I spent a good amount of time trying desperately to ignore social media/the news in the first week of November--there's just too much sports-like speculation about political behavior and it's all superficial to me. I spent more time gaming than any other 2 weeks in the year. My drug of choice?
Diablo 3. Good lord. This game got me just like the other two did: I played this game something stupid like 8 hours a day on top of another 4 hours of other games. This third game sets itself apart from the other two by being a little more like an arcade game, despite looking like the other ones. You're still chasing ever-increasing armor and weapons by gawking at stats, but there are monster-kill combos and speed increases that keep the XP flowing in a different momentum than D2. This game was able to transition from PC to console by having a menu that's still awkward despite Blizzard's best efforts. They do this 10-spoke wheel thing that's just a little too full to not be frustrating to use for both skills and inventory. I'd often go for 20 of my 70 levels to earn without changing equipment because of that.
The game runs amazingly smooth and the PS4 handles mobs of 20-30 and spell effects on screen without slowing down. Loading is almost nonexistant, and the game is just really well optimized in general. At launch in 2012, people complained about this game being too bright and colorful, so they went back and tweaked the visuals. Blizzard always delivers top-quality cinematics that are actually pre-rendered, which is a rare thing these days, but I still prefer them. These days everything is politically charged, and one of the great things about Diablo is that you're fighting demons from Hell. Evil demons. You're not shooting Russians (why is it always Russia?) or killing thieves of antiques who are impeding your search for the MacGuffin. No, you are one of 6 classes and the best of the best and the gloves are off. The demons have to go...
And that's where one of my favorite experiences came in: I was less than impressed with the voice actor's uninspired lines for the mace-wielding righteous badass known as the cleric, so I started roleplaying. My own lines about holy this, reprobate that, justice, divine whatever, all while bashing the shit out of demons with nasty spiked objects and bigass shields. To top it off, I wondered if electric guitars ever made their way into Christian rock. I am far from religious, but I do appreciate passionate music like gospel, so that left me asking what could be more passionate than Christian heavy metal? I was not disappointed. Some saint curated a 4-hour playlist of various musicians shredding for Jesus. Crooning for Christ. It all just fit while crunching skulls, shattering bones, commanding lightning from the heavens and spouting off lines. All inspired by some lame voice acting that didn't jive with the gameplay.
The week before Diablo 3, I played through Erica 9 times. Erica was a free PS+ title in July 2020, and is an interactive thriller. You remember the infamous Night Trap, or Heavy Rain or Detroit: Become Human? It's an updated one of those, and is technically stunning. The game is live-action, filmed in 1080p, and on my setup (PS4Pro with solid-state), everything was seamless and blew my mind every single time. The 90-minute playthrough revolves around a teenager Erica Mason who gets put in danger and ends up in a mental patient sorority-type place and learns about her past. Naturally, she gets involved in some shit and gets to make plenty of choices about how to handle it. I would recommend at least two playthroughs to see some of the different choices you can make, and how amazingly it gets folded into the overall story. If you want to get all the trophies, there's a way to do it in 6 playthroughs. I made mistakes and the game saves absolutely everything, so yeah, 9 for me. Another recommendation is that the game is played through the touchpad which is a bit finnicky; however you can download an app for your smartphone and play that way, and it's the better route.
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Now for the downs? Well, I wasted 2 whole days trying to nab a Playstation 5 through the big retailers, since I missed the preorder rush. So, Microsoft and Sony launched their new systems Nov 10 and Nov 12 respectively. Microsoft was very public about their preorder dates and times, and gave a conference to present the systems and then you could try and beat up shopping carts to reserve your own system. Sony didn't have a lock on anything, and suckers like me were expecting to be able to jockey to preorder right after their conference on Sept 17, only to finish it and find that every retailer had already sold out. COVID pushed all sales and reservations online, making them extremely vulnerable.
The weeks between that date and release of 11/12/20, no retailer anywhere had any information about what was going to happen on launch day. Amazon, Target, WalMart, Playstation Direct were all silent about whether there would be more systems. I spent that day and the day after refreshing all the retailers' sites only to run into crashes and systems jumping out of carts as lucky people made it through checkout. On top of that, Playstation Direct had a queue for people to get into the store in some semblance of fairness. However, by pressing back in your browser and refreshing the page, you could skip the queue - something I found out too late. These cheaters, in addition to bots that people used that could access inventory and checkout much faster than a human being meant that something stupid like half of the people who bought Playstation 5s actually kept them. Retailers have no reason to care about this, but had Sony coordinated their launch better, gamers who wanted their console might have had more luck in securing one. Microsoft had been releasing a ton of information on system specs and sent reviewers their systems weeks before Sony did, and the information was out there and everyone knew what to expect. Sony did a piss-poor job on it.
Launch day, it was common for people to sell them for 3x their price. Since then, it's gone down to just under $1000, with anything remotely close to the $500 actual price likely being a scam. OfferUp sellers all want you to use ApplePay or cash app, which wouldn't create a record of the sale, and thus buyers wouldn't be protected against this likely scam.
I thought I would play it cool and not want the first model of the system, as those are usually the most prone to manufacturing errors (historically, right?). But I got caught up and eventually obsessed, and more than 2 days of stress lead to nothing more than a burning hatred of how Sony kept everyone in the dark and buyer bots and cheaters won the week. The next wave is supposed to come Black Friday, but be ready for more of the same shit.
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