What We Played #64: Portal 2, Fallout NV, Halo: Reach

What We Played

Following the same pattern as last week I’ve been playing Mass Effect 3 online and returning to older mobile games to see how they fair on my Nexus 7. This week it was old favourite SteamBirds that got a fresh start freed of the confines of smaller smartphone screens and as with Fieldrunners last week it works brilliantly with the increased finger room on Google’s 7” tablet.

Keith has become addicted to the new Pro Evolution Soccer demo and is “loving it”. Darksiders has seen a couple of false starts due to the fact that he just can’t seem to stop playing Fallout New Vegas.

[drop2]Halo: Reach has proved “really enjoyable” for Aran who’s now almost all the way through the single-player and has found it “really well crafted” with a “decent amount of variety in the gameplay”. Bizarrely persisting with his spell of managing Everton in Football Manager 2012, he’s somewhat unrealistically built a star-filled team and is expecting to challenge for a virtual spot in Europe.

Kris’ week has seen a bit of variety, with the Pro Evolution Soccer demo featuring on both 360 and PS3, as well as a good chunk of Ghost Recon Future Soldier’s campaign. His thoughts? Well he preferred the 360 version of the PES demo to the PS3 build, complaining that “replays on the PS3 are juddery, suffering from major frame rate issues, and overall the performance isn’t up to what the 360 offers.”

As for Ghost Recon he found it a “very enjoyable experience, in particular the drone really shines out.” However, he did feel it ripped off the Modern Warfare series a bit, noting that “the campaign cutscenes could literally be from Modern Warfare 3, and they don’t even have the good grace to use them to hide loading.”

However, the highlight of his week was a trip to That London to see the Olympics. I’ll let him tell you about it:

On Monday I headed off to That London to see just what the Olympics have to offer. Unfortunately I didn’t tickets for anything at the Olympic Park, but I did get to see the archery at Lords. I’ve never been to Lords before but it’s a wonderful venue, and has been brilliantly converted for the games. Although competitive archery hadn’t made it’s way into my life before, the commentators did a brilliant job of explaining it and getting the crowd invested in the athletes’ performances. Overall it was a great day, and the organisers deserve a lot of praise for their organisational skills, everything went off like clockwork.

Lastly Toby is “still living it up in Cornwall”. Replaying Portal 2 while listening to the developer commentaries has been his primary gaming focus. He highly recommends you do the same if you get the chance as “the majority are really interesting and provide an insight into the development process and the ideas behind many of the puzzles and characters”. He says the game has not been diminished despite this being a replay for him “and unbelievably, a small robotic core is still close to topping my videogame all time favourite characters list!”

While we wait for the seasonal flood of game releases to begin have you been replaying any favourites?

18 Comments

  1. Got a little bored of New Vegas after a week of owning it…just not as good as Fallout 3. Other than that it’s been a little of Flashpoint: Red river, Borderlands and Unit 13. Might download Rock of Ages later though…

    • I felt the same when Fallout New Vegas came out. Not to mention is incredibly buggy and the load screens in the Vegas section were ridiculous. The Ultimate Edition was a bit better, not as buggy and the colours didn’t seem so garish. I actually became angry because this was the 2nd series Obsidian messed up (Knights of the Old Republic) on original xbox. They were responsible for the Sith Lords.

      I’ll give Obsidian one last chance when South Park rpg comes next year, I mean they can’t mess that up can they?

  2. On the topic of Olympics I went to the GB game at the Millennium Stadium, great atmosphere but it was a shame the actual football wasn’t good :/
    As for gaming, should have my 11th plat by the end of the day. Coming close to the last trophies on Lego Harry Potter 1-4. has been very enjoyable :)

    • Also I’ve bought; Hunted, Brink and Rage, all of which i’ve only played a little of. I have another two Lego games to complete as well :P close to another play on the POTC one :)

      • Just got the plat now, yay!

  3. With the summer drought now in full swing I turned to my older games again this week:

    + My wife and I finished our co-op playthrough of Portal 2 – Got a little too tricky for us towards the end but we stuck at it and had a great time overall.

    + My mate has recently started a new Gamertag so we had a great laugh firing up Left4Dead and replaying through the campaigns again, unlocking as many achievements as possible. Still the best co-op game in existance in my opinion

    + Ghost Recon AW – Played through a couple more missions and was reminded how tricky some of the later stages are. Also left my console running one day to unlock the ‘commited’ achievement (play for 8 hours straight)

    + My brother handed me a small stack of games mid-week and, as well as copies of Oblivion, Fable3, COD2 and Mass Effect, included in the pile was Forza3. Had forgotten how great this game was and had a lot of fun playing through some of the races and putting stuff up for auction.

    + Deadlight – Hurray! A new game ;D Far too short for my tastes but very enjoyable nonetheless and one of the prettiest arcade games I’ve played. Great stuff.

  4. still playing Minecraft. ^_^

    there’s a great mod called Sim-U-Kraft i’ve been playing with recently.
    it adds NPCs that you can instruct to build houses, shops and farms.
    it’s pretty damn fun, if a little buggy at the moment, but the guy behind it does update fairly often with new features and bug fixes.
    this is his youtube page, where he’s started doing a playthrough.

    http://www.youtube.com/user/SatscapeMinecraft

  5. I’ve been tempted by Fieldrunners 2 – looks good!

    Not much for me this week, Platinumed Plants vs Zombies on Vita, restored my MW3 100% by completing the new Spec Ops mission with McProley. I also showed my face at last weeks Battlefield meet which I haven’t attended for about 6 months, even then I wasn’t a regular. And I’ve now returned to the WipEout 2048 DLC and only need to complete the last campaign on HD to have finished the HD campaigns. Then it’s on to the Fury DLC. Couldn’t bring myself to play any Fallout 3 this week – needed a break from the DLC.

  6. This week I’ve been mostly playing ‘Flathunting’ which has lead to a huge desire to play “Call Of Duty: Estate Agent Murder Spree”

  7. Who’s keith? O-o

    I’ve been playing Batman:Arkham City and have been collecting the riddler trophies as well as finishing off the side quests. And i started New Game Plus, which has been a challenge so far. Also, did a few challenges. I think i only have 200 left. :D Will punch a lot of kittens if the save becomes corrupt or if it crashes on the 400th one. Also got Dues Ex 1. Played it, discovered that i am shit at stealth on that, restarted and playing it as a FPS.

    • I’m gonna hedge my bets & say KJKG is Keith.

  8. This week has been pretty much solely Yakuza Dead Souls, currently working through the last quarter of the sub stories and I have 1 more subterranean mission to do (still have quite a bit left to do after that if I’m to get anywhere near the Platinum).
    Bought GTA LCS and VCS from the PSN store summer sale … I have played them both before, but another outing on the Vita will be nice, especially at 4 quid each.

  9. Not much really for me tbh,Im struggling to sit and play anything for a long time,so i’ve managed to play a little on nascar 2011 and a bit of metal gear collection.
    Ive got the new escape plan dlc to play tonight.
    oh and i’ve been helping the gf with saints row the third,which is never a chore as it makes me laugh :)

  10. This week I’ve been cracking on with Naruto – Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 which I’ve been massively enjoying. I also tried out the demo for Fall of Cybertron and now I really fancy picking it up when it’s released.

    Beyond that Virtua Tennis 4 on the Vita is getting some serious play each night after work.

    I’m glad there’s virtually nothing coming out as I’ve got games coming out of my ears! Looking forward to trying Dead Space 2 out from my Playstation Plus this month as I’ve not played either game in the series.

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