Matthew Supert

So what have I been playing recently? Well, the Division has been the biggest game that has probably launched and I have spent a lot of time working my way through that game. The Division has perhaps one of the most detailed and intricate world maps I have ever come across. A ravaged New York City has just tons of detail on each and every street in the game. 

The game is a sort of loot based shooter, similar to Destiny in some ways. The story in the game is convoluted and mostly wrapped up into various audio files you find throughout the world. They are remarkably well put together, it is too bad though that so much of the story is hidden behind those and not tied more closely into the actual "story" missions. 

The shooting is fun, but things do begin to get a bit repetitive towards the upper levels. I have no hit the upper level cap in the game and apart from cleaning up the side missions I still need to do there isn't a ton left to play for unless you just want to grind and get better gear. That isn't something I really want to do at this point. 

I have also been playing a lot of Miitomo from Nintendo this past week. I don't even know if I would truly call this one a game, but it is a sort of social app where you answer questions with your friend's and get cute clothes. It seems to be a perfect iPhone type of game to share with friends.  

This past week I have decided to try my hand at building a map in Halo 5's forge. This is not something I have done before, but I figured I would give it a go to see how the process was. 

My first map is based off of the map "Training Grounds" from Titanfall. Since I needed to basically learn the basics and tools for forge I figured going off of a known map layout would be a good first approach. I also felt that I could make a good "Big Team" map. Here is a quick preview of what I am working on. I am probably 90% done with this at this point.  I just need to tweak some of the small details and also figure out why the strongpoints aren't capturing while testing. 

It has been way too long since I have posted a video game update. This fall has been a bit crazy, but I have thankfully gotten some good video gaming in. 

My gaming has been spread out all over the place so let's take a look at what I have been playing lately. 

Over the summer I have put a lot of time into my Nintendo 3DS. I got in on the Humble Nindiebundle and picked up a bunch of games for the 3DS and WiiU. SteamWorld Dig, Retro City Rampage and a few other games took one some great hours. I have really put a lot of time into Fantasy Life though. I am clocked in at around 37 hours on it right now and I still haven't beat the game. It is a fun, light RPG that has many of the same charms that Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon would bring to the table. It also has some excellent multiplayer so Megan and I have been playing that quite a bit with a little couch co-op. Personally, I think it is a must have game for the system.

The bulk of my gaming over this past summer has probably been on my Wii U. A lot of Splatoon has been going down along with some Yoshi's Whooly World over the past couple of months. Yoshi has an excellent multiplayer game, but let's talk about Spaltoon. This game is really an amazing home run for Nintendo. They nailed a competitive multiplayer game in only the way that they could and in doing so may a game that is fun, charming, fast and intense all at the same time. It also makes great use of the WiiU gamepad. 

But, all of those other games have now taken a back seat to my most recent obsession. Xenoblade Chronicles X. This is a huge open world JRPG released for the WiiU about a week ago. It has been a long time since I have played a full on JRPG so I was itching for some of those old story tropes again. This is another one of those games out for the WiiU that define the system. Not only is the game huge and immersive, but it makes great use of the WiiU hardware. It really in a lot of ways is what I wanted the Monster Hunter games to be. There are simply huge monsters in this game set in incredibly gorgeous environments, but you don't have the deal with a slow and pedantic combat mechanic. 

Lastly, but certainly not the least is the Xbox. There have been a couple of great games that have caught me this past fall. First up is a game called Valiant Heats which was released on Games with Gold I think in October. It is a heartbreaking story set during World War I that follows a family that is torn apart by the war. This game really touches on some emotional and tragic topics and it is accompanied by really in-depth diary logs that explain some of the horrors of the war. It is out on just about every platform so if you have a chance to play it, please do. It is remarkably well done. 

Then we have Elite Dangerous. This is a very pretty space "simulator". It is one of those games that does not hold your hand. The galaxy in the game is rendered in real size to our own and there are millions of systems to discover in the game. It is big and the world is set before you to basically just explore on your own. There is no story and no right or wrong way to play. You can just go explore, or you can bounty hunt, or deliver goods. It is up to you and one of those games like the Golf Cub that I will keep on my hard drive and go back to periodically for probably the life of the Xbox One. It also has some of the best sound design I have ever heard and is the sort of thing you can just put on to listen to the sounds of your ship's engines and space to calm you. It is incredibly relaxing in that way. 

Finally, we have Halo 5. Probably the biggest game release this fall. I am a huge Halo fan. So much so that I have even read some of the books. The game is flat out gorgeous and the multiplayer is as good as ever. It is a fun game and it will likely share the top spot as my goto multiplayer game with Splatoon over the next six months or so. 

Winter at work is always our slow time and it is a nice opportunity to us to catch up on smaller projects and plan things for the year. Spring is what brings in our busy time of the year and this year it has hit us suddenly like a brick. Things have been crazy busy and stressful. I have really found two outlets over the past couple of weeks to really burn off some steam. 

I have had a really energizing experience broadcasting some of my music in the studio on Twitch. I am now to the point where I am experimenting with two cameras and perhaps will expand to even three cameras. I hope over the coming weeks with this setup to do a couple of "live performance shows" or to do some tutorials for the Command Station and my other gear. 

I have had a small obsession recently with a game called Warfare on the Xbox. It is a free to play PC/Xbox/PS4 game that came out about six months ago. I picked it up initially and played it for a few weeks and then put it down. It came out on the consoles right around the same time as Destiny and it a lot of ways it is the same sort of game as Destiny, except that it is third person to Destiny's first person. It is a loot based, quasi-MMO. You play as a Tenno, a being of some sort that can inhabit bodies call war frames. The story is pretty thin, but the gameplay is quite fun and I honestly think it does right what Destiny was trying to do.

It is a loot grind, which means you will be playing the same missions over and over, but it does succeed in providing you all those juicy item drops that and loot based game does. Recent updates have made the game much more playable on the consoles with a controller and I have found it is one of the few games on the new Xbox that consistently has people chatting in it. 

There is something done right about this nice, mindless online component to Warfare. It is almost all cooperative so if you are the type of person who doesn't enjoy or isn't good at online competitive play, then you can still get into the community here and enjoy your time online. The pacing is just right with the loot you get where you can still keep progressing forward and building more gear for your Tenno. 

What surprised me the mot though is how well the developer has done the FTP aspect. You can earn almost everything in the game without paying a single dollar. The purchase platinum in the game basically gives you really cool cosmetic upgrades and also allows you access to what they call "Prime" versions of war frames and gear. So, I'll admit that I gave the developer $20 and picked out some Platinum to get some cool additional gear. 

I don't normally play games on my iPad or iPhone beyond something simple to pass the time while waiting in line. I have always preferred to play games on dedicated gaming devices. Over the Christmas holiday though I downloaded SimCity BuildIt for my iPad. I also made the mistake of introducing my wife to this game. 

SimCity was one of those games that always stuck with me when I was a kid. SimCity 2000 in particular was this perfect mix of resource management and expenditure. The new game, Buildit, which is available on the iPad, takes a lot of its ques from last year's maligned SimCity for the PC. Where that game seemed to fail with gamers the model seems to hit really well on the iPad. Perhaps it is because of the F2P model or the sort of stripped back interface, but this game (which is free) pretty much hits the nail on the head IMO. It nails all of the resource management of the previous games and has the model fit surprisingly well for the sort of "Farmville" model of resource distribution. 

In the original Simcity games your resource restrictions were largely constrained by your tax income. Here that resource constraint is spread out among different building materials. Yes, these have a time factor put onto them, but when you look back at the older games, they really aren't that different from the original concept. Back on those old PC games you were sitting, waiting, gnawing at your fingers waiting for that next chunk of money to come in. The satisfaction and anticipation is all there in this game and I am surprised to say that EA has handled the P2P aspect rather well. I haven't felt the need to buy anything to further my city, which in some ways is too bad. I personally have no qualms about putting in a few dollars to support games I like, but I wish I could put in some money into something besides getting in game cash to speed up builds. Something like a unique tile set of high end buildings would be totally reasonable for me. 

One thing that has really surprised me though is the level of detail going on. Most recently I had to build a hospital for my city and I had several abandoned buildings because of it. After I built the hospital, small ambulances drove out from that hospital and then went to my abandoned buildings. Upon returning to the hospital those buildings began to fill up with people again and my population rose. That was a surprising detail that I thought was really well crafted. I had another similar instance once when I had a building that didn't have garbage service, so you could see bags of garbage being thrown out of the windows into a pile on the side of the building with seagulls circling overhead. 

A surprisingly well crafted game for what it is. 

Video games, video games, video games. 

Fall and early winter is that time of year when all of the blockbuster games come out. There have been some decent games that have come out this fall, but I feel that 2014 overall has been a bit of a lackluster year for gaming. I definitely have played less games this past year, and I am not entirely sure if it is due to the selection of games out or if it has to do with my available time. 

I put a lot of time in at the end of the summer and through the early part of this fall playing Pikmin 3. That game is quite good, but it had one of the most frustrating ending levels I have ever played in any game. I seriously almost did not make it through that game simply due to the ending. 

Just prior to Thanksgiving I also took advantage of a sale over at target and picked up three games; Sunset Overdrive, Shadow of Morodr and Bayonetta 2. 

I had a lot of fun playing Sunset Overdrive. It was a great looking game that had that goofy, over the top mayhem that is reminiscent of the first Crackdown. I beat the single player mode, but I hope to put in a little bit more time playing the multiplayer and getting all of the collectibles. There is a good, mindless sort of fun about the game that really hits well. 

I also started playing Bayonetta 2 over the past couple of weeks. I enjoyed the first game, but this second one really nails the over the top Japanese aesthetic and action along with overt sexuality, subtle and not so subtle puns and crazy fight sequences. The game is fast, smooth and really does look quite gorgeous. For anyone who thinks the Wii U doesn't have games, they really need to look at the releases for 2014 that Nintendo has put out. It really is a stellar system right now. 

Finally I started playing Shadow of Mordor just a couple of weeks ago. That game is straight up an Assassin's Creed clone, right down to the map. I have only put in a few hours so far, but I can't say I am hooked. People online seem to really love this game and many have it as their game of the year. The nemesis system, with the orcs is cool, but the game has not captured me. The opening couple of hours are difficult since the tutorials are almost non-existent. What little information it does put across the screen for you disappears too quickly. The text in the game is also incredibly small and if you are sitting any more than four feet from your TV you simply cannot read it. 

I hear it gets better and I am planning on still playing it. I sort of found myself this weekend though falling back into a game that has to be my game of the year if simply for the hours I have put into it. Titanfall. 

I have played over eighty hours of that game since its release last March. A took a break for a few months as if burned itself out, but Microsoft had it on sale for $12 over the Thanksgiving holiday. I booted it up again this weekend and it is as fun as ever. I am probably going to see myself playing that for another few weeks over the holiday break as well. 

I haven't been playing my Wii U much lately. I have been trying my hardest to try and get some time into Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate on the console. I have spent the better part of the past month though just getting frustrated with that game. I wanted to try and like it. I was in the mood for something very "Japanese feeling", but I just couldn't get myself to like it. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing most of the time and I unfortunately found most of the combat pretty boring. 

My lack of interest in that game had me not really wanting to pickup the Wii U for a while. I finally had to give in and I am thankful I did. I should have thrown the towel in on that game weeks ago and I opened up Pikmin 3 that I downloaded with the purchase of Mario Kart 8. Now Pikmin is quite a good game. It is what I would call the perfect "laid back" experience that Nintendo does so well. The game is calming with very subtle music and design elements.  Tension in the game is mostly low and the payoff really comes from wandering around the world looking for fruit for your ship. 

It has also been the best game to utilize the Wii U's gamepad so far. Not only does it make good use of the map functinality, but the Wii U's pad acts as a communicator device which pays off really well. It is definitely worth the pickup. 

This spring so far has been a pretty fun time for video games. It has been my sort of go to stress relief after I come home from work. I have been playing quite a bit of Titanfall since its launch back in March. The game is basically just Call of Duty, but the formula still works and it remains fun to jump in and play and hour or two. There has been quite a bit of complaints from some people online about the value of the game for online only. I never quite understood the issues with those arguments. People spend $60 on COD all the time without touching the single player at all. A new map pack is coming out in a couple of weeks that I am looking forward to play. 

I also picked up Super Mario 3D World a few weeks ago for the Wii. That is a gorgeous looking game and if anyone had an qualms about the Wii U producing some good looking games, just look to the Nintendo products for it. It is your standard Mario game in many respects and has all the fun you expect there. I have liked playing it in short bursts of 30-45 minutes, which seems to get me through 2-3 levels before I hit a road block. If you are trying to be a completionist and collect all the stars, the game can be quite challenging.  Mario Kart 8 is coming out at the end of this month and I am really looking forward to that. All of the video and screenshots that have been coming out so far make the game look quite phenomenal. 

I have also been slowing still chipping away at Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on my Xbox 360. That is another really pretty game, and it fills my sort of mindless RPG niche at the moment. I wouldn't say that it is a great game by any stretch, but the fight mechanics are solid enough to keep me going and the world is just too pretty not to look at. I thing that drags the game down a bit for me is all of the sidequests, which all come across as a bit meaningless. They all feel like sidequests from an MMO and they are extremely numerous. Overall it is worth playing if anyone comes across it. 

So a few weeks ago, I posted about how i pulled out all of my old game systems and hooked them up to my TV. Since doing that I have done a little research on some of the great games that I missed from previous generations and also some of the really good Xbox Live Arcade games I missed from this past generation. I have to say that I am quite surprised at home many Gamecube games made it onto that list. I loved that system to death, but I sort of thought that I played most of the good games on it. 

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