Man, such a huge backlog of games. So many coming out this year as well. I've given up on WoW after I remembered how much stuff I get done when I'm not grinding out next to nothing every night in an MMO. I'm considering playing something for a bit of PvP every week, but I plan to catch up a bit on games I mean to play, some I even bought, that I haven't played yet. Star Wars isn't out until fuck knows, so lets see how far we get!
Jan 10th - in the wee hours of he morning.
Burnt out! Burnt out! Burnt out!
Firstly, the content was great, the new zones, story-lines, PVP maps, dungeons, raids, gear, - everything. No offense to the great job Blizzard did with this expansion, but I am so GOD DAMN SICK of Fantasy MMO's. I've done this to myself mostly, getting addicted to 3 basically in a row over 4 years, but NO MORE. I need to have a break and experience a variety of awesome games Ive missed out on. These lists have helped me realize that I have only finished like 1 game a month (including listing WOW plus Xpacs and WAR) for the last 3 years. I have probably played double that but I keep getting distracted. Time to end the cycle. Time to experience these awesome.. well experiences.
That is at least until The Old Republic comes out.... at least its space and shit, right?
For what its worth, 4 stars - more WoW, more better, more soul crushing.
Jan 29th - just before Midnight.
While, as usual, I am half way through a dozen or so games - I actually knocked the campaign of this over in 2 nights! Also, AMAZING FREAKING GAME!! I agree with Brad pretty much 100% with his review so I wont go too in depth, but I'm considering playing it through again in a harder mode on game plus or whatever its called. My moment to moment dread was more manageable this game as well, which I wonder if it's myself gaining a higher tolerance to this kind of scary material, or due to subtle balance and pace changes.
Anyway, 5 stars. Time to hit the MP.
Feb 6th - Right on Midnight.
So before I lavish this game with praise, I'll go over the few negatives. While improving a lot on Fahrenheit, I still hate the walking system. It's so damn clumsy, and not intuitive at all with the weird camera angles. It causes you to run into walls and other parts of the environment so often, which then points out the worst part about the animations.. that jenky way you walk into something. The timing on the controls are a little off sometimes too, but, for the most part reasonably reliable. Also, I accidentally started a new game, and saved over my 2/3rds complete save. This ended up being not such a bad thing, as I played scenes fairly differently, and got actual new scenes, and crazy different outcomes.
Anyway, great story, great freedom for something which sounds so limited, great voice acting, and besides the stuff mentioned above, the animations are pretty impressive. Loved the ARI thing the FBI guy had, and the eventual conclusion I didn't see coming. 5 stars.
April 7th - 2am
This came just in time to save me from RIFT. I was a little concerned at first that it was going to be too Mass-efied, and had heard some pretty wierd rumours about combat changes and game length. I was pleasantly surprised with the thruth, its basically the same game, and 9/10 changes
were for the better. My biggest gripe is that the opening of DA2 was a lot weaker than DA, which admittidly would have been hard to beat - but if your gonna change how it works, it has to come off as BETTER. The second is the repitition of locales. The dungeons are repeated a hell of a lot if you do all the sidequests, and all acts being set in the same city made it feel old hat for the 2nd half of the game. I liked the city, don't get me wrong, just would have prefered way bigger changed and marks of time from chapter to chapter... or even a different city for one of the middle acts, and then come back to a greatly changed main city for the end. Oh well. Still played it for 57 hours, sill loved all the character interaction and voice work, still sought out every little peice of the game before I finished. Definately will play through again after a couple dlc's come out. 5 stars.
April 16th - 1:30am
Finished the campaign (with IG), and played the hell out of Last Stand. Love all the changes, the campaign is great with all the different factions, and the coop is much improved. Just the increased unit cap and pop system makes it way more intense and presents a lot more options. One playthough seems a little short, but the parts of played of the others seem to reflect similar experiences, but with customized story content, and variations on maps.
Last Stand is still quite addicting, but even with the inclusion of another Hero and Map, it still feels like an awesome idea that's only been half realized. Maybe it just needs more Maps... Either way, if you like DoW II, this really really really expands on the game. Funtastical! 5 Stars.
May 13th 1:20am
I got this after watching the quick look for it. Was pretty funny; short but sweet. I think the humor might play to a British or Australian audience better than an American, with some pretty rough slang, but this worked out fine for me. Not blown away, but a fun little romp, and will probably buy episode 2. 4 Stars.
May 24th 1:30am. 5 stars.
This was way better than I imagined. I originally was interested and going to just buy this on principle (Aussie dev studio yay!), and of course Rockstars involvement was an added bonus. I watched maybe a trailer or two, and then just added it to my list of must buy.
Buy the time I had got it, I had read Brad's review, and listened to his first podcast after playing it. Absolutely rapped, I pinched the game day one.
So many good things, and plenty of reviews cover them, so I'll quickly list my favorites and then give you my spin on the game. Amazing story; superb voice acting; beautiful detailed world; hot cars; great sound; thrilling focused experience; best facial animation in a game ever.
The big difference between this game, and any other open world environment game Rockstar has been associated with, is the open worlds role in the game. Its not really a sandbox. Some of those elements are there, but the open world is really just a hub for the real game. I navigated the world by forcing my partner to drive, and therefore teleport me to the next location I wanted to go.
I know that might seem crazy with that massive, fully realized replica of old school LA, but that's almost the problem there. During a case, I like to keep the momentum going, and traveling around an enormous city doesn't really play to the pace I want to experience the story to. I took breaks, and drove occasionally, explored and tried a bunch of different cars, but the experience was really a distraction from the true game.
Anyway, loved it, 5 stars.
August 3rd - 8pm 4 stars
August 5th - 3.20pm 4 stars
Auguest 7th - 8pm 5 stars
August 22nd - 1am 3 stars
September 16th - 12.30am. 4 stars.
September 26th - 9pm.
While still entertaining, and cool to kind of catch up on the characters from 2 episodes ago, after the crazyness of the last episode, this kinda felt like a filler. The idea was quite interesting, so maybe it was just unfortunate that the crazyness of last episode had to take the place it did in the games time line. Still not unpleasant, but only 3 stars for this one.
October 24th - 4am 5 stars
October 29th - 9.15pm 5 stars
October 30th - 1am 4 stars
November 11th - 3am 5 stars
November 13th - 9pm 5 stars
November 19th - 12.15am 4 stars
