Since I ran up against the buffers in Nightingale I've been game-hopping like crazy. Typically, when I was spending all my time in one game, I complained about feeling trapped. Now I'm back to jumping between half a dozen games it's giving me the jitters. There's no pleasing some people.
The games I'm "playing" just now (Although that's a very fancy word for what I'm actually doing when I log into some of them.) are:
- New World
- AdventureQuest 3D
- Once Human Closed Beta 3
- EverQuest II
- Nightingale
- The Dungeon of Nahalbeuk: Amulet of Chaos
I don't have one of those fancy apps that tallies exactly how much time I spend in each of them but I can say with a fair degree of confidence that it isn't a lot. I doubt it's more than a couple of hours altogether most days.
As well as those six, I have a mental list of about twice as many games I feel I ought to be playing - or could be playing - or was in the middle of playing before I stopped for no good reason. Those include:
- Valheim
- Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit
- Tales Noir Preludes
- Imposter Factory
- Lake
- My Time At Sandrock
There are more - potentially a lot more - but that's a round dozen so I'll call it there, just so I have time to give a little gloss on each of them, starting with the ones I'm at least managing to log into once in a while:
New World - I came back for the Spring event and kind of hung around. I've been logging in most days to do the rounds of the settlements and festival camps so I can pick up my freebies, especially the tokens. I've bought some of the furniture I wanted and I have a couple more days to get the rest. I need to remember to spend everything I've earned because the event currency vanishes along with the event itself a tthe end of April.
Other than that, I've done a few quests and I feel like I might carry on and do a few more, just for the fun of it. Questing in New World is generally entertaining and I see new quest markers everywhere I go. Unfortunately, I'd need to buy the expansion to level any further and I think it's a bit steep at £25. I'm somewhat discouraged to do too much questing while the xp goes nowhere so I'll probably shelve this one soon in anticipation of whatever the Big Announcement in June might be. Maybe that will make it feel like it's worth buying the DLC.
AdventureQuest 3D - I log in every day just to collect my three daily chests. There are two reasons I keep doing it: 1) The first chest always gives some cash shop currency and I want some for housing items and 2) AQ3D has by far the fastest login process I've ever seen.
Seriously, it's like lightning. I wish every MMORPG was even half as fast. I just timed it and it took 28 seconds from Pressing "Play" in Steam to looking at my character in game. I can log in, get my chests and be back in Steam in under a minute although I don't usually go quite that fast. Of course, I'm not actually playing the game but there's certainly nothing being put in my way if I wanted to, which is more than I can say about a lot of games - *cough* Lord of the Rings *cough*
Once Human CB3 - I logged into this one for the first time in a couple of weeks last night and my house was gone! That was a shock. It turned out to be more of a feature than a glitch, though. It seems that if you don't log in for a while (I don't know what the time-limit is.) your house automatically gets copied and stored using the system designed for moving home.
All you have to do to restore it is find a new spot and put down the blueprint and it magically reappears, just as it was, with all the furniture in the right place. It seems like a very ingenious solution to the endless problem all games with open-world housing have, namely absentee homeowners. This way, no-one has to look at hundreds of abandoned homes and all the best building spots can be taken by people who are going to use them.
Once Human has a lot of clever design features like that. Yesterday I ran across the game's ingenious solution to that other annoying trope of so many F2P MMORPGs, player-owned strip malls. You must have seen them; dozens, scores, hundreds of stalls put up by players to sell their goods, all crammed together in a particularly ugly form of urban blight.
In OH, players sell from pick-up trucks on which they place vending machines. These fit so well into the post-apocalyptic environment, already littered as it is with broken-down vehicles and machinery, it took me a good while to realize what they were. They also have the benefit of all being different. I haven't found out how you get one yet but it looks as though once you have one, you can furnish and decorate it like a room in your house. I wonder if you can also drive about in it? There are vehicles in the game, so I don't see why not.
EverQuest II - I'm in and out of this one as usual. This morning I finished the Signature Questline from the current expansion, Ballads of Zimarra, which would normally be a big moment. Instead it turned out to be something of an anti-climax.
For one thing, it's the first expansion for a long time where finishing the Sig hasn't also put me at the level cap. My Berserker is still only half way through Level 128. For another, there isn't a big, explosive ending to the storyline - just a regular fight with a named mob I wouldn't even call a Boss, followed by a hand-in, at which point you get a pop-up telling you the Sig line is finished.
It transpires there's a reason for that. The Signature Quest might have stopped but the quest faucet is still jammed full on. Other NPCs nearby immediately sprout feathers over their heads and everything carries on as before. I looked ahead on the wiki and there are tons more quests of all sorts in the expansion, many in direct line of sequence from the Sig.
I'm not sure why they've done it this way although no doubt there are reasons. It's fine with me, anyway. Now I can just carry on chipping away until I eventually hit 130. I'd like to get it done before the Anashti Sul server arrives in June. That shouldn't be too hard...
Nightingale - As I said the other day, the changes they've made aren't significant enough to get me back playing regularly again. I would like to re-visit all the vendors so I can buy stuff directly from the UI in future, though. That would be a project in itself.
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: Amulet of Chaos - The wild card on this list, being both the only game that's both solo and offline. It's also the one I've been playing the most. I've had a session most evenings, usually lasting a couple of hours, which is sometimes as long as it takes to finish a single battle.
I really like the gameplay. It's one of those XCom-style, turn-based, tactical group combat games, only with a high-fantasy skin. Lots of setting people on fire, knocking them down and hiding behind things until someone blows them up. All of that.
It's also - loosely - a parody and I was wary of what that might mean in the way of "humor" but it's largely okay. The voice acting is just the right side of amateurish and the jokes rise just above embarrassingly cliched. I wouldn't call it witty or original but it raises the odd smile and the characters... have character.
The game also seems to go on forever. I feel like I've been playing it for months. I know I'm doing all the side quests but I feel if I wasn't my party wouldn't be tough enough to handle the main quest so it doesn't feel like that's much of an option. Anyway, I'm enjoying it and I hope one day I might even finish it.
And now the ones I'm thinking - but not doing much - about...
Valheim - Wilhelm writing about this one again reminds me I ought to go back and at least take a look at the Mistlands. I had a terrible start with that biome, although from what Wilhelm says that was likely the developers' intention.
I'm not even going to bother trying to play the game properly any more but luckily I don't need to because I've switched all the mobs to Passive, meaning I can go explore without fear of being jumpd on by a spider the size of an elephant, moving as fast as a cheetah. I mean, does that sound like fun to anyone?
I was tempted to go back and have a wander around yesterday but then I thought about the final biome, Ashlands, which is in testing now and should be going live in a matter of weeks. It probably makes more sense to wait for that and then explore both biomes together. If I do, I won't be switching mob aggro on for that either, I'll tell you that for nothing!
Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit - I bought this in January. Haven't even logged in yet. Every time I see it in my Steam Library I feel uncomfortable. Maybe I'll start on it as soon as I finish Naheulbeuk.
Tales Noir Preludes - I bought this around the same time and played it right away. I was really enjoying it but then I stopped, for no reason I can recall. I keep meaning to carry on from where I left off but somehow I never do. Must try harder.
Imposter Factory - Much the same story for this one, although I got further before I stopped.
Lake - And this one! I have no idea why this keeps happening. I have a post in mind to write about Lake, too. Something very odd happens in it. Twice, in fact.
I thought I might already have posted about that but search suggests I haven't. I guess I could tell you what the Odd Thing is now but there's still the outside possibility it might happen more than twice, so I really ought to finish the game first, just in case.
My Time At Sandrock - Will I ever play this damn game? I very much doubt it.
I almost wish I hadn't bought it, now. I feel like its whole schtick has been done by so many other games, I can't really see the point. Then again, the My Time At... games probably do it better than most of them, so why play any of those, when I already have this one installed?
And there we have it. Not so much a post, more of a to-do list. Maybe putting it all down on paper will even inspire me to get some of it done.
I kinda doubt it but you have to try something, don't you?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment