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Stuff I've been playing recently

By artelinarose January 28, 2011 7 Comments

uhhh does this go here

I went out Tuesday and purchased three video games that I have been spending my unfortunately abundant amount of free time with. I've had enough time now that I think I'm ready to express my thoughts on them thus far.

Dead Space 2

Lookin' good, Mr. Clarke.

This was the big one that I went out for; I waited about a week to pick up the other two games here because I was too lazy to make the one-hour-both-ways walk to Fry's two times in a row. I went in, picked up the Collector's Edition for my PS3, and waited until it got dark to sit down with my significant other and let it entertain the hell out of both of us.

And entertain it does! This game is amazing on all fronts; the visuals, the great atmosphere, tight controls, creepy enemies, satisfying combat that is challenging but never bullshit, the perfectly times musical stings... it's very well crafted. The game is less creepy than the first, forgoing the sense of dread and isolation it worked so hard to maintain in the first for a more intense, on the edge of your seat adventure. There are still monsters closets and fake-out scares abound, but the real parts that get my heart racing and my mind jumping all about in a frantic effort to figure out what I need to do before the thing in front of me kills me dead are the setpieces; dangling upside down from a train hanging loosely from the ceiling or barely fighting off a giant necromorph as it slams me about the room, running down a hall and then into jumping into space to get away from it are the highlights for me.

I like that they gave Isaac a voice, too; he's sort of high pitched without being annoying. A good pick for a nerdy engineer protagonist.

LittleBigPlanet 2

Part of me loves this game and everything about it. The cute visuals, the optimistic "just have fun" attitude that permeates the entire thing, the simplistic nature of the gameplay. All of it. I spend most of my time just searching online for fun levels people have created in their spare time, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the ridiculous concepts people have come up with, or just how much they've managed to squeeze out of the new level creation tools. Every other level I step into I audibly exclaim "Oh, WOW!" It's mind boggling to consider what people will have done months from now, or even a year.

But I'll be a little honest here. I'm terrible at platformers. The WORST at platformers. I can go through a significant portion of God Hand or Shinobi on their hardest difficulties, but give me a platforming game and I will want to strangle myself with my controller cable out of frustration within a few hours. I don't know what I was thinking when I picked this up. I'm glad I did but ugh i am so bad at it i hate myself

My Hell has a face, and it is adorable.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

I love you, but fuck you.

I will save space and just say this: This game is huge, and it's great fun when it works. But this is not a stealth series no matter how badly they want to try and make it be, this 100% synchronization bullshit can blow me, and the controls suck ass at the worst times.

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Halo Reach's campaign has stopped being fun.

By artelinarose September 18, 2010 90 Comments

I picked up Halo: Reach the other day as your "standard" Halo fan; I think they're fun games, but nothing amazing. Following Reach before its launch there had been many, many sources saying "If you've played Halo before, play on heroic." I have played Halo before. I also don't suck at video games. I know better than to play on hard my first time through a game, but I figured what the hell.

As I type this I have just finished playing the level "The Package" and I feel like the game is dragging on. And on. And on. AND ON. AND ON. I roll my eyes every time the game throws yet ANOTHER wave of three or four high ranking elites, jackals and brutes at me, or a pair of hunters, sometimes two pairs at a time, while providing me with nothing but a very, very hefty stash of assault rifles and half ammo plasma weapons. Arguably the worst weapon in the game, and limited resources for inaccurate weapons that take forever to do anything to the friends of their previous owners. Some of these enemy combinations with the equipment they provide have taken me a half hour(!) or more(!!?)to defeat, often culminating in bullshit death after bullshit death. I have died more times in this campaign than any other game this year. Not once have I thought "Oh, I could have avoided that if I hadn't been a dumbass."

I am not one averse to challenge; I think a challenging game is often more rewarding when you can finally overcome it. Some of my favorite games are known for being suicide inducingly difficult; God Hand on Hard, Shinobi, the higher difficulty levels in the Devil May Cry games, Ninja Gaiden, etc. While most of these might be action games, I have completed my fair share of shooters on their higher or highest settings, such as Modern Warfare and its sequel, Halo 3, and so on. I felt a sense of accomplishment when I finally fought through and overcame whatever the game had thrown my way.

But playing Reach, I do not feel this. I feel nothing but irritation knowing I'm just going to have to do it AGAIN because the game continues to throw waves of overpowerng enemies without the proper tools to finish it quickly and efficiently in repeated bouts of artificial difficulty.

Fuck it, I'm playing on normal.

90 Comments