Play Salad

I've been into a ton of different things in the past few days:


Firewatch - I finished it. It was alright, overall, but I didn't end up liking it as much as I anticipated. Maybe I was just not in the mindspace for this type of thing. The high points are the style of the game's art and believable characters on display, though I don't quite buy that it is set in the mid '80s when the characters speak the way they do. Something about it just seemed off. Hiking around the nature areas was nice, but got old kind of quickly, and I was soon dashing everywhere, and dashing through to the end of the game.


Torchlight II - I'm not sure why, now, but something made me want to go back to revisit this game, as I felt like we had unfinished business. I feel like I'm finished with it now, though. I realized while playing it for a while that I wasn't particularly in love with either the play or the world in this game, and my time would be better spent elsewhere.


Borderlands 2 - Same story here as above. I haven't been able to get into Borderlands 2 for whatever reason, after a couple of tries. I played all the way through the first and all the DLC for it, and while I do enjoy the combat in these games, the randomly generated guns don't really do all that much for me, and I don't particularly like the world they've built here, unique though it is. I could play any number of other shooters and probably eventually find one that clicks in a way that this one doesn't.


Tomb Raider II - Another game not really on my backlog, since I did play all the way through it back at release on the original PlayStation, but that I did want to revisit. I bought the entire collection of Tomb Raider games on Steam a while back, and I want to try each of them out, for a while at least. I never played past the second when these were contemporary, nor ever played Legend, Anniversary, or Underworld in later years. The next TR game I played after II was actually the 2013 reboot. I still really like these original games in the series. No other game has done quite this sort of 3D world navigation puzzle with a very well defined move set and a collection of levels planned out so exactly. I hypothesize that the advent of the analog stick cut short this evolutionary path in gaming.


Rocket League - It continues to be a great game to dip into for a few minutes at a time as a break here and there during the day, or in the evening as a warm-up for more serious fare.


The Witness - The more serious fare, often. I've made some really good progress lately. I'm up past 250 puzzles solved now, I think, with 5 or 6 laser beams activated. I really like this game.


X-COM Enemy Unknown - My campaign continues. I'm at a stage where I have to infiltrate an alien base, and I'm just trying to build up resources and prepare my squad before doing that. I don't know if it's time sensitive or not, but it probably is, at least in the sense that alien activity is going to keep happening, and I can never address all instances of it. Eventually everyone will just pull out of the whole X-COM project. One nation already has, Russia, if memory serves.


Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - I have a game in progress that I am half-serious about completing, and that I keep going back to when I feel like a quick hit of action play and the PS3 is on, usually because Mia and Juno have been watching something.


Elite Dangerous - I finally made it back to civilized space with my tons of exploration data, and sold it, making about 8 million credits, which was enough to bankroll the best FSD available for my Asp, as well as other improvements, and now I'm off out into the black for another run. I don't know where I'm headed, other than to the bottom of the galaxy, and rimward of the bubble of settled systems. One of the new toys I want to test out is my SRV, the rover that can be deployed to drive around the surfaces of planets (rocky and non-atmospheric, for the time being). I need to do more and longer expeditions if I'm going to make enough money to buy an Anaconda or other large ship, and if I'm going to rank up to Elite in exploration. These are long, long, long term goals. I can play CQC mode in between bouts of jump, scan, jump, scan, jump, scan, and so on.

Pillars

This is a post about pillars, in a way. Two major pillars of my pantheon of games, at least for the past few months, have been Diablo III and Elite: Dangerous. Also, Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's Kickstarted modern successor to the Infinity Engine RPGs of old has been released, and I've played a bit of that.

A few other tidbits, first.

I finally uninstalled Borderlands 2, after giving it another go to see if the hook would set. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's not snagging me at the time being. I may have gotten my fill with the first game, but there's also the fact that I have umpteen other FPS to play, many of which I think I would get more out of for time spent. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, for instance.

I played a little SpaceChem recently, as well. That's a great game, but one that might be too difficult for its own good. I like that about it. I'm stuck on what might be one of the first really genuinely mind-bending puzzles, a level called "No Ordinary Headache." Indeed.

Rather than tool around in Assassin's Creed Rogue collecting miscellany, I jumped back into Shadow of Mordor for that Assassin-like feeling. It's a game that is way better than it has any right to be, as a licensed property. In fact, I think the license is pretty boring, and probably a major reason why I'm not head over heels for this game. It's very solid and fun in the moment, but there's pretty much nothing that actively draws me back to play it over one of my pillar games.

Speaking of which, I leveled up a Crusader to 70 and beyond for Season 2 of Diablo III play. I like it better than Witch Doctor, but maybe not as much as Barbarian or Wizard. Crusader seems designed around the concept an agro-grabbing tank, which I think has limited utility in a game like this to begin with, and then only in multi-player. I would like to try that way of playing sometime, but I wonder if it would be as efficient as going all-out offense. It might require having other damage dealing-centric party members rework their gear to disregard survivability and go 100% damage- focused. I'm not sure if I'll play any more of Season 2. I ran bounties all the way to 70 and then did one rift after that. I might like to run a few more and then try a greater rift, but then I might just wait until Season 3, when I plan to play a Monk to 70 to complete the full set of classes. After that may be when I focus on endgame stuff for each class, and when I finally delve into hardcore mode characters. There is still a lot of Diablo left to play.

Elite recently hit version 2.2, where two new ships were added, the Vulture (5M CR) and Fer-de-Lance (51M CR), both dedicated heavy fighters. I was able to afford a modestly outfitted Vulture with my earnings from exploration and trading, and set out to try 2.2's other big change to the game, buffed bounties. Simply put, the monetary rewards for destroying pirate ships got a big increase, so much so that to me it seems like easily the fastest and most enjoyable way to amass a small fortune. At some point, maybe in a Type-7 or larger, trade might edge it out in CR/hour, but without any of the thrill of combat. I earned over a million credits over the last day in about an hour altogether of hunting pirates at a RES (resource extraction site). That is quite an improvement over earning rates pre-patch, no matter the method. I'll probably crank out a few more million hunting bounties, hoping to raise my combat rating, before putting it all into an Asp for some real big-time exploration. That's going to be fun. I don't know where I'm going, only that it'll be a hell of a trip.

I mentioned Pillars of Eternity at the top of this post, but I really don't have much to say about it just yet. I've created a character, a sort of halfling woman who is a Chanter, which is a class that seems a lot like a Bard from FFXI, with buffs and debuffs. I've only made it through character creation and the first maybe 20 minutes of play thus far, but it does seem very faithful to the feel of games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. I hope to dig deep into this one soon.

Filling Out Twenty-Fourteen

The end of the year is rapidly approaching, and I like to come to some kind of annual conclusion on what my game of the year is, so I am now trying to revisit or look into some of the more notable releases of the year, to my sensibilities, anyway.

I also jumped sooner on at least one game, Shadow of Mordor, after hearing a lot of talk about its interesting Nemesis system. I've only played it for about an hour so far, but it seems pretty slick, with solid (Batman) combat, Assassin's Creed climbing, and multiple systems of unlocks for new abilities. It's a pretty good looking game, as well, especially powered by my new 970 GTX.

Civilization: Beyond Earth has also just come out, and I am most itching to get in and play it some more. I also have only spent about an hour with this one, so far, but I've spent 70+ with Civ V. While I am far, far from anything approaching good or expert at the game, I do really like it, and I see a lot, at least on the surface, of Civ V in Beyond Earth. I think I prefer the exoplanet colonization theme, too, as great as the historical cultures of the world theme, is. Both are very cool.

Legend of Grimrock II is out! I haven't had much time to put into this one yet, either, but so far so good. I really loved the first game, and this seems like more, and more robust, and nice outdoor environments, too.

The Banner Saga is on my short list of GOTY contenders, but it had been several long months since I last played (and never completed) it, so I'm trying to pick it up again. I played for about half an hour last night, and was given a healthy reminder on what is so grand about the game. The art is stellar, the writing is also great, and it even has a cool tactical combat system, though this may be its Achilles' heel, so to speak. It seems easy to play yourself into an untenable state. That may just be it's razor's edge balance speaking, but often the battles in this game have me feeling really stretched thin. I'll have to see how it further pans out. I don't really have any sense as to how deep into the game I am, other than an hour count (6).

Elsewhere, I've dipped into both Borderlands 2 and Diablo III for a bit of click and loot, I'm continuing playing Baldur's Gate (on ipad now) as a solo sorcerer, and I even played the first hour of Final Fantasy VII the other day just in the interest of refreshing my memories (and opinions) on what it seems is finally no longer the undisputed masterpiece of everything ever. While far from my favorite of the series, it is also far from my least favorite, and I think I would like to revisit it, in limited chunks, here and there.

This and That Before Diablo III 2.1

The last week has been fairly uneventful. I've played just a little of several different things, as seems to be my modus operandi, of late. Patch 2.1 for Diablo III is out today, and I'll be headed back to that game to begin a Witch Doctor as soon as Seasons are live. But in the meantime:

Hearthstone - I finished up all of the normal Naxxramas matches, as well as the class challenges, and have played a little conventional and arena. I have no real reason to continue playing this except that it's easy to dip into and out of, and mostly pretty fun. It would be nice to collect all of the cards, I guess, but I have no wish to climb the ranks of competitive play.

Analogue: A Hate Story - I only briefly checked this out, because my daughter saw the anime girl in the screenshot on Steam an wanted to "play" it. It turns out to be a very text-heavy research and interaction game. It seems pretty cool, with a very Korean-focused starship setting, presumably a generational ship. I really want to see more of this when I can focus on it.

Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming - You're welcome, Esteban. It seems kinda cool, but I find that parody wears thin very quickly, for me. I'd love to see a more straight take on this game type, but I have zero idea of what that would look like. I guess comedy serves in this case. It is a very absurd premise.

Shadowgate - I kickstarted this remake of the game that originally intrigued me on the NES. The art looks nice enough, but I don't care for the UI presentation or the Item Verb Item mechanics, and the puzzles are as abtuse as ever, which might not be a good thing. I'm feeling pretty lukewarm on this one.

Wasteland - Yeah, the original. I feel like I'm starting to get a grip on what this game is, after a few false starts. I should play more before I play the sequel, which is officially out next month.

Goat Simulator - Mia likes to mess around with it, and it is pretty entertaining. More toy than game.

Half-Life 2 - Yes, yes, I am finally getting toward the end of this epic. I've just arrived at the Citadel, or rather a tunnel leading into or perhaps under the Citadel, opened by Alyx's robot, Dog. I've taken down striders in City 17, what could be next?

Borderlands 2 - I've done handful of quests and fought a boss, advancing into the next zone. I'm feeling pretty ambivalent on the game, so far. It feels like empty calories. Again, parody does next to nothing for me. Handsome Jack is fairly entertaining so far, though. It's something to play, and better than a lot, so I guess I'll keep going with it from time to time.

Mid-August 2014 Playlog

It's hard to find a theme in these large collections of games I play for less than an hour at a time, for the most part. To review:

Talisman - I picked up both the solo adventure and full 4-player digital board games on Steam in a Games Workshop sale. While very, even completely, dependent on luck of the die roll, the game is decently fun. I found the variety of abilities and characteristics each playable character had offered up some interesting in-game ramifications. I played 2-3 complete games, which can be fairly long, before deciding my time was better used elsewhere. It was a satisfyingly fun experience, though.

Mount & Blade - I began my campaign and was immediately overtaken by bandits and taken captive, only to escape sometime later minus my followers and much of my wealth and possessions. This happened over and over, until I was left with no one, not even a horse, and next to nothing. The only choice left was between going full-rogue to probably die alone and reviled and taking up arms in the arena, winning gold and glory and, and hopefully parlaying that into followers. That's what I'm in the midst of, now.

X-Com: Enemy Unknown - I advanced my campaign through a couple of battles, finally taking captive a couple of the aliens and beginning to get a handle on managing my forces. This is another game I don't know why I don't just play all the time.

Half-Life 2 - I played though about 20 to 30 minutes of stuff up to a point where I'm making my way up through a warehouse area from subterranean tunnels, and there are all these Combine soldiers fast-roping down onto catwalks above me and they keep killing me. They'll get theirs, eventually.

Colin McRae Rally - this really is a very bare-bones experience. It's good for a quick race here and there, though. For $7, it's really not too bad.

Hearthstone - I figured it was no more random than Talisman, takes only a fraction of the time to play, has much better production values, actual people to play against, interesting solo content, and all the might of one of the biggest and best game studios in the world backing it up, I might as well invest my time further into this as any other digital card or board game. I've actually been enjoying the hell out of the single-player Naxxramus "boss battles," which are just duels against players with unique abilities and traits. They're almost puzzle-like in that they require a certain approach to win. While nothing like them, they remind me of the puzzles I used to do in The Duelist magazine about 20 years ago, when I was big into Magic: The Gathering.

Final Fantasy III (DS remake) - I finally knocked a few minutes into playing this, before taking it and all my other DS games and trading them all in. Not much to say, other than it's FF, and why the hell isn't the action ever on the top screen? Total loss on this, by the way. I bought it new in Japan, and even had the cool strategy guide to go with it, which I gave up for a mere buck alongside the game. Oh well, not like I was ever going to use it, anyway.

Kurohyou: Ryu Ga Gotoku Shinshou (Yakuza spinoff for PSP) - This was also a quick try-out before trade-in job. It's a Yakuza game, that much is certain. I thought it looked nice enough on the PSP. Series diehards or PSP gamers not already tired of the series should take interest. It's only available in Japan, however, and these games are heavy and deep with the sort of high-level and macho- slang Japanese that many non-native speakers will have trouble understanding (from my own experience).

Wipeout 2048 - I thought I'd played this one before, but I suppose not. It was only for about 20 minutes late at night when I was practically falling asleep, but I was pretty impressed by how well it looked and felt. I did a handful of races and placed decently among my friends, and I'm looking forward to playing more.

Borderlands 2 - I have merely begun, playing Maya the Siren, and having just beat the first boss, a sasquatch type thing in the ice that was bothering a claptrap. I've got to play more to rally form up an impression.

Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition - A gift from Esteban. I haven't really played SF since HD Remix, and that only casually. Before that the last one I really played much of was Super SFII on the SNES. Wow, it's a nice looking game, and it runs flawlessly on the PC. What really pushed me over the edge in wanting to play it (and now wanting to play more), was hearing of the feasibility of playing with a keyboard. It's not something I'd ever considered, but taken logically, there's no reason it should not work, and in practice I found it shockingly easy to pull off special moves, if not completely second-nature in the way that playing with a pad is. I think the keyboard layout is fundamentally better suited to the game than the average 4-button control pad, simply due to the six-button layout possible on the NumPad (4-7, with other keys for button combos), but also due to the ability to use A,S,D, and space directions (space being up/jump). It sounds ridiculous at first, but in practice, wow. It works. With some practice and getting used to, there's no reason at all this control scheme should not be competetive with, or even superior to, other input methods.

The Final Leg of the Sheep Drive

Put a cap in Borderlands, is more like it. I went back to my years-old game save and finished up all the DLC, I care to, which equates to all the campaign-y stuff, General Knoxx, Dr. Ned, and Claptrap's add-ons. The Mad Moxxi thing is nothing more than an arena-based horde mode type of thing that is best played with friends. However, Borderlands no longer supports online play (thanks, GameSpy!), only LAN, so to hell with that. I have to admit that I had fun finishing this game off, even though I was rushing right through everything, seldom straying at all from the critical path. Look, I got shit to do.

I played a little bit of Half-Life 2 the other day, as I am wont to do every several months. That is a great game. That I can't seem to finish.

I also looked into Euro Truck Simulator 2 a little bit. It's pretty cool, but I'm a little disappointed by the lack of fidelity to the bits of Germany I am actually familiar with. It cuts out a lot of the anciliary countryside and urban areas to focus instead on the intersections--the interesting decisions, as it were. You'll seldom drive more than a few minutes down any one road before taking a ramp to another or turn off somewhere. Still, it's a neat idea, relaxing, and actually difficult in spots. Backing into a loading dock, especially. I'm not sure how much more I'll play, but I did enjoy myself with it for a couple of hours.

Summer is here, baby Juno is here, E3 is gone, and there is a bit of a lull before the busy all gaming season begins. It is time to play Mass Effect 3, finally. All the furor around its release is now water under the bridge, and I bought it for $5 or $10 at some point several months ago, and I am finally ready to guide Shepard to the end of her journey, for better or worse. The fixed ending is live, all DLC available on Origin (thank fuck, after the mess of ME2's DLC marketplace), some of which I may buy, and enough time has passed that neither is much of a sore spot anymore. If Shepard can make peace with the Alliance leadership for the greater good, so can I with EA/BioWare/Origin on these matters. We don't have to like it, but working together is the only way we'll get through this to the end.

That said, I imported my Caroline Shepard, created in ME1, continued through all of ME2, into ME3 last night, and got the ball rolling. Earth is being attacked by the Reapers, folks are dying, and Shepard has been reinstated as commander of the Normandy and sent to gain the aid of the Citadel. First stop are some Martian archives where it sounds like she may encounter long-time friend and comrade Liara, now a galactic shadow power broker. So far, so good. It feels like Mass Effect, and combat-wise maybe even the best of the bunch, though it is still early to really tell. I'm looking forward to more.

Shooting From the Hip

I still haven't put away Diablo III, not completely. I have slowed down on it, considerably. All my characters are now Torment II capable, and each with some pretty cool rare legendary items that offer unique effects. There's no game as good for playing while listening to a podcast.

I may segue that habit over into Borderlands, now, though. I'm getting a little more back into it in the last couple of days. I'd like to put a cap on this game once and for all, and maybe peek into the sequel some, too. On the shooter topic, I had a weird hankering to play some Doom the other day, so I jumped in and messed around with that a bit. I should probably stick with some of the more modern fare that I have untouched, though. It's tough to go back that far.

I was able to complete a couple of games recently, one a tiny, ponderous sci-fi adventure called Stranded, which finds the player crash-landed on an alien world and having to survive and figure out the mysteries of the surrounding alien ruins. I enjoyed that. I also finished off Assassin's Creed Liberation, which was pretty mediocre all the way through. I don't regret playing it, though. Aveline's story was interesting enough.

Putting Hell the Hell Away

I'm going to have to force myself to stop playing Diablo III. I got my Demon Hunter, Isam--after a similarly haunted Wheel of Time character--to 70, and then promptly switched back over to Orda--after the Khan--to gear him up a little more for Torment level Nephelam Rifts. I've been having fun wrecking stuff and finding game-changing legendary items with him, such as ground-melting boots, a monster-charming helmet, and a demon-summoning greatsword. This game is so good! It's even better now after the expansion and extensive patching than it was at launch--far, far better, as a matter of fact. It's high time to shelve it for a while, though, and when this 7-day period of increased Legendary Item drop rate and double Rift Fragment Bounties ends, I'll do just that. I have half of the classes at the level cap, now, and while it may not be the most efficient, each of them can get along in Torment mode with reasonable comfort. I want to play a Witch Doctor next, but I don't have it in me now. It makes more sense to wait until whenever Blizzard introduces Seasons to the game, where players will compete on leaderboards as to who can start with a new character and level up the fastsest, the most, with the best gear, or whatever it turns out to be. That will be fun. I will not be able to compete to much of any extent, but it will be fun.

I've also been playing some Assassin's Creed: Liberation. It really is pretty mediocre, which is a shame. Not that the even the greatest entries in the series stand up as shining examples of the form, but this is even lacking in their charms. You can tell that the developers were ambitious with their design; it mainly just feels like there was a shortfall of funding and time to make the game great. It probably also has to do with the constraints that attempting to shoeorn an AC game onto the Vita placed on the whole endeavor. I can see in Liberation the many things I like about this series, I just have to look harder. I wish the production values were higher--particularly the voice acting, which is pretty bad. I wish the plot was more coherent and had more connective tissue, because it's hard to decipher, as is. I wish the game just had a better feel to it--it's pretty janky. To be fair, jank is nothing new to AC. Maybe the frequency with which we see these come down the pike is finally starting to wear on me. Maybe I needed more time to put 80 hours of Black Flag and DLC behind me. I will soldier on through, this, though, and await with anticipation this fall's Assassin's Creed: Unity, and the rumored Comet, to a lesser extent. Maybe Liberation will pick up, who knows?

I felt like monkeying around with Dawn of War II: Retribution's The Last Stand mode last night, wondering if I could seque my routine from Diablo III into that, soon. I'm not so sure. Instead, maybe I'll go back (again) to Borderlands--the first--to try out all the DLC before finally, ultimately canning that game for real this time. I need to play Borderlands 2 sometime, after all. I'm undecided whether the Pre-Sequel (not developed by Gearbox) is something to be excited about. I'm leaning toward no, but again, who knows?

God From The Machine

     After three or four long weeks, I have finally wrapped up my playthrough of Deus Ex, the Warren Spector created classic first-person RPG/Shooter from Ion Storm. This is a game much hallowed and spoken about in hushed tones around the PC gaming elite. Deus Ex laid out a style of game design not often emulated in games, even to this day. The degree of possibility, and freedom of choice in how you develop JC Denton and how you accomplish his goals are rare in an industry that nowadays seems to be all about the yearly iteration and that next cash grab.
     It's still a great game, even after 11 years, though the graphics and sound are somewhat painful to experience at times. The combat can be quirky, and the enemy AI is pretty bad, but you're not exactly forced into having to deal with those. The best part about Deus Ex is the fact that there are usually two or three ways to get to a given place and do what needs to be done, so if you're partial to a stealthy approach, that option is available. When that approach doesn't work out, you can always decide to go weapons hot. Much like Metal Gear Solid, it is even possible to play through the game without killing anyone save a few rare exceptions.

The VersaLife Building

     Deus Ex is a regular in the top 5 of so and so's Top 100 PC games lists, and even if I might not personally rank it quite that high, I can see the reasoning behind doing so. I'm sure if I had been there playing it back in 2000, I would have come away astounded, whereas now I merely admire the game and can appreciate the grand things it was going for during the heyday of the run and gun FPS. If the recent release of Human Revolution has you curious about the series' history, don't hesitate, it's well worth playing if you can ignore the bad production values.
     Valve's Steam Trading update went life this week, and so I've been again getting back into TF2 to have fun with that and earn items to trade with other players. Now that it is possible to trade items straight across for Steam games, I'm hoping to try that. Maybe I can get someone to trade me a copy of Deus Ex: Invisible War for a highly sought-after TF2 item of some sort.
     Borderlands also got an update this past week, adding Steamworks integreation--basically just cloud saves--and also some stat tracking stuff so that Gearbox and see how people play the game, and use that information in development of Borderlands 2. I remain a fan of the game despite it's lackluster PC port, unplayable multiplayer (GameSpy), and the fact that I've already beaten it once. I've started a new game playing as the Siren, even though my loot-hunting-in-a-shooter time might better be spent on TF2!

Having A Ball

I've been lucky today in that I've gotten to spend a good amount of time gaming. Just today I've gotten in some time with TF2, Titan Quest, and Section 8, and I'll probably sit down with Deus Ex later on, too!

Today is kind of emblematic of what and how I've been playing over the last couple of weeks. I've been popping in and out of several shooters--mostly TF2--but also Red Orchestra, and I even re-installed Borderlands the other day because all the DLC was 75% off on Steam again and I finally bit this time. I still have my character from when I finished the game, and I'm keeping him around, but I thought I'd try another class too, so I started playing as the Siren. I may try to play a little more of this later tonight, too.

Mostly I've been focusing on playing Deus Ex, though, and it's been a revelation. It's an excellent game, as its reputation would have you believe. I said this on Call Of Podcast, but had I played this back in the day, it really would have been another Metal Gear Solid moment, I think. It doesn't have a hell of a lot in common with that game, but it is similarly in a class all its own, head and shoulders above everything else in the genre (of the day). There is a brilliant flair for game design on display in both games, and like MGS, Deus Ex holds up remarkably well even all these years later. Deus Ex is $10 on Steam, and will run on probably anything capable of displaying this blog (and running Windows). If you haven't played it, consider this post yet another recommendation to do so.

Normandy. Requesting permission to dock.

The arrival of Mass Effect 2 is imminent. I am more excited for this than I have been for a game in quite some time. I've been unable to buckle down and concentrate on any one game, so I've been futzing around with a whole lot of them. In no particular order:

WoW - I jumped into this for a bit to see if I could re-kindle the flame. No luck. I did a daily quest and then jumped into an instance and immediately did not want to be there. The group wiped, I logged out at the Spirit Healer, and uninstalled. Maybe I'll be back for Cataclysm.

Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers - This was on sale for $5 on XBLA, and I bit, being a long-time player of Magic in my junior high and high school days. It's a very basic take on the game, bordering even on too simple for a seasoned veteran like myself, but the core mechanics are still solid and fun. To another Magic player, I'd liken it to playing with stock starter decks right off the shelf. I'll be back around to this one here and there. I like it.

Canabalt - I just bought this on my iphone today for $3, and it's pretty cool. You're a guy running across the rooftops of a city under attack from big alien Voltrons (or something). The guy runs, and you tap the screen to make him jump over obstacles and gaps. Very simple, very addictive, great music and art. I'd put this one up there with Drop7 and Galcon. It's a perfect game for the platform.

Sins Of A Solar Empire - Galactic 4X RTS. Basically, you control a galactic empire. It seems incredibly deep, and I only brushed the surface of the 4 tutorials available to beginners. I like what I've seen so far, though.

Borderlands - This game has always given me issues with my graphics card, and after tinkering around with some settings this weekend, I booted up the game to stress test my setup, and ended up running through a couple of leftover quests with my Playthrough 1 clear-saved character. This game gets F-U-N right.

Far Cry 2 - I had a couple of hours to kill and still wanted to stress-test my machine, so I loaded up this beauty and ran through a couple of objectives. I am constantly amazed by how good this game is when I go and play it. Why haven't I been able to stick with it? It's so immersive and atmospheric. I was stalking through some high grass with a high-powered sniper rifle last night, picking off my target's guards one by one, remaining unseen, and it felt great. I love this game.

Shattered Horizon - This is a PC FPS I've been playing a lot lately. It's set in space, and you're a mercenary astronaut taking part in multi-player only battles for control of various asteroids and mining bases in the debris of an exploded moon that is orbiting Earth. You have full 360-degree movement, which makes for some really bewildering firefights. There's nothing else really like it, and it's really fun, not to mention gorgeous.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - I decided to finally see what the multiplayer is all about in the COD/MW series, and I have to admit that I'm surprised; it's really good. The gameplay is fast and frenetic, the frame rate locked at 60 fps, and death even quicker than that. It also does the carrot-on-a-stick routine as well as any MMO. That next unlock is always just a few more games, a few more kills away. Let it be known: the hype is justified. I've been back to this game almost every day the last week or so.

Aaaahhhhhh. That's better. Now that I don't have all of these impressions clouding up my mind, I can hone my focus in on Commander Caroline Shepard's next outing. Can not wait.

Onward, To A Lean 2010

Here's to thinning out the pack and adding onto it as little as possible in the coming year. 2009 has been nuts, but I think I'm just about caught up to where I need to be (for now) in terms of looking backward. There are plenty of games of '08 and '09 that I haven't even gotten around to picking up yet, but until I finish off some of what I've already bitten off, their status is iffy (Dead Space, Batman, Mirror's Edge, et. al). There are others I will definitely get (Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed 2), but those too will have to wait.

I've got one completion in the bank as of now (Borderlands) and that's going to buy me Mass Effect 2, I think. If I can manage to knock off some more of the games I'm halfway into (Yakuza 2 is a prime candidate), then I'll start thinking about others.

Meanwhile, I've been distracted by Demon's Souls and Planescape: Torment, and there is little chance I'll be finishing either of those anytime soon. I follow my heart, though. If I feel like dropping a weekend into WoW in the middle of the Fall release feces tornado, then by the Great Old Ones, I shall.

P.S. Far Cry 2

Workin'

Lonesteban and mine's Internet radio spectacular, Call Of Podcast, is off to a running start. I got a website up this week to host it upon, and I got the RSS feed working through iTunes, as well. We're due to record episode 12 tonight sometime. It's a lot of time and work (and a little money) to put together and present a show, but it's a lot of fun, too, and cool to have a body of "work" to look back on later. I've been dealing with getting that set up and sorted out a lot this week.

The average time to produce and post an episode is probably 4-5 hours, you can figure 2 hours to record, including the pre and post-show chatter, and then 2-3 hours later of playback and editing and processing and posting. There's very little prep or organization that goes into it so far, just a little reading of the news throughout the week (we'd do that anyway). We like to keep it kind of fast and loose, like a real conversation. I listen to a ton of podcasts, and I like most the ones with the least rigid structure.

As a side note, I have feeds to let me know when there are comments on this site or the one hosting the podcast, so either of these places or twitter is a great place to comment or submit questions and the like.

As far as gaming over the last week or so, I've been mostly focusing on two titles, with a tad of Killzone 2 multiplayer thrown in (I just unlocked the medic class for play).

The first of the games I've been working on this week is Demon's Souls. This is a fantastic game. I had it waiting for me here when I arrived back from my recent trip to Japan, and I've spent maybe 12 hours with it so far. It only took a couple to finish 1-1, the first level of the Boletarian Palace, but then I spent probably 3 or 4 times that amount of time playing in 4-1, the Shrine of Storms, playing co-op with other players (visiting their games as a blue phantom) and leveling up so that finally I was able to completely loot the level and kill the demon boss. Later I went back and played through 2-1, in Stonefang Tunnel, in just one sitting and only dying one time, with the help of my own summoned blue phantom, and a well-placed message on the ground in the boss' chamber.

Refer back to a post I made about the original Diablo for more of why I like Demon's Souls so much. The dark, Gothic fantasy, the great music, and the very cool art direction are all a large part of it, but there's also the fact that in this game, there is no cannon fodder. There are no trash mobs. Anything can kill you, and most of the time within two or three strikes, and often enough with just one. Additionally, death means something, and on more than one level. One death, and you go from your physical form to your soul form, losing the ability to summon phantoms for help as well as losing half of your maximum HP, and that's not to mention all the souls you've gained and have on you at the time. Subsequent deaths will just cost you any souls you have accrued since your last (though you can get them back, if you play well enough), but death also puts you back at the beginning of a level with everything in that level respawned.

It sounds punishing and Draconian, and it can feel that way, for sure, but it very rarely feels unfair. The game is very friendly to the methodical player, and very unfriendly to those who would rush in headlong, throwing caution to the wind. There are some skeleton knights at the beginning of level 4-1 that are incredibly tough when you initially encounter them. They come rolling at you and attack very quickly, and can be your death before you know what's going on, at first. But then, after a while, through death and trial and error, you learn how they move, and when they are vulnerable. I rock through them without a second thought now. I've been through that section of 4-1 probably 50 times, and I enjoy encountering them, now.

My other focus this week has been Borderlands. I'm trying to finish it off. It's been too long since I completed something, and I've got a ton more to move on to, as well. A user-created app I downloaded fixes a lot of the gripes I have with the PC rush-job port (which is what it feels like), but aside from that, this game needs help with story and quest direction. Both are pretty uninteresting, and the world is basically one big brown junkyard. It's a good thing the shooting mechanics and crazy loot and off-the-wall guns are so much fun. And I should emphasize how much fun they are, because were it not for them, I'd have given this thing up for the midden heap long ago, but I'm really enjoying my playtime with it.

I haven't done much co-op of the game because A) I don't want to mess around trying to get it to work on GameSpy's shit and B) I kinda prefer to play solo and at my own pace, though with as throwaway as the questlines and story are in the game, I'd hardly be missing anything if I rushed through with some other people. I should probably give it more of a go...

The Week Leading Up To Coming To Japan

The week of the 5th-12th of this month was fairly uneventful as far as gaming. I spent more time plowing through the latest Wheel of Time book and going out with co-workers for drinks (and catching Zombieland) than anything. The time I did get to game out was mostly spent on Torchlight and Borderlands, with a little Dawn of War II thrown in. A good portion of that was spent trying to figure out why Borderlands always crashes my machine upon exiting the game. My conclusion is just that it's a slapdash console port and my computer takes personal offense at having to run the game. It chokes the game down for about as long as I demand, only to purge at the first possible moment. Luckily, it seems to like the other games I've been running.

Crazy- Ass PC Loot Game Rampage

I'm living single for a couple of weeks since the wife has headed over to Japan ahead of myself to spend some time with friends and family. In the meantime, I've been reading a hell of a lot of The Gathering Storm, the new Wheel of Time book, and I've been playing a hell of a lot of some recent PC purchases.

Torchlight is just about perfect. It's a game very much in the Diablo tradition, and indeed made by a lot of the people behind the Diablo series, formerly of Blizzard North. It's a great refinement of the genre, and it's effortless to sit down and waste a couple of hours with the game. I'm playing a dual-pistol-wielding vanquisher with a trick-shot like ricochet ability, and having my pet concentrate on keeping enemies' attention while I blast them from range. The story is paper-thin, and it's single player only, but a game with this level of playability for $20 is madness.

Borderlands is often summed up as Diablo, but with guns. I'd just add that it's done in a brown GWAR junkyard setting. It's a pretty fun game, but the PC version has a lot of things that piss me off. It's just a straight case of shoehorning the console version onto a PC, with just about nothing added but enhanced graphics settings and mouse controls. The UI is atrocious, and the P2P networking over Gamespy is gutter trash. Despite these failings, I've spent like 10 hours playing the game, already. With a patch (or some tweaks I could pull off myself in the config files) the game could be something great. Go the extra mile, developers. You just look bad when you pull this shit.

Dawn of War II is a novel mix of RTS and Diabalike game conventions. It's the tactical gameplay of one with the more intimate scope and character and gear progression of the other. It's great, so far. I like the crazy Warhammer 40,000 universe it's set in, too. So far I've done 6-7 missions of the campaign, a match of the more traditional, base-builder RTS multiplayer, and several games of The Last Stand, which is the Horde/Firefight/survival mode done in DoW II. Very cool, so far.

Yakuza 2 has kind of fallen by the wayside for now, with me about halfway or more through it. I'm at a decent break point, though, and I'll probably be back at it either once I finish this book or once I'm back from Japan around Thanksgiving.