A word of warning: I would probably not respec my character in Diablo IV at the moment. When I did this recently, I lost all additional skill points I had accrued beyond pure levelling (via map renown and the like). They are just gone. Apparently, I am not the only one with this problem, but Blizzard hasn’t even acknowledged that it exists, as far as I know. It most definitely does, though. And it is extremely annoying. Skill points are pretty important in that game…

Yesterday, Blood Bowl III was released. And since I am a bit under the weather at the moment and find it hard to concentrate on work, I’ve started a new career as my Blood Bowl coach alter ego Jurgen von Klopp, coaching the Burgdorf Barons (team motto: “Finem Mundi Nobilis”). The game is still a bit buggy at the moment, but a lot of fun, nontheless. As Blood Bowl should be. And most importantly, it’s a faithful recreation of Games Workshop’s tabletop rules, including visible dice rolls. You can even skin the dice… very cool!

I think I am in love…

World of Warships launched an update today that includes a number of graphics improvements like better wave physics for more realistic ship wakes, dynamic reflections on surfaces and the simulation of wetness on ship hulls. They’ve also improved some map textures and seem to have made the water prettier in general. It’s quite stunning. Here are some impressions of what Scharnhorst looks like out at sea in the new game version:

Holy shit! Space Marine II is coming! The first game was one of my favourite console games and the only video game ever that actually made you feel like you are an Astartes. If Skyrim hadn’t come out in the same year, it would’ve probably been my game of the year in 2011. I’ve always wanted a sequel and I’m very glad we’re getting it. I’m a bit worried it isn’t made by Relic, but at least Saber seems to understand how integral visceral chainswords were to the first game.

Notes on Deathloop #9

I found this very intriguing Reddit thread on Deathloop’s lore (it’s obviously full of spoilers). There’s some crazy shit in there. And apparently Deathloop is part of the Dishonored universe after all! Looks like I’ll have to play Dishonored again at some point.

Notes on Deathloop #8

Deathloop is a lot of fun! There’s nothing better than starting your day by going for a hunt and killing a visionary. I’m slowly getting the hang of how this game works: its systems, how to outwit the enemies and all of the (rather complicated) little intricacies of the time loop. But key is that I’ve accepted that it’s OK to die. Once you start building your armoury of weapons and powers that persist between loops, you start to lose the fear of dying. Which takes away the stress that usually comes with these kinds of stealth games. You’re OK with it if things start going to shit five minutes into silently creeping around.

I usually try to play it stealthy at first and then, if I get discovered I kill all nearby enemies and hide for a while. Things won’t completely go back to normal, but that way I can creep up on the next batch of enemies to murder them too. So far, I haven’t finished a single run stealthily. But you know what? The game has never given me the slightest suggestion that this isn’t the way it’s meant to be played.

Notes on Deathloop #7

This RPS story on Deathloop is spot on.

In his Deathloop review, Brendy described Colt as “playing it by ass”. I liked that line, but I didn’t yet understand its true gravitas. I am now enlightened. I have beheld the true ass of Colt, and I have grasped its magnitude: Colt’s ass is the antithesis to Dishonored’s heart. Blam. Boot. Blam. None of you are free of sin.

Absent the spectral whispers of a murdered empress for guidance, or the crushing burden of a city teetering between ruin and hope, Colt allows his glute-instincts to scribble his itinerary through Murderparty Island. While my Emily Kaldwin peers at the souls of militia trapped by poverty and circumstance and opts for the sleep darts, my Colt is stifling laughter as he sticks four proximity mines to a firework and launches it at a happy drunk.

Deathloop encourages this by not only scrapping Dishonored’s wagging narrative finger, but actively lopping it off with a machete. Then it sews on a new finger, perpetually pointing out an array of blissful idiots who simply cannot get enough of the very edge of roofs. Colt is the rare videogame shootyman who isn’t Doom Guy and just straight up enjoys his job as much as the player does. Both he and Julliana are Arkane protagonists cut from the cloth that the studio usually reserves for its much more interesting fringe oddballs while the leading parts go to stoics and mutes. I have some gripes with Deathloop, but I’ll take Colt and Julianna’s worst one liners over Corvo lamenting Dishonored’s much more interesting world while he perches on a roof like a grim, guilt-ridden, gravel-throated gargoyle. Homicidal glee is, it turns out, incredibly infectious.

Lighthearted time loop stories usually feature a sort of ‘seven stages of grief’ arc. Confusion. Despair. Acceptance. Then playful nihilism, like Bill Murray eating facefuls of cake for breakfast. This is always the best part. Deathloop knows this. Personal growth and altruism are for suckers who don’t recognise a good thing when they see it. Revenge is best served in perpetuity, in the pettiest ways imaginable. Bill Murray never had to floss again, and Colt never has to wash the face fragments off his best kicking boots.

I think that sums up pretty well why I like this game so much. It isn’t as full of itself and its world as Dishonored and it’s simply a lot more fun to play than Prey. And the time loop, while on the face of it being a pretty tired literary device, does explain a lot of things rather neatly that videogames often struggle with. Like how you come back after you die as a player. Why the main character speaks to himself. How he knows certain things. And why he doesn’t care what happens to people and happily goes on a murdering rampage.

Games like Dishonored give you a ton of cool weapons and then basically tell you off for using them. Because you killed someone or didn’t completely ghost a level. Deathloop does away with all of this crap and lets you have fun. This time, you actually can play the way you like. That was probably the best decision Arkane ever made.

Notes on Deathloop #6

I’m actually getting somewhere in this game! And it’s fun! I think I really dig this one. First Arkane game I can actually enjoy fully.

Notes on Deathloop #5

Well, played as Julianna the first time and promptly my game crashed.

Apparently this is a know issue with the game’s handling of refresh rates and VSync under strain. If it happens to you, this might help. Seems to have fixed it for me.

Notes on Deathloop #4

Jesus. This game is fucking with my brain on so many levels.

Notes on Deathloop #3

Well, a restart of the game fixed the dual wield icon issue. At least that’s something… Although I still don’t understand the default layout. Such a weird design choice.

Notes on Deathloop #2

Why the fuck is the dual wield control on mouse/keyboard this idiotic in this game? By default, left hand is right mouse button and right hand is left mouse button. And even if you change the bindings, the permanent icons at the bottom of the screen are still wrong. What the fuck!?

The amount of times I’ve ended my stealth run by accident now because I looked at the icons and squeezed off a (very loud) SMG burst instead of using my (silent) machete… This is infuriating!

Notes on Deathloop #1

Well, despite continuous warnings that my old GTX 980 has about 2 GB too few VRAM, the game actually runs quite well. I mean, it isn’t exactly pretty and I sometimes have some screen tearing, but it’s very playable and actually quite smooth. And since it’s a very stylised look anyway, even more than with previous Arkane games, it’s actually not that jarring to turn the graphics settings down to low.