What We Played #58

Something of a shocker this week as the disruption to my free time and gaming routines has been such that I have not played any Gran Turismo 5 this week at all!  That’s definitely very uncharacteristic. My PS Vita has seen some more Everybody’s Golf loving, and I’ve been doing what’s necessary to stay at the top of my friend’s list tournament in Treasures of Montezuma Blitz. That means setting high scores, not deleting friends, before any of you suggest that.

PS3-wise I played a few hours of Skyrim at the weekend as I want to try and get it finished before the DLC hits, which is hopefully around the end of July. Mass Effect 3‘s multiplayer has been getting some action too as a few friends and I have got quite into it. It was also the cause of a highly amusing text I received from a friend yesterday:

OMG how much do I want to do the savage weekend quest…. 7 million…. we can do that!!!!

Yes, an excitable friend had read it that individual squads had to rack up 7 million kills over the weekend to get their Operation Savage rewards!  It was with no small degree of amusement that I pointed out that it was great that they had sufficient confidence in us being able to sustain a kill rate over the whole weekend of about 50 per second – a rate which gave us a little leeway should we need to stop for toilet breaks and get more coffee.

Peter has been playing a plague simulator on his iDevices called Plague Inc. Your sole aim in the game is to develop a disease and wipe out humanity.  “Quite fun so far” is his interim verdict.  I do wonder whether his need to expunge the planet of humanity comes as a result of his playing through Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor for our review, which he summarises as follows:

It’s total rubbish. I spent hours trying different clothing, lighting and even moved to a different room to see if that fixed it but all to no avail. It doesn’t function as it should. Unless they were trying to make the most broken piece of crap they could in order to make me swear continuously for about five hours. If that’s the case, they nailed it.

[drop2]Naturally if only it had featured Kinect dancing Peter would have escaped the review as it would have gone to Kris instead.  Our resident seagull- and arcade-lover has also been playing with his iDevices with Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror being the subject of his reflection this week.  “It was enjoyable”, he says, “but not quite as challenging as the first game”.

He felt that the pacing of the story suffered in comparison to the original Broken Sword and that the feeling of danger was missing.  It was competent enough to still rate as a “good game” though and the presence of “some quite amusing supporting characters” was welcome.

With no more Broken Sword games on iOS Kris is now looking for recommendations for good adventure games for his iPhone.  Any suggestions?

With his exams behind him Jim has been gaming more than recently which much of his attention focused on Wrath of Heroes once more.  The free-to-play title keeps drawing him back and tempting him to part with cash for more must-have heroes.   He’s also “dabbled” with EVE Online though the thought of the subscription is holding him back from fully committing to it.

On his PS Vita he is “almost done” with Mortal Kombat:

I’ve poured hours into this game and still have much to explore, though after having beaten the campaign, arcade ladders and most of the tower challenges, I won’t feel too bad if I ever need to free up some space on my puny 8GB card.

Gaming on his PS3 has been confined to LittleBigPlanet 2 which despite loving the first game he struggled to get into until receiving some encouragement from his little sister.  Presumably not the kind that goes after your Adam with a big syringe.  Now he’s “on board” with LBP2 he’s enjoying the “added game play features and the newly-found focus on narrative” but is “worried” that he still doesn’t feel up to creating his own levels.

Portable playing has consumed Blair’s attention this week with both of the current handheld consoles seeing some action.  On his 3DS it is Heroes of Ruin that got his circle pad orbiting, while the cause of the twin-stick-tilting on his PS Vita has been Unit 13.  Both titles are the grateful recipients of a “great fun” rating.

[drop]Positively gushing about Gravity Rush we find Tuffcub.  “[It’s] one of the best games I have played all year” is his opener.  His attempt to characterise the game is that “it’s Final Fantasy mashed up with Studio Ghibli in an open world float ’em up”.  Sounds like we have a new genre there.

In case his opinion isn’t already clear he like you to know that he “absolutely love[s] it and it is a joy to play such a game whilst on the move”.  His PS Vita is proving so popular that he’s had to buy one for hubby so his own doesn’t keep getting stolen.

Whilst not “on the move” his PS3’s Blu-ray drive has been spun up for the “rather fun” Lollipop Chainsaw and Spec Ops: The Line which is actually managing to live up to expectations and be “rather fab”, apparently.

That’s us done for another week.  If you have got any suggestions for Kris let him know while you let us know what you’ve been playing.