My willpower is rubbish

Yup, it really is. In my blog entry “Too Many Games” I realised I had a game collection that had 29 Xbox 360 games in it, which was simply too many as I could never play them all. I decided to get rid of Civ Revolution, Condemned 2, Lego Star Wars, Lost Odyssey, PES 2008, Smackdown 2008, Star Wars: Force Unleased, Top Spin 3, and Euro 2008. That brought my collection back down to a more managable 20 game collection. I bought, completed and then sold Lego Batman (very enjoyable by the way), again keeping the collection the same size.

Then I started looking at the games I wanted. Due to getting rid of the above, I could afford to pre-order Fable 2 and Fallout 3. A 22 game collection then, not so bad. Then I realised all the other stuff I had that I could sell. My PSP and games were never used so might as well be sold. I had 3 DS games I didn’t play, so they could go. I had some old PC games which could also go, along with some PC hardware that was lying around. It all added up to enough to also pre-order Dead Space and Gears of War 2. The collection was growing again.

I then found 10 old PS2 games I had no use for at all. I knew I wouldn’t get much for them if I sold them, but in trade perhaps I’d get enough for a cheap game. They actually turned out to be worth more than I thought, as Computer Exchange gave me £37 in trade for them. Sat on the shelf was Mercenaries 2 for £38, so with a shiny pound coin, I returned home with another game.

Then something very lucky happened. A few months ago I traded in quite a lot of stuff into Computer Exchange, and ended up with over £100 worth of vouchers. After buying some stuff, I had £38 left, but I lost the vouchers while we were on holiday in August. We looked everywhere, in every bag, in every bit of clothing, but they were gone. I’d resigned myself to not having a game (I was after Beijing 2008 at the time), and stopped looking. Then yesterday morning, Lynnie was emptying one of her bags, and out fell the vouchers! We’d both been through that bag at least once, so we’ve no idea how we missed them before, but I wasn’t complaining.

So, off to town I went, looking to get Halo 3 and GTA 4 (they came to £38 2nd hand). I walked straight into the shop, picked up both games, and paid with my vouchers. As I left the store, I noticed PES 2009 was on the shelf for £40. Now, Computer Exchange is a 2nd hand store only so I was a little surprised to see that in there only 3 days after it was released. Still, I’m a Fifa man now (more on that in another update) so I put it back down and carried on walking. That was until something else caught my eye. Saints Row 2. For £40. 3 days after it was released. I picked up the one and only copy they had (disappointing someone in the process I think), and went back to the till to ask if there was any chance I could get that instead. The staff, who are always exceptionally helpful there, were more than happy to sort that out, and out I walked with Saints Row 2 costing me £2.

So, after trying so hard to cut my game collection down to a reasonable size, with pre-orders and cheap games it’s gone back up to 26 games. That doesn’t even include games like Guitar Hero World Tour, Scene It Box Office Smash, Rock Band 2, and Sacred 2, all of which I’ll be wanting to get with either birthday or Christmas money. Looking through my collection, I still can’t really see anything I’d be happy getting rid of (I tried and failed twice with Bioshock and Mass Effect, I just love them too much for that). So, I guess I’m stuck with a rather large games collection again. Oh well, at least I’ll never be short of games to play

Edit: I also forgot I’ve got Dynasty Warriors 6, and Fifa 09, so that makes 28 games! Even more than I first thought.

Star Wars – Force still on it’s leash

At least that’s the impression I was left with by the time I’d finished the game. The Force that the Apprentice wields is very impressive at times, blasting open huge metal doors and throwing Tie Fighters around. However, you’re still left with the impression that they could do more. His powers are shown to be truly amazing in the quick time events and cut scenes, where he can crush AT-STs into a small metal box, and control the descent of a Star Destroyer, and things like that only serve to further your disappointment that you can’t do things like that in the actual game. I suppose if you could it would make things far too easy, but you’re still disappointed nonetheless.

The game itself was pretty good, besides the 2 glitches I had (more on that below). The story was good and ties things together nicely, without ever being really shocking with the details it reveals. I was hoping we’d get some deep story with a twist that changes the way you look at the story, but I guess Lucas would be running the risk of annoying a lot of fans by changing too much. The action was pretty non-stop, and it’s a game where you can use the achievements to help make it a more varied game. As I said 2 posts down, you can vary the gameplay by going for the various kill achievements using all your different powers. This forces you to not rely on one particular power and definitely adds some nice variation. The levels are all very linear (which I don’t mind so much, there’s plenty of open world games around if that’s what I want), but they’re all very pretty to look at and most definitely have a Star Wars feel to them.

Now onto the glitches. The first was easily the most annoying, and is pretty common. Partway through the game, it stopped giving me bonus objectives, instead showing “*Default Text” in its place. This glitch also causes the game to stop tracking your holocron collections, and your force power kills (it still counts who you kill, just not how). It means I couldn’t get the achievement for collecting all the holocrons, nor could I get any more “Kill 100 people with force lightning” style achievements. It was pretty annoying to be honest. I wasn’t playing the game solely for the achievements, as I did find it enjoyable, but I was purposely collecting all the holocrons and there was no point in the end.

The other glitch I had was right at the end. I finished off the final battle, choosing the good ending, and right as the final movie was about to play, the game froze and I had to reset my Xbox. Thankfully I still had the achievement for finishing the game, and for the good ending, but I hadn’t unlocked the movie, and the game still had my last continue point before the final battle. I decided to do it again, this time going for the evil ending, and got the achievement for that as well. For once a glitch managed to work in my favour.

Overall I did enjoy it, and I’ll definitely be renting it again in the future, but only when it’s been patched and I know I can get the achievements without it glitching on me. Hopefully that patch is already being worked on.