That D4 Halloween event was such a disappointment for me. I did like two Nightmare Dungeons (didn’t even spawn the Butcher), collected the free items, and was done.

Finished HROT. It’s a good game, like I said last week, it’s basically Quake. I started on the Hard difficulty, played through the first episode, but turned it down for the others, because I wanted more run-and-gun and not creeping around corners, because enemies kill me in two shots.

Then I also played through Animal Well. A great looking metroidvania, where you don’t fight, it’s more about avoiding enemies or scaring them away. I saw credits after less than six hours, but then spend another eight searching for secrets. I needed help from a guide for the last couple, to get to the credits the second time, for the second ending. There’s some more stuff to find, maybe a third or true ending, but I don’t really care enough to do that.

I also decided to check out Rain World, but I’m not really sure about this one. For some reason, the game resolution is 768p, which scales with nothing. This means, unless you play on a cheap or old laptop, that uses that resolution, the game will be blurry (or a tiny window). There isn’t even a x2 scaling option or something. Luckily there is a mod fixes this, but it’s still baffling, that this is even needed. Like Animal Well, it’s also a game, where fighting isn’t really the focus (although you can to some extent), but most of the time I was fighting the controls. I’ll give it a bit more time next week, but unless it suddenly clicks with me, I’ll skip this one.

Since I’m in the mood for some metroidvanias right now, I played through another one, Haiku, the Robot. It’s a pretty cookie cutter medroidvania, not bad, but also doesn’t do anything special. You find abilities, like a double jump, short teleport, morphball, stuff like that. There’s also a system like the Charms in Hollow Knight to enhance certain parts of your skill set. I usually like pixel art graphics, but I really didn’t vibe with the enemy design, and everything else is once again pretty basic.

Earlier in the week I started Remnant II with a friend, but the beginning was really rough, so much so, that I don’t know if we’ll continue. The levels and bosses are randomized to some extent, so depending on your luck you might get easier or harder bosses. Our first boss (or event) was pretty terrible. We had to run down a tower, while we were chased by lighting (but also couldn’t be too fast, because of more lightning), and had to shoot some stuff in the middle of the tower, all while enemies spawned. The worst part about this “boss” was that basically everything, except the enemies, was a one-shot death. I was terrible at this and constantly failed, but we eventually made it through. The next couple of bosses were better, but not by much. Who knows if we’ll ever get back to this one.

Then the same friend and me started a coop Baldurs Gate 3 run today. I guess we’re doing an evil run, since he picked Dark Urge and we’re going to raid the grove next time. I played through the game once, around the time of the 1.0 release, and wanted to do an evil playthrough anyway eventually, so this is fine with me.

You probably know this already, but if you don’t get slowed down that much on T3, definitely move up, but if you’re just getting killed too much or don’t kill stuff fast enough, stay on T2. I farmed T3 for a while, even though I had unlocked T4, because I would just get one-shot too much. After some more upgrades and a Mythic Unique, I was finally able to do T4 efficiently.

since for whatever reason ancestral items don’t drop that often for me, and the last thing I have to do is salvage 100 of them. It might have to do with the Torment level I’m on

I’m on Torment 4 and yeah, they don’t drop a lot. If you’re on a high enough difficulty, Ancestral Uniques probably drop more, since you can farm the Uber bosses, who basically only drop uniques. I think that objective was the second to last one I finished for the journey (the last are the 5 Helltide Commanders, which I don’t probably won’t do).

I thought I was done with the latest Diablo 4 season last week, but then I put in a bunch more hours this weekend. While the season and the expansion is generally fun, it feels like the devs took two steps forward and one step back. Progression seems a lot more tedious, compared to before. In earlier seasons, you could basically unlock the highest difficulty really fast and progress pretty quickly to the endgame content. Now, with everything a lot harder and a bunch more difficulty options, you take twice or three times as long, to get to the same point as before. If I didn’t play the Spiritborn, who is completely busted this season, it might’ve taken even longer. I still gotta try the raid, which you can only do coop, although I rarely play with someone else.

Then I started HROT, but have only finished the first level, so I can’t talk about it too much. It seems like it’s basically just Quake with a different skin, I guess? I love the look, and it plays pretty smoothly, so I look forward to playing more of it.

More Diablo 4, after finally getting over my cold. Playing through the campaign was super boring (being sick and miserable didn’t help). All that time is also basically wasted, and you just want it to be over as fast as possible, to actually start progressing your character. Future seasons might be better, since you can skip the campaign, but a bunch of stuff only unlocks after you hit max level anyway, so who knows. The expansion increased the difficulty of the game, added some more difficulty options and did a stat squish, but I don’t think I’m a big fan. Until yesterday, it felt like I was just treading water, not making much progress. Then I managed to unlock Torment 3 difficulty, change my build a bit and get good enough gear, started blasting through enemies, and had more fun. So, while I’m not bored out of my skull anymore, I think I’ll just finish the season journey and battle pass, and then take another break from the game.

Only just started the new Diablo 4 expansion, because I was sick the whole week. I’m still early in the campaign, playing the new Spiritborn.

I got really into TCG Card Shop Simulator. It’s pretty much like all these other “Simulator” games, that pop up in early access every few weeks, like Supermarket Simulator, Recycling Center Simulator and whatever, although the theme is definitely much more appealing to me. The standout feature is probably that you can actually open card packs to collect the gazillion of cards already in the game or sell them as singles. The game is also made with Unity and can use existing mod frameworks, so there are tons of mods out already. You can change the cards to Pokemon, Digimon, and more, along with a bunch of mods to automate the more tedious aspects. I’m at a point right now, where I just need to restock my warehouse every night and can spend the rest of the day sitting in a dank corner and open packs like a degenerate.

The Diablo 4 expansion was supposed to launch a few hours ago, but it got delayed and nobody can play and has to wait.

Good to know. If I get more into Doom an non-official stuff, I might look at those, but for now the batch file will do.

True, how easy it is to get into the games with this port, along with the mod browser, definitely outweighs the few minor issues.

I’ve actually downloaded Woof myself for my Final Doom playthrough. It takes a few minutes to read up on how to create a batch file to make launching the game more user friendly, but once you’re in, it’s has everything you’d want.

I really enjoyed the first game years ago, but never really got into the sequel the few times I tried, although I never disliked it.

I finished Doom II and some levels were an absolute pain. I gotta say though, this re-release (Doom + Doom II) is a bit disappointing. There are a bunch of glitches, although pretty minor, that are just annoying. The most frustrating one for me was, when you have the Pistol Start option activated (to automatically start all levels with just the Pistol), the Backpack is bugged and doesn’t give double ammo capacity. Once you die and restart the level it’s fixed, until the next level. I don’t know if it ever made the difference with me dying or not, but it just sucks.

Today I started Final Doom, specifically TNT:Evilution, which I’ve never played before. Just like before I’m trying UV, Pistol Start, no mid-level saves, but depending on how it goes I might start using saves. I’ll probably try a different source port though, since this KEX engine port isn’t the best.

I also played through Horizon Forbidden West: The Burning Shores DLC, although only the main quests and almost nothing else. It was kinda meh. The story was fine, but the final boss fight was complete garbage. The romance part also felt really rushed, especially since I went through everything over just two days/seven hours in total.

Then, I’m also kinda in-between games right now, since I’m waiting for the Diablo 4 expansion release in a bit over a week. There are a bunch of games I want to play, but probably won’t finish in time, so they have to wait. I tried Ace Combat 7, played through the first mission, but it didn’t really grab me (KB+M is definitely more playable than the Steam forums made it seem). I’ll probably play through one of the dozens of metroidvanias I bought, but never played.

I finished Doom in the most recent re-release (Doom + Doom II), Ultra-Violence, Pistol Start and no save scumming. The base game isn’t too difficult, but still one level per episode gave me some trouble. The fourth episode is a massive step-up in difficulty though. E4M6 took me a lot of tries, but it got a lot easier, once I found some secrets with extra weapons.

After Doom, I continued with Doom II, still on UV, Pistol Start, no saves, and the first few levels are no issue, but it got tough real quick. Basically, just like E4 in the first game, it’s often about finding the best path to more weapons and ammo. The levels are also more open, so you usually have a few different paths to choose from, so figuring stuff out takes a bit. Depending on how it goes, I might start looking at the wiki to check out secrets and pickups and kinda plan a route that way.

I also finished Lies of P. It’s a good game and I had fun, but the there are definitely some weird decisions by the devs, although they were pretty minor. Weapon durability felt pretty pointless, I think only for two or three boss fights did I have to sharpen during the fight. Same with the jump, which is only needed a few times. However, since it’s like Dark Souls, so you need to sprint to be able to jump, any more would have sucked anyway. Might as well put in a dedicated button like Elden Ring and make it better, or just remove it. The weapon system was pretty neat, even though I basically just used three different heads and handles. I loved the perfect block mechanic, especially if it also destroyed the enemy weapon. Too bad it doesn’t work on the monster enemies, I guess, since they don’t really carry a weapon. The story got pretty lame in the end, but it’s whatever. I disliked two boss fights, the first Black Brotherhood fight since it was a gank fight, and the penultimate boss, because the hitboxes were just really weird, and I was constantly getting shoved around. Even on a perfect block I was a mile away from the boss, so a follow-up really sucked

Finally, I started Horizon Forbidden West: The Burning Shores DLC. I played the base game earlier this year, when it released on Steam, but I’m not really feeling the huge 3D open world right now. I’ll still finish the story, since it’s pretty short, but will probably only do the critical path and little to no exploring.

Just when the new season in World of Warcraft starts, I stop playing. I had a lot of fun, but also played a lot these last couple of months. WoW is also not a game I just play on the side. If I play it, I basically play nothing else. No idea when I’ll be back, probably if my best friend starts again, but who knows if that happens.

I wanted to check out the latest re-release of Doom with Doom + Doom II, and look at the new episode, but decided to try and play through all the levels of the first two games on Ultra-Violence, Pistol Start, and no save scumming. I’m halfway through episode three of Doom, and it’s not been too difficult so far. Three levels took me a few tries, the rest wasn’t too bad. The main thing is a lack of ammo, especially at the start of a level, so you either got to get comfortable punching things or cause infighting. I usually choose the former, so the Berserk power-up is always a welcome sight.

Then I started Lies of P. I killed three major bosses so far and it’s alright. I play on KB+M, and as always controls are just so-so. It’s not like you have 60-100 keys available, so better put two or three abilities on the same button or force players to cycle through item shortcuts.

Still the new World of Warcraft expansion. While I appreciate Blizzard slowing down the start of an expansion, so you don’t have to rush through everything to get to the endgame, this is a bit too slow for me. The next weekly reset on Wednesday can’t come soon enough, so finally the higher difficulty stuff opens up.

I’m a certified Trails hater, but I loved the two Crossbell arc games. It’s a shame those games are connected to the rest of the series, which is complete trash.

More of the new World of Warcraft Expansion. I’ve leveled four characters to 80 now, and equipped two of them. My Monk and Paladin are basically “done” for now, and I’m kinda waiting for the higher difficulty stuff. Next week I’ll focus on gearing my two other characters, a Mage and a Druid. While the Monk is definitely my favorite to play, the Paladin and Mage aren’t too far behind. Only the Druid is a bit underwhelming, since stuff just dies too fast right now, and I need to apply DoTs to anything to do any real damage (Balance spec).

Even though I’ve had the soundtrack for the first game for a while and even recently bought it for the sequel, I never bothered to check what kind of game this is. Then I recently saw a video of shapez 2, and it looks really fun, so I gotta check it out sometime.

The new World of Warcraft expansion was launched, but only if you paid for the giga edition to get three days early access (which I did). It’s a WoW expansion alright.

The stuff you can do during the early access period is pretty limited, there’s no real way to get a gear advantage or something, just more time to level up characters I guess. I finished the campaign on my Monk (skipping all the quest text as usual, but watching the cutscenes this time) and just started a second character today.

It feels a bit underwhelming right now, because a few of my friends, who usually play WoW all year round, are still on holiday, along with the limited things to do. The first and second week in August should get a bit more interesting, since then the higher difficulty stuff launches.

I’m also 100% done with Melvor Idle and the first two DLC and will start on the new DLC, after some more housekeeping and grinding for items.

Maybe a bad time to pick up the game again, since 1.0 is releasing next month, along with the story/campaign, so you might just get to do it all over again!