Hey! I've decided that I'm going to start using this blog to keep a record of what I've been playing in a given week. This is partly for my own devices, to help me work on my sizable game backlog; it's also an assignment for my History of Video Games class. In this first installment, I might be reaching back a little further than a week, because I should have started this thing a while ago. So here's what I've been playing!

Bastion - I went back into Bastion for two or three hours to clean up the last few achievements and finish my New Game +, and it was just about as good as the first time through. I liked the subtle changes in narration, and the world was just as fresh the second time through. The only thing that nagged at me about it was that the ending I picked the first time through wasn't the one that justifies there being a NG+, and though it's cool that one of them does offer a story beat for the inclusion of that feature, it was a little disjointed for me. Didn't cut down on my enjoyment of the game, though.

Burnout CRASH - After spending an hour or so with CRASH, I can't help but feel like Criterion chose the wrong perspective for this game. It's fun, and the pinball comparison is a fairly apt one, but I don't find the action as satisfying as the Crash mode in other Burnout games, and for a game that had the opportunity to remind me of Hot Wheels: Crash! I find that disappointing.

TrackMania 2 - I probably spent five hours or so with TM2 and I think it's a pretty great game with pretty bad features. The driving is very satisfying, and competing for the best time with 40 other people on crazy tracks is a lot of fun. If that's all you want to do, you will enjoy this game with no caveats. However, if you want to use a custom paint job on your car, or do anything related to hosting a server, you'll have to jump through a lot of hoops and it might put people off that the developers failed to include any tutorials on the game's features outside of the racing itself.

That's about it for this blog, hopefully I'll be putting these up on Mondays from now on. Looking forward to playing the Battlefield 3 beta this week/right now.