Steam Sale Time Again

Yes, it's that time again, and despite my best intentions, I did come away from the sale with a bundle of new games. A couple were ancillary things like the GTA IV episodes and a Steam copy of System Shock 2 (already had it on GOG, but it was $2.50...) and almost the entirety of the Tomb Raider series (I was mainly in it for the new game for $12.50, but the rest of the series was only another $5 on top of that).

Regrettably, I don't have a ton of time to write up the journal entry I'd like to, here, so here's a list of the games I've been playing over the last couple of weeks:

Saints Row The Third
Planetside 2
Cube World
Tomb Raider (OG!)
Tomb Raider 2013
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Civ V
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

The highlights mean I've put a decent amount of time into each of those, and was planning to go into a little more depth on in the next Call Of Podcast, which, again regrettably, has slipped out another week as my co-host has just returned home from abroad and has to get busy makin' them games.

Yes, one of those is a 3DS game, and yes, I did buy a 3DS at some point--I'm holding out for a good deal on the Vita, as a matter of fact, to pick up one of those, as well. I do still like the occasional Japanese game, and those look like the platforms to find them on, for the time being. When they don't make it to the PC, which is pretty often, unfortunately.

Charitable After All

I just finished up my 'evil' play through of Fallout. Naming my character Charity was, I thought, a stroke of ironic genius, considering the way I wanted to conduct her through the game's various moral decision points. In the end, though, I could never choose the rude jackass options in dialog, which meant doing the Right Thing a lot where I might have opted for a more polite-but-self-interested approach, had one been offered.

In the end, though, Fallout is about saving your Vault, first from dehydration, and then from being ravaged by the super mutant army that is sweeping the wasteland. There is only so much room to veer away. You can, interestingly enough, opt for a bad ending wherein your agree to join the Master (of the super mutant army) and give up the location of your Vault and its inhabitants to his plan to achieve the Unity--his moniker for a humanity-free world where everyone is one of his new super mutants. I did that just to put a cap on my 'evil' character's story, but then went back and finished the game up the traditional way, mostly just because it's more fun to infiltrate and nuke from within the Master's lair and the Mariposa military base where the mutants are being created.

I'm still interested in finding a game that can really pull off the evil thing, though. I'll keep looking.

(pic courtesy of http://arwenevecom.ipage.com/)

War Never Changes

I picked up Relic's newest, Company of Heroes 2, this past week, and spent a few hours being trounced online and fighting my way through the first few eastern front campaign missions. It seems like, and reviews seem to corroborate this, that it's mostly more Company of Heroes. Not that that is a bad thing, I just get the sense that people were hoping for more. Maybe I am just a sucker or too new to the series to know better, but I am fine with with my full-price purchase on this one. I want to see Relic continue making cool games like they do. I am sure I will get more than my money's worth out of CoH2 when all is said and done.

So, I went back to playing Fallout: New Vegas again, and I couldn't even tell you why, aside from a vague hesitancy to put it away, and a desire to explore more of the Mojave wasteland and flesh out some of my companions' histories. I actually ran into a character from Fallout 2, a companion of The Chosen One in that game, no less. Marcus the supermutant runs Jacobstown, a supermutant/nightkin town outside of New Vegas.

And sticking with the Fallout theme, I started a replay of the first game in the series this weekend, on a bit of lark exploring what it is like to roleplay an evil character in a game. I chose Fallout because I love the world and have really been into it lately, but also because it is a game that offers a tremendous amount of freedom to the player and for the most part is very laissez-faire about directing you to do such and such. It also does not pass judgement on your decisions, and the world will continue to play out and evolve around them, if for example, you kill large swaths of important NPCs in the world. Not that that is the particular route I am going down for my evil play through.

I am trying to play my character, Charity, as a young, impetuous, power-hungry woman who doesn't mind getting her hands bloody in chasing power. She's not overly concerned with finding the water chip to save her vault, but if it will serve as a macguffin to send her on an adventure around the wasteland consolidating a power base for whatever ultimate plan of domination she has in mind, then she'll go with it.

I'm curious to see how well the game supports this kind of character within its greater plot structure. Will I be able to take control over the supermutant army at Mariposa from The Master, and use them to my own will?