Matthew Rossi

I won't say I played a bit of Torchlight over the years because that would be like saying I occasionally like to talk about dinosaurs -- it's true but a bit of an understatement.

Some people come back to Skyrim or Oblivion over and over again, but for my money, the best computer RPG to return to is Kingdoms of Amalur. The Re-Reckoning version released by THQNordic, complete with the Fatesworn DLC, has been my game of choice lately after I finished a pretty fraught playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. Partially because of the balancing changes and partly because I wanted to actually get to see Fatesworn, I was interested in getting to play it again.

Anyway, I think it still holds up pretty well. It’s my favorite fantasy RPG and the conceit of playing a character who can change the fates of others because their own fate was removed reminds me a bit of the old David Eddings books I like, the Sparhawk series.

This one's a pretty wide potential discussion since the term genre means a lot of different things when referring to games, because games contain so many other elements.

In case you were unaware that I am as ancient and hoary as a sinister black sword that drinks souls, let me introduce y’all to White Plume Mountain, the module that contains throwaway references to stuff that ended up becoming iconic Dungeons and Dragons villains and items. I mean, it’s heavily implied by the art in this module that Elric’s famous black sword Stormbringer ended up in this mountain under the name Blackrazor.

When I was a wee sprog of around 10, my fighter got his hands on that thing, and let me tell you, it was as bad an idea to let me have a sentient evil soul devouring greatsword as it would be for, say, the Prince of Lordaeron. But man, I can still remember the chant we all came up with for places we wanted to go after we were done inside the volcano of weird giant crabs and evil Efreets. Dragotha Dragotha Dragotha.

This is the Queue. We never actually did get to fight Dragotha.

No, you’re working on your own tabletop RPG with crazy time travelers going back in time and catching prehistoric animals and releasing them in, say, Greece in BCE 1200 just because they think it’s funny.

Tabletop RPG design is wild and I’m winging it, guys.

Anyway, it’s the Queue. Let’s goooooooooooooooo.

Titanfall 2 was sent out to die by EA.

Last week's Diablo 4 Campfire Chat introduced a lot of changes coming to the game in May (including a vastly overhauled itemization system), but one small change may have flown under the radar: increased zoom distance.

I play a lot of games and I am always hitting moments I completely find compelling or fun or interesting. And then, once I am done playing them — and usually much later, hours or days later — I realize that I should have screenshotted or recorded it. By then, however, I’ve moved way past it, and going back would either be a process of hours of gameplay from an old save, or with games like Diablo 4, literally starting the whole game over again.

So anyway, I had a whole lot of Baldur’s Gate 3 stuff I was gonna talk about, but then I realized I forgot to take the SS of me talking to an angry bird, so here we are.

Diablo 4 is about to upend itemization with a new philosophy that stresses quality over quantity.

I am rapidly becoming convinced that I am the most contrary human being to exist, because the more people complain about Diablo 4 Season 3, the more I seem to be loving it.