for life. Hailed as one of if not the best RTS game of all time, Starcraft was truly a perfect storm. Competitors such as Command & Conquer held their own, but Starcraft set the bar for all RTS games to come. I fell in love with the game, eschewing nearly all other games I was playing to devote my life to it. I beat the campaigns, I beat the expansion, I played regularly on Battle.net, though I never got involved in the ladder. I used the map editor to create new maps, attempted to create a Starcraft RPG within it, and even had a webpage dedicated to it, that won an award back in the days when GeoCities were a thing. Clearly, I was obsessed.

That obsession came back when Diablo II released in 2000. I was in my senior year of high school, and thankfully was at a point where I could pretty much ignore school so my grades didn’t suffer, despite the fact that I was constantly playing it. I lamented when the computer I was using fried and I was unable to play the game after the Lord of Destruction expansion hit. I was able to play it periodically at friend’s houses, but I lost out on part of the game’s evolution for the most part.

When Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos hit stores a couple of years later, I was still computer-less, though I had a good friend who would allow me to play it when I was visiting. Eventually, I had a new computer and I purchased the Battle Chest for the game, that was packed with The Frozen Throne expansion, and ended up playing through both, along with playing the game itself and multiple mods created by the community. Never DotA though, and for that I am sad. Nevertheless, my obsession with Blizzard’s fantastic games continued.

Upon hearing of the upcoming MMO World of Warcraft, I was very excited and wanted to be one of the first to play it. At the time though, I was unemployed and was unable to afford a copy of the game let alone a subscription fee. There were also stories of huge queues and Blizzard pulling the game from store shelves, so I made a decision to stick with the original Everquest, which I had been playing off and on for years (though never very seriously).

A couple of years later, I had basically forgotten about Blizzard altogether. I was busy playing single player games, shooters like Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, Call of Duty, or whatever was in my Playstation 2 library. Sure, WoW was a success and hard to ignore, but I wasn’t at that point of being obsessed with MMOs like I would be in the future. Eventually my Dad (who had introduced me to EQ) was telling me that he had picked up Everquest 2, and I followed suit. I convinced my roommate at the time to join us, and soon I had a mixture of friends and family that were all playing the game together. It could have just as easily been WoW, because honestly they are very similar games when it comes down to it, but we had found our home in Norrath and my obsession with MMOs had nothing to do with Blizzard. It even came to a point that from what I had read, what I had seen and what I had talked about with friends, that WoW felt like the inferior game in many ways, despite being vastly more popular with most of the world. We felt like we had made the right choice regardless, and since Blizzard hadn’t done anything with any of their IPs outside of WoW for years, I basically wrote them off altogether.

From circa 2003 to circa 2010, I didn’t play any Blizzard games. There were times I would dabble with Starcraft or Diablo II, but I didn’t feel the love for the company that I once had. It was a sad state of affairs, but it was what it was. It wasn’t until I had a falling out with the MMO genre altogether that I opened up the possibility of playing and enjoying World of Warcraft. I had spent very little time in these virtual worlds for a couple of years and had a new job where my direct co-worker wouldn’t stop yammering about the game. I finally succumbed to his pandering and bought the Battle Chest that included Vanilla and The Burning Crusade. I also picked up Wrath of Lich King shortly thereafter.

I was pleasantly surprised how much I could enjoy the game I had spent so much time trashing. So much time arguing over with friends who loved it and I was still wondering why. None of them would even give my games of choice the time of day because they felt like they already had so much invested in WoW. I don’t blame them, looking back. They were right. I was wrong. However, it seems that somewhere along the line Blizzard put all of their eggs in one basket, and forgot about people like me. People who helped them become the behemoth. Who paid their way towards making WoW which would then in turn make them the king of the gaming world.

Sure, I played WoW for about six months and enjoyed myself well enough, but the time investment I had put into Everquest 2 continuously pulled me back to that game instead. Had I started with WoW, I probably would be like most of you who are reading this post. WoW would be my game, and I’d either play it steadily or leave for a couple of months only to return when the next expansion hit. Either way, I had that relationship with EQ2, so it was easy to leave WoW to go back to that game. WoW never hooked me the way other Blizzard games did, and I don’t think it ever will.

It wasn’t until 2013-14 that I really got back into Blizzard games, and this wasn’t due to World of Warcraft. I managed to get into the Beta for Hearthstone and was rather impressed with it, and played it for quite a while. I purchased Diablo III and its expansion, and as it sits now that is currently my favorite Blizzard game, though Starcraft II has been fun as well (though no where near as addictive as its predecessor was for me). I also picked WoW up again, pre-Warlords of Draenor, but only played for a month and wasn’t hooked this time either.

Hearthstone was unique in that it was a free to play title, which Blizzard hadn’t released before. I loved the fact that it was a CCG because of my history with Magic: The Gathering, and though it was simple and still based on Warcraft lore, I was hooked for a time. I played through beta into full release, earned enough gold to buy all of the Naxxramas adventures and even continued playing after Goblins and Gnomes released. It was around this time though that I started to feel disenchanted with the game. The random effects began to get to ridiculous levels where it felt like you had very little control over what happened in a given match, and if I wanted to play a dice game I’d just go play craps. Still, it has become a steady revenue stream for Blizz, and they’ve added more solo adventures and are teasing a new set of cards coming out sometime soon in The Grand Tournament. Good on them, but it’s no longer a game that gets my regular attention.

Diablo III launched and had its issues (namely the Auction House) and I avoided playing it until after they fixed the problem with the patch 2.0. Shortly thereafter Reaper of Souls released, and along with it one of the best ideas the company had in a while: Adventure Mode. The level of replayability and the fact that patches are still released fairly regularly leads me to believe that Blizzard learned their lesson from the past. Diablo II didn’t have much added to it after LoD. Diablo III looks to have new content added regularly, and that’s good for the franchise overall. Even now, patch 2.3 is in testing and they’re adding a whole new zone, a powerful artifact, and changes to Adventure Mode.

Starcraft II was different from its predecessor in that it released only one single player campaign at a time, but has made changes through Battle.net to the multiplayer portion of the game. Mods are better supported through the Arcade as well. The third campaign Legacy of the Void, centering around the Protoss is in development now and the game has definitely lived a long life, sitting at the five year old mark already.

Clearly, Blizzard is starting to remember those of us who weren’t that taken with WoW but still love their other offerings. They’ve also started to branch out a bit by adding new IPs, such as Heroes of the Storm. Granted, this game still draws from their other IPs so it’s not entirely new, but it is their first foray into the MOBA scene and seems to be doing fairly well, though it’s not as popular as the kings of the genre League of Legends and DOTA 2. Personally this game appealed to me because I figured Blizzard would make a great MOBA, but it fell short of my expectations and I haven’t touched it since it was in Beta. Still, it’s good to see the company do something else besides make content for their MMO.

Lastly, a completely new IP called Overwatch has been in development for some time now. It’s actually showing up in the Battle.net launcher now too, though I haven’t heard of anyone getting any in-game time just yet. It’s a team-based lobby shooter, and though this isn’t a new genre in itself it’s something Blizzard have yet to do and it looks good. Hype got the best of me with HotS though, so I’m not super excited but I will try it when I get a chance. Perhaps it will exceed my expectations if I keep them low. Video of the game does look fantastic though.

Most people are in the middle of writing (or have written) posts about their predictions for the next WoW expansion which will be announced later today. The other big news is that WoW is down to 5.6 million subscribers, a low not seen since 2005 or so, yet still the biggest amount of subscribers in any western MMO at this point, with FFXIV coming in a close second. I really wanted to make some commentary but as you can see, my history with WoW is limited, though my history with the company might exceed some of yours. I’m thankful that they have done well and can potentially make more games that I’m interested in sometime in the future. But I have nothing overly positive to say about their MMO and I don’t suspect that will ever change. I’m in agreement with some members of the blogosphere that WoW is slowly being sunset and focus within the company is shifting to other projects. Honestly, I think diversification is good not only for Blizzard but for gamers like me as well.

WoW is dead. Long live Blizzard.

#blizzard #history

State of the Game – Playing Catch Up

May 17, 2015May 23, 2017 Izlain

Yeah, it’s been about a month since I’ve done one of my signature round-up posts, but with NBI planning and execution coupled with less time at the computer, I didn’t really have the material to pull one of these posts together. Because it’s been a month and I haven’t talked about much in the way of what I’ve been playing, there’s plenty of material for this post. The games at hand this week are: Titanfall, League of Legends, Diablo III, Shadow Warrior, Hearthstone, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I have touched on all of these games over the course of the past month, be it in a random post talking about one or the other, my Tweet round up post, or during one of the various NBI writing prompts. Titanfall has been in my regular rotation for this past month, and as a result I’m almost max level (sitting at rank 45 currently) and I’ve also had some success in the ranked play. I mentioned this in my last screen shot post for the #NBI2015Safari so I won’t delve into it any further. It’s still a blast to play, and with the jump-in, jump-out nature of the game, it’s right up my alley.

I’ve also been playing League of Legends regularly, but I have slacked off on ranked matched. I did promo back to Bronze II, and have been bouncing up and down ever since. I did manage to pile up enough IP to get another champion though, and picked up Jinx whom I’m planning to practice heavily for use in ranked matches. In the last patch, 5.8 there were some improvements to the visuals of The Howling Abyss map, along with a new summoner spell that works just like the snow balls in the Poro King game mode that was out this past winter. They also added in a new way to use up those tiny amounts of RP you might have on your account, with a skin boost. For 95 RP, you unlock a random skin for each champion on your team, and everyone gets an IP boost as well. When I bought one, the boost was 200 IP, and when one was purchased for me, the boost was 100 IP. Either way, it’s nice to be able to use the small amounts you sometimes end up with.

The newest patch, 5.9 introduced a rework for Ashe, some balance tweaks and new skins. There was also a teaser for the next new champion released recently:

We now know his name is Ekko, and he looks primed to be a top/jungler but I could see him fitting into other roles as well. Here’s what he’ll look like in game:

You can check out his full kit on his champion reveal page.

The Diablo III event that I was running this past Saturday basically didn’t happen, but that didn’t stop me from rolling a new hardcore Witch Doctor for Season 3 which started recently.

One thing I didn’t realize, was that there was an anniversary event going on as well, where each new zone that you enter had a chance to become a cow level. Yep, just like back in Diablo II. I didn’t think we’d ever see this, as Whimsyvale was supposed to be the replacement for the cow level, and there is even some dialogue at some point that says “there is no cow level.” That has changed though, and when I entered a rift with my Witch Doctor, I ended up being accosted by bipedal cows. Horrifying.

The rift guardian too, was a huge bovine, which an even bigger axe. He was taken down though, and throughout the rift I ended up with some pretty decent gear. My Witch Doctor ended up at level 25 before I decided I was done for the evening. She looks pretty fierce, doesn’t she?

I’ve also been playing through Shadow Warrior still, usually just a chapter or two at a time. Despite my write up sitting at Chapter 6, I’m actually on chapter 13. It’s been a great game so far, and I really do recommend it to FPS fans. I won’t go into too much detail, as more of that write up will be coming soon. But here’s a shot of the next big baddy I had to take down:

I mentioned it on the last episode of the podcast, but I’ve been playing Hearthstone again here and there, but not on my PC, no. My friend picked up a new iPad the other day, and since then the past couple of times I’ve seen her I ended up playing Hearthstone on it. I suggested she download it just so I could check it out, and she ended up getting hooked on it as well. Legend of Grimrock, another game I own on the PC was also available on the iPad, and I told her it was a good game as well, so she has been playing that too. Both games don’t require any sort of twitch skills though, and I think that’s why they run so well on the touch-screen device. Playing Hearthstone again reminded me that the new adventures came out, but I didn’t have enough gold on my account to pick one up. I’d have to do dailies for a while to get them, and while I’d like to, I also ended remembering why Hearthstone started to get on my nerves: fuckin RNGesus. Everything have random effects and it gets to a point where sometimes it feels like everything is out of your control, and that’s not something I really want in my card game. So who knows if I’ll ever actually get around to playing it anymore. Probably just when I’m visiting my friend.

Lastly, despite having ESO, GW2 and H1Z1 sitting on my hard drive ready to play whenever I want, I went and downloaded more games. First it was Marvel Heroes. I ended up hearing that some of my qualms with the game had been changed up, so I checked it out again. I still don’t like it. I’d just rather play Diablo, to be honest. Next, I downloaded Neverwinter again, mainly because I wanted to check out the dungeon creator stuff that we talked about on the podcast recently. Neverwinter just doesn’t sit well with me, or my computer for that matter. Something looked off and no matter how much I messed with the graphics settings it still looked funny. Which is weird considering the above mentioned MMOs run great and I believe they are all newer. So last night I downloaded Star Wars: The Old Republic. A bunch of people in the blogosphere seem to be playing it right now, and I remember enjoying what I played of it back when I first checked it out a year or so ago. Hearing about that XP bonus for story missions means avoiding all the sidequests and I think that might make it even more enjoyable, because I remember the story being the best part. I think I’m going to check out a different class though, because I remember the bounty hunter was getting sort of stale before.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Til next time.

#stateofthegame #roundup #gaming

State of the Game: Mixed Bag

December 14, 2014May 23, 2017 Izlain4 Comments

Another week bites the dust, and this time around I’ve been playing a bit of everything. Well, not everything, but I’ve dipped my toes into many different pots. Earlier in the week I covered the launch of the new Hearthstone expansion, and also the news of H1Z1 coming to Steam Early Access. That was the biggest news of the week for me, but I bounced around between finishing up some TV shows and playing an assortment of games, so let’s talk about that next.

I’ve been playing FFXIV sporadically, just enough to get a feel for the different starting areas, and the general feel of the game. I only have a handful of days left on the free trial, so I probably won’t get too much further along before that runs out. Like I said before, I could see myself playing it a bit more seriously but that would require buying the game and subbing, and with the recently announced H1Z1 Early Access, I don’t think I’ll be getting involved. As I mentioned in that H1Z1 post, I’ve been hyped about that game all year and I don’t see myself playing anything else (MMO-wise) once I get my hands on that. I probably won’t jump in on day one, but provided early reports aren’t entirely negative I think I’ll be in it sooner than later. If it is terrible to start off, or otherwise not worth it during EA, then perhaps I’ll dive further into FFXIV.

So aside from that Thurmaturge class I highlighted last week, I also made a Marauder and an Archer, both so that I could see all three starting cities. Of the 3, I preferred the Archer’s starting city, but I spent the most time with the Marauder, leveling to around 12 or so. I didn’t like the Archer at all, so I deleted that character and just played the marauder through a zone and a half of quests and content. I completed Fates (live events), duties (instanced story quests) and regular quests throughout. I’m still amazed by how beautiful the game is, and how it melds the best of computer and console RPGs into one package. Here’s some shots of my Marauder and one of the Archer who now rests in peace:

We spent the last podcast talking about some of our favorite games of the year, and one that me and Eri both agreed on was Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. The discussion of the game made me realize I hadn’t played the game in a couple of months (or more). The more I thought about it the more I wanted to play, so before I knew it I was in the game and grinding away. I played my Wizard for a while and decided to experiment with different builds, finally settling on one that used a mix of abilities I had never used before, along with ones that I used all the time. I’m satisfied enough for now. I played through a few bounties and Nephalim Rifts and managed to get a few new legendaries, along with boosting my Paragon level to 17. I also was craving some different gameplay, so I decided it was time to play something else, and perhaps level another class to 70. I already had a Crusader who was level 25 and a Monk at level 19, and both were hardcore characters. I was torn between wanting to level one of them or start a fresh class on the normal ruleset. I like not having to worry about dying, but at the same time I like the challenge that hardcore presents; the game is more satisfying when you know death actually means something. As such I decided to roll with the hardcore Monk, and leveled him from 19-28 in a couple of sessions. I really like the Monk, more than I thought I would, and I think I’m going to try and level him to 70, while breaking things up with my Wizard. The only unfortunate part is that the Paragon levels and other goodies that I’ve leveled up in normal mode doesn’t carry over to Hardcore, which means buying all the stash tabs, leveling the crafters and getting to 70 before I get the benefit of the extra passives. That’s a bummer, but also a motivator. Anyway, here’s what the two look like currently:

Otherwise it’s been League of Legends in a major way. I am still playing multiple games per day, and still having a lot of fun with it. Also, this weekend saw the expansion tournament for the North American LCS, because this year they are adding two more teams to the pro scene, so instead of 8 teams duking it out during the Spring Split, there will be 10. I assume that will go for the Summer Split as well. Either way, Team Coast and Curse Academy won their way in, and the games were quite exciting. I think most if not all of the players from both of those teams have been in the LCS before (albeit on different teams) so they aren’t exactly new players or new teams, but some of the teams/players that were in this weekend’s tourney were. Too bad they were all eliminated. Anyway, it wasn’t Worlds but it was still fun to watch.

In other League news, patch 4.21 came down the pipeline, nerfing Warwick (who needed it), adding the Negatron Cloak back in (we missed it!) and making a slew of other tweaks and changes. Rek’Sai also released, and I’ve seen her in action and she is a tanky, elusive, DPS powerhouse. One of the more annoying junglers in recent memory. Here’s her champion spotlight in case you missed it:

Lastly, Snowdown is on it’s way to the Rift, meaning there will be skin sales, new skins added, and probably a new featured game mode (or a rehash of an old one). This also means we’ll be earning new summoner icons and things like that. I’ll have more about that as the new stuff is announced, which should be this week.

On the TV front, I’ve watched the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead, the series finale of Sons of Anarchy, and we’re nearing the end of this season of American Horror Story. TWD had a shocking end, but I won’t give anything away with spoilers. SOA’s ending was shitty, but you pretty much knew it was coming to an end in the way that it did. I’m sad to see the show go, but the last couple of seasons were reaching a bit, and it’s better to end on a semi-high note rather than drag it out past its natural conclusion. AHS has been alright, but this season and last weren’t nearly as good as the first two seasons. I’ll keep watching but I’m not sure how long they’ll be able to keep this going without some better writing. Then again the last season started to pick up at the end so we’ll see how it goes. That’s really all I’m watching on TV, most of the shows I enjoy are either over for the season or over for good. On the horizon is the end of Mad Men, which is another show I’m sad to see go. Around that time we’ll get the end of this season of TWD as well. From there I really don’t know, as quite a few of the shows I’ve watched in recent years won’t be coming back, so we’ll see what new stuff comes out. I do see people talking about all kinds of other shows out there, but my general rule of thumb is that if it’s on the big networks (CBS, ABC, NBC — basically channels 2-13), it’s not going to be any good. They keep rehashing comic book stuff and other things that just don’t appeal to me. I’m curious to see what AMC is going to do to replace some of the stellar shows that have ended… Better Call Saul is most likely not going to be better than or even as good as Breaking Bad was, despite the tie-in. Replacing Mad Men is also going to be tough, and FX will have a tough time replacing SOA, though The Strain was a good addition. I guess time will tell. That’s about all for this week.

#stateofthegame #roundup #gaming #television