I have not been keeping up with backloggd as much as I should be, but thought I would share an update on my current personal favorite multi-player shooter, located on Nintendo Switch of all places, Splatoon 3. I missed out on the heyday of Splatoon 1 & 2, coming into the games well after the Splatfests and festivities were over. I love the community, the fun matches that are over in just minutes while feeling great and is even getting a great content patch, new modes and more come December. Absolutely love the game and can't seem to stop playing it.

The game I can never quite get away from due to it being on my phone: Hearthstone. I love the digital card game as like many who play, I used to be an avid World of Warcraft player myself before abandoning the game so I could have more time for well, other games and real life. The game is still very fun and utilizes the advantages of being a digital card game well, but of course is not perfect.

The game has an upcoming expansion focused around the Death Knight class, the newest class to be added since Demon Hunter. The new expansion has plenty of flavor and has me pretty excited.

While I was anticipating this game like no other on release, I did not put the time in I would have liked and was also going through personal struggles that led me to ultimately never finish the game.

Fast forward to November '22 and I am going through the Playstation+ Extra catalog, and there is Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition along with the sequel on sale for Black Friday. I have begun my journey as Alloy and have already taken down some of the machines. What has really stunned me, beyond the amazing PS5 patch, is the really gripping story, defined characters with their own motivations that compliments the great gameplay to make this a game I'm really glad I picked back up to experience.

Decided to play more Final Fantasy VII with the girlfriend watching, who is really enjoying the story so far. We just made it to Aerith's hometown, after (naturally) slaying some monsters and helping out some local kids, I saved for the day.

I have to say the game's graphics are stunning. I know it's an overused phrase, but it definitely evokes a "next-gen" feeling. I am playing on the "performance" mode (60fps) so I'm even missing out on some of the more advanced graphical features like ray tracing but hey, I'm not playing at 30fps period.

Really happy I decided to pick this up out of the backlog and really put time into it because the game is absolutely full of beautiful locales, bustling towns and it's a pretty damn good game as well.

Decided to put some more time into Final Fantasy VII, made it to where we meet up with Aerith and got my ass kicked in the fight after that.

After Hearthstone, I decided to put some time into Valorant after taking a sizeable break. Can't lie, definitely had a lot of fun playing the game with the GF and ended up playing with surprisingly decent people.
It would seem the smurf detection systems have become much more effective and I haven't run into anybody incredibly toxic in a bit. Overall, I can see myself playing this as my main shooter should the decent lobbies continue.

Played Wild Rift today during some downtime. Decided to put some time into Katarina (for those not aware, a rather high skill character for the game) and see if I could learn how to play the Assassin "playstyle" and roamed, ganked with my jungle and ended up MVP.

It really can't be stated enough how amazing this game is, especially when viewed through a mobile gaming perspective where quality is scarce.