What’s Happened In February 2017
It’s been an eventful month so far. While one game in particular has dominated my time this month, there have been several other memorable moments and news worth mentioning. I’ve given a readers digest of what I think the most important things are for you to know about February 2017.
Conan Exiles
Probably the game I’ve clocked the most hours in has been Conan Exiles – over 100 hours. Haven’t played a game that much in a long time. I’ve mostly done building. From expanding, to repairing from being raided while offline, to fixing terrain clipping after patches. We’ve got a nice little clan going, and even though we’ve had to restart a few times, we seem to be getting the job done. The game itself has had updates almost every day. This does get annoying because when the client updates, the server has to update too or things won’t work. Additionally I’ve found it takes about 20 minutes from server crash to stabilize. It’s Early Access though, so what can you expect?
Tiger Knight: Empire War Rome Free-LC
FINALLY, the Romans have been added to Tiger Knight! After several delays, Rome has finally invaded China. I was a little disappointed to see that there is only one line of troops for Rome, though I am sure that more will be added in time. There were some bugs with the patch that made me want to hold off until the next patch. That next patch has since hit, but I haven’t had the time to check it out. Still planning to dive back in though, as I want to see what the future Roman troops look like.
Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
I think finally the balance in this game is headed in the right direction. Patch 1.3 released this past week has really seemed to change things. The last balance patch wasn’t so impressive, but this one I feel a little better about. I’m still toying with new loadouts and weapons, so it’ll take a while to get a good handle on the current state of balance. I played a few games and was pleased with things, although the latency/performance does seem to have taken a hit. The campaigns I am not so happy with, although I think my issues with campaigns stem from balance issues. Time will tell.
For Honor
Hadn’t planned on playing For Honor, but someone gifted it to me. Since I’ve started learning to parry, it’s been a much more enjoyable experience for me since the last beta I played in. I’ve stuck mostly to vs. AI mode, training up before I attempt PvP. Strangely the AI seems to have two levels of difficulty. Too easy, and too hard. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. Mostly I’ll go in for a few games, work on my orders, and focus mostly on blocking and countering. I enjoy the skirmish and elimination modes, as I hadn’t gotten to try those before. I’ve also thought about playing through the story campaign, but i’m not really interested in playing all of the classes and factions. Meanwhile the audio track for this game remains one of the best ever.
Space Hulk: Deathwing
There is an upcoming update for Space Hulk. The game showed lots of promise when it came out, but it’s endless list of bugs just made it not worth playing. A recent notice posted by the devs said that the patch was live on their test server. After reading the patch notes of this upcoming update, I am very optimistic. I read a good review on Steam of the patch, but I refuse to go to the test server myself. I bought the complete, finished game, and was served a pile of crap that wasn’t even playable for 6 days. I refuse to do ANY testing for them. If things do work out, i’d like to play this s’more. It definitely has promise. I’ve also since played the actual tabletop board game that this is based on. Pretty fun, although as the Space Marines I didn’t win a single round. It makes me really look forward to seeing the flamer in action after the patch!
Total War: Warhammer Bretonnia DLC
In a couple days the Bretonnia DLC will hit, and I will finally be able to play with the faction that got me interested in Total War: Warhammer in the first place. I’m a fan of Arthurian legend, and for those that don’t know, Bretonnia is based heavily on it. I will be doing a campaign playthrough for the stream, and then putting it onto YouTube for those that enjoy Let’s Plays. I’m a huge fan of Cavalry, as many know from my Total War: Arena streaming days, so this faction is perfect for me. And speaking of perfect, this is the perfecting ending to the month.
March, onward!
I’ve enjoyed the Ghost Recon: Wildlands beta a little bit. Debating on buying it, but I don’t want to play it alone. I may just wait for the first decent sale if nothing else. Kingdom Wars announced it’s 3rd installment, promising a persistent world with an RTS view! I’ve been waiting for one of these for quite a while, so I hope they can deliver. The devs of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada teased that they have some kind of announcement coming. They said that while they considered the game complete, that players should keep an eye on the website and Facebook for details. Finally, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor has launched it’s alpha/early access. This is Diablo, but Warhammer 40k style. I’ve got an eye on it as it has a lot of interesting plans (procedurally generated worlds), though I’m not sure how much I like this style of game just yet. That’s about all I learned this month. What games or news are you looking for in March of 2017?
For Honor is a fun game, but with the Peer-to-Peer server system it’s doomed in the PvP area. Also, the complete imbalance of gear (with the Pay2Win and the horrible matchmaking system) will make Dominion (the game mode where gear matters) will be [sometimes] horribly unfair. Also, the microtransactions has helped ruin the experience.
With the P2P networking there are numerous reports of people performing lag-switch kills causing the game to momentarily freeze, their character to disappear from your screen, all the while able to kill you. Also, there have been reports of some PvP-ers even performing DDOS on those that tick ’em off in a match.
Until Ubisoft get’s their crap together and switches to dedicated servers and better [gear] matchmaking for Dominion mode, they’ll not be getting any money from me.
Concerning Wildlands, though….
Wildlands is a very fun game…with friends. I would never consider it as a solo game, though. Even though it’s open world with lots of content, it would get very boring.
The game still has issues (it’s still in beta for a few days). One of the most glaring problems is the air vehicle controls. They are just absolutely horrendous in this game. It feels as if you’re fighting some type of Cyberdyne A.I. just to be able to move forward or bank left/right. I don’t know why they can’t just fix the chopper controls to emulate that of GTA V’s, or any other game that got ’em right.
All-in-all, though, Wildlands is a well-done game that my friends and family have enjoyed. We have just enough for a full group of 4 and had a blast over the open beta weekend. However, even with how much fun we all agreed that it was worth a buy albeit at a discount price. I don’t think it’s worth retail price at the moment, and I would also like to see how it performs after launch. For Honor’s beta worked better than launch, so it’s always best to wait.
First, i’m so glad to see you still coming here after so many years. Thank you!
Second, I am looking for any reason to get Wildlands at this point. I’m even getting antsy at the rumors of PvP being added at some point. It does seem like a good game – with friends – which is they key issue for me. Not sure if I’ll have enough of a pool of friends for it. Guess we’ll see!