WANTED: Have You Seen This Game?
Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been maintaining the blog of late. I've been busy juggling University assignments and my new job as a cleaner with the Student Union, so I've not had much of a chance to play games, and I've had even less of a chance to write about playing games. Hopefully, this short round-up of affairs will compensate for the lack of updates in the meantime. Where the hell is my copy...
Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been maintaining the blog of late. I've been busy juggling University assignments and my new job as a cleaner with the Student Union, so I've not had much of a chance to play games, and I've had even less of a chance to write about playing games. Hopefully, this short round-up of affairs will compensate for the lack of updates in the meantime.
Where the hell is my copy? I honestly thought that the next time I wrote something in this space, it'd be a brief mention of my copy of Final Fantasy XIII arriving in the post from Amazon. I got my pre-order in for the Xbox 360 version almost a month in advance (my account tells me I placed it on February 15th), to ensure I'd beat the last-minute rush of pre-orders and snag myself a copy of the game. Incidentally, being a collector of official strategy guides (yes, I'm weird, I know), I placed a pre-order for the collector's edition of the FFXIII official guide, too, to add to my vast collection of gaming tomes. On Monday (March 8th), I received emails from Amazon notifying me that both items had dispatched and would be with me by Saturday (March 13th) at the latest. Since then, I've been waiting patiently for my copy of Final Fantasy XIII to drop through the letterbox. On Thursday, the guide turned up. The game still has yet to arrive. I'm mightily annoyed by this whole debacle - there's something very wrong about pre-ordering a game a month in advance and still not having it five days after release. If the game doesn't show up on Monday, Amazon will be receiving an email. I certainly won't be making any pre-orders with them in the future. I'll be turning to the high street game shops to make my day one purchases, instead. Even if it is going to cost that little bit extra, it's worth it for the benefit of being able to play the game immediately. 
Even after 35 hours, Borderlands is keeping me captivated While I've been waiting in vain for Final Fantasy XIII to materialise, I've dedicated what little game time I have to a couple of other 360 titles. The first of these is Borderlands. I finished my Playthrough 1 on March 7th, and since then I've been taking some tentative steps into the Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC. My Soldier character, who finished the main game at level 37, is now level 42 and holding his own pretty well in the DLC so far. One thing that's surprised me a lot is the fact that so far, I've sunk a whopping 35 hours into Borderlands. This surprises me because at its core, the game's questing mechanic isn't particularly compelling, and neither is its story. What's been driving me through the experience is the incredibly satisfying gunplay, its well-implemented RPG elements, and my insatiable desire for bigger and better guns. I'll probably end up sticking with Borderlands now until I've made my way through to the end of the Secret Armory DLC (although, if what I've heard about the final boss is to be believed, I might end up falling short of actually completing it). It's an awesome little game, that I'll probably end up blogging about at some point in more detail in the near future. 
There's something undeniably charming about this old-school platformer The other game that's been keeping my 360 whirring is the Xbox LIVE Arcade version of the original Banjo-Kazooie. I picked it up on a whim with the points left over from purchasing the Secret Armory DLC for Borderlands, figuring I hadn't played an old-school collection-based plaformer in quite some time. Although I never played the original Banjo games way back when (I didn't own a Nintendo 64), I'm having a blast with this. Its simplicity makes a nice change from the relative complexity of the modern platformer. Its emphasis on move-learning and item-collection to progress may seem antiquated in the modern world of gaming, but that doesn't stop it from feeling fun, and in my eyes that's the most important ingredient of a platformer. Essentially, Banjo-Kazooie is scratching an itch that I didn't even know I had, and boy, does it feel good. I think that'll do for now in terms of a gaming update. Hopefully come next week I'll have my copy of Final Fantasy XIII, so I won't be in such an annoyed mood. For those of you waiting on a new episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, rest assured that I haven't forgotten about you. I'm still playing it, albeit sparingly, and I hope to have a new episode up for you before the end of next week (workload permitting, of course). For now, as always, thanks very much for reading, guys. I'll see you around.
Dan
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Currently playing - Borderlands (X360)