Alas, I’m still not in a place to really write at length about the videogames I’m playing (or thinking about playing). Y’know, unless that writing is really short and in the form of a haiku. This hard swing seems to happen every summer, and it’s mostly because I’m extremely stressed to day jobbery things that I won’t ever go into publicly and working on laying out a book of my 365 BAD COMICS, but I am still Pauly, which means I am playing games whether there are words to attach to them or not because they help soothe my soul. I figured it’d be easier to give y’all a little rundown on what I’m playing as of late and how it’s going than waiting for the inevitable to never happen.
And away we go.
Fable III
Well, this is not a very good game, in all aspects of something being a game. No, sir. It’s janky and lazy and poorly paced and unclear in its directions and overly interested in telling the player silly data, and I hate the “no menu” mentality, as there is nothing wrong with menus, so long as the menus are designed properly. The dog is pointless to the point of annoying and should have been left behind; that was Fable 2‘s thing. Being the king of Albion is not as cool or special as one might assume. I’m currently right near the end-all battle, but I want to clean up all the remaining side quests (finding gnomes, silver keys, gold keys) because I am never going to play this again. I’m glad it was free, but I’m sad to see how dry and drained it is compared to the previous adventure, something I enjoyed. There are still some very pretty locales and cool beard options though.
Battlefield 3
This is a game I really do want to write more about at length, as I’m playing it for educational purposes, to figure out what it is about realistic, war-themed FPS titles that I find so uninteresting and off-putting. So far, this game has all of that–whatever it is–and then some. I’m also finding it extremely difficult to see due to how real and dark the environments are, accidentally shooting my own teammates. Thankfully, friendly fire is in play–though the game openly states such actions will not be tolerated–so I’m not ruining missions at every turn. But yeah. I’ve done ground fights, tank fights, sky fights, sniper stuff, and so on. It’s pretty boring.
Defense Grid: The Awakening
This is the first free game for us Xbox 360 players with Gold accounts. It’s an old, downloadable RTS game from a few years back, with upgradable towers. It’s slow, as slow as if I was to actually build a tower myself, but I was able to play a few levels past the tutorial stuff. Not sure if I’ll hop back into it, as it is almost the exact opposite of the only RTS game I’ve really enjoyed recently: Kingdom Rush. Oh well.
Chrono Cross
I’m now at the turning point of my sorta re-play of Chrono Cross where I’m experiencing parts I’ve never gotten to before. This is exciting. I always got to the moment in time where Serge and Lynx do the Freaky Friday and then lost interest quickly after that. Despite some hiccups, this replay has been pretty steadily chugging along, and I’m now working on beating a bunch of dragon gods into submission. I still absolutely love the music and the battle system with a passion unlike anything else. More about Chrono Cross later, I promise.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
I am loving my new daily life as mayor of Arni in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but am taking it pretty slow. In fact, I’ve only gone to the island four or five times now, and that’s the place many players hop to and from to earn big bells thanks to the special beetles they got there. Just finished expanding the museum with a second floor and gift shop, and am now working on increasingly my house to have a larger second room. That’s gonna be where I put all my Japanese furniture. Other than that, it’s the same ol’ addiction and easygoing gameplay from the previous game, and the emergent gameplay in multiplayer is a joy to watch unfold.
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So that’s the handful of games I’m currently playing. Pretty exciting, I know. I’m also contemplating if I’ll pick up Shin Megami Tensei IV or not tomorrow. Hmm, we’ll see…
Grinding Down 