Post-Halloween

October might be my favorite month. I typically couldn’t care less about horror movies, but for some reason I always need to watch at least a few of them around Halloween (always the awful ones, a habit i’m trying to break myself of). And having moved to San Francisco last July, I was excited to experience the holiday in the city for the first time (the Castro did not disappoint . Also, its the always the time of the year I get struck with that ‘oh shit, the years almost over’ feeling and force myself to swallow everything I may have missed in it’s first 9 months and drown my girlfriend in my thoughts. So I finally made a solid effort to catch up on games in the last 4 or 5 weeks and walked away feeling pretty good about most of them.

RECENTLY PLAYED

Spec Ops : The Line

I’m pretty sure my experience with SO:TL is the only time I’ve actually benefited from waiting to pick up a game. With all the ‘is this game great or garbage?’ talk that came out surrounding Spec Ops when it was released earlier this year, I was hesitant to check it out at all. After a few weeks I decided to focus on living life and forgot about it entirely until I saw it for super cheap and decided to finally pick it up having lost track of all preconceived emotions i had felt before. I made the right decision.

Yeah, the gameplay was middling at best, the disparities between the characters personalities in cutscenes and in gameplay annoying, and I died one-too-many times due to limitations the game accidentally placed on me by being somewhat broken. But the totally intelligent, effective and well paced plot-line and climax made up for it entirely; I, admittedly, had to take a moment to reflect on my actions after that epilogue. I don’t know, maybe im too easily effected, but I found the whole thing refreshing after having lost 5 hours of my life to yet another Modern Warfare last year.

Dishonored

The original Bioshock is a contender for my favorite game ever. I understand the issues people have with it in hindsight (combat, mainly), but I spent a whole lot of time happily wandering Rapture, wrench in hand, simply soaking up the atmosphere. I haven’t been as into a games mood like I am with Dishonored since that first Bioshock game. The art-style, clothing/architecture defining time period and musky other-world elements all combine into something that I just feel. Even if the gameplay wasn’t great (which it is) I’d still recommend Dishonored to anyone in need of something to help get them through the wait for Infinite.

Dust: An Elysian Tale

The whole Furry issue surrounding Dust’s release was of no interest to me. You want to dress up like an animal in a room full of others doing the same, you go right ahead. The fact that I spent a whole two minute reading a thread on the whole thing means it had too much of an impact on me. I have no issue with any of it, I simply think the animals in the game are just kind of obnoxious. If these voices/personalities belonged to human characters I would be just as annoyed, which is kind of a drag because I like the story/combat a whole lot. I just wish I could experience them without having a Fidgit in my life. Euch.

Asura’s Wrath

Man, I would have never expected to enjoy Asura’s Wrath as much as I did. Apparently, I haven’t matured as far from my childhood love for DBZ-vein anime nonsense as fully as I thought, and after having fist-pumped my way through an entire games worth of brutal, limb-destroying melee battles I put the controller down a little unsure of how I felt about myself. It took me a day or so to shake my confusion and come to terms with the fact that AW is just a great game as long as you’re willing to dive headfirst into something new and kind of frightening.

Borderlands 2

I’m not going to spend any time with this one because everything has been said, which is the reason I walked away from B2 after only a few hours. Gearbox should have just named it Borderlands 1 - 2. You can’t argue it’s a bad game, it just wasn’t different enough to inspire me to spend any time with it.

Sleeping Dogs

I’ve been totally burnt out on open world games in 2012. After spending a lot of last year in Skyrim, Saints Row: The Third and Minecraft, I began to miss the super-linear plot-driven games I grew up with. Then Sleeping Dogs came along and reminded me of how good it can feel to simply jump in a car and waste a whole grip of time. Super fun Batman-style combat, in a gritty GTA style city with a hint of Saints Row insanity, the whole game welcomes the player with arms outstretched like a forgotten best friend.

November

Now that games are starting to come out more often (and I am a little more financially stable) I’m sure there won’t be any lack of new titles for me to check out next month. Hopefully, a mac port for Hotline Miami will surface before I break down and have to hijack a friends PC, I'm getting real desperate.