I haven’t felt much of an urge to write lately, and that’s mostly because I haven’t really been doing all that much, game-wise, beyond Diablo 3. And what, ultimately, is there to say about Diablo 3, anyway? I’ve gotten to the point where I’m playing it with the sound off and Spotify on, because the act of clicking mindlessly through levels you’ve already been in a dozen times requires a different sort of aural stimulation.
My monk just hit level 57 last night. It was not an easy road. After finishing the game on Nightmare with relative ease, I immediately restarted the game on Hell, and found myself dying repeatedly, constantly, by those elite molten mobs with jail/freeze abilities and those goddamned fucking arcane sentry laser beams, which are the bane of my goddamned existence. I struggled mightily to finish Act 1, found that Act 2 was even harder, and decided to take a little break.
I started up 2 new characters – a Demon Hunter (who’s now at level 12 or so) and a Barbarian (level 5 or 6), just to see the differences. I may have said this before – normally, when I play any sort of RPG, I tend to pick the Barbarian/Tank character, but for whatever reason I picked a Monk in D3, and after messing with those two other classes, I still feel that for the most part I made the right choice – the Monk is quick and agile, has useful healing abilities, and has some very effective magic spells.
Here’s my current Monk build (I think this is right):
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WeXijS!YcU!ccYYcY
Anyway, after getting bored with Normal difficulty, I decided to get back to the Monk. I went to the Auction House and picked up a pretty amazing weapon, and restarted Act 1. And whaddya know, suddenly I was kicking the shit out of everything and everyone. I don’t know if it’s the new weapon, or that I restarted Act 1 at level 56 instead of level 54, but whatever it is, I’m plowing through it with great aplomb. (I think I’ve only died once so far, actually, and that was due to a lost internet connection.)
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Beyond that, there’s not a tremendous amount to report…
- I’m not nearly as addicted to Pocket Planes as I’d thought I’d be, although it’s still a suitable distraction on the subway…
- The Xbox and PS3 have been collecting dust, for the most part – I did rent Dirt Showdown, which was sort-of fun (although in order to do multiplayer I would’ve need to buy an online pass, which I wasn’t really inclined to do), and I also rented last year’s Vanquish solely because the guys on the Giant Bombcast were gushing over it – it didn’t do that much for me, I’m afraid.
- I downloaded Cthulhu Saves the World last night for my iPad (though I haven’t yet had a chance to mess with it); and then I saw that Cthulhu: The Wasted Land was available for free – I’d heard some decent things about it. So at least my iPad is full-up with Lovecraftian goodness.
- Also downloaded Magic 2013 for the iPad, although I’ve never played Magic in my life. My wife has, though, and she watched over my shoulder as I tried the tutorial. It’s a beautiful-looking game, but it’s also very complicated, and I ended up bailing on the tutorial because our dinner had arrived, and I don’t know that I’ll get back to it. (It was a free download, though, so I didn’t necessarily lose anything beyond some hard drive space.)
Shouts From The Couch 