5th July 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we bash our heads against Shadow of the Erdtree, we suffer for our evils in Baldur’s Gate 3, and we enjoy the change in Diablo 4.
What have you been playing?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.
Diablo 4, PS5
Diablo 4 is a perfect companion game in the sense that it’s a welcome relief from whatever else you’re playing. I went back to it this week inspired by many of you still playing it, and as ever, was impressed. It’s such a smooth and well-made package that it makes me feel like a child with an action toy who wants to just smash it into other action toys; I pick up the game and it compels me to play.
The slight uphill struggle I faced this time was that the loot has changed. I chose an older character to spend some time with – one I’d completely forgotten how to use, so I just had to trust that I’d ‘done the thinking’ before and built something viable, and mash the buttons until the old strategy resurfaced – and I quickly discovered that all the equipment I had on was now considered “legacy”. Moreover, I started looting things I’d never seen before: schematics for weapons that can be applied separately, core augments, and there’s new systems like Tempering. It was the same game but it was a different game now too.