Regularly Playing: October 2020 Edition

Good Morning Folks! For anyone who has tuned in more recently during the “Genshin Boom” as I am calling it, there is this thing that I like to do semi-monthly where I review the games I have been playing and talk about them a bit. This also serves as a reminder for me to update the regularly playing widget in the sidebar of this blog. Even more than this it is also a time for me to finally admit that a romance with a game is over and send it off on its way, while also talking about the new things that excite me. I actually legitimately did one of these in September so maybe this is the beginning of it actually returning to being something I do each month.

Essentially I like to divide the games up into a few categories:

• To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
• To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
• To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
• Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.

To Those Remaining

I am a sucker for this game. I am not playing an awful lot of it right now because we are in the doldrums between finishing one season and starting a new one. However the next season is right around the corner and it should be a very interesting one. During the season the Kanai’s Cube is expanding to four slots with the fourth being completely open to what you want to stick in it. I am assuming that most builds are going to go with some sort of double weapon buffs, but it should be super interesting. Given how packed that November is going to likely be gaming wise, it probably means I will be Demon Huntering it up given that tends to be the fastest route forward.

I am one of the lucky few that managed to snag a PlayStation 5 preorder, or at least hope that I was successful. I am not playing this game a lot, largely because I am waiting for the improved visuals of playing it through a PS5… but I am occasionally popping it open and wandering feudal japan from time to time. Glorious game and I look forward to focusing on some more at the tail end of this year.

This game is now officially out and you should probably be playing it. I’ve shifted things up a bit and I am now playing a lot more of this on the Switch from bed than I am on the PC. I am looking forward to cross save being implemented because while I am not super progress on either platform I would love to just have one that I am focused on period. This is a really great game and I am constantly in awe of how well Supergiant makes games.

I am not actively playing this game but lord I wish I was. I keep hearing rumors about new phases of testing starting up soon, and I am down for this. I had a blast in August and September playing the last extended phase of testing, and the phase prior to that one. I am super on board with this game whenever it actually launches and I would love for if the next phase included a friend code… or if they just rolled into Open Beta soon. I cannot fully conceptualize why I enjoyed this game so much, but I am wanting to get in and share it with some friends. I have this sneaking suspicion that the AggroChat group will be drawn towards Team purple, even though I myself tend to gravitate towards Green. I will make the sacrifice of course for them however, but it is definitely an experience where you want everyone on the same team.

I started this last time as a general catch all category for poking around with emulation and my Retro Freak console. I’m not really dug in deeply into any games other than maybe the current play through of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest that I have going on the switch. I also picked up a mega pack of Sega Genesis games recently when it was on sale for the Switch and I’ve been playing quite a bit of classic Streets of Rage 2. I’ve yet to really go spelunking into the closet, but given that I am going to have to rearrange my set up to make room for the PlayStation 5… I have a feeling that I might be doing this sooner rather than later. I need to devote a weekend to organizing and hooking up my office for playing this sort of nonsense. I still want to dig out the NeoGeo CD and see if I can get it running on HDMI.

Shadowlands has been delayed, but we should have the pre-patch event starting next Tuesday. I am hoping to spend some time this weekend maybe finishing leveling my rogue, but other projects have stolen my attention. Additionally we should have the beginning of the Halloween event soon, and you can damned well bet I am going to be spending each day running it on each of my available characters because I really want that damned mount finally. I mean it is highly likely that I won’t get it… but I am going to at least make a good effort this year given that I actually am enjoying the game still. November is likely going to be heavy shadowlands time for me so this absolutely retains its spot.

To The New and Returning

If you have been reading this blog at all this month and the tail end of the last month you will know that I am completely obsessed with Genshin Impact. This is being called “Breath of the Waifu” by many a person online, but I am not even sure if that covers it. I am absolutely not playing it for the Waifu or Husbando, but instead because it is this insanely good action RPG that sort of came from out of nowhere. It is this expert blending of Breath of the Wild, Trials of Mana, Modern Dragon Quest games, Open World Exploration and the addictive as hell Gacha mechanics of Dragalia Lost. I am still shocked at just how damned good this game is for as free as it legitimately is. Sure I have spent money on the game but I also didn’t feel like I had to. If you are not playing this you should be, and probably on the PC/Mobile since they cross save and the PS4 is locked to only that platform. That said there is cross play between all of the platforms regardless, I just like the freedom of being able to farm materials from bed on my phone or tablet and also play primarily on my PC.

To Those Departing

Oh Avengers… its not me… its you. I feel like this game probably needed another year to mature and develop enough interesting combat to really be the sort of game that it was trying to be. This is the Anthem of 2020, a game with a lot of promise but also a game that felt pointless after awhile as I chased rewards that didn’t really matter. The difference being that the moment to moment gameplay was so much more enjoyable in Anthem. Avengers needs significant tweaks in its combat system to make it feel more enjoyable in the moment to moment gameplay. I leveled and farmed up a full set of yellow gear for Captain America, leveled up Thor, and then realized while I was leveling Ms Marvel that I didn’t exactly know why I was doing it and logged out never to log in again.

I rarely do two pictures for a single game, but here we are breaking that rule. This is a snipping from Steam DB for the Avengers game, and notice that its peak concurrency was at launch… and only ever hit just over 31,000 players. The few times I attempted to match up with other players, the queues were too long and I eventually gave up and went back to soloing content. The storyline for this game was great and I made me fall in love with the character of Ms Marvel, and since then I have been pouring through her comics through Marvel Unlimited and having a grand ole time. The game however just becomes repetitive when you realize there are six maps in the entire game and everything is carved out as chunks of those as they send you on the same handful of mission types with semi-randomized objectives. Maybe I will revisit in a year or so and see if the game has improved.

I still don’t know why this game and I struggle to get along. There is so much about it that I adore, but at the same time I feel absolutely no desire to actually log in and play it. I left it on the list last time, but to be honest I don’t think I logged in at all during September. With everything on the horizon game wise with the launch of the PS5 and World of Warcraft Shadowlands… I don’t expect to probably play it for the rest of this calendar year. At some point I will return and gobble up a few patches worth of story content, but I am already behind in that department. I love Lalabel, and I will come back to visit him at some point in the future but for now we are admitting to ourselves that the game just isn’t going to be played in the near future.

Ships Passing in the Night

I gotta admit I teetered back and forth between putting this on the new and returning list. I had a really fun week/weekend hanging out and playing this game and I could see myself returning to it on a more permanent basis. That said… there is just so damned much stuff on my radar right now so I am going to put it in this category for the moment. If it becomes more… then it can trickle upwards on the list. The game has either massively improved since its launch, or I never really gave it enough of a chance because I became enthralled with Anthem. Either case… I am compelled to spend some more time here at some point.

This charming game is an Early Access title that Tam stumbled onto and I have poked my head into a few times. Not really actively playing it, but it is something I am definitely going to be watching. They are doing active development on it and I am hoping some rounds of combat balance are in the works. if you want more detail you can check out my write up from a few weeks back.

Summary

There really wasn’t a ton of movement, but that is usually the case when I actually manage to do these on a monthly basis. Looming on the horizon is the launch of the PlayStation 5, World of Warcraft Shadowlands, and Cyberpunk 2077 which are all going to steal some of my time. Past hat I am really not sure what the tail end of this year is going to lead to. Time is moving so damned fast in part because every day is effectively the same as I rarely leave the house. I can’t believe we area already knee deep in October when mentally it still feels like it is maybe April. 2020 is going to go down in history as the “Lost Year” I think for me, and while I have stayed busy… it all just sorta flows together.

What are you “regularly playing”? Drop me a line below.