I had somehow told myself that I had previously tried Saints Row 2 and disliked it. Decided to give it another chance - and turns out I was wrong. On the bright side, it's much better than I thought it would be. It's still a GTA clone, and I disagree with those who think that SR2 is better than SR3. I like the crazy, and SR3 just has a little bit more (and then some) crazy. <br>

Still, pretty good. Hasn't aged terribly bad, though I had some pretty bad technical issues with low framerate and regular crashes.

Without the spoiler that there was more to Little Inferno, it's unlikely I would have played it. Having done so, I'm glad I saw it - it's a rather short game, 4h+, probably, depending on how fast you solve the "puzzles". <br>

Overall, it's a terrible and heartwarming story that lays it on a bit thick at times. Still, very nice.

(and Gravity Bone). Huh. I've been meaning to play these for a long time - and I finally got around to it. Truly a weird experience. Still not entirely sure what was going on, but I think I enjoyed Gravity Bone more - it felt less disjointed. Then again, the platforming wasn't great... so about the same, maybe? :)

(on iPad) Fun puzzle game, though felt it kept going too long - felt a lot like the developer ran out of ideas for the last quarter or so of the game, and just pushed out easy content. <br>

Another negative is that the game relies heavily on randomness, much more than it does on actual matching skill. Best way of progressing is just having luck with creating cascades of combos. But it's fun for quite a while!

Very cool puzzle game, though... I do think it's a bit sterile and at least I solved most puzzles by trial and error - there's a lot more reacting and a lot less thinking involved when the rules of the puzzles are changing every time you turn around. So, yeah. Cool - and I hope the non-euclidean geometry inspires future games developers.

Such a loaded franchise. I've been watching the development of this game... uh... actually, I haven't, because I stopped caring about the Devil May Cry franchise after...2? So why did I pick it up? Because I watched videos of it post-release and it turned out that it looked amazing.<br>

In fact, I think that Devil May Cry is one of the most visually impressive "mainstream" games recently. They play a lot with locales and with transformations there of - to great effect. In other words, they are doing some things that "indie games" have been experimenting with recently, and I applaud the effort. <br>

End of the day, I liked the game (played on "Nephilim" difficulty), and I may return for a second pass on "Son of Sparda". I think that this reboot is the smartest thing they could do with the franchise, as just smacking a "5" on the end of it and contining the way they had been would most likely have resulted in worse sales than what this most likely will get. <br>

I played it. I probably wouldn't have. I liked it. I probably wouldn't have. *shrug*.

Pretty good, though I did find some of the puzzles frustrating because of how "magical" they were - requiring something that didn't really make sense. *shrug* It's still good. Decent story/writing too.<br>

And I like the voice acting.

The Quick Look made me interested! Wound up beating it while watching the Quick Look... but at ~1 Dollar, that's ok.

Fun and interesting. Looking forward to the "next" one.

To be clear, I have no reverence for the Aliens franchise. I haven't watched the movies. I don't want to watch them. I think the franchise is an exercise in displaying human stupidity.

That said, I've had quite some fun with the Alien (and Predator) franchise games, and combined with being developed by Gearbox, I was sure this couldn't be a failure.

Sigh.

So... yeah, typical stupidity by the characters besides, the first level is extremely poorly designed. The weapons are bad...

Sigh... why bother? It's not a great game.

That said, I do think it's important to highlight something: The reviews going around are spewing a lot of hyperbole about how bad this game is. Yes, it's bad. No, I can't recommend it to anyone. but 20-30 out of 100 scores (and I mention this despite hating review scores...) are kind of blowing things out of proportions.

Anyway, meh.

I really like the Dead Space Franchise. I do feel like Dead Space 3 has lost something from the previous games - but on the other hand, I had so much fun playing through Dead Space 3 with a friend that I'm not sure how much I care.

That said, I do feel like a lot of the co-op parts are pretty cheaply made, especially in parts where Carver is warping around the world, to allow the game to tell the same story regardless of it being the single- or multi-player campaign.

Also, I felt it was a bit of a shame that only Carver gets the "Co-op asynchronous nightmares", as I, playing as Isaac, kind of felt like I missed out on something there - but it's a cool feature.

I did not mind the microtransactions much, though I am really, really worried about the future of microtransactions in "proper games"... and no, I do not trust major publishers (or other economical entities) not to balance games to push it's players towards paying for something that the game should be balanced against.

But yeah, Dead Space 3, great game, even if it is more of an Action game than the previous - but that somehow feels fine, because of the evolution of Isaac's character.

*sigh* After some 30-40 hours, my 2 cities are now in shambles. The first city appears to have broken in the cloud, as I can no longer even load into it.

The second city, has become a gridlocked nightmare OUTSIDE OF TOWN, as people line up in a enormous queue to get into town, not to mention that most of the city is also gridlocked.

For a long time, this wasn't a big issue. My first tower was providing my second city with Power, without requiring deliveries to the local power plant.

However. Now that the first city is gone, there's no power coming there, and the oil delivery trucks are desperately trying to reach the power plant.

Of course, the lack of power has resulted in a cascade of bad things

- My industry has shut down, as there is now power. I am now losing more than 30k/hour, from gaining 100k/hour.

- My sewage plant is pumping sewage into the ground.

- My Water treatment plant is pumping the barely treated sewage into peoples' homes.

And I'm at a loss how to fix it, as I don't have room (or money) to build a massive wind or solar farm. And I don't have the education to run a nuclear power plant.

And all other cities in the region are occupied by people who have already given up on the game.

Maxis, I wanted to love your game. But I'm really frustrated with it instead. :(

Tomb Raider has never been a franchise I've gotten very deep into. I have some friends who sing praises for the old games, but... besides a few vague memories of playing through one of them (No idea which that would be), Tomb Raider is a series I've watched from afar.

The new one changes things up a bit, and borrows quite freely from the design of Uncharted. The good parts - the climbing and traversing, the strong characters.

Also, importantly, it doesn't roll out it's super natural themes at the 11th hour to be a deus ex machina.

I thought Lara felt like a genuine person. She's forced through some messsed up things in the game, but comes out stronger for it. Despite some pre-release footage looking very extreme, I never really got a feeling that she was taking more damage than a human would be able to sustain and keep going - no doubt she'll be a mess of bruises as soon as she stops, but for the duration of the game, it seemed pretty believable.

I liked it, from start to finish - though... I do worry about where it leaves the next game(, which I'm sure is inevitable - not really a spoiler).