This week sees the release of the first THQ property of the post-THQ era. Metro: Last Light (360
In other releases, Dust 514 does the free to play thing on the PS3, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance gets the Blade Wolf DLC and Anomaly 2 does the tower offense / RTS thing.
Me, I started Deadly Premonition last night. It’s very weird. I’m also enjoying the hell out of Nolan North’s performance in Spec Ops: The Line, even if the combat is somewhat generic and the Heart of Darkness allusions are a bit thick. Etrian Odyssey IV has been shown the back burner in favor of Eclipse and Transformer: Legends with the latter occupying more and more of my time. Card management is hell!
Star Command, the twice Kickstarted combination of Star Trek and Game Dev Story is finally here. Is this the game what was originally promised those that backed it? Not really, although there’s nothing keeping it from getting there. Is it still worth playing? That’s another matter entirely, and unfortunately, the things that hold the game back feel entrenched. In other words, the stuff that bugs me probably isn’t going anywhere.
Etrian Odyssey IV is a game about maps.
It may look like a game about dungeons and monsters and airships, but it’s really about maps. Sometimes games look like they’re about one thing but they’re really about another. The World Ends With You looked like it was about Japanese teens fighting shadow monsters but it wasn’t. It was about pins. Pins and fashion. It was about equipping pins and leveling up pins and not equipping pins to level up your pins and switching out your pins and admiring your pins. All your pins. So many pins. It was also about wearing unpopular clothes and taking the attack hit for your unorthodox fashion sense, only to see your dress code skyrocket up to popularity. The World Ends With You was into wool caps before you were into wool caps. Now that you’re into wool caps, it is so over wool caps.
I would have liked to play Soul Sacrifice
Far Cry 3 continues to impress, mostly for all of the brainless mayhem but occasionally for being able to take out an entire outpost by letting a tiger out of a cage and having it do all of the hard work for me. Funny story: I warped to a completed outpost, heard a tiger growl, went outside and promptly got mauled to death. The tiger giveth and the tiger taketh away. That being said, I’m all in for Blood Dragon so yeah, Ubisoft, go on with your bad self.
24.11.82 – Today was my first day working as an immigration official at the newly opened border checkpoint in Grestin. I am thankful for the opportunity to help our glorious Arstotzka and monitor the tide of immigrants into our land. It is tedious work, punctuated by brief moments of anxiety as the printer in my station spits out a report of my latest error. Luckily these moments were few and far between and I was able to process enough people to pay for food, heat and rent in our new lodgings. I even had enough left over to save up for the sweets that Piotr loves so much. I am hoping that once he is better, he will be able to appreciate them. Living near the smelting plant for so long may have damaged his lungs beyond repair, but I am hopeful that this position will mark a new start for all of us.
Yet another glorious spring week is upon us. Well, it’s upon me. Other people may not be in a spring time state of mind, or state of the world. Sorry about that. Spring is rad. You should try it.
This week brings Dead Island: Riptide (360
The game I spend the most time with on my iPad is Lost Islands, the free to play Skylanders game from Activision. I don’t usually play free to play games, in fact, with the exception of Jetpack Joyride, I actively avoid them. Lost Islands was another story though, a story with Skylanders in it. Skylanders has three iOS games and a PC game to tie in to the console games, all of which use the figures used in the console games. Cloud Patrol is a shooting gallery game, Battlegrounds is a hex-based, real time action-RPG and Lost Islands is a free to play, kingdom builder. The fact that you can use your figures across all three games made it all the easier to buy more figures for the main game, not that I needed a reason. I mean, come on, this is me. I don’t need reasons to buy toys, but as reasons go, increased utility is a pretty good one.
As I got more figures, my kingdom grew and grew in the usual free to play way. Characters use energy to go on missions, missions that reward them with gold and experience. Gold buys crops which in turn grow more energy. Gold also buys houses which attract Mabu citizens. The more Mabu you have living on your island, the more public buildings you can have. Public buildings and houses grant your kingdom experience. As your kingdom levels up, you can get better houses and better public buildings. As your characters level up, they can go on longer missions that give bigger rewards. Grafted on to all of this is a quest system that rewards you in money, experience and gems, a multi-purpose currency used to buy special buildings, buy new Skylanders and speed up missions and building construction. Finally, there’s a pretty nice “element of the day” mechanic in which Skylanders that match the element of the day get reward bonuses when completing missions and planted crops that match the day’s elements give additional energy.
Hey, you know what’s not much fun? Running cable, that’s what. Thankfully my basement is still unfinished so that I could run network and phone cables to various rooms on the first floor. Plus, I got to learn how to terminate cat-5 cable which will help me out, well, never but I saved about five hundred bucks by doing this myself rather than hiring an electrician, so there’s that.
Oh, right, games. Another superhero fighting game comes out as does a “new” Shin Megami Tensei game for the 3DS. Seeing how I’m about a battle or two away from completing Fire Emblem, I may have to play that one. Then again, Etrian Odyssey IV is first in line, so it may get the nod. As for couch time, I’m in the middle of Gears of War: Judgement. People Can Fly have made some interesting choices with this game, including a nice selection of new weaponry and a scoring system that allows you to take on mission modifiers that makes things more difficult so that you can obtain stars more quickly. Stars unlock things I don’t normally care about, except for an additional campaign mission, but the modifiers are usually interesting enough to be worth it. Plus, People Can Fly know that colors other than brown and grey exist, so they use a more vibrant color palette. Still, in the end, it’s a Gears of War game, with all of the baggage that comes with it. I’m enjoying it, but I’ve certainly played this game before. It’s not a total waste though, as it makes me want to keep seeing work from People May Fly and I’m always down for having developers to keep an eye on.
As you all here know, I recently moved. I used to live not very close to Atlanta, now I live even less close. There’s Inside-the-Perimeter, there’s Outside-the-Perimeter and then there’s me. The county I live in isn’t totally rural but at the same time, the guy who trained my dog used to work for the sheriff’s department in this county and the most excitement he ever had while on duty was lassoing a bull with an extension cord. If I want to get to Atlanta, I can be there in about 40 minutes, provided it’s not rush hour or a day with a Brave’s game, a Falcon’s game, a Tech game or a day with any of the various festivals and summer going-ons that happen in the city. I know it sounds like I’m out in the boonies, but trust me, it ain’t all like that. My buddy Hodge lives even further out than I do, like cow-country far out.
Dishonored in Review
XCOM: Enemy Unknown in Review
Borderlands 2 in Review