Articles tagged with: Offtopic

As I live in Spain, currently with the COVID-19 pandemic we're in strict house confinement and I don't have the gaming PC, so I'm taking advantage of it to change my usual habits of gaming to try indie titles, play older games and play more the Nintendo Switch (which I do have with me).

These past months I've mostly redeemed myself by finishing the original The Legend of Zelda, I must confess I had to check a walkthrough at some points because the hints are not so good, but I agree it is impressive considering that came out in 1986. I tried Zelda 2 but I can't bear it.

I also finished Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which I remember as having a great atmosphere, and it truly delivers. I just got a bit tired of so much shooting, but the sneaking, the running and overall the plot is great, such a good adaptation from Lovecraft main Innsmouth lore.

I'm burning out from playing Diablo 3 on the Switch, as the following screenshot can assert:

I played one season character, I played the Darkening of Tristram event, and I'm soloing with my necromancer greater rifts near level 55, but it is increasingly hard to find better gear for her and I'm not willing to grind loot too much. I might switch to another character to try to obtain some of each class armour sets, but the only thing I want (all the pets/minions) is one of the harder and chance-based tasks, so not willing to complete the collection.

I also played Diablo 1 a bit more, as the Hellfire expansion was included in GOG's version and I could make it run under Linux, but playing in hard difficulty mode is slow even with my level 43 character, so I've stopped (you feel the lack of variety in the levels after some runs).

Finally, what I am currently playing now is quite a departure from the usual... the latest Animal Crossing game for the Nintendo Switch, New Horizons.

I played a lot 3DS' **New Leaf game, so I remember most of the basics, but you can feel the supreme expertise of Nintendo in polishing and always improving gameplay of it's AAA titles; everything feels smotth, simple to learn, varied, helpful, intuitive... The game looks like having content and things to do for potentially hundreds of hours, and even the multiplayer is fun (visiting other's islands and trading fruits and materials with them). At least to me, it is the perfect calm companion for this confinement.

Posted on 2020-03-22

I'm going to try to keep doing a status update post each X months, as might be of interest to read some personal opinions of some videogames I play (my main hobby nowadays).

Switch videogames finished

• Zelda Link's Awakening: I must confess I didn't played the GameBoy original, but this remake is a wonderful trip into imagination and cuteness. The game is not hard (although later dungeons and map portions are best played on one go to more easily memorize the layouts) but feels like real-life toys (in movement, of course), plus great music.
• Oninaki: An action RPG published by Square Enix, more akin to an action Diablo 3 (combat has more depth) than a classic Final Fantasy, the game starts telling us the story of a Watcher, a kind of knight who can see and interact with the souls of the dead and travel between the normal world and the world of the dead. You also collect and "train" daemons who not only provide powerful magic attacks but also set your attack style (from swords, axes, or lances, to crossbows or a huge scythe). The gameplay might not be too varied but the story is quite interesting and you're encouraged to train all your daemons in order to unlock their hidden memories (tales of how they became a daemon).
• Diablo 3: I keep playing this game from time to time. I already have 6 out of 7 characters at 70th level (only missing the Monk class) and my account has paragon level 403. I now play trying to get all the minions/pets (random loots) and doing the "secret" set dungeons, because seasons are too tiring for just a few aesthetics (or a set).

PC videogames finished

• Dawn of War III: I finally finished the campaign. I had uninstalled the game out of fury due to a friggin' bug on the final boss, so I reinstalled it, restarted the level (hoping that after a few months the bug would be patched) and indeed it worked, I saw the souless, dull ending and whenever I have some spare time I'll reinstall the game for skirmishes and/or multiplayer games (the real core of the game). Campaign was terrible, clearly a patch to sell an otherwise clearly multiplayer-oriented title.
• Dark Seed: Not an RPG or strategy game, but a really old AMIGA graphic adventure based on H. R. Giger's artwork and ideas. Quite hard without a walkthrough but I wanted to finish it no matter how as was a childhood memory.
• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus: A great turn-based strategy game with unit progression, about an Adeptus Mechanicus ship entering a remote system and awakening Necrons. I loved both the setting and the gameplay, I just don't totally enjoy that once you finish the game, everything starts over from scratch (including your unlocks, upgrades, etcetera).
• Final Fantasy VII (currently playing): One of my long time desires, to play again my favourite FF game. Sadly I am older and less patient now, and both the endless random encounters and some really slow progression fragments make me wonder how did I managed to have so much free time when I was younger to spend so many hours in the fights. But I'm determined to finish it again. And then maybe give a try to FF X (2nd favourite) or FF VIII (3rd one).
• Final Fantasy XII (on hold): I tried to play it. I really tried and have my savegame with more than 20 hours poured in. I love the gambits system, the pseudo-realtime attacks and strategy component of being able to see your enemies while walking, the progression system is so great and gives you a great degree of freedom... but the story is so dull and sometimes plain boring, and the English voices are bordering the a "bad" rank, that I've decided to stop it for a while.

Painting and Miniatures

I've done small bits of painting some necrons, but nothing relevant to show.

I've mainly spent time deciding which miniatures to get rid of and which ones to keep permanently, and then selling them. I still keep quite a few ones and have enough to paint for years, but at least I did this pending task and now can focus on painting.

Posted on 2019-10-27

I haven't forgotten the blog, but some relevant things have happened in real life that make harder to write content for here:

• Our role-playing group is mostly dissolved. Part of if no longer lives in Spain, and of those who live, it became so hard to be able to meet that even playing some boardgames became almost impossible.
• I am spending some days most weeks out of home, so I have way less available time to paint miniatures.
• I am in general dedicating less time to play videogames, so I try to rotate between genres, but RPGs usually require lots of commitment.
• I am reading, quite a lot more in fact, but I had a long stack of pending articles to read before being able to spend more time with books, and again, I have to leverage between books that could be reviewed here and from other areas (mainly technical, but not limited only to those).

That said, I have played quite a lot of Diablo III on my Nintendo Switch (I've got 5 level 70 characters, around 400 paragon levels, and one of the characters is already doing the set armour special quests). I also finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (awesome game, I'll replay it sometime in the future), and I am onto some Final Fantasy: I am playing FF-X HD on PC (finished it on PS2 on its day, but as I loved it wanted to play it again), I have installed and started playing FF VII on my laptop (but oh boy, the random battles do get annoying at first), and I tried really hard to finish FF XII HD... but despite nice graphics and the awesome gambit AI system (basically you can spend more time fine-tuning the combat behaviour of the characters than actually battling) the story is so dull and the voice acting so rough that I gave up. I have the savegame for the future but it felt so boring I am not sure when I'll continue. Not having the gaming PC with me all the time also doesn't helps, although enables me to divide by platforms. I am for example finally going through my PS3 exclusives.

About miniature painting I would love to spend more time, but in the short term I only foresee moving more old miniatures to my mother's countryside house after taking some photos.

About reading, I have started another Horus Heresy book and the 2nd volume of The Dark Tower so is a matter of time only.

And in general, my life is quite busy right now so no boardgaming or role-playing, we'll see if later this year that changes.

Posted on 2019-07-09

Small status update, as lots of real life work made me not have enough time to paint almost anything. I am also selling and gifting a few boardgames and RPG books so I've been quite busy not in the areas I'd liked to (regarding this blog, of course).

What I have done is received and assembled this gorgeous ork champion from GT Studio Creations, which I backed on Kickstarter for the 70mm model. It is so awesome and full of detail... I'm really glad I made that choice, even despite my crappy painting skills the model is going to look amazing, it already does unpainted!

Sadly, apart from that there's not much to speak about... I'm reading some books and comics but haven't finished anything that I can review yet, but at least October looks more promising regarding spare time in the afternoons (or nights).

Posted on 2017-10-04

I am starting to play Dawn of War III. After the previous titles I thought I would wait until got cheap, but Steam summer sales made Amazon put it around 45% cheaper, so I ended up buying it. Just started the campaign and tried a multiplayer skirmish against computer AI controlled foe and battles can be so long now! I ended up defeated as I didn't even knew what buildings and units I can have, but it is really fun to call into battle an imperial knight, and as there are quite a few elites (special characters) on all three factions, it looks I'm going to have fun for a long time.

I am also back at hitting hard Zelda: Breath of the Wild, because first DLC came out, so apart from playing the new content and quests, I'm trying to finish all secondary "quests" (fully upgrade all clothing and armours, get many korok seeds...). I'm 2/3 through the Master Sword Trials, easy ones were quite easy, medium ones were a bit of a challenge on the first levels as you start naked, but once you grab some weapons and a shield... are doable.

Still regarding videogames, I finished an X-Com 2 walkthrough. While not technically an RPG (despite the soldier stats and upgrades), it is a turn-based tactical game so if I talk about Warhammer 40k why not about it? I loved the game, it is a nice kind-of-adaptation of V, with aliens having won the original battle and convinced humans they're here to help but a resistance fighting back to uncover the dark truth. It is a very hard game (on the normal difficulty setting), mid-game you start to not suffer on every battle but at first it is hard and I restarted twice due to fatal mistakes (I played in "ironman mode" where you only have an automatic savegame and cannot go back).

As Warhammer 40,000 8th edition came out, I bought some Dark Imperium plague marines cheap from eBay and assembled them. Primaris Space Marines are not bad, but I both dislike the lore additions to justify them and prefer to keep my old miniatures instead of mixing both. I might buy a small squad of them in the future but only for painting, and surely not for my Dark Angels (I only see them for now as "new" Ultramarines). I'd prefered just a model change, but I get the commercial justifications behind it... why just replacing models if you can have both and slowly make people move towards the new ones without explicitly retiring old ones? Also they get to sell space marine players lots and lots of new minis! Is a great strategy from Games Workshop, that's for sure. Anyway, thanks to internet I have the cool models I wanted, the plage chaos marines are so awesome...

And finally, I'm retaking some old hobbies and after a bit of a cleanup of LEGO pieces, I'm assembling and programming a Star Wars R2-D2 with the Mindstorms EV3 "computer". My plan is to fully add to id original sounds and the like, but for now the prototype works and is just missing a few more pieces plus the logic:

Sadly, all this means my painting has been on hold, and as summer is here, having both at July an August vacations, I'll do my best but don't expect to advance much on the painting topic.

Posted on 2017-07-03