Well, I wasn't able to get to any of the games that I mentioned I would like to play last week but I did finish Wolfenstein, play some more Nuclear Throne, and a bit of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. I spent a lot of time with my wife and daughter over the weekend… if you want to know how tough balancing work, family, and gaming is just listen to @vinny anytime he tries to explain it, it’s tough.

Anyway, I don’t want this blog series to just be about married/dad life, I want it to be more about games and how they are an escape when I’m feeling overwhelmed by everything else. I, as many of you, play games to relax. They’re fantastic for that. So let's get to it.

LAST WEEK IN GAMING:

1. Wolfenstein: The New Order

THOUGHTS: Wow, this game is great. I talked about it at length during the blog last week but after playing about 7 more hours and finishing the story I have to say that had I completed this game before my personal cutoff for GOTY 2014 it would have more than likely ended up at number 1. I was amazed how Machine Games was able to humanize and make people sympathize and feel for a character who in the previous games in the series was just an avatar used to murder as many Nazi’s as possible without caring one bit for him. B.J. Blazkowics received a motivation for his assault on the Nazi regime, aside from the fact that they are the Nazis and are horrific people.

The pacing of the story was fantastic. It started a bit slowly and built to an extremely emotional climax. I’m not going to spoil anything if you haven’t played it because I feel like it is a game that you should experience for yourself. There were some characters that I really connected with and found myself rooting for them to fight and survive.

VERDICT: Highly recommended. The best shooter that I have played during the new generation of consoles it has a great story, excellent game-play, and enough variation in level and mission design to keep you interested the entire time.

2. Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes

THOUGHTS: I played this to completion on the PS4 when it first released earlier in 2014 but decided to pick it up on PC during the Steam Holiday Sale to see the visual differences and I have to say I was impressed. The game looks great on PS4 but once I booted it up with my GTX780 it bordered on being the best looking game I have ever seen. Mostly all I did was just mess around a bit to check out the lighting and the rain, my God that rain; I killed a few guys and hopped on a turret. Fun times.

I was already super excited to play the Phantom Pain, this only heightened that anticipation about being able to mess around in an open world with Snake on PC.

VERDICT: It’s a demo. When it released on console it was an expensive, and pretty shady, proposition to make fans play 30 bucks for a 2 hours (if you do everything) experience. On sale on Steam for 13 dollars it becomes a little easier to stomach but still you have to know what you’re getting before you jump in or you will be super upset. I recommend playing it on PC just to see how phenomenal it looks and to get yourself more excited for MGS5.

3. Nuclear Throne

THOUGHTS AND VERDICT: I can’t stop. Play it.

4. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

THOUGHTS: I love this game. I played around 100 hours of it when it released in 2012 on XBOX 360 but never played any of the DLC and played as a Rogue. I decided last week to replay it on Steam with the DLC using a different character class, albeit, the warrior is a bit similar the abilities are different enough to make it feel like something new. This isn't going to be something I do over a week or two period, I’ll probably pick it up here and there over the course of the next few months until I get through everything that I want to see this time around, I mostly want finish the DLC packs that I haven’t played yet.

VERDICT: It’s a few years old but still plays great. The combat was one of my favorite things about the game. The open world always felt a little bit lifeless to me but it’s tolerable to see the story, which I thought was pretty good, and just to kill dudes in some fairly cool ways. I have seen the ultimate edition of the game on sale for as low as 5 dollars and for that price it is a totally worthwhile purchase. I named it my number 2 favorite game of the year on my 2012 Top Ten list. Play it… it’s fun.

5. Warframe

THOUGHTS: Why did I do this? I played a little of it on PS4 when that thing launched in 2013 and thought it was okay and then Jeff did the new Quick Look for it and showed off all of the things that had been added to it and I thought, “that looks fun, I need to play some Warframe”. So I played some Warframe. The game does such a horrible job of explaining things to you that I mostly spent 3-4 hours just running around trying to figure out what the hell I needed to do. It looks great on PC and actually plays pretty well but I don’t think I’ll play anymore Warframe. I just don’t have the time to invest.

VERDICT: Don’t play Warframe. Wait, play Warframe if you have a bunch of people to explain it to you just to check it out. I don’t like Warframe that much. I may play some more Warframe tonight. Dammit.

THE WEEK AHEAD

I mentioned four games during last Monday’s blog that I wanted to play during last week and I ended up playing one of them so take this list with a grain of salt. It’s more of a reminder/outline to myself that I need to play some of the games that I own so hopefully I follow it a little bit better this week. We’ll see though…

• Sunset Overdrive
• Star Trek Online – Remember when I said I don’t have time to invest in Warframe. Say hello to next weeks Warframe!!!!
• Warframe – Dammit
• Puzzle Agent
• Bulletstorm – Never played it but always wanted to so let us remedy that.

OPINION TIME

Last week I spoke about my distaste for pre-orders and how I plan to wait a few weeks on every game I purchase in 2015. I’ll try to stick to that but for this week my topic is…

VR Gaming: This topic seems to have been discussed to death by people much more qualified to offer an opinion than me but I want to add in my two cents. I am not excited for VR to invade gaming. It seems to me to be another fad that will be copied to death and actually end up costing gamers a bunch more money, if they can convince enough people to buy in, only to fizzle out just like most of the other gimmicks that we have had to endure. Motion controls lasted for a few years. The Kinect seemed like a cool idea but the execution was so poor that nothing great ever really came from it.

Sitting on a couch and playing a game with a controller is what I’m used to so I don’t want to wear something on my head while it happens, I never want to high five a monkey using a connect again, and please for the love of everything holy I never want to play a motion controlled anything ever again. Wii Sports was fun for a few times but I grew so tired of all the tricks used in Wii games that I can’t stand the thought of doing it anymore.

How about instead of making new devices for gaming let’s try to focus in 2015 on releasing games that aren't broken on day 1. I’m not trying to come off as hateful on this topic, if you’re looking forward to the Oculus Rift or the VR device that Sony is making let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for commenting. I hope those of you that read this actually enjoy it. If so, let me know in the comments. I'm hoping to keep evolving this so if you have suggestions or anything throw them at me.

Have a Happy Monday Duders. I hope the rest of your week is awesome.