Category: ramblings

winter doldrums

These are lean times for a non-profit game blogger; there’s not a tremendous amount to discuss.

I’ve mostly been playing Old Republic, because what else is there.  I finished Act 1 last Thursday, and was going to write up a post here about it, but work got in the way.  At the time I was going to write it, I’d power-leveled from 32 to 35, but after this weekend my dude is up to level 37.   I’m itching to get the hell off of the planet Taris, which is dreary and dank and not all that much fun to romp around in.  The game hasn’t changed all that much since I finished Act 1’s story; it should feel a bit more open-ended from a story perspective, but I’m still basically staying on one planet until I’m powerful enough to handle my class quest without too much trouble, and then moving on – which is, more or less, what I’d been doing previously.  I am enjoying it as a time-filler, and I’m appreciative that there’s tons of content that I can access without having to rely on strangers, but I must admit that I’m not terribly engrossed in it any more.

Also: lots and lots of new iPhone content.  Most recently, I’ve come under the hypnotic spell of TripleTown (iOS), which is basically a reverse match-3 game crossed with Grow.  You are presented with an 8×8 grid filled with bushes and rocks and such, and your objective is to turn all that stuff into a city:  3 grass squares = 1 bush; 3 bushes = 1 tree; 3 trees = 1 house, etc.  It gets tricky because you need to plan ahead in terms of where your combination will take place; if you put 3 bushes together, you’ll get a tree but only on the square that you touched.  It’s very easy to build the wrong way, in other words.  There are other complications but it’s easier to explain if you just download it for yourself – it’s a free download, actually, although it only comes with around 1500 “turns”.  You’ll quickly get hooked, though, and you won’t have much choice in forking over $4 for unlimited play.  The whole thing is very charming and quirky and ferociously addictive.

My rental copy of Final Fantasy XIII-2 should arrive by Thursday, and I guess I’m looking forward to it inasmuch as it’s something new.  I was of mixed opinions regarding FF13.  (To date it’s still the only FF game I’ve played from beginning to end, and I know that’s kind of a blasphemous thing to admit.  If it makes you feel any better, I’ve downloaded FF7, FF8, and FF9 from PSN, and I’ll probably download FF6 at some point, too – and maybe, if you can play PS1 games on a Vita, maybe I’ll end up with a Vita.)  The battle system in FF13 was pretty great, and it certainly looked nice, but it was also completely nonsensical, and while there’s a certain amount of utter nonsense I’m willing to put up with (i.e., MGS4), FF13 required a time investment that was a bit ridiculous.  All the reviews seem to indicate that FF13-2 is a massive apology that fixes everything that was wrong with the first game, plus it’s a bit shorter and maybe not as graphically impressive, and, well, yeah.  As noted above, I’m playing it because it’ll be something new, although I won’t feel guilty if I don’t finish it.

Finally – there will really, honestly, truly be some SFTC podcasts happening up in here soon-ish.  I’ve got theme music picked out and everything, and as soon as I tweak the things that need tweaking and get some schedules squared away, there will be some SFTC in your ears as well as your eyes.  All in time for the apocalypse.

hacked!

I haven’t been doing very much gaming lately – no, not even in Old Republic – so it took me a while to notice that my Gamerscore looked a little off.  I did a little poking around and, lo and behold, my Xbox Live account got hacked, and someone bought almost 3000 Points worth of FIFA12 DLC.  Spoke with customer service this morning, and the short version is that my account will be suspended for around 2 weeks while Microsoft conducts an investigation; when that’s over, my account will be reinstated and I’ll hopefully get my Points refunded.

Kind of a bummer, right?  Not that I’ve been doing a lot of online gaming ever, but still – that’s kind of messed up.

In the meantime, yeah – not a lot of gaming happening.  I’m stuck on a boss in TOR and haven’t felt inclined to grind my way past it.  I’ve mostly been playing the shit out of two iPhone games:  Muffin Knight and Run Roo Run, and if I had the time I’d devote some Subway Gamer columns to them.   They’re both fun, though, is the thing.

I’ve also been continuing to build the hell out of my Tiny Tower; I’m up to 126 floors and the other day I went a little OCD-insane and renamed each business to include the floor number and its number of happy employees.  I did this because, well, when you have 126 floors, finding things is very tedious, and I’ve basically removed the endless searching from the equation.  Now, whenever I move a new bitizen into the building, I can immediately tell if their dream job is available.  I can also tell if I’m able to complete a mission just from seeing the names of the necessary companies.  Again, this is kind of insane, and I’m well aware of that, but, I mean, if you’re similarly addicted to Tiny Tower you would definitely appreciate this kind of insanity.

further adventures on Tattooine

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, but I was hoping to increase my writing output this year (on this blog, at least).  The problem with that, of course, is that January is generally a dead zone when it comes to new games that need to be talked about.  And it should also be noted that, for whatever reason, I don’t really have a backlog right now.  I suppose I could keep pushing on in Assassin’s Creed Revelations, but I don’t hate myself.

Still, though, I have continued to play the hell out of The Old Republic.  I hit level 28 last night, right before I logged off.  And that’s without doing any of the Heroic quests or the Flashpoints; I’ve just been cruising along on all the stuff I can solo.  I’ve developed a series of battle strategies that work for me, more or less – the only times I’ve run into trouble have been against Elite bosses with 10K+ health, because my companion stops healing me after a while and then it’s pretty much a race to see who dies first.

It’s funny – now that the game’s been out for a few weeks, the gaming podcast circuit is starting to talk about it.  And for the most part, everyone seems to be of two minds about it – they’re playing it a lot, but they hate it.   The space combat is stupid (although it’s gorgeous, and it really ought to be an iPad game).  The environments are pretty but also ugly and barren.  The conversations are engaging and well-written and acted but they’re also repetitive, and pressing “1” or “2” isn’t quite the same thing as actively participating in a discussion.  There’s So.  Much.  Running.*

I don’t hate it.  I’m generally pretty wary of MMOs (after having lost around 6 months to WoW), but I find that I’m able to log out of TOR without immediately going through withdrawal.   I go in, I kill some dudes, I craft while I wait for dudes to respawn, I advance my questlines a bit further, and then I log out.  It’s much like any other long-form Bioware RPG, and since Bioware makes great RPGs, that’s good enough for me.  I suppose I could stand for some fat-trimming; I don’t know that this story is so compelling that I need to play it for 100 hours, but that’s what an MMO is, and that’s how it sustains itself, and I’m having a reasonably good enough time (and there’s absolutely nothing else out right now that I’d rather play).

I don’t even mind the space combat stuff.  The thing that everyone seems to forget is that Bioware’s games always have stupid mini-games.  Remember the pod races in the original KoTOR?  Or the planet mining in Mass Effect 1/2?  (I can’t remember if there was one in Jade Empire or not, but I might be the only person on the planet who still likes that game.)  Anyway, the space combat stuff here is a pleasant diversion – it certainly looks amazing on my setup, and it’s an easy way to grind out some quick XP, and it’s only a few minutes long.

If I had one complaint about the game, it’s that there’s not all that much to do.  The entire game is basically 4 steps, repeated infinitely:

  1. Talk to quest-giver, who gives an objective
  2. Go to objective’s location
  3. Kill enemies, achieve objective
  4. Return to quest-giver

Sure, there’s the aforementioned space missions, and there’s also crafting and stuff, but you don’t even need to do that – you send your companions out for that.  And in a way, that’s unfortunate, because those mission descriptions usually involve heists and deceptions and explosive action, which is way more exciting-sounding that the 4 steps listed above; all you do is press a button, and then 5-10 minutes later your minion returns with some loot.  THE END.

I suppose I’d like TOR to have, well, other Star Wars-y stuff to do.  Stuff that doesn’t involve the same sort of combat over and over again – even though the combat is fun in its own rhythmic way.  There’s no sneaking around; there’s no explosive chase sequences; hell, there’s no pod racing.  There’s none of the card or casino games that KOTOR or Mass Effect have, which seems like a missed opportunity.  There’s no real way to interact with other game players except through joining in combat – and I’m not sure that the PvP side of things changes that.  Whether you’re a bounty hunter or a Jedi knight, you are still ultimately doing the same shit – just with different weapons.

In any event, it’s what I’m playing, and it’s what I expect will take up most of my time for the next few weeks.  I’m mildly interested in Final Fantasy XIII-2, and I’m curious about Kingdoms of Amalur, and I’m very hopeful for SSX, but I’m not planning on taking any vacation days until Mass Effect 3 arrives, which isn’t until March.

Bear with me, then, in the meantime, and I’ll do my best to keep things interesting.  Certainly there’s some iPhone stuff to talk about…

 

 

* Justin McElroy (formerly of Joystiq) had some interesting comments about this.   He’d been talking about Saints Row the Third, and how that game’s designers appear to respect the gamer’s time by not making you wait to get fun stuff to play with, and contrasting that with TOR, which (a) makes you run everywhere;  (b)  gives you a “sprint” boost at level 10; and (c) ultimately gives you a mount in your early 20s, which is essentially the game’s designers telling you that they know that walking sucks, but tough shit.

Happy New Year, etc.

I don’t mean to start 2012 on a down note, but here we are.

The main thing on my plate these days is The Old Republic.  My Bounty Hunter/Mercenary is now level 18; I’ve got a bitchin’ spaceship and I’m doling out death and destruction all across the galaxy.  I’m really enjoying my time with it.  As noted the other day, though, my wife is also a full-blown TOR addict; she, in fact, pulled an 11-hour marathon yesterday, which is something that even I haven’t ever done.  She’s having somewhat of a more frustrating time than I am, though, even though she claims she’s still having fun with it.  (I’m definitely going to do a podcast with her in the near future.)

So while she was Jedi-ing yesterday, I was left with my 360.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, except that I’m not really into anything at the moment.  As I said last week, I’ve started to sour on Skyrim, which is a bummer.  I finished the Civil War side-quest yesterday – or, at least, I think I did.  Maybe I didn’t.*    The whole thing was unclear, and in any event it was incredibly anti-climactic, riddled with bugs and strangely staged in-game cutscenes where the music was (a) louder than the dialogue, and (b) on an endless loop, which tended to decrease the tension with every subsequent replay.     Now that I’ve beaten the main story, and I’ve discovered most of the stuff that there is to discover, there’s really not a lot pulling me back to the world – it’s certainly not the narrative, which feels positively clunky and dead next to The Old Republic.

I also put some time into the Stranger’s Wrath HD remake on PSN.  The best thing about HD remakes – when they’re done well – is that they don’t diminish your memories of how those games used to look.**  The Oddworld games were always quite pretty, but they were running on primitive hardware (compared to today), and one only needs to look at the PC port that appeared on Steam last year to see how far graphics have come in only 5 or 6 years (or however long it’s been).  The PSN HD remake looks absolutely fantastic – they’ve re-skinned and re-textured pretty much everything, down to the last pixel.  The gameplay is still refreshing and inventive – the live ammo thing is still pretty clever – although the level design feels a bit archaic, with lots of canyons funneling you into small clearings, where the action is.

Finally, I continued to dabble in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, which remains profoundly disappointing.  I feel terrible about saying this, but I think I’m gonna trade AssRev in.   I’ve played – and loved – each of the three previous games to death, and yet this game feels totally foreign to me.  The controls are far too complicated – there are two different buttons you need to press just to run – and it’s ridiculous that I’m fighting the controls at this point, being that I’ve already sunk probably 100 hours in the franchise already.  Does that make sense?   I used to know how to kick ass and run around and could stealthily eliminate an entire town square, and now I can’t even figure out how to climb a wall.  It should feel familiar, and instead it feels clunky and overly complicated and – most depressingly – uninspired.  I sincerely hope that the inevitable Assassin’s Creed 3 is more of a re-boot – this franchise needs a kick in the ass.

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*I got the “Hero of Skyrim” achievement for capturing Solitude?  I have a feeling that there’s yet one more piece to that puzzle, involving the Thalmor.

**  Microsoft might not have been wrong when they made the 360 not-totally backwards-compatible – some of those previous-gen games look kinda terrible running on today’s demanding resolution standards.  Just look at the recent iOS port of GTA3 – yeah, it’s great that it’s running on my iPhone, but it also looks kinda old.

more rambling about Skyrim

I’ve been wanting to write about Skyrim for a while now, but I’m having a hard time figuring out just what to say.

I suppose I should start by mentioning that I’m playing it twice.  I’ve invested around 30 hours into my level 23 character on the 360 – a male Imperial, two-handed weapon specialist with some destruction magic to back it up – but I’ve also working on a female High Elf on my PC*, who is strictly all magic, all the time, and who is less inclined to be polite if the option is available.  This essentially means that I’m still visiting a lot of the same places, but that I’m having totally different experiences.

*   Playing it twice wasn’t my original intention, but I was feeling guilty about hogging the TV in the living room.  This is an ongoing issue in my house.  My wife has always been totally understanding and supportive of my gaming habits, and I do my best to accommodate her when she wants to watch her shows, but I still feel guilty if I’m monopolizing the main room in the apartment.  In a few weeks we’ll be getting multi-room DVR, and that will hopefully alleviate some of this guilt.

This is key, I think.  Every night when I fire up my 360, more than half of my friends are playing Skyrim, but we’re all having vastly different experiences.  This isn’t a bad thing, by the way; it’s just that the very fact that everyone’s experience is unique means that my story won’t be as interesting as yours.  Talking about one’s Skyrim adventure is basically the same thing as talking about one’s dreams; unless you were there as an active participant, you don’t really care.  Even the crazy shit that’s on youtube (Exhibit A) simply serves to remind you that there’s a lot of stuff in the game that you aren’t doing.

And, of course, the game’s got problems.  Tom Bissell wrote an interesting piece over on Grantland basically calling Bethesda out for making the act of getting through the narrative a chore.  The whole piece is worth reading, but I’m copying the meat and potatoes, since Tom’s a much better writer than I am and his points echo my own:

 The real problem with theElder Scrolls games — the real artistic problem, I mean — is that when you’re not out there chopping and shopping, or dropping a Helmet of Alteration to make room for an Axe of Freezing, you’re stuck in some town, being buttonholed by a loquacious elf inexplicably determined to tell you all about a magic tree. The series’ designers have always mercifully allowed the player the option of spamming through the tedious pre-quest dialogue at the speed of thumb, but the problem with the Elder Scrolls games has now grown more significant than its narrative content’s optionality. The problem, it now seems clear, is that the way in which the Elder Scrolls games present their narrative content — the way, in other words, they try to communicate “drama” — has never worked and will never work.

The dialogue in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is without question the best written and most capably performed of any Elder Scrolls game. Another way of saying this: It remains terrible. Please know that, two hours into Skyrim, my astoundometer remained soaringly high. Whether you’re watching some lonely club-carrying giants herd woolly mammoths across the steppe or journeying up a snowy mountain to a hidden monastery or hiding in a watchtower from a poison-breathing dragon or doing something as desultory as catching butterflies, for god’s sake, the game is as visually compelling as it is experientially gratifying. Every time one of Skyrim‘s characters opened his or her mouth, however, I felt my irritation begin to nibble away at Skyrim‘s edges. Irritation in response to a game’s dialogue is especially problematical when said game contains hours upon hours of dialogue. How can it be that the part of the game that exerts so much effort to accomplish something succeeds in accomplishing nothing?

*   *   *

I can hear you: Who cares? None of this has to do with what makes Skyrim so great. I agree. The question becomes why the thing that doesn’t make Skyrim so great is such a prominent part of Skyrim. Why, in fact, is it in Skyrim at all? I ask these questions as an admirer of Skyrim. Everything else in the game — from the beautiful simplicity of the user-interface system (at least when compared to previous Elder Scrolls games) to the crunchiness of the combat to the graphical fidelity of the environments — has improved upon previous Elder Scrolls games, so why hasn’t this? Are we not at the point where dramaturgical incompetence in a game as lavishly produced and skillfully designed as Skyrim is no longer charming?

*   *   *

It surely says something that even my most fervent Skyrim-loving friends cop to skipping through the expository narrative sequences. They laugh when they admit this, and it’s a nervous, uncomfortable laugh — a laugh that suggests they’re wondering why they do this. I’ll tell them: Because the stuff they’re skipping is so bad that it makes the rest of the game seem like a waste of time, which it’s not. When many of a game’s biggest fans are unable to endure large parts of that game, it may be time to reexamine the vitality of certain aspects of the experience…. Like most who play Skyrim, I’m greatly drawn to these incredible environments because the act of exploring them becomes uniquely my experience. When I’m listening to and watching Skyrim‘s interminable characters, I’m skipping through the same dumb cartoon everyone else is.

I don’t know if the narrative sequences are really that bad, but I do skip through them.  I skip through a lot of narrative sequences, actually, although that’s mostly because I play with subtitles on (the audio on my TV is kinda shitty) and I read a lot faster than people talk.  But I would certainly agree that my interactions with NPCs in Skyrim can be kindly described as “stiff” and “awkward.”  That doesn’t stop me from enjoying the overall experience, but it certainly does cause me to spend as much of my time wandering around on my own as possible.

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Meanwhile, I finished Saints Row the Third in a mad rush last Wednesday, when I was home sick from work.  It wasn’t the kind of sick that causes fever dreams, which meant that the stuff that I did and saw in the game actually happened.  And while Saints Row 3 is just as much of a sandbox as Skyrim, it’s also a much more focused experience, which means that anyone who plays it is liable to see the same crazy shit that I saw, which means we can talk about it.

Holy shit.

I won’t spoil it.  Frankly, not enough people on my friends lists are playing it, which is a bummer – I imagine that most people will be playing Skyrim for the foreseeable future in lieu of other games (myself included, which is why I’m not talking about Assassin’s Creed Revelations).  I implore you, though – do not miss it.  And not just because the game is completely insane – it’s also that it’s a really well-made game, with lots of worthwhile additions (the new map system is a thing of genius) and rock-solid fundamentals (it’s still got better combat than GTA) and a new city that might be a little bland and forgettable but still has a ton of stuff to see and do.  Of course, the stuff that makes it insane is why it’s worth picking up – you get a ridiculous amount of firepower in a very short amount of time, and you have plenty of opportunity to use all of it.  You are constantly being rewarded just for messing around – the game keeps track of everything, and so if, for example, you spend all your time driving on the wrong side of the road, you’ll eventually level up and add a perk to your character – you’ll take less damage from bullets, or you’ll carry more ammo, etc.  It’s a really smart system hidden inside a lunatic asylum, and it’s well worth seeking out.

the calm before the storm

So this is just a quick check-in before I am utterly consumed by Skyrim, Saints Row 3, and Assassins Creed Revelations.  And also Modern Warfare 3 and Rayman Origins and even perhaps the Metal Gear HD Collection and Need For Speed: The Run.

1.  I’m kinda scared of Skyrim, to be honest.  Was listening to yesterday’s Bombcast this morning and Brad mentioned that he’d put in 50 hours and had “barely touched the side stuff.”  Now, I’ve got no problem sinking tons of hours into a game – I sunk at least 100 in Oblivion and I’ve approached similar numbers in many Rockstar titles.  But it should be noted that I’ve been binge-gaming of late – I’ve been sick a lot lately and so I’ve been spending more time at home than usual, and as such I’ve been engaged in marathon gaming sessions.  (I blasted through Uncharted 3 in two sittings, and Lord of the Rings: War In the North in one, and LOTR wasn’t very good, either.)  Point being, I’m already predisposed to hunker down with a game for long stretches of time, and if Skyrim is even half as good as Oblivion was, I may not leave the house until the spring.

2.  This has happened a few times recently, I think in both Uncharted 3 and LOTR, where I’ve been in a seemingly endless battle with hordes of enemies, and then more enemies have swarmed the scene, and my player character quips something to the effect of – “Again with this?”  or “Don’t these guys ever quit?”  I think it’s supposed to be funny, or at least some sort of nod from the designers that maybe this is what you, the player, are thinking as well; but it isn’t funny, and if you as the designer decide to mock the player’s frustration with your tedious bullshit by giving them even more tedious bullshit, then that’s basically just you being a dick.

3.  I wasn’t planning on playing Modern Warfare 3, but here it is in my hands.  (Thanks, Amazon, for your goddamned pack-in deals.)  My antipathy towards the franchise is probably a little bit unfair considering that I’ve played most of the campaigns in the franchise, dating back to COD2, and while I don’t particularly care for multiplayer shooters in general, I can’t deny that it’s generally pretty fun, and certainly many millions of people love it.  I think my antipathy is more directed at Activision’s merciless whoring of the franchise, which (to me) appears somehow even more greed-induced than even EA’s relentless shilling of Madden.  I get that this is a business, and the Modern Warfare franchise is among the biggest in that business, and there’s nothing wrong with making money (especially in this economy).  But I’d be lying if I didn’t cop to feeling a tremendous amount of shooter fatigue these days.  I’m playing it mostly just so that I can be part of the larger conversation about it, and yet I suspect that there probably won’t be very much to talk about.

4.  I’ve been thinking a little bit lately about the question of Games being Art.  It’s a question that seemed pretty loud back when “arty” games were coming out (i.e., Braid, Flower, Bioshock), and it’s more or less died down these days (since, well, there’s almost nothing super-popular this year that qualifies).  And I guess I arrived at the conclusion that it’s a totally irrelevant question.  Most games are not striving to be art (as is the case with most popular films and TV and even music).  They are striving to be fun, certainly, and they are striving to be entertaining, obviously, but they are mostly striving to be purchased.  This realization is not particularly profound, I know, but I was somewhat taken aback by the realization that I kinda don’t care.  If a game comes along that truly knocks me on my ass in a deep, profound, metaphysical way, I’ll be all for it.  I’ll appreciate the effort.   But I’m not sure that I’m looking for an artistic experience when I fire up my 360.  Most of the time, I’m looking to escape into the game’s story – or, since most game stories suck, I’m looking to get lost in the moment-to-moment thrill of the game itself.

5.  I know the audience of this blog is small, so this probably won’t make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but I must recommend Tom Bissell’s excellent book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter.  For one thing, I’ve played pretty much every game he talks about, so I understood where he was coming from.  But he’s also probably my favorite writer in today’s videogame space; his pieces for Grantland (especially this L.A. Noire essay) are incredibly insightful and knowledgeable and just plain readable, frankly.  I am hoping to emulate his quality here in the future.

Batman and Uncharted and GTA5, oh my

1.  I just finished watching the GTA5 trailer.

So it’s Los Angeles.  And it looks like it’s keeping the gravitas of GTA4.  The most impressive thing to me is how colorful the trailer is – not that GTA4 was bland, but everything here is crisp and bright and beautiful.  Didn’t catch a release date, but I’d guess it comes out next spring/summer.

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2.  So I’m a little over 2 hours into Uncharted 3; I finished the “burning chateau” section and that seemed like a logical place to stop for the night.

The good:  it looks absolutely phenomenal.  It is, hands down, the prettiest game of this generation – which includes Uncharted 2.  The dialogue and voice acting are terrific; I like these characters and care about them and I enjoy watching them interact.  The platforming is still engaging, and the few puzzles I’ve encountered so far are interesting and have been immensely satisfying to solve.

The bad:  the melee combat is really awkward and unsatisfying, and this sticks out specifically because I’ve spent the last 20 hours of my game-playing life beating the shit out of every living thing in Batman: Arkham City, which does 3rd-person melee combat better than anyone else.  The gunplay is still awkward, too – the early enemies aren’t bullet sponges, which is much appreciated, but it’s still a bit touchy, and it’s also a bit off-putting to consider how many people Nathan Drake murders over the course of an adventure.   (As noted above, I’m only 2 hours or so in and I’ve already killed dozens of bad guys.)   The walking/running animations are, for the most part, really beautiful and fluid – except when they’re not, like when you suddenly change direction.  And there are quite a few chase sequences when you’re running towards the camera, and the controls in those sequences are pretty rough, and you’ll die a lot, and in doing so you lessen the impact of the chase itself – it becomes less about HOLY SHIT LOOK AT WHAT I’M RUNNING FROM and more about rote memorization and hoping that the controls move the way you intend.

I’m still enjoying the hell out of it, but I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I’d hoped.  Its strengths are still top-notch, but its weaknesses are becoming glaring.

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3.  I’m more or less done with Batman: Arkham City.  As noted above, I’ve put at least 20 hours into it; I’ve found almost 300 Riddler trophies, and that’s probably enough for the time being.  I may put it in every once in a while during a release lull to try and get all 400, but it’s not a priority.

My first impressions were not overly kind, to be honest; in my excitement for the new game during the summer I’d replayed Arkkam Asylum on the PC and so the first hour of AC was pretty much the exact same experience.  But I grew to really enjoy it.  The story is ludicrous if you look at it for more than 5 seconds, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief it’s an enjoyable ride, and the ending is easily one of the best endings I’ve ever seen, in any medium.  (Again, keeping my disbelief suspended.)  And I was certainly excited to know that after I finished the story I’d still have more to do – and for the most part, that was true.  But I’m a little fatigued with it now.  Knowing that I have over 100 Riddler trophies to go is not enticing – it’s exhausting.

Weekend preview – pre-E3 edition

I’m not entirely sure just how much gaming I’m going to be doing this weekend, but let’s get the obvious out of the way – as soon as I have the living room free, I’m firing up the Duke Nukem Forever demo.  I can’t tell you how weird it is to type that and not have it be part of some fever dream.  I do not expect it to be amazing – I expect it to feel somewhat dated and look a little rough around the edges, especially as this appears to be the same demo that was at PAX.  Be that as it may, I just want to play the damned thing.

Also hoping to get some time with the Infamous 2 demo.  I know the full game’s coming out next week, but still; I enjoyed the first one.  Glad I returned my copy of the first one, too, as it’s one of the Welcome Back freebies I plan on picking up just as soon as the bandwidth evens out.

Probably will get some Witcher 2 happening, as well as some Dirt 3.  I’m more or less done with L.A. Noire for the time being; I’ve downloaded all the DLC but I think I’m a little burned out on it.  I’m certainly burned out on the music that plays during the crime scene inspection sequences – that little horn swell has been stuck in my head for days.

As for E3 – I must admit, I’m getting a little excited.  I have no interest in Nintendo’s new console, but certainly I want to know what it is.  Likewise, I’m probably not going to get Sony’s new handheld, but I have to admit that it’s a pretty sexy piece of tech… it’s just that the iPhone covers all my handheld bases more than adequately.  Microsoft, having no new hardware to show off, would presumably be focusing on software – and that’s important, as their first-party lineup has been somewhat weak of late.

Beyond that, I’m really just looking forward to hearing about all the stuff I don’t know about yet.  Certainly I’m wanting to hear more details about Bioshock Infinite, Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Mass Effect 3, Tomb Raider, Uncharted 3, Skyrim and Batman: Arkham City, and I’d certainly like a fresh look at Bioware’s Star Wars MMO.  But, for whatever it’s worth, I’m not really aware of any major press conference leaks, which means that we might actually get some surprises next week.

What are you playing this weekend, then?

dusting off

Sorry, again, for the hiatus.  Couldn’t be helped.

A quick rundown of the last few weeks:

1.  Finished Mortal Kombat‘s story mode, albeit on Beginner difficulty.  Shao Kahn is a jerk.  It really is a fantastic game, and I really wish I was better at fighting games – or even really just gave a crap about the genre in general, because it’s an incredible experience and a great value.

2.  Did as much damage with Virtua Tennis 4 as I was willing to do.  It would be difficult to choose between VT4 and Top Spin 4 in terms of value, but if we’re just talking about the actual tennis, Top Spin cleans up and it’s not even close.

3.  Put about an hour into Motorstorm Apocalypse, in spite of the PSN being down.  Big fat “meh”, is all I have to say.  I’d rather play Split/Second – which I ended up doing, at least for a little while.

4.  Bought too many iPhone games:

  • 100 Rogues (a rogue-like which was free for a day; haven’t touched it)
  • Falling Fred (free; meh)
  • Frisbee (free; meh)
  • Coin Drop (.99; would rather play Peggle)
  • Gears (beautiful, but got difficult very fast)

Still haven’t finished Sword & Sworcery; got hung up on a boss fight and haven’t come back to it, which is stupid.

5.  Tonight is all about L.A. Noire; impressions will happen tomorrow.