Hey everyone, Happy 4th of July! I hope you all have a great day today and are able to kick back, relax, and enjoy the free time. Just try not to do anything too wild.
Anyway, it’s Monday. And with Monday, that means the second edition of What I’m Gaming. Read on to see what I’ve been gaming this week.
Games I’ve Played
Gears of War 2
It seems to happen every big holiday – that’s right, a Gears of War 2 EXP event. This time, it is for Independence Day and it’s 21x EXP through tonight. I’ve yet to obtain the “Veteran Gear” achievement in this game (for those that don’t know, you have to reach level 100 in online play and win a match in each of the Snowblind Map Pack maps), so I decided to give it a shot.
It needs to be said that I do not like the multiplayer in Gears of War games. It’s glitchy, it’s third-person (I greatly prefer first person), it’s got everyone trying to bridge for host, it doesn’t want me to play it (more on this in a future article), yet it wants me to spend my life on it to get the online achievements. That said, I do want to have 100% completion in this game, so I need to be able to finish this achievement off. I’ve passed on a lot of other EXP events, so I at least needed to spend a few hours on this game.
And that’s all I could take. I played enough to level up nearly 3 levels. I went from 57 to [almost] 60, so I’ve still got a long way to go. I just can’t take this game except for in small doses. I can honestly say I am not looking forward to Gears of War 3.
Schizoid
I admit, I’ve had this game for a while. It was on sale on XBLA who knows how long ago, but I never got around to checking out what it was all about. I’ve never been much of a trial person – I like to kind of just dive in and hope it’s good.
Buying Schizoid was a good decision.
The concept of the game is very simple. There’s a blue guy, and there’s an orange guy (no, these aren’t portals). If you have the blue guy, you can kill the blue creatures. Likewise with the orange. The goal is to clear all the blue and orange creatures on screen, preferably without dying.
Me and my girlfriend dove into the co-op (after the game I outline next pissed me off) and after dying a few times, we were much better. It was really pretty mindless fun – the kind where if you lose a few times, you don’t get mad. It just inspires to you play better and keep trying. Completing this game will be very challenging, but I’ll be giving it a shot, for sure.
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
I don’t know what to say. I heard that this is a very solid game with good co-op, but that’s not what I experienced. We were only in the first level, but actually experienced two game-breaking glitches that caused us to move on to play Schizoid (although that part wasn’t a bad thing – see above).
I was playing as Lara and I was killed by a rotating flame. When I respawned, I appeared on the other side of a gate that I wasn’t supposed to be at yet. I had no way of returning to my partner, so we had to reload the game. The second glitch was just as frustrating, if not more. While trying to work our way back to the flamethrower puzzle, there is a small chasm that you have to cross. Lara has a grappling hook/rope tool where she can swing across by latching onto a golden ring. She would then help her partner across. Well, the game refused to acknowledge the ring (even though this is how the game instructed us to cross!) and we could not continue.
That’s when I turned it off. It’ll be a while before I try to play this game again.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
After last week’s Sonic 4 fiasco, I decided to go back and play the previous entry to make sure that I wasn’t being too critical of the newer game. I played one level (picture above, actually) and stopped. I don’t particularly like the level that follows.
Anyway, Sonic in this game was a fast as I remembered, and ensured that my perspective was not skewed by time.
Condemned 2: Bloodshot
I still have not played through the campaign in this game, but I’m finally almost done with the entire multiplayer. I was able to have a friend assist me with unlocking my “Serial Killer” achievement, where you have to get 1000 kills in the multiplayer. I also made progress towards the “SKX” achievement, where you have to kill 9 people that unlocked “Serial Killer”. It was definitely a good day of work, and it didn’t take long.
It might be a while before I finally get into the campaign in this game – “horror” games are games I need to be in the mood to play, and usually it needs to be at night. I’ll get there, though – but not before I complete the multiplayer.
Tales of Vesperia
I continued my journey in Tales of Vesperia and uncovered some interesting plot points. Right now, I’d say I’m around two-thirds through the story segment of the game. You’ll be seeing this game a lot in What I’m Gaming.
Killzone 2
I played about half a level. I wasn’t really in the mood to play it and I was tired. Just a quick fix, I guess.
NBA 2K11
Another game that will probably be a weekly entry for the foreseeable future. I love this game, but Kobe’s dunk rating is way too high for his age and current ability, and my brother knows how to abuse the [nearly] unstoppable dropstep dunk. Ugh.
The King of Fighters XII
Continued working on filling out my spreadsheet for this game. I’m done with my initial playthroughs with each character. Now I just have to go back fill in all of the blanks. Too bad there are a lot of blanks…
Oh, and Mature sucks in this game. Bad.
Games I Bought
No retail games this week. I did purchase three XBLA titles, though. Those titles were Tetris Splash, Hardwood Hearts, and Puzzle Bobble Live. All three of these titles were purchased for my girlfriend to play. I will probably end up never touching any of the three, myself.
I did end up getting HALF MINUTE HERO: Super Mega Neo Climax for myself, although I haven’t had the chance to start it.
Other Gaming-Related News
Not much here. I re-downloaded several games and DLC that I either deleted in anger or frustration (Prince of Persia Classic, anyone?) or because I needed to conserve space. Now that I’ve moved into a bigger HDD, these things aren’t a big concern anymore.
Conclusion
That about 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.