Welcome back to What I’m Gaming! At the beginning of every week, I post about the games I’ve played in the past seven days and give some quick thoughts and impressions about those games. To see past editions of this feature, click What I’m Gaming.

My apologies for getting this post up extraordinarily late. I decided to go with my Top 12 Most Anticipated Games of 2011 for last Monday, and I was a bit busy with natural disasters (both the earthquake and Hurricane Irene) the last few days. Better late than never, though, right?

Games I Played

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

This is the game that made it to the top of my most anticipated games list for this year, and also happened to be the first to release. I was able to grab a copy on release day (something I rarely do) and got started on it right away.

I’ve already beaten the game once. And I have already started my second playthrough.

Rarely does a game compel me to not only play it immediately, but start a new game rather after I complete it. This game definitely lives up to the Deus Ex name, and I love it. It’s got a few small pitfalls here and there, but the overall product is worth the price of admission. You can play this game so many different ways, so it has the chance to appeal to almost anyone – except graphics-whores, since the visuals do look a bit aged.

Portal 2

I gave it a short run with a friend the other night. We were looking to try and complete the game’s achievements – he needed three, and I needed one. After some practice and a few attempts at it, we were finally able to complete Course 4 of the co-op without either of us dying, which netted both of us an achievement. We sandwiched that in-between beating three chambers in Course 2 in under 60 seconds each and making sure that he never dropped the Companion Cube in Course 2, Chamber 6 for the “Iron Grip” achievement. I’ve finally 1K’ed this game, and just in time – there’s speculation about free DLC for this game sometime in September.

Army of Two: The 40th Day

Me and the wife are still at it – we’re so close to getting our 6,666 kills each. Okay, we’re still over 1000 away each, but still. We decided to play through the entire game (and DLC) over and over to do this, instead of reloading a specific level or checkpoint. That just gets too boring. Another weekend or two and we should be done with this achievement. Now, the multiplayer is a different beast…

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Last time I gave an update on this game, I was about halfway through it. Now, I’m completely done. Got the full 1000 Gamerscore from this game, too. It wasn’t too hard; a few of the platforming parts toward the end were a bit annoying, but the rest of cake. It wasn’t the greatest game in the world, but it was interesting enough and I felt satisfied when I finished it.

Hexic HD

I was browsing through the Marketplace the other day, and I noticed this game was [finally] there – and free. I remember first playing this game on my brother’s Elite console (this game came already loaded on the Elites) and I was addicted to it for a while. However, when I tried to obtain this game for myself, it wasn’t available for download. I was upset, so I went and bought Hexic 2, thinking it would be similar. Wrong.

Anyway, once I got it, I immediately dove in and worked on some achievements. I was able to finally make a black pearl, and then I reached 150,000 points in Marathon mode. 75,000 points in Timed mode is my next goal. Amazing how the simplest of games can be so addictive.

Prey

Last time, I mentioned that I met some good people and they helped me complete the multiplayer. Well, a few days later, I decided to give the campaign another go. This game is still as boring and tedious as it was before, but I’m determined to complete it. It’s not hard – I just dread playing it. I reached the same level I was on before I got rid of it the first time, and then Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out. I haven’t played it since. I will soon, but it’s a little discouraging to have to play it twice. Yeah, the Cherokee (Hard) difficulty isn’t available until you beat it on Normal. Ugh.

NBA 2K11

Once again making its appearance here, NBA 2K11 took up a lot of my pre-Deus Ex time. I’m still running through the regular season (my sophomore year) in the My Player mode, trying to get myself to become MVP. I think September will be the month I get all my ranked wins, too, since NBA 2K12 will be out at the beginning of October.

Halo: Reach

Not too much to say. I felt like shooting up some people in a game I enjoy, so I hopped on for a few matches. Interestingly enough, I’ve recently heard news that there will be a big title update for this game in the near future. Good thing I don’t use Armor Lock. And of course, I still haven’t finished the campaign.

Turok

A friend of mine felt like doing some boosting on the multiplayer, so I gladly obliged for a bit. I was able to unlock my achievement for killing 20 bugs in a match and come one weapon kill away from another achievement, but I’ve still got quite a ways to go to finish this multiplayer. Thing is, it’s so boring and terrible that it’s hard for me to stay on it very long. We’ll give it another go soon.

Games I Bought

Deus Ex ended my buying drought. As promised, I was able to complete three games (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Dead Space: Ignition). I also got rid of a few games I decided I didn’t want to play (Unreal Tournament III, Need for Speed: Carbon) to reduce my backlog some.

I very nearly bought Summer of Arcade 2011’s first game, Bastion, after watching the wife play through the demo and listening to that awesome narrator. However, I realized it was 1200 Microsoft Points rather than the 800 I initially thought it was, and decided against it. I just can’t pay that much for an arcade game.

Other Gaming-Related News

I won a third time at K-Mart before they changed up the contest policy. This time, I won a PS3 copy of Shadows of the Damned. I read a little about it, but I haven’t seen it in action yet; I’ll get to see it when I head back over to the wife’s house where the PS3 is.

I also decided to prep myself for the future by installing the original BioShock to my 360’s hard drive. I loved the game, but when I first played it, I had issues with freezing. I hope installing it will alleviate that.

Conclusion

That wraps up my gaming report for this week. Now it’s your turn – what have you been playing this past week? What new games have you bought?

Let me know in the comments.