General Update 27: Famous last words!

“I’m not going to buy any more games!” - Chris Pragnell

It’s a bold statement to be sure, but and one that comes with a couple of caveats. Firstly there are 2 exceptions to this, Inversion, to be released on Feb 10th, and the second is Mass Effect 3, to be released on March 9th. The second caveat is that is my birthday is in February, so it’s possible I may receive games as presents.

Why have I decided that this is to be the case simple, I need to get through a lot of games. My list spans around 20 titles, that I need to start/finish the main story line. That does mean that it doesn’t cover those games I need to go back and put more time into. Here is the complete list, in no particular order.

• Spacemarine
• L.A. Noire
• Assassins Creed Revelations
• Halo Anniversary
• Bayonetta
• Timeshift
• Alice Madness Returns (which includes a download code for Alice)
• Metro 2033
• Sonic Generations
• Wolfenstein
• Ninety-Nine Nights 2
• Skyrim
• Deadspace 2
• Battlefield 3
• Dead Rising
• Dead Rising 2
• Star Ocean
• Rage

While I was looking through the stack of games I did notice an awful lot of first person Shooters, so my aim is to try and mix it up a bit so I’m going to start out with Spacemarine and L.A. Noire. Last weekend I managed to make some good progress on Spacemarine, and I'm liking the story which is always a bonus we all know I'm a sucker for a story. As for L.A. Noire, it’s a fairly long game and probably one I can get a decent amount of ‘Chievo’s on, plus a lot of my friends have completed it so I’m trying to catch up with them. 

My To Do List. . .

What else have I been up to? I’ve tried to go back and get through a few more games on my phone i picked up IloMilo earlier in the week, as there is no reason why I haven’t got any further on it. I also tried to pick up my xbox Arcade version as well but I'm stuck on one of the bonus levels. I completed Gears of War 2 on Insane with the help of my housemate. I enjoyed that, it also means that he’s able to now start Gears of War 3. 

This week saw the demo of Final Fantasy XIII-2 released. I downloaded it along with Asura’s Wrath and Choplifter HD which is an arcade title. I really enjoyed the demo for FFXIII-2, it looks very pretty, and has added some new features to that of the original that are interesting, and it does mean I’m looking forward to it, even if I do need to go back and put some more time into FFXIII. Asura’s Wrath intrigued me when I heard about it, and after playing the demo I’m not so sure. The demo included 2 boss battles and after doing some searching on youtube, for game play between boss fights and I’m worried that, as far as gameplay is concerned, it’s going to lack depth. Choplifter HD, is an HD remake, that I hadn’t heard of, but I thought I would give it a go anyway. It’s a good game but I don’t believe it’s worth 1200 MSP. It doesn’t have any multi-player, but it does have leader boards. In the trailer that plays as you exit from the demo it announces that there will be DLC for it, and following a quick google, it looks like that DLC will be free. Will that be enough to entice me to buy it, not at the moment, if I see it in the deal of the week then it’s possibly I’ll pick it up.

General Update 15: Only A Ninja Can Sneak Up On Another Ninja (or Assassins!)

So this is really my first post of 2011, but before I get into the New Year I do have one thing to clear up and that is my Christmas gift list. I received Nier, Gears of War 2, Assassins Creed Brotherhood, and Dead Rising 2, I also picked up FEAR and Dead Rising in the Game sale. I completed my First play though of Nier before returning home, I then moved onto Gears of War 2 which I completed on Saturday evening.

I started the game on hardcore and managed to get to the last chapter of act 4 on hardcore and then when I loaded up to finish off the game for some reason it changed the difficulty back to casual so when I completed the game I didn’t get the achievements for the other difficulty settings. I do aim to go back and play the remaining levels again in order to get the outstanding achievements.

After completing Gears 2 I tried Dead Rising, the original, as I want to know the story first before playing the sequel. Unfortunately I’m not sure if I am actually playing it right as I keep dying when trying to save survivors. It could just be that my getting the priorities wrong and I should just try and focus on the story until I get more experience.

After dying several times I moved off that and started Assassins Creed Brotherhood. While I’ve not get very far I have changed my mind about something. uPlay. I touched on uPlay in my post about Online Play for all, but it would appear I had it a little wrong. The points you unlock for completing certain tasks in the game allow you to download certain rewards related to that game. For example in Assassins Creed 2, the rewards are an xbox dashboard theme, a new map to explore, a new outfit and an increase on the number of throwing knives you can carry. I like this idea because the amount of points you earn from the game is the same amount that you can spend.

For Assassins Creed Brotherhood which has the same system and number of points available, there are more rewards than there are points available, which means you need to choose which rewards you want but can’t have them all unless you buy a different game and choose not to download the rewards you unlock for that game but it seems to me like a fair trade off. I’m not everyone wants the theme for the game they are playing. If you’ve completed the game you might not want to increase the number of throwing knives seeing as you’re probably not going to be playing it again.

Demos: Ilomilo & Raskulls

Over the weekend I tried a couple of demos from XBLA. I’ll admit now that I never actually finished the Raskulls demo, not because I didn’t want to, but because I was cooking my dinner. I enjoyed what I played, it’s an action-platformer that plays well, and looks great.

Ilomilo is a puzzle based game where you play as both Ilo and Milo who are two characters that you have to work out how to get them to meet. The premise is simple enough; get the two characters to meet and the game looks great as well.  

Out of the two my money went on Ilomilo, and while I’ve still not finished the prologue it’s defiantly one I will play, when I get some time.

Previous GamerScore:  51555

Current GamerScore:    52270

Increase:                         +715