Saturday!
1984 United Airlines "Big Shot" Commercial
I (finally) beat Arkham Origins and it has left me champing at the bit for MORE MORE MORE. So I’m going to play Arkham Asylum again, and see if, after that, I want to play Arkham City. Because, lemme tell ya, those Batman simulators are the bomb diggity. You’ve got the combat, you’ve got the environmental puzzles, you’ve got a fairly decent Batman story, and everything just *CLICKS*.
It’s rare to find a game that you want to go back to, I tell you what.
So… what are you playing?
I beat Arkham Origins, but I’m OCD when it comes to video games so I’m trying to find all the Enigma secrets (off-topic: was there a trademark dispute over “Riddler” or something?). It’s odd, because I’m super-disorganized and don’t care about completionism at work or at home, but sit me down in front of a video game and I simply have to unlock everything.Report
I think that they were going for origins for *EVERYBODY*. The Riddler didn’t know that that was his name or even his gimmick just yet, at this point.
Or so it seems to me.Report
I played a couple of rounds of Minecraft Survival Games last night. (It’s the Hunger Games, but with blocky people swinging wooden swords against each other.) Managed to kill a few other tributes before losing each time. I’ve watched a lot of play-throughs on Youtube and finally just went in and played a bit, myself. I might be able to try again tonight, but the internet’s not nearly as fast here at home than it was at my friend’s house.Report
I finished up To The Moon. Overall it was a good, short game, despite the lack of actual gameplay. It was a bit saccharine, but I thought the payoff was worth the ride.
With that done, I decided to go old school with Phantasy Star IV. I never played the series, but I heard good things about it, and I got the impression this was the best of them. Whether it will hold my interest long enough to finish, I really do not know.Report
It was all right, but I cringed when they played the Trendy Disease of the Year card.Report
I’ve started futzing with Hearthstone (Blizzard’s online WoW based MtG-style game). It’s free and in open beta. Interesting, but a lot more luck-heavy than I like, especially arena.
Plus, decade old Magic: The Gathering impulses keep getting in my way, like the deep and apparently unshakable belief that attacking creatures can’t defend. 🙂Report
I enjoyed Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, but don’t have Arkham Origins, yet. I hate the feeling of getting nickle and dimed over DLC, so I’ll probably wait for complete package.
The mobile version of Dungeon Keeper has gotten a lot of (negative) press lately, many using Hearthstone as a contrast, so I tried them both of these this week.
Dungeon Keeper is being widely panned because of its microtransaction system. The game is very limited in what you’re allowed to do at a given moment, with cooldown timers for almost everything. They range from a few seconds for the most basic actions, to a full day to dig through the hardest materials. In my few days, most actions seem to take several hours. The main issue being that in order to bypass the cooldown, you have to spend “gems”, which can be purchased using real money. They can also be earned slowly by completing in-game achievements. Without using gems, gameplay pretty much consists of harvest materials->build/upgrade->wait. I’ve rarely spent more than 5 minutes at a time playing. This is hardly a new style of gameplay and one I’ve never been a fan of and I doubt I’ll continue much longer. I think EA’s biggest “sin” was in using a beloved IP. If it had been named something else, I doubt anyone would have been outraged.
Hearthstone offers a very different free-to-play experience. You can play as long and as often as you’d like. You unlock the basic cards by playing and leveling up the various characters. You can also spend the in-game gold to by booster packs, which gives a chance at rarer and more powerful cards. You can also spend cash to buy booster packs.
On a different note, it’s been a month since I’ve started with Rocksmith. My skills have definitely improved. I can now play Next Girl by The Black Keys pretty well (by the game’s metrics, anyway, wouldn’t sound as good in a live performance.)Report