Diablo III Interest Revitalized

So I have a confession to make. Even though for the last two months, Diablo III on the Personal Computer has been the most played title in my Game Library, there are only so many times that I could fillet Diablo's @$$ before everything starts to get a little boring. Sure, I still have two more classes to max out to 60, legendary items to hunt, and the hardcore mode to experiment with but after a while, the whole thing does start to feel rather repetitive. But hey, what is this? Blizzard had just released the character profiles on the official website and they look pretty darn cool featuring all the information you could ever need from your characters. The profiles are so detailed that they even showed the items you equipped on your followers! I really like having access to gloat on my characters outside of the game and it's the little things like the character profiles that has fueled  me to jump back on the game again and get moving on at least getting all my characters to 60. Diablo, you need to get ready to get your @$$ handed back to you over and over again. There is one problem with the character profiles however - your in-game character model is not included! They have done it for World of Warcraft so I hope that it will be coming out for this game in the future.

It isn't hard for people to guess Mr. Oblongata's first name...

July 2012 Gaming Analysis

The results shown below are of course based on the combined data from the Daily Game Log which should provide a clear indication of a game's usage frequency. Bear in mind that even if a game is played twice or more during a particular day, it would still register as 1 in the Day Count column below. In a sense, "merits" are given based on how often a particular game can make me play it again throughout the entire period of the month on a daily basis. A game that makes a gamer play it over and over again or at least spend a lot of time with it... Isn't that what we mostly want from a great game? I don't think it's really fair to count all the way down to the number of hours played since some games only require a short amount of time to properly serve their purposes.

OVERALL BREAKDOWN:

Total Games Played: 33

It was another Diablo III for the Personal Computer month but as you can see, my favorite PC game by the name of League of Legends was trailing not too far behind. With the way things had been lately, I have a good suspicion that LoL will reclaim its throne soon enough. The real surprise last month was Bejeweled 3, also for the PC. I really like the "Diamond Mine" mode of the game where you have to mine precious minerals and artifacts and had been playing that sparsely ever since I picked up the game back in January of this year but I never had got into an addiction spiral like I did last month. Maybe it was a change in diet. Maybe it was the Steamoroid I contracted. Whatever it was though, I am just glad that it took me to a place of bliss.

This Month's Inductees:

Total Inductions: 34 - Not too bad for a Steam Summer Sale month.

Games Played 07/30/2012 - 08/05/2012

- 07/30/2012 -

Heroes of Newerth - PC

League of Legends - PC

Sid Meier's Civilization V - PC

- 07/31/2012 -

Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition - PC

League of Legends - PC

Payday: The Heist - PC

Sid Meier's Civillization V - PC

- 08/01/2012 -

Awesomenauts - PC

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templar Director's Cut - PC

Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga - PC

Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition - PC

League of Legends - PC

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode One - PC

- 08/02/2012 -

Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga - PC

eXceed: Gun Bullet Children - PC

League of Legends - PC

- 08/03/2012 -

eXceed 2nd: Vampire REX - PC

Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition - PC
League of Legends - PC

Titan Quest - PC

X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse - PC

- 08/04/2012 -
Diablo III - PC
League of Legends - PC
Titan Quest - PC

- 08/05/2012 -
Awesomenauts - PC
League of Legends - PC
Super Monday Night Combat - PC
Titan Quest - PC
Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown - PlayStation 3


Screenshot of the Week:

I don't forge alliances with theocratic nations, now get out of my face!

Sid Meier's Civilization V (Personal Computer)

Faces of Ashe

During a League of Legends match on the Personal Computer today, someone on my team had selected to play Ashe using the "Freljord Ashe" skin and the splash art looked new to me. When the match was over, I went to the champion list to check it out again and I then noticed that Riot Games had updated the Queen Ashe splash art as well! This is the second revision of the splash art for this skin ever since Ashe got a new in-game model. I am just very impressed that Riot is always trying to polish up the game's presentation. There are still plenty of horrid splash art out there though - like that nasty one for the default Anivia - and I can't wait for the day when all of them have been replaced.

Definitely an improvement compared to the last one and the one before it.

Steam is So Convenient, I...

In the middle of last month, my Personal Computer got a really nasty virus attack that forced me to do a clean install. To this day, I still haven't completely reinstalled all of the retail games back to my PC. Things are quite different when it comes to my Steam library - almost all of them are ready to be played with one click of my gaming mouse. I was about to reinstall my retail copy of Titan Quest and its Immortal Throne expansion an hour ago before I noticed that they are on sale today on Steam. I looked at the 5 discs involved in reinstalling the first game and then the additional one for the expansion then I looked at my Steam client and I said to myself, "Screw it. I'm just going to get this cheap digital version!" Soon after, both games got downloaded into my PC and now, I don't even have to keep the expansion disc close by - the retail version does a disc-check per play. I love you too much, Steam!

Now, what to do with the retail discs... Guess I can go touch them every once in a while.