What We Played #75: Dishonored, Derreck The Deathfin, Democracy 2

This past weekend I finally got around to playing through Mass Effect 3‘s Leviathan DLC.  And I loved it.  Not for the gameplay, which was good enough, but fairly run of the mill, but for its fleshing out of the Mass Effect universe.

I have also played a bunch of solo multi-player (so, single player?) missions in ME3’s online mode to tick off a few of the new challenges while my usual gun-toting comrades are still AWOL.  After all those solo runs I feel like I should break out into a rendition of the Blue Suns Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear The Reapers’ with Tali and Liara on backing vocals.

After a break of a week or so Borderlands 2 got taken out for a spin with a couple of friends.  Still good, still Borderlands.  And rounding out my list this week I have been playing a bit of Move Fitness to see if I can fit a few of its workouts into my free time with autumn and the associated dark evenings now in residence.  I can but the space I have is just barely big enough.  It does however mean that I am using my PS Moves for the first time in a looong while.

Dan has started playing through Dishonored “which is most enjoyable” by all accounts.  Not quite enjoyable enough to prevent him becoming seriously sidetracked by the “brilliant” anime Spice and Wolf though.

Resident Evil 6 is “just average” according to Aran.  By trying to appeal to fans of both action and survival horror it seems that Capcom have created a game that is unlikely to satisfy either group.

You may have read his review of NBA 2K13, which received an 8.  In summary he says it “is good fun to play once you get the hang of it”.  Notably he highlights the fact that the MyCareer mode is also more immersive than EA’s rival Be A Pro mode.  His The Witcher 2 adventures have finally reached the 2nd disc and he is “still loving it”.

Testing an early build of the latest creation from Michael (he of husky fame) has consumed a fair amount of Chris’ time this week.  “I hope he won’t mind me saying that even at this pre-pre-pre-alpha stage it’s great fun & perfectly suited to the platform.”

When it comes to published games he has been playing some FIFA 13 in between saving the Earth from yet more aliens in XCOM: Enemy Unknown.  Chris is not the only person I know that is playing the game to have restarted after getting about a dozen hours in and finding that “the ramifications of my building priorities turned disastrous and my combat veterans were recovering from injury leaving me with very difficult missions to do with rookies”.

Keeping up with requests from various countries had also become a problem leading to them dropping out of the Council.  “Going through again I’ve tweaked my research & building priorities and am being more cautious during the combat missions ensuring that my flanking soldier isn’t too isolated, surrounded and picked off by the aliens.”

Between savage bouts of man-flu Tuffcub has been variously playing “working on my DJ set for this weekend”, “writing news for TSA” and Derreck The Deathfin.  What he does not tell us is whether any of those were more fun than the man-flu so we can but speculate.

Finally this week Peter, caught up in the ‘excitement’ of this week’s presidential debate, bought a Mac-compatible game off Steam called Democracy 2.  Not without issue though.  “The Steam install didn’t work so I had to email the company that ported it – Red Marble Games. They were quick and pleasant and sent me a direct download to just get the game from their website, which was excellent customer service.”

Democracy 2 is “basically a rough political simulation where you take control of a fictional country and set policy in an effort to get re-elected”.  In doing so “you have to balance all the usual country-running things like state schools, military spending and taxes in order to satisfy voter groups and raise your approval rating”.

[drop2]It seems that the challenge of herding cats which is running TSA is good training for a career in politics as when it come to the game Peter is apparently “spectacularly good at it”.  “In my first game, I’ve already been re-elected once and I’ve created a true socialist utopia with a large, strong economy and my approval rating is really good.”  Okay, maybe not so much like running TSA then.  :-p

Seeming concerned that we might not believe that he has found a game that he is good at, he has provided the adjacent picture to prove it.  “That’s my approval rating with all those groups and the bar along the bottom is my overall rating.”

“I might run for office” concludes Peter.  And let’s face it given that one of the candidates for the US presidency can’t understand why you cannot open windows on aircraft, presumably he’s talking about airliners, perhaps Peter would not be the worst choice.

Or perhaps his thoughts about running America stem from his recent experiences in another game set in revolutionary times that he cannot tell us about yet…

Enough about us, what have you been playing?