04 October 2008

Retail Therapy

Written by Gareth ( )
Published on October 4th, 2008 @ 12:17:41 pm, using 407 words, 62 views

Categories: General

Another period of lessened posting frequency has hit here on the Blog of War; over-work induced, as usual. Another Saturday spent at the office, another weekend which adds to my fatigue instead of reduces it. Bah.

Well, at least there’s hope. I’m working like an SOB right now but the promised land of vacation time and holidays down the coast looms on the horizon. I just need to grit my teeth and push through.

And buy shit. Buying shit helps. Retail therapy. I’ve been buying anything that catches my fancy, media wise. DVDs, books (including the latest Dresden Files), games, whatever. I don’t have much “down time” so shiny new entertainment helps refresh the mind. Or that’s what I tell myself. In reality, when you’re overworked, you feel kind of resentful towards life in general, so you feel like you deserve to have the things you want.

Oddly enough, I’ve been buying games I usually wouldn’t. I bought Crysis, even though I almost never buy shooters. And today I picked up Sacred 2. Action RPGs have to really stand out to tempt me, and Sacred suffers from an extreme case of “teenage male pandering", something which usually sets my teeth on edge. Seriously, does the Seraphim need to run around in a thong? Argh, who am I kidding, there are plenty of adult men who love that. Bah. What makes it worse is I generally play the mage, which means that in this case I get stuck with the teenage-girl like High Elf eye-candy.

At least Diablo 3 will let me choose gender with my class, thank goodness. I’m one of those weird males who DOESN’T play every RPG as a scantily clad young woman.

But yes, returning to my point. Not games I’d usually buy. Yet I’m enjoying Crysis, I think I’ve gotten into “genre rut” over time, as far as my gameplay habits are concerned, where I don’t play as much variety of genres as I used to. So it is kinda refreshing. And I’m hoping Sacred 2, which is taking half an hour to install, will be similarly entertaining.

Can anyone tell me if Hinterland is worth the purchase? And worth re-installing bloody Steam again?

Well, this has been a fairly pointless post. But at least you know I’m not dead. Well, half and half, really. Anyway, I’m going off to grind monsters and loot for gear that lets me grind bigger monsters and shinier loot.

Later.

Permanent Link3 comments

Comments, Pingbacks:

Comment from: MaximB

Hello !

I have some questions regarding Sacred2
I played Sacred 1 and it was a decent game with major limitations (at least for me).
I would like to know if the "solved" those limitations in Sacred2.

1. Most quests had only one solution.
2. The game was liner - meaning that you had to go and do some specific quests in order to progress in the story (act1, act2 etc...)
3. Those undead are so hard to kill without the right potion ;)
4. the major drawback at least for me is the skills, you use some particular skills and you must renew them when it goes off, this is very annoying to renew the same skills every minute.
I mean if you are playing the barbarian and you have the armor skill you must renew it ever 40 seconds or so (depends on the level), same thing with most other classes.

How did they solve those issues in Sacred2 ?

Permalink 10/05/08 @ 01:38

Comment from: Gareth [Member]

Hi Maxim,

1. Indeed they are, and mostly simple kill/fetch. It's an action RPG though, this is expected.
2. Again, I think this is true, but I haven't gotten very far. So far I'm level 6 and have been doing side quests. There are a lot of them.
3. No idea. Not much undead yet.
4. Buffs seem much longer lasting now. In fact it seems more like a toggle than a buff. The tradeoff is your recast time for all skills increases while the buff is active. I quite like it, simulates the fact that you have to concentrate to maintain it.

Permalink 10/05/08 @ 04:36

Comment from: Fosse

I bought Hinterland five days ago and Steam still won't let me play it. They have also not answered my support e-mails. I've heard nothing.

If I ever get to play the game, I'll mention if it's any good. But if your attitude toward Steam is fairly negative then I certainly can't endorse buying the game based on my experience so far.

Permalink 10/05/08 @ 13:45

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