Since my last post I’ve played kind of a lot of stuff.  I finished Resistance 2, got a whole bunch of trophies, and had a lot of fun with it.  I tried going back and playing it on hard, but started getting frustrated when I couldn’t beat the huge spinner boss, so I don’t think I’m going to commit to it, just like what happened with BioShock.  I don’t know how the hell I managed to get up the motivation and drive to beat Uncharted on the hardest difficulty setting.  Maybe I was just excited that it was the 2nd game I played for trophies.  Anyway, I started playing online, but didn’t really get into it like I thought I would.  Granted, all I’ve played so far is competitive multiplayer so I haven’t even tried co-op yet.  I may really enjoy co-op, so we’ll see.  So far its just confirmed that I’m really not very good at multiplayer deathmatch type of gameplay.  I still really enjoy playing Call of Duty 4 multiplayer, but I don’t think I would have as much fun with R2, which disappoints me a bit.  I guess I’ll find out for sure once I get around to playing co-op.

Also, I’ve been playing a lot of PSN games.  The most significant of which is Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix.  It looks amazing and plays nice, but like R2 its only cemented the fact that I’m really not very good at fighting games anymore.  This saddens me too, because I really really want to play and be good at fighting games and online shooters.  I loved playing Street Fighter 2 Turbo back in the day and was disappointed to find out that I had serious trouble doing well when playing the computer AI on medium difficulty.  Even after I switched to easy, I was still using up continues on almost every character I fought.  If I can’t even beat the computer, I won’t be able to even phase a live opponent.  Its to the point where I don’t even known if I should play Street Fighter IV because I won’t be able to do it.  I’ll spend more time with HD Remix but I fear I will never be very good at it.

The rest of the stuff I’m playing can be listed quickly:

Super Stardust Portable - This turned out better than I thought it would!  The lack of another analog stick forced the developers to use the four face buttons in a pretty creative way.  You can basically move your finger over the buttons like it was a joystick and the game can interpret the movements into a relatively decent facsimile of the smooth aiming movement.  And if you tap the buttons quickly in a specific direction, it automatically sprays your shots.  Its still no match for an actual analog stick, but it works better than I thought it would.  Also, the PSP could not handle showing the full 3D world, so they flattened out the playfield somewhat and made it loop around on itself so you still get the freedom of movement and layout of a 3D globe to fly around.  Its nice that they took the time to think about and address some of the limitations of the system, and it seems like their effort has paid off.

Age of Booty - Downloaded this when it came out but haven’t started it yet.  Want to though.  It sounds fun.

Blast Factor - I was enticed to try the demo once I found out it had been patched for trophies.  Its really awesome!  Its wierd playing a dual joystick shooter in a confined space after playing so much Super Stardust, but I really like the variety of the enemies and the presentation.  It gets really hard though.  Although, any dual stick shooter worth their salt gets insane after a while, so I guess its ok.

Soldner-X - This is a pretty cool side scrooling shooter.  Way hard, but cool music and cool weapons.  It reminds me a lot of Einhander, which is not a bad thing at all.  Einhander was awesome.

Prince of Persia Classic - I like this game but its way harder than I expected.  Probably won’t play it too often, but its fun for when I feel like playing that kind of game.

I also downloaded The Last Guy and Commando 3, because of Sony’s $5 sale.  Cool games, but not a lot of substance to either one.  $5 is just the right price for them.

Oh, and I checked out the latest issue of Qore due to it being free, and I gotta say I’m not that impressed.  I’ve been wanting to check it out but have not been willing to pay for it.  Its ok, but there’s nothing in an issue of Qore that can’t be gotten for free online.  I’m not willing to pay for it just for slightly different interviews and a few free demos and themes.

So far the only new retail games (this holiday season mind you) I have but haven’t gotten to yet are LittleBigPlanet, Dead Space, and Valkyria Chronicles, so I’m pretty proud of myself.  Next up is Age of Booty and Dead Space.  Plus I figure I’ll try R2 co-op.  I have to give it a chance.  Maybe it’ll blow me away?