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Monday Gaming Diary: PSN Catch-Up

October 22, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

This past week I had a “week off” from the review schedule beforeMedal of Honor: Warfighterreleases (this Tuesday!). Since I only had a week, I really didn’t want to start a new game from my stack of shame, as I know I’ll never get some decent time to work on it. So I turned to a different stack of shame, the one that resides in my PlayStation Network. What’s been sitting there?

The Walking Dead (episodes 2 and 3),
DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, and
Journey

I started with The Walking Dead so I could somewhat catch up to the rest of the world. I prepared myself to get as freaked out as I did after playing the first episode, but Episode 2 was really more about how insane the surviving humans have become more than the zombies. In other words, I got freaked out on a different level, but at least that level didn’t give me nightmares. I played Episode 3 the next day and bawled like a big baby from about 10-15 minutes into the game until it was over. I was still crying when I went to bed, and I think I cried myself to sleep. If you’ve played that episode, then you know how incredibly sad it is. When you’re a parent, it fucking rips your heart out. I nearly risked waking up my son to give him a hug when I finished playing. I thought Heavy Rain about did me in emotionally, but The Walking Dead makes that story look like a walk in the park (it’s raining while you’re walking in the park, but it’s still a walk in the park). I hadn’t purchased Episode 4 yet, and both finances and stack of shame guilt prevented me from adding it to my list just yet. I’m not sure I could have played it anyway after crying so much post-Episode 3.

Thank God I had DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue to cheer me up. I hadn’t touched the second DeathSpank game in well over a year, so I was both rusty and confused as to what to do next. I was afraid I would have to start over, but after consuming a few Fortune Cookie hints for side quests, I was back in business. I remembered DeathSpank being funny, but I forgot how ridiculously funny it is. It was the perfect antidote to The Walking Dead. This is obviously what I need to do in between episodes of The Walking Dead–play plenty of DeathSpank. Maybe I should even play a side quest or two immediately after finishing an episode of The Walking Dead. Sure, I’ll be up far later than I need to be, but I won’t go to bed feeling as disturbed, right?

Sadly, I didn’t finish DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, so I haven’t gotten around to Journey, something I’m really remiss for not playing thus far. My podcasting cohort, Mr. Grundman, has also been strongly encouraging me to pick up Unfinished Swan, so it looks like my PSN stack of shame will grow a little bit more this year. At least none of these games take a long time to play, so there’s always the possibility I finish them before 2013. Don’t laugh too hard at that last statement.

Monday Gaming Diary: No more stealth games, thank you

October 15, 2012 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

I have the distinct pleasure of reviewing both the game and strategy guide for Dishonored, so it’s fairly obvious what I’ve been playing in my spare time since this past Tuesday. While Dishonored allows players to play however you want, whether it’s stealthy or guns a’blazing, you must have some stealth if you’re going to make it very far. Corvo is as resilient against swordplay and gunfire as Sam Fisher, so if you have no plan in mind, you’re going to be reloading quite a bit. We all know how much I such at stealth, so I always opted for a strange combination of the two. I only killed everyone if I had to, but I really tried to slip by most sentries most of the time. Too bad it never quite worked out very well most of the time.

Fortunately, my occasional blunders were rarely game killers and they rarely caused high chaos rankings, especially since I did my best to not kill my targets. That was another thing I really liked about Dishonored: there’s always a nonlethal solution to the puzzle. Your chaos rankings affect how your allies treat you and the ending you receive. However, this only added to my stress levels; I really wanted that low chaos rating at the end of most missions, and sneaking in, not raising alarms, not killing everyone on sight, etc. affects this as much as how you treat your target.

I was incredibly tense during my entire playthrough.

Between Deus Ex: Human Revolution last year, my sad attempt at Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Dishonored, I really don’t want to play another stealth game for a long, long time. I hope Assassin’s Creed III doesn’t have too many don’t-get-detected missions or I’ll be rolling on the floor and sobbing. Being stealthy puts me on edge to the point I don’t enjoy playing. I can barely watch friends play stealth games, because I get that tense and nervous on their behalf. I know for many, this is the appeal of playing, but it’s definitely not for me.

I’ve done my stealth game of the year; I feel like I’ve had paid some penance of something to someone.

I can play more Retro City Rampage now, yes?

Monday Gaming Diary: Harry Potter all the Way!

October 8, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

I know I said I feel the need to finish what I start, and I’ve left about three games hanging, but since I started LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 last weekend as well, I couldn’t leave such a light-hearted game hanging! Everything else is pretty heavy handed, and with the review season in high form, I NEEDED SOMETHING LIGHT. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

So happy to say though that I’m super close to Platinum-ing the game. I’m really close to wrapping the game up to 100% (only one Gold Brick left), which will give me all of the remaining trophies except for a couple of bronze. Those last bronze are the most annoying out the bunch–they require reenacting random fights between characters, which wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the one that requires Voldemort to Avada kedavra ALL of the versions of Harry Potter, of which there are like 20. Going to be hanging out at a cauldron and forcing Harry to sip lots of Polyjuice potion for 15-20 minutes at some point. Tedious tasks like these make earning a Platinum trophy kind of not worth it. At least it’s something that is easy to do and doesn’t require a ton of skill on top of being tedious.

Although, it’s not like I haven’t abandoned a Platinum trophy pursuit before due to monotony. I bailed on LEGO Batman 2 just because I couldn’t take doing the same stuff over and over and over in that massive hub world. I didn’t even finish playing all of Free Play modes because I got so sick of the tediousness.

You can argue that the Harry Potter LEGO games have the same amount of tedium, but it doesn’t bother me as much with this one. I have too much fun running around Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, and even Hogsmeade with the Harry Potter characters. I’m a bigger fan of Harry Potter than I am DC Comics, which I’m sure has some to do with it, but I think it also has to do with the fact that the characters don’t talk. I’ve said it before, but I really did not like the LEGO characters talking in LEGO Batman 2. I know they talk in LEGO LOTR, and the only reason why I’m not as hesitant about that game is because all of the lines are copied (literally) from the movie. It’s not a fresh script, and what is different from the movies does not have spoken lines from what I understand. God I hope that’s true.

I’ve also been exorbitantly pleased at how much the console version of LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 has NOT been like the Vita version. I couldn’t even finish the Story Mode of the Vita version since I hated the gameplay so much. I don’t understand why they’re so different either. I understand that the handheld versions can’t include the large hub worlds that the console games have, but does the actual gameplay have to be so different? Case in point with this game, the dueling for the Vita and the console versions were so incredibly different, and after playing the game on both, I don’t understand why.

After this experience and the experience I had with playing LEGO Batman 2 on both, I’m definitely not playing any future LEGO games on the Vita. The 3DS, yes, absolutely, especially after I found the absolute gem of a version LEGO Star Wars III on the 3DS over the consoles. I wonder what joys I’ve missed with not playing either LEGO Harry Potter game on the 3DS? Hmmm…maybe another time…way after I finish playing this current Harry Potter game. When you play these LEGO games to completion, they kind of suck a lot out of you and you don’t want to think of playing them again for a long, long time, if ever.

However, playing this last game has really made me want to watch the last three movies again.

Monday Gaming Diary: Finishing what I start

September 30, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

This weekend marked the first weekend I had alone in MONTHS. Normally my husband’s parents take Gabe for the weekends that he has drill so I can have a weekend to myself, but between my travel schedule and his parents’ travel schedule, I haven’t been able to take advantage of it in awhile. Normally I use these precious weekends to wrap up whatever game I’m reviewing. However, I’m having an unusually long break in between reviews, so this time, I played what I felt like playing and not what was in my schedule.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I really, really wanted to play Borderlands this weekend so I could see some semblance of the hype. However, my conscience took over, dragged me over to my stack of shame, and reminded me I have GOT to start finishing what I start. Since I’m still taking a brief hiatus from Halo, Halo 3: ODST was ignored once more. Bulletstorm received the proper honors, and I’m proud to say that I indeed finished what I started.

Bulletstorm was a fun romp that I really had trouble putting down. So much so, I finished the game by Saturday evening, just before I needed to seriously think about dinner. I rarely took breaks during that session. My hands were so cramped. There was going to be no gaming that night for sure, so watching the Avengers movie for the umpteenth time (yes, I’ve watched it numerous times since picking it up on Tuesday) took over my schedule.

So now what do I play next? I looked over my stack of shame carefully, and I begrudgingly made the decision to actually finish what I start. In other words, Halo 3: ODST and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning need to be finished or tossed. Once I finish Amalur, it will then be time to finally finish Dragon Age: Origins.

That was the plan, anyway. As I sat down in front of my TV on Sunday, however, I just didn’t have the energy to play something else serious. So LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 it was! After the constant under-fire action of Bulletstorm, a LEGO game was exactly what I needed. At least I know that if I don’t finish what I start with this game right away, it won’t be too hard to pick it back up. That’s the beauty of LEGO games.

Something tells me that this new plan of finishing what I start will be like any new diet I start; I’ll do it tomorrow.

Monday Gaming Diary: Zombies give me nightmares

September 24, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

I’m a complete wuss when it comes to horror and suspense, especially when it comes to the suspense that likes to startle you for whatever reason. I startle easily as it is, so those kinds of movies and games make me jump out of my seat. Case in point, while playingMass Effect3, I really searched every system for assets, which meant pinging an RF frequency that the Reapers really loved. If you pinged enough times, the Reapers visited that star system, and you had to leave or get captured–and I’m assuming destroyed, as I never stuck around long enough to find out for curiosity’s sake. Whenever they entered your system, their intro music was a nice, loud blaring of the horns. I jumped each time they entered, without fail. The fact that I have to wear a headset when I play to keep the noise down at night really enhanced it. I fully admit this is one reason why I haven’t started my Renegade playthrough of ME3.

What does that I have to do with anything? Well, this past week I played through the first episode of The WalkingDead. My fellow podcasters have done nothing but recommend this game to me for its story, and they assured me it was as scary as BioShock. BioShock was more disturbing than scary, so I figured I could handle The Walking Dead. Yes, I know there are zombies in it, and I know that’s potentially scary, but since they made it sound like the zombies were really second-fiddle as to what was going on, I assumed they wouldn’t be so bad. Apparently, my friends have no idea what scares me.

It’s more than the fact that the zombies are present and I have to kill them or be killed; it’s how the game presents the manner in which you kill the zombies. If you’ve played the game, then you already know what I’m talking about. The Walking Dead took many of the interactive game mechanics from Heavy Rain and greatly improved upon on them, and as such, the player really feels the absolute panic that the characters feel in how they fight for survival. You are “forced,” in a way, to feel how scared they are and how tense every encounter truly is.

This is brilliant for the developer, but it’s horrendous for someone like me. Every instance where I had to fight zombies, I could feel my hands slicking up my controller with sweat. I actually sat with my feet on their tippy toes on the floor, because that was how tense I became with each encounter. When a zombie surprised the characters, it surprised me just as much, and I nearly played Hot Potato with my controller. I stayed up for an hour after I finished playing, reading shojo manga, just to get the images and intensity out of my head. The attempt failed miserably, and I had one of the worst nights of sleep in a long time due to nightmares.

Am I quitting? Nope, I’m too into the story to quit. I definitely can’t play more than one episode in the same week, something that I’m certain the developers and writers definitely knew when they decided to make the game episodic. I’ll just have to plan ahead for the weeks that I do play an episode and prepare for a restless night.

The worst part is, I’m already regretting some of the decisions I’ve made.

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