Long time no see, right? The move from Milan to Pavia took a lot out of me, and my method of recovery was mostly lounging on the couch playing Bloodborne because it was free with PS Plus, and I figured why not give it another try? And by the way, the new internet connection is so slow that downloading Bloodborne took FOUR DAYS. Obviously, streaming games is going to be out of the question, and that means no PS4 games at all unless I can sort out how to record and upload them. As it is, recording and uploading PC games will have to be limited to around half hour sessions because that tiny ass file will take all day to upload to YouTube and Twitch. *Le Sigh*

(A side note: I apologize to anyone waiting on the remaining episodes of me playing Dark Souls II. I go to upload one, walk away to do other stuff, and come back a few hours later to see Twitch has once again fucked up the upload, so I have to start over…and have it fuck up again. My internet woes are truly terrible right now, let me tell ya.)

My opinion of Bloodborne hasn’t changed with additional runs, by the way. It’s got good bosses and the chalice dungeons are fun, but the vast majority of the game is boring to the point that I can fall asleep while playing it. Of all the FromSoftware games I’ve played, it’s the one I like the least. But hey, I played through all the chalice dungeons with a bloodtinge build, and while it took forever to build up a gun to the point of being actually useful, the end result was a dungeon run that was a literal blast to play. So it’s the same as my review, yeah? A decent time, if you can stomach the grind.

But so…where was I? Right, the review. Before we moved, I got a Kindle Fire tablet to use as a second screen while streaming…and another side note: the Twitch App for android is bjorked and won’t show viewer’s comments or the current stream, so I had to download Firefox for Android to get to the Twitch site. That in itself required a whole other series of workarounds because Amazon tried to lock me out of the Google Play store, and despite Firefox being the defacto browser for most folks on PC, they don’t have it in their store. Can you say oy vey? Because I sure can.

So, Gems of War. I’d heard good stuff about this spiritual successor to Puzzle Quest, and I of course had many good times with Puzzle Quest and Puzzle Quest 2. This would seem like a perfect fit for me, and in small, short doses, it’s not all that bad. But…I don’t like it. I mean, I don’t hate it, either, but the free to play mechanics make any session over an hour into a kind of slow torture, like getting teeth cleaned. At first, it doesn’t seem so bad, but the longer it drags on, the more irritating it becomes. Continue reading