What have you been playing recently?

Welp, apart from a few bits of Wrothgar and the last two mop-up Thieves' Guild quests, I've done all the major questlines in ESO now. There's still multiplayer content I haven't done, but doubt I will as my guild doesn't seem to group much and I hate PUG stuff as I need people who will take time to explain mechanics and forgive the odd slip. Still quite a few side quests left but will be interesting to see how long the game retains my interest until new content comes along.

I'm also a bit underwhelmed by the resolution of the Summerset storyline. It was great in parts, but left me hanging in others:

Ve hav NO soft boots in ze German Army, fool!

Any eso fans?

Not actual zombies - some of Deathshead's cyborgs look pretty ghoulish (as does he TBH), are you thinking of those? Old Blood has the supernatural type as per the 2009 game but "overwrites" a lot of that story.

Yeah, I think the writers wanted to hint at why there wasn't any supernatural stuff in TNO whereas it had been a staple of all the older games. So they stuck in a prequel that reworked the plot of the 2009 game and gave you the zombies to show that the Nazis WERE looking into the supernatural stuff, but also a damn good reason why they didn't keep using them.

It's not like Nazi bases on Venus was any less silly, though. I dunno if we ever got any hints that the Da'ah Y'ichud had actual access to alien tech to base their stuff off (Super Spesh in TNC seems to think so but even invading Area 52 there's no evidence) but convenient space travel and colonisation to THAT extent in 16 years since the war is a bit of a stretch (I could just about buy the moonbase in TNO).

So I hit up Destiny 2 again, downloading Curse of Osiris and Warmind. Did the first mission of Solstice of Heroes and the first two missions of CoO, but I'm getting frequent network errors again forcing return to orbit, usually in the middle of fucking missions.

Looks like my Xbox's IP address on my wired network got changed, maybe when I added the PS4. I've reset the DMZ on my router to use the new IP, but too irritated to try it out tonight after two dropouts in the last mission. It's also possible apparently that my router - a Technicolor - is blocking the 3074 port the game needs.

I have NEVER had problems with multiplayer stuff on the Xbox except for Destiny... what IS it about these games that's so fucking fussy over my network settings?!

The witcher games are white room material.

Recently started up on Path of Exile, which is remarkably like Diablo II with different lore and a better skill tree. Hadn't heard of it until my brother clued me in a month or so ago. Fun so far.

And I want to kill the designers of the game.

The opening act is like an hour long and I think I played five minutes total.

Here's a fucking idea: Have the one idiot put Snake in a damn wheelchair and push him instead of Snake dragging his ass all over the floor.

I love retro games, and just recently started replaying Beneath a Steel Sky. It's a lot harder than I remembered.

Had to use command line stuff to manually unblock a bunch ports on my router - here's hoping it resolves the issue. Managed to finish the mission I kept getting kicked out of but the game was kind enough to let me re-enter it at the last waypoint, so I didn't actually have far to go at that stage. Got time for a longer session this afternoon so will see if it can go a whole mission without problems.

Edit (or is it time travel?): that seems to have fixed it.

matthunter have you ever played a paradox grand strategy game?

Only the last time I got my TARDIS working.

Well, Destiny grabbed my nerd attention with the two DLCs and the upcoming Forsaken storyline, but trying to get ready for it reminded me of how much Bungie HATES solo players in this game. I quickly hit Light 343 but suggestions are I'm gonna need to be closer to 400 for Season 3. Have already hit the point where I need "Powerful Gear" engrams to have a chance of an upgrade, and since I don't typically do it I'm wary of trying the Nightfall for the same reasons as raids.

So figured I'd hit up the Solstice of Heroes missions. These are tough, but I figured I could manage the Homecoming and Payback Redux missions OK so I ground them out until I hit the requirements the armour pieces wanted.

Go to unlock the two pieces I ground out.

No luck.

Google.

You have to unlock ALL the armour pieces in order to upgrade the set. Which means at least two missions I've attempted and ragequit due to them really NOT being designed to allow solo-ers to succeed without anal amounts of precision (1AU, which is OK up to the bit where you have to fight whilst staying in the small shadowed areas or get crisped by the sun's rays, and Spark, which STARTS with you versus a walker with virtually no heavy ammo and limited reloads even for your main gun - I got past it after a five-minute long fight, only to die in the next section and get waypointed back to fight it all over again...), plus having to get Crucible (i.e. PvP, have I mentioned how much I suck at PvP?) kills...

And apparently, this only unlocks them to Blue quality. You have to do the whole thing again only turned up another notch for purple gear...

EDIT: OK, Imma try this during the 1AU mission, as seen on Reddit: "If you play warlock, you can switch to dawnblade(top tree for dash), pop super, and dash past all the enemies. If you get into that airlock at the end, even if you don't kill the enemies to open it, when you die it respawns you inside."

Also, I think it might be possible to just ignore the tank on Spark. Not sure but will try it.

EDIT 2: Yeah, you can ignore the tank, rest of the mission is a cakewalk if you haven't wasted your ammo on it first. Well, the servitors at the end could be a bit of a problem, but they never swarmed me as some walkthroughs suggest. Will try the Dawnblade thing tomorrow. Also popped into PvP long enough to get my 10 Guardian kills but only 10% of the way to the Super Kills target (as I only popped 2 Supers the whole match). Fuck knows what my opponents were shooting with but they cut me down in seconds while I was tickling them with the MIDA Multi-Tool/Mini-Tool combo.

I've been playing Ninja Gaiden on the old NES emulator. I forgot how much fun, and how much frustration, this game can be.

Oh. Figured with another week until Forsaken actually launches I might have had time to finish the basic armour unlocks, but nope. Servers are down today and the patch is downloading, but Solstice will end once the servers come back.

Fucker.

Playing the director's cut of Deus Ex: Human Revolution on my new PC, I never had the DLC for my X-box copy. So far i'm pretty underwhelmed, I just got to Rifleman Bank.

Destiny back up. New music is nice. New item system is confusing - managed to infuse one of my bits of gear but everything else seems to want consumables from various locations - which I've been turning in for rep so don't have any. My MIDA scout rifle seems to have dropped 5 Power for some reason too. Weapons have been switched about so half my heavy weapons ended up shifted to my energy weapon slot which maxxed it out as I keep a ton of exotics there.

Spent the bit of time I could play after the servers finally came back up last night doing the post-Warmind quests on Mars and hitting the Clan XP target for Powerful Gear from Hawthorne which at least netted me a 245 Power item (was only getting 240s from everything else). Apparently, there's a chance to get some Forsaken 400 gear early in drops.

Crucible is apparently a shitshow - shotguns have been moved to Energy Weapon slot and use Primary ammo, so now much more available in PvP leading to a glut of corner-camping and blowing suckas away as they run around the corner. That and sniper rifles are back. And Titan melee hits are now one-hit-kills if charged. Fun.

Finished off Spiderman last night (just the story, haven't done a whole heap of side quests) and absolutely loved it.

Still playing an absolute ton of Beat Saber, it's become the go-to for when I have people over who are new to VR, and usually crack out a couple of songs on the end of my lunch break.

Finally got around to buying HOI4 with all the expansions. I am going to have to brush up on my HOI skills.

Still grinding along in Destiny 2. Printed myself a buddy to cheer me on:

1 pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption 2 for the Xbox a couple weeks ago. I'm looking forward to playing the game. I enjoyed Red Dead Redemption a lot. Even went as far as ordering the special edition, which actually cost less than the standard edition. I ordered it through Best Buy, and being a gamer's club member and an elite member the price went from 79.99 to 55.99, the standard edition is 59.99. I'll probably end up having it on Xbox and PlayStation. My PlayStation has been overheating, and since I bought the extended coverage for the PlayStation, I'll swap it out and get the Red Dead Redemption version. On the Xbox I'll play the "good" guy and on the PlayStation I'll play the "bad" guy.

I ordered Red 2 as well.

Right now I'm playing We Are Billions and getting my ass kicked by the zombies.

HOI4

There's been a new story released in a recent update. Basically a prequel based on the plot foundations of the original. It's stupid hard so far as you're fighting the hope/discontent meters from the start and are about an hour worth of play from being able to build anything that'll have a positive effect. By the time you can, the critically ill start dying!

The upside is they also unlocked a level that was previously only available as an achievement via a relatively weak/dull to play scenario.

Overall, this has become worth the money I paid and will only become better as new content is made available. Currently being bundled with TWoM on steam.