This is my monthly post and I am still catching up on games that keep coming out. There have been some really good games come out recently and I am still working on a backlog of games I haven’t finished yet. I tried to keep it short but failed badly I could write so much more about each game but people would get bored.

Metro 2033

It is nice to see a new IP, and to find out it is so well polished was very nice. It was sort of Stalker mixed with Fear (the original, the rest don’t have the same feeling). I keep recommending my friend to play it as I really enjoyed it. I was expecting the storyline to be good, as it was based on a best selling book but I expected the gameplay to lack. But the constant scripted events kept you immersed in the game and made you want to keep playing. I felt the game was a perfect length, it had everything it needed in it and in the end you felt satisfied by it. They had so many little that just added so much depth and you don’t even realise it, things like the gas masks; if you keep them on and get attacked they crack and break and become useless. Also pumping up your weapons to give them more power; I was shooting some men and I forgot to pump up my rifle and when I fired it, it just bounced off the guys helmet and he just went ‘what was that?’. Great game, would definitely recommend it to anyone.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

I can see why this game has such a fan base, it is actually a good game for the PS3. I had to get out my PS3 and dust it off when this game came. At first I was very sceptical about it, I played the demo when it came out and I really didn’t like the combat system, and I still don’t really; I feel more comfortable with shooters on the PC. But the storyline was interesting and so was the character interactions. In the end the game was very well polished and well made. I never really had any problems where to go or what to do in the game. I tried looking for some bugs, but I never found anything majorly wrong with the game. If you haven’t played it you should, I am looking forward to playing the second one now.

Mortal Online

This is one to keep my eye on. I have been playing it and trying to get use to it, it has a much higher learning curve than most MMOs. It is sort of like Eve in the fact that you have to set your character learning books that take real time to finish. There isn’t much content in, but they keep promising that it will be all added later. There are still a lot of problems in the game, there is no wonder they delayed it by another month really. It is not going to be a ‘WoW killer’ but if done right they will have a nice player base. If anything else they will have a bunch of naked man running about griefing and stealing from each other.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

A lot of people ask, what do you prefer? Modern Warfare 2 or Bad Company 2? My answer would be overall: Bad Company 2. The single player was far more interesting and I prefer the multiplayer as it is less run and gun and more tactical. I was so close to finishing the single player but now my save game corrupted so I might go back and try again. The multiplayer really does require your team to work together properly and stick together. I started out playing a recon but you really get punished playing them as you get no points per round. Then I played a Medic and you are just thrown points all the time, esp when you get the defibs. It is fun running out madly through a motor stick to rez your team mate then get back into cover. I still think it is the second best Battlefield multiplayer, 2142 wins.

Gyromancer

Another PopCap casual game to get addicted to. I was surprised when it said it was developed but Square Enix as well. If you like Puzzle quest then you will most likely like this game. I did find this game much shorter than puzzle quest, as I finished it within 25 hours (probably less as I would leave it idle while playing on my 360 :P). There were challenges to do and unlock but I haven’t started them, nor do I feel any need to do them. A nice distraction if you have any work needs to be done :P.

Global Agenda

A meh game. They made it out like it was something epic and fun, but in the end it is just another online shooter. It has some nice ideas, but in the end it is missing out is a massive amount of content. After doing the first few missions a couple of times I got very bored. There were a lot of people in chat saying things like ‘Is this it?’ and ‘This game is rubbish’ and whereas I don’t normally agree with the complainers I couldn’t find many good points in this game.

Lego Rock Bands

I was sceptical about this game at first, I figured that it would be very kiddie but I just wanted to play the Ghostbusters song; so I rented it. In the end, I really enjoyed this game, there were a few songs that I really couldn’t stand playing, but there are always a few in each rhythm game. The cutscenes and events were really well done, it has that Lego humour that travellers tales do in all their Lego games. Well worth playing if you like playing guitar games. I was also wondering how many people would have the wolfman as their drummer (I wanted to take a picture of my band but using a camera on the screen doesn’t come out well.)

Guitar Hero 5

Urg would my response from this game. After playing Rock bands for so long the game feels clunky and childish (yes even more childish than Lego Rock Bands). The only thing I liked about that game was the character and guitar creation. You could go into so much more detail than any other guitar game so far, but RPGs have been doing that for along time now. The song list was awful, there were no songs I actually enjoyed playing. I will still never understand why they pick good bands, but then pick their worst song. I wanted to finish the main mode at least but I just couldn’t stand the songs and interface.

Spellforce

I can’t believe I missed this one out when it was released in 2003, it must have been a quiet release. The only reason why I got it now was because it was on sale on steam and I wondered what the game was. At £4 I figured I might as well get it and see what it is like. I was so impressed with this game, it combines RPG with RTS so well I am surprised not many other games have done the same. The only one I can think of recently would be Dawn of War 2, but they didn’t have base building in it as well. It has so many levels of gameplay to it and it works so well. Even a game that is 7 years old, it still looks good and plays well. It is sort of like Warcraft games, but has more emphasis on the RPG side as you can get better gear for your main character, level them up and learn new skills just like any other RPG. I also get the impression that this game is massive, so far I am only using humans and elves, but there are spots for dwarfs, goblins, orcs etc. I have the second game too, I am looking forward to playing that as well.

Allods online

Now that Allods is out of closed beta and in open beta / release I gave it another chance and got some friends involved. They have improved since closed beta and the game flows a bit better. There are a lot of questionable things going on with the shop, but I am just ignoring them until they affect me. It is a very good game for a free MMO, very well made and fun. There are just a few things that bug me about it; sometimes you will own the mobs you are fighting then all of a sudden you will just not be able to hit / kill a mob and it is either the same level or lower, that happens too frequently. Also some quest promote grouping, whereas most others (like picking up certain items) doesn’t. The respawn time on intractable quest items is a joke, I waited for over 10mins for a stump to spawn and then someone else came along and looted it a split second before me. Slowly, one by one everyone stopped playing the game and moved onto better MMO or moved back to WoW. I tried to stick it out as long as possible, but after struggling to kill anything in the next area I gave up.

Stalker – Call of Pripyat

Best stalker out of them all so far, I managed to finish it first time instead of having to wait for a patch or two. There were one or two bugs, but loading your save seem to fix it. At first I was very disappointed with the game, they had changed too much and it didn’t feel ok. But as I started playing it I really got into it. The side quests are really well scripted and made me want to do them, although the main storyline is a bit weak. It is still a hard game, lots of saving and loading. If you liked the other stalkers, then this one is the best so far and worth playing. I also liked the ending: ‘because you failed to exterminate the bloodsuckers everyone died’ and ‘because you helped this man the town became prosperous’ Those kind of ending always make me laugh because they always flick from extremes.

Bayonetta

I was surprised by this one, at first glace it didn’t seem like a game I would enjoy. I was very wrong. The storyline was very wacky and hard to follow at the best of times, but the combat flowed so well. The only gripe I had about the game was there wasn’t enough combat, too many cutscenes broke up the action. It would actually be a game I would go back to and try the next level of difficulty and try and complete most of the challenges and secrets. I did miss so much out on my first playthrough. A lot of the time I would get a stone or silver trophy at the end of chapter, even though I would get platinum and gold most of the time. Would recommend it to anyone who liked Devil may Cry or Ninja Gaiden.

Wet

I played the demo and was ‘meh’ about the game. It wasn’t worth it to buy it, but I rented it; I was glad I did. I’m not too keen on shooter on the consoles, but in good games you can get use to it. I played the game as long as I could, but there were so many things that put me off. For one the checkpoints were so far apart, and being able to die so easily on the jumping bits it got annoying fast. You would try and jump a gap, but at the last min the camera would change and she would do something else and you would just fall to your death. It didn’t know what it wanted to be: a platformer, a shooter, hack’n’slash and action game. They tried to cram as many mechanics into the game and in the end none of them were any good.

Mass Effect 2

I don’t know about this game. Everyone seems to think that this is the best game ever and was way better than the last one. I must be getting more cynical about games, because I personally think it is worse than the last game. They have cut out all the things I really enjoyed about the last one; exploring the planets (Yeh the buggy was a bit buggy, but that could have been changed), levelling my characters, having a reason to have certain people in your party because of their skills and many more reasons. I am only 11 hours into the game but I feel no pull of wanting to play this game really. I will finish it and will truly make up my mind then, but so far I am not impressed.

I hate being unemployed because you think you have a lot of free time to get on with your portfolio or work. But because I am living at home with my family again I have to help out around the house and do odd jobs. I’ve been helping out my dad on some projects he has been doing around the house and I have managed to pick up some new ‘life skills’. Painting, tile cutting, tiling, grouting, wallpapering and general skills. After I have done all that I don’t feel like doing much work or even play games. So it is now taking me much long to get anything finished.

I got some 3DSMax books with some of the xmas money I got and have been slowly working my way through them. I have also finished Dragon Age so I started to see what the editor was like. I have been playing around in that and so far it seems straightforward. I have made a few simple modules, nothing amazing. I have been thinking of trying to make my book in the editor, but what I had envisioned would be more like an action RPG game. So I don’t know if it would be suited to Dragon Age engine. I will play around more and see what I could botch.

I have stopped progressing with my book any further, just dug myself into a bad situation and can’t think of a good way out of it yet. I have now gone back to iron out some of the kinks and sort out some things that were hazy. Then I was thinking about the era that it is set in and eeeeeeverybody sets it in a rural England fashion, with no technology or major progression like irrigation and other simple things. So I was thinking about our progression and what we invented over the years and then thought about what we would have done with magic instead. Like electricity wouldn’t have to be invented, it was there in magic form; it just needs to be harnessed and used for the right reason. They wouldn’t have to invented lights as they can make crystals glow to any brightness.  So they wouldn’t progress the same way we did, certain things would be different and some other things would have to be the same. They would have been able to master flight before us (levitating crystals and magic etc), so they wouldn’t have such a great need for high speed vehicles to get around faster. I think I might start the fact they are working on computers, but they aren’t ready just yet, in very experimental stages atm. They wont have needed to invent the telephone as you can use crystals as a long distance communication. There are a lot of other things that would seriously change their course compared to our, so at the moment I have been thinking of their progression and where they are set. Also how things would have been made compared to our ways of making things. I might have to draw some things so I can get my head round some things.