Let’s try this again…

So in the last few months I’ve had to perform some concerts and move into a house my wife and I just bought.   It really distracted from me doing things like this blog and even keeping up with my backloggery.  I have less time for just musing about stuff.  I’m gonna attempt to pick it up back up, but who knows.  Meanwhile, my gaming hasn’t suffered that much.  I played quite a few games that probably won’t even get discussed.  I’ll see what I can do to recap

Recap

I’d begun playing White Knight Chronicles, but was interrupted by a music educator’s convention.  It was the first RPG I’d let myself play in a while and those are hard to jump back on.  I still plan to do so.  I was actually enjoying the game despite its flaws.  I also recently finished Dante’s Inferno, which I liked a lot.  I really feel like it got shat on for the wrong reasons in reviews.  Sure GoW is more polished, but DI was an enjoyable game.

Heavy Rain

I finished this a while back, but I have more to say than an abridged recap.  This game was great for me and also for my wife.  The QTEs look silly when you’re watching and I was dubious, but they feel fantastic.  I really liked connecting with the characters and empathizing with their situations.  There are people who tear apart the game for its plot holes, but most of these so called holes are just people being hyper-judgmental.  While some might take a stretch to make sense, most of the things people complain about just require you to not look for something you dislike.  Some complain about Madison and Ethan getting together and say it makes no sense for various reasons.  To me they are both people who needed something more.  They were vulnerable and in need and that makes sense to me.  I can understand the argument that it would be out of character for Ethan, who is so single-mindedly after his son, but I have to make myself think of it that way (which you could opt to do by not kissing back) to be bothered, and I’m not.

An odd thing happened.  My ending was not so happy, but upon playing back through the ending I found that it felt like my ending was the ending.  The story that I’d told was the story that will stick with me.  I’ll probably play back for some different scenarios like I did with the ending, but I doubt it will even feel right.  Although, it is interesting to get different tidbits from the story.

On a second trip to Ethan’s sad apartment and his time with his apparently detached son, I at least knew that Shaun loved him.  But beyond that, something different I did actually brought some extra dialogue in which Shaun told him it wasn’t his fault.  This made a world of difference in the way I perceived Shaun as having felt on my first playthrough where I never seemed to connect and he was eternally distant.  I really though maybe he didn’t love me as much and it was heart tearing.

God of War III

I’m certainly enjoying this final installment in the trilogy.  It’s obviously very polished  the game looks gorgeous.  Combats is fluid and responsive and I’m just enjoying myself.  One gripe I have is with the double jump which seems to have a small gap in execution.  I could understand if it didn’t go off if I hit the second jump too early or too late, but the fail spot is in the middle rather than on the ends.  This has caused numerous frustrating deaths.  I’d have to say that’s one area where I felt Dante’s Inferno was clearly superior because I never felt out of control with Dante and could time my second jump whenever to make the platforming work.

The game is surprisingly brutal even for GoW.  The bit with Hermes really made me feel like I was watching one of the later Saw movies.  I was a bit disturbed.  My wife says Hercules was more disturbing, but Hermes really got to me.  Speaking of Hermes, I loved how much the game made me hate him.  He’s so fay and it’s humorous, but he’s such a douche in the way he taunts Kratos.

My wife was not that interested in this title, though she was in Dante’s Inferno.  Through a deal I convinced her to watch.  She begrudgingly has done so and has watched back through most of the GoW I &II cut scenes to get a good grasp on the story.  Today she actually seemed eager to play.  At one point she let out one of her little mangasms and excitedly goaded me to “step on his face!!” while fighting Hercules.  She even played a little with the Cestus while I cooked.  She was enjoying tearing shit up.

Patapon 2

I finished the first Patapon absolutely loving it.  It wasn’t very forthcoming about what to do with materials though and often they were wasted and farming was a chore.  Due primarily to the fact that I heard you couldn’t loose caps in Patapon 2 (losing 2 Barsala is not fun), I decided to move quickly to it.  If only all sequels could be like this. It removes absolutely nothing about what made the first one fantastic, yet adds so much.  It’s a significant improvement in so many ways as far as farming being more efficient and less grindy, never being at potential to lose significant progress, way more weapons and gear, actually enough materials and reasons to use special Patapons like Kibapons and Dekapons, etc.

My wife started the first game recently and now we’re both heavily addicted.  I can see myself easily being tempted to play long beyond the game’s completion just because improving my Patapons is so fun.

Upcoming

I’m really looking forward to so many upcoming titles.  Nintendo dropped the bomb about Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M coming out way sooner than I’d expected.  I was looking forward to Monster Hunter Tri for so long, but now that it’s here, I’m just not sure if it will mesh with my life.  It if weren’t for the almost necessity of buying extra controllers (for my wife to join me) then I’d be more on top of it, but we decided to skip it even though we’ve wanted something with local co-op of that sort for a while.  A game at the top of my current list is 3D Dot Game Heroes which is also coming out fairly soon.  Looking quite forward to that.