With Christmas coming around the corner, that means a nice holiday break that's filled with food, family and (hopefully) gaming. My wife and I build brand new gaming PCs and I bought her a PS4 for her birthday so there are no excuses to not game.
Here's what I've been up to:
Diablo 3 - Season 8
I stopped playing D3 for a while since there didn't seem to be any new content. My wife and I fired up D3 to test out our new gaming PCs. While playing, we saw her cousin online playing D3 as well. One of the things he told us was the fun of playing a seasonal character. This is where you start a character from scratch without any access to the gear and gold of your previous characters. If you progress a seasonal character far enough, Blizz will give you a free set of armor. This had me intrigued, so I rolled a Witch Doctor and it was pretty fun. After a week or two, I managed to get that set and it was even more fun. I'm speeding my way through normal and greater rifts. I've had so much fun, I may roll a season 9 character. 8/10
Overwatch
My wife and I picked this up during the Black Friday sale. Yes, we love Blizzard games. They don't necessarily make the most original games, but they are usually the most polished and the best games of their particular genre. With that high level of expectation set, Overwatch was disappointing. One of the tutorials keep kicking me out because I spent too long reading about the abilities of the characters. I've never seen Blizz make such a poor gameplay design. The gameplay itself was a little underwhelming; nothing really awed me. Granted, we only played a couple of matches, so it's still early to pass a final judgement. Here's my early judgement 6/10.
Saints Row IV
I'm a huge fan of the series and I was curious to see where they'd take the franchise. It starts off with the leader of the Saints (you) as the President of the United States battling aliens on the lawn of the White House. Unbelievably, it only get crazier from there. It's all of the wacky humor and gameplay from previous installments, but now they've added superpowers. Plus, there's plenty of Keith David. Everytime he talks to me, I feel that much cooler. They even recreated his fight with Roddy Piper from They Live. This was a solid entry into the franchise but without spoiling the ending, the next SR should have even more story possibilities. 9/10
Jagged Alliance 2
I finished this game years ago but I don't think I ever reviewed it. This is a classic turn based action game where you recruit and control a team of international mercenaries. Your mission is to help rebels overthrow a dictator on a tiny island nation. The more missions you do, the better gear and skills you get. I really enjoyed the attention to detail as you can outfit your mercs in a variety of ways. Combat was a lot of fun too as it took line of sight into account. This game was released in 1999 and I would easily consider this a classic. 9/10
Hawken
My friend, Scott, recommended this free-to-play online robot shooter. I was a little skeptical as I had never heard of this game. Needless to say, I was surprised at how good it was. Lots of detail went into customizing the mech. Mech felt a little too light and nimble during gameplay, but that's forgivable given the fast pace of combat. The usual online gaming modes were available: DM, CTF, etc. I think it'd be more fun if I played with people I knew. 6.5/10
Divekick
Imagine a fighting game like Street Fighter but without the depth or graphics. That's Divekick. It only has 2 buttons. And I don't mean it has movement controls and then only 2 buttons for punching and kicking. It literally only has 2 buttons. Jump and kick. Each character jumps and kicks a little different so the gameplay is somewhat varied. It's a funny game and is a solid parody of the fighting genre. Due to it's lack of depth, the game does get a little stale after a few hours. 6/10
The Typing Of The Dead: Overkill
I first saw this game in the arcades of Akihabara in Tokyo a few years ago. My wife spent a few yen playing this. It's just like the House Of The Dead shooting games, but instead of using a light gun, you use a keyboard to type out words to kill the zombies. The faster (and more accurate) you type, the faster you'll kill zombies. I did not play as the keyboards looked kind of nasty and I don't know how to type in Japanese. As it turns out, an English version is available on Steam. We bought a couple of copies so we could play co-op together. After almost 20 years of developing software, one would think I could type at a decent rate. Nope. I never learned how to type properly. My wife laughs at how I type. She says it looks like I'm playing a piano. The zombies also laughed at how I typed by eating my brains. I don't think I can finish this on my own. 6/10
Yoshi's Wooly World
A very cute sidescrolling platformer with Yoshi as the main character. In fact, the game is populated with dozens of different looking Yoshi's. The twist is that everything in the world, including the Yoshi's, are made of yarn. In fact the game itself comes with a knitted Yoshi figure. It's very much like a typical Mario game but with a yarn theme. I can't say I followed the plot very closely, but it was fun. Especially co-op where you can toss the other player like a ball of yarn. 7/10
