Speaking of too many games….

…I’ve just gone through the upcoming releases, and assuming everything hits its intended release date, there’s at least 1 game a week I want between now and November 7th! They are…

• Fifa 09 – 3rd Oct
• Lego Batman – 10th Oct
• Saints Row 2 – 17th Oct
• PES 2009 (maybe, depending on demo quality) – 17th Oct
• Fable 2 – 24th Oct
• Fallout 3 – 31st Oct
• Gears of War 2 – 7th Nov
• Guitar Hero: World Tour – 7th Nov

That’s a lot of games. I’ll definitely have to prioritise and only get one or two to start with, then finish them and trade them into the next one. Fifa 09 is a definte, as is Fable 2 and maybe Fallout 3. The rest may well have to wait until I’ve finished with other games, or until my birthday at the end of November. Then I’ll get the rest for Christmas hopefully, along with Rock Band 2, assuming it comes out before Christmas that is.

Too many games?

3rd update this month, I mustn’t be feeling very well

I was thinking last night whether I had too many games. After a post made on a forum I frequent by a friend regarding how he plays games, I had a think about how I play them. He treats games like books, getting one and playing it almost exclusively until he has either finished it, gotten all the points out of it he wants, or both. Then he sells it and moves onto the next one. It’s certainly a good way to play games as it means you always get your monies worth out of the games you buy.

Now, I play games differently. I get quite excited about the games I want to get, and generally try to find any way to get them as quickly as possible. When I get it, I’ll generally hammer it straight away, irrespective of what games I’d been playing the day before. This means that from time to time, if several good games come out close together, the ones I get first can get lost in the shuffle and hardly played as newer games take over. A prime example of this is Devil May Cry 4, I game I really enjoyed playing, but as I got it near my birthday last year, games like Mass Effect were played more and I never went back to it. It’s still sat on my shelf though, waiting to be played, and constantly losing value.

I currently own 29 games, which realistically is far too many. I can’t play 29 games at once, especially when you consider I’m a member of Lovefilm and get 2 game rentals at a time. Below is a list of all the games I currently own, with a point score per game, and any comment I may have about it.

• Bioshock – 890/1100 – Brilliant game, just need to replay it to get the final 4 achievements. Should trade it and just rent it when I’m ready to do it.
• Call of Duty 4 – 390/1000 – Best online game around. I refuse to trade it in until something better comes along.
• Civ Revolution – 0/1000 – Not played it yet.
• Condemned – 100/970 – Unsure why I’ve not played this more. Had it since release day, and want to finish it before I trade it.
• Condemned 2 – 0/1000 – Refuse to play it till I’ve done the first one.
• Crackdown – 510/1250 – Love the game and want to get more achievements for it, but I really should trade it and add it to my rental queue.
• The Darkness – 0/1000 – Not played it yet.
• Dead Rising – 920/1000 – Possibly my favourite game on the 360. Only 4 achievements left and I refuse to trade it as I’ll keep it as a training tool for the eventual zombie invasion
• Devil May Cry 4 – 20/1000 – Played it twice, and despite really enjoying it have hardly touched it. That needs to be rectified.
• Flatout Ultimate Carnage – 210/1000 – Good party game, keeping it for that reason alone.
• Forza Motorsport 2 – 135/1000 – I love driving games but I need to be in the right mood. This is being kept for when I’m in that mood.
• Gears of War – 200/1250 – Only keeping so I can go through it on Hardcore and get more achievements. Really should do that before the 2nd one comes out.
• The Godfather – 140/1250 – Really enjoyable game, keep meaning to go back to it to finish the story.
• Guitar Hero 2 – 750/1000 – Won’t get rid of this, far too enjoyable, especially with friends.
• Jericho – 0/1000 – Not played yet.
• Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga – 60/1000 – New game, playing through it with Lynnie which is good fun.
• Lost Odyssey – 0/1000 – Not played it yet.
• Mass Effect – 405/1000 – Gone through it once, fancy going through it again at some point. Another I should trade and rent when I’m ready for it.
• Need For Speed: ProStreet – 165/1000 – Really enjoyed it as a rental, so picked it up cheap and haven’t played it since. Another I need to play more.
• Ninja Gaiden 2 – 600/1250 – It’s Ninja Gaiden, therefore will never be traded. Nuff said.
• PES 2008 – 500/1000 – Getting traded in this weekend towards Fifa 09 (the balance of power seems to have finally shifted back to Fifa).
• Rock Band – 210/1000 – I’ll only get rid of this when I’ve got the sequel. Really need to go through the drum career though. Stuck on the last song on Expert guitar career
• Scene It? LCA – 815/1000 – Another I’ll keep till the sequel is here (and only when I’ve got the full 1000). Great party game.
• Smackdown vs Raw 2008 – 440/1000 – Good game that I want more achievements on, then trade away. Should really put aside an evening or two for that soon.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – 125/1000 – New game from Saturday. Will likely finish it this week and trade it towards Fifa 09, then rent it again to finish off the achievements.
• Tiger Woods 09 – 345/1000 – I love golf games so this will likely stay in my collection for a while.
• Top Spin 3 – 425/1000 – Really should trade it, I’m only keeping it for achievements.
• Uefa Euro 2008 – 305/1000 – Getting traded this weekend for Fifa 09. Currently being whored for as many points as possible.
• Viva Pinata – 40/1000 – Lynnie’s game, I need to get her to play it more to get me more points

So, there’s my 29 game collection. There’s 16 I definitely want to keep – 8 of them because I love them too much to get rid of them, and 8 because I just want to finish the story/achievements off. There’s 8 that I should really trade, either right away or after some quick whoring. There’s also 5 I’ve not even played yet (all of which will likely get traded after I’m finished with them). So, my game collection is really about 15 too big. The bad thing though is that I should have traded in most of them ages ago, when they had a decent trade in value. I’ll probably only get £5 for most of them now. Still, 8 x £5 is enough for a new game, which there are plenty of coming out that I want to get. Perhaps it’s time to turn too many games into just the right amount.

Achievement whoring has been back in semi-effect since my last update. As mentioned I had Fifa Street 3 and NBA 2K7 on rental, and when I was off ill last week I spent the day playing them. I got all the offline achievements for Fifa Street, and a good portion of NBA’s. Fifa was infuriating at times with it’s stupid gamebreaker matches, and it got repetative quickly, but it was easy enough. NBA was a bit of a chore to get what I did, simply because the game isn’t as good as NBA Live 08 which I went through a couple of months ago. I’ve put it back on the rental list to finish when I’m more in the mood for it.

I’ve also been whoring Uefa Euro 2008 prior to trading it in this week. Most of the offline achievements are gettable, but most will take some time as they require multiple playthroughs of the Captain Your Country mode as different players. Thankfully the game is still a little active online, so I can try to get as many online achievements as possible, which will make for a good few points.

I picked up Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga two weekends ago for Lynnie and I to go through. The game is good fun but the camera is rubbish at times. In Lego Indy if the two players were far apart the camera would pull back out to keep everyone in sight. In Lego Star Wars it doesn’t do that which makes getting some of the collectibles very hard, and occassionally will actually drop one player out as the camera pushes them off screen. Annoying.

And in more Star Wars news, I picked up The Force Unleashed this weekend. I’m 5 levels in with 4 to go and it’s been very enjoyable so far. You start off with a teaser level as Darth Vader, giving you full access to force powers so you know how much fun it can be. Then you start as the Apprentice and your powers are drip fed to you as you advance through the levels. If you combine this with achievement hunting, it can make for quite varied gameplay as you try to get 100 and 500 kills with each of your powers, so you don’t rely on any one of them (though Force Grip is easily the mostfun, picking up people and throwing them through windows). It’s been slightly slow going through it so far as I’m using a guide to make sure I don’t miss any Jedi Holocrons as I’d like to get the achievement at the first time of asking, so I can just try and blast through it on a harder difficulty next time.

So that’s the end of another update from me. I actually feel like writing another one now, so maybe there’ll be a 4th this month. Unheard of from me. Till next time, stay well true believers.

Minor Disney update

Yay, we’ve finally managed to book our seats for the flights to and from Orlando. I’m not quite sure why, but it all seems a bit more real now, knowing where we’ll be sitting. I know it’s silly, but I don’t care It might seem a bit strange being so concerned with booking seats 11 months in advance, but it was definitely something we had to do. We really really wanted to sit in the upstairs part of Premium Economy on the way there, to give us more of a buffer between ourselves and the screaming kids (of which there were plenty last time). On the way back, it was also important to make sure we book early. We’ll fly there and back in a 747, which generally has a 3 – 4 – 3 seating arrangement (3 by the window, 4 in the middle, 3 by the other window), which means that as a couple we could easily find ourselves sitting next to some random stranger. While that does offer a chance to meet someone fun and interesting, it also gives the real chance for sitting next to a weirdo for a 9 hour flight with nowhere else to go. Thankfully, near the back of the plane the seating configuration changes to a 2 – 4 – 2, and we were able to book one of the few remaining banks of 2 by a window (and only two rows further forward than our seats 2 years ago). That’s a potential worry out of the way now anyway. Is there any way we can speed the next 10 months or so up?

On a completely random note, I’m sat here typing this while listening to Metallica’s new album, Death Magnetic. It’s a pleasant return to form for them after the mistake that was St Anger. It’s not up there with the Black album, but then again not many albums are, so I think it’s unfair to compare it to that. As a standalone metal album, it’s certainly a decent one. Hopefully they’ll carry on in this vein in the future.

I really suck at updating this

Yes, I know I do. I seem to go through phases where I really fancy blogging, and the others where it’s the last thing on my mind. Anyway, after reading Haly’s blog today I figured it was time I got something down. Not sure how long it will be yet, we’ll wait and see.

So, what have I been up to since my last update? Well, my last update was completely Disney related, and not much has gone on in that area, nothing concrete anyway. We’re always talking about it, what we’re looking forward to, what things we’ll absolutely do next time, but it’s still 11 months or so away so we’re too far away to go about booking anything. Hopefully we’ll be able to book our seats on the flight soon (I’m checking every day), as we want to make sure we get the best seats possible. I know that in Premium we’ll have good seats regardless, but I’d still like to have a decent choice on where we sit.

In gaming, it’s hard to pick out what I’ve been playing recently. I’ve almost completely gone off achievement whoring for the last few months, which is evident by the lead Haly now holds over me. It wasn’t that long ago we were neck and neck, but now she’s around 15k ahead of me. If I had the urge I think I could have a good go at pulling that lead back (there’s plenty more whoring games I’ve not touched yet), but I’m never really in the mood. I’ve currently got Fifa Street, NBA 2K7 and LMA Manager on rental, 3 games that with a bit of time and boosting I could get 3000 points from, but I’m not really bothered. I’m picking at Fifa Street as it’s fairly enjoyable, but I’m not sure whether I’ll get the urge back any time soon. I’d rather spend my time lately playing stuff like Tiger Woods 09 (which is very good) and the Fifa 09 demo (which is excellent, I’m really really impressed with it). Hopefully I can pick up The Force Unleashed soon as I’m looking forward to it, as I loved the demo and think I’ll really enjoy the full game.

3 games that do stick out as playing recently are Tiger Woods 09, Too Human, and Lego Indiana Jones. Lego Indy was great fun, going through it with Lynnie. I still have a few achievements left to 1k it, which will take me a couple of hours at some point. Tiger Woods is excellent, as the Tiger Woods games always are. I quite like the way your player attributes are handled this time, in general anyway. If you’re playing well, your stats will improve. However, all it takes is a bad round and your stats can drop drastically, a bit too much for my liking. Still, it’s very enjoyable and the achievements aren’t too bad either. It won’t be an easy game to 1k, but it’s certainly do-able with enough time and effort.

Too Human was a weird one, so much that it deserves it’s own paragraph. The gameplay had a lot of good things about it. There was a large variety of weapons and armours, and plenty of ways to customise them with runes to alter their properties. The control system was weird but very usable (using the right stick to aim melee attacks, with the triggers controlling your ranged weaponry). My two main gripes fall into two categories – gameplay, and story. Gameplay wise I was very disappointed with the lack of a block button. Surely in a game of this manner, blocking should be a critical part of the gameplay. Many times I found myself taking a lot of damage from attacks I had no way of blocking or avoiding. Unavoidable attacks are a real hated of mine, especially when games like Ninja Gaiden 2 show companies how you can make a combat game challenging, but still give you ways to defend yourself. My other gripe was with the story itself. It was very disjointed and difficult to follow. In the end I stopped caring about it and merely killed everything in my way without caring about why. It made my brain hurt less.

So what’s on the horizon that I’m looking forward to? As mentioned earlier, The Force Unleashed is one I’m waiting for. Also, Fifa 09 will be the first Fifa game since Fifa 99 that I’ll actually buy, in 2 weeks hopefully. Beyond that, I’m with everyone else I think in looking forward to Fable 2, Gears of War 2, and Fallout 3. I’m also desperate for a release date for Rock Band 2. Hopefully we’ll get that by my birthday in November. I’m pretty sure they’ll keep me going through to the end of the year, coupled with the 5 games I own that I’ve still not played yet (Civ Revolution, Condemned 2, The Darkness, Jericho and Lost Odyssey), and all the ones I’ve still got to finish properly.

Well, back to work for me, lunch is over I reckon. See you in 2 months probably!