What We Played #53

Now the controversy has died down and we are all left waiting to see whether Bioware will indulge in any retconning in the forthcoming DLC, Aran has got around to finishing Mass Effect 3. While it was “fantastic” overall he agrees the ending was “a bit of a let down”.

He’s also been suffering from a bad case of Starhawk-envy having “played a ridiculous number of hours of Warhawk”. It would appear the most fun he had was when he channeled Altaïr and commenced running around with a knife. That does bring back memories of some of the bizarre spinning knife duels I’ve had in Warhawk over the years.

Appealing to the well understood ‘collector gene’ that is often present in gamers, Skylanders has been remarkably successful. Aran’s the latest victim of this “fun game” with a well designed “portal and character hardware”. Given the Wii U tablet’s NFC capabilities I’ve heard it said that all Nintendo need to do to ensure the console’s success is bring out a Pokémon clone of Skylanders and bundle a Pikachu character for it with every console. And you know what, that would probably work.

When it come to his last game this week we find evidence that Aran has graduated from the Alex School of Hyperbole:

And, finally, Journey again. This game will help change the future of gaming and it sends a message to other devs that a game doesn’t have to be complicated to be a masterpiece. Journey may be the only game that has actually got a round of applause from me on completion.

He’s clearly at odds with the likes of myself and Tuffcub who agree Journey’s good, but probably not as good as Flower. Discuss.

Speaking of Tuffcub he’s given his PS Vita a damn good seeing to this week with his games played rundown consisting of Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Treasures of Montezuma Blitz, Velocity, Floating Cloud God, Super Stardust Delta and Mortal Kombat.

Peter owns up to playing “loads this week” before clarifying that with “well, little bits of loads, not actually a lot of anything”. Loads has included continuing his Football Manager career, the first couple of missions in Starhawk and a peculiar game of ordering but not downloading Diablo III. It’s probably wise to wait until the demand on the servers drops back a bit though.

I’ve also been playing quite a lot of Minecraft 360 Edition. I never really understood all the hype about it, despite owning it on PC/Mac for ages. I resented the baffling crafting and total lack of any hints as to what you should or could be doing. Minecraft on the 360 sidesteps that by making crafting simple and hosting a brief tutorial. There’s just enough information told to you that you can get started while still leaving things for you to discover. I definitely wouldn’t say I’ve turned into one of those odd Notch fanboys that I seem to bump into so often around the internet but I definitely understand the appeal a little better now.

As for myself, I finally broke the shrink-wrap on my copy of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception at a friend’s urging to join them for a spot of co-op. So far so Uncharted, I’ll have to find time to give the single player a go sometime but I’ve struggled to drum up any enthusiasm for the game despite pre-ordering it.

ToM Blitz gets an almost daily play to fill the odd minute or two as does Velocity while Ridge Racer seems to have secured a regular place in my PS Vita’s card slot as it is still a fantastic drift racer that’s easy to drop into for a quick race. Alex is certainly right about the poor state of its DLC on the store though.

My PS3 has seen some Rock Band 3 action plus the regular weekly Gran Turismo 5 session though there’s been no Skyriming this week. I did try a bunch of the month’s PS+ titles including Ricochet HD, Hamster Ball and Sky Fighters but none for much more than a handful of seconds. I may have tried some of the others but their blandness has let them slip from my mind.

Whoring it up in Saints Row: The Third we find Toby, appropriately playing the games Whored Mode. “It’s easy just to switch on and play for fifteen minutes of fun – perfect when you’re trawling through pages and pages of AS revision.” I guess his results will reflect exactly how wise that particular combination was.

Yet another of us hanging out on their PS Vita more than anything else is Keith who’s still engrossed with Hot Shots Golf and Unit 13. He’s dabbled with a bit of FIFA too “but using the back touch screen makes scoring far too easy”. Are your PS Vitas holding your attention like ours are?

Meanwhile Dan is unable to tell us what he’s been playing as he’s been too busy secret squirrelling, which he assures me is not dogging with midgets.

How about you?