Well, first – thanks for everyone’s feedback yesterday. I ended up buying my rental copy, and I also decided that I will check out the DLC – as long as it’s not, like, shitty. That way, everyone wins. Darksiders 2 is a game I can see myself playing more than once, which is something I’ve been known to do (i.e., a rather high percentage of my Steam library are games that I’ve already played on the 360). Hell, right now, even though I’m finished with the 2nd “world”, I’ve gone back to the 1st world just to finish up all the side quests that I somehow missed – I somehow spent the first 15 hours of the game without finding the Lure Stone, which led me to believe that it was a thing that only unlocked with a new copy. (I kept seeing all these bright, shiny gems sticking on every wall and was unable to do anything with them, and it was driving me up the wall.)
As to the topic at hand – I didn’t have access to the TV last night, so I decided to revisit Diablo 3 and see what the hubbub about 1.0.4 was about. I’d put the game down rather abruptly a few weeks ago, once I saw that I was still getting utterly decimated by elites in Act 1 of Hell difficulty, despite spending hundreds of thousands of virtual gold in the auction house, and that started to get old very quickly. 1.0.4 seems to have made rather sweeping changes to almost every aspect of the game – Hell difficulty has been tweaked considerably, each player class has received numerous updates, and there’s a new XP system for people who’ve already maxed out at level 60.
I would’ve liked to have tried out Hell difficulty, but the thing is, I’d put the game down in a rather sorry state – almost all of my equipment was heavily damaged, and I only had 66 gold to work with. So I decided to go back to Act 3 of Inferno and farm gold for a bit so that I could at least approach Hell with enough gold for the inevitable repairs I’d have to do, and maybe also see if I could notice any difference.
Can’t say I noticed much of a difference, actually, although it’s hard to say if that’s because of the patch, or because my character is just that powerful. Back when I was still heavily addicted (and having trouble with Hell), I’d periodically go back to Inferno and farm for a while, and I never had too much trouble. But last night I mowed through the Battlefield section of Act 3 like a goddamned tornado – I’m not sure my health ever dipped below 50%, actually. Some of my critical hits were 5 digits long. I may very well end up farming Inferno Act 4 once more before giving Hell another go – it’s pretty quick, after all, and I should be able to scrounge up enough gold for a few high-quality Auction House items and be able to cover repairs if Hell starts to go bad, again.
Then again, I’m still in deep with Darksiders 2, so maybe I don’t need to do this right away.
Plus, I don’t want to forget about Sleeping Dogs – that’s a game I’d like to finish.
And Borderlands 2 is going to suck up a lot of time, I’m almost positive of that.
Anyway. If you’ve been away from Diablo 3 for a while, the 1.0.4 patch is substantial enough that you might want to give it another look, if (for some reason) you’re not playing anything else.
Shouts From The Couch 