July was the month I finally broke free of my Fallout 76 obsession! I mean, yes I’m still playing Fallout 76 but I’ve been playing other things, too.

I also bought a new gaming PC this month. I justified the purchase thusly: By buying a new gaming PC, I could re-purpose my older gaming PC into a new work PC. My current work PC is my even older gaming PC. It’s like 12 years old and getting super slow. (My official work machine, provided by my company’s IT dept, is gathering dust somewhere…thing is a total potato and so locked down I can’t install any of my tools on it.) The out-going PC I was using for work is old enough that the video card had a DVI port on it, and the disks were all HDDs. But the end result in terms of gaming is I went from an RTX 2070 that was OK at playing modern games on medium settings to an RTX 4070 that so far has been able to handle high or very high settings on the stuff I’ve tried it on. It probably helps that I am pushing a 1440P monitor with it rather than 4K.

But anyway, playing PC games on the widescreen monitor with high/very high settings and HDR and suddenly PC gaming is very appealing again!

Playing

Fallout 76 — As mentioned, still playing but I backed off quite a bit after my character crossed level 300 (and thus unlocked the final Legendary Slot perk) and I hit level 100 in the Season Pass. That is significant because up to level 100 you can ‘grind’ the season pass via a repeatable task to earn character experience. After 100 you just have a fixed number of daily and weekly tasks that will advance the season pass. Once I get to 150 (very soon — I’m at 145ish now) I can buy a bunch of perk points and level up my Legendary Perks and that will pretty much be the end of my character progression. From then on it’ll all be about chasing great gear, or just (gasp!) playing to have fun.

The pic at the top of this post is the new “survival tent” I got from the Season Pass. This is a Fallout 1st item, but they are SO handy. You can plunk it down almost anywhere and it gives you access to inventory, a bed to rest in, a couple of crafting benches (food and tinker) and a SPECIAL board so you can change your stats. I love this thing…though I’d love it more if it wasn’t so ugly!

Guild Wars 2 — So how did I end up here? It started while watching Dusty Monk’s new YouTube channel where he was talking about the new World of Warcraft patch and how he is excited to be getting back into WoW. That inspired me to try to go back to WoW which just didn’t work. But in the midst of talking about that, some other friends were talking about an upcoming Guild Wars 2 expansion so I jumped over to try Guild Wars 2 for the umpteenth time.

It’s only been a few days but so far it is sticking. I (of course) made a new character and they’re level 50 after less than a week of playing. (I have something like 8 characters…one is level 80 but got there almost purely via daily login rewards rather than from being played. Another is level 54 and that character actually got played once upon a time. All the others never made it out of their 20s before I drifted away.) I’m mostly focusing on the story missions and events that pop up here and there. Something in my gaming brain has changed. I’m becoming less of a ‘game grazer’ and more likely to get stuck on a particular game for a good long time. My plan is to just move through 10 years of Guild Wars 2 content in order, but we’ll see how it goes.

The First Descendant — Before Guild Wars 2 hooked me, I was enjoying this free to play looter shooter. The core game is running around shooting and looting tons of stuff (surprise!) while doing some pretty basic missions. The meta game feels a lot like Warframe in that you level up both your characters and your weapon proficiency which unlocks slots to add mods to. People say the cash shop is predatory. I bought a Battle Pass for $10 just for grins but otherwise I haven’t spent anything, so the cash shop, so far, hasn’t bothered me much. It’s also worth mentioning there’s a lot of fan service in the character models. Skin tight outfits with plenty of peek-a-boo holes barely covering some unrealistically proportioned bodies. Oh, one more thing I enjoy: cross save/cross progression across PC, Xbox and PS5. I still WANT to play this but between Fallout 76 Daily Tasks and being hooked on GW2, there just hasn’t been enough time.

Once Human — This survivalbox MMO is proving to be pretty popular in the circles I visit. I like it but I am confused about how the Seasons work and how big a setback that will feel like. Because of this I haven’t really cut loose in it. It is definitely on my ‘things to circle back to’ list, though.

Diablo IV — I FINALLY finished the campaign, using a character I started last season that is now over on the Eternal Realm or whatever it is called. Now I guess when the new season starts on August 6th I can see if I find the post-campaign game to be more interesting. Because honestly I found the campaign all pretty boring in terms of gameplay, I’m hoping once you hop off that treadmill and just do what seems fun, it’ll all be more interesting.

Watching

My Lady Jane (Amazon Prime) — We loved this. It’s an alternate (and much less grim) history of Lady Jane Grey, one in which there’s a tinge of magic in the world in the form of Ethians (spelling?): people who can shape-shift from human to an animal form. It’s based on a novel I haven’t read. The TV adaptation includes a salty narrator and a bunch of modern cover songs. It was a really unique show and I hope we get a second season!

WondLa (Apple TV) — This is a short animated series that felt like Horizon Zero Dawn meets Fallout meets Disney. Eva is a girl raised by a robot mom in an underground bunker. She heads to the surface to find other humans and to her surprise, the world has been drastically changed and is full of alien life. It was fun and kind of sweet. Not great but I think it was 7 episodes of 20 minutes or so, so it didn’t overstay its welcome.

We watched a lot of other stuff but nothing that stuck in my head so I guess none of it was that great! 🙂

Reading

Nothing. Well, I’ve been reading a lot of news lately. Trying to stay informed without depressing myself, which let me tell you is like walking a tightrope! But it’s still too hot to hang out with the doggo outside and get much reading done. Maybe in September or October I can get back to reading.

And that’s July, all wrapped up in a neat bundle. We’re halfway through the summer, thanks goodness. Not that August is any cooler but at least the days are getting shorter which means we have a little more shade during our after-work walk. Until fall comes we’ll just keep taking it one day at a time, I guess. Hope wherever you are it is cooler (though that probably requires being in the southern hemisphere, so basically Naithin) and that you’re having a great summer!