Wow, I underestimated how busy this month would be. Where the heck did it all go? Me and my fiance were doing some last minute wedding things before the big day next month and suddenly it’s the 23rd of September?!

I haven’t played anything most of the month partly because of a busy schedule and partly because I just wasn’t feeling it. Every now and then I’ll end up in a gaming rut and just don’t want to play anything for a week or two. Sometimes I just need something new whether it’s reading a book or watching TV. But I’m back to my regular gaming schedule now.

Actually, last week took an unexpected turn. One of my friends asked if I wanted to come over a play League of Legends. Feeling a little nostalgic I said sure. I used to be really into League of Legends in college right when the game was at its peak. My whole dorm floor played and we always played with and against each other. It was awesome. But after college, it just wasn’t the same playing alone so I drifted away from the game for the past few years. The last time I played, Braum had just come out. Now there are almost 2 dozen new champions I’ve never heard of.

We ended up playing 10 matches. We both hadn’t played in a while and made new accounts so we wouldn’t be placed out of our skill level starting out.  We won some, we lost some but it was a great time.  I don’t usually like PVP, I get in my own head too much about playing against other humans but playing with friends seems to take the pressure off. I still don’t think I’ll be playing much by myself. The community seems to be just as friendly as when I left it, which is to say not friendly at all. I found it amusing that Riot added voice chat. I guess when you get tired of being harassed in text chat you can take a break by getting yelled at over voice chat.

With a renewed interest in League of Legends, my friend also reminded me that LCS was a thing. I’ve always liked watching the League of Legends Championship series more than playing it. But every year I forget that it exists until the season is basically over. The same has happened this year, except I caught it right around the summer finals and right before the World tournament. I’m still surprised how good the production value is and I understand just enough about the game for pro play to be interesting. I kind of took a deep dive into the whole thing recently, listening to as many podcasts as I could find and watching the Gauntlet series to determine the 3rd team in North America to go to Worlds.

I do this a lot though. I find something super interesting and want to learn all about it and then after a point I lose all interest. This kind of feels like one of those things but I’m having fun learning about it all the same.

I was introduced to Geogusser by a friend over the weekend. I was getting Christian set up with OBS now that he has decent internet so he can stream on our channel. I ended up hanging out with him during his stream and trying to play along too.

The game puts you in a random place in the world in Google Maps street view and then you have to figure out where you are and mark it on the map. Each game is separated into 5 rounds and you’re awarded points based on how close your guess is to the location you start each round. There isn’t a time limit or a limit, unless you do challenge mode, on how much you can move around so some rounds take longer than others. Especially when you’re dropped in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road with no signs or landmarks. Also, good luck if you end up somewhere in Russia.

You can choose which maps you want to play in. They can be as broad as the entire world and as specific as, I kid you not, Call of Duty map locations. The world map is really challenging. I watched Christian stream a couple games. He’s played for a while and has come up with some great strategies for more accurate guesses. Like if you can find a sign with a web address you can usually figure out what country you’re in based on what it ends with. Or if you see the same word over and over again on signs it’s a safe assumption that the town name.

I’ve played a few games and I quite like the United States map. First of all everything in English and second I like the challenge of trying to figure out the state and town. For the most part, the town is easy to figure out and the state becomes the real challenge. I’ve only played a few games in the United States and it’s hard to find the state name unless you come across a state park or a highway. Also, it’s a challenge to find those small towns within the state.

Much like Euro Truck simulator, this is something that shouldn’t be as fun as it is. Geogusser even more so because at least in ETS you’re driving a truck. If you told me it would be fun to click on 360-degree photos for 20 minutes I wouldn’t have believed you. Adding that extra layer of scoring you on how close you can get to your exact location brings it all together in a rather pleasing way. It’s also relaxing and a fun way to see things you probably wouldn’t have seen any other way. I’m sure it will probably lose its charm after a while but I would highly recommend it if you haven’t tried it yet.

7 Days to Die is my second most played game on Steam sitting at just under 150 hours. Late one night me and a friend, Jay, were looking through multiplayer games and just happened to find this one. It also just happened to be on sale for under $10. Neither of us having played a survival sandbox decided to try it out. And we haven’t stopped playing since.

We get together at least once a week to fight off zombie hordes, scavange for crafting materials, and chop down trees for hours on end.  Believe it or not , that gameplay loop was pretty satisfying until recently. We’ve gone through 2 maps. The first one we played for almost 100 days and our most recent one we’ve played for about 40 days. The material grind is immense sometimes and after learning how to effectively dispatch zombies, there isn’t much of a challenge there anymore either.

So I had the bright idea this weekend to turn on “cheat mode” aka creative mode. This gives you access to the creative menu in a standard game offering every block and item in the game.  I never liked building in the normal game mode because the blocks take so much materials to made and if you misplace one you have to destroy it. Plus, how can you have time to build when there’s so much foraging and gathering to do.

We set out to build a giant underground bunker because why not? Having access to everything makes building so much more enjoyable. Unfortunately, to make an underground bunker we had to first dig underground and hollow out a big enough space. . Once we hollowed everything out we got to work building the structure. I had a vision of a giant steril looking vault, complete with a ridiculous amount of ammo, weapons, tools and materials. A place that would have been amazing to stumble upon when we were actually playing. I must say, it tuned out quite nicely.

I’ve been experimenting with the console commands much to Jay’s ire. Apparently filling our underground bunker with zombie vultures was not ideal.

Creative mode isn’t just great for building it’s also great for trying things you would never get to in the base game. For example, I wanted to find out if, given enough gas barrels, I could bring down a sky scraper. What followed was the longest explosion ever because setting off that many barrels at once destroyed the frame rate. I was almost certain the game was going to crash. After all of that, the building remained standing.

Creative mode has given me a much needed break from the core game play loop while still playing 7 Days to Die. The plan for right now is to continue building and experimenting with creative until the next patch comes out. Maybe then I’ll feel like jumping back in to standard mode.

I left the Steam sale this year with less games than the last few. I scoured through my wishlist to see if there was a burning desire to buy anything, and low and behold there wasn’t much. My wallet was happy.

There were 3 games that I’ve wanted for a while that I always tell myself the next time their on sale I’ll pick them up. I finally pulled the trigger last week and am now the proud owner of 3 JRPGS: Tales of Zestiria, Tales of Bersaria, and Legend of Hero’s Trails in the Sky. That last one is a mouthful. I used to play JRPGs all the time, I guess I was feeling a little nostalgic.

For some reason I decided I also wanted to play a pure puzzle game too. So now I own the Witness. We’ll see how long that desire lasts

I haven’t sat down to play a game by myself in a long time. Gaming is usually a social activity for me and my friends and even when I play games alone online there is still that social aspect.

I can’t tell you the last time I played an offline single player game. It’s nice to have a game just to yourself without worrying about getting people together to play with.

But these last two weeks I’ve been sucked into Tales of Zestiria. I can’t tell if it’s actually good or I’ve been away from single player RPGs for so long that it just seems that way. I find when I step away from something for a while, wethter it be books, tv, or movies, the first one back always seems like the best thing ever. Nevertheless, I’ve been enjoying it, racking up 20 hours so far.

The story is pretty simple, cliche even. Our hero, Sorey, sets out on an adventure with his best friend to stop the Lord of Calamity from taking over the world. Along the way you gather a menagerie of characters to join your party to defeat evil. It’s all really light-hearted  which is a nice change. It’s not overly dramatic or grim. None of the characters take themselves that seriously. It got a lot of charm .

Then there’s the battle system. This being my first Tales game, I’m not sure if the system has always been this confusing, but I’m still grateful for the tutorial messages that pop up from time to time even after 20 hours of gameplay. It’s a action battle system based around skill combos.  You control one character at a time and can switch between them if need be. Each character has it’s own set of skills and it’s been fun testing out which characters work best with each other.

I’ve been enjoying myself and I definitely feel like I’ll see this one through to the end. This might also be the first time I’ll beat a steam sale game so soon after purchase!