Category Archives: Platforms

The Lost Year

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So, what have I been doing in all that time missing in this blog?  Probably a lot of small stuff I’ve forgotten, but the major games are:

Minecraft: I played a whole ton of Minecraft, including not just further developing my own private worlds but checking out various mod packs like the Technic Pack, Yogbox, TerraFirmaCraft, and Hack/Mine.  I also completed some challenge maps, like Feed The Beast, Vechs’s Legendary map from the Super Hostile series, and one of those Skyblock-like minimal starts.

Diablo 3: I’ve gotten a wizard into Hell difficulty so far, but still have to check out the other classes.  It doesn’t seem to have as much staying power as D2 did, a large part of which is that the loot seems blander, but I’ll still get a lot of hours out of it.

Disgaea 4: And once again, I got sucked into putting a ton of hours into yet another SRPG, getting some characters up to pretty much insanely maxed-out stats.  I haven’t done the DLC chapters for it yet though.

MMOs: I started up LOTRO and got a character up to level 20ish, but haven’t gotten back to it recently or played any other MMOs, really.  Kinda feeling a bit burned out on them for now.  I’ll give Guild Wars 2 a shot when it comes out, though.

Skyrim: FUS RO duh, of course I’d be playing this one.  I played a kitty wizard through the end of the base game, but actually left a good number of side quests unfinished.  I figure that I’ll wait a couple of years for all the good mods, DLC, and an expansion to come out, and then go back and do a proper clear-everything run with a different type of character.

Forza 4: Good, especially with the new stuff like Rivals challenges, but I’m still only a sliver of the way through the full event list, and I’m not sure if I’ll bother to clear them all like I did with 3.  Just not feeling the driving urge lately.

Mass Effect 3: Controversy over the endings aside (I haven’t seen the revised ones yet), still a pretty good game overall, and I enjoyed it just as much as the second one.  Lots of different environments, good gunplay, and a decent story along the way.

Portal 2: Yay! Lots of good puzzles, interesting new elements introduced as you go, longer without being too long, and even a really good story around it.  Definitely worth it.

Damn, that’s a lot of sequels…

Bunnies!

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In Lugaru HD you are a bunny.  That beats up other bunnies.  A lot.  I’m not sure there’s really much else to say.  Unfortunately I’m terrible at these kinds of brawlers, and I wind up just mashing attacks until something hits and completely forgetting all the blocking/parrying tactics, and this game is rather too chaotic and fast-paced for me.

I Would Have Preferred Shotgunfight

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I gave Hammerfight a try today, but I only made it through three or four missions before giving up.  It’s a neat enough idea, control a floating machine and move the mouse to swing weapons on it around to hit enemies, but the mouse motions required become really frustrating really fast, especially with a small space to work in, a mouse that likes to catch on the edges of things, and a game UI that likes to cover up important bits of the screen during the fight.  Not a keeper.

Well, Partly-Stopped

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Today I checked out Unstoppable Gorg, yet another tower defense game (there was a bit of a wave of them a while back), but the twist of this one is that you place satellites into orbit instead of on fixed ground spots, and you can rotate the orbits around as the enemy waves attack, to defend particular spots on the fly.  Interesting, but not interesting enough to stick with I think, and it was actually fairly difficult.  I kept getting my ass kicked on Medium, and it almost feels like you have to ‘cheat’ by winning on easy to get research tokens to upgrade your satellites first.  It has a nice retro-50s flying saucer B-movie style to it, though.

Gettin’ Paid In Africa

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I played a bit of Far Cry 2 as today’s game, after having only briefly started it before.  I’m not usually big on shooters, but this one’s different enough in how it’s more of an ‘open world’ one, with various factions and buddies to get missions and rewards from, lots of terrain to explore, etc.  It reportedly gets kind of repetitive once you get tired of clearing the same checkpoints of guards over and over, but I haven’t reached that point yet.  A keeper for now, I think.

Not The Good Drugs

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Today I randomly picked Black Market to check out, though I couldn’t remember where I’d gotten it in the first place.  One of those big indie bundles, probably.  Anyway, it’s a space trading game with a main storyline, but it felt more simplistic than I’d like.  I’d rather spend my time in Space Rangers 2 instead, so I’m not going to pursue this one any further.

Damn Ninjas

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Today’s game was Sengoku, one of Paradox’s grand strategy games but set solely in Japan in the warring states period.  I don’t really know much about that era though, so the constant shifting of territory between names I couldn’t recognize didn’t really mean anything to me. I thought I had a relatively good, peaceful development period going when my neighbour suddenly attacked and overwhelmed me, despite having good relations with them.  Not a bad game, but for my grand strategy fix I’ll go to Crusader Kings 2 instead, so it’s not a keeper.

Seriously

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Today I played Serious Sam: The Random Encounter and it’s…a bit of an odd duck.  Take the frantic shooting action of Serious Sam, and put it in…a turn-based JRPG?  It actually kind of works though, as combat consists of you running backwards away from a huge pack of enemies, selecting which weapon to use, and then you can move up and down to adjust your aim and dodge bullets while the turn executes, and then it freezes for the next turn and you can pick another weapon or item, etc.

It’s an interesting take on the JRPG style that’s appropriate for the Serious Sam series, but it got kinda repetitive very fast, as you wind up in fights every few steps you take.  Interesting, but not a keeper.

Mmmm, Bacon…

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I played The Baconing once before, but couldn’t remember much about it, so I revisited it as today’s game.  It’s a fairly standard ARPG whose main strength lies in the setting and characters rather than the combat, but it’s a bit too “monkey cheese” for me and I kept dying since you can lose health extremely rapidly.  Not a keeper.

Totally Gratuitous

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I checked out Gratuitous Tank Battles as my game for today, and it’s fairly standard tower defense with a few twists, like being able to design your own units, choose both the attacking and defending sides, and manually designate targets.  It’s hard to judge just how well I was actually doing though, especially since you don’t get much warning about what kinds of units are coming, so it feels like I just have to slap down a variety of defenses and hope that’s sufficient.  Not a keeper, though I think the previous game, Gratuitous Space Battles, might fit my tastes better.