Sunday 9 January 2011

Three months later, a relapse

After three months of not buying any new games myself I got a bad itch in my wallet and went out to spend the money my grandmother sent me for Christmas.
I checked my regular joint's website for any titles I have been on the lookout for in the past, and sure enough I did indeed spot a few that raised my interest: Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Content's Under Pressure for PC, State of Emergency for PS2 and a used copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum for PS3.

I did find Marc Ecko's Getting Up and Batman: Arkham Asylum and bought both, but to my disappointment the State of Emergency I saw they had was in reality State of  Emergency 2, which is not even a distant cousin to the first game, so I left it on the shelf. Because I have this addiction problem with buying new (old) video games I couldn't just leave with two titles, so I also bought Rogue Ops for PS2 and BloodRayne for PC.
Batman: Arkham Asylum has you sneaking around Arkham as Batman, Marc Ecko's Getting Up has you sneaking around spraypainting shit and having fistfights with armed people if you fail at sneaking, Rogue Ops has you sneaking and hiding your magnificent ass inside pottery and BloodRayne has you running around in tight leather giving the nazis some sexy hickeys, so that's three more games giving me the chance to sneak around.
I'm just sad that the game where you're a flexible creature of the night infiltrating nazi bases and getting up close and personal isn't a sneaking game.
I might write something about these new games once I get to playing them, but right now I'm still preoccupied with Fallout: New Vegas, a game which consistently introduces more stuff to like immensely and more glitches to prevent it from being the great title it should be.

My mother also bought me a new game for PS3 soon after Christmas because the price tag caught her eye: 4,90€ for a brand new, sealed PS3 game. Hell, it costs me more than that just to take the bus downtown and back when I go buy games, and larger stores around here don't sell new games that cheap even if they're shitty PS2 games with damaged covers.
Although it's easy to understand why it was so affordable once you read about it online, as the game in question is Stormrise. Judging by the reviews it's a shitty game. It's a shitty, broken game with bad design and it got 2.5 on GameSpot. Well, according to Metacritic it also got some better than averige scores from other major review sites, but I trust GameSpot in this. Many of GameSpot's reviews may be full of crap but from my experience they're less full than some others.
I suppose I should play it myself before giving it a good bashing, but to be quite honest the GameSpot review frightens me too much, and it's real-time strategy. Only RTS game I have ever liked, that I can remember at the moment, was Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard, and I gave that game a much too positive review just because it surprised me how much fun I had with it.

Also, when I went to buy those four new games I mentioned earlier, I sort of gave in and spent a bit of money on a microphone. A real microphone that looks like a microphone, not a cheap headset that crackles, like the one I used to record the YouTube LPs and which broke soon after. I tested it and it works and the sound quality should be at least decent. There was a bit of static, but I think that can be easily fixed just by adjusting the sound settings, because everything's still set up for the old headset.
I'm just telling you this in case you're one of the two people who want me to do more LPs, because what this means is that I have basically no good excuse to not do LPs as far as lack of recording equipment goes, and if I don't actually do LPs then I have just wasted a wad of cash on yet another piece of junk electronics that I'll never use. You should know how much I hate wasting money (on anything other than games) so I'm now forced to try and get my money's worth out of this microphone.

3 comments:

  1. I have my own problems with GameSpot's reviews, they rated BioShock so well and it left me horribly disappointed.

    Batman Arkham Asylum is a really good balance between action and stealth, you'll enjoy. "Jumping on people is cool" is what you'll say. However the boss fights leave very little challenge as anyone that challenges batman will end up with a flat surface where their face used to be. But its a good game even if the box art looks...well...eghhhh. :D

    This post makes positive sounds towards the making of an LP, and that makes me happy. And this is quite a feat considering that these days the only things that make me happy are narcotics and rainbows...I don't know why...

    On a personal note, my channel was recently partner by youtube, which means that in 20 years or so, I'll be able to buy pizza for you, me and Derek and only owe the pizza place like 14 bucks... :D

    -Neal

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  2. @Neal
    I thank you in advance if you ever buy me pizza

    @Johnny
    LPs FTW!!
    You said you were gonna play New Vegas on evil with a female, why not record that?
    The problem with your Fallout 3 walkthrough was that you KNEW everything and was like pro. Sometimes I was fuckin' pissed when you tried to show you're pro-ness by not picking up keys, especially that note from your dad. LOL

    I thought Batman was one of the games you were interested in. I know longer am interested in purchasing it. Thats the bad habit I have. I wait for a game to get cheaper but by the time it gets cheaper, loads of new games come out which others are getting too so it drowns out the popularity of the original game I wished to buy. I might buy it some time later when it hits bargain bins possibly. But anyway, I thought you wanted to support the devs for making a good game so would purchase it full price but I don't blame you, even now it's considerably big on the price side.

    At the moment I'm not doing much gaming. I'm in a situation similar to you: training in the army. Don't take it the wrong way, like I'm going to war in Afghanistan or any of that but its just a thing I'm kinda doing till the summer time, so perhaps, I'll miss out on the latest games.

    Let us know when you return to LPing. And oh, I think Rockstar have removed the ban on cutscenes for games more than 2 years old since quite a lot of high profile youtubers have uploaded it with cutscenes (Mahalo Games or something, and GTAComplete, and some other crap dude but his vid has been up for over 9 months so chances are R* don't give a fuck about GTA IV anymore).

    - Derek

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  3. Jumping on people in Arkham Asylum really is cool.
    Pizza? Hmm... I may have to reschedule some things, in 20 years I may be incredibly busy.

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