4th January
Hello and Happy New Year! Did you have a nice break? I hope so.
This is our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing, in this case, over the festive break. This time, we gorged on loot in Diablo 4 Path of Exile 2, we were pleasantly surprised nay delighted by Indiana Jones, and dug into the trifle-like layers of genius that make up Animal Well.
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.
Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred, PS5
I’ve been ping-ponging between Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 during the Christmas break – I’ve been filling my ARPG cup, you could say. What surprised me, doing this, is how complimentary the games can be. Path of Exile 2 is frugal. It doesn’t give up anything easily. You inch through zones and then try multiple times to beat bosses, and when you do, they don’t give you much, the stingy bastards. Path of Exile 2 certainly doesn’t shower you in rewards like Diablo 4 does.
Never was this more apparent than during Diablo 4’s festive Slay Ride to Hell celebration, which spawned Treasure Goblins around the map seemingly everywhere – those scurrying Santa-like carriers of bottomless bags of loot. The spawns were particularly potent in the new Vessel of Hatred expansion zone, Nahantu, which it turns out I hadn’t been to yet because I hadn’t played the expansion yet. Cue, then, the perfect storm for me: catching up on a year of loot changes and expansion content, while also being drenched in fountains of loot along the way.