Happy Birthday Youngster but!!!
Hope its a great one and congrats. And I really want Alice Madness returns but its $40 plus bucks for it used.
Update: Birthday Edition
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 On 12/18/2013 at 03:38 PM by Michael117 See More From This User » |
Today I turn 25 years old. The time has come to bring forth your cakes in my honor. White or chocolate will suffice, as will whipped icing, buttercream, even rolled fondant, but never quick-pour fondant icing. In the event you want to ham it up, the bite-sized love of cupcakes would satiate my desire as well. Bake wisely, and bring me your best efforts. Your efforts may or may not impact your future with the company.
P.S. When you arrive to your cubicles you may notice that sentry bots have been placed both near the exits and beside each desk. I promise you they aren't armed, they're simply being moved from manufacturing to packaging and will be gone by the end of the day. Just ...ignore them. Good luck on your cakes! ...I'll be waiting.
Games I've been playing
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen -
I spent most of the past week in this game and it's been growing on me over time. I didn't like the beginning of this game one bit, it makes a really terrible impression over the first hour or more. The texture work is a little rotten and Capcom certainly didn't create a very sharp looking game even with the "HD Texture Pack" installed, but once you get outside the truly ugly, poorly-lit, and uninspired cities the game gets prettier. The world of Gransys is made up of rolling hills, mountains, and coasts. The palette is dominated by green and charcoal, and the greens are bright and appealing. All the cutscenes look awful though, everything appears like it's been run through a gold filter, the depth of field is bad, and all the edges are super soft making already rough textures look like mush (It looks like a different game).
The writing of dialogue is real bad. The game takes itself too seriously and uses really cheesy diction to try and establish a medieval fantasy atmosphere. People use the word "aught" in almost every line, and things only get worse when you speak to low-born NPCs that use less sophisticated language and shortened phrases. It wouldn't be as big a deal if you didn't have to listen to people talk all the time, people are always chatting and forcing you to notice. UI is often too flashy, the game communicates poorly with the player, doing quests feels longer and more confusing then it would in other games of this type. There's a number of problems but despite all these I'm still falling in love with what the game is doing in the combat and the Pawn system.
The third person combat is super satisfying both ranged and melee. I'm playing a Ranger character whom uses a pair of daggers and a longbow, and I fill out the rest of my party with Warrior and Mage pawns to cover the tanking and healing. It's fast, sharp, the framerate somehow holds up fairly well in the chaos of battle even though it falters in less noisy situations, the sound design is good, particle effects are good, there's a wide variety of enemies to come across, there's challenge to be found, the skills are cool, and the mechanics are solid. I can use a skill where I fire ten arrows at once to blast a huge cyclops in the eye, then as he staggers I can climb him like in Shadow of the Colossus before unleashing my daggers on him, then jump off his back as he's about to do a back-flop to smash me. I can do double-jumps to reach loot in odd places, I can use a "Reset" skill which basically acts like a combo breaker by letting me interrupt my react-animations if an enemy is slicing me to death and I need to stop it immediately and roll away to safety.
The Pawn system works because the filter to search for the characters I need is fairly effective, the UI for comparing stats is alright, and it's always satisfying finding the "right ones" and going off into a quest with the perfect party. It feels flexible, fast, and I get the party I want when I need them, and we go kill monsters. No narrative, dossier, or waiting to get cool people in your party like you'd do in Dragon Age or Mass Effect. In Dragons Dogma just go search and grab them, it's all focused on function and gameplay, and the gameplay is good. Despite all the problems this game has I think they made a real solid combat system, loot system, upgrade system, and filled the world with fun things to fight in exciting ways.
Spelunky -
I started playing this last night and before I knew it a few hours had flown by and it was time to hit the sack. I didn't even make it out of the mines either, and I had a fantastic time. If you listen to the Idle Thumbs podcast Chris Remo talks about this rogue-like platformer game all the time and he got me interested. It turns out this is my kind of game and it's really addicting. When you die you start from the beginning and loose everything, but you hop back in fast and the levels generate randomly. Dying is part of the learning process and every time I got killed I just wanted to start right back up and the game lets that happen super fast and keeps it feeling fresh. Music is great, animation is great, the gadgets you get are really neat and change the game a lot. I might lose another evening to this game tonight.
Games I've bought this month -
Alice Madness Returns -
I've been wanting to play this for a while so I finally grabbed it new from Amazon. I was surprised to see that when I opened the game up they have a free download for the original game when you activate your online pass. I've never played either of these so I'll probably play Madness Returns and then go back to play the original to see where they were coming from.
Batman Arkham City GOTY Edition -
Last month I played through Arkham Asylum for the first time and loved it, so this month I bought the sequel.
Borderlands 2 GOTY Edition -
I'm most excited about this one, I was a huge fan of the first game and I've been waiting to play this sequel until this edition came out. I probably won't start it until next year but I'll hop deep down into the Borderlands rabbit hole soon enough.
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