Finally gotten about finishing the story mode to Vessel of Hatred, the expansion to Blizzard’s Diablo IV. At the same time, I was focused on getting my Necromancer up to level 60 and back to Torment-level difficulty. The expansion was surprisingly focused on my player character, giving her more spoken lines as she went out of her way to rescue Neyrelle. But it wouldn’t be a game of Diablo without a betrayal or two, so Eru’s deal with Mephisto served that up cold to our intrepid bunch of heroes and it doesn’t bode well for the rest of Sanctuary.

The final boss battle against the demon wolf known as the “Herald for Mephisto” simply meant that there will be another battle with Mephisto (now merged with Akarat’s corpse) in the cards. Missing are also the angel-turned-mortal Tyrael and the surly Horadrim, Lorath Nahr. These are basically fodder for another expansion. Deeds of a Champion quests form a kind of epilogue, and these serve to introduce players to new gameplay elements such as Undercity runs.

So with the story mode done, I’m testing myself (and my build) with Undercity runs, Nightmare Dungeons, Whispers, the Pit, Infernal Hordes and whatever else Diablo IV post story mode. Since I don’t really like playing with other players, I’ve not tried out the co-op end game in the form of Dark Citadel. With an interesting story line, revamped gameplay systems and borrowing heavily from Southeast Asian and South American influences, I rate the expansion a 5/5.

And with my attention no longer on D4, there are some games that I would really want to continue checking out.

MechWarrior 5: Clans

Do you remember watching the old BattleTech cartoons on a Saturday morning? MechWarrior 5: Clans gets you playing as one of the dreaded Smoke Jaguar pilots, and these guys do NOT use contractions. Playing the game is like reliving some of the dialogue that you find in BattleTech novels, and if you are fan, don’t be surprise to hear words like Batchall being bandied about.

WarCraft II: Remastered

Back when I was in high school, WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness and its expansion pack, Beyond the Dark Portal were the rage. To give you an idea of how old this game is, its minimum system requirements were a 486/33 MHz processor with 8 MB of RAM, and my PC at that time was the same specs…. the game did take a while to load.

Blizzard gave us a surprised this week by releasing a remaster of the game, so I’m very eager to indulge in some nostalgia with some quality-of-life upgrades.