It has taken me until this morning to actually get around to writing one of these, but by god it is still april so it still counts in continuing this streak of posts.  I am notoriously bad at actually keeping a series going, which is weird considering I did the whole daily posting thing for over three years.  For those who are just tuning in once a month I attempt to true up my sidebar and talk about the games that I am actually regularly playing during a given month.  Some months there isn’t much net change and then other months we basically wipe the slate clean.  This is going to be on of those first types because a lot of things changed this month.  Without further stalling…  lets rip the band-aid off.

To Those Remaining

Dragalia Lost – Android

I cannot believe that of all of the titles I was playing last month… that this is the only one that is still kicking at the end of the month.  Dragalia Lost has been going strong for me pretty much since release,  and in part it does well with me because there is always another event just around the corner.  Right now we are in the middle of an event that crosses over characters from the Fire Emblem series that came along with a big patch that changed the way that summons work.  No more useless Wyrmprints and now we can simply buy the ones we need from a vendor.  I play this every night before bed and at a minimum do my daily activities until I reach the point where I am just about to drop the phone…  at which point I plug in the charging cable for the night and go to sleep.  It has become a part of my routine, which means it is probably here to stay for awhile.

To Those Returning and Brand New

Diablo 3 – Switch

This one never stays off the list for very long, which is in part why I am generally so hesitant to remove it when I eventually do.  There is a new season coming up and I fully expect to get re-engaged with this title during that time.  As to which platform I do it on is another decision point.  Right now my usual partner in crime does not have the switch so more than likely we will be teaming up on the PC.  I do however kinda want to make my way through a switch season and try to earn a bonus bank slot in the process.  I wish to all that is holy that I could just link my switch copy to my PC copy so I could sure rewards.  Cross play is a thing that is needed more than probably any other innovation in gaming.

Final Fantasy XIV – Console

Another game that does not stay off the list for terribly long is Final Fantasy XIV.  I am not fully engaged with this game at the moment, but I did come back and finish all of the story content.  Since then I have been languishing a bit at trying to find something to draw me to the game and hold me there.  Most recently I have started working on beast tribe quests because who doesn’t love mounts.  I know I will return in full with the expansion because I always do… but for the moment I am struggling to find purpose.

Grim Dawn – PC

I am not entirely certain if this game has ever made one of these lists but I have played it off and on since its initial early access release on Steam.  It only took me until recently however to actually fully engage with the game and find out how damned good it is.  This would be my replacement for Diablo 3 entirely…  if it were simply better at providing interesting multiplayer options.  That said I greatly enjoy what the game does give me, which is a largely single player experience that lets me pour my mind into it and watch fountains of loot explode around me as I do.  If someone was looking to get into an ARPG… this is now the title I would probably point them towards.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

A brand new expansion has released and as a result I am back engaged with Magic the Gathering Arena.  War of the Spark promises to add a ton of new planeswalkers…  36 in fact…  and have the final conclusion of the whole Nicol Bolas storyline.  I was nowhere near as engaged with Ravnica Allegiances because none of the guilds included were really my jam apart from Gruul and maybe Orzhov.  Whatever the case I never really got super into what was happening and faded away from the content for a bit.  With War of the Spark however I am back in full and enjoying the experience…  and at the same time starting to do some direct duels with friends with the prospect of playing some weird decks in the future.

Marvel Future Fight – Android / PC Emulator

I have been playing an excessive amount of this game lately, and it shocks the shit out of me.  Firstly this journey all started after being nostalgic about the Marvel Heroes ARPG by Gazillion and looking to see if anyone had managed to come up with a private server option yet.  In one of those threads someone mentioned that Marvel Future Fight on mobile devices was the closest that we had to that game…  which lead me to download…  and the rest is more or less history.  It feels weird for me to be playing a mobile game in place of other games…  because that is a barrier that I never quite crossed before even with Dragalia Lost.  Mobile games were something I only did when I did not have ready access to other platforms…  this I am playing on an Android Emulator with WASD controls like a traditional PC game.  The free-to-play-ness can be really annoying at times, but I am carving out whatever enjoyment I can get from it until this whim passes.

Mortal Kombat 11 – PC

I’ve been having a strong itch to play some fighting games and I think it was brought on largely by the advertising about Mortal Kombat 11 making me nostalgic about my arcade rat past.  I am also dabbling a bit with Street Fighter V and some other games…  but more or less MK11 is the only one I am playing often enough to add to this list.  I even went so far as to pick up a Fight Stick as I talked about yesterday.  I’ve missed fighting games… and while I am nowhere near as good as I once was…  I want to regain at least some of those skills.  I will never be competitive…  but I figure I can still eek out some enjoyment.

Outward – PC

I played this obsessively for several nights in a row and want to return to it.  I wrote at length about how this game reminds me of the way that Everquest used to make me feel.  I’ve been distracted by other games but I am adding this on the list if for no other reason than to remind me to return to it.  It is a very interesting title and one that I want to explore some more.

Star Wars the Old Republic – PC

This is a title that I was not expecting to add back to the list anytime soon…  but Star Wars Celebration caused an upwelling of Star Wars nostalgia leading to me playing some of this.  When I last played I had finished the Fallen Empire storyline, and coming back I picked right back up with the Eternal Throne.  Now I am working my way slowly through some of the post Eternal Throne content, of which there are several patches worth and several new areas that have been added to the game.  So far I am really enjoying myself and it is making me want Ammo to do another “Belghast” this time my Jedi Guardian in the armor set above… that I scrounged hardcore for at release because I loved the look of it.  The storyline in this game is still really damned good and it does a pretty good job of scratching that KOTOR itch.

To Those Departing

Anthem – PC

Oh Anthem…  what a fraught mess you are.  I spent most of April waiting on the sidelines for a supposed “major” patch to land and fix all of my woes.  It never came, or at least not in the ways that I wanted it to.  Ultimately Bioware made a game that is different from the game that they intended to make… and has yet to realize this.  The other stance is that they could be trying to change the game fundamentally to become the game they intended it to be.  Whatever the case… they built Mass Effect Multiplayer with Flight and Diablo 3 loot…  but with a high end drop rarity rivaling World of Warcraft Legendaries or Destiny Exotics.  That rarity more or less worked in those games because every drop was curated.  Diablo 3 and Anthem  however with random affixes you get a lot of shit items so you need to get a lot of drops to allow you to sift through them to find something workable.  I likely won’t play the game again until the loot is raining down around us…  if the game survives that long.  I am hearing that matchmaking is already a ghost town most of the time, so here is hoping they can make significant enough changes to allow those of us who left to return during year 2 and see the greatly changed and improved game.

Baba Is You – Switch / PC

Super cute game and still probably on my list of best games for 2019…  but after the initial desire to play I sorta floated away from it.  I am sure I will return at some point but it doesn’t really need a spot on the list for the moment.

Destiny 2 – PC

No clue why on this one…  but I am just not feeling Destiny.  There isn’t a firm reason other than the fact that I log in and log out almost immediately.  From what I hear the game is in a better state than it has been in a really long time… and I am sure at some point I will make my return and obsess about it once more.  That said I am just not into it so I am letting it slip off the list.

The Division 2 – PC

Again I am not sure why… but I never latched onto this one as hard as I thought I would.  For awhile I was using it as a methadone for Anthem…  and then I stopped using it at all.  I am sure at some point I will cycle back around to this one but I might simply be “looter shooter”‘d out for the time being.

Pokemon Go – Android

This one ends its very long streak.  I still technically crack it up every so often, largely to hatch eggs…  but I had four eggs ready to hatch and I let that notification go for two weeks before actually doing anything.  It is a perfectly fine game, and if I engaged with some sort of a community I would probably get into it more.  I am trying to increase the amount of activity I am doing as a whole now that it has warmed up so it might have a resurgence.  That said…  my TicWatch tracks my activity without me actually having to open the app so I admit that was a nail in the coffin for this game.  Out of sight and out of mind…  you had a good run PoGo.

For most of this month I have been battling some respiratory crud that keeps circulating and recirculating through the office.  I’m currently in another under the weather spell which means that my gaming habits are a bit off.  However it is approximately that time again where I should post what all is in circulation at the Belghast household during the month of February.  For those who have not seen this post before, it is essentially my process of semi-monthly truing up the sidebar of the blog and talking about the various games contained within.  I am notoriously bad at sticking with series but one of my 2019 goals is to try and keep this up to date throughout the year.

To Those Remaining

Assassin’s Creed Origins – PC

I legitimately do not expect this game to stay on the list much longer.  I’ve reached the point where I am a few hours away from the end of the game and as such going through my stalling tactic that avoids actually playing it out.  I think part of this is my wanting a story to not be over, and part of it is knowing how frustrated the ending is going to make me since it will be forcing me to NOT play my actual character.  One way or another however I expect by March this one will drop off the list.  For now however I spent a significant amount of time early in the month and late January playing this so it stays on the list.

Destiny 2 – PC

I’ve not played nearly as much Destiny 2 this month as I probably would have liked.  I spent a lot of time logging in and back out again because for whatever reason it did not seem to scratch whatever gaming itch I was having at the time.  A lot of this lost time went to Assassin’s Creed Origins, which really did hold me in thrall for a few weeks there.  I am sure at some point in the near future I will return to being active again, but for now I am logging in doing a few objectives and then logging right back out.  Still keeping it in the rotation but my weekly play time has decreased significantly.

Dragalia Lost – Android

The thing this game does better than pretty much anything else I have seen… is keep a constant flow of content coming out that makes you want to pop in and participate in each and every event.  Right now there is a Valentines event that isn’t really my jam…  but I am still participating regularly and I applaud them trying to break up the formula.  Most of the story in Dragalia Lost is completely nonsense…  so when you create an event that is almost entirely story driven… it is equally nonsense.  However it has served as a great way to stock up on some of the rarer items that you can purchase with the extremely easy to obtain “rose” currency.  It has however made me burn down my stack of skip tokens so that is a bit of a negative.  Still playing… still engaged.

Elder Scrolls Online – PC

Another game that is sort of holding on by a thread is Elder Scrolls Online.  While I love this game I am just not playing nearly as much as I probably should be of it.  I need to start the Morrowind content because it would give me a sense of grounding in the story that I need to keep logging in on a nightly basis.  That said I have had plenty of games on my plate so I am fine with a few of them slipping off the easy to reach shelf for a moment.  I need to buy that 1 TB SSD/M.2 drive I have been contemplating because I don’t have a ton of space on my current boot drive.  I think this is a game that would DEFINITELY be improved by an SSD given how much loading happens.  A big problem with me and this game right now is knowing how long it is going to take before I load all of the way into it.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

I’ve been going through a bit of a renaissance here this month as I finished leveling Blue Mage to the level cap of 50 and am a single dungeon away from being caught up with the story.  That said… Anthem happened and sorta threw any time that I would be devoting to Final Fantasy for a loop.  However I am starting to feel like I am back in the swing of things.  I am focusing on the Samurai since tanking for strangers seemed like a bit too far off the path for me to wander.  Weirdly I find the dungeon queues for DPS to be massively improved over what they previously were… so maybe that isn’t a horrible choice.  Samurai is a really fun class but it still very much feels like I am “alting”.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

Still in the regular rotation but not spending an awful lot of time there on a weekly basis is Magic the Gathering Arena.  I’ve participated in a few events this month with the release of Ravnica Allegiances and all in all still enjoying the format.  The biggest problem I am having at the moment is that formats I am likely to enjoy the most… Pauper and Singleton are dominated by degenerate decks like Rat Colony or Persistent Petitioners.  Both of which are entertaining the first time you encounter them…  but end up with me just conceding out of the match so I can move on with my life.  I is not that the decks are unbeatable…  it is just that it isn’t worth my time to go through the motions.  What makes it worse is the mechanics of MTG Arena make them super easy to field given that if you have 4 copies of a card in your library you effectively have an UNLIMITED number of that card in your library since the system can only keep track of 4 copies.  That means instead of forcing someone to burn through 24+ common tokens…  they have to use 4 at most.  I should build up a proper standard deck and just play that format, but for now I only really play MTGA when I am not feeling like anything else.

Monster Hunter World – PC

Another game that is holding on by a thread is Monster Hunter World, and it isn’t for lack of wanting to play…  but more a case that I have a wealth of other games to play right now that all function similarly.  I consider Anthem, Destiny and Monster Hunter to all be filling the same basic niche of the MMO-Lite style of game.  For now I am devoting those efforts to Anthem, but I am sure in the coming months some of that time will be spent killing monsters.  When some of the console exclusive quests start trickling over to PC I am sure I will come back in and participate in them again.  That is a major problem I have with the PC version right now however is the staggered release schedule.  It should have been their goal to catch the PC up at a hyper inflated rate so that they could have events going on in both locations at the same time.  However Capcom seems to be fine with leaving PC as a less than equal version of the game… which I find maddening.  I am hoping with the expansion that all of this shakes out and they can both be on equal footing once and for all.

Pokemon Go – Android

I have to admit that the only thing really keeping me engaged with Pokemon Go right now is the fact that Android Wear integrates with it.  What means my TicWatch E is constantly logging steps made and giving me credit so…  I spend most of my time hatching eggs.  That means I am also using my backlog of friend gifts as a repository for getting more of the eggs that I want to hatch.  At this moment I spent some coins on the store and am hatching ALL the eggs at once so I can clear all 9 slots for more friend egg hatching nonsense.  Side note… I love my TicWatch E and at some point should probably write a post about it since I have been using it for months after my formerly beloved Pebble Time stopped synchronizing with my phone.

To The Returning and Brand New

Anthem – PC

This is the new hotness in my life and I am loving the game.  Seeing a lot of negative reviews floating about and I keep thinking that they are playing a different game.  Flying around in a mech suit has been a dream of mine since I was a little kid.  There were some folks that loved the Valkyries from Robotech…  but for me… it was all about the Cyclone armor.  In the Rifts pen and paper game… it was all about the S.A.M.A.S. and the Glitterboys.  In Fallout I have sought out wearing Powered Armor as soon as I could possibly get a suit.  So as a result there may be a player fantasy that Anthem is providing that fits neatly into my wheelhouse.  I am having a blast and look forward to seeing what the world as a whole feels about the game on Friday.  I think the big publication game reviewers in general consider being bitter fucks about everything to be “on brand”, so as such I largely ignore them.  Instead when it comes to games…  my focus tends to be how my friends with similar play styles are feeling about a new title.

To Those Departing

Ashen – PC

This game while super interesting… just did not stand the test of time for me personally.  I stalled out and never wound up returning to it.  This was not helped by the fact I went through a week where the Epic Games launcher kept crashing constantly for me.  I probably will return to it at some point because I still find what it is doing interesting, it just lost out to other games that were holding my attention a bit better.

Far Cry 5 – PC

Ultimately I beat the game and as a result it fell off my radar.  At some point I will probably play through the Zombie Survival mode of the game just to see what it is all about.  However I more or less moved on to Assassin’s Creed Origins and as a result this is dropping off the list.  You can follow down some of my post about the game to track my sentiments, because while I loved a lot of the experience it had real flaws when it came to the forced narrative.  Still would absolutely play again… and it makes me want to spend some more time in Far Cry 4.

Minecraft – Windows Store

Not shocked at all to see this dropping off the list because this tends to be how I play Minecraft lately.  I will go through an obsessive building phase for a few weeks… and then stop playing altogether for several months.  Still a great game and shocked at just how evergreen the experience of virtual legos ends up being for me for the long run.  I do not care at all about the survival aspects and tend to play the game mostly on creative mode.  I return to this when my mind wants me to build something… and exit again once I have finished tinkering with it.  It serves a glorious purpose in my life and I am thankful to have it.  Playing Minecraft calms me.

Summary

All in all there was not a ton of movement this month, but I will say there are a bunch of games in danger of dropping off the list come next time.  I also know that Division 2 is looming on the horizon and I am not sure where it will fit into the entire apparatus since it is launching roughly a month after Anthem.  All in all… question to the readers.  Do you enjoy this column of sorts or do you wish I would just drop it and do normal posts in place of them?