What We Played #114: Gran Turismo 6, Portal 2 and Serious Sam

What We Played

I have to admit that after 10-12 hours a day in a 30 degree office when I’ve been getting home from work this week I’ve just been chilling out, both literally and figuratively, and haven’t even considered playing anything. Luckily the others haven’t been so lax so there is something for me to tell you about.

Kris has finished off the “very disappointing” Battlefield 3 campaign, though he does say that the final level was “good fun and relatively interesting”.  He’s used the “pretty fun” iOS version of Ms. Splosion Man to alleviate his disappointment with BF3, and is enjoying the game’s “tricky platforming”. On a less gaming note, he’s also been paying close attention to the Ashes, and is hoping that England can recover from a rather depressing performance yesterday.

It’s been a while since WWP has heard from DanOne, not to be confused with Danone, but he’s dropped by to let us know that his time trying out Gran Turismo 6‘s Goodwood Hillclimb track was “pretty cool”. For mobile entertainment he picked up Donkey Kong on the 3DS. “It feels a bit more sluggish than the Wii version but it’s still a cracking game.”

DanToo wants to start things off by sharing that the “awesome/horrific/completely unbearable” weather had left him stuck to his leather couch as he was writing his WWP report. I think that maybe we should just thank him for his commitment and swiftly move on to what he’s played.

God of War: Ascension‘s camera positioning is causing him some frustrations, as is the lack of strategy in the combat as “it’s all just smash square and triangle”. Despite that, the fact it “looks great” and has “impressive” big battles means he’s looking forward to playing more. F1 2012 has seen rubber laid on some more tracks, and he’s now getting excited for F1 2013’s Classic mode.

Switching focus to his PC, the Steam sale has cost him a pretty packet, as I’m sure it has some of you. I decided not to even look at the Steam Store this summer after last year… Anyway, DanToo reports that Alice: Madness Returns is proving enjoyably “quirky” so far but he’s spent most of his PC gaming time trying to complete the “freaking awesome” Portal 2.

If  you spot someone looking smug as they recline in front of their air-con unit you may well have found Tuffcub. While making the most of being able to play at temperatures below the point where neurons start to give up and go home in large numbers (below about 28 degrees Celsius) he’s been playing Killzone 3, Superfrog HD, Thunderwolves, Battlefield 3 and the Vita version of Need for Speed.

Rounding out our overly hot (for us fragile Brits) week of gaming and non-gaming is Aran, who’s been turning to Breaking Bad on Netflix when he’s found it too hot to game. When gaming he’s reviewed the The Serious Sam Collection which “felt dated”, except for the 2D side-scrolling Double D XXL which “proved fun throughout” and added “a fresh spin” to the series.

If you haven’t got any weather to complain about where you are what have you been playing?

24 Comments

  1. Still Animal Crossing, Borderlands 2, some Left 4 Dead 2 coop and now Tropico 4. Now I have Borderlands 2 on the PC too, which is better for me since we don’t have to go splitscreen anymore, but I need a controller or a gaming mouse because I simply cannot function with >10 keyboard keys. I got some extra copies of BL2 that I want to trade and weirdly Euro Truck Simulator 2 looks fun…

  2. Usual mix of Gears3 and Saints Row The Third for me this week.

    “Re-upped” on Gears after buying the Season Pass and made a start on the various tasty DLC packs. Making a start on an Insane 4player co-op run this evening now that Infinite Ammo and Instagib Melee have been unlocked. Should be fun!

    As for Saints, my mate and I are about 50% through now and having a great time. Sure its a bit buggy but it beats GTA hands-down in the fun department, which is all what matters in my opinion.

    Oh, my Wife bought us a Wii-U this week whilst walking around Asda, so I picked up a copy of Monster Hunter 3 (currently still in the wrapper) and also dabbled in the Rayman Legends App. That game is going to be really special in August!

  3. 10-12 hours in a 30 degrees C office? Sounds like a sweatshop to me. I recommend you, you show your management the studies done on the influence of office temperature on the quality of the decision making process. It is an negative correlation, the higher the temperature, the poorer the quality of the decisions. Ideal office temp is 21 degrees C.

    • Oh I have. They’ve seen the NASA studies on heat stress too. Still not doing anything about it. You’d think that a >10% measured productivity drop would matter to them, but apparently not.

      Still, it’s almost the weekend! :-)

  4. Lots of Dead Island Riptide with McProley. Whilst the game isn’t amazing, I’ve really missed having something mindless to play, and something co-op – and it ticks both those boxes, so I’ve really enjoyed it. We did half the game in about 2/3 of the game in 2 sittings, over an evening and the following morning. We should have the platinum fairly soon, once we arrange a suitable time.

    I’ve also been playing TLoU multiplayer, although it seems people are not really exploiting the overpowered melee attacks now – and they are overpowered – people running at you should not be able to take several bullets in the chest/head/face and still be able to continue to run at you! Otherwise it’s enjoyable.

    Then I’ve played some FIFA 13 on Vita, and I’ve just got to play a game in every stadium for the platinum, so I hope to have that done soon too!

  5. This week, I’ve been playing Dark Souls. Started as a Deprived class character and did quite well untill the bloody DS3 R2 button caused me to kill an NPC due to the nature of the DS3 triggers if they are not on a flat surface. Thus I restarted as a knight. Discovered that I was very rusty at the game as I died to Taurus Demon and I never used to die on that boss. Yesterday’s session was just a failure as i kept dying for various reasons.

    Picked up the goddamn Batman Arkham City:GOTY edition and was annoyed to discover that saves from the original are not reconginised by this version. Meaning, i’ve had to delete a year old save that I had to make more space as it would just end up sitting on my harddrive. I usually play a few maps every now and then. Going to complete the main story as well as all of the side quests aside from the riddler’s one but his sidequest will be easier as i know all of the riddles barring a few. I may pick up the Prepare to Die edition tomorrow of Dark Souls and try to split my sessions into 3 hour sessions for Batman and Dark Souls. I suspect what From actually mean with Prepare to Die is prepare to fecking ragequit a lot.

    Oh and I’m going for a pure melee build in Dark Souls. Did the catacombs which was fairly challenging and Pinwheel was a very close fight. I was literally one or two hits away from dying. :O

  6. Well, I’ve been off today and I’ve just finished the ludicrously pretty Far Cry 3! Loved it, even romping around just mopping up relics etc was fun. On to the coop now, anyone fancy a few hours of it tonight from 9?

    • Should’ve said if you do just add me on PSN, anyones welcome :) I might even set up a meet…

  7. More Animal Crossing, albeit in much smaller chunks than the last few weeks as I’ve pretty much got my town the way I want it. Halfway through my 2nd season of Tiger 14. Also decided to start playing through GTA 4 again.

    And finally, after being denied the Grid 2 ‘global domination’ trophy on 2 separate occasions, I managed to get it to unlock at the 3rd attempt and now have my platinum (#85).

  8. Just arrived back in the UK after a lovely honeymoon.

    Any TLOU meets going about

    • Honeymoon? Congratulations mate!!! :)

      • Thanks. Yeh got married 2 weeks ago, that’s why I been offline hopefully now that I’m married she won’t think I’m going cut down on gaming lol

    • Ahh that’s where you went! haha. Congrats mate, hope you had a good time.

  9. Played some GTA4 because I thought 5€ would be a great deal for the game.
    Boy was I wrong. Even on the highest settings the game looks like crap, the animations look like something straight from the PS2 and the voice acting is the worst I’ve had to endure since playing Just Cause 2 (at least that game was fun…).

    Fortunately I’ve also picked up Dust: An Elysian Tale and that turned out to be great.

  10. Absolutely nothing! Watched Luther, but other than that, the TV hasn’t even been on.

    • Luther is a great show!
      Even tho I’m a season behind due to missing it when it started on BBC, caught the 1st series recently on Alibi & loved it. Now I’m 2 or 3 eps in series 2 (also on Alibi), but have recorded all the new series just shown on BBC1 so I can watch them after I’ve caught up.

      • It gets worse unfortunately. Still worth watching, but first series was best.

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