I’m pretty sure Ark allows you to host your own server if you want to invite friends to play.
As for me, I’ve been still mostly playing Heroes of the Storm. The medic was released last week, and she’s the supportiest support who ever supported. I’m enjoying her, but I think she needs to be rebalanced with a bit less healing and a bit more survivability at low levels.
My understanding is that you can play Ark locally. You can even play locally with someone although they’ll be tethered to your general location since your game is acting as the server. I don’t know long long that tether is since I’m just reporting third hand.
There is some sort of single player progression if you only wanted to play it locally. One of the two achievements (the second is just unlocking every animal dossier) is:
So there’s some sort of goal beyond “make a house, don’t get eaten”.
Have any of you played The Evil Within? If not I suggest you check it out! I haven’t jumped like this in a long time!
Yesterday and today I’ve gotten back into NCAA Football 11. I’m into September 2019 with my six-time national champions, the Kent State Golden Flashes. 4-0 to start the new season.
Like a couple of others in this thread, I just started Dragon Age: Inquisition. I picked up the Deluxe Edition for the Xbox One used at GameStop for $25 the day the new GOTY edition came out. My brother played through the game a couple of times and said the additional DLC isn’t worth the $35 difference between the used copy and a new GOTY copy.
I’m liking it so far. I skipped DA:2, so I think I’m missing some background on how Orlais and Ferelden ended up where they’re at now, but the story of the Inquisition doesn’t yet seem like it depends on me knowing that background.
I tend to monofocus on games, so after I got my Platinum trophy for Diablo 3 on the PS4, I have tinkered with Rogue Legacy and Xeodrifter, but not much else… played some Warhammer 40K via the VASSAL engine…
I wish I could play it again for the first time. 
As for DA2 - It’s a story told by Varric, who you meet again in Inquisition. He will explain what happened in Kirkwall if you talk to him enough.
Bouncing between Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and The Secret World. New content for the first two coming out soon, and relatively new to the third. It’s enough to keep me busy.
Do you think DA2 was worth playing? I remember it getting a LOT of bad press, which is why I skipped it. With backward compatibility coming to the XB1, I might pick up a copy if it’s worth it.
I have recently finished Dragon Age: Inquisition, Far Cry 4, and The Witcher 3.
I am playing Arkhan Knight but am getting pretty frustrated with some of the puzzles.
Holding out for Fallout 4 and Starwars Battlefront.
The whole series has gone down the crapper, IMHO.
The 1st was a fantastic RPG in the style of older CRPG’s but with some modern touches. It’s not the perfect western RPG, but it got damn close. Combat was challenging and tactical. You controlled a party of characters, each with it’s own strengths and weaknesses, and narrative agency was there and it mattered. The main quest line was supported and paced by side quests with at least some level of nuance and interesting twists, some measure of interaction that went beyond: kill 10 of these (most of the time).
There was a sense of exploration, even if the area design was a bit bland.
2 made the combat more action oriented, but at least didn’t totally drop tactical considerations. Combat animations became over the top, anime style light shows, which might or might not be your thing (it certainly isn’t mine). The main quest suffered form pacing issues, and most sidequests were considerably dumbed down from the first game. Many where kill x of these. The roster of NPC’s were at least as fleshed out and interesting (for the most part), as they were in DA:O, but there were a couple that were so very poorly written and uninteresting than you would never want them in our party, and were never given a reason to care about them.
The most damning thing though was the setting. It all took place in a single city, made up of something like 5 main areas, plus something like 2 areas outside in what players started calling “shit mountain”. It became extremely repetitive. Every other quest would have you revisiting the same bland looking area over and over again.
Hell, there is ONE cave area in the game that kept on being used and reused unashamedly for side quests… god damn that cave, I still remember it.
Finally, narrative agency took a back seat, even though there are a few spots here and there were your decisions mattered, for the most part, you were following a much more linear storyline - one whose ending, especially, completely removed any illusion as to your ability to influence the sequence of events.
Inquisition completely dropped any sort of combat with tactical depth and removed player agency even more, but the main issue with that game is that outside the main story line, and one or two of the companion quests, there is ZERO depth to it. Quests are essentially something out of the early days of WOW. IT’s like a single player MMO, where you spend countless hours killing generic mobs in large, boring areas, and collecting weeds and flowers in order to fulfill the most inane, boring quest goals ever devised by man.
It looks pretty though.
EDIT: Ok, I guess I should credit that singular main quest line in Inquisition, which, despite featuring what s probably the most incompetent and non-threatening villain ever, was decent, and evoked in me a lot of interest as to what had transpired on that mountain top at the beginning of the game.
We were considering getting an Xbox One for Christmas for us, although now I’m leaning away from that because we really need to be paying down debt… but I’m like a million games behind on Ass Creed!
Then again, when on earth would we play anyway? We have a fifteen month old.
While you’re killing time at 4AM, waiting for the little one to settle down again?
Eh. It was my least favorite of the games. You’re stuck in Kirkwall pretty much the entire time - and it spans over 10 years (I can’t remember the exact amount of years but it’s something like that) so I had trouble getting attached to characters. They completely changed the fighting style, and I didn’t like it.
That being said, if I hadn’t had such high expectations for it being a DA game, I would have liked it more. If you can find a used copy, it might be worth your time. They reference the unrest in Kirkwall quite a few times in Inquisition.
(I also disagree with everything Kinthalis says about Inquisition. It won game of the year and I think it deserves the title. I got attached to a bunch of the characters and thoroughly enjoyed the plot. I enjoyed the quests and the exploration aspect; I thought it was excellent and possibly my favorite of the games. But, everyone has an opinion haha.)
the characters are the highlight for sure. I liked most of them a great deal, and they are the main reason I finished that otherwise, incredibly pedestrian RPG.
I’m certain you mean “quest”. singular. Because there are no QuestS, unless you’re seriously talking about the MMO fetch, kill x of y nonsense that permeates the rest of the game? No, you couldn’t possibly 
DA:O was full of fetch quests as well. Getting someone’s cow in DA:I didn’t strike me as any more or less enthralling than collecting lumber for some elf in DA:O. Now, DA:I had a lot more quests in general and, if you are a completionist, I guess I can see how you’d burn out but I don’t believe that the game was designed for you to “clear” an area either. They’re just there for you to pick up some xp and map points along the way. Likewise, there’s no reason to pick up every flower and rock you come across either.
Combat in DA:I has the potential to be much more involved than it was in the previous games with considerably more synergy between characters. I suppose you can also hack and slash your way to greatness depending on the difficulty level but using your entire party intelligently is rewarded. Plus the dragon fights are way more awesome than in DA:O 
I’d pick DA:O over Inquisition as the better game but I much enjoyed my time in Inquisition and it’s leagues superior to DA2.
There were plenty of fetch quests in DA:O, but there were also plenty of interesting side quests too. Quests that involved dialogue, choices, consequences, etc. Sure it wasn’t up to the standard of something like Baldur’s Gate 2 or Pillars of Eternity, or Mass Effect, or a lot of other great RPGS, but they were there.
They DON’T EXIST in DA:I. It’s ALL fetch quests… well, the companion quests aside, but only like two of them are any good.
The MAIN quest line, while not always great, did have some stellar moments. Like Val Royeux, for example.
I think you’re crazy if you think DA:I’s combat has any sort of depth. Dragon combat IS cool, but it’s also mostly about taking down a “bullet spongy” boss.
Compared to DA:O? Absolutely. I mean, wow, freeze and bash… freeze and bash…
Waving away all the companion quests because you decided they don’t count doesn’t make for a stronger argument. It’s not as though fetch-questing Sten’s sword across the map or talking Alister through his meanie sister issues was high literature either.
I agree that DA:O is an overall stronger game but I don’t think most of your criticisms of DA:I are really warranted. That said, you’re welcome to your opinion and I won’t debate it further since that’s not what this thread is about.
Oh common, there was more to it than that! For one, facing and flanking mattered. Positioning mattered. Managing you ability cooldowns mattered.
I grant you, I’m tougher on these games probably because they had such an awesome start. If the animated husk of Bioware that EA voodooed hadn’t left so many of the awesome things I liked about the first game on the cutting room floor I’d probably be less critical.
But they did, and so I am.