Sometimes a Rift just does not go your way. Yesterday I was trying for a level 72 to keep moving that needle forward and just ran into a chain of deaths and then got behind the timer. That is one of those things that happens in Diablo 3 sometimes, and it sort of highlights just how dependent upon RNG some of your success ends up being. I dusted myself off immediately and tried to just a straight 70 instead of the maximum I could do and breezed through it. I am having a freaking blast right now, in spite of the occasional death storm. There is just something about Diablo III that I have never found in another game. I’ve been spending some time playing Torchlight III a bit more, and it is a better game than I gave it credit for… but the dopamine cycle just isn’t the same.
When it comes to the Season 26 Journey, I have knocked out most of the low-hanging fruit. The one that is ALWAYS the bane of my existence is the set dungeon mastery. I hate doing set dungeons so much and I avoid them until I absolutely cannot any longer. This is a reoccurring theme and if you look up me talking about ANY past season… there is always a point where Slayer and Champion are done apart from the set dungeon. As far as conquests go I will probably start chewing away on those as well. I need to see if I am at a point where I can farm bounties on T16, and then start stockpiling caches for Avarice. Ultimately in an Avarice season, I tend to wait to do the cube 20 and 40 powers until after I have finished with that conquest because I will be swimming in materials. I need to also focus on doing a really fast T13 Neph Rift in order to knock out that under 4-minute run, which will tick two boxes.
Right now I am running a Thorns Bombardment build, mostly because it was something easy to build into from the Akkhans set granted by Haedrigs Gift. I have almost everything I need to switch over to a straight Invoker Thorns build, and I am contemplating making that shift at some point. I think Invoker might be an easier dungeon to do, but I am not entirely certain. I at least know it is a dungeon I have done several times. I have always thought Omnislash thorns build would be cool and apparently, some patch changes have now made that a viable thing. It is sorta dumb the amount of enjoyment I have by running back-to-back rifts trying to farm additional gear for gaining some power. I have a shockingly sparse number of Ancients at the moment, and my Primal gained from the 70 greater rift… was awful. My second primal wasn’t much better, but at least it was something I could hand to my Templar.
In other news, I am still logging into New World at least once a day and running around and collecting a few easy pieces of Gypsum. I’ve managed to slowly work all of my armor slots up to 600 expertise, and am now starting on weapons. I got my Sword all the way to 600 already, and Greataxe/Warhammer is in the 575ish range. I am not entirely certain WHY I continue to play other than running around and harvesting materials is still pretty enjoyable. I think ultimately I am waiting for the dungeon patch that removes keys, and then I will probably be spending some time trying to get groups tanking dungeons to finish out my expertise grind. I am also farming keys on the side because they have stated that each key will become a box full of dungeon loot. Especially now that all of my armor is at 600, there might be some interesting items that come from those.
The other game I am spending time in each day is Guild Wars 2, but lately, that has been limited to farming daily PVP Potions. For the time being the only members of the Greysky Armada that PVP at all… are me and Kodra and we are trying to farm up as many pots as we can. We’ve already farmed up to 50 a few times and unlocked some of those upgrades and now we are chewing away at one of the 100 potion requirements. At a minimum each day I do enough dailies in order to get the completion reward and the free 2 gold that comes with it. If I happen to be paying attention at Tequatl time, I still try and catch that whenever I can. However, the last few days of being in “Diabble land”, have caused me to miss those.
All in all, I am having quite a bit of fun, but I do need to revisit some other projects like finishing out Horizon Forbidden West.
Good Morning Folks! I am a sucker for a new controller because I seem to be on this eternal search for the perfect one. I have three hanging show storage units full of controllers that I have bought over the years, each of them with its own foibles. In the mobile space, I have been on a similar journey of trying to find the perfect controller that will turn my phone into a switch-like device. I’ve talked about this search before in the past, and have even tried the original Razer Kishi device. The core problem that I had with that device is it is connected by essentially an elastic band, which led to a certain amount of torsion as I apparently apply more force with one hand than the other. The end result was a controller that felt comfortable in the actual controls, but flimsy as a complete unit in the hand. When I saw that there was a revision in the works and that they were obviously taking notes from the Apple exclusive Backbone controller, I was interested… at least enough to purchase one. Please note that this entire post is going to largely be for Android users only. If you are in the Orchard and have an Apple device, just get the Backbone controller and call it good.
My unit arrived yesterday, roughly three days after I placed my order. This seemed pretty fast considering that I ordered directly from Razer instead of going through a service like Amazon with an already proven delivery track record. One of the things that initially excited me about this controller was the thumb sticks and how much they reminded me of the Nintendo Switch. This initial impression however appears to be cosmetic only, because the thumbstick is probably the deal breaker for me but I will get into those specific complaints a bit later. Essentially the device has a thing backplane that telescopes and a combination of a swappable rubber pad and a top lip that holds the device in place. The device comes with two sets of pads, essentially a thick set and a thin set and if you were so inclined with a 3D printer… it would be pretty easy to bang out a set of pads to fit the exact gap of your phone.
There is a fairly standard assortment of face buttons, and some of the best triggers I have seen on one of these wrap around mobile controllers. In addition to the standard bumpers and triggers, you have a second pair of buttons which are by default mapped to A and B but all of the buttons can be remapped using the Razer Nexus software. At first, I have to admit I was concerned about maybe hitting the little inset face buttons when I was pressing a trigger since I have notoriously large hands, but in the middle of the action, it feels very comfortable. The grip design also felt extremely comfortable in my hand as I played through a handful of different games over the several hours that I have already spent with the device. However, let’s get into the problems I found with the device.
The Case Against
First, let’s start with the Thumbsticks that I hinted at earlier. There is something odd about them and the comparison to Switch is only at a surface level because these do not feel good to use. It is really hard to pin down the problem but it is something about the thumbstick height and the actuation that end up feeling like a very shallow experience and remind me of what it felt like to use the thumbstick on a Vita. The rubber surface also feels a bit too soft for this controller and I would be concerned that after a hundred hours of regular usage, that it would begin to rip and tear, as I could already feel it giving underneath my thumbs. Again this could entirely be a “big hands” problem, but I am uncertain.
Another problem that I found more annoying than anything is the layout of the face buttons. I’ve become used to the “switch layout” of the miscellaneous buttons and as such, I have gotten used to the equivalent of “Start” and “Select” being towards the top of the controller and “share” and “home” being towards the bottom of the controller. On the Kishi V2, the “select” button is the “…” icon and appears in the correct place, however, the “pancake stack” icon is the one that represents “start”. It is placed underneath the home button on the controller, so your thumb always finds home before it does start leading you to accidentally press it. The functionality of “home” on this controller is thoroughly useless because it is designed to launch the Razer Nexus app, which will kick you out of whatever game you were playing. Similarly, the functionality of “Share” instead of just being mapped to an android screenshot, takes you to some built-in game streaming functionality within the Nexus App, which is a less than ideal option.
Razer Nexus App
Then we get to the Razer Nexus app itself, which on the positive allows you to remap all of the buttons on your controller in order to support whatever layout you might need. The negative is this appears to be a global change and while the software itself offers the ability to launch into all of the games installed on your device, does not appear to offer any per-game profiling. I was honestly excited for a moment when I first saw the software because I thought maybe it might have some sort of built-in screen mapping to add in support for games that have no controller support out of the box. That unfortunately is not the case, it is instead an attempt to create a store-like interface that simply shows you games that are available in some form on Android, with the top row being games you actually have installed. As far as the game streaming option that I spoke of before, it seems to only support Facebook and YouTube… with seemingly no support for Twitch.
Now let’s use the coolest Razer website product shot to maybe blunt the impact of what I consider to be the worst problem. Remember I said that my core problem with the Razer Kishi V1 was the torsion issue, where I apparently apply uneven pressure to the two sides of the controller causing it to twist and feel like it is putting pressure on the phone? I have the same problem, admittedly to a lesser degree with the Kishi V2. The central backplate is significantly better than the elastic band design, but the strength of what I can only assume are elastic bands in the central column is not enough to hold your device securely. There is still a lot of twisting that takes place while I am playing games and I have to treat the controller very carefully for fear of twisting my phone in the process. The plastic is thin and the entire device feels a little on the flimsy side, which does not help the feeling that I could twist it in half taking my phone with it.
The Better Option
GameSir X2, Razer Kishi V1, and below Razer Kishi V2
It is for all of these negatives that I can not recommend a purchase. I personally still recommend the Gamesir X2, and honestly, the only reason why I continue looking for other options is the fact that I would love to be able to play games on my phone without having to shuck it out of the case. I thought maybe just maybe since I have a Razer V2 Phone and a Razer-made thermal case… that someone inside their design lab would have taken this specific combination into account. That is not the case and I am forever likely to keep having to pop my phone out of its case in order to use any of these controllers. The Gamesir as a whole just feels like a more solid option. The wider points of contact with the phone essentially stop the whole torsion problem, and the thumbstick is at an ideal height… even if I wish the thumbstick pads themselves were a bit bigger. Then you have the face buttons thing, where they are more in line with the Switch standard that the rest of the android controllers use.
Then you have the price. While both controllers started out at $100, the Gamesir X2 has been around long enough to regularly be on sale somewhere in the range of $50, or potentially cheaper if you are willing to risk some sketchy Chinese websites. Razer could however make up all of this ground if they would do something useful with their Nexus application. If they added in screen mapping functionality, I feel like this entire discussion would shift significantly. That is a killer app that Backbone does, but none of the Android options seem to be able to do it. Technically I have software that will do it… but it requires so damned much work in order to get it working on a non-Rooted phone. Again if you are an Apple user then your choice is simple, just get the Backbone controller as it does pretty much anything you could want it to do.
Again the Razer Kishi V2 is a massive improvement over the original design, but when compared to other offerings I just cannot recommend it. If you are nonetheless still interested, here are links to the controllers I talked about during this post. Note, that Amazon seems to be completely sold out so you will have to go directly to Razer.
Good Morning Friends! On Monday I talked about my general sense of unhappiness and how my prohibition of Blizzard titles, and specifically my beloved Diablo III had brought me nothing but misery. So the interesting part about that is… I was holding stable up until the point that I tried Diablo Immortal. I largely tried Immortal in the first place so that I could write my impressions given how much Diablo III and honestly D2 and D1 I have played over the years.
I posted a snippet of an article from the Washington Post yesterday on Twitter, and for me at least it rings so true. I think my falling back into Diablo III has been at least in part a way to wash the bad taste of the Diablo Immortal monetization out of my mouth. This seems to have been the case for at least a few of my friends as well. I legitimately had no intention of breaking my Blizzard prohibition but it has now happened… and I am happier for having done so. I missed this game so damned much.
I am still in the “building power” phase of the season. It took me a few nights to level from 1 to 70, and it has been a really long time since I have done that completely solo. When I usually played Diablo III I had Grace along with me, and we at a minimum duo’d most things… and occasionally had others like Byx joining in the nonsense. I was nowhere near as efficient in my leveling as I could have been, in part because I knew I needed a Ring of Royal Grandeur for my target build, and I figured since it was going in the cube I might as well try and get one from bounties as I leveled up. I wish I had managed to get some of the other items I needed for the build because it would have made the start of the season considerably easier.
For those who might have never started a Diablo III season, the general theory is that you create a Seasonal character and then immediately hop into whatever challenge rift was available for that given week. A Challenge Rift is essentially a snapshot of a specific build, often taken from the community… and you have to navigate that build successfully through a fixed Greater Rift in order to beat a specific time. Your reward for doing this… is a cache full of resources that gives you a headstart on the season and allows you to do some specific things. Essentially you get:
5,100,000 gold
475 blood shards
35 deaths breath
125 veiled crystals
350 arcane dust
370 reusable parts
15 of each of the different act bounty currencies
Essentially the standard order of operations is to use this to level the Blacksmith and Mystic all of the ways up, and then attempt to convert a Rare item into a legendary item in Kunai’s Cube. Based on what you get there this generally determines what item you go for in gambling with Kadala using those 475 blood shards. There are specific items that are suggested and I did not get any of them.
What I did get instead however was a nifty parlor trick that I was able to stick in Kunai’s Cube. I am not sure I have ever used Flail of the Ascended, and if I did I largely just used it as a temporary beater until I got something better. This ultimately lead me to build around Shield Glare and Shield Bash, so that I could bash my way through the level and then use Shield Glare as a big nuke to take out bosses or large packs. Honestly, it felt pretty good right up until the point that it stopped feeling good around level 66. In my challenge rift cache shenanigans, I managed to get a level 70 weapon that I could equip at level 49, so once I grew into that I had an express elevator to the top. I’ve had worse seasonal leveling experiences for certain, but I have also had much much better ones.
At this point, I can pretty reliably clear Torment VII Neph Rifts at a decent speed for farming and I have cleared through Solo 43 in Greater Rifts. I have three decent legendary gems and I just need to work on getting those leveled up a bit. This is the Diablo that I love, and this is ultimately what I hoped Diablo Immortal would be… but on the phone. This is what the loot from a Rift should feel like and only exists in Immortal if you spend $25 on Legendary Crests per run. I am having a freaking blast folks, and my hope is to finish off Season 26 before the timer runs out. The prediction is that this season will end sometime in August. With the current double bounty cache reward going on, I should be able to farm up Avarice pretty easily, but I need to really get my power up to where I can comfortably run T13 at a minimum before starting that grind. It is kinda dumb how returning to a game can make me so happy… but it is a thing that has happened. God, I love Diablo III.
Good Morning Folks! I’ve found myself weirdly checked out most of the time during this “Not E3” period. Normally this is my Christmas catalog as I drool over all of the trailers of games to come. However as the various shows have gone whizzing by, I am having trouble even catching up on the news. One thing that is not this way however was the Microsoft and Bethesda show that took place on Sunday afternoon. This show I absolutely watched live and with much anticipation. Microsoft has uniquely placed itself through acquisitions as being the arbiter of good stuff for the coming years. There is part of me that is deeply troubled that a single company owns all of these franchises. Then there is another part of me that loves that I can start a game on my Xbox Series X and then continue it on my PC… and maybe even get in some playtime from bed on my phone via XCloud all without missing a beat.
Another thing that I love is the GamePass ecosystem because it gives me easy access to a large list of titles that I might have missed otherwise. This is really where XCloud shines for me because it gives me fast streaming access to games with a very low time commitment. While I am laying in bed at night, trying to figure out something to do until sleep claims me… this is often when I hook up my controller and try something out on the phone. It will take a lot of effort to really dislodge me from the Steam ecosystem, but just having games available and ready for me to play… as part of my existing GamePass subscription is a good start. I really dig that they are supporting smaller games in addition to all of the big titles because it means that there is a regular flow of new titles coming into the system. What I do wish is that they would include things like ESO Plus into GamePass to expand the player base of Elder Scrolls Online, or a World of Warcraft sub when the Blizzard purchase completes.
There were a massive number of titles that interested me, so here is a quick run down with some discussion about each.
Free Riot Game Champions
I have to admit this one blew my freaking mind. I don’t play League of Legends all that much anymore, but when I did… I regularly liked trying out new champions. Essentially if you have GamePass you are getting every champion in every Riot game unlocked as part of that subscription. This legitimately makes me very interested in diving back into the game and checking out all of those champions that were released since 2015ish when I last gave the game any attention. Granted I hated playing solo queue, and mostly only really enjoyed bot games… but still had a certain measure of enjoyment doing that. I wonder if Wild Rift supports a controller.
Persona Games
This was another massive mic drop because fans have been begging for a PC release of Persona 5 Royal since the game was released. As part of GamePass you are getting access to Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal on both Xbox consoles and PC. I’ve yet to really beat any of these games and I know that I should really attempt to get into P5R. There is just something about the daily chores section of the game that always kills my interest. I want to experience the story, but don’t want to have to shuffle through the dross.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox
I am extremely interested in this game. It pretty much looked like what you would get if you took Castlevania and took away the vampires and skeletons and instead swapped in elder horrors and void creatures. I love Symphony of the Night and this is giving me DEEP vibes. This is a perfect example of a game that is probably going to fall between the cracks, but absolutely will have new life because folks are going to play it as part of GamePass.
High On Life
Okay, I still unironically love Rick and Morty. This game basically seems like you take the weird as fuck space stuff from that cartoon and make an entire shooter-based video game out of it. The catch is you have talking sentient weapons. This legitimately makes me wonder if someone played Cyberpunk 2077… got Skippy and then thought… let’s make an entire damned game around this. I am absolutely at least going to give it a spin and check out whether or not I personally find this mess enjoyable or not.
Scorn
I like HR Geiger and I like Body Horror, so I think I am probably uniquely in line with the goals of Scorn. This has been appearing periodically at shows for quite some time now, and it just seems to keep getting higher resolution. I am mostly intrigued by the game at this point and want to see it in action. Do I think this is going to be a good shooter? No, not really, but I also don’t think that is the point of the game. It seems like avoiding combat is going to be the name of the game more than anything. Do I think this is going to be one of my favorite games? Nope! However again because it is on GamePass I am absolutely going to check it out.
Forza Horizon Hotwheels
So they spent way more time during the show on the version of Forza for people who get horny over cars, but I was happy to see we are getting a Hotwheels expansion for Horizon. If you have never played a Horizon game you really should. They are this weird fun arcadey car MMORPG for lack of a better explanation. They are just fun as hell to drive around in and unlock new cars, and I am super on board with taking my cars and now racing them on literal Hotwheels tracks.
Redfall
I am deeply interested in this game, but also probably deeply out of the core demographic. My hope is that this is going to be a game that is solo-player-friendly. My expectations are that it is going to be all groups all the time, and expecting you to bring your ready-made group of exactly four friends into the game with you. I already struggle at matching up with people to play games with, and I doubt Redfall is going to be the game that changes that. Between timezone constraints and my own anxiety over player expectations of me… yeah no this is going to be a fraught mess for me personally. I still think it looks cool as hell though, so I guess I will watch this evolve over time.
Ravenlok
I am getting deep Legend of Zelda meets Harry Potter vibes from this game and I am on board with that. Again this looks like it is going to be one of those many smaller titles that come out and the fact that it is on GamePass gives me the freedom to just check it out guilt free. The only thing that is really tweaking me a bit is the mix of voxel models and traditional models that seems to be going on. Like I enjoy voxel graphics, but I prefer if games completely commit to them like something along the lines of The Touryst. I just hope that the actual game while playing it does not seem jarring as the two model styles clash.
Hollow Knight Silksong
I would likely be disowned by several of my friends if I did not at least talk a bit about Silksong. This is a game that so many of the AggroChat folks have been anxiously waiting for. I am not sure what it is about Hollow Knight but it never really clicked with me. I think partially it is that the game requires so much more technical prowess than Symphony of the Night, and by reference Bloodstained Ritual of the Night. That is pretty much my perfect form of the Metroidvania. Ash and Kodra, however, love the skill-based games, and more specifically they both seem to enjoy the randomization mods for Hollow Knight. I am hoping this is the game that they have been anxiously waiting for. Me… I’ve not decided to devote the amount of time needed to actually get good at Hollow Knight so I could decide if I enjoy it or not.
Flintlock The Siege of Dawn
This is another game that I am cautiously interested in. I say cautiously because I am getting deep Dark Souls vibes from this game. Everything about the setting and lore makes me interested, but generally speaking, don’t want to work as hard at combat as a Dark Souls game wants me to work. I play games to relax, not cause more anxiety. Jedi Fallen Order bridged this gap because I just played the game on a lower difficulty setting and it stopped feeling like a Dark Souls game. So I guess I have hope that maybe just maybe this game will work for me as well. Again the low investment of it being on GamePass means I can boot it up… check it out for a bit and then decide if I like it or not.
Diablo IV
Oof do I have some feelings about Diablo IV. Of all of the Blizzard games, Diablo is the franchise that I have cared about the most over the years. First, it was weird as hell to see Blizzard games now just being included as part of the Microsoft conference. Second, I have been on this emotional rollercoaster lately thanks to the collosol fuckup that is Diablo Immortal. The team working on Diablo IV has come out trying to stem the bleeding and guarantee that this game will not be an egregiously monetized pay-to-win mess… but I am not sure if I am willing to trust them yet. What I saw in this trailer and the other trailers at the show excited me, but also made me think that maybe this game is going to be a direct competitor for Guild Wars 2. A lot of the big open-world multiplayer stuff felt a lot like events and zone metas in GW2. I am sad that there will not be a Crusader at launch, but generally speaking, I can be happy with a Barbarian for the time being.
Starfield
This was the reveal that I think most of the folks who tuned in were waiting for. I get that “No Mans Skyrim” is a meme, but this felt way more like a Fallout game to me. I have deep concerns for this game, namely that I think maybe Bethesda bit off more than they can chew with the whole “1000 planets” thing, including full space flight and seemingly a whole dogfighting game. That also gives me pause because I like the concept of spaceflight… but I don’t actually like flying ships. I really do not like flight sims, so I am hoping that this is very “starfox” in its interpretation of space flight. Either that or I hope there is an option to just let the computer calculate the space combat because I am not really interested in doing much of that. I would be down with the equivalent of VATs but for ship-to-ship combat. Planetary exploration and the improved gunplay though… I am all on board with that.
A Solid Show
This year’s Microsoft Bethesda show was legitimately one of the better ones I have seen over the years. There were so many things that I was either extremely interested in or tangentially enough to play them with GamePass. I need to spend some time and sift through the other presentations and cherry-pick some of the other gems. I might turn that into a single post covering multiple shows. If you have been more plugged into the “Not E3”, which of the shows should I check out? What games do you think I should watch trailers for? Drop me a line below.
