Monthly Archives: December 2021

The end of the world has been postponed

Looks like Fallout 76 has run its course for a while, as I’m not really getting a hook to pull me into a session. There are quests all over the place, often interesting little self-contained stories as in the previous games, but in the face of the not so great combat and all the MMO-ness outlined in the previous post it’s not really enough. It might be something to head back into, or it might stay parked in The Great Library of Eternal Promise, we’ll see.

In the meantime Destiny 2 perked up slightly after a couple months off, with a wave of Bungie’s 30th Anniversary stuff and the Dawning event. Neither are wildly innovative; there’s a 6 player activity from the former that, shockingly, consists of a bunch of waves of minions then bosses, the latter is a lot of schlepping across the galaxy handing out gifts, but they manage to stay the right side of “giving a gentle incentive to do other stuff, which is pretty fun anyway” without straying too far into tedious admin. It’s not long term, even with some randomised elements the new event got same-y pretty quickly, but it was a nice little diversion with some shiny outfits on offer. It hasn’t been enough to get me to pre-order the next expansion, I think I’ll still be taking a longer break before heading into that.

KARDS, the Second World War themed online CCG, has proven quite compelling, I’ve been playing a round or three of that most days, veering between the usual CCG emotions of smug satisfaction at my incredible tactics and incandescent fury at the appalling cheese decks my opponent uses, the latter augmented by the AI quite deliberately dealing the perfect card to the enemy at just the right time while putting all my potential match winners at the bottom of the deck. A quick browse of forums suggest the current meta swings heavily towards issuing a lot of irritating orders, something I’ve seen a bit of myself, hopefully the tide might shift as it’s enormously frustrating to get into those matches. I’m quite happy bibbling around at a low rank with other players who haven’t invested a vast amount of time or money into building up masses of fancy cards. Much like War Thunder, where I also hop into low-to-mid ranked planes and boats for a match or two most days, even tanks a bit recently, though that’s mostly reminded me that I’m really not so keen on ground forces. Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms continues to be inexplicably compelling as well, but I’m missing something to really get my teeth into. Cyberpunk 2077 might be the very thing from the current Steam sale, I’m strongly tempted to pick it up after Christmas.