Blogs / BobiRoka
Added by BobiRoka, 28-02-2010
This weekend I have mostly been finished games (and continuing to catch up on Lost).
Xbox came back yesterday morning - which I have to say was a pretty damn impressive turnaround. Would have been even quicker if I'd been around when UPS came on Monday(! - that's less than a week turnaround), but I've been borrowing James' Elite since mine went down so no biggie at all really.
Anyways...
After a pretty manic week of attending film screenings (cheers Ebow), attending the NME Awards (for the 4th year running - Here's looking at you, Slash) and trying where possible to attend the gym to rectify the damage done, it was nice this weekend to finally finish two of the best games I've played in years (and so without spoiling anything)...
First up was Mass Effect 2. Huge universal improvement on the first game. The game's structure is sublime: assemble team, gain loyalty of team, proceed to suicide mission and do your best to keep each of them alive. In the end it really makes you give a shit, cos you build up genuine (or should that be 'virtual') relationships with your team in a similar way to the empathy you build up with characters of a show like Lost. The shooting bits are better, the talky bits go deeper. It's not dumbed down at all. It's one of the greatest role-playing experiences in existence. I would probably recommend playing this over Dragon Age if you can only spare the time for one awesome Bioware RPG. It took me about 50 hours to get through it all - but I did everything, went everywhere and also spent a long time arsing about on Insanity difficulty, which dragged the first (maybe) quarter of the game out twice as long... if you weren't so OCD about it you could probably do it in 20-30 hours - less if you're willing to ignore certain characters and/or loyalty missions.
Assassin's Creed 2 was also very very cool. Glad I waited for the DLC, since the missing chapters 12 & 13 slot into the game seamlessly. I can understand why people might not be happy with what they're having to pay extra for, but I was just glad that I got the complete experience in one playthrough. I can imagine it being a tad jarring going to the final mission straight from chapter 11, so for this reason alone it's worth coughing up the extra ���£5-6 or whatever for the extra missions. I suppose the most glaring problem is that they're asking for extra money for parts of the game that were never finished, but if they couldn't charge for it, maybe they'd never have seen the light of day. Anyway, definitely play it. If you thought the concept/ending of the first game was fucked up - wait till you get a load of this...
So with both these games pretty much dominating all the downtime I've had so far this year, it's finally time to move on. Bioshock 2 I sort of had a bit of a go with when I first got it and was in the middle of other stuff, but VW bought Darksiders at the same time so I may have to investigate that too... I guess the pull of Rapture will take some beating though...
Anyways...
After a pretty manic week of attending film screenings (cheers Ebow), attending the NME Awards (for the 4th year running - Here's looking at you, Slash) and trying where possible to attend the gym to rectify the damage done, it was nice this weekend to finally finish two of the best games I've played in years (and so without spoiling anything)...
First up was Mass Effect 2. Huge universal improvement on the first game. The game's structure is sublime: assemble team, gain loyalty of team, proceed to suicide mission and do your best to keep each of them alive. In the end it really makes you give a shit, cos you build up genuine (or should that be 'virtual') relationships with your team in a similar way to the empathy you build up with characters of a show like Lost. The shooting bits are better, the talky bits go deeper. It's not dumbed down at all. It's one of the greatest role-playing experiences in existence. I would probably recommend playing this over Dragon Age if you can only spare the time for one awesome Bioware RPG. It took me about 50 hours to get through it all - but I did everything, went everywhere and also spent a long time arsing about on Insanity difficulty, which dragged the first (maybe) quarter of the game out twice as long... if you weren't so OCD about it you could probably do it in 20-30 hours - less if you're willing to ignore certain characters and/or loyalty missions.
Assassin's Creed 2 was also very very cool. Glad I waited for the DLC, since the missing chapters 12 & 13 slot into the game seamlessly. I can understand why people might not be happy with what they're having to pay extra for, but I was just glad that I got the complete experience in one playthrough. I can imagine it being a tad jarring going to the final mission straight from chapter 11, so for this reason alone it's worth coughing up the extra ���£5-6 or whatever for the extra missions. I suppose the most glaring problem is that they're asking for extra money for parts of the game that were never finished, but if they couldn't charge for it, maybe they'd never have seen the light of day. Anyway, definitely play it. If you thought the concept/ending of the first game was fucked up - wait till you get a load of this...
So with both these games pretty much dominating all the downtime I've had so far this year, it's finally time to move on. Bioshock 2 I sort of had a bit of a go with when I first got it and was in the middle of other stuff, but VW bought Darksiders at the same time so I may have to investigate that too... I guess the pull of Rapture will take some beating though...
This story has been added to the following section(s): Action, Blog, Consoles, Fighting, Role Playing Game, Shooter, Third Person Shooter, Xbox 360
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