Game Deluge! Sims 4, The Secret World & 7 Days to Die
If I’ve been silent here on the blog, that means one thing — I’ve been busy playing games! I’ve been heavy into Sims 4, and dabbling in TSW and 7D2D. Today is the ArcheAge launch, which I’m going to attempt to join casually, and next Tuesday sees the launch of the new Gauntlet, which my gaming group has already pre-purchased.
It’s a game deluge!
Sims 4
I continue to enjoy my time with Sims 4, watching the amount of mods and custom content slowly growing. I’m plotting up a full storyline for my Sygnus Sims. I’ve also experimented with modding hair colors and making my own geeky line of custom content clothes.
I’m planning what CC I’m going to make to give away for Simblrween — the Halloween celebration for Sims players on Tumblr. I’ve clocked in over 50 hours in this game, and I don’t see myself putting it down any time soon.
I’ve been pleased with how the development team for the Sims 4 has handled the concerns and often biting comments from the gaming community. I may not agree with all their choices, but working in the software industry myself, I understand that sometimes sacrifices have to be made in order to put the product out the door on time, or in favor of a completely different feature. But that’s a discussion for another time and place.
The Secret World – City of the Sun God
Syn and I picked up TSW for the first time in many months. I don’t know what it is about the oncoming change of seasons that always makes me get the urge to play this game. Maybe I associate TSW with Halloween, or maybe I associate it with late summer and early fall since that was when I first played the game the year it launched.
Despite picking up the game at launch, and playing only one character, I’m still only in Egypt. I can happily say, however, I’ve graduated from the Scorched Desert to the City of the Sun God now! I’ve been somewhat stalled in the Scorched Desert for over two years now. Part of this was due to helping other folks through the earlier content rather than pushing ahead through the story. Seeing this is one game I’ve never rushed, I always have just as much fun going back through old missions with friends as I do seeing new content.
I heard a lot of rough things about the City of the the Sun God – how it had a poor, claustrophobic layout with far too dense an enemy spawn. How most people just want to get in and out of that area… or they skip it and head to Transylvania instead. So I was kinda balking the idea when I realized we’d finished all our quests in the previous area, and were being ushered head-first into the city. Especially so, since we haven’t played in forever and were quite rusty.
Instead, I found we were caught up in some of the most enjoyable and cohesive storylines that I’ve experienced since Kingsmouth. Here we have the lost city of Amarna, the site of the prison for the Black Pharaoh, Akhenaten, who seeks to restore his dark god, Aten. Note all those links head off to Wikipedia, since all this “lore” is in fact based on real historical events of our own world. This always delights me… so often we feel like we have to delve into a fantasy world for amazing stories. Our own world has so much “lore” we don’t even know about! TSW always open doors to our amazing history for me.
What is most gripping to me about this area is that the vizier Ptahmose and his children (some who were/are literally just children) act as your allies. For all this time, they have watched over this city, sealing the darkness and kept it secret away from the world. The vizier’s children, the first of the Marya, are young spirits sealed within statues placed throughout the city. They now act as eternal Sentiles who struggle to maintain their watch and keep the darkness sealed away.
As we came to learn about each statue, they took on lives of their own, with their own personalities and well-acted voice-overs. All of them were young, some only children, who never knew a life outside of this eternal servitude, and it shows through their character and the quests you carry out for them. Some have grown weary of their tasks, some impatient, while others carry their burden without complaint.
These stories connect the zone as a whole in a way that’s pleasing to a story lover. This is no old city of dust, stone and mere statues once you understand the plight of this family and invest in their emotions.
The Secret World never disappoints when it comes to holding my imagination through powerful writing and characters. I’m looking forward to making more progress through this zone.
7 Days to Die – Patch 9.3
When our group is in the mood for zombies, we’ve been playing and testing through the newest patch in 7D2D. Update 9 brought the amazing randomly generated worlds. Patches after have done a lot to address bugs, balance spawning, fix issues with farming, and overall make the game even more amazing to play.
The other night, our team finally played long enough to experience our first Day 7 Feral Night Horde. Yes, that’s in caps. It needs to be in caps. Our little bunker build held out really well against the massive swarm of zombies. They came from everywhere and they were relentless! We had a few player fatalities, but overall, defending our base was a lot of fun!
With over 200 hours sunk into this game since July, I highly recommend this to zombie survivalists who enjoy their zombies with a side of building. I’ve got more than my money’s worth out of this game, for certain.
