April, huh? It's been a while.

Writing can be tough. Give me a blank screen and no specific topic, and there's a good chance I'll write absolutely nothing. In saying that, I have been busy. The last 12 months of school have seen to that. As far as games go, this year hasn't appealed to me as much as 2008 did. Indeed, the only games that have impressed me in any huge way (or at least enough to have me remember them off the top of my head) have been Arkham Asylum and Uncharted 2. Which one more? Well, I'd have to go for old Batman. If there is one thing I like in a game, it'd have to be audio diaries. Which reminds me, ODST wasn't half bad either. And I'm not even into the whole space marine thing.

Merry December.

Given that this is the time of year that school decides to pick a fight with me (and inevitably win), I thought I'd write one last blog before things get too serious and I'm busy studying or at least guiltily procrastinating. Since I last decided to relieve myself of game related opinions I haven't played many new releases. This is largely down to my disinterest in most of these games (Street Fighter IV being a prime example of this). However I did play through Resident Evil 5 as well as some slightly older games.

Might as well start with the zombies. I'm sure anyone who happens to be reading this (for whatever reason) is tired of hearing about RE5 at this point, so I'll keep it quick. It's pretty good. To be honest, RE is not a series I'm particularly fond of; the control scheme, the story, the very concept, none of it appeals to me. That being said, I found the game to be fairly enjoyable. The incredible graphics, intense boss fights and... hilariously bad presentation of local co-op, all fought against my apathy and made the game worth playing.

The next game that immediately comes to mind is Too Human (timely huh...). For me, Too Human is the most frustrating kind of decent game. At every turn, something just prevents it from being great. Be it the slightly clunky controls, the somewhat off animation, or the damn Valkyries. OK, so the Valkyries are decidedly worse than most other aspects of the game, but they're still indicative of the problems that drag Too Human down. Overall, I still enjoyed the game. Although it was largely down to the fact that Too Human is the type of game that I generally enjoy.

Next up, Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction. I haven't actually finished this yet, but I think I'm close enough to the end to form an opinion of sorts. This is actually the first game in the series I've played, and it was mainly out of guilt for neglecting my PS3 that I played it. The gameplay itself is not particularly compelling, but the story, setting, characters and colourful art styIe that surround it most certainly are. The game has an all round (to use a technical term) pixar-ish quality about it, from the funny dialogue to the creative character design. I'll probably finish it in the next few days.

Besides these I have played quite a few other games that I don't feel like writing as much about, these include: Iron Man (...), CoD: WaW (good, but not good enough. Sorry Treyarch, you just can't win), Amped 3 (unbridled madness) and Need For Speed: Undercover (...). On the DS front, I finally finished New Super Mario Bros and have spent shamefully little time playing Chrono Trigger. I'll play through it eventually.

This post has a lot of brackets...

Let the writing of several lines of text indicating how I feel about a game commence:

Far Cry 2

This game is one I'm largely conflicted about. It has its awesome moments where the open world stuff plays off, however, it also suffers from just about every problem a game of that type can do. Besides these problems, it has a backwards difficulty curve, to begin with the game is frustrating, as you are constantly being attacked when you drive around the map, yet, by the end I was making it through missions without having to use many (if any) health packs. The game also has uniquely terrible voice acting. Most of the lines sound very rushed...bewildering.

LittleBigPlanet

LittleBigPlanet is a game that I don't find particularly compelling. It's just a platformer...a platformer with odd controls. Now, the creation stuff is interesting and playing user created levels is often fun but in the end I can't help but feel that this is a game which is massively overrated. To me, the only standout feature is the game's music, which I find to be amazing at times, especially in the Savannah levels. In saying this, I have yet to complete the game, maybe when I'm done with it I'll somehow be blown away.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

The vehicle building aspects of Banjo give it surprising depth. It can be frustrating at times, but finally building something that makes a mission easier is a rewarding process. Besides this, the game is wonderfully written and genuinely funny (I think I used that phrase in my last blog). The basic objectives of the missions can get a little repetitive but overall, the game is great. I think I still have to collect about 30 Jiggies before I can face the last boss.

Final Fantasy IV (DS)

After feeling bad about neglecting my DS, I pre-ordered Chrono Trigger (which isn't out here in the U.K yet) and bought Final Fantasy IV. I've played FF IV for about 30 hours and am about to enter what I believe to be the final dungeon. Besides some shoddy voice acting, the game is very good. It looks great, it's a good challenge and has a fairly interesting, if a little dated, story. I'll probably finish the game in the next few days and then start looking forward to Chrono Trigger, which I've heard described as one of the best RPG's ever. Hopefully it lives up to that claim.

I qoute:

"start writing them more regularly"

That was a lie.

The longer I put off writing these, the more daunting a prospect it becomes. I'm going to have to craft this in such a way that I can eliminate the various games I've played from my mind before it self-destructs. Here goes:

Before Christmas (BC if you will):

Shortly after lamenting the difficulty of a boss fight close to the end of Final Fantasy X, I finished the game. Apparently Aeons were the answer. I also played through Mass Effect again, getting some more achievements and enjoying the dialogue all over again. I almost certainly played several others before Christmas but I'll be damned if I can remember them.

After annual gift day...

I played many games. Underlined (or not) text shall represent them:

Dead Space

While I'm not generally a fan of horror games, Dead Space garnered enough praise and looked promising enough for me to give it a try. I'm glad I did because it turned out to be one of my favourite games this year. The game appealed to me in similar ways to Bioshock, it has an amazing atmosphere, an interesting setting and audio logs to listen to. The game's story isn't as compelling or original as it might have been but it's enough to keep you moving along. Derivative as it is, Dead Space in sublimely crafted game. Play it.

Fable 2

As a fantasy RPG, Fable 2 is a game my various interests won't allow me not to buy. The stand out feature of the game is its world, Albion. The land is full of interesting and genuinely funny, well voiced and well written characters, a rarity in video games. The game's story is entirely forgettable but does take you to several interesting places for long enough periods of time for your various morally charged choices to take effect and shape the world. The combat in the game is fine and stays relatively interesting for the entirety of the experience.

Gears of War 2

I wasn't particularly excited about playing Gears 2 until I had actually played a good chunk of it and remembered how awesome the original was. So much so that I played through the single player campaign in one sitting. Gears 2 improves on the original in enough ways to make the concept of shooting aliens from behind cover interesting all over again. One of the main improvements was the addition of an actual story to the series, which makes moving from one showdown with monsters to the next far more meaningful than it was in the first game. As far as multiplayer goes, my indifference knows no bounds.

Expect Act 2 in 6-8 weeks.

These blogs are all too quickly becoming a monthly event, giving me too much to write about at once. My fragile mind can't handle it. I'll do my best to make this somewhat sensible and then hopefully start writing them more regularly. Where to start......ah, The Force Unleashed.

I bought and played through twice, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Once on normal and once again on Sith Master, although I mainly sprinted through the latter. I found the game to be very good. The story, although a little contrived, was entertaining and better than any of the new movies. The graphics and sound were the other high point, with solid voice acting, again better that the new movies (damn you Hayden Christensen) and the music you expect from a Star Wars product at this point. The gameplay on the other hand was a bit all over the place. Using the force to throw guys around was fun, but when the game started introducing Force resistant enemies and cheap boss battles things got a little tiring. Lightsabers without dismemberment doesn't play anymore. Still, overall it was worth playing.

Following that I played some Alone in the Dark. Don't play that game. I'm not going to anymore. I got to the second last mission and the game is asking me to burn all these roots (of evil) that have appeared. To do that I have drive around an apocalyptic Central Park in a car that controls as if it has the ability to fly but is scared of heights and when it touches a kerb it gets enough courage to fly several feet in the air but then gets scared again and comes back to the ground (my obtuse way of saying the physics are terrible). I refuse to play it anymore, especially when I have games like Fallout 3 to play.

What a segue. Fallout 3 is awesome. It would be fair to say that it's basically a post-apocalyptic Oblivion. Because of this, the game has some of the same problems that Oblivion had, such as repetitive environments (metro stations) and stilted NPC behaviour. In other ways it has improved on Oblivion with sharper dialogue and more voice actors and unique character models. The combat is fairly satisfying as soon as you get the bloody mess perk and remains fun throughout. The best thing about the game though, as it was in Oblivion, is interacting with the different, interesting characters in the game, completing side-quests and exploring the world. I've played the game for 40 hours and have done most of the quests I can do, all I've got left to do now, is explore the world collecting, killing looting and so forth. If you liked Oblivion, or just like the idea of the game, definitely check it out, its few flaws are easy to overlook.

Apart from that I've continued to dabble in Pokemon Diamond, The World Ends with You and New Super Mario Bros. I'm on the last world Mario and it is damn difficult. I'm also close to the end of Final Fantasy X and after finding the game to be mostly easy, the second last boss is proving very difficult. What makes it more frustrating is that there is about 10 minutes of build up that there is no way to circumvent. I'll do it eventually though. True to form, I've once again been toying with the idea of getting back into WoW. Just to tide me over until Christmas when I'll have all the new games that I wanted. I'll be level 80 by 2012.