We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty

With no single game demanding all-consuming focus at the moment, I find myself drifting around playing in 10-20 minute chunks, discrete matches/battles/quests in various offerings. Sometimes the chunks link together into more substantial gaming sessions, often not; maybe it’s something to do with the summer. I recall writing a similar post before, digging around, it turned out to be from June 2012 when chunks included Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and World of Tanks.

I wrapped up the main story of Dragon Age: Inquisition a little while back; it was all perfectly solid, without leaving a particularly lasting impression. As with ME3, the co-op multiplayer is proving to have slightly surprising longevity, I’m often dropping back in for the weekend events; it’s not something for long sessions, after two or three rounds of rampaging through hordes of evil I’m generally ready for a break, but the mechanics hold up well, it’s interesting to try the different styles of combat. A fairly big update added three new playable characters including the Duelist, Isabela from Dragon Age 2, making a very welcome return. Each multiplayer character has a few lines of dialogue to liven up quiet moments, which was rather tedious at the beginning when most people had only the default classes and you’d hear the same lines several times every round (“Would anyone like to go for a drink at the tavern? That’s what friends do, right?”) With a good mix of characters it’s a lot more fun now, and Victoria Kruger’s marvellous voice work for Isabela is a particular highlight: “Every time we find gold, I think to myself ‘imagine the hats you could buy with this Isabela'”.

On the “World of…” front, World of Warships is picking up steam as the testing stokers frantically shovel coal into the beta boilers. I got in towards the end of closed beta, and have been rather enjoying it. At first I focused on working towards battleships, lured in by the prospect of massive guns (I like big boats and I cannot lie), but in trying out the other types of ship I became more fond of first aircraft carriers (who have a very different style of play, despatching squadrons to attack targets more like an RTS), and more recently nimble destroyers, nipping in to launch volleys of torpedoes before beating a hasty retreat under the cover of smoke. World of Warplanes seems to have crashed and burned, at least compared to the stunning success of World of Tanks, but it looks like Wargaming are back on form with World of Warships.

One of the major obstacles that World of Warplanes faced was the competition from War Thunder, and though I believe War Thunder ultimately aims to include player-controlled ships, the combined arms approach that it takes (as opposed to the completely separate World of… titles) is going to be pretty challenging for naval combat, especially if they include more realistic gameplay alongside quick arcade action. It looks like Gaijin have put ships on the back burner for a while, probably a wise decision, giving World of Warships clear water for a while at least.

I’m still flying out at least once a day with War Thunder’s planes; the most recent big update added a new set of British planes of the Fleet Air Arm, including the Fairey Firefly with beautifully modelled Youngman flaps (matron). I wrote a couple of short pieces, about the new aircraft and a brief history of the Fleet Air Airm, in Issue 5 of the War Thunder Community Magazine, if that’s the sort of thing that floats your boat. Or indeed flies your aeroplane.

Checking back, it looks like I’ve been playing War Thunder for two and a half years now, pretty impressive longevity. It also turns out that the first screenshot I posted was a Hurricane bedecked with “the fighting cock” decal, quite a good Time To Cock score. In other Cock News, via Zen Of Design a developer tweeted about the impossibility of creating a dong detection tool for LEGO Universe and resultant need for a human penis sweep for every player creation. I imagine the offices were awash with cheery cockney penis sweeps doing elaborate song and dance routines (with animated penguins) about how there’s no happier job than looking for LEGO dongs, probably why the game was unsustainable in the end. It reinforces what we heard when the game originally shut down; fingers crossed LEGO Worlds, just going into Early Access on Steam now, can avoid similar issues.

2 thoughts on “We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty

  1. Warsyde

    As someone who also quite enjoyed World of Tanks, you might like to check out Robocraft (available on Steam early access for free). Matches are typically 10-20 minutes, making it good for bite sized gaming. Just beware getting sucked into building your own vehicles, as that can easily wipe away an entire evening once you’ve accumulated enough parts. “Oh but wait, if I move this and add that, then I can place this extra gun . . . oh wait, I don’t have enough points to buy the gun. Better play another round . . .”

    Three hours later. “It’s done! Perfect! Oh, I better try it out before I head to bed.”

    1. Zoso Post author

      Sounds interesting! A couple of people mentioned it when Crossout was announced, must take a look.

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