Another week down, another plethora of geekiness to catch up on!
Destiny 2
For me this week has been mostly about Destiny 2. I did a cheeky pre-order through Amazon to get access to the Beta a little early so I could really sink some time in to it.
The Beta for Destiny 2 had a lot less content than its predecessor, which meant you could quite easily play through it all with all the character classes available.
I played through the opening missions ‘Home coming’ three times, the ‘Inverted Spire‘ strike around five times and got through a good dozen or more multiplayer matches which gave me a good overall feel of what Destiny 2 will offer us.
To be honest, my feelings are mixed, although they’re still mostly positive. The gameplay still feels a lot like Destiny but with a few tweaks here and there – it’s more evolution than revolution. It did feel to me that the gameplay had been slowed down a bit though, but I wasn’t sure if that was just because I hadn’t played Destiny for a long time so wasn’t used to it.
I don’t mind the changes to the weapon classes too much, but the fact that you can’t now roll with a sniper and shotgun combo is a little disappointing as both weapon types now sit in the power weapon slot. The submachine guns feel pretty nice to use although from the ones I saw they lacked a in damage and unless you’re really up close and personal, and I mean really close, they don’t feel like a gun I’d use all that much.
One thing that seems pretty clear is that Destiny 2 is really focusing on the story a lot more. Even though we only got to play one story mission it already felt like it was shaping up to be a good story with a clear enemy to focus on. Ghaul seems like a good antagonist and I’m sure it will be very satisfying to eventually take him down. We’ve also heard that there will be more than 50 cut scenes in the game, which may or may not sound like a lot to you, but it’s certainly more than Destiny 1, let’s just hope they’re good cut scenes….
I enjoyed the Inverted Spire strike to, it had nice variations of open combat areas, more focused fights, some light platforming and a multi-tiered boss fight, it was good fun and fans of Destiny should feel pretty happy with it I think.
On the PVP side, I’m less convinced though. Some of the changes made just feel a little odd – the reduction on team sizes to 4v4, the cooldown times on abilities and the worst of all seems to be the time it takes to charge your super. For me Destiny is about space magic, we’re bad ass Guardians who can rain fire and lightning, so it’s a little sad that most multiplayer matches only had a couple of people actually getting to use their supers. Most games would end before players had even fully charged them. I think in most games I would see around 3 supers max being used across all 8 players, which just isn’t fun and it would be right at the end of a match when the game is basically already done and dusted. For me, Supers should be game changers, popping it at the right time to swing the balance of a match, Not popping it right at the end to basically bump your K/D ratio a bit. They don’t feel meaningful to use at the moment and I’d be surprised if they kept it this way.
Speaking of the supers brings me on to the new subclasses. I felt that the Sentinel for Titans was probably the most enjoyable. The Hunters subclass – Arcstrider kind of feels like a revamped Blade dancer, which is ok, but I would’ve liked a little more variation. Dawnblade – the Warlock class, is cool too, raining fiery swords of death down on people is pretty satisfying. There have been some pretty big changes across the board to all classes and I plan on writing up my thoughts on the Beta in a lot more depth once I’ve collated them a little more.
Overall, I’m happy with Destiny 2 and I will definitely be buying it upon release.
Oh, also the new social area opened up for one hour Sunday evening so I got to take a little tour of that, visually it looks great!
-Will
Stardew Valley – AKA My 2nd Job
I wasn’t particularly keen on Destiny 1, so had no urge to try the BETA for Destiny 2. I did in the week spend £11.50 of hard earned cash on a physical copy of Stardew Valley for PlayStation 4. Some hours later it’s turned out to be one of the wisest purchases I’ve made. I’d dabbled a few hours on the game throughout the week, but never got a good meaty session to sink into, just a few odd hours in the evening when free.
Well Saturday that would change, I began my long haul play through trying to restore Hyrule Fields Farm to it’s former glory at around 12:30 Midday Saturday. I would then not leave my seat for any stint longer than a few minutes for a toilet or food break till midnight, and then I could have stayed longer, but had to do taxi duties for my wife in town. Sunday around 1:30pm I took my spot and then plowed through till 10:30pm. Again easily could have played this into the early hours, but have a real job that earns real money to try and at least function at on Monday.
What a game, I was initially a little hesitant to get the game based on the things I’d read about how difficult it can be to start or get to grips with. What a load of …. Yes it can be a little tough at first clearing the farm with that dreaded stamina bar emptying with every tree you cut or rock you break. And I can see why there would be confusion initially on what to do and what the best plan of action might be. When talking to Will about it and i’d mentioned I spent a lot of time mining, he made me chuckle with his response of “I didn’t even know there was a mine”. So it show’s the different styles to approach getting the farm running.
Well some numerous hours in, I still have a pretty terrible farm to be honest. Winter of year one is 3 days away from ending. I’ve got 3 cows, 3 chickens and a goat that are currently my main daily source of income. I’ve got preserve machines running daily turning my crops i’d grown all year into jellies and pickles, and I’ve got a maple tree farm providing maple once a week for 200g per bottle, so the income is pretty decent. On a good day the produce from the animals mixed with the fish I’ve caught and items I’ve foraged I can make around 3000 to 4000g a day. I also opted to go and buy a membership at the Joja store rather than try and restore the community centre. Not the popular choice, but money is coming relatively quick and easy, so i’d rather pay to get the town improvements than wait years growing the correct crops or catching the correct fish to improve the community centre. Plus Pierre is a little unreliable at the shop, often visited to find him not there, so yeah… take this Pierre!.
As of right now, there isn’t much more I want to do then play this game. It’s taken my life over.
Comic Con
Much like last week, Marvel Studios have dominated the geeky news as of late with their reveals at San Diego Comic Con. A trailer for Infinity War did leak, but it was shot at a rather awkard angle, and for the sake of this site, I won’t be posting the link here to it. But it’s out there, and even in it’s potato came footage quality, it’s still fucking incredible, I cannot wait for this. 10 years in the making and the initial 3 minute leak that I’d seen, it’s all come together fucking perfectly. Aside from the Infinity War leak, there was plenty of news about Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Ant-man and The Wasp and Thor Ragnorak, including a new trailer for Thor that looks excellent. And away from the movie side, the Defenders got a new trailer and the first episode aired to a lucky crowd, Punisher got a sneaky reveal but no footage revealed for us general Joe Public types, and Inhumans details were revealed. It’s not looking overly great for Inhumans, but the Netflix side of things appears to be awesome which is all that matters.
The round of up comic com has come from poster “George Oscar Bluth II” over at NeoGAF and trailers below the summary (not including Infinity War leak, Sorry)
Captain Marvel
– Nick Fury will appear (with both eyes intact).
– Set in the early 90s.
– The villains will be the Skrulls.
Ant-Man and the Wasp
– Michelle Pfeiffer is Janet van Dyne
– Laurence Fishburne is Dr. Bill Foster, AKA Goliath.
– Walton Goggins is Sonny Burch.
– Hannah John-Kamen is the Ghost.
– Randall Park is Agent Jimmy Woo.
– Animatic of a car chase where a car shrinks, drives under another car, and then grows, tossing the first car over.
Black Panther
– The film begins just after Civil War.
– T’Challa is mourning his father’s death and trying to figure out how to be King when circumstances occur that force him to deal with a threat immediately.
– Coogler says that one of the most important aspects of T’Challa is that he be a hero who gets his power from the people around him and from his sense of history.
– Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, is in charge of technological innovations in Wakanda.
– Okoye’s (played by Danai Gurira) goal is to protect the secret of Wakanda as the most technologically advanced city on the planet.
– Michael B. Jordan says that Erik Killmonger has “his own opinions on Wakanda and how it should be ruled”.
– Forest Whitaker says that Zuri was very close friends with T’Chaka and has known T’Challa since the kid was very little.
– W’Kabi, played by Daniel Kuluuya, is T’Challa’s oldest friend and head of security. He’s reponsible for stopping any threat coming into Wakanda.
– Lupita Nyong’o plays Nakia, who is a spy. She goes undercover to the rest of the world and reports back to Wakanda.
– Andy Serkis says that he’s excited because Klaw gets his arm back in this one. He is a wheeler-dealer. “He can call up any government and compromise them into anything.”
– Winston Duke says that M’Baku is “a big, strong, ferocious, majestic, beloved leader”. He says he really loves the humanity of M’Baku. He’s “deeply faith driven”.
Thor: Ragnarok
– It has been four years since Thor 2 The Dark World.
– Loki has been pretending to be Odin all that time.
– Hulk is now a popular gladiator and he decides his new life is better than anything Banner could do. He’s on Sakaar and refuses to become Bruce Banner.
– Tessa Thompson says Valkyrie is an “elite warrior of Asgard, who is hanging on Sakaar”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_6J9BqgonU
