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Baby’s First Diablo

LMO 2014-06-20 06-09-20-013 It is no real secret that I love Lego, as I sit in an office full of sets waiting to be built and have an army of minifigures decorating my cube at work.  So when I first heard that Funcom, the makers of my beloved Secret World were working on a brand new game revolving around the random minifigures bags that I already buy way too often…  I figured I would be throwing money at the screen.  A good friend of mine managed to get into the alpha and without saying much about it specifically she said it was extremely cute and charming.  That about sums it up perfectly…  oh and you might throw in adorable.  I love the whole “toy store come to life” vibe that you get while playing the first level.  You start off with one of three sets of minifigures, I ended up going for the roman soldier, because he is already one of the favorite minifigures I own.

I am not sure who exactly coined the phrase, but so far “Baby’s First Diablo” has stuck, and that is not to diminish anything about the game.  It feels very much like a diablo style version of the various “Lego” franchise branded video games.  You break up blocks to get resources and stars in this case instead of coins.  Then you use special “builder” type minifigures to construct objectives.  You can have three minifigures equipped at a time, and right now my team consists of the Roman Soldier that has a charge and a melee swing, the Fortune Teller who is one of those special builder types, and the Bee Girl that drops adorable honey bombs and attacks enemy legos with swarms of bee ranged attacks.

It seems like the game is going to use a model similar to league of legends in that you buy champions in the form of minifigures packs.  The only gotcha is that I assume they will be just as random as the actual in store variety is.  So if I had to guess you can probably end up with duplicates, but I have no clue at all how that will work.  Will you be able to trade your dupes with other players, or will they have some sort of a deconstruction ability to turn them into resources…  or are they just going to go with “smart random” in that you never have the chance of getting a minifigure you already have.  In that case it would mean you would simply need to buy 16 packs of each type and would eventually get the full set.  This is definitely going to be a game I watch as the open beta continues.

Rocket Powered Hoverboard

WildStar64 2014-06-20 06-18-05-408 Just like Griff Tannen in Back to the Future… my hoverboard’s got power.  Last night I dinged 25 and was finally able to claim both the preorder hoverboard and the deluxe edition hoverboard.  Surprisingly I think I like the deluxe edition quite a bit better.  Originally I upgraded to deluxe when I thought I would be sticking around for awhile, and I guess I am happy I did so.  On the chua it seems so much cooler looking than the original human preview picture did.  I guess the difference is that the preview shots didn’t really have actual in game lighting applied to them, so they made everything look that much more gold and gaudy.  In game it looks pretty cool and as short and fat as my chua is… the regular hoverboard just looks too small for him.

WildStar64 2014-06-20 06-42-26-568 So far moving out of Auroria has breathed new life into the game because I did not really understand at the time just how bored with that zone I was.  It’s weird because I absolutely loved Deredune but couldn’t be bothered to care about Auoria at all.  Now I am in something much more my style the traditional “snowy” zone.  For whatever reason I seem to have an affinity for the snow  zones in games be it Iron Pine Peaks or Winterspring… that usually ends up as my favorite leveling destination.  Additionally I’ve installed a number of mods that make following the quest chains a bit easier so I expect that I will stay on track a little better rather than endlessly chasing rabbit trails.  I am still firmly in the middle of the pack level wise, but there are several that are now into their 30s, so I keep feeling the need to “catch up”.

Battlefield Hardline

Game trailers are pretty much all lies, but even knowing that this one gave me hope that we might see an interesting shooter to play.  You have to understand that my ideal shooter is one of the Enemy Territory series games, where you have real “objectives” that have to be completed in order to progress the map.  Based on this footage and folks using the term objective based shooter… I had hopes that this might be a return to that gameplay style.  So I applied for the beta and got accepted to play it on the Playstation 4.  Within a few minutes of gameplay all of those hopes were dashed.  This game is pretty much exactly like every single Battlefield or Call of Duty game… except this time you get to play cops and robbers.  For some that will be a good thing, if you like Battlefield and Call of Duty…  but for me it is a pretty damning indictment.

The objectives in Hardline are basically “capture the flag” by another name.  Instead of creating a series of complicated objectives that the team has to work together to achieve, it simply creates temporary choke points where death-matching occurs.  On top of this… the game just does not feel like a next generation shooter.  Everything feels extremely low resolution as compared to say Destiny, in fact I wouldn’t even say those two games are anywhere near the same league as far as look and feel.  Everything about this game feels like a “B Team” effort, and I think that is pretty much what players have come to expect out of “off year” titles in the big shooter franchises.  Basically if you just want Battlefield 4 with a few changes, then you might enjoy it.  If you were like me and hoping for something more…  keep looking elsewhere.  After all Destiny is just around the corner.

#LegoMinifigures #Wildstar #Hoverboard #BattlefieldHardline