14th February

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we’ve been playing. This week, Bertie plays a classic but finds himself getting a bit bored; Marie adopts a black cat called Salem; Tom can’t get out of the menus; Victoria makes a young child cry; Dom Platinums a game and feels very smug about it; and Connor finds an inventive way to play two MMOs at once.

If you’re looking for something else to read, or a reminder of what you once wrote, there’s a whole What We’ve Been Playing archive to delve into.

Diablo 2 Resurrected, Switch 2

It’s a bit boring? Ever the contrarian, aren’t I? But I can’t hide the truth: this was how I felt when I played the game. Important clarifying statement: I haven’t played Diablo 2 before. I’ve always been keen to; it’s one of the games I’ve had earmarked for years out of a sense of duty to perform some reverential digital pilgrimage to experience all of the classics. Plus, I’m a Diablo fan, and with a brand new warlock class added this week, there’s never been a better time to try Diablo 2. But I didn’t especially enjoy it.

I’m a bit disappointed with myself, truth be told, but if I step back a bit, I realise it’s not necessarily my fault. For I have been raised on a diet of modern Diablo, which I don’t think it’s mean to say has more artificial flavourings in. Diablo 3 was my first game in the series and that was a dramatic pivot for it. And as Diablo 2-facing as Diablo 4 tries to be, it’s still a fireworks display of dings and dongs and treasures and rewards, compared to the dour sparsity of Diablo 2.

I’ll persevere; I’m sure it’s a grower. I’ll probably become an insufferable Diablo 2 bore by next week. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, the different ways that series evolve?

-Bertie

Stardew Valley, Switch 2

I needed a serious break from my battle with Cooking Mama, so this week I have found myself starting a brand new farm. I have good intentions: this time I will stick with it and not restart after a few hours. I tend to have a habit of reaching Year 3 and realising I want to start again with a different layout. But not this time! This time I have chosen the beach and I will stick with it.

So far I’ve raised several friendships to six hearts, stolen the Mayor’s shorts, completed some museum collections, beaten Abigail at the egg hunt and adopted an all black cat called Salem. I’d say that’s pretty decent progress for midway through summer in year one.

-Marie

Silent Hill 2 Remake, PS5 Pro

I think my brain might be cooked, as my 12-year-old son might say. I finally decided to play the near-universally-loved Silent Hill 2 Remake and I spent most of the 40 minutes I had with it flicking between Performance and Quality visual settings. There’s been so much chatter about the shimmering, which people seem to think is because of the PS5 Pro’s use of PSSR (its image scaling system) in Quality mode and the apparent overly-dim lighting in Performance mode, that I became almost paralysed, unable to commit to one mode or the other. I feel like both modes are compromised in some way (although the vastly superior frame rate in Performance is probably edging it at the moment) and I really wish there was just one that the developers decided was the best way to experience the game.

-Tom O

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Dobble

I’ve always known that I am quite a competitive person, but I didn’t really appreciate how competitive I was until playing The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Dobble with my neighbours and their son last week.

“ARAGORN!!!” I bellowed as I slammed my hand down hard onto… their son’s tiny and unassuming hand. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I knew what was coming. So did he. So did his parents. We all knew what was coming. “Mum-mmmmmy,” the small boy cried out, his once adoring bright eyes now filled with tears as he ran to the comfort of his mother’s embrace. Whoops!

Still, I won the game. So, you know: worth it.

-Victoria

Nioh 3, PS5 Pro

Allow me to boast for a second: I have Platinum’d Nioh 3. I actually think it’s the easiest game in the trilogy so far. Being able to grind against bosses and enemies in the open world helps a lot, a la Elden Ring, sure, but I also think the ninja/samurai dichotomy really works in its favour to make you feel like an invincible killing machine when all the cylinders align just right. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some skill checks that feel deeply aggravating,, and the gauntlet battle scrolls where you need to beat five bosses back to back suck. Maybe I’m just getting better at the series, or maybe Team Ninja wanted to make it a bit easier to get a bigger bite of the apple. Either way, it rules.

-Dom

Double MMOs, PC

I’ve been playing a combo of Old School RuneScape and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade – at the same time. Now, that might sound wild, but it works. Here’s how. In Old School RuneScape, there is plenty you can do practically AFK. For me, it’s been going for rare versions of certain fish: the big bass, swordfish, and shark. These are low-drop rate variants of common fish so you just pull up to a fishing spot, start fishing, then tab out.

In The Burning Crusade, I’m playing a Boomkin, which is basically a giant chicken who uses a lot of mana. While questing, you kill a lot of enemies right? Boars and big birds and loads of orcs. After a few mobs, the Boomkin is out-of-mana (or OOM). This is annoying in group content, like dungeons, but in questing it doesn’t matter much. In fact, it provides a chunk of time when you can tab out while passively regenerating mana.

So you see where this is going. I’m doing some fishing in OSRS, then tabbing out to quest in WoW, then going back to OSRS when I’m OOM. Yeah it’s stupid, but doing this I hit level 69 in a few days and have both the big bass and swordfish. I’ve also not had a match on Hinge in like three weeks so y’know, that’s how it’s going at the moment. Excited to run The Botanica!

-Connor