I had such a great time playing the Diablo IV closed beta this past weekend (around chores and preparations for my impending trip), that I decided to break with my usual writing habits and post this the day after I wrote it. I didn’t want to wait two whole weeks (since I’ll be taking next week off for said trip) to tell everyone how much fun I had, especially when there’s still time for people to give the open beta a try if I post it this week.
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My Final Thoughts On Chained Echoes
I finished Chained Echoes last night (you can find my early thoughts here). I mean, I’ve still got a bit of post-game type stuff to do (unlocking the last two ultimate weapons, getting and upgrading some of the ultimate armors, etc), but I’m most of the way through that as well and only the final (extra) boss fight really appeals to me. Clearly, I didn’t need the fully upgraded ultimate everything to finish the game. I managed to figure out a system of abilitys and debilities in battle that has worked pretty well for me and I can now reliably put out enough damage while keeping my Damage Per Second anchors alive that I was able to get through the final plot boss fight fast enough that I think the game was struggling to do all the cool stages of the fight before I blew the boss away. I even tested it against a timed encounter that’s part of the “collect the macguffins to unlock the ultimate hidden boss fight” line of challenges that had been absolutely unbeatable only a few gaming hours earlier (I’d literally tried it before heading off to the final area where I got the ultimate armors and weapons and whatnot) and managed to end it faster than I thought was possible. I’m not sure I really need to do more of this kind of collection and gear improvement stuff before I take the hidden boss on, so I might try to bang that out tonight or this weekend.
Continue readingFire Emblem: Engage Is Anything But
While I did not manage to finish my most recent Fire Emblem: Three Houses play-through, I decided to go ahead and start playing Fire Emblem: Engage anyway. It had just come out, after all, and I needed something new and exciting after the week I’d had. I needed something to keep me engaged and, well, it was right there in the title. Unfortunately for me, my first evening of playing the game was marked by multiple restarts, no ability to shift the difficult up mid-game (which accounts for one of the restarts), and a whole lot of trying to figure out if the mouth movements were bad and making everything else seem good by comparison or if I just couldn’t see anything because the mouth movements for the English dub prevented me from noticing anything else happening during the dialogue and cut-scenes.
Continue readingWildermyth Is Great In Single AND Multiplayer
I’ve been steadily working my way through Wildermyth during my vacation. I meant to play a bunch of other games during my winter vacation time, but I wound up getting sucked back into Wildermyth thanks to a combination of my Wednesday night gaming evening with a friend and watching the VODs of a collection of the Friends at the Table crew playing through one of the stories (something they started doing as one of the donation goals from their charity stream back in July). I don’t regret it, aside from how much I’ve wrecked my sleep schedule by “one more task before I stop for the night”-ing my way to four in the morning, because it’s a lot of fun to grind my way through mechanically and narratively. The battles are satisfying, the random events are interesting, and the storytelling is always fun to read through. It really is just a great game to sink my time into.
Continue readingThe Best Game I’ve Played This Month is Lil Gator Game
Recently, I purchased and played through the entirety of a game in a single day. I stayed up very late to do it, but I managed to one hundred percent Lil Gator Game in an extended evening. I’ve been following the development of the game on Twitter for a while now, ever since I saw a retweet and was instantly charmed by the blocky but detailed aesthetics and the clear homage to The Legend of Zelda that the main gameplay revolves around. Over the months since then, I’ve watched as more and more detail has come out via small videos and trailers for Steam and then, on the 14th, I bought it immediately. While I’m normally leery of any kind of hype train, I can definitely say that this game delivered on every promise it made.
Continue readingCohost Is My New Home Away From Twitter (And Here)
I’ve been exploring cohost.org for a few days now. I made an account months ago (cohost.org/LiteraryWizard), back when the whole Tweluskian debacle began, and didn’t really use it much. Also, Tweluskian is a fun portmanteau of Twitter, Elon, and Musk I made up that feels like it’s probably either memorable or pretty clear about its meaning without attracting weird nerds who wanna defend their billionaire bestie from any kind of rightly earned criticism since even my account attacts them if I type his name into a tweet. Anyway, I wish I had spent more time on cohost, so I’d be more familiar and immersed in the social media platform by now as I’m trying to use it more. It is difficult to figure out how cohost works, as a social media site and media sharing platform, while also monitoring the development of whatever the heck is happening at Twitter.
Continue readingI Am Glad I Watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunner, Even If I’m Still Dead On My Feet Days Later.
I watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners with some friends last weekend and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I feel like I should have something to say about it now, days later, beyond what my friend and I talked about after the show ended, but I’m not sure I do. So far, all that’s really changed since 1am Saturday morning when the final end-credits bit played is the intensity of my feelings about the show, and those haven’t changed in a uniform way. They’ve grown less and more intense seemingly at random, maybe following my ability to give my attention to reflecting on the show. Which is something I haven’t had much of a chance to do between all of my weekend plans, the ceaseless exhaustion following several busy weeks, and the recognition that I have at least two more busy weeks before my first chance to relax for a whole weekend. Now, as I do my best to parcel out my attention and spoons through a work day, I find my mind returning to the show and how I felt about it any time I’m not pushing thoughts of it away. Despite my desire to just focus on stuff like blogging, working on the next Infrared Isolation chapter or just paying attention in meetings.
Continue readingSpiritfarer Is A Beautiful Game
Content Warning: the following post is about the video game Spiritfarer and contains spoilers for the game, along with discussions of grief and mourning.
Continue readingFire Emblems Warriors: Three Hopes Is More Than The Sum Of Its Parts
I’ve been playing a lot of Fire Emblems Warriors: Three Hopes lately. It has been a lot of fun, since it combines one of my favorite entries in the Fire Emblem series with a style of game I’m fairly new to (at least in terms of the lifespan of the game type) but definitely enjoy. I was introduced to the Warriors style of game by the IP crossovers they have been doing lately (again, an incredibly subjective term), namely the previous Fire Emblem game and the two Legend of Zelda entries, but I’ve never really finished any of them. I think I’ve gotten through the plot on one of them (the original Hyrule Warriors game), but I also didn’t play that one alone. My roommate and I took turns playing through it and I doubt I’d have made it through to the end without a friend along for the ride. I genuinely enjoy the games since a relatively mindless beat’em’up style game appeals to me when I’m tired or not terribly interested in being challenged, but I’ll admit the previous games didn’t really catch my attention in a way that made me choose them over any other game.
Continue readingIs It Worth Unearthing the Good Game Beneath the Bad Battles in Paper Mario: The Origami King?
I was recently struck by the urge to replay Paper Mario and, instead of going through the hassle of digging out my old systems or signing up for the more expensive Nintendo Online account so I could play it on my Switch, I’ve spent my time finally playing through Paper Mario: The Origami King. I bought it shortly after it came out two years ago, based on some reviews I read, started playing it right before I moved into my current apartment, and then never played it again after moving. I’d gotten distracted by getting my wisdom teeth removed and the PS4 I purchased with the moving and dental work budget I had leftover when those were all finished. Ghost of Tsushima was incredibly compelling and I had some other PS4 games I still hadn’t played. I barely even used my Switch for months.
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