Betacular?

The Diablo III beta stress-test weekend dealie was stellar; May 15th can't come soon enough! I'm playing Hellfire in preparation (it was either that or Dungeon Siege; I've never finished either, but I've hardly spent any time with the latter), but man, for those 13 levels, I was in a fantastic place. It's a little disappointing that a lot of the great ideas implemented in the new Diablo game have already been seen in the competition, but the visuals and storytelling make-up for it. As for Hellfire, I made it to the hive playing as a Monk (who's pretty overpowered from the outset), and things suddenly got kinda underwhelming with some pretty weak level design and annoying characters,; I wasn't all that disappointed when I discovered that uninstalling something called Sierra Utilities deleted my character. What to do...

Esoteric

Blazed through Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP on Steam, and what a gorgeous game! Visually and aurally stunning, I just want to drink it all in. The mouse-driven controls are a little awkward and the plot's kinda thin, but everything else is genius in its simplicity; even though the gameplay is nothing particularly complex, it provides a solid challenge in its... I dunno what the right word is... The hints are concise, the puzzles are opaque, and I still had fun.

Also tracked-down a copy of Nightshade for PS2 and Cool Cool Toon for Dreamcast.

And I'm kinda bored of Deus Ex: Human Revolution about 1/4 of the way in... Not sure if I want to press on or come back to it another time.

I did, didn't I...

Did I miss an entire month again? I did, didn't I... That's cool though; aside from TripleTown and Journey, there's hasn't been much to go on about. TripleTown is awesome and Journey is one of the greatest games ever made; I played through it the first time without even pausing; I look forward my next playthrough. Seriously, I cannot stress how beautiful Journey is, and I mean in every possible way from price to length to replayability to inadvertent multiplayer. It's a game of sights and moments and human nature and you have to play it.

I've spent ~$100 on XBLA titles in the past week. Specifically, I've purchased Rocket Knight, Radiant Silvergun, I Am Alive, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Sine Mora, Rayman 3 HD, and Fez (this Friday); holding-off on Skullgirls for now. Still gonna tell you all about the Indie titles I bought, when I get around to it.

I also snagged Golden Axe Warrior, Out Run 3-D, and Space Harrier 3-D (SMS; I now have all seven official 3-D titles), Sparkster (SNES), Hang-On GP (Saturn; it's decent), Typing Of The Dead (DC), Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii; gotta support), Jak And Daxter Collection (PS3; really only for the first one), the second Humble Android Bundle, and prolly a few other games that I can't recall at the moment.

Oh, and I'm almost done Torchlight. It's very good, but not great. Loot's kinda inconsistent (I'm stuck with awesome versions of low-level stuff, so I look ridiculous) and the grind got old before I was done.