Quite a while since my last blog. Reason for this a two week holiday in Mauritus. That is no doubt the best holiday I've ever had. That place is a pure paradise. A proper tropical holiday with sand, palm trees, sea and you name it.. Enough to have by batteries loaded to handle the Indian people rest of the year. Had my GBA with me in there, but not once even started it. Anyway here games I played before and after this trip.

Fantasy Wars

Finally done with this. Not an easy game. Had to enable a cheat where one can heal and do an action movement on same turn. Got a some sort of OCD where I try to have perfect run. Ie. not loosing any dudes. Without that cheat it is not really possible. Game is so hard that a single miss-step can end the game. Luckily there is autosave. Wrote an review of the game and worked little bit on the wiki. Review here.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

This is actually pretty good. Really good looking game and the shaky-cam really works well. Although it gave me headache, but it was almost worth it. Had to go back to my review of the first game, because it had one the most annoying things were enemies could shoot you when you were behind the cover. Same still here. Also bit too much warehouse action, but the Shanghai city sequences are cool. Even when playing as a naked "bear-ly" man. And of course the game had to have a helicopter battle. The multiplayer sounds interesting, but I just didn't like the shooting too much. Enemies require way too many bullets to kill and then the shooting through the cover thing. Still, the 4-5h it took me to finish this was worth it. Don't think I payed more than fiver of this anyway. Both this and the first game are decent enough and the game would have potential with the gritty ideas. Bit more polish, especially around the shooting wouldn't hurt.

inFamous

Used pretty much one Saturday on this. Not because it was so good, just had the opportunity. Anyway I excepted this to be so much better than Prototype, but no. Brad gave this 5 stars which I can not understand. The platforming sequences are clunky as hell. Often there is no clear way where to go. Also what's with the enemies constantly shooting at you, especially on the latter part of the game. Still I think this is better than Prototype, just slightly. Game could also have used a proper means of transportation. Grinding on the rails and cables is fun, for a while. In the end very slow and annoying looking for a new route. Especially across the three islands. Played the game on evil, what else.

Beyond Good and Evil HD

The original game is from 2003 and it had a nasty bug. When entering the Slaughterhouse level it is possible that your companion is not following you as he should. Well guess what? The 2011 version of this game on modern consoles has the same bug. That is quite an achievement eh?! They re-do all the art assets in the game but leave glitch that was on every version. PC/PS2/Xbox and GC. Fucking morons. Anyway, this is my first attempt of playing the game and there is no way I can finish it now. Without starting again that is. Game is so good that it actually deserves it. Didn't mind the sneaking parts at all. Wasted about 5h, but the second run should be much faster. Will have a second try one day.

Art Style: light trax

My review

Two week break here

Battlefield 3 - Open Beta

Have this sucker pre-ordered and the open beta doesn't change that. Heard lot's of grumble on the presentation and some of the bugs, but personally didn't really experience any of this. Lot of people consider this as an early demo, which of course it is not. For those it would worked better with more open Battlefield type map. Anyway I really liked the map. The indoor metro action gets really hectic and there is a certain strategic aspect that reminds me of old R6 games. My brother who has almost become a professional BC2 player at this time had some serious worries about BF3. Mostly because at his dorm/flat doesn't have open enough internet access for Xbox and what not. And I haven't gotten around fixing it for him. He is studying to become a engineer but still I fix these for him!? Or should be. Anyway, what he has done is to get one these mobile broadband dongles. Just so that he can hook up his Xbox online. Else he could only play during the weekends. And that is something he can not have. Especially when there is a chance that I surpass him. I think he has closer to 250h on BC2 now where i just passed 100h.

Fifa 12

Right. Don't want to get a subscription on yearly EA sport games, but had to get this since I skipped the last one. Fifa 11 that is. Can not live in the UK and not be interested in football. My beloved Arsenal are playing so poorly atm so what better way to compensate than doing it myself(kind of). With improved squad and all. Played some Ultimate Team, but it is kind of pointless after certain point. To get to gold level at least. Need to grind so much of the bronze and silver games to get there. It is possible to buy gold card decks with real money, but no way I will be doing that.

Started career mode with Arsenal recently. Playing around with difficulty settings, with the new sliders this really easy. Still tuning the balance. Can probably get by on world class with assist on, but prefer playing without. Some playing on Professional to get used to it. Regret a bit that I bought it on a release week and paid full price. Need to delay Dark Souls because of this. Principle of getting 3 full priced titles in a month is daunting, even if I can afford it. Changes are I won't have time to play when they are fresh anyway. Got still un-opened Mass Effect 2 from its release data?!

The Binding of Isaac

The last previews and gameplay of this before the release wasn't really promising. Yet still I ended buying this. And glad that I did. This really nice and simple roguelike. Edmund's grotesque art-style and Danny B's chiptune really go well together. So far I've beaten mom only once. Took about 15 tries. Maybe get back to this. At least with the Halloween update if not before. Made me think of the first roguelike I ever played. Gateway to Apshai for the C64. Reading about the game now doesn't categorize it as roguelike. Although I am sure it had random dungeons and one life.

The Saboteur

My wife was away for a weekend which allowed me finally to play this. Well didn't want to play it on the small TV so I had to wait. Why you may ask? Well, my wife is German and in The Saboteur you kill a lot of Germans, a lot. Yes these are Nazis and Nazis are evil. Also this is just a videogame. Still, it would have been to strange. This gives me an idea of another blog.

Shank

Started playing this quite late in the evening and was just going to do few levels. Ended up finishing it one sitting. Really enjoyed it and the complaints about the game being repetitive is something I would not agree with. Nice variation with the weapons and bosses. Only the last boss giving bit more trouble. Thanks to its irregular patterns. So maybe slightly easy/short. Same time i am not interested in the Hard Mode because there are no checkpoints. Thought that the normal level just had decent amount of those.

The Darkness

Oh my, not my usual genre. Horror that is. Not that there is much horror here. Missed this originally because Didn't know that Mike Patton was here when this was released. News of his return on sequel made go back to the first game. Length was just enough for me to finish this before arrival of GOTY. Picked easy difficulty because was kind of expecting a janky experience. Also tend to be bit sissy on the horror stuff. Anyway, not a bad game. The shooting which seems to get most critique wasn't the problem for me. The fact that the progress in "open-world" is so poorly explained made me almost quit the game few times. A bit more subtle map/checkpointing would have helped. One good example was one sidequest where I had to go a room 216 and kill some mobster or something. If the game told me about which building I was supposed to go when getting the quest I missed it. The quest on inventory literally says room 216, but not in what building or street. WTG! Still finished the game and thought it was decent enough. The Dark Void kind of overpowered and Patton's voice bit too dark/distorted. Promising what I would say.