What We’re Playing – Week 13

This week’s WWP presents the usual motley of gaming greats you’d expect from the team here at TheSixthAxis. Heavy Rain? Check. God of War III and Battlefield Bad Company 2? All present and accounted for.

There are some other, shall we say, less expected entries, however. Nofi has gotten his hands on a near gold release of ModNation Racers, while cc_star is back on Warhawk duties, ever trying to break into the higher echelons of notoriety. Throw in some Pokemon, PSP games and – brace yourself – the first Assassin’s Creed, and you’ve got a well-rounded, some might even say full bodied, collection of games on display this week.

Zuler:

I’ve been sucked back into the delightful world of Pokemon Diamond, in a (rather futile) quest to ‘catch ‘em all’. I say futile because I curse those Pokemon that you cannot get anywhere except at an event (I’m looking at you, Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, etc.). I’ve been challenging mynameisblair to a few matches, but the Pokemon God inside him has beaten me every single time. Buck up my Torterra!

I also finished God of War III. Absolutely astounding. I can easily call it the best game I’ve ever played, hands down. I also won Section 8, which I tried for a bit before getting bored. For some reason, even though I’ve never played Halo, I got a Halo vibe from the game (how weird is that!?). I wanted to try some multiplayer, but since I was basically playing in the morning for Americans, there was nobody to kill. I even played a bit of Borderlands, venturing to the Secret Armoury of General Knoxx to see what was in store for me. Clearly, I need to level up a little bit more before I continue. Those women assassins love to slice and eat me up.

Michael:

I have played nothing this week. Nothing at all.  However, my other half is soon to depart to get her hair cut. This gives me a window of opportunity in which I shall perhaps play a videogame.  If I do, I shall surely forget to email Kovacs the details, and for this I apologise.  It’ll be Battlefield Bad Company 2 though, so if you want to make up something about my incredible skill during the single-player campaign…no wait, that’d be better as an April Fool’s joke.  Oh well, missed that deadline too.

Bah humbug. Damn; wrong celebration.

Watchful:

I’m trying to play less Dragon Age: Origins and being somewhat successful in reducing the number of hours I’ve played it.  I decided that after a month it was time for another play through of Heavy Rain to see what happens if I change some of my early decisions in the game.

Then there’s been my regular weekly session of Borderlands with a couple of mates.  Beyond that I’ve been playing a few of my favourite minis, Fieldrunners, Blast Off and Vector TD. I also bought and read the Dragon Age comic off the PSN Store.  That counts as not playing the game, right?

ColinBarr66:

The newest game I’ve played this week is Just Cause 2 which has turned out to be extremely fun. The grappling hook is insane, and has created some hilarious moments so far. The video capture feature will hopefully capture some of these before the week rental is up.

Speaking of video capture, I finally got round to testing the YouTube upload feature in WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010. It works well and is a nice addition but only provided average video quality to my already poor video.

I also bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2 this week but have only had the chance to play the same level I played at Murdo’s a few weeks ago. Hopefully will get more time with this over the Easter break and jump online with some TSAer’s.

Saturday was a sad day for me. I finally replaced Formula 1 2006 with Formula 1 2009 on the PSP. 2006 stole a huge chunk of my gaming time but I can’t see 2009 doing the same unfortunately. I’ve found the car’s handling far too twitchy so far and am just not enjoying it. Hopefully I’ll get used to it but I’m missing the older version already.

Spent some more time on God of War III during the week and it is still impressive. Remember I said that I kept getting stuck only to complete that part a day later? That has happened several times this week and it is starting to annoy. I’m only playing it on normal difficulty and hate to think what the harder ones would be like.

Also purchased Doodle Jump on my phone a few days ago and have been playing it every chance I get. It is so simple but very very addictive.

Finally the usual sessions on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, FIFA 10 and Killzone 2 wrap it up for me. Hopefully we will see some good turnouts in the Boot Camps this week in preparation for the King of Killzone competition.

Nofi:

This week I’ve been hammering the latest build of ModNation Racers.  It’s truly everything I wanted it to be, and although there’s still a few weeks left before the game goes gold, it’s pretty much feature complete apart from a couple of last minute tweaks (hopefully to the loading times).  The track editor is expansive, powerful and incredibly smart, the Mod editor stacked with potential and the kart shop gloriously indulgent.  Really, once you get to grips with the track editor’s intuitive mechanics it’s possible to create just about anything you want, and I’ve already built some classic Mario Kart 64 favourites – I’m particularly proud of my Moo Moo Farm adaptation…

I’ve also been lucky enough to get my hands on something nobody else has seen yet – it’s quirky, original and jolly good fun…

cc_star:

This week has seen the launch of the official Warhawk tournament, and I thought it’d be rude of me not to join in and I really, really want the in-game award for finishing the month in the top 50. I’ve clocked up a huge amount of time in Warhawk over the past year and thought I’d become quite a reasonable player; regularly finishing each round in the top 3 and never finishing outside the top half of the 32 players. However, I’ve never seen such a high standard of play and have now realised I’ve got less than no chance.

I also got round to attempting to play The Orange Box which I’ve had on rental for over a week now. I went through the usual rental shenanigans of downloading a game update which for some reason took 20 minutes, and then I had to sit through the installation. After about another 20mins I received an error message telling me the install had failed, and then my PS3 froze. The only way I could get see any signs of life out of it was to flick the power switch on the back. I attempted another install but it froze again, so it’s now winging its way back to LoveFilm – and I regret hanging on to it for over a week before getting chance to play it.

Kovacs:

With a review slate completely clear (and it’s been a long time since I could claim such a feat), I’ve started back into my mammoth backlog of games. I had started Assassin’s Creed (please note the lack of any numerical data after that title) back in August, before I left for my three month around the world trip. I’ve been back in the country since December, and the game has just sat there, patiently waiting for me to return after wading through the likes of Bayonetta, Dante’s Inferno, MAG, Greed Corp, Silent HIll: Shattered Memories and, most recently, Yakuza 3. (And Heavy Rain, the only game I’ve played this year not for the purposes of a review.) Return I have, and it’s just like I remember it. Unfortunately, my recollection of the gameplay of Assassin’s Creed was poor to start out with.

I’m committed to finishing it out of some twisted and likely ill judged duty. Maybe it’s because I received it as a birthday present literally years ago that I feel I must endure. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ubisoft games. I also really liked Montréal when I visited the city as part of the aforementioned global excursion. I just don’t really like Ubisoft Montréal’s Assassin’s Creed. Sure, it’s pretty, and I’m usually a sucker for historical games, but for all its visual grandeur, the gameplay’s repetition is disappointing, while controlling Altair is like wrestling a drunk monkey into an oily bag.

Other than that, I picked up Echoshift (I was a big fan of Echochrome) and I’ve been losing hours on the bus to Doodle Jump and Angry Birds, the latter having lost some of its sheen the further I’ve gotten into the later levels. Levels that are usually defeated down to pure luck. Of course, luck does factor as an integral element in gaming, but when it’s the key or only factor, the fun dwindles to some degree.