Help me play games: The Darkness Edition

So I'm back again, and I haven't come back fruitless. I beat the Darkness II, and I had a freaking blast. It was great and it was short; Steam puts time of death at around 6 hours. So with a new game out of the way it was time to pick another one from the mound of games I had bought and then neglected. However, as I dug deeper into Darkadia's systems, I discovered that there were way more games that I wanted to play than just the ones I owned. Not talking about buying more games again, but I blew out the selection process. So now, I'm not only playing games that I own but games that my family owns that they will allow me to play. This made my list a whole lot bigger than it used to be. Now my "Now playing" list is about 30+ titles deep at any one time. This would allow for a lot more maneuvering in the selection process.

Anyway, here's the list as it stands right now in the order that I want to play them in.

• Mass Effect 3
• Syndicate
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown
• Sleeping Dogs
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
• Rayman Origins
• Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers
• Max and the Magic Marker
• Metroid Prime
• Crysis Warhead (Replacing the Darkness II on this list)
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Far Cry
• Chronicles of Riddick
• Company of Heroes
• Penny Arcade Episode 2
• Warcraft III
• Hard Reset
• Banjo-Tooie
• Advance Wars: Dual Strike
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Zelda: Skyward Sword
• San Andreas
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Persona 4
• Mafia
• Mr. Robot
• Dark Forces
• Resistance 1
• Super Mario 64

And then MOAR PODCAST GAMES (more of the same anyway)

• Binding of Isaac
• Dungeons of Dredmor
• FTL
• Torchlight II

I kind of threw the ordering together, but I feel pretty alright about it. Still I would love suggestions from youse guys about how the flow of this list is gonna go, what mods/DLC I need to have a good time, and if I'm going to get burned out on a specific genre in this list. Also, suggestions for podcast games would be great. I know that Dark Forces doesn't have a phenomenal voice cast (or any at all) and I think it would do well as a podcast game.

So I'm back again, and I haven't come back fruitless. I beat the Darkness II, and I had a freaking blast. It was great and it was short; Steam puts time of death at around 6 hours. So with a new game out of the way it was time to pick another one from the mound of games I had bought and then neglected. However, as I dug deeper into Darkadia's systems, I discovered that there were way more games that I wanted to play than just the ones I owned. Not talking about buying more games again, but I blew out the selection process. So now, I'm not only playing games that I own but games that my family owns that they will allow me to play. This made my list a whole lot bigger than it used to be. Now my "Now playing" list is about 30+ titles deep at any one time. This would allow for a lot more maneuvering in the selection process.

Anyway, here's the list as it stands right now in the order that I want to play them in.

• Mass Effect 3
• Syndicate
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown
• Sleeping Dogs
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
• Rayman Origins
• Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers
• Max and the Magic Marker
• Metroid Prime
• Crysis Warhead (Replacing the Darkness II on this list)
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Far Cry
• Chronicles of Riddick
• Company of Heroes
• Penny Arcade Episode 2
• Warcraft III
• Hard Reset
• Banjo-Tooie
• Advance Wars: Dual Strike
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Zelda: Skyward Sword
• San Andreas
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Persona 4
• Mafia
• Mr. Robot
• Dark Forces
• Resistance 1
• Super Mario 64

And then MOAR PODCAST GAMES (more of the same anyway)

• Binding of Isaac
• Dungeons of Dredmor
• FTL
• Torchlight II

I kind of threw the ordering together, but I feel pretty alright about it. Still I would love suggestions from youse guys about how the flow of this list is gonna go, what mods/DLC I need to have a good time, and if I'm going to get burned out on a specific genre in this list. Also, suggestions for podcast games would be great. I know that Dark Forces doesn't have a phenomenal voice cast (or any at all) and I think it would do well as a podcast game.

X-Com

Mass Effect

Deus Ex: Human Revolution and

Rayman Origins are the ones that VERY much stand out as the 'not to judge but these ones are clearly better imo' kinda games.

ALSO, if you have not played The Darkness (1) you really should. It's a much slower pace and a more serious tone but to me a much more interesting and multilayerd experience. Not that The Darkess 2 is bad at all, but it's probably best to forget all about it if/when you play the first.

@bluefish said:

ALSO, if you have not played The Darkness (1) you really should. It's a much slower pace and a more serious tone but to me a much more interesting and multilayerd experience. Not that The Darkess 2 is bad at all, but it's probably best to forget all about it if/when you play the first.

He hasn't played the first Darkness and yet finished Darkness 2?!

That's not possible...if you haven't played the first game, that should be the next one on your list so you can make the connections. Just turn the aim assist all the way up, and have fun (because the shooting mechanics aren't that good compared to second game).

I would say to play Metroid Prime first, but that's just me being a bit biased towards one of the greatest games of all time.

Also, a little hint - mix it up often and have short games between long ones. Jumping between longass RPG's with nothing between them is a good way to get pretty burned out.

Both Mafia 1 and 2 are excellent games in my opinion. Mafia 1 was way better and had a lot bigger impact on me than any other open world game I've played. They are both quite short. Mafia 2 was about 10 hours. I would definitely recommend these two!

@bluefish: @AssInAss: The idea of this blog thing is to finish 5 games before I purchase a new one. I've already decided what my first purchase will be after 5 games are completed, and it's not going to be the first Darkness. Although I've been super interested in the first game and really want to play it, Far Cry 3.

@believer258: I guess that means don't play Dragon Age right after Persona 4?

@Solfege said:

Both Mafia 1 and 2 are excellent games in my opinion. Mafia 1 was way better and had a lot bigger impact on me than any other open world game I've played. They are both quite short. Mafia 2 was about 10 hours. I would definitely recommend these two!

I can play the first Mafia on my laptop so that may become my new laptop game.

Once you feel like playing something in the same vein of Darkness 2 (if not right after it), I suggest going for Syndicate, which is about as 'short' and just as blastery(?) as D2, maybe even more.

As for other suggestions...uuuhh, don't know, almost all the games on the list I've got experience from seem like lenghty ones...especially something like San Andreas and Sleeping Dogs might be bad picks, unless you just want to ignore the sandboxy elements of them and push your way through the story. Also spent plenty of summer days/nights playing Warcraft III and it's expansion Frozen Throne, excluding the multiplayer.

@JMatrix: Got to play Mass Effect 3 before it gets majorly spoiled by the bombcast.

I approve of the majority of the order of this list! I'd bump Persona 4 and Dragon Age: Origins higher simply because they're fantastic games! Also, Dragon Age III is coming late next year, and Persona 5 (or, if Persona 4 Arena has anything to say about it, Persona 3+4...) is coming sometime in the next couple of years, so it'd be great to get caught up and excited sooner rather than later.

And, well, it'd probably be fair to boost Skyward Sword up a bit higher, too.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1 said: Play the first 4 games on your list because they came out this year. You should do Mass Effect 3, Sleepy Dawgz, X-Com & Syndicate. Also, I'm totally stealing this blog idea.

The first 4 are good choices to play, Deus Ex:HR and Skyward Sword should be higher on the list in 5th and 6th place.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1 said:

@JMatrix: Got to play Mass Effect 3 before it gets majorly spoiled by the bombcast.

Oh, my bad, didn't catch the 'order to play in' bit. Seems good enough to me! Also reminds me that I should play through Masses 1 & 2 meself...

@Little_Socrates:

• Mass Effect 3
• Sleeping Dogs
• Syndicate
• XCOM
• Persona 4
• Skyward Sword
• Dragon Age

That should honestly keep me busy until new games start coming out again.

@awesomeusername: But...but! It's only my second...okay...

@Cold_Wolven: We will see how my mood is come the end of Mass Effect 3.

@JMatrix said:

Also reminds me that I should play through Masses 1 & 2 meself...

Yup...you should get on that.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1: Great idea. Mafia 1 is the best of the two.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1: I really like that order, yeah! That should keep you busy well into new games season; BioShock Infinite will probably be out by the time you beat Persona, unless you have a lot more gameplaying time than I realize.

@Little_Socrates: I probably have a lot less than you realize. Even less this week, but come the weekend after Christmas I should have a pretty good grip of stuff to play.