Here’s a look at what games I’ve been playing, 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.
You'll be seeing more "Bastion" screenshots when my review is posted, but the game is so pretty I had to post one here.
“Bastion” (rated E10+, $15 download for Xbox 360, being released Wednesday): I played this downloadable game at E3 and absolutely fell in love with its hand-drawn art style. I’ve been playing it quite a bit the past few nights so that I can have a review ready by Tuesday or Wednesday, but I’m still under an embargo until Tuesday, so I can’t say much more.
“Infamous 2” (rated T, $60 for PlayStation 3): After I didn’t get a launch-week review copy of this game, I figured I’d skip reviewing it but buy it later at retail to see where it slots into my Game of the Year contenders. (I absolutely loved the first “Infamous.”) But then a Sony rep ended up sending me a code so that I could download the game — all 15 gigabytes of it — so I’ll probably be reviewing it next week. I’m a little ways in and so far the game has a little bit of been-there, done-that feeling to it. I’m enjoying myself, but it’s not blowing me away like the first game did. Actually, what I should say is that I’m really enjoying the core-story missions, but the side missions in which you capture territory can be just as tedious as some of the side missions in the first game.
“Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012” (rated T, $10 download for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3): I finally knocked out the final achievement I needed to get 100 percent on this collectible-card game. Now, I’m just playing the occasional match or two against the computer to unlock all of the cards. It’s nice that they let people pay a small amount of money to fully unlock each deck, but I actually like earning every card the hard way. It forces me to play with all of the game’s decks, learn their strengths and weaknesses and discover unlikely card combos.
“Dungeon Siege III” (rated T, $60 for Xbox 360 or PS3, $50 for PC) [review]: I’d already finished this game by early last week, but a buddy of mine who’s a teacher on summer vacation and I hopped online for a couple of hours of hack-and-slash co-op play on Tuesday. I found the game worked better as a two-player co-op game than when we’d tried to play earlier with three or four people. Having just a pair of us allowed us to do a better job of staying on the same page as far as where we were going. As a result, the annoying issue where we were tethered to one another for the multiplayer was mitigated somewhat.
“Bulletstorm” (rated M, $40 for Xbox 360 or PS3, $30 for PC) [review]: The same friend I played “Dungeon Siege” with on Tuesday recently picked up my game of the year so far on sale at Target for $30. So on Wednesday night, we hopped online with another friend and played a few rounds of Anarchy Mode, “Bulletstorm’s” twist on the now-classic horde mode. We fought off wave after wave of bad guys, hitting our score objective easily until we got to Round 15 or so, then called it a night.
“‘Splosion Man” (rated E10+, $10 download on Xbox 360): With the sequel, “Ms. ‘Splosion Man” hitting Xbox Live Arcade for $10 last week, I decided to revisit this classic, which I’d downloaded months ago but never played. I’m enjoying the simple control scheme (A, B, X and Y all make your character “‘splode,” which is sorta like jumping and destroying stuff at the same time) and will probably try to finish it up this week so I can get to playing the new game, which is drawing enthusiastic reviews thus far.
“Trenched” (rated T, $15 download on Xbox 360): I hopped online for an hour or so last week to help a friend get gold medals on this game’s two hardest levels. I’m not quite done with this fusion of tower defense and shooter. I expect I’ll enlist the same friends to help me knock out the last few achievements I need. Expect a short review later this week.
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