What exactly is this?

In all honesty I don’t exactly know what this blog will be, or even turn into. I recently decided to do a weekly write up of what I played, watched or if I am lucky enough to actually leave the house and do something interesting in the week what I did. Most people may find this boring (I hope not), but in all honesty its for me. I want to do this to hone my writing skills and I dunno, I guess its just something to look back on a little while down the line.

What have I been Playing?

Gaming has taken a back seat a little recently. I am not totally sure why but I am finding myself watching more TV in my spare time than playing games. When I do play games though I tend to only stick to one main title and focus most of my time on that. At the moment that title is Dishonoured. I have never really been a fan of stealth games. To put it bluntly I am shit at them. I don’t have the patience to sit there and wait for the most opportune moment to take out a guard or sneak past a security camera. I would much rather run out there and fuck shit up.

As far as dishonored goes I have gotten through the tutorial and the first two missions. I like the game I guess but its just not drawing me in. I never have an urge to play it. I think the problem is, I want to like the game more than I actually do (if that makes any sense). The art style is amazing and the game looks beautiful on the PC. I just don’t have the patience for stealth games. With that in mind and only being about 1 and a half hours into the game, I feel I have a choice. Do I carry on playing and hope that the later game content (the powers and story) is enough to keep me interested or do I give the game up as a bad job and just say it isn't for me?

Any other games?

This weekend I decided to do fuck all and just lounge around watching shitty tv and playing random games:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - Jumped into multiplayer for the first time in a couple months. Really not that bothered about the game any more. I think this will be the first year that I do not buy any of the dlc.
• FIFA 13 - Played a few matches of my Manchester United Career, again I jumped back into this game after a hiatus of a few months. I really like the FIFA games. I just can't play too much in one sitting. After 2 or 3 matches I get bored and want to play something else.

What have I been watching?

I actually went to see Django Unchained this past weekend. Oh my fucking god is this film great. I have always been a Tarantino fan, but this by far is my favourite of his. The cast are perfect, the soundtrack is amazing and the plot my god is the plot entertaining. This film is 3 hours of pure entertainment. It just hits every note. Its funny when it needs to be. It has amazing action sequences and the music in the film fits in with the theme perfectly. The stand out star of the film has to be Samuel L. Jackson, even though all the cast’s work is great Samuel L. Jackson’s character is amazing. You know what thats all I really want to say on the film for now just go and watch it.

What else have you seen?

In this section I just want to briefly outline anything of note that I watched be it TV or Film.

• Prison Break Season 4 - When this show was originally on TV I lost interest after season 3. I can see why now. The first season was amazing and, well it just went downhill from there. Season 4 is bad. Really bad.

Anything else happened?

Nope not really, I did go back to the gym for the first time in what. god it must be 7 months. I am really going to make an effort this time. I have cut down on junk food, 3 trips to the gym a week and at least for this month I have totally cut out alcohol. It feels good living a little healthier. I am not too sure if it is psychological but I do tend to feel more lively and generally happier.

The End

And thats it for the first in what will hopefully be a series of blogs from me. If I decide to drop Dishonoured (I am still not sure) most of my time will probably be spent with XCom Enemy Unknown, another one of my 2012 backlog games.

Thanks for reading and any constructive criticism is welcome.

I have the same problem with Dishonored. I'm really not to keen on games penalizing players for playing to their strong suits (i.e. getting a bad ending for not using stealth). I would much rather play balls out and maybe just miss a few acheivements like in Far Cry 3. Speaking of which, my only criticism is.....play Far Cry 3.

Do I carry on playing and hope that the later game content (the powers and story) is enough to keep me interested or do I give the game up as a bad job and just say it isn't for me?

Unless you have an academic interest in finishing the game or you're one of those crazy people that swears they'll finish every single one of their games no matter what, then no it isn't worth finishing.

Dishonored is by no means a bad game but there's something subtle missing. It's really hard to place my finger on it, but I felt like the game was punishing me for using the more interesting powers, i.e. the ones that kill people. Those sleep darts and knocking someone out? Yeah, you're not going to get any more ways to take out a guy non-lethally, but you're going to get a decently large number of ways to kill guards and traverse the environment. It's a serious design flaw, like the guys in charge of level design and story were fighting with the guys who did mechanics and combat.

...and that sums up my feelings on Dishonored as well, there's a good game there but it's wrapped up in conflicting ideas. I'm torn on whether or not I want to like it.

Great blog duder. Keep it up!! I'm hoping to do a write up each week about what I've been up to too. Yay more writing!!!

I don't normally like stealth games either, but I really dig Dishonored. It really does free you up to play with a variety of styles and not be overtly punished for it in the process. The gameplay really is very well balanced.

I just wish the story was a bit more gripping. It never seems like Bethesda spins stories very well to me. They create great worlds and great backdrops for stories, but then the delivery of the story itself is usually pretty stale. That's my biggest complaint with them.

Other than that, I think it's a kickass game.

Nice blog man.

I'm liking Dishonored. I'm just about to do the final mission (I think, unless there's a twist). I'm playing stealth, pretty much only using Blink and Dark Vision and save for a few incidents it's been going pretty smooth. Sure, there's been reloading but some of those were my fault and also video games. I'm only killing dudes when I really have to (I'm out of sleep darts or there's too many of them). I've only spared one assassination target though. The nonlethal method for one was too much hassle and the other I thought killing them was a morally better choice than the nonlethal option.

I wish they'd make more of the world though. You have to do a lot of reading of incidental stuff in the environment to get some detail (reminds me of Skyrim in that respect). I'm also having difficulty wrapping my head around this being a pretty short game. I play a lot of long games so it kinda shocked me that I'm about to do the final mission. I'm still convinced there's some kind of twist.

There is a chemistry between Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson that always jives for me and my enjoyment of Tarantino's flicks.

I think I will give Dishonoured one more shot because I really do want to like the game. By the way @kgb0515: I have played through Far Cry 3 and that game does stealth right. It never really penalises you for being caught. You are as bad ass while guns blazing as you are hiding in the shadows.

@rentfn cheers dude. You write that blog and I will damn sure give it a read.

Yeah I agree Samual L. Jackson is always great in Tarantino flicks but he is especially great in Django. God I love that film.

I just started Dishonored, and I'm getting the same vibe. I feel like I'm supposed to be stealthing everything (mainly because so many of the achievements are stealth based), but it isn't fun and just leads to so much reloading. I'm only about halfway through the second mission and I don't really care about it. I ended up getting that ash power for killing guards just to make things move a little quicker and not worry about bodies piling up

@frankfartmouth said:

I don't normally like stealth games either, but I really dig Dishonored. It really does free you up to play with a variety of styles and not be overtly punished for it in the process. The gameplay really is very well balanced.

I just wish the story was a bit more gripping. It never seems like Bethesda spins stories very well to me. They create great worlds and great backdrops for stories, but then the delivery of the story itself is usually pretty stale. That's my biggest complaint with them.

Other than that, I think it's a kickass game.

Nice blog man.

It wasn't Bethesda. They just published the game. Arkane Studios worked on it. I love Arkane Studio games to death but their games aren't ever too different from each other. It's almost always a re imagining of older systems. Just check out Arx Fatalis, then Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, then Dishonored and you'll see that are practically an evolution of the same mechanics. Kind of like how The Elder Scrolls have been.

I was thinking about starting something like this again. I did a personal website for a while, and was posting about 1-3 times a week about what was happening, but it has been a really long time since now. I think it's time to start that up again.

Sometimes with a game like Dishonored you just have to move on if it seems to be more work than fun to play.