I was raised with video games. Some of my earliest memories are of playing Atari on an old Black & White TV. I was fully behind (and possibly lead the charge on) my family's decision to get an NES instead of going on vacation one year. So, it's fair to say that games have played an influential role in my life, for the most part. And, as an adult, I've come to the same conclusion that many people in my age group and life situation have also reached: I HAVE TOO MANY GAMES. When cost isn't as much of an issue as time, it's easy to stockpile games with the thoughts of, "yeah, I'll get to it at some point," or "I'd be a fool to not buy it at that price!".
So, my plan is to use this space to keep track of what I'm playing, what I want to be playing, and what I should probably stop playing. Hopefully, this will keep me on task playing what I already have instead of just buying more and making the "stack of shame" rise ever higher. At least, that's the plan.
It's written down, so there's no turning back now.
(The plan is for a weekly write up summarizing each day, but since I'm a horrible procrastinator and slacker, this entry is a week late.)
Monday 1/13/14
Don't Starve - PS4
-Free with a Playstation Plus membership (this will be a running theme). I already owned a copy of this through some Steam sale or another, but I had only messed around with it for a few minutes. To be perfectly honest, I prefer games on consoles to PC. I didn't grow up with mouse & keyboard controls and I'm a horrible, horrible typist. Unless my fingers can be locked to a select few keys (Diablo 3 springs to mind) I'll usually spend way to much time looking down from the screen trying to locate the "M" or whatever key is needed, and die horribly in the meantime. So I really enjoyed the way the controls were mapped to the PS4 controller. I also really liked the idea of "Sanity" as a stat to keep tabs on. In addition to keeping an eye on my Health and Hunger, I had to weave myself a little flower headband to keep my sanity up. It's a fun little touch: little arts & crafts projects to keep your brain sharp in between gathering enough food and fire to make it through the nights. I only spent an hour or so with it but it's definitely something I'd like to get back to. (Here's how my game ended, which is a pretty good indicator of my skill at games. I finally found some gold and made a science machine; and in my excitement to find out what else I could make, I failed to gather enough fuel for a fire and died when the dark set in.)
(SIDEBAR: Yes, I just spent the first paragraphs about a blog I started to keep track of the games I plan on finishing talking about a randomly generated game with no discernible ending. If you are looking for logic and common sense, you've come to the wrong place.)
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon - 3DS
-Grabbed this from my local library to try on my new 3DS. Yes, my local library is awesome. They have a huge supply of games for pretty much all of the current systems. When I grow up, I want to be in charge of purchasing media for my library.
I only played the first mission; which seemed pretty similar to the little bit I had played for the GameCube. (I never owned a GC, but I bought the original Luigi's Mansion for GC to play on my Wii. This will also be a recurring pattern for this blog: I bought __x__ for cheap, played it for __x__ minutes and then forgot about it and moved on to something newer and shinier. THIS is the pattern I'm trying to stop.) Anyway, ghostbusting (ghost busting? ghost-busting? GhostBusting?) as Luigi is a fun enterprise, but for the forseeable future my 3DS heart belongs to one game.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 3DS
-I consume a lot of gaming information, through sites and blogs and podcasts. And I kept seeing this game coming out near the top of all of the end of the year lists. Now, Link to the Past for the SNES is one of my all time favorites, but I had little interest in playing a graphically upgraded version of that again. Sorry Nintendo, fool me once etc. and so forth with your repackaged nostalgia, I'm done with that type of thing. Turns out, I was wrong.
I had a gift card for ToysRUs, they were having a buy 1 get one half off sale on 3DS games, one thing led to another...I'll spare you the gory details. Fast forward 5-10 days for shipping, and on my doorstep arrives a bouncing baby copy of this and Mario Kart 7. So I grab my son's 3DS, toss in the Zelda cart and: "Heh, I remember this," "Ooh, that's a bit different," "Wait, who's that guy?" "Hold on, this is...wait...I'M ON THE WALL!?!" "THIS IS SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT!"
Needless to say, double meat hooks, one under each shoulder blade, Nintendo had me. I ended up buying my own 3DS the next day. Didn't seem fair to my son to dominate his toy; after all, he saved his birthday money until Black Friday (on my suggestion) to buy it himself.
FIFA 14 - PS4
-My relationship with FIFA14 summed up in one hastily put together Photoshop:
And so another year if FUT use and abuse began anew. I will say this about FIFA 14: EA has created the best shirt-pulling simulator of all time, hands down, no contest. It's not all bad; for a while, when I was playing every day, I was able to progress in FUT Seasons (Offline. Always offline.) on the highest difficulty division. I got to the point where I could beat the CPU most of the time on World Class, and even get a result against Legendary difficulty opponents. But the problem is, on these higher difficulties, bronze and silver players are irrelevant. It used to be fun to get my bronze or silver USA teams and run a tournament against higher opposition but with 14 it's just not possible (for me at least). Even my gold players act in such bizarre and illogical ways at times that makes me want to throw my controller through the window. ("No! Why are you passing to him!!!?" "Just square the ball! What are you doing!" "Cross to the man at the far post, not at the top of the box, you idiot!")
Oh, and for real: JOHN TERRY WITHOUT THE BALL SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO CATCH UP TO AND EASILY DISPOSSESS ASHLEY YOUNG WITH THE BALL!
I cannot stress that enough. Again, refer to the hastily created JPEG above for a window into my madness.
Tuesday 1/14
Link
-Only played a few minutes, grabbed the Master Sword. Got distracted by Kakariko Village music. Tuesday's are tough because that's new release day. Or at least it would be if I bought my games new, which I rarely do. But this Tuesday threw a good number of temptations my way, all of which I'm happy to say I was able to avoid. They did all get added to my Steam wishlist, so let's see if I'm able to stay strong once the next Steam sale hits.
Temptations -
Broken Age - Not usually an adventure game guy (Walking Dead excluded), but the art style on this looks amazing.
Blackguards - Medieval/Fantasy setting? Check! Turn based tactics? Check! This ticks two of my favorite video game check boxes from the trailer alone so I'm interested.
The Banner Saga - My wife, who has no interest in games, walked by when I was watching this trailer and was mesmerized. Then she saw the gameplay and said, "oooh, this has your name written all over it." Yup. It sure does.
Wednesday 1/15
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - PS3
-Another Playstation Plus freebie, I think. I'd started this game early last year and abandoned it at the start of summer. I try not to play M rated games while the kids are around, and in the summer, they're always around. So I wanted to beat this one to finally reclaim some much-needed hard drive space on my PS3. It's just good enough to keep you playing, but not good enough for you to actively seek out. Stompy-clompy tank-men shoot and chainsaw through hordes and hordes of orcs (sorry, Orks) and the like. Really, I'm not down with Warhammer lore, but parts of the environment reminded me of Mass Effect. Maybe Wrex's home world? So really, playing through this just makes me want to go play the original Mass Effect (also occupying precious PS3 HD space). (I've beaten ME 2 & 3. Honest, I have.)
Thursday 1/16
Space Marine
-Stompin' and stabbin' through a few more levels. I love the idea in this game that you can stun and kill enemies in a certain way to make you regain health. But when the animation takes so long that you continue to lose health from other attacking enemies while you kill the guy, it ends up being a zero-sum game. Oh, and the multiplayer! I tried the multiplayer. Whooo, a dozen giant tank-men running and flying (wait, why can they fly and I can't?) around clompin' and stompin' and killin' each other. Honestly, this game doesn't control well enough for the multiplayer to be competent. And there's no way I'll stick with it enough to get any of the trophies out of it. Moooooving on.
Mario Kart 7 - 3DS
-Ah yes, the forgotten man in the Zelda acquisition. Still Mario Kart, still great. Love the flying bits. I played this one briefly before the start of this blog, but once my son got ahold of it, I haven't had much of a chance. Today I snuck in some time while the kids were at gymnastics.
Friday 1/17
Assassins Creed IV and Killzone Shadow Fall - PS4
-Got both of these from the library (yep, my library is awesome, like I said) and only played them for one night so I'm just going to lump them together right here. Again, I got swept up in the end of the year accolades that ACIV was collecting so I decided to try it. I played AC (1) and some of another one and they never clicked with me. But the pirate angle piqued my interest so I dove in on this one. Yeah, nope, still don't get it. I got to the first main mission in the first city and just wanted to stop. I hate (HATE H8 HAIGHT) stealth, and all of a sudden it's "tail this guy" and "hide in this bush" and "oops, I'm caught and forty guys are pummelling me with swords and nope, I'm done." Same with the multiplayer: sneak around, "stab that guy! here! try it against real people! oops, why am I dead all the time?" Speaking of dead all the time...
I own a copy of Killzone 2. I played some the the campaign and a fair amount of the multiplayer. I even owned a copy of the Killzone Collection. I forced myself to play through Killzone 3 quickly just so I could trade it in with a clear(er) conscience. But seriously Sony, stop trying to make Killzone a thing, because if it hasn't caught on by now it never will. Again, I don't care about the lore (British Space Nazis, or something?). I wanted to play this one because I read it was supposed to be a good showcase for the PS4. And it is, I guess? Honestly, I quit out of this one even earlier than ACIV. I like the stuff with the OWL, or at least the idea of the OWL, but the rest of it does absolutely nothing for me. I mean, am I supposed to be sneaking? Oh, hey, there's a guy in that tree; now there's 5 more; now there's 5 more; where am I supposed to go? Oh, an alarm, OK, got that shut off, wait here's another...nope, I'm done.
Saturday 1/18
FIFA14
-So FIFA (actual) did their whole team of the year thing and FIFA (game) did their whole FUT team of the year / blue cards thing and then it happened: the 100k pack became available! Now the last time the 100k pack was available, around Christmas I think, I was sitting at around 85,000 coins and there was no way I was going to be able to make it to 100k before the pack offer expired. So I got all ticked that they weren't offering 50k packs and stopped playing for a few weeks. And I don't know about you, but when I stop playing FIFA14 for a while my skills get super rusty and I have to crank down the difficulty (play in easier tournaments) to get my footing back.
When I saw the 100k pack announcement this time I was at around 95,000 so I though, "Yeah, I can do this." So I started some tournament on World Class and promptly lost. OK, let's re-evaluate. Ah, Semi-Pro tournament, fewer coins, but I can easily beat it twice and still have enough time to grab the pack. It's pretty sad the excitement I felt at getting that coin odometer to roll over the 100,000 mark, just to spend it all a minute later. I tried using the PS4 Share function to make a little record of my accomplishment. You can check out my Twitter page for the sad recap, in images. Short version is, I got Luis Suarez (yeah!) and sold him (boo!) and made 55k back (not bad, not bad). So that will probably keep me playing for far too long.
Sunday 1/19
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions-PSP/PS Vita
-Another on my all-time top 5 list; for some reason I played this for a few hours from an old save file near the beginning of the game. (Thanks AGAIN, Playstation Plus.) I knew what I was supposed to do, but I kept getting destroyed. I didn't remember this game being this difficult. So I went back to the shops and upgraded everyone's equipment. Nope, that didn't help. So I started poking through the menus and found the page for jobs. Of course! That's what made this game great, using JP to buy skills and mixing them with other jobs and of course there was no explanation of this (thanks, old games!). That helped get me through the next battle. Finally. But then my Vita battery ran out so, #frownyface. But the old spark has definitely been rekindled.
So the week began with an "unbeatable" game and ended with a game I had already beaten. Logic, be gone with you! Anyway, just wanted to get something written down, something I could come back to to keep me on task and away from spending more money on games.
Enjoy!?
Feel free to tell me I'm doing it wrong on Twitter: @steveferrigan
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