It should sort of go without saying that posting here is going to be pretty light for the next few weeks. Taking care of my newborn son takes up a fair amount of time, and the time I have that’s left over is generally spent trying to get back to sleep as quickly as possible. There’s just not a whole hell of a lot of gaming going on.
But I think that would be the case even if I weren’t changing diapers and trying to stay awake. The release calendar is light, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The only real must-have on my schedule for the rest of the year is GTA5, which doesn’t come out until September. Certainly I’m intrigued by Metro Last Light, and that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon or whatever the hell it’s called looks pretty amazing, and I guess there’s some neat-looking 3DS stuff coming out over the next few months, but the pickings for fresh content are slim.
So I’m thinking that this is a marvelous opportunity – when I can carve out a few hours – to get back into games that I never finished. As there’s no real grand critical conversation that I feel that I’m missing out on, and since there’s no rush to finish something new before it gets spoiled, I feel like I could take my time and finish the games that, for whatever reason, I needed to put down.
Tops on this to-do list is Dishonored, especially as the new DLC that came out this week looks pretty great. I’d gotten pretty close to the end on the 360, but I think I’d gotten turned off by how rote the violence was getting. And yet my memories of it now are quite fond, actually, especially in light of all the things about Bioshock Infinite that turned me off. I’d already picked it up on the PC during a holiday Steam sale, so that’s as good a reason as any to give it another ago.
Also, for some reason, I’ve been thinking more and more about getting back into my PC save of Skyrim. A friend of mine has been playing it pretty continuously since it came out – he’s level 81 or something by now – and I’d asked him if, after all that time, there was still stuff he hadn’t yet done. Turns out there was plenty he hadn’t done, and in the meantime he was still enjoying doing the non-mission stuff, too. Now, I’d put that game down on the 360 in a fit of disgust, after sinking over 80 hours into it; too many quests were bugged, too many glitches broke my immersion, and I just stopped giving a shit about the stuff I hadn’t yet done. I’d given my 360 copy to a friend and to be honest I don’t really care if I ever get it back. But now, having been away from it for so long, and figuring that at least some of the bugs ought to have been squashed by now, and knowing that it looks pretty goddamned spectacular on my PC… well, I’m curious to give it another ago. And maybe I’ll make a conscious effort to stay away from the critical path and try doing some of the stuff I know I’d been putting off on the 360.
And I’d like to see if I could finish Antichamber. I can’t remember where I left off with it, so I might as well start over and try to brute-force my way back to where I’d gotten stuck.
I’m also pretty curious about Starseed Pilgrim, even though it’s brand new. I suppose I’m curious about it also because I’m thinking about getting Fez again once it comes out on Steam in a few weeks, and for some reason the two games remind me of each other. I’d gotten over 100% in Fez on the 360, but apparently I hadn’t truly finished it, and I was afraid to go back and dive in once Polytron decided to not patch certain game-breaking bugs.
On the 3DS side, I’ve put Etrian Odyssey 4 to the side – I’m in this weird limbo where I don’t have any quests but I’ve clearly got a long ways to go before the game ends, so I’m kinda just grinding, which isn’t all that interesting – and have fully invested myself in Super Mario 3D Land. I’m in the last level of World 8, which, as I understand it, means that I’m only 50% of the way through. That game is pretty goddamned terrific, even if it’s occasionally frustrating.
I’m sure there’s other titles that should go on this list, but I can’t remember what they are. I can’t remember much of anything these days, to be honest; it’s a wonder I can put matching socks on my feet before I walk out the door. In any event, I’m too annoyed with Bioshock Infinite right now to give it a proper second run-through, anyway, so I might as well try to have some fun.
Shouts From The Couch 