(Part one of this blog series can be found here!)

The first week of my silly experiment is over, how have I fared?

Total saved so far: £350.65

This total does include games that aren't out yet but which I would be purchasing anyway, as well as DLC, Kickstarter projects and other miscellaneous alpha buy-ins.

This has really shone a light on my rampant spending. If I hadn't started that spreadsheet I don’t think I would've processed just how much I spend. I'm not really feeling any great desire to rush out and break my pledge, maybe that’s because gifting season is coming up. Maybe I’ll get Assassin’s Creed 3? I have Liberation but it’s not quite grabbing me, maybe I just need to put more time into it. One game I would really like to get is the Edna and Harvey bundle from GOG, it looked great in the quicklook.

But anyway, with that admin out of the way, onto games I actually did play significant amounts of this week!

Bioshock

This was my intended game of the week, where I would go back and play a single game solid for a week to get a better appreciation of it. I say intended because I never actually did that. I played enough of it to get the research camera. It’s not that I dislike Bioshock or that I can’t go back to it for technical reasons (the PC version notwithstanding,) it’s that I have played so much of that game I just can’t do it again. I've beaten it so many times under so many conditions I can no longer wring any further enjoyment from it.

I love Bioshock, it’s a game that absolutely everybody should play.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

I played far more of this than I expected to, having expected to play none of it. However Valve had a free weekend and it was always something I had wanted to check out. I never played CS 1.6 or Source online against actual humans, preferring to putz about with bots. That changed with CS:GO. The changes they made to the standard formula make it a much quicker, enjoyable game to play, what with round times being shortened, the emphasis on smaller teams, and the faster demolition and Arms Race maps. Speaking of Arms Race, that is my new favourite FPS mode. Fast gameplay which forces a rotation of weapon types and therefore a change in tactics? Sublime. Also, whatever Valve has done with their matchmaking might as well be witchcraft to me. The games I was matched into felt right; didn’t feel outclassed and I wasn’t outclassing others. Still reluctant to try other FPS games such as CoD, Battlefield etc. though.

When the year is up, that is definitely on my must-purchase list.

Other games

Galactic Civilizations 2: I just didn’t understand this game. Spent a couple hours with it, found it nearly impenetrable. I’ll stick to safe, ground-based Civilization V.

Skate 3: I can always put this on and tool around for an hour doing nothing and enjoy it.

Way of the Samurai 4: Finally got around to removing the wrap on this, had it since launch. Too early to render an opinion just yet, but what a weird localisation; the British Captain is called Melinda Megamelons.

Melinda Megamelons.

Theme Hospital: Sat down to play just 10 minutes of this, ended up spending over 2 hours. Oops.

Grand Theft Auto 4: Mainly tooling around with mods; the iCEhancer mod and this absurd thing:

This week

More time with Way of the Samurai 4 for sure, perhaps more Theme Hospital and Forza 4.

MUSIC: