Saturday Morning Gaming: Gaming Frugally 2

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

Related Post Roulette

12 Responses

  1. Pinky says:

    Blame Pindleskin!

    Word on the street is that the Diablo II beta testers were playing the game normally, rather than doing magic find runs. The servers were sufficient for the number of players they’re seeing now, but not for the play style. New game, kill Pindleskin, check for loot, end game. Every 20 seconds they’re generating a new map, and resaving a character.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    Oh, one thing I should say: If you’re on the Diablo 2s and wishing that you had a buddy who had a level 60 farming necro who would keep an eye out for particular items for ya, send me an email (it’s up there in the author info).

    I get stuff and sell it a lot (or turn it into golems) and I can’t help but think “that’s a dang shame” for half of them.

    I know that there’s probably a handful of people out there who would love to play with some of these toys that are just lying fallow.Report

  3. Brandon Berg says:

    I finally finished normal mode. This is the original game, not Resurrected. I’m surprised at how much they dialed it back in the expansion. After dying constantly in Act IV, Act V felt like a victory lap. I died four times: Once to a random elite, twice because I didn’t notice the poison after the second wave of pre-Baal fights, and once because Lister. Unlike Diablo, who kept killing me with his blast attack before the unresponsive combat engine would allow me to move, Baal just didn’t put out enough damage to pose a credible threat.

    I’m surprised at how little action there was in the genre-defining action RPG. You walk around and click on enemies to attack them, and that’s about it. Sometimes it helps to reposition yourself, but aside from that the outcome of combat is almost entirely determined by gear, build, and level.

    I’m not really inclined to go on to nightmare mode. That’s enough Diablo II for me. I’ll probably give IV a try after it’s had some time to bake, though.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Brandon Berg says:

      Yeah, Act V always makes me think of Galaga. It’s all about quantity of enemies, not quality. I do really hate Baal in hell mode, though, but mainly due to the amount of damage he can take. You need to be customizing your character the whole game to be able to deal out that much damage. It’s made worse by the increasing elemental resistances in nightmare and hell.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Pinky says:

        There is a criticism of games that I absolutely understand and it is a criticism that fits here:

        “The game gets really good after you put 20 hours into it.”
        “Who in the hell has time to play a game that isn’t really good until you put 20 hours into it?”

        When I was playing on Normal with my necro, I was dying every level. Multiple times! In Nightmare, my build finally started to click. I strolled through Acts II, III, and IV and am only starting to slow down in V.

        And the game has started to be *REALLY* fun. Like “I remember 2001” fun.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Pinky says:

        “You need to be customizing your character the whole game to be able to deal out that much damage.”

        This was my criticism of “FTL”. Like, there’s all different kinds of ways to play the game! And 95% of them will get you straight trucked by the end boss. And if you build for the end boss you’ll probably be done with that build about halfway through the game, and the end boss build is massively OP for anything else.Report

  4. Reformed Republican says:

    I’m still taking a break from video games, but I’ve been hearing good things about Metroid Dread, so I will probably be getting that next month.
    My wife and I played a game of Planet Apocalypse over the weekend and got trashed, but we think we have a new strategy to beat the setup the we used.
    I also revisited the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game.
    I finally broke down and bought Gloom Haven: Jaws of the Lion. I’ll probably give that a try later this weekend or next weekend.Report