Busy times here at TSA lead to few of us playing (or at least admitting to playing) much at all.
Peter’s managed a few iOS games like Triple Town and Football Manager Handheld while he’s been out and about. He would have indulged in some proper mobile gaming but he has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to remembering his PS Vita. A bit like Sony’s software teams then.
Tuffcub has many been playing around in Cubase, which if you’re not familiar with it is a music editing tool. How is that game related? It’s game related because he’s busy finishing off his remix of minis title Velocity’s soundtrack. (As if you didn’t know from all the mentions he’s been giving it in the comments.)
In addition he’s played a soupçon of Treasures of Montezuma Blitz, a smidgen of Skyrim and a portion of Floating Cloud God.
Cursing the latest convulsive bout of PS(SE?)N maintenance for delaying his purchase of Journey, at least when I asked him, is Aran. Presumably that situation has resolved itself by the time you read this. Gaming-wise he’s for some unknown reason, which will no doubt remain unfathomable to most of the country except for a small suburb of Liverpool, decided to try and manage Everton in Football Manager 2012.
It was only after I signed that I noticed that my transfer budget was a big fat £0, so I’m trying to loan amazing players, which is hard. At least I’ve won my first 3 pre season matches, even if one of those was against my reserves. Still, beat Sporting Lisbon.
Elsewhere, Alex has been messing around with iPad DJing software and had a quick shufty on Velocity to see what all the fuss was about. He says it’s wonderful, and reminds him of the Amiga glory days. Or something.
Quite a long way from reality then. My own gaming has been similar to TC, but without the Cubase-ing. I’m also thoroughly enjoying Velocity. Dan’s review was spot on. The well-judged learning curve soon has you teleporting around the levels at a pace you wouldn’t have thought possible ten minutes earlier.
[drop2]It’s ludicrously good fun and certainly the best shmup I’ve played in a good while. It also looks and sounds great on my PS Vita with a good set of headphones. Some of the gold medal times on the levels I’ve played through remain tantalisingly just out of reach at the moment, but those medals shall be mine.ToM Blitz is proving handy for filling in the odd few minutes during the day with time to play rarely exceeding ‘goes’ remaining so like TC said last week I can’t see myself indulging in any micro-transacting.
The bulk of my gaming when I get a quiet couple of hours at home is still spent in Tamriel’s northernmost territory. Since Skyrim’s release me and my avatar have spent somewhere over 250 hours picking flowers, inadvisably nibbling on random mushrooms to see what effect they have, crafting weapons that merchants can’t afford unless you spend a few thousand gold with them first and of course slaying the odd dragon when I trip over one.
Having spent so long wandering the countryside I thought I’d seen pretty much all the variety the game had to offer and was used to everywhere new being more or less the same as somewhere I’d already been. At the weekend though I was proved very wrong and even after all this time Skyrim managed to surprise, astound and impress.
I won’t say anything about exactly what it was but it has served to rekindle my, admittedly waning, enthusiasm for the game and remind me of one of the reasons I game; to enjoy and revel in the imaginations of others. With gaming, at least on consoles, becoming ever more about this year’s sequel to last year’s sequel, to be truly surprised by a game has become a rare and therefore ever more welcome experience.
When was the last time a game surprised you? Played much this week?
Dom El
This week I got hold of Dynasty Warriors Next for the Vita and enjoyed brief spells of hitting lots of people. I also bought both Fat Princess games in the PSN sale, before realising the PSP one won’t run on my Vita (why?) and tried out all the PS+ free games for about 3 minutes each.
cc_star
I didn’t play anything in time for the article deadline, but I haven’t been able to stop playing the Dirt Showdown demo & of course the utterly brilliant Velocity, which is not only the best Mini ever it ranks up there with the best of the PSN and retail.
cc_star
*since
Youles
The Dirt Showdown demo is the first demo in quite a while where I’ve kept playing it over and over, great fun!
Mickey2010
Been playing 007 Bloodstone the last 2 days! and it was really good i loved the story and it actually felt like a bond movie.Also been playing through Football Manager,Fifa Street and had a quick play on Magic Orbs and Awesomenaughts
TSBonyman
I went back to Heavenly Sword for another go .. bloody hell it makes
Youles
…cauliflower grow faster?
Forrest_01
… A bloody good cocktail?
TSBonyman
Her tail, my c… auliflower ;)
TSBonyman
*oops dodgy keyboard*.. makes Enslaved look a bit poor in comparison! Nariko especially is a stunning beauty but the combat can get a bit tricky with the three stances. I seem to be doing better than my original playthrough though.
Played a little or most of the PS+ stuff and gosh, out of everything Velocity mini was the one that appealed to me the most!
Also my daily TomBlitz and have played some Frobisher Says which is a fun diversion.
yogdog
Ok, mainly PC games for me: the only PS3 game I’ve played (although I’ve played a fair amount of it!) is Battlefield 3: ranked up to Colonel 18 and not far off 19.
I started another runthrough of Witcher 2, played Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity with a TSA’er and his friends, played Company of Heroes with some other TSA’ers, played a little of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and World of Tanks, and also started a couple more saves on the Medieval 2: Total War Kingdoms grand campaign mod. All good games :)