Tag: mario golf world tour

Weekend Recap: Fun in the Sun

As with most weekends of late, there wasn’t a lot of gaming done.  Two reasons for this:  (1) I’m not particularly engaged with any specific game right now, and (2) it was an absolutely gorgeous weekend in NYC, and we were out and about for a great deal of it.

I’m still sorta playing Diablo III, though only in quick bursts – which is fine, actually, considering what the new endgame is like.  It’s easy enough to go in to an Act, collect some bounties, enter a rift, and scoop up some nice loot and then hop out after 30 minutes or so.

Did I mention that I formally gave up on Mario Golf: World Tour?  I won the first two tournaments but found the whole thing so empty and shallow that I just wanted it out of my house.  There’s a country club filled with stuff you can’t actually do – including a fully built-out gym, and you’d think you’d be able to hang out in it and do some mini-game exercises to help train your character and improve your stats, but there’s literally nothing to do in there but talk to characters who offer dumb platitudes about hard work – but you still have to walk through it in order to get to the courses.  It makes no sense whatsoever.  And the golf itself is as uninspiring and rote as the rest of the game, which is depressing.

I am now starting to sink my teeth into my Vita, though.  I played enough of my rented copy of God of War Collection to gather that it’s a rather uninspired and bare-boned port of the first two PS2 games, which were much better presented in an HD collection on the PS3.

But I’m also now a few save points into Final Fantasy X, which is, among other things, one of the main reasons why I finally bought the Vita when I did.  Having never played the original game, I can’t really vouch for the Vita experience other than to say that it looks utterly fantastic, even on the Slim’s “inferior” screen (which also, sadly, highlights just how not fantastic the God of War Collection looks).  I am very much looking forward to spending more time with it in the coming weeks, although how much time remains to be seen – Transistor comes out this week, as does Wolfenstein, and then Watch Dogs comes out next week.

And as long as I’m talking about the Vita, I might as well pimp my latest Gamemoir column, “Five Ideas to Help Save the Vita“, which is an admittedly hacky title but comes from a sincere place.  I genuinely dislike those types of SEO-friendly headlines – which is probably why this blog is still pretty small – but in this case, it is what it is.

Weekend Recap: Easy Mode

My new piece for Gamemoir just went up:  “There Is No Shame In Easy Mode.”  I feel pretty good about it, though it did go up a few hours before I thought it would, and I would’ve liked one last chance to proof it and make sure it was in tip-top shape.  In any event, it’s too late to take it back now!

Almost no gaming happened this weekend; we were at my mom’s new house for the Mother’s Day weekend, and between the baby and two sets of grandparents and everything else, I barely had the time to finish revising the Gamemoir piece, let alone play anything.

That said, I did finally get a chance to look at Borderlands 2 for my Vita, which took a literal three (3) days to download.  And after all that, it pains me to say that as much as I love Borderlands 2, I’m not sure this port was worth it.  I mean, hey, it’s great, portable Borderlands!  And it’s free, and came with all of the DLC!  But it also kinda looks a little shitty, and the Vita’s controls are just never going to compete with using a real controller.  And yet, because it took 3 days to download, there’s a part of me that would feel stupid to delete it from my memory stick.

I’m also nearly fully soured on Mario Golf World Tour.  I’ve had no desire to play it, or even think about it, and that’s sad; I like golf in videogame form, especially in a portable one.  It’s a rental, and my queue doesn’t get busy for a few more weeks, so I may hold on to it and give it one more real go, but it’s hard to stay excited for it.

No idea what’s happening this week.  I’ve yet to play my rental copy of MLB 14 The Show for PS4; that might be worth checking out, especially since my wife and I just cut the cable cord and no longer have easy access to live sports.  But I’ve always been kinda terrible at the hitting phase of the MLB games, which is (as you might imagine) a rather large part of the gameplay experience.  So I’m not necessarily holding my breath.

In the meantime, check out that Easy Mode column.  I’ve got to start figuring out next week’s pitch, too…

the rundown

1.  I am beginning to think that the universe does not want me to own a Vita.  After Amazon received my defective unit, I pre-ordered the new Borderlands 2 bundle.  It was supposed to arrive today.  But late last night I received an e-mail from Amazon telling me that it won’t ship until somewhere between mid-May and mid-June.  Honestly, at this point I’d just give up and forget about it… except that I spent nearly $100 on a 32gb memory stick, and it’s loaded with some quality content, and I’d at least like to see some of it one day.

2.  My rental copy of Mario Golf: World Tour for the 3DS arrived last night, and I’m sad to say it’s probably going back to Gamefly relatively soon.  I adored the Mario Golf game for the DS, and played it endlessly, and loved nearly every minute of it.  This… thing, on the other hand, feels so half-baked, utterly bland and devoid of content that one wonders why it kept getting delayed.

3.  A rental copy of MLB 14: The Show will arrive later this week for the PS4.  I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating:  the MLB games are unparalleled in terms of presentation, gameplay and the overall experience.  And I’m also terrible at them, at least as far as hitting is concerned.  I’m excited for next-gen baseball – especially as I recently cut the cable cord and no longer have access to live sports – but I also know that this is probably a “try one game, be impressed while madly flailing at pitches far out of the strike zone, send back” sort of situation.

4.  It would figure that the day after I sing Diablo 3‘s praises for an unprecedented run of incredible loot drops, I’d spend an hour or two and get nothing but crap.  Still having fun, though!  And having fun is all that matters.

5.  Late yesterday afternoon I pitched a feature article to a site I’d very much like to write for, but I haven’t yet heard back.  This is a little depressing, I guess, but in the meantime I’m going to start getting it into shape, and so if it doesn’t go up there, it’ll most likely end up either here or at Gamemoir.  I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, except I always feel compelled to have 5 things in these numbered posts.