Fez, VF5, Space Marine, and way too much Choplifter HD.
By MooseyMcMan 12 Comments
It's been a while since I've wrote up a proper blog thing here on GB. I didn't really play much new stuff after Gears 3 for a while. I went back to Mass Effect 3, and S-Ranked it. As you probably know by now, that new ending DLC is out tomorrow, but I have low expectations for that actually addressing any of the issues I have with the game, and the fact that you apparently have to go through the last couple of missions (I presume just as a way of getting your current Galactic Readiness score) bums me out, because I was planning on using my old save from when I had max Readiness. I'm not spending another day grinding that out for an ending that will probably just disappoint me anyway. So I'll probably just YouTube some of that stuff once people find out what it is and get the various versions of it online. I'll probably play through it at some point, but not soon, because I've been using my PS3 a lot.
Why, you ask? Well, aside from liking the PS3 more than the 360 (for various reasons I shan't go into), I bought three months of PlayStation Plus because I was super bored and there was a lot of stuff that could be downloaded there. I've already more than gotten my money's worth, and I'm still not done with the stuff I've downloaded, and there should be more stuff next month. Much like last summer when I got the most out of the free month of PS+ that everyone got, this has resulted in my playing a lot of older/really good games that I had missed.
Like Virtua Fighter 5. Okay, technically it's the Final Showdown version, which is new, but I never played any previous version of this game. Or any Virtua Fighter game. The closest I ever got was Shenmue, which was a game about story and exploration first, combat second or third. Anyway, VF5 is pretty great. Too complex for me to really grasp, at least with the amount of time I'm willing to put into it. But I've had some fun with it, and it has that great "This game was made in Japan" feel. Stuff like the characters. One of them is a Canadian professional wrestler named Wolf Hawkfield. And the voice acting! It's great! By which I mean it's bad, but in a great way. I wish there was more of it, but that's just me being spoiled by last year's Mortal Kombat. But really, expecting all that from a $15 game (that has its origin in a time before that specific MK game) is unrealistic.
Then I played Choplifter HD. I link to that page because I wrote all of it, and I feel like I wrote far more than that game deserves. Not that I made stuff up, or that the game doesn't have enough stuff going on to warrant that much text. I just feel like it's mediocre at best, and I've spent far too much time thinking and writing about that game. The best part about it is that Duke Nukem has a cameo appearance, and he's voiced by Jon St. John. Four or five lines of dialog from a tired old character whose last game was a train wreck. I dunno. It's not a bad game, and I had some fun with it. Some of the humor is kinda funny.
Then I started playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. That game is awesome, and I had a lot more fun with it than I expected. I don't really have much to say about it that hasn't already been said, but I do think they could have done a little better job explaining stuff to people like me who don't know much about the Warhammer 40K universe. All I really knew before going into it was what Vinny has said on the site since Space Marine came out. Enough to get by, but not really enough to have a solid understanding of what's going on. Not that I want to go all out Vinny-style on it and start reading Warhammer 40K books or anything. I guess I could have looked some of it up on Wikipedia, but too late now. I hope they make a sequel to the game, because it's excellent, and I definitely want to see more of this universe, specifically in the form of another action game. And I'll buy that one, instead of getting it free on PSN. I feel kinda bad for not buying it, what with THQ being in financial trouble and everything.
And after I finished Space Marine, I discovered that Choplifter HD had DLC missions that were free, so I played some of those before finally getting fed up with it.
Speaking of getting fed up with it, I realized that I segued so well that I forgot to mention that I played Fez between Gears 3 and all this PSN madness. I really liked it, and I did just about everything without checking the internet, but there were three puzzles in particular (people who played it probably know which three) that when I looked up, I realized I never would have gotten them on my own. Fez is one of the best XBLA games I've played, and definitely the best "indie" game I've played (though I dunno how "indie" it really is, and I don't care enough to look into it). I cannot recommend it enough to those who haven't played it.
Back to PlayStation Plus games, after I gave up on Choplifter HD (those DLC missions aren't great), I started playing Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. And after getting through the first mission, I noticed there was Kane and Lynch character skins that were free to download, so I did. And I proceeded to play through the whole game as Kane (played single player), and I think it's great that they actually change the dialog in the cut scenes. I think it's even better that when they swear (and they swear a lot), they bleep out the swears in a comical fashion. Sure, I missed out on whatever the normal story is, but this was way better. And I made sure to replay the first mission with that on, and yeah, way better with them.
But with Kane and Lynch or the normal characters, I really liked that game. It has a much higher emphasis on puzzle solving than I thought it would, and I really liked that. The combat is fun, but at a certain level the combat is really just another dual stick shooter, just with more weapon variety than most of those. The puzzles, meanwhile, are pretty good. Again, I highly recommend this game to those who haven't played it. And play as Kane and Lynch. It's funny and ridiculous.
That was the last of the games I've played. I still have three more that I've downloaded. One is Hard Corps: Uprising. I've heard mixed things about that one, so I dunno. I probably won't like it much, because from what I've seen (the Quick Look on GB), it looks really hard and like it has really bad checkpointing. The second game is...Well, I forgot the name of it, but it's some zombie game that I downloaded because the description said it was set in Canada. Also it was free, but that's a given. But the last game? Well...
Yup, Just Cause 2. You may be thinking, "Moosey, how have you never played Just Cause 2?" My answer is that I don't know. When it came out I thought, "Oh, I'll buy it when it goes on sale," but I never did. If I ever saw it in a bargain bin for $20 (or even $30) I would have bought it. But to the best of my knowledge, I never did. Anyway, this is the game that sold me on the PlayStation Plus time, and I'm very excited to play it. I just played that other stuff first because I think this will take up more of my time, even if most of that is just wandering around and exploring (and then blowing stuff up).
I'll make sure to write something up about those games once I play them. And I'll probably throw something in about what I think about the new Mass Effect 3 ending. Or maybe that'll be it's own thing, because of spoilers. Or, if the mods are as active as they were with the original ending, I may just end up commenting on a forum here. But I'll get my opinion about it out somehow. I've spent too much time playing, thinking, and writing about the Mass Effect games to not do that. I just don't think it'll be good. It's a shame too, because I liked most of the story stuff in Mass Effect 3. It just kinda implodes within the last hour or so.
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