What We Played #66: Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders II, PlayStation All-Stars

I’ll leave you to guess the limits of my gaming this week. If you’ve been reading along for the last few weeks you’ll know the answer. Last week Tuffcub was having moving hassles and this week Kris has been playing “Panic about flatmates changing and sorting out bills being transferred into my name so I have electricity.” He describes it as “not a fun game”.

Something I hope he has been having more fun with following the installation of a new graphics card in his PC (he doesn’t mention whether he’s now playing for Team Red or Team Green) is Half Life 2. Those of you familiar with the game will know he’s not far in yet as he’s still “mostly running through tunnels at the moment”.

Returning to Tuffcub, who has inflamed our collective jealousy with his imminent return to Waikiki, so much so that mild-mannered Peter has even stooped to calling TC’s music “dodgy, camp disco tunes”, he has in turn returned to minis title A Space Shooter For Two Bucks, which he is replaying on his PS Vita having previously completed it on his belatedly bought PSP.

[drop]If you’ve read TC’s discussion-provoking Why I’m Not Taking My PS Vita On Holiday post you’ll already know that his recent move has meant the temporary loss of Internet at Casa TC. If you haven’t read it and joined in the arguments discussion in the comments, you know now. The lack of access to the wealth of Internet content, primarily those areas with a red bulb on the homepage, has left plenty of time for gaming and resulted in a real laundry list of titles and opinions:

Rock Of Ages, “erm.. hmm”; inFAMOUS 2, “almost completed – love it”; Tower Of Babel Demo, “quite fun”; Datura, “no idea what’s going on”; Final Fantasy XII-2, “just started”; Resistance: Burning Skies, “not too bad”; Dead Nation, “trying to finish it”; Lego Batman Vita, “can’t see what people were moaning about, ’tis fun”; Tales From Space: Mutant Blocs Attack, “one of the best PS Vita games going”; Metal Gear Solid II HD, “awesome”; Super Stardust Delta, “my go-to PS Vita game when I have 5 mins spare – love it”; Velocity, “obviously”; Killzone 2, “STILL CAN’T FINISH THE F@#KING GAME THE LAST BOSS IS A NIGHTMARE!!”

After that little lot it’s no wonder he needs a holiday. But why can’t he settle for somewhere on our own wind-swept and rain-soaked isles? Making a welcome return to WWP this week is Chris who’s PS3 has seen very little gaming of late with PC indie titles capturing his attention. Unsurprisingly it was the pseudo-sequel to Warhawk that attracted him back.

I turned my PS3 on to test out the Starhawk update. Don’t even think I came across the new maps though, but I had an awesome time all the same. I don’t think it has the same pick up & play nature of Warhawk, but if you commit to it there’s a brilliant game there, particularly in Zones mode where the imbalances are less relevant.

Aran has finally completed the “brilliant” Halo: Reach and has now turned to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. “I’m having fun with it even though I feel the controls & camera occasionally conspire to make me fall from ledges.” He’s still managing Everton in Football Manager 2012 and is currently languishing in 7th spot behind West Brom. Sadly the wrong Albion to bring a smile to Kris’ face.

A real mixed bag of games for Blair this week. First up is Darksiders II, which “has some great mechanics and is a fun game but dragged far too much and the plot was very weak”. Then he had some hands-on time with the “good fun” PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale but wasn’t entirely convinced by it because “the Supers system is a big problem in my opinion, and it’s something they won’t be changing”.

[drop2]Having in the past played through MGS2 and MGS4, somehow missing out Metal Gear Solid 3, he has finally caught up with it in its PS Vita incarnation. While he has not spent enough time playing to truly get into it, his expectations are high.

Lastly this week we get to Peter who’s “mostly” been extracting the Michael from TC’s music playing through Sleeping Dogs for our review. Having “really enjoyed it” he sums it up as “a reasonably generic GTA clone but it has fantastic hand to hand combat and the atmosphere is pulled straight out of Hong Kong action cinema”. If like him you’re a fan of Hong Kong action cinema you could do worse than read his full review to get a proper taster.

Do you ever think about what your save games are worth to you? Try totting up the number of hours of your gaming time you have invested in them and multiply it by the last hourly wage you got paid, it’ll be a big scary number. Unpatched save-corrupting bugs have been in the news recently and a forgotten lack of auto-save caused Aran some consternation recently, while Peter has found another way to lose a save game:

I’ve also got back into New Star Soccer on iOS (and Android) since the update arrived back on the AppStore. I lost my save thanks to some issues upgrading to the iOS 6 beta so I had to start from scratch again but I spent some money on in-game currency so I could get my stats back up to where they were before so although it’s cost me about £8, I’m now as good at passing and shooting as I was when I was playing for Barcelona on my old save.

Have you got any ‘lost save game’ stories to share while you let us know what you’ve been playing this week?