Gaming, gaming, and more gaming.

Things have gone through a bit of a change over the last week; I’m no longer writing for GamesAreEvil, which means that I’ll be creating content (at least at the moment) solely for this blog. It’ll allow me to get back down to why I got into blogging in the first place; to get my thoughts down into an area that cannot be edited, censored or otherwise tampered with by anyone but me. I’ll be editing my About Me page and LinkedIn profile to reflect this change. I wish it could’ve been on more amicable standards, but the phrase ‘double standards’ comes to mind, although whether that is the right phrase of words or not, I don’t know. All I know is that I won’t be writing for GrE or TPG again. Whether I get into writing for a games site again, once more I’m not sure.

BUT. Onto better things.

I’ve been gaming a lot this week to try and get myself interested in the industry again; with the same stuff piling out of Kotaku and Destructoid (no offence to the sites; they do great work, it’s just after E3 it’s gone down to the usual grind), I’m starting to lose interest in the industry as a whole, rather than just the games that I play. So, I’ve been playing a few.

GO AWAY! I LIKE MY DEAD BODY WHERE IT IS KTHX.

I played Too Human for about five minutes, and I realised what the reviewers had been saying about it all this time. When I first got into it, I started from the beginning,and I was enjoying myself; because I had started from the beginning. With the reviewers often having to start from the middle of the game, I can see why they get annoyed at the difficulty and the back-handed attitude the game has to the progress of the player. And I saw that damn valkyrie five times; once simply because I had been put in front of the boss right in the middle of his most powerful attack. Needless to say, I did not enjoy that.

MadWorld came straight from Lovefilm, and it got sent back a week later. I can understand why people like it; it’s just that I don’t. I don’t like the idea of having to unlock the end of the level by scoring points, as it feels like the developers have just avoided manning up against the weaker players. Yet in the same breath, the boss fights on each of the levels are the exact opposite. They are bloody unforgiving, and the contrast between the two can really throw you off.

Finally finished .hack//G.U. Reminisce. I had to do some power levelling before I took him on again, and at level 93 I finished him pretty quickly. I’m now on the third and final volume of the series, Redemption, and I’m now levelling so I can take on the first round of the Sage Palace Tournament. I had tried before, and died in the second fight. Once I’m up to about level 107, I’ll give it another try. There’s another thing that got me on the .hack//franchise as a whole; it makes me wonder why the games’ reviews have been so harsh. A friend hit it on the head, though, when she said that anyone who plays .hack just wants to be told a story, not to find out whether they like the .hack world. After all, the anime will polarise you either for or against the games, so anyone who buys the games with any sense of knowing what it’s about, will make the right decision and enjoy the game ot the fullest. Except of course everyone in Europe and the UK, who can’t get the game unless they modify tyheir consoles and import it from abroad. Or in my case, bring it back from a holiday in the US.

This guy is a bugger to kill. End of.

After I’ve completed Redemption, I’ll probably get to work on the Ace Combat games I’ve accrued; I have Squadron Leader first, and then AC: Distant Thunder. I might try to play Air Combat (the first Ace Combat, but I doubt it’ll be any fun; going from the last game in the series to the first is not something I recommend, in any game series, unless you know what to expect.

So now that I’m not affiliated with GrE anymore, I’ve got a bit more free time on my hands. I’ll be working on the RahXephon project, and if that’s going along swimmingly, I might consider working on FloodGuard for a little while. I mean, I’ve got all the material to do a decent script whenever I want. I hope I get around to doing it eventually; whether it’s a series or a one-off remains to be seen though; stringing out a few bad first-person camera angles to try and show the Flood presence would get boring pretty quick.

ANYWAYS. Off to clear some more .hack//G.U.

EDIT: Since I wrote the above, I’m now past the second round.