Dragons and Titans

Hello! I'm trying to be regular. I really need to work out when and how often I'll be doing this. Some days are better than others and I'm not talking about my schedule. I don't have a lot of money for games so I'll mostly be reviewing games I already own or free to play games. Some of these reviews will be, "timely." It just so happens I downloaded a free to play game a few days ago. I haven't played it for very long, but I do have some initial thoughts on it.

Dragons and Titans:

As the title suggests I've been playing Dragons and Titans. It's a game where you ride dragons into combat with your enemy with the ultimate goal of destroying your enemies' titan. The controls will feel familiar if you're already used to the DOTA/LOL control scheme. The game itself is actually very similar to other MOBAs.

There are multiplayer, coop, and single player modes. The game has a thorough tutorial so you wont be left scratching you head not knowing what to do. Playing through the game gives you currency to open loot packs that give you more dragons to use. It kinda reminds me of Puzzle and Dragons / Hearthstone in that way. There's a season pass that gives you access to all of the current content. If things stay the way they are or the game gets more popular it's definitely worth picking it up. It's also a short download so pick it up and try it out. I had a lot of fun in my short time playing it.

Well I know this one is short but that's all for now. I haven't really decided what I'm going to be writing about here on a regular basis, but there's more to come. Thanks for reading and see ya around!

Charity Marathons

Hello! It's been a long time since I've posted. I haven't done much more than play a little Diablo 3 here and there, and watch The Walking Dead on Netflix. I've also been talking to a friend of mine and tossing around a few ideas for games. I've been wanting to make a game for 2 years now. I'm just really lazy and haven't bothered learning what I need to be able to do it.

I don't know why for the life of me I never thought to come back to this blog. There's a lot I can talk about other than games, movies and TV. I'm getting really hyped for the next few months. There's two charity marathons on the way: RPG Limit Break and Summer Games Done Quick! You can find all the info about these charity events in the links below.

RPG Limit Break

Summer Games Done Quick

I got started watching these marathons on YouTube years ago. RPG Limit Break is rather new, and as I understand it's a replacement for Crystals for Life, another marathon from the past. These events are a lot of fun and have prizes for your donations, so take some time and check them out. RPGLB is benefiting NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and SGDQ is benefiting Doctors Without Borders.

That's it for now. I've just installed another free to play game that I'll be talking about soon. So, thanks for reading. See ya around!

Diablo 3 Season 10 Thoughts and Tips

Hello! It's been a few days since my last blog post. I've been well though. I had a few bad nights because I'm still missing Randy, and I don't quite know how to deal with it. It's hard to let go when your life revolved around another person for years.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I don't know what rock I had my head under for the past few years but I've totally been missing out on seasonal play in Diablo 3. I know I've already talked about how much I love this bad game. To be honest when I played it in 2012 I never used the auction house or the real money auction house, so I don't really get it when people say it ruined the game. I will admit though that it may have cheapened the fun for some people because they could just plug in whatever stats they wanted and gear out as long as they had enough gold

Anyhow on to seasonal play. I love this idea. It took me back to when I first started the game. I had to level everything all over again. It's slow going in the beginning. I never felt like I was out of stash room or anything though. Which is a good feeling. I like to have a lot of room for gems. I don't play hardcore yet so I'm not stashing tons of gear in case I die.

I'm playing a Wizard this season. I'm not really out to top the charts. If I was I would have started a couple weeks ago. I'm not even using an optimal spec. I also have no idea what the optimal gear is. I can look it up later if it becomes an issue. At the time of this writing I'm paragon level 47. I'm still a baby when it comes to my paragon level. You can check out my character Parathunder here.

While I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to Diablo 3 but I do have some advice when it comes to the Wizard. Make sure you keep your buffs up at all times. This should go without saying. Try to keep a high damage weapon in your hands when you're leveling. It can be easy to miss the increase to damage when you get a weapon that isn't a typical weapon for a Wizard. Just realize that everything scales based on your weapon's damage. While I was leveling I had usually a big two handed weapon. Try to focus more on your weapon while leveling. Gear is nice but when you get a good weapon upgrade while leveling you could be getting like 100% higher damage from a new weapon.

My next bit of advice is for battle. Pay attention to your position in battle. I try to focus on choke points as I'm a disintegrate Wizard. I know that makes me a pleb but like I said I don't really care about the charts right now. I tend to plant my hydras far ahead of me and fall back to a corner or a choke point and blast with disintegrate I use Storm Armor so that I get a little passive damage. So far I'm doing really well playing on Torment I. I may switch things up later so that it's more optimal.

Anyhow all this talking about Diablo 3 makes me want to play some Diablo 3. Thanks for taking the time to read this. My next entry will probably have links to guides and stuff as I'll probably be moving to a more optimal build. If you want really good guides / builds /specs for all things Blizzard check out icy-veins.com/. Thanks again for reading see ya around!

Jesse's MMO Romp Part 4: First Impressions

Hello! This is it. This is the end of my MMO Romp. If you've read my previous post you already know I reached the conclusion that I do not want to play MMO's any more. I still wanted to finish putting my thoughts on the games I've played to paper. I actually didn't play too much Runescape so I'm leaving it out of this article. Without further ado here's my thoughts on Firefall, Age of Conan, Order and Chaos 2, and D&D Online.

Firefall:

I really wanted to like this game. I'm more of a shooter oriented gamer so I thought for sure I'd fall in love with this one as it is an MMO shooter. I did fall in love with it in fact. I mean what's not to love. The game has fast paced shooter action. The environments were nice and you get rocket boots.

I experienced a game breaking bug though. I got to one part on a mission where I had to activate a terminal to continue. When I activate it I get a loading screen. After the loading screen either nothing happens or I get logged out. If I try to go about the mission after the loading screen I eventually get to a point where the quest tracker literally tells me to go up over a vertical wall and return to the console to begin the quest. So I like this game, and may come back to it. For right now though I just don't want to bother.

Age of Conan:

I like this game immensely. It's the Conan universe which I love. You start out playing as a slave whose ship has run aground resulting in your freedom. The Combat is fun. I still don't have it quite figured out, but it revolves around you chaining combos together for big damage.

I played as a Cimmerian Ranger. I thought it was going to be more like a hunter. To my surprise my skill set was mostly Melee starting out. I didn't like that I the only bow I could find required me to be level 10 before I could use it. They even gave me a ranged ability even though I can't use the starter bow from the first trade post. I don't want to sound like I didn't like the game though. It's fun! Give it a try. 

Order and Chaos 2:

First off I have to say that I have played this game before on my phone. Yep, that's right, this game lets you play a full fledged MMO on your phone or tablet. There's also a version of it on the Windows store that will let you play the game on Windows devices. I installed the desktop version and set off to romp around and see the world.

I like this game. I have an instant interest in any game that will let me play as an Orc. I just like Orcs there's something powerful and primal about them that I love even if they are big ugly brutes. Anyway I dove right in and started questing. They're really good about directing you where to go. You get blue dotted line to help you find your way.

This game is also controller enabled. I plugged in my Xbox controller and went at it. The controls weren't the best though. I think the controls would be a lot better if turning the camera angle also made the character turn, but you get used to it. You also will do a lot better if you use the mouse to interact with the various interfaces in the game because they're not very intuitive with the controller. Sometimes pressing “A” does one thing sometimes it seems to do another.

All in all I had fun with this one though. It's free to play and you can take it with you on the go. So download it and have fun!

Dungeons and Dragons Online:

This one was a pleasant surprise as well just like Lord of the Rings Online. Once again if you can handle the HD textures by all means do it. It makes the game look much better than it would otherwise. I played as a human ranger. Unlike Conan I was able to use a bow from the get-go.

Leveling up in this game is more in line with actual D&D than it was in Neverwinter. I played about as much as I would have to get to level 10 in other games, but I'm still level 1. In this game you rank up before you level. At rank 10 you graduate to level two. You still get skill points for every rank so it doesn't make leveling up seem too daunting.

The game play wasn't too grindy there were all kinds of bonus zone objectives and quests. I had a lot of fun with this one. There are also puzzles that were semi-challenging. I think I might leave this game and Lord of the Rings online installed for whenever I feel the itch to play something MMO-like.

In any event thank you if you stuck around for my ramblings. Thank you to everyone that +1'd this blog at any point. I'll be back, but I don't know what I'll be writing about next.

I'MMOut: My Personal Conclusion on MMO Style Games

As the title suggests I've come to a conclusion concerning MMO style games. In short I think they're for the most part not worth it. Right now you have two models the free to play / no subscription model and the subscription based model. They both have their good points.

Free to play is free which is good. There are still things that you'll have to pay for eventually though. If you want vanity items, extra bag room, or character slots then you'll end up paying. There are some games that still require you to purchase expansion content which is actually true across both models. But, for the most part these games would have you pay to take shortcuts for achieving most of the goals of the game from crafting to pets and mounts.

Subscription based games are probably going to end up being a little bit better. This is because the people that make the game are for the most part obligated to keep adding quality content. They can also give you pets and mounts from various achievements. World of Warcraft I would say has a great balance of vanity items for real dollars and others that you can earn.

By the same token developers are also making content that requires you to spend a good bit of time to achieve certain things whether it's mounts, pets, achievements, or even just leveling up. It's a delicate balance though because too long or short of time invested can lead to people leaving the game to go play something else that will reward them at a better interval.

At the end of the day I see this (just my personal preference) as just a big mind game. There are a lot of other games that I find to be better because these games actually have an end to them. Still though, modern games come out with a lot of DLC which I find (again just my preference) to be a better method of delivering content. There is DLC out there that feels like a whole new game (Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry for example) too, which I find to be a serious plus as the developer is giving people more bang for their buck when it comes to buying a season pass for something.

Of course content is added to MMO games all the time. I'm simply saying that the motivation is to keep you grinding away for something that seems less personal than other types of games. I know I've said before on this blog that I don't mind the grind, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately and that's what these games eventually turn into for me. To me it's either a ploy to keep me paying a subscription, or to have me pay for quality of life be it from short cuts or extra features.

I just think it's not my thing. Moving forward I think my focus is going to be on more single player games. I will miss multiplayer, but there are a lot of single player narrative games that have a multiplayer aspect to them, so I don't think I'll be depriving myself of that kind of play either. I know some people might think I'll be paying more money for less content because new games are upwards of 60 dollars or more. I'm an older gamer though, and I'd like to think I'm more patient than most. I can wait for a game to go on sale, or catch it in a humble bundle.

I think I still might keep a couple of these games installed at the end of the day. You never know when I'll get the itch to just mindlessly grind mobs. MMO's are alright sometimes. I just don't see myself dedicating a lot of time to them the way I used to.

Well if I go too much further with this rambling it's going to turn in to a specific rant, and That's not really what I'm about. So, I'll be dropping the last of my first impressions on the rest of the games I've been playing soon. From here on out this blog will be more about my [semi] collected thoughts from playing single player games. I still didn't touch much on my social anxiety when it comes to multiplayer games. I think that's best saved for another time.

How I Deal

Hello! I'm back again for a short post or two today. The past couple of days my anxiety has gotten the better of me, and I haven't posted anything. I said previously that my character flaws would be the topic of a post later on. Seeing as it's gotten the better of me I figured now would be an OK time to talk about it.

In 2012 I manifested schizoaffective disorder in the form of multiple paranoid delusions and a big, long outburst on social media. I had my moment of clarity eventually though. Since then I've been having severe social anxiety and depression. Situations where I would normally be fine are terrifying to me sometimes. I get scared that I might be saying the wrong thing, and might anger people. I also worry that what I'm doing might be yet another byproduct of delusional thinking. This causes me not to say anything, or do anything. I've had moments where I just sit there looking at my computer screen for several minutes petrified to do anything.

I've had cognitive behavioral therapy though. That's what I want this post to really be about. I don't want to just cry and whine on the internet about my problems. I want to help people by talking about what I've been trained to do to make the situation better. This doesn't work 100% of the time but it does help out.

When I'm feeling depressed, or experiencing anxiety in the form of bad thoughts I've been trained to do thought replacement. Instead of just letting the same old wheels turn in my head I collect a lot of different more positive subject matter that I force myself to think about instead of focusing on bad thoughts. Like I said this is still not 100% because sometimes I can't turn off the bad thoughts no matter what I do. It sucks I know but at least it's better than nothing.

Another thing that I've been taught to do is to occupy my hands with something productive or fun. I'm a gamer so usually this part is easy. Lately though it still isn't enough for me. Sometimes I'm just too depressed to do very much. I take long naps and sleep for most of the day. This is an example of something that you shouldn't do. I just feel down because I lost my partner of 7 years late in 2015. I know I should probably be over it by now, but I'm not. Sometimes it makes the days hard. At the end of the day you have to give yourself a pass sometimes. Nobody's perfect.

I'm going to break this recent cycle today though as I'll be forcing myself to play a few new games so that I can talk about them in my MMO romp posts. I'll be playing more D&D Online, and I'll be playing another game I found on steam: Age of Conan Unchained. So far it's been fun, but I'll have more on that later. So for now take care, and just know that at the end of the day nobody is perfect and you're allowed to take the time you need. Hopefully my writing this helps at least one person. See ya around!

My thoughts on the Assassin's Creed Series Part 1

Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 So Far

Hello! I'm taking a short break from writing about MMO's mostly because I haven't had time to sit down and play them to the point that I have something new to say about them. I'm also not done giving my first impressions of all the games I've played. I have a few ideas about what I want to do after I'm done writing about these games. That's what I'm here to write about today.

I'm more of a casual gamer. I don't typically play a game on the highest difficulty. It's because of this that I want two write about two series in particular; Assassin's Creed, and Dark Souls. Assassin's Creed because there aren't difficulty settings, and Dark Souls because it's notoriously hard.

I had to sell my PS3 quite a few years ago, and my computer was also broken during that time period so I didn't really get to enjoy these series as much as I would have liked. I got another PS3 2 years ago, and had been meaning to play the original Assassin's Creed. Well I completed the game recently and started on Assassin's Creed 2. There are a few things I've noticed moving from Assassin's Creed to Assassin's Creed 2.

The combat in Assassin's Creed 2 is a lot easier. There are also a few quality of life changes that were made to the combat. I say that combat is easier because I typically use counters to dispatch my foes, and countering has been made quite a bit easier. Whereas in Assassin's Creed I would most likely get hit for trying to parry too early the timing window in Assassin's Creed 2 seems to have been extended.

As far as the quality of life changes go there's the addition of health bars for the enemies which makes it easier to tell if you're about to kill someone. There's also NPC markers to make it easier to see someone that you're supposed to protect, or to tell you when guards are on the verge of going after you. They've also made climbing up and down a little faster than it was in Assassin's Creed. One major change that I've liked very much is the ability to blend with any group of people on the street. This makes avoiding the guards seem a lot easier. I've also noticed that whereas in Assassin's Creed guards would chase you to the ends of the earth unless you broke line of sight and hid in Assassin's Creed 2 you can lose the guards if you break line of sight and flee the area.

Overall I can't wait to see how this series develops. I know there are people that have a lot of negative things to say about some of the games in the later series. I've watched a few streams and videos and I can honestly say I can see why people have a few things to complain about, but as I've said before I don't think some of these things make the games unplayable. Thanks to anyone out there that's reading this. I'll be writing some more about the MMO's I've been playing, and eventually the Dark Souls Series. Thanks for stopping by and see ya around!