So on Tuesday while working from home, the internet stopped working. We figured it may be our modem, but the company wanted to test some other things outside first. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the evening without internet. I decided that it’s time to check out which games I can actually play while being offline – and to write a “diary” of my offline gaming time.
Day 1
Of course, all MMOs are out. Doh. I had started playing Van Helsing Final Cut lately and really wanted to continue with it. The problem is that I had never been able to decide for one class, so I played the starting map countless times already. I finally decided to go with the tanking class. The good news first: You can play Final Cut offline! But you do not have access to your cloud-saved games. Well, this is quite logical, of course. The problem is just that I didn’t know the games were saved online only! So the only saved game was of a level 1 character. That is a bit useless. I could have started another character but this would have been the 10th time or so I would have seen the beginning of the game. No thanks.
Anno 2070 is an Ubisoft game. Do I need to say more? Okay maybe… I have it on Steam, but when I wanted to start the game, it told me that it can’t connect to the key server. So no Anno 2070 for me. To be quite honest, I mainly started this game to see if it works offline and not so much because I felt the urge to play it. Still, it would have been nice!
I then decided to play Venetica. I bought the game not too long ago and I thought that without the internet, I could finally concentrate on the story of a roleplaying game. We usually have a stream open or watch a series on Netflix etc., so I never really pay too much attention to the story of a game or at least don’t feel immersed – other than MMOs. The problem is that this game was rather buggy. I am not sure if it’s Windows 10 maybe, but when I exited a map and entered another, I had half of the loading screen on top and only restarting the game fixed it. That’s when I decided to not play this game for now… or until I can figure out if there is anything I can do to make it run better.
For the rest of the evening, I played The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. It is a kind of “hack & slash” game where you control one character and have two NPC companions with you. So in total, there are three characters: A male man, a male dwarf and a female elf. Of course, I forgot all of their names. ;) I chose to control the elf, because she has a staff and can fight in melee. I love staff-wielding melee classes and would really like to see this more often in games, actually. Yes, I was the weird person running around with her female orc warrior and a staff in World of Warcraft who ended up really crushed when her boyfriend told her that while warriors can wield a staff, there are actually none for the warrior to choose later on (it was a white staff and a low level character at that point), because all staves had caster stats on them…
Anyway, my verdict on The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: It’s not a bad game. It’s not a good game either. The problem with this game for me is that all levels seem to be on rails. In fact, you enter a (small!) map, fight off several waves of orcs and/or goblins, get some story piece (the voice overs are actually really good if you ask me!), get to choose some of the dialogue you want your character to say and then move on to the next map. Oh, and you collect better and stronger equipment pieces, of course. Before transitioning to the next map, you even get a pop-up telling you which character did the most damage, used the most special attacks and so on. You can play the game with other players instead of those companions – if you can go online, that is. But taken together, you have a small-map hack & slash game in Middle Earth with a not very interesting story. At least, not in the beginning. I fail to get excited here.
Day 2
On day number 2, while enjoying my morning coffee before work, I decided to see if I could play Fragmented. This is an online game, but you get the option to play offline or even host your own server. It’s still in Early Access on Steam, so I didn’t really think it would work – but it did! I could continue playing my character on the offline server. This was a very nice positive surprise! But it was early and I had to get to work, so I could not play.
After work, we found out that the company had not done anything yet and we still had to wait for them to actually do their tests. So, no internet that evening either.
Bookahnerk went to meet some friends and I stayed behind (my own decision! I could have joined him, of course, but I preferred being a lazy potato at home). I played some more War in the North, but that did not change my opinion on the game. It was nice, but nothing amazing. I also started up Demonicon (a “The Dark Eye” game), but after reading some Steam reviews (on my mobile phone), I had ruined the fun for me. Lots of reviews mentioned constant crashes and other issues and I just did not want to spend my “precious gaming time” with that game. Maybe another time. For the record: There were 0 crashes during the 30 minutes I did play the game. :p
By the way, Prison Architect also stores the games offline, so I did have a look at my little prison for a bit and checked on my prisoners. They’re all still there. Good girls. :p But as soon as I had started that game, I realized that I could also try Civilization: Beyond Earth. I had played the game during a free test period on Steam and had liked it so much that I bought it not too long afterwards. Unfortunately, I had soon realized that I just did not get the game. I assume it’s not complicated at all, but the last time I had started the game, I remember I tried to google quite a lot. Still, I wanted to give it a try again. Unfortunately, no matter how often I clicked the “play” button, nothing happened. That’s when I decided it’s time for Civilization V again instead.
Diablo 2 got tested at some point as well. It loads. Thankfully, it doesn’t rely on the battle.net-launcher to be online. In fact, it doesn’t need the launcher at all!
Day 3
The company had made their tests and had confirmed that it’s nothing outside into our house and that, in fact, they need to send a technician over. Not on Day 3, though. But at least, we had it scheduled for Day 4.
I immediately settled for Civ V after work. I also spent an hour in the kitchen preparing dinner which I had thought would be fast to prepare. Apparently not. ;) I usually have streams, music or Netflix on in the background when cooking. It was actually not bad not to have any background noises. I should do that more often after work. In case you’re wondering about what I had made for dinner: Chicken marinated in soy sauce with fresh vegetables and saté sauce (not self-made, though. I still had some left that I bought a while ago which only needs to be poured into boiling water).
Civ V is great, but I soon wondered: Wouldn’t I want to give Diablo 2 a shot again? I did, oh yes, I did. Don’t get me wrong: I really like Diablo 2 and would love to finish playing it one day (I never did, because once I had discovered it, it didn’t take long and bookahnerk gave me World of Warcraft…). The major downside was that I did not think about “forcing” the game into windowed mode. Tabbing in and out did not always work flawlessly the first time. So I tabbed in and out several times to get back into the game – and then tried not to tab out again afterwards. ;) I also got a slight headache from the graphics. So I only played for a bit before I decided – just one more turn! Back to Civ V until it was time for my bed.
And in case you are wondering: Yes, I know it reads like I have “gaming-ADHD”. I do the same with MMOs, only with less games to choose from (currently it’s only Wildstar, Guild Wars 2 and Rift). But hey, there are so many choices for me, it’s really hard to decide and one moment I feel like playing a roleplaying game, the next I prefer a turn-based game. It could also be that I just get more and more tired the later the evening gets and turn-based games are easier to play when you’re tired. :p
Day 4
The technician was said to arrive between noon and 4 pm. He arrived exactly at noon! Not one minute later. I was shocked, actually, but very happy about it. Only thirty minutes and a new modem later, our internet was finally back up. Just in time for the weekend – and for me to be able to finish work without having to drive to the office as I actually had some important emails to send which I never want to do on my phone. The screen is too tiny and uncomfortable to send longer emails if you ask me.
Anyway, I started Steam and it updated 10 games. I also logged in to my favourite MMOs and immediately got stuck in Rift again. Summerfest has started. Since there is no summer to speak of here, I guess Rift’s summer will have to do for now. ;)
Like this:
Like Loading...
