So I’ve been playing a bit of zombie-slaying for a couple of weeks, it’s actually pretty fun. The absolute worst thing about it though, is the PUGs. Sometimes you find a great group, they might not always know what they’re doing – where to go, keep an eye out for alarms, common tactics for area-control, etc. – but it’s fine. I dont need everyone to know they have to pick up totems, to use toolkits on stashdoors, to save molotovs for hordes and handgrenades for specials, etc. But when they know none of these things, as well as run around picking totems up to throw them behind because “trash melee weapon”, or blast the back of my head with any gun they might have because they dont know friendly fire exists, it’s getting kind of irritating. I admit, I’m not perfect either – there’s things I’m still learning, such as only yesterday I found out that barbed wire not only slows zombies, it actually also does a small DoT on them. There’s things I still learn, and crutches I still use – one of the cards I run in every deck is “Down In Front”, where when every time I crouch I toggle friendly fire off, both as doing and getting – just because I cant be arsed at the moment to try to compensate for teammates trying to run infront of me every time I decide to unload on an enemy.
Sometimes though, you find a team where everyone knows what they’re doing, atleast just enough, that you breeze through the act. Everyone buys team upgrades, shares resources, gives ammo in need, doesnt just hog the legendary attachments for themselves – why do you need a legendary scope on a revolver? Just take the epic sight and let someone who uses scopes take the legendary one. Everyone looks out for alarms, assassinates snitches, use barbed wires in chokepoints, heals each other, each person have their own role.. not everyone needs to look out for the same special – sometimes it’s fine to let someone else get kill-credit!
It’s a fun game – I just kinda wish I wasnt the only one in my friend-circle playing it. Although, I can somewhat understand it, while it is the L4D formula improved upon, the open Beta wasnt that great for them, and they do have other games to play instead. Like…PUBG. And COD.
There’s also a small update on the Diablo franchise! Diablo 4 is soon to be release…ing a new update. Last was late March, so it’s just a month away for another update. The game itself? Probably not out for a couple of more years. However, Diablo Immoral have released!
Oh, sorry, it’s apparently Diablo Immortal. Could’ve fooled me – worse cashgrab of a garbage pile you can look for and not find.
It’s a pretty decent game – it looks like they kind of ported Diablo 3 to phone-User interface/gaming experiences, and while some new versions of the old features are pretty slick – the skill system isnt as customizable as D3, but more streamlined which in itself is pretty nice looking, but the rest of it seems like it’s still the same – small tweaks on Rifts, you can enter rifts without being max level, still the same disenchanting deal where you break down items for materials, and there’s an auto-pickup feature! That one I like! On the other hand, almost exactly everything costs money. There’s several streamers who have covered it already, but it’s not like “buy the game for $60 and get everything” – it’s legit microtransactions on steriods. It’s disgusting, and it should be discouraged. Asmongold actually showed the differences the other day, and it’s beyond words. Either you play the game for free, and basically get nothing, or you pay $20+ each rift to get basically what GR100+ rifts in D3 gives. Now, Asmongold can afford to do this – he does it to show the rest of us how ludicrous it is – so he’s not hurting. But the entire game premise is cashgrab, it’s predatory and it’s disgusting. The entire game is basically a skin for a slotmachine – anyone with addiction problems, bad handle with money or any other issues will end up throwing away their money, more than they actually can afford. It’s cynical, it’s predatory, it’s insane, and it’s immoral.
I downloaded it – they have a client for both phones and PC, so that you can play “better” on PC and “on the go” on your phone, just to really maximize the amount of time you can play the game, offering you more “chances” to end up paying for it. And no, it’s not like League of Legends, who sells overpriced skins for the game or at their worst let you buy champions for real money so you can play outside of the free champ circulation, and it’s not like most other games where you pay a one-time cost of up to $60 to get everything – or sometimes more, now that DLC’s end up carrying most of the game mechanics for a lot of games – no, Diablo Immoral actually lets you spend a whole lot more.
Like, a whopping $100 000 for one character to be fully kitted out – ingame power and cosmetics included. Or should I say “costmetic”?
I know, now there’s probably a few of you saying “well, just dont buy it then!”, and that’s a valid point. Just as valid as to say “just stop smoking”. It’s not something a lot of people chose, it’s addiction. They cant help themselves. And before you go on a rant saying “well, games are bad, because of that” – how did you end up smoking?
So yeah, while the gambling-skin that is called Diablo Immortal on the surface seems like a good game, it’s probably only because they re-purposed Diablo 3 in a new UI/UX and ported it to phones. I would much rather just still go buy the now 10-year old game of actual Diablo 3. While I dont really condone what Blizzard is doing, and dont really feel like they deserve more money after this absolute dungpile, I rather let them gain only $40 from you to play an actual game instead of risking draining your wallet with a mockery of a game. And with those $40, you actually end up with the entire game, complete with all the seasons they put out. Admittedly, there was tendencies even when D3 came out that Blizzards wanted to use Diablo as a cashgrab, but that was put down almost immediately. While I would’ve liked some sort of trade between people, the implementation was just horrible. If they atleast opened it up a bit more – like, instead of a real-money-transfer auction house, they could’ve made an ingame auction house like in WoW. But I dont know, in the end it might have gone inflation in it, because of how much gold there actually is in that game.
The €25 option gives you just enough to get a fully Legendary Crest-stacked rift, which basically equates to a GR100+. Not even guaranteeing the best materials – and you can even lose out on it if you fail the rift. There’s so much more wrong with this “game” it’s bordering on stupid.
To be perfectly honest – this “game”-release has me legitimately worried about how Diablo 4 will come out. I’m less inclined to even look at that game now, because of how messed up Diablo Immoral is.
I have yet to played any Elden Ring Survival mod, because it hasnt released yet. I’m as of yet unsure when I will be playing some as well, as I need to wait for the next time the kids visits their mom. Which should be this coming weekend – but that’s also just two days. And I need time to download, install, test the mod out, iron any flaws out, etc, and then I can play for real. So, when the actual playthrough will go off, I’m not yet sure. Grimrukh himself says that it’ll release late Monday night – which is today, but considering timezones, it’s not until late Monday night CST. I also am not sure when Lobos will be streaming the game, or for how long, but the mod-release will be after Lobosjr’s stream – I will link to his youtube here when it’s up, until then, I suggest you look out for his stream!
I have also not been playing any New World since last. They’re trying to stay relevant – which is all good, and perhaps they succeed, I just dont pay much attention to it anymore. I know they’ve had a Dev vs Streamer fight, which I obviously did not take part of – even if I was a large streamer, I’ve stopped playing the game, and while I do believe I’m still in their (very open and large, I admit, they accepted anyone who wanted to apply) New World Creator program.. I’m just a creator in name for now. Not that my “creation” was that great to begin with – but hey, they accepted me into their program, along with everyone else.
I probably should just remove it from my PC all together by this point.
Vampire Survivors are still churning out updates – they’ve got more weapons and accessories available, more maps and characters. It’s starting to look like a pretty complex game now! I kinda feel bad though, because it was almost “too cheap”. It’s less than €2.40! It’s one of those games, where you buy them because it’s a quick, easy, cheap games, and end up realizing it’s underpriced like hell.
Me and the oldest have also played through It Takes Two, which was a really great game! We both loved it, but we almost felt like it was a “too long” game in the end. Not sure if the novelty slowly drained out, or if the later maps were just…well, not “bad”, but rather “not as good” as the earlier ones. We also didnt care much for the cutscenes, we liked the gameplay too much to even watch them – also, we both really disliked the book. Everytime he showed up, we just immediately skipped. We made it a point to find and play through the minigames though, and while I ended up winning most, the kid actually got a decent amount of wins. The funniest we ended up doing though, was climbing the Helltower. We basically competed to do it, and it was close several times, he was climbing slower than me for a while, and when I was at the upper part he was still climbing the lower, but I ended up falling so often, that at one point he was the platform below the top when I had just fallen to the ground. In the end though, I think I crushed the little guys spirit, because we both fell so often and I ended up beating the tower at the same time he fell to the ground. He never attempted the tower after that.
Also, we both empathized a bit more with Cody than May – she seemed like an ass towards Cody half the time. He had always tried, but she was too selfcentered to bother it seemed. I felt bad for the guy.
I also got my hands on the new game V Rising – which has been compared to, almost like a “vampire-esque Valheim”, which doesnt look too far off. I havent played Valheim myself, but I’ve seen enough of both games to see why they’re compared to eachother like that. It seems super fun, but it’s also one of those games where I seem pressed to find time to get into. If anyone is interested, I know both Cohh and Zizaran loves the game, and Cohh even have two entire playlists of the game! Apparently Zizaran is going to boot up a server with other streamers, but I’m not sure when he’ll be streaming it, or where it’ll be available for viewing. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess!
Fun fact – both developers are from the same town in Sweden! One is Stunlock Studios, and the other is Iron Gate Studio.
Bonus fact, Iron Gate Studio’s game, Valheim, is published by yet another company from the same town, Coffee Stain Publishing – which, through Holding Companies, are the same guys that released the Sanctum-games, Satisfactory, Goat Simulator; Coffee Stain Studios.
Stray is soon to be released too, on both Steam and Playstation – that game will be interesting! I’m not entirely sure where I will be getting it, but I’m leaning towards Playstation, to be honest. It’s not a competetive PvP game, so there’s no real “need” to have it on a PC, and it doesnt exactly hurt to have it on PS.
It’s an exploration-game where you play as that cat! Apparently, you’ve lost your family and your goal is to escape the city, I guess in order to find your family? Either way, it looks awesome, the few videos I’ve watched makes it look awesome!
Speaking of other games that is yet to release – Darktide now has a release date, September 13th. It’s the guys who did Vermintide, so it’s almost guaranteed that it’ll be a solid Horde-swarm game! Not too shabby price either, €40 for the game, €60 for the “Imperial Edition”. For anyone who doesnt know, Vermintide is a co-op game where you play as one of five characters trying to stem the tide of vermins (large rats) trying to end the world – hence the name “Vermintide”. Darktide is the same thing, except whereas Vermintide is set in the Warhammer Age of Sigmar universe, Darktide is Warhammer’s futuristic space-universe, Warhammer 40’000. I hope this game will be more interesting for my friends, because I’d love to play the hell out of this game with them.