Several things have kept me from updating this quite as much as I’d like to. So, this is going to be an enormous recap post!
First off, the guild I was running in Rift finally collapsed a couple months back, resulting in my withdrawal from the game. We had to take fairly desperate measures to keep the guild going due to attrition, so we absorbed a smaller guild. Things went quite well for a month or so, and then the leaders of that smaller guild decided they wanted to leave the server and took their people with them, without any warning or discussion. Losing a significant chunk of our raiding force ended our hopes of continuing to raid. That actually left me with more time!
Fortunately (or not as the case may be), several other games jumped up to fill that void. First of all was Dark Souls on the PS3. This sequel to Demon’s Souls is just like it, in terms of being brutal, unforgiving, and just plain hard. It’s also intensely rewarding, challenging without being overly frustrating, and enjoyable. To date I’ve put over a hundred hours of playtime into it without finishing it yet, though I did start over after putting a lot of time into my first character. While it’s nearly impossible to gimp your character completely in this game, it’s entirely possible to build poorly and end up in a place where you can’t correct it without some ungodly amount of time and effort. My new character is a pyromancer though, as opposed to the previous character’s sorcery. Fire is just a bit better.
Second and third, Dungeon Defenders and Battlefield 3 on the PC. Dungeon Defenders was a $10 purchase I’d been looking forward to for ages, since it was supposed to release in January 2011. They delayed it 10 months or so while they put it on iOS and Android etc. In the end it was a good idea, as their release was extremely well polished, integrated well into Steam, and a hell of a lot of fun. It’s a tower defense game that’s been crossbred with action/loot RPG conventions and a very cartoony art style. There are a few different classes who have different defense styles, towers or traps or auras, plus their own skills. I didn’t expect it to be as fun as it has been, and I need to play more of it.
Battlefield 3, on the other hand, I haven’t played much at all. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the BF series. While they’re great fun when you have good teams on both sides, players who skew the curve can do hideous things when they get into a tank or jet or what have you. This is only made worse when the teams get stacked. The Ars servers have always been horrible about teamstacks in previous BF games and this one doesn’t seem any different. Worse yet, I’m simply getting older and I’m just not as good at FPS as I used to me. This is exacerbated by the ultra-detailed graphics in the game. I can’t even tell if that blob there is an enemy or not until I have half a clip of bullets arrayed in my chest and face. Suffice to say, this is the purchase I regret most in the past couple of months.
I’ve also picked up playing League of Legends again. That’s always been a fun game, though it absolutely brings out the worst in people. People who want to win get angry because poor play by one player on their team can cause a loss, no matter how well they play. People who want to play for the sake of playing get angry because people in the first category get angry at them. People who want to troll others have the time of their lives because they can cause the first category to stroke out on a regular basis. I’m honestly surprised we don’t hear more about people passing out from apoplexy while playing this game. The most amusing point of the game is that no one has a very good grasp of how good they actually are. This leads to people who are average players thinking they are great and attempting to play the game as if they were great, which leads to them being bad. Very bad.
Finally, Skyrim. Yeah, Skyrim. Enormous sandbox open world RPG. It’s amusing in many different ways. Need to play more.
On the more passive side of entertainment, I finished reading the Malazan Tale of the Fallen, and immediately read it again. It’s such a rewarding series to read – while not every book in the series is top flight, the end is entirely worthwhile. It’s massive payoff for the previous three-odd million words. I was shaking while I finished off the last third of the final book. Want more.
I also watched an enormous anime series called the Legend of Galactic Heroes. It’s old school space opera, two interstellar nations at war, space battles and politics in full swing. It is an old show, having started in 1988 and ending in 1997, going for 110 episodes. Yeah, 110 episodes. It took a while to finish. Some of it was somewhat silly, but in general, it pre-dated a lot of the annoying anime tropes that infuriate me these days, and it’s simply good solid space opera. It’s actually given me some ideas and motivation to try my hand at my own space opera – I had actually brainstormed some ideas about that some time ago, and they’re sticking in my head.
Finally, I picked up a new Nook Tablet a couple days ago. It’s a nice little device. I haven’t ever used an ereader or a tablet before, so this is all new to me, but I’m digging it so far. I did have to turn on my router’s wifi, which made me sad, since I live in an apartment building and I’ve always been moderately concerned about interference. Luckily, the scan showed that there aren’t all that many access points that are actually reachable from my apartment. I guess brick and concrete construction is pretty good for such things.
As for my own book…more to come on that in a couple of days. Suffice to say, the day is just about here.
