Durera's Blog - Apr to Jun 12 (14 followers)

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This is how I keep my 360 cool in the Summer heat :)



Essential equipment for those 8 hour Skyrim sessions. Works surprisingly well, the case is only warm to the touch at the end of the day, rather than the usual "molten lava" temperature it reaches.

In case you are wondering, the 360 is in the cupboard under the staircase along with all my other AV equipment. It can get very toasty in there, especially with an Onkyo 805 (aka "the Inferno") running in tandem with the 360 :)

April was the month that I got back into RPGs in a big way. I finally took NIER off my pile of shame at the arse end of March and by the end of April I'd sunk as near as makes no difference 80 hours into this game. Truth be told I only picked up NIER because the guys on the Midlife Gamer Podcast were raving about it some 2 years ago and I picked it up in a HMV sale not long after. Really glad I did, this is easily one of the best games I've played for a long long time. The New Game + was handled better than any other game I can think of and the varied gameplay was a refreshing contrast to Mass Effect 3.



XBL Activity - April 2012

Mass Effect 3, I did my best to avoid all the internet shitstorm following this game's release. No matter what they did in this game I pretty much had to play it to see the conclusion of the universe I'd got so engaged in back in the first game. Sad to say that the third is probably on par with the second rather than a return to form. A solid 3/5 game still, but this series hasn't really done much to interest me since the first game. 30-odd hours is a good chunk of time, the plot is far more interesting than that of the second game, but that wouldn't be hard. Playing on Insanity is an absolute chore because the actual gameplay is terrible.

Press A to take cover, press A to hurdle, press A to heal teammate, press A to launch out of cover. If you are going to have one button do so much you really need a much tighter control over the character to make it whatever the opposite of really fucking frustrating is whenever the combat gets hectic.

Anomoly Warzone Earth hit XLBA, a rare day 1 sale for me there as I loved playing this on iOS when I was out in the states last Autumn. The move from touchscreen to controller makes for some interesting changes in the balance of the game which I had not expected, I wouldn't say it felt like a new game, but it made enough difference that you can not play the same strategy on the same level on the different platforms.

The only other game worthy of note was Lara Croft: GoL -- the absolute best co-op game I've played so far. Had a great time playing through the entire game online with Shadow Enz, really appreciated that the entire game is co-oppable, rather than the co-op being an additional, seperate mode from single-player as it often the case.

Doghouse Diaries

In unrelated news, Hayley is off to a bootcamp Sunday-Friday next week, and I shall be booking the week off work

This is a great time to be a gamer in the UK! HMV offering £3 more than I paid for Prototype 2 in trade-in. I don't shop in physical stores often, but when I do I generally end up buying something in HMV, so it won't go to waste.

So not only did I get to enjoy a pretty decent game this weekend, I earned £0.15 per hour while playing it :D

It really does make you wonder about the long term viability of "bricks n mortar" retail though! Scrap that, the only thing keeping them alive is uneducated consumers -- something of which this world has a near endless supply of!

Been absolutely hammering Skyrim for the past two weeks (60 hours on the clock this month so far) but decided I needed something different to mix things up when I saw Prototype 2 down to £24.

After 18 hours play I'd finished the story and all the side-missions. For me this is just about right for a sandbox game, sometimes games overstay their welcome. Unless you have a really good story, or exceptional gameplay it's very hard to justify going over 30 hours in my opinion. 2 hours later I'd finished off the last of the achievements for the full 1000.

My thoughts:

1) This isn't a bad game, it isn't a great game either - the first was much, much better than this. This seems to have become a trend in gaming recently; there was a time when sequel almost always meant a better game, but we seem to have hit the same drought of ideas that Hollywood has been facing for a decade it would seem. Sequels that fail to live up to their predecessor are common (Mass Effect 2 & 3, Prototype, Fallout New Vegas, Batman Arkham City just off the top of my head) and we've even seen the rise of the "reboot", the surest sign of a lack of creativity in an industry (Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Devil May Cry).

2) The main character is one of the worst in a game I've played for a long long time. I didn't hate him, I didn't like him, I felt absolutely nothing.

3) The whole plot just didn't make sense to me, I really liked the (albeit simple) plot of the first IIRC, but this? Sorry, not for me.

4) Challenges. I really enjoyed the challenges in the first game. They were non-existent here, I gather these are in the DLC (I didn't redeem the "RADNET" code so that I can sell the game on as new). What a brilliant use of DLC -- carving out an established part of your original game to "sell" as additional content. I do what I can to not support this business model.

5) The freedom of movement is still the best in a superpowered-type sandbox game -- leaping, gliding, super speed all work wonderfully.

6) The combat can get very messy at times, with the camera doing you no favours at all. This is a minor niggle though.

7) Difficulty. I don't recall the original being this easy. Unless you are really not very good at this type of game you are wasting your time playing on anything other than Hard your first time (I then started New Game+ on Easy to finish off the remaining achievements).

Overall, I'd say it's worth 20 hours of your gaming time if you like the genre and are willing to overlook a weak story without any strong characters. It's the equivalent of a good Summer blockbuster at the movies: loud & dumb, but done very well which makes that okay.

20 hours playtime makes this only the 17th game to break the 20 hour mark in the 11 months since I started tracking these things -- it's in good company!