Quarter-Life : How Gaming Habits Have Evolved in My 20's

As I speed through my 25th year of life on this planet, I've started reflecting on a lot of things. Most recently, my gaming habits and how they've changed over the years. From the pixelated platformers that helped occupy my free time as a child, to my parentally regimented gaming hours in my adolescent stage, to my high school obsession and dedicating entire weekends to JRPGs, it all seems so long ago. These days, I'm lucky if I can get in an hour or two a day without interruption, and that's not to mention other, self-imposed deadlines like this one. Instead of long, plot-filled, story-driven titles like Final Fantasy, Persona or The Elder Scrolls, I often find myself content to play through a few matches of Titanfall or Street Fighter, or bang out a couple quick levels of an indie title like Bastion or Octodad. I started wondering if it was my taste that had changed over the years, or if something else about me had.

This Week in Gaming - March 31st - April 5th

Tsaikotyk and myself have talked regularly about doing news wrap-ups in the past, and I figured it was about time that we do one.  There's not much from March that we haven't covered (besides D3: Reaper of Souls), so it's a pretty good time to get a jump on what's going on in April.

ANNOUNCED
Divekick Addition Edition hits tomorrow, April 4th, and has in store a BOATLOAD of changes. Not one character went untouched in this revision, and The Baz even got completely redesigned. In addition to this, the menus have been redesigned to work with directional pads, bugs have been fixed, and the style gem has been updated. For a complete list of changes, check out this list on Shoryuken.


RELEASED
Ashly Burch, famous for the webseries "Hey Ash Whatcha Playin" and her voice role as Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2, has just landed herself as the host in a new Geek and Sundry web-series.  Titled "Unplugged", the series takes two YouTubers and pits them against each other both in-game and the real world.  Contestants will have to battle it out in a predetermined game, but that's not the fun part.  After competing on the digital scale, players will then go head-to-head in a real-world competition that is as closely-related as safety allows to the game that they just completed.

Always glad to see the Burch family getting things done outside of HAWP, and I'm sure having Ashly as the host of Unplugged will do great things for both Geek & Sundry and Ashly herself.

PATCHED
Titanfall got its first major patch this week. After about a week of beta testing, Respawn has initiated changes in the way the matchmaking works.  The change is currently only in effect for Attrition and Hardpoint game modes, but is designed to put skill-matching above speed and level-matching.  After a few rounds, if the computer notices a clear difference in skill, it will make an attempt at remixing and re-balancing the teams. This should make games far more enjoyable and remove the frustration of being repeatedly dominated with no hope for new opponents.