What Am I Playing NOW - Part III

To tell you the truth, the short answer to that question for the past two months would be "Not much..." But of course, there's a (somewhat) longer answer. Yes, I haven't had the time to play as much as usual for various reasons : being quite busy at work since the end of the school year is approaching fast, some never-seen-before high temperatures in late april and early may which called for a lot of basket-ball outside, more activities planned with friends and family, etc. But I still finished two 2013 Game of The Year contenders and started two other good/great games.

The In-Between-Games Game
I always have some games that I play "during" other games, usually a racing game or a sports game because there's usually no storyline (or one so uninteresting that I simply don't care about) so I can play without mixing up plots or characters or whatever. Plus I can play those game on mute or with a very low volume, which is practical for someone like me who listens to many podcasts per week (sports related, all of them). So during those past two months I've been playing a lot of Forza Horizon and a bit of NBA 2K12 and Shift 2 Unleashed.

The Early Contenders
Earlier this year were released two superb games I had preordered ages ago : Tomb Raider & Bioshock Infinite. Both lived up to the hype and one could even argue that Tomb Raider exceeded it (although it has to be said it wasn't as hyped as Infinite). Anyhow, Tomb Raider proved to be as good as the so-called Tomb Raider clone, the Uncharted series. Perhaps the story or characters, besides Lara herself, weren't as developed as the Uncharted cast, but the gameplay was simply superb and I was glad the developer didn't copy Uncharted's infamous "everyone is shooting at me from everywhere even from places I've cleared 1.5 second ago" moments which kinda infuriated me at times (I'm not hating though, that trilogy is hall of fame worthy). Also, I liked how they  didn't feel obligated to follow Drake's globe-trotting expeditions and managed to exploit a small island and transform it into a semi-open world with tons of stuff to find, even the area to explore clearly was not that big. Great stuff!

As for Infinite, I was expecting sooo much out of Irrational's masterpiece it was practically unfair. But, amazingly, it lived up to the hype. I wasn't that fond of Booker for the first few hours, but that was mainly because I was speculating on the man's story. When you learn a bit more about him, you have to like him. As for Elizabeth, nothing wrong can be said about her. Charming, useful, deeply attaching, she's basically the best A.I. partner a video game has ever seen. You simply care for her, not unlike this new Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The story is a bit hard to follow, especially the ending, which had me spending 30 minutes on the Internet to be sure I actually understood the right thing. But it's truly excellent, many developers have something to learn from Irrational for story-telling. I wish we would have seen more of the Songbird, but that's a small price to pay for such a superb game. The gameplay is perfect, the variety of actions you can do during combat is impressive and the set pieces very, very fun. The combat is harder than I would have expected, but nothing out of the ordinary. Anyway, it's a great, great game, clearly among the best I've played this generation.

I would have to talk about Assassin's Creed, but I have a piece coming on the series.

I first started writing this more than two weeks ago, but never had time to finish because of work and other obligations. Since that time, I've started XCOM : Enemy Unknown, finished Braid in a few hours (old, I know, but I had to finish it at one point) and my PS3 broke down for the third time. So I had to bring it to this repair man I know. Meanwhile I play more Vita and other consoles, but not that much since summer is starting at last and I can finally play basketball, tennis and other sports.

I'll try to do this more regularly in the next two months.

What Am I Playing NOW - Part I

Happy New Year to everybody! I know I'm a tad late, but I still think it's polite to wish you all a happy year. And I hope that it will be as rich as 2011 was, gaming-wise.

So, in this first edition of "What Am I Playing NOW", I'll start with a game I've only just beaten yesterday : Prince of Persia : The Forgotten Sands. The latest PoP was actually a very, very good game that I enjoyed a lot more than the last cel-shaded outing where you couldn't die. That one wasn't bad by any means, as I enjoyed the relationship between the two protagonists and the artistic graphics, but it was nothing memorable.

So, The Forgotten Sands, let's just start by pointing out that the gameplay overshadowed every other aspect of the game. Seriously, the free-running was incredibly well executed, it felt fluid, intuitive and the regularly added powers all felt natural and added some thrill and excitement to the great wall-running/climbing and puzzle solving. The emphasis on timing in the latter parts of the game really made the game that much more fun. Graphically, let's just say that beige, grey and brown walls ruled the day, even if some settings were pretty interesting in an artist's point of view. The weaker point of the game is the story, which was somewhat original, but I thought it wasn't presented very well. That Djin lady (I forgot her name) really was boring. Anyway, a very fun game, the best Prince of Persia I've played since Sands of Time on GameCube.

There's a game I've only just started that is, so far, extremely fun : Rayman Origins. I'll start by saying I've never played a Rayman game before, except on my brother's iPhone, which was certainly not the best example of what the series have to offer. Anyway, it's bloody fantastic. I LOVE the cartoony graphics and the sheer silliness of the characters and enemies. The "platforming" isn't bad either, while maybe not as sharp as, say, the Mario series (then again, which game is?), but still very, very good. I played the game for maybe an hour after opening it yesterday and I was smiling all the time, and that's a great way of saying that it's very enjoyable. More on Rayman Origins soon!

I've just started Gears of War 2 as well, but I've played only for 30-45 minutes so I can't say much about it yet, except that it looks a lot like Gears 1 (obviously...) but with some tweaks that made it a bit better. Looking forward to play it more!

And, last but not least, The Legend of Zelda : Skyward Sword. I haven't read a thing about the dungeons or the length of the game (it's Zelda, by far my favorite game series ever, I don't want to spoil a thing), but I'd say I'm past the halfway point of the game, or so it feels (yes, I've played so much Zelda games I can actually feel where I am in the story). Let's just say that it's a superb game, predictably, and that Zelda games always find a way to innovate while staying true to their formula. It's quite amazing. I'm still not entirely sold on motion controls, but it feels more natural than it did in the first few hours. GoTY candidate for sure.

I also played a tad of Fable II (still at the beginning of the story) while waiting for my brother to give me my Wii back. It's good so far, but I haven't much to say about it, it's tough to comment on an RPG so early in the game. More to come as well.

I could say I'm playing more game than that (and I am), but all others are basically Sports game or online shooters, and those games you can pop in your console, play for 15 minutes to satisfy some craving, then go on with my life. That's a lot harder to do with Zelda or Fable II. Those games are NHL 12, NBA 2K12, Forza 4, BF3 and MW3.

Games to start soon : Skyrim, GTA IV Complete (yes, 3 years later...) and a few PSN games as well.

See you soon!