Here’s a look at what games I’ve been playing the past week, ranked roughly from most-played to least-played. This allows me to offer some thoughts on some titles that I may not devote a full review to, plus sound off on some ideas that might not have made it into full reviews of the games I play. Games are listed roughly in order of most- to least-played, with assistance from my Raptr profile.
“Brink” (rated T, $60 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, $50 for PC): This is the next game I’m going to review, and I’ve been playing it a ton since my copy showed up on Friday. But right now, I’m under an embargo until 9:01 p.m. tonight, so I can’t say much. My plan is to have an “impressions”-type piece posted Tuesday morning, then follow with a full review on Wednesday morning. I actually feel like I’ve played enough of the game to write a full review now, but I’m interested in how “Brink” plays with a massive online community as opposed to a handful of journalists, public relations staff and developers. So I’ll be playing all day on Tuesday and then writing up thoughts on what the online experience is like post-release.
“Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga” (rated M, $40 for PC and Xbox 360):I’m still slowly working my way through this epic RPG and, despite its numerous warts, I’m really enjoying it. It has an incredibly old-school feel in that there’s very little handholding and it’s easy to get stuck in a room because you’re overlooking a key switch required to open a door or whatever. Nowadays, most games would just include a glowing trail to lead you right to the switch, which would be circled in red and have a sign over it saying, “Switch.” I think I actually need to backtrack a bit because my character doesn’t seem to be a high enough level to survive some of the encounters I’m running into. I’m guessing I missed some “optional” quests that would help tremendously from a leveling standpoint.
“Crysis 2” (rated M, $60 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3) [review]:I regret having to review this game without spending hours on the multiplayer, but its release came at a bad time for me, with my own personal Internet outage followed by the great PSN failure of 2011. I’m looking forward to getting back to “Crysis 2” once the PSN comes back online, but I fear that when it does, I’ll be chest-deep in “L.A. Noire.”
“Bulletstorm” (rated M, $60 onPC, Xbox 360 and PS3) [review]: A couple of friends and I fired up Anarchy mode for a couple of hours on Thursday night. Along with “Portal 2” and “LittleBigPlanet 2,” this game is part of my trinity of favorite titles from this year so far. Speaking of “Portal 2,” I should probably mention that my Raptr profile says I played that game last week, but that was just a statistical correction I entered to the week before. (You have to manually enter how much time you spend playing PS3 games, as the service no longer tracks them automatically.)
“Gears of War 3” beta: I’ve been playing this off and on to try to unlock Cole Train for the retail game, but I’m not sure I’m gonna get there by the time the beta ends. I have too many new releases to play, and something tells me my usual online crew is going to want to play a ton of “Brink” this week.
“Catan” (rated E, $10 download on Xbox 360 or PS3, except you can’t download it on PS3 because the PSN is still down): This digital version of the classic German board game has once again become my 20-minute timewaster.
