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rent / buy / steal

“It’s a question of ethics.”

Here is my dilemma.  (Which, admittedly, as far as dilemmas go, isn’t really anything to get terribly concerned about.)

As previously alluded to, for reasons that I’ll reveal in a future post, I am trying to keep my spending habits down.  I’m not buying any Blu-Rays, but the wife and I are known to spend $5 on an On-Demand movie; I’m not buying any music, but I am a premium Spotify user (which has probably saved me at least $1000 dollars since I signed up last year); and I’m not buying any video games, so I’ve been using Gamefly’s rental service.

These are all legal, paying services; I’m not getting anything for free, and I’m working under the assumption that, at the end of the day, the right people are getting my money.  (I’m aware that Spotify’s rate-of-return for the artist is absurdly low, but it’s still better than outright piracy.)

Still, though, there’s a part of me that likes to own things.  And, also, I like to support the things I like.

So, in the case of Darksiders 2 – a game that I am enjoying the shit out of, and which, if I were to enjoy the full breadth of what it has to offer, would need to own a new copy of the game in order to validate certain codes and thus unlock certain content – I am tempted to buy it outright.  I want to support the developer, as I imagine DS3 on the next generation of consoles will look fucking amazing, and I want them to know that I am interested in such a product.  I also want to throw THQ a bone, a publisher in dire financial straits that nevertheless has still put out some truly compelling IP in the last few months (i.e., Saints Row 3).

Here’s the question, then.

I can buy my Gamefly copy for $44 – the disc has never been used by anyone but me since I got it on launch day, so it’s not technically “pre-owned” or “used”.  But I’m not sure that THQ or the developer will see any of that money (though it’s entirely possible that they’ve already received it through Gamefly’s purchase of the original game, although who knows).

Or I can buy a new copy on Amazon for $53.

Or, I can suck it up and just enjoy my rental copy, knowing that I have other things that I’ll need to be able to afford.

this is more like it

Topics covered today:

  • Darksiders 2
  • Sleeping Dogs
  • discovering new bands through game soundtracks

I’m actually going to start with the last thing first, because despite the mega-marathon sessions I had this weekend with both Darksiders 2 (hereinafter, “DS2”) and Sleeping Dogs (“SD”), it’s the third thing on this list that’s made the deepest impression on me.

To wit:  I am obsessed with the band White Denim.  I had never heard of them before, though it’s entirely possible that I may have noticed their albums reviewed with mid-level scores at Pitchfork and the AV Club and simply skipped past them.   In any event, at some point last week (i.e., before my rental copies of DS2 and SD arrived), I was playing Saints Row 3 on my PC with my headphones on, kinda just screwing around, looking for hidden packages, not really interested in any of the missions I had to do, when I suddenly noticed that whatever was on the radio was really, really good.  I stopped what I was doing, pulled out the radio song list (in order to make a custom mix – a great feature in SR3 only limited by how little of the music I actually like), and discovered that the song in question was White Denim’s “Paint Yourself.”

And from there, I quickly went to Spotify, found all of their albums, and now it’s all I’ve been listening to ever since.  They are some perfect hybrid of Broken Social Scene, Deerhoof, Blitzen Trapper and Phish – which shouldn’t make any sense, but it does, and then some.  I was annoyed with myself that I hadn’t noticed them sooner, when I was playing SR3 on my Xbox – but, then, I’m not sure I would’ve noticed it coming through the TV instead of my kick-ass studio monitor headphones.

This is not the first time I’ve learned about a band through a game – Rock Band turned me on to Maximo Park and Silversun Pickups (though, in those specific cases, I mostly just like the songs they picked and not the albums as a whole).    Frankly, the way certain games shove their soundtracks down my throat really just turns me off (I’m looking at you, EA.) GTA4 turned me on to a few things – somewhere out there, someone’s made a fantastic mp3 playlist of every GTA4 radio station – and, really every GTA game’s had a fantastic soundtrack.  But I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten this obsessed with a band before simply by hearing them in a game, and I think that’s kind of awesome.  (And the weird thing is, the song they picked isn’t even necessarily a lead single-type track.)

(Should you be interested in more of their stuff, I’ve made a Spotify playlist with all their albums, which can be found in the widget below (except I don’t think the widget can contain everything – the native Spotify application should, though).)

Moving on, then.

If my Raptr profile is to be believed, I spent twice as much time in Darksiders 2 than in Sleeping Dogs last week, though that doesn’t necessarily feel right.  I kinda rotated between the two of them for a while, switching if I found myself frustrated or if I came to a natural break in the action.  Funny thing – while the two games couldn’t be more different – one is a GTA clone set in Hong Kong, the other has you playing as Death (one of the Four Horsemen), slaughtering demons, traversing platforms and solving puzzles in strange, fantastical realms – their melee combat is just similar enough to make the combat a bit difficult to adjust to right after a switch.  

I guess the Raptr timing is right, though – I have no idea how far I am in DS2 but I suspect I’m at least at the halfway point, being that I just picked up my 3rd special ability (out of 4).  I’m enjoying the hell out of it, just as I did the first.  Great art style, great story (and great voice acting to boot), and the game experience is pretty much exactly what I want to be playing right now.  My only frustration is that I’m just not as good at the combat as I’d like to be, leading to boss battles that take forever to get through; and, well, on rare occasions the camera makes the platforming a bit more difficult than it needs to be.  That aside, it’s really quite good.  Maybe it’s not a WORK OF ART, but it’s a really enjoyable experience all the same, which is the part that really matters the most.

The thing I said above about not being great at combat applies in equal measure to my experience with Sleeping Dogs, which is (again) a pleasant surprise.  (I’m not great at the driving, either, though I’m getting better – the cars are a bit floaty and the handbrake takes a lot of getting used to.  OH, and people in Hong Kong drive on the wrong side of the road, so there’s that.)  But the thing about the combat is that, by and large, it’s how missions get completed, and sucking at the combat means that the game can be quite frustrating at times.  And yet I still find myself enjoying the experience, at the end of the day.  Hong Kong is a fascinating location for an open-world game, and it feels pretty authentic (not that I’ve ever been there, of course, but it still feels like a real city).  The story is definitely interesting, with quite a few compelling characters, and I’m certainly invested in what’s happening.  There’s lots of little side things to do, there’s tons of hidden packages to locate (which is one of my favorite things to do in these games – this also applies to DS2, which has hidden packages galore), and in spite of its occasional jank, it’s a compelling experience.  There’s some neat social touches in it, too, which (unfortunately) I can’t really explore, since I’m apparently the only person on my friends list who’s playing it, but in any event the game keeps track of various things you do (like how long you can drive without hitting anything), and then it ranks you with your friends.  I’d like to see Rockstar’s Social Club incorporate more of this kind of thing in GTA5, frankly.

Anyway.  It’s nice to be playing new games, again, finally.   My hands will be full with these two for the foreseeable future – or at least until Borderlands 2 arrives in a few weeks.

approaching austerity; fun with bullet points

It’s been busy times here at SFTC HQ, though not for any particularly good reason.   I spent the bulk of my free time last week working on a quasi-review of Quantum Conundrum, one of my (too) many pickups from the Steam Summer Sale, and the piece itself (as I worked on it) became intensely negative, which might’ve been a bit unfair since the game is not, in fact, a piece of shit, but in any event I didn’t want to suddenly appear here after a long silence  with 1000 words of bile.

Speaking of which, since I realize that it’s been almost 3 weeks since the last post, here’s my complete haul from the Steam Summer Sale:

  • Galactic Civilizations II (super pack) – [why did I even bother?  I saw “turn-based strategy in space” for under $8 and couldn’t help myself.  have I played it yet?  of course not!]
  • Bulletstorm – [#10 on my Best-of-2011 List.  looks AMAZING on my PC.  I’ve been playing this a lot over the last few weeks, actually, and I think I like it even better the second time.  A real shame the sequel got cancelled.]
  • Alan Wake (complete pack) – [I played and sort-of liked the first game on the 360.  I tried the first few minutes of American Nightmare on the PC; it’s a little ridiculous.]
  • Quantum Conundrum – [half of me is really appreciative that there are first-person puzzle games still being made; the other half of me hates first-person platforming.  this game could’ve used a bit more focus testing, a bit more polish on the narrative (and maybe a different voice actor entirely, or at least one who bothered to show up and not just phone it in), and maybe it didn’t even need to be 1st person.  I’m still glad I finished it – despite the many frustrating bits, there are some glorious “eureka” moments, too – though I won’t be playing it again.]
  • SOL: Exodus – [This space combat-ish game got a lot of talk earlier in the year on various podcasts, which is how I presume it wound up on my wishlist.  I tried the first 10 minutes or so; it’s promising.]
  • Legend of Grimrock – [I was sorta hoping to wait for the iPad version, but the sale price was too good to pass up.  I played the first few minutes; I need to spend some serious time with a tutorial to figure out just what the hell I’m doing.]
  • Saints Row the Third [which I’ve already finished on the 360 – but how could I pass it up for 75% off?  I’ve been playing this and Bulletstorm over the last few weeks; they’re both so good, though they’re a bit confusing to play side-by-side – I keep wanting to do Bulletstorm-type stuff in SR3, which usually ends up getting me killed.]
  • Indie Bundle 2 (Botanicula, EYE, Universe Sandbox, Oil Rush, Splice) – [bought this only for Botanicula, which I haven’t yet played.]
  • Anno 2770 – [as with GalCiv2 above, I have no idea why I bought this.  I opened it up and played the first 5 minutes and didn’t know how to do anything.]

This splurge is likely to be my last for the foreseeable future, for reasons I’m not quite yet prepared to get into.  (It’s a good reason, is all I’ll say at this time.)  It is nice to have all this stuff to play, though, considering just how shitty 2012 has been so far in the quality-new-release department.  (It’s true that next week sees the release of both Darksiders 2 and Sleeping Dogs, but I only have high-ish hopes for one of those games.)

Splurge aside, my iOS devices have been getting quite a workout lately, too – and for not a lot of money, either:

  • Agent Dash is a free-to-play endless runner (similar to Temple Run), which looks fucking incredible (and is also quite difficult – I’ve installed it on both my iPad 3 and my iPhone 4, and the iPad version is superior if only because you can see future obstacles a bit easier).
  • 10,000,000 is a simple, fun puzzle RPG thing – I’ve beaten it already on my iPhone and so now I’m playing it again on the iPad.  Hoping there’ll be future content updates; this could use some new objectives and such.
  • Wizorb is a Breakout clone done as if it were an SNES RPG that first surfaced in the Xbox Indie Game library; it’s a perfect iOS title (again – it plays better on the iPad, because you can actually see what you’re doing.)
  • Orc: Vengeance is a frankly gorgeous Diablo-ish adventure, which I haven’t spent nearly enough time with.
  • Nihilumbra is a gorgeous puzzle/adventure game – reminds me a little bit of Okami, in a vague way.
  • Finally, the classic game Another World was on sale for $0.99 (down from $5), and I figured I should give that a shot at that price.

Looking back at that last post, I see that I was just days away from playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD.  I ended up spending quite a bit of time with it, and I came away from it with mixed reactions.  It does indeed look great, though ironically it now feels really empty;  the level designs (while pleasingly familiar) seem a bit sparse, and the level selections themselves are hit-or-miss.  (Seriously – the shopping mall and the downhill jam are levels I never needed to see again.)  Ultimately, while I am not nearly as good at it as I thought I was, I am somewhat relieved to see that I’m not noticeably worse.

So, yeah.  I know this post is far from substantive, but it’s a hell of lot cheerier than the depressing QC review I ended up not posting.  (Though, if you really want my in-depth thoughts on that game, I suppose I can be persuaded to whip it into publishable shape.)

Murder, Mayhem and the Matching of Colored Spheres

Couple things to talk about today:

1.  I think I’m done with Diablo 3.  Haven’t touched it in over a week.  It’s basically come down to this choice:  I can either keep re-running Act 3/4 of Hell difficulty until I scrounge up enough gold to buy the equipment I’d need to survive Inferno, or I can just move on with my life.  Starting over with new characters is not really all that appealing to me, either; I’ve played every level so many goddamned times now, and being a wizard or a witch doctor instead of a monk won’t make left-clicking any more interesting.  Ultimately, I definitely got my money’s worth, even if I’m still unsure about how much I actually enjoyed the experience.

2.  My shift from the PC back to the couch meant that I got to play (and finish) Spec Ops: The Line over the weekend.  I wasn’t really planning on playing it;  I only rented after listening to a bunch of Giant Bombcasts.  It’s a hard game to recommend based purely on its gameplay – it’s a third-person action shooter in a military setting, and it’s not like that’s an empty genre that needs filling.  That being said, it takes some very bold moves with its storytelling, and it asks you to do some pretty unsavory things, the repercussions of which are somewhat hard to swallow.  It’s an ambitious game, even if it doesn’t really appear to be at first glance.  It’s also gruesomely, spectacularly violent, and if it makes you feel guilty about all the murdering you’re doing, it also makes sure you see it in slow-motion, where a well-placed head shot literally makes your target’s head explode.  Also, Nolan North says “fuck” a lot and gradually goes insane, which is in many ways the proper response after killing hundreds and hundreds of people (unlike, say, Nathan Drake, who manages to stay calm, cool and collected after killing hundreds and hundreds of people).   As usual, I highly recommend checking out Tom Bissell’s piece in Grantland for further, better-written insight.  (And I’ll probably do a more spoiler-heavy write-up later this week; while the game’s story is based on Heart of Darkness, and while it wears its Apocalypse Now influence proudly on its sleeves (perhaps too proudly – the 60’s soundtrack feels downright anachronistic), there’s another movie whose influence on the story – particularly the ending – is perhaps even more obvious, but to say it basically gives it away.)

3.  Speaking of incredibly dark videogames, I am now fully caught up with The Walking Dead.  I don’t watch the TV show, but my wife is a big fan, and so we’re playing the game together – I drive, she makes the decisions.  Both episodes thus far are quite good – great writing, great voice acting, great art direction.  Tough choices.  And I love the touch at the end, where the game shows you how your decisions compare with everyone else who’s played.   It seems that Episode 1 was pretty even-handed, with the general public mostly split around 50/50 – Episode 2’s results, on the other hand, seemed to be pretty one-sided.  Curious to see how that’ll affect Episode 3’s beats.

4.  All this grisly murder requires an occasional cleansing of the palate, and to that end I am profoundly grateful for last week’s XBLA release of Zuma’s Revenge.  Nothing feels so refreshing after slaughtering thousands of virtual people quite like the matching of brightly colored spheres.  Similarly, I am very much looking forward to this week’s release of Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD.

5.  I’m not the Achievement Whore that I used to be, but I guess it’s worth noting that at some point last week I crossed 80,000.

6.  Finally, I just want to give Valve’s Steam Summer Sale a hearty “fuck you.”  I’ve bought too much already, and we’re not even a week into this thing:

  • SOL: Exodus
  • Legend of Grimrock
  • Saints Row the Third (which I’ve already finished on the 360 – but how could I pass it up for 75% off?)
  • Indie Bundle 2 (Botanicula, EYE, Universe Sandbox, Oil Rush, Splice)
  • Anno 2770

 

 

 

 

Fall 2012 preview

2012 is shaping up to be pretty underwhelming, all things considered.  Yes, it’s the end of a console cycle; yes, most of the good stuff we were told to look forward to has been delayed to Spring 2013.  Still, though, there’s not of a hell of a lot to get excited about.  What follows is the current state of my GameFly Q, which is my rough way of keeping track of what to pay attention to:

August:

  • Darksiders 2
  • Sleeping Dogs

September:

  • Borderlands 2

October:

  • Resident Evil 6
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown
  • Dishonored
  • James Bond 007 Legends
  • Forza: Horizon
  • Need for Speed: Most Wanted
  • Assassin’s Creed III
  • Lego Lord of the Rings

November:

  • Halo 4
  • CODBLOPS II

December:

  • Far Cry 3

That’s pretty goddamned sad.  Of those games, the only ones I truly give a shit about are Darksiders 2, Borderlands 2, NFS:MW (because Criterion is developing it), and maybe that XCOM game, because Firaxis are making it and I’m trying to get into turn-based strategy (even though I anticipate it being a very, very difficult experience).   Dishonored sounds really intriguing but I’m not holding my breath; nor am I  holding my breath for AC3 – as much as I loved Brotherhood, Revelations put a horrible, horrible taste in my mouth and nothing I’ve seen of the new location/era has been in any way intriguing to me.  Halo 4 will probably be OK, though I won’t do much with the multiplayer; similarly, I have no idea why CODBLOPS2 is even on my list (I suppose I want to be able to say I played it).  I don’t know that I’ll play Far Cry 3, either – my feelings about that franchise could be generously described as “ambivalent.”

What are you looking forward to, if anything?

inferno and beyond

Is it OK that I’m dwelling solely on Diablo 3 these days?  I don’t know whether it’s worse to be repetitive, or to simply not post at all.

I beat Hell last night and got about 10 minutes into Inferno before going to bed.  I’m tempted to replay Hell’s Act 4 again, though, because I’d inadvertently signed off literally one checkpoint before going into the final boss the previous night, and so when I killed Diablo the loot was, to put it kindly, underwhelming.  The quality of stuff you get when you’ve got 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor (heretofore “5NV”) can’t be denied, even if the vast majority of it remains unusable – but I’d also replay Act 4 with 5NV if only to scrounge up more gold, which can add up pretty goddamned quickly.

I’ve softened my stance on the Auction House.  I was previously angered that the AH was more or less a necessity in order to make any significant progress; instead, now I’m thinking of it as a different kind of in-game vendor.  Which is basically what it is.  I think my total playtime is around 64 hours  – I think the last time I picked up an in-game loot drop that was worth holding onto was about 30 hours ago.   The stuff I’ve found on the AH is profoundly more powerful, and can be very reasonably priced.  All I do now during runs is sell, sell, salvage, sell.  And I’ve more or less given up on making anything with the Blacksmith – he’s been far more miss than hit when it comes to making something with Monk-appropriate stats, and it’s too expensive to experiment.   (Likewise, I’d love to craft more of the super-high-end gems, but those require so much gold that it’s possibly more cost efficient to look for them on the AH.)

Once I finish Inferno, I’m not entirely sure I’ll keep playing.  Blizzard themselves have admitted that the end-game is, in its current state, a bit underwhelming:

We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they’re going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven’t already). Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks. But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren’t going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it’s not there right now.

We’re working toward 1.0.4, which we’re really trying to pack with as many fixes and changes we can to help you guys out (and we’ll have a bunch of articles posted with all the details as we get closer), and we’re of course working on 1.1 with PvP arenas. I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they’re not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it’s a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out.

(That’s as far as I read in the thread, by the way – the Diablo 3 forums are filled with perhaps the most horrible, vile people on Earth.)

 

idiocy in action

Let me explain.

I’ve said repeatedly that my normal approach to playing RPGs is to play as a Barbarian/Tank/melee fighter.  When I started Diablo 3, however, I decided to switch it up and try the Monk class – it seemed to be an interesting mix of melee combat with support magic.  And for a long time – probably right up to beating the game on Nightmare difficulty – everything was going fine.

Sort of.  Towards the beginning of the Nightmare run, I – for reasons yet unknown – switched from fist weapons to two-handed staffs and daibos.  I was hitting much harder, but also a bit slower, but I felt the trade-off was worth it.

And then I started playing Hell difficulty, and was getting the shit kicked out of me by elite mobs.  It got to the point where, like I said in the last post, I started up two new characters just to avoid having to go back and deal with what I clearly couldn’t deal with.  And then I bought a legendary two-handed weapon (and some better armor) in the auction house and decided to replay Act 1 of Hell, and things started to go a little better – not much, but I wasn’t dying all the time.

My 2nd run of Act 1 of Hell was a goddamned cakewalk compared to Act II, though – I was still getting crushed left and right, and I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.

And then I suddenly remembered that I was playing my Monk like a Barbarian.

I quickly bought some insanely powerful one-handed weapons in the auction house, switched up my skills (more specifically, I got rid of Mystic Ally and put Seven-Sided Strike back in) and started ripping the shit out of everything.  I basically re-ran Act II and got through the first third of Act III dying only once, hitting Level 60 in the process.

Fuck and yes.

* * *

Now, here’s the thing.  I didn’t even open up the Auction House until I started Hell difficulty, but there was absolutely no way I could survive more than 10 minutes of Act 1 of Hell without going to the Auction House.  I’ve forgotten how many hours I’ve put into the game, but I’m sure it’s somewhere between 60-80 hours, and in that time, I’ve had to throw away (or salvage) about 98% of all the loot I’ve picked up.  I’ve taken the Forge guy and the Gem guy up to their maximum levels, but the Forge guy is wildly inconsistent with the stuff he makes for me – I almost always have to junk it because it’s got the wrong specs.  (The Gem guy, on the other hand, is absurdly cheap – until the last three levels of construction, where it costs 30K + Tomes of Secrets (which I’ve only found on the Auction House) just to make 1 gem.)

I kinda think that’s insane.  That in 60-80+ hours, I’ve only been able to use maybe 2% of the stuff I’ve picked up.   That the only possible way I could continue to succeed in the game is to use the Auction House, where I’m seeing stuff that is so absurdly better than the stuff I’d seen in-game that I wonder if I’m playing a different game entirely.  I mean, I don’t mind spending the gold – it would’ve gone to an in-game vendor (although the stuff they sell is pretty terrible, too), but it’s just a little bit nuts that the usable drop rates are so stingy.

(Of course, now that I’ve hit level 60 and had my first experience with the Nephalem Valor buff – and picked up some serious loot in the process – maybe now I’m seeing where all the stuff in the auction house comes from.  I still haven’t had a need for any of the loot I’ve picked up, but at least I can get some decent resale value for it – or, alternately, I can salvage it for my Forge guy.  I might just alternate runs going forward – I’ll fill up my inventory once to sell, and then fill it up again to salvage.  And if I find something useful, well, hooray for me.)

summertime blues (and yellows)

I haven’t felt much of an urge to write lately, and that’s mostly because I haven’t really been doing all that much, game-wise, beyond Diablo 3.  And what, ultimately, is there to say about Diablo 3, anyway?  I’ve gotten to the point where I’m playing it with the sound off and Spotify on, because the act of clicking mindlessly through levels you’ve already been in a dozen times requires a different sort of aural stimulation.

My monk just hit level 57 last night.  It was not an easy road.  After finishing the game on Nightmare with relative ease, I immediately restarted the game on Hell, and found myself dying repeatedly, constantly, by those elite molten mobs with jail/freeze abilities and those goddamned fucking arcane sentry laser beams, which are the bane of my goddamned existence.  I struggled mightily to finish Act 1, found that Act 2 was even harder, and decided to take a little break.

I started up 2 new characters – a Demon Hunter (who’s now at level 12 or so) and a Barbarian (level 5 or 6), just to see the differences.  I may have said this before – normally, when I play any sort of RPG, I tend to pick the Barbarian/Tank character, but for whatever reason I picked a Monk in D3, and after messing with those two other classes, I still feel that for the most part I made the right choice – the Monk is quick and agile, has useful healing abilities, and has some very effective magic spells.

Here’s my current Monk build (I think this is right):

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WeXijS!YcU!ccYYcY

Anyway, after getting bored with Normal difficulty, I decided to get back to the Monk.  I went to the Auction House and picked up a pretty amazing weapon, and restarted Act 1.  And whaddya know, suddenly I was kicking the shit out of everything and everyone.  I don’t know if it’s the new weapon, or that I restarted Act 1 at level 56 instead of level 54, but whatever it is, I’m plowing through it with great aplomb.  (I think I’ve only died once so far, actually, and that was due to a lost internet connection.)

——–

Beyond that, there’s not a tremendous amount to report…

  • I’m not nearly as addicted to Pocket Planes as I’d thought I’d be, although it’s still a suitable distraction on the subway…
  • The Xbox and PS3 have been collecting dust, for the most part – I did rent Dirt Showdown, which was sort-of fun (although in order to do multiplayer I would’ve need to buy an online pass, which I wasn’t really inclined to do), and I also rented last year’s Vanquish solely because the guys on the Giant Bombcast were gushing over it – it didn’t do that much for me, I’m afraid.
  • I downloaded Cthulhu Saves the World  last night for my iPad (though I haven’t yet had a chance to mess with it); and then I saw that Cthulhu: The Wasted Land was available for free – I’d heard some decent things about it.  So at least my iPad is full-up with Lovecraftian goodness.
  • Also downloaded Magic 2013 for the iPad, although I’ve never played Magic in my life.  My wife has, though, and she watched over my shoulder as I tried the tutorial.  It’s a beautiful-looking game, but it’s also very complicated, and I ended up bailing on the tutorial because our dinner had arrived, and I don’t know that I’ll get back to it.  (It was a free download, though, so I didn’t necessarily lose anything beyond some hard drive space.)

Subway Gamer: airplane edition

I’m leaving tomorrow for a mini-vacation – a wedding followed by 2.5 days in Orlando – and since I’m not the best air traveler in the world (though I’ve gotten much better), I’ve been stocking up on iOS diversions to help keep my anxiety in check.  Likewise, there’s bound to be some downtime during this trip, so I’ll need some stuff to keep me occupied.

Here, then, is a quick rundown of what I’ll be checking out over the next few days:

Pocket Planes:  Nimblebit’s followup to the insanely addicting Tiny Tower arrived late last night, and I’ve become arguably even more hooked on PP than I was on TT.  Instead of building an endless skyscraper, you are gradually building an airline.  Right now, I’ve got 5 or 6 planes ferrying people and cargo along a narrow corridor in the Northeastern US (on my iPhone, at least – my iPad game is starting out in South America), and soon I’ll be buying airports in the Midwest and beyond.  It’s engaging, it’s non-stressful, it’s got the same charming 8-bit art style that TT had, and it’s FREE – and not in that annoying way where it’s technically free but you have to shell out real $$ in order to actually get anywhere.  Free, Universal

Temple Run: Brave:  Imangi’s follow-up to its mega-hit Temple Run, now with Pixar branding for its forthcoming film.  It is pretty much the exact same game as the original, except with better graphics and an “archery mini-game” which really just requires you to tap on archery targets as you run past them.   It’s a little awkward, but it does mix things up a bit.  $.99, Universal

Air Mail:  A truly gorgeous 3D flying/exploration game, reminiscent of Crimson Skies (but without the combat, at least so far).  It’s a little aimless at times, but it’s also one of the best-looking games on the new iPad.  $4.99, Universal

Defender Chronicles 2:  I’m not much for tower defense games, but this has been getting great reviews… $2.99, Universal

And of course, lots of 8-Bit Ninja, Spellsword and Fairway Solitaire.