I have decided to start a blog. This is something I have been planning on doing for about a year now and never got round to starting. I've always felt I needed a place to put my thoughts about what I have been playing. Even if no one ever reads it at least it forces put my opinions down and sort through them. So here we go!

Since this is the first one of these I will discuss what I have played in the past few month ish, starting with Catherine.

Catherine

So I live in the UK which means I had to import the game from the US which was actually a more difficult process than it is usually. It seems Atlus did not want any retailers exporting the game so I could not buy the game from either Amazon or PlayAsia. But of course these rules do not apply to Gamestop, who's online store not only allowed me to preorder the game but also sent me two copies of the game. So thanks Gamestop for allowing me to get the import tax back by selling my second copy.

Now onto the actual game. I have almost identical opinions to most other people about the game. The block puzzles aren't very compelling and sometimes just poorly built and then the ending just goes off the rails. I definitely enjoyed the game more than Jeff did though and actually really liked the end cutscene that I got which I guess was the true lovers ending. The block puzzles really let the game down. There were just some moments where I had completely no idea how to get past a certain part of a wall. Attempting to play that game on normal was a poor choice overall and if I do play the game again to see Catherine's ending I will be playing on Easy.

Perhaps with better designed puzzles or even better tutorials the walls would not have been such a problem. Futhermore I think either removing the time limit or the enemy sheep would have really helped the difficulty.

Alice: Madness Returns

Now onto Alice. This game is absolutely beautiful. I spent a lot of time staring at her hair and how it flows around her shoulders almost perfectly. It is all impressive stuff and even the art design is spot on for Alice's world. Wonderland is a very distinct looking place and each world has it's own unique style to it. As I progressed through the game I always looked forward to seeing what the next world had to offer.

Yet even the games beautiful style didn't make me want to play it. I felt I had to force myself to play the game and had a hard time trying to figure out what the problem was. I eventually discovered it was a few reasons. Firstly I just did not find the combat fun. It was a little clunky and a lot spammy. For most enemies I just spammed the kill button until they attacked me, then I dodged and carried on with the spamming. Then there was a lack of interest in the story, which is perhaps linked to my inadequate knowledge of the Alice fiction other than watching the Disney cartoon when I was a child. Characters barely got an introduction as Alice just talks to everyone as if I should know who everyone is. The ending is also very lackluster as I guessed who the final boss was going to be from the games first hint.

Borderlands

I am complete sucker for Steam sales and last week's midweek madness was one of my favourite games of last year, Borderlands. Even though I already have almost 5 days worth of play on the xbox version that didn't stop me buying and completing almost the entirety of the Game of the Year edition of the game. So yeah... That happened.

Darksiders

The final game i'm going to talk about is Darksiders. I started this game last night and it makes a really good first impression with a classic abilitease. The game is really good at making you feel powerful with heavy hits and brutal finishers. I really did not expect the events of the intro either. It was pretty awesome to run down the streets beating down both the citizens of heaven and hell while watching the citizens get completely murdered.

So I managed to get through the first dungeon last night and I am really enjoying it so far. It's style of God of War meets Zelda is really compelling and I can't wait to get this games version of the hookshot etc. Finally this games zelda secret jingle is pretty great.

That's it for this edition. So far I have no decided how often I am going to do this and future episodes may be a lot shorter as this is almost an entire summers worth of games. Any feedback you have would be highly appreciated and the inevitable spelling mistake corrections too.

Thanks for reading!