Weekend Recap #1
By fraser 1 Comments
Is this, STRUCTURE?
Happy Weekend everyone. Alongside my newly rediscovered blogging determination is a quest for interesting subject matter, something I don't feel I've ever managed to conquer before. This is down to one limiting factor;
I have no money.
Because of this small hurdle my current gaming life is what your gaming lives were approximately one year ago. But surely some of you enjoy reading about amazing new titles like Uncharted 2? Red Dead Redemption? Saints Row 2? Yeh? Well, maybe not, and this is something I'm just gonna have to live with. Anyway, lets get on with what I've been doing this week.
Undead Nightmare
Well, I say Undead Nightmare but I should probably just put Red Dead Redemption back up there. I bought Undead Nightmare on Monday as a reward for getting the first chapter of my dissertation into my professor. Another £8 to Rockstar after the £35 I gave up on release. Was it worth it? I'm gonna have to go with the definitive....maybe?
The Good
The world of Red Dead Redemption is still awesome. The cutscenes and dialogue are on par with Rockstar's funniest. I would contest that the shooting mechanics actually work quite well for zombie killing, especially the close-up execution kills. The game's a decent length, if you're into killing zombies, which, if you bought this, you better be. The Blunderbuss is awesome; it fires zombie parts. Zombie parts. Also, fucking Unicorns.The "Meh"
There's nothing necessarily "bad" about Undead Nightmare just a lot of things to shrug your shoulders in disinterest at. The stringent story gets a bit old after a few of the missions, taking the basic form of; "Hey, remember this guy/girl from the game? Would you mind helping him/her with a bit of a zombie problem?". Although saying that, it's a zombie game, I don't really know what else they could have done. There's a lot of repetition, so you better bloody love killing zombies and giving people ammo. Also, the multiplayer is poo.I think my biggest GRIPE with Undead Nightmare is that it's too sparse. The massive open-world of Red Dead Redemption feels empty. I appreciate the zombie apocalypse has a lot to do with it, so to an extent it serves a narrative function, but this was what I absolutely loved about Red Dead. The world doesn't feel brimming with activity anymore; far fewer animals, limited random encounters, no variance in towns. I'll tell you what. It feels like Gun. Not a bad game, but a vast game-world with not a whole lot of stuff in it. It's the case of a well realised artistic choice leading to less-than-awesome gameplay situation.
I appreciate here that I'm being a bit of a dick seeing as this was an £8 piece of DLC but I think it's rather telling that after spending about 10 hours on Undead Nightmare this week, I returned to Red Dead to spend about 15 hours hunting wildife, for free, in this bad boy;
The Secret of Monkey Island
This game came out when I was 1 year old, so alas, I didn't have quite the cognitive faculty to take on LeChuck. To be honest I'm doubting that the 21 year old version of me has either. Point and Click adventure games do, however,hold a fairly important place in my heart. (I didn't want to say heart. But I did. Deal with it.) My first gaming memory was playing Discworld at my older cousins house. One of my cousins has recently, unfortunately, passed away, so I am now taking it upon myself to play through these games he loved when he was younger. Also, point and click games rule. After finishing Broken Sword 1 and 2, and making decent progress through Grim Fandango, I've started up The Secret of Monkey Island.I'm playing the reloaded edition they did a couple of years back, but I'm playing it on the original settings. The new artstyle is a bit too painterly for my liking, I find it strangely disturbing, something about the character models. The older version's soundtrack also has more of a nostalgia hit for me. Similarly, I don't like how obtrusive the item menus are in the new version, they cover the entire screen once activated.
It's pretty challenging compared to those other Point and Click games I mentioned because of it's open-world navigation system, rather than a linear progression of smaller areas. Also the item interaction options are far more complex and take a bit of getting used to. I have to say that the dialogue is hilarious and the game world is potentially the best out of all these games I've played. I'll keep you posted with my developments.
Anything Else?
That's really all I've been up to game-wise this week. Add a bit of Uncharted 2 multiplayer to that and there you have it. Some non-game things;
- Three Times by Hou Hsaio-Hsien is boss. Slow, but boss.
- Pepsi Max will never be as good as regular coke, even if my local Tesco do a litre for 65p.
- Our broken freezer is ruining my life.
- Girl Talk's new album is fun.
So there we have it. Thanks to those of you who took the time to read this,
Fraser