February has come and gone. Steam had a couple of events, Valheim is doing quite well, the LCS spring split started back up, and I’ve completely lost the plot. Let’s review.
The Independents
First, Steam hosted a bunch of independent early access games on their platform. Some notable ones included Potion Craft, Sands of Aura, and some other fuckin’ game I refuse to name. Potion Craft is a game where you role play as a potion seller, bartering with travelers who are going into battle and want only your strongest potions. The game lacked polish in only long-term goals to keep me coming back, but such is the way with early access games. The aesthetics were clean, the gameplay was inventive enough, and I can say that I will definitely consider throwing 10-20 dollars at it on release assuming enough content is thrown into it. Sands of Aura is the cleanest mix between Diablo and Dark Souls that I’ve ever seen, and is showing great promise even in its infancy. The controls are elegantly crafted, the dialogue just about gets the job done, and the combat / looting systems seem deep and leave a lot to be learned after just a half hour. Definitely a game worth spending hours and hours in just to master specific mechanics and boss fights, assuming the demo has anything to say about what the final product will be. $30-$40 game, if it holds up in its continued development.
Then there’s that other game. I won’t name it, as it suffices to say that this Russian story driven ‘rpg’ is another game that tries to take Runescape and throw it into a third person perspective. The controls are disgustingly clunky, the linearity of the demo, at least, leaves much to be desired, and the combat has the depth of a kiddie pool. Stop making third person rpg-survival games with simple graphics and combat, they are bad. You are bad. Stop.
In Completely Unrelated News
Valheim, a third person RPG-survival game with simple graphics and combat came out into early access, and its incredible, according to the player base. I tried it out, and the numbers don’t lie, the game is pretty well designed. The graphics, as aforementioned, are simple, but unique enough to be easy on the eyes. The combat (and controls overall) lack crazy depth, but aren’t so shallow that they feel unintentionally bad. Additionally, the long term pull of taking on increasingly difficult bosses in a Nordic survival game is proving to be quite an effective one, at least for now. I’ll be keeping tabs on this game, both for the headlines and also because it would be nice to have something to replace OSRS for a while.
The LCS Started Back Up
And I still, for the life of me, cannot pick a new team to support. Ever since Echo Fox got kicked from their spot for having a super cool investor with an addiction to racial slurs, I haven’t been able to find a love for any other team. Team Liquid always seemed like the villains of the league, 100Thieves is an organization for children, TSM is TSM, and I’m not about to join the basic bitch team of North America, even if my beloved Huni is their top laner. The rest kinda just suck, know what I mean?
Maybe I’ll tag onto FlyQuest. I dunno. Also, stop asking to get rid of the import limit rule, you donkeys. NA needs to grow its own talent if it wants to compete with the east one day. If the LCS starts throwing three to four imports on every team, the only place where rookies can be discovered will be in Europe and Asia, which means you can kiss any chance at long term international success for an LCS team goodbye.
I’ve lost the plot
This February, i’ve probably spent an average of three hours a day editing videos that are just not worth my time. Its fun sometimes, but knowing that video making is more for branding than for passion makes it feel like a bit of a waste when I could have spent all that time writing. I’ve gone a bit mad to tell you the truth. I’m likely going to stop editing the videos almost entirely and just shave down a few parts here n’ there. I mean who has the time to edit videos for 3-6 hours a day for free? Not this guy, no siree bob.
Here’s to February, and welcome March.
GLHF,
-E