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.

Bara_Chat's most anticipated games of 2012

1. Bioshock Infinite : The obvious choice for the most anticipated game of the year. By far. Bioshock was the best game of this generation, in my opinion, and Infinite looks to be the one to knock it off its podium. Just look at one of its video trailers if you're not convinced.

2. Diablo III : Diablo II is far and away my most-played video game of all-time, thanks to its exceedingly addictive Battle.net feature. The series is so legendary it has its own "Diablo clones" a bit like GTA has spawned a enormous amount of "GTA-likes" in the past decade. This game alone might force me to buy a new computer if my Mac can't run it.

3. Borderlands 2 : Borderlands is the one game I fell in love with this generation. The kind of game I loved so much I didn't even see its flaws. It was unconditional mother-child love. It's also the first game for which I bought DLCs. It's not perfect, but I don't give a s***. There will be better games in 2012, but something inside me wishes to play Borderlands 2 above all else. (Then why it's third, because when I fell back to Earth, I realized Diablo III and Infinite will very likely be better games in every single way, and I'll enjoy them as much as BL2).

4. The Last of Us : I honestly don't know much about this game, but the trailer alone convinced me that I will undoubtedly love it. Of course I've always been a huge fan of post-apocalyptic related entertainment products like Fallout 3, Rage, Borderlands (not exactly post-apocalyptic, but similar feeling), Enslaved, New Vegas, I Am Legend, The Book of Eli, The Road, etc. Well, you get the point.


5. The Last Guardian : Granted, we have no release date announced for this game and, given that Team Ico seemingly (and rightfully so) doesn't care about any sort of outside (read : media and gamers) pressure to release the game soon, it's highly possible we won't see it until next year. Still I have hope.

6. Mass Effect 3 : I played Mass Effect 2 last year in probably the worst circumstances possible. At that time I was playing through 4 or 5 games at the same time (or so it seemed) so I "rushed" through games instead of taking time to really experience and enjoy them. It still took over 30 hours to finish this game, but I'm pretty damn sure I've missed many, many things in my playthrough. Anyway, the story was pretty interesting, so I'm very curious of what will happen next.

7.  Far Cry 3 : That my first taste of the Far Cry franchise was the second opus might make a few people facepalm in unison. The fact that I've never even played the original Far Cry will likely make people. I know the second game of the series didn't please the masses as the first one did. But anyway, I really liked FC2 and I'm really looking forward to it.

8. Prey 2 : This game could actually be higher on this list if I had only a few more info on it. I only saw the jaw-dropping trailer last year and I was amazed. Although you have to learn that trailers are purposedly made with the intention to amaze. Indeed, in the past, the final product has already been less impressive than the damn trailer itself.


9. Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance : Now I must admit, I only discovered (not the existence, but the experience of playing the games) the Metal Gear series in 2008 when I bought the PS3 MGS4 bundle. While I didn't understand a lot of what the hell what actually going on, I thought the gameplay was extremely solid and the attention to details staggering. Since then I've played MGS, MGS2 and started MGS3 and I must this is a very solid (oh, haha) franchise. And Revengeance does look pretty amazing.

10. SSX : The last snowboarding game I played was Amped nearly 10 years ago (I'm not kidding) and before that it was 1080 Snowboarding on N64. Let's just say I'm due for a new snowboarding game, and there's really nothing on the market right now (Shaun White's games are basically horrible if you're to trust any game critic in the world. And from the trailers, you have to say it looks pretty damn cool.

11. Resident Evil 6 : Another franchise I'm a big fan of, so it's impossible to leave this off the list. I explained why in a earlier blog post.


12. Tomb Raider : I simply like where the franchise is heading with this reboot. The gameplay shown at E3 really impressed me. And Lara Croft is one fine-looking lady. What's not to love?

That's it for this year's list.