Hello Internet! I figured I'd write up a post, seeing how I haven't talked to you guys in quite the long time. Life's been in a rough patch, both personally and professionally for me as of late and I haven't had much of a chance to do much gaming in the last year.
Some things to note that have happened/are happening:
I started a Dungeons and Dragons group with some friends. We meet (roughly) weekly in a world that was created by myself and one of the players. We're playing under a slightly modified 3.5 edition ruleset. If you're interested, I can post some summaries of how that goes. I'm actually thinking of doing that here anyway.
Next, my wife bought me an Xbox One back in May. I currently have Call of Duty: Ghosts, Watch Dogs, Dead Rising 3, Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition, Forza 5, and, Peggle 2. I'll give you brief impressions of all of them here:
Call of Duty: Ghosts - Standard COD fare here. Nothing overly special to write home about. Campaign is mind numbingly average, multiplayer is the same old moderately ok run and gun we've come to know and expect from COD. Graphics are kinda bad, and sound is fairly solid. I'd write more, but there really isn't anymore to write.
Watch Dogs - I really wanted to like this game. Sadly, I don't. There are some quirks with it that I can't get past. If you're driving, the cops are FREAKING RELENTLESS and I can not outrun them. However, I ducked into a train tunnel with a level three wanted level and waited for like 10 minutes and they were gone. Also, the cops CANNOT GO OVER WATER. I will repeat that. Cops cannot travel over water. Unless in a helicopter. Then, you shoot them out from your impenetrable island fortress, and they forget you exist. The graphics were kinda muddy for my liking, the driving was...something, also, you can't free fire. You have to aim down the sights to shoot. Unless you're aiming with the left trigger, pulling the right trigger to fire your weapon will cause you to sprint. However, I did enjoy the hacking mechanic, the world, and some of the minigames. Overall though, I was moderately disappointed with Watch Dogs.
Dead Rising 3 - I haven't played enough of this game to really know about it. Seems like it's going to be fun though.
Diablo 3: UEE - Similar situation to Dead Rising, except I've played a bit more Diablo. The wife and I are both having a good time with Diablo 3. I've got a Demon Hunter for my solo run, and I'm running a Wizard for our co-op run. She's running a Barbarian for both her solo and co-op. I'm at level 8ish on my solo, she's at 16 on her solo, and our co-op is like 5ish.
Forza 5 - Pretty great racing game. It's quite deep, and the real world cars are fantastic. Also, you can damage them a bit, which is fun for me. I don't get into the tuning and mechanical stuff in these types of games really. The racing is tight, responsive, and looks freaking beautiful. The Drivatar mechanic where it takes other drivers stats and ports them into your game based on difficulty choice is great. It allows you to race against friends and strangers without officially racing them online.
Peggle 2 - I am not happy with this purchase. You get the absolutely solid and fantastic gameplay of Peggle, with all of the bullcrap that comes with an EA game. This time around, instead of 10 masters and 110 levels, you get 5 masters, 50 levels, plus 10 challenge levels for each master. You can buy (at time of writing) 2 more masters, unlocking 20 more levels and challenge levels, but they cost $5 each. NOT COOL EA!
Enough about the games there. We've got to talk about the system! Xbox One is a system that's designed to take control of your living room and be the go-to device for everything you need. Ir might do that, I haven't figured out how yet. The interface is fairly frustrating to navigate through. Things are not easy to find, and it uses the Windows 8 and Windows Mobile setup. I don't like that, I never have, and I doubt I ever will. The system works great. I run my cable box through it. Netflix, Hulu, WWE Network, YouTube, Amazon Prime Instant Video, all work great through the system. I like what it does, just not quite how it does it. I can't seem to figure out how to actually turn off apps and such, other than cycling through a bunch of other apps until it has to close a previous one. I had an issue where YouTube had frozen, but I couldn't figure out how to reset it until I had left it off for a while and used several other things to cycle through.
Overall, I like mine, and would recommend a buy if you are looking for more of a multimedia box than a strictly gaming box. Otherwise, go with a PS4 or Wii-U.
I won't go into much detail as I'm trying to avoid a political battle here, but I'd like to go on the record and say that we do NOT support the actions of Zoe Quinn or anything relating to that business. We are an independent gaming blog worked on by a husband, a wife, and their friend. We do not have any kind of Patreon accounts to games, we don't have any donations to Kickstarter or IndieGoGo. If anyone here does anything like that, they will not be allowed to post anything relating to that project. Plain as that. It's pretty sad that things like this mess have happened.
That's all for now. I'll try and be back more regularly! Thanks for reading, and as always, see you online!
