Gaming Progress Report - March 28, 2014

First, let me apologize for the lack of updates recently. I'd been having issues with my extracted teeth and then I landed a new job that's kept me busy and also exhausted. That said, I'm going to at least make an effort to keep this thing alive, just don't be surprised if updates stay slower during the week.
 

World of Warcraft:

Yes, I know. I only decided to reinstall this because an acquaintance gave me 30 days free he had laying around, but even so. I'm looking forward to the new expansion and even though it's not coming out for quite some time, it's not as if there are any other MMOs out right now that I'd rather be playing at this point. I'm really just messing around with leveling, anyway, no major commitments like raiding.

If anyone is interested in chatting me up, the characters I spend most of my time on right now are Magicpierre on Wyrmrest Accord Horde, and Milhaust and Aihm on Wyrmrest Accord Alliance.

Yakuza: Black Panther:

Honestly, I've never given the Yakuza series a second glance over the years. Not necessarily because the games don't suit me, they've just never done anything to catch my eye. I picked this oneup because I was looking for an import title that was different that my youtube viewers might enjoy, and I'll be darned if the game isn't growing on me.

I only had a basic idea of what the series was like, and was surprised when this particular entry turned out to be something like God Hand crossed with a JRPG in a modern day setting. The cutscene art style is also excellent, and I'm finding myself excited to see more of them. I expect to post a full review of this when I finish it up.

Gaming Progress Report - March 19, 2014

Castlevania - Lords of Shadow:

Been playing this on and off for weeks now, mainly basing my playtimes on whether or not my PC wants to recognize that my PS3 controller is plugged in or not. As a rule I tend to dislike spectacle fighter action games like this, stuff like God of War and Darksiders have always bored or frustrated me to the point that I don't finish them, but somehow this one held onto me til the end and then some.

I think it must have been a combination of the setting and the incredible music, but I powered through and finished not only the main game, but both DLCs. Unfortunately, the DLCs were kind of weak with the 2nd one being downright infuriating (I died more in the first 10 minutes of the 2nd DLC than I did throughout the whole of the main game), but they were important top finish to see the whole story.

Warhammer 40000 - Dawn of War II Gold Edition:

I'd been wanting to play this game for ages now, after getting a hell of a lot of enjoyment out of the original Dawn of War and its expansions. I was somewhat wary when I heard that they'd removed the base building aspects of the game (that being probably my favourite part of any RTS), but so far it's been fun enough and I've cleared the main game and moved on to the expansion. I've heard that the 2nd expansion helps a bit with the whole being locked to a squad for an entire mission thing, so we'll see when I decide to pick that one up.

The way the missions are handled is kind of cool, sort of a mix between the two styles of the original Dawn of War, but I'm not big on the infinitely repeating defensive missions, and the whole corruption system in Chaos Rising seems more like a pain in the ass than anything else. So far I've managed to keep my entire team pure, but so few decent weapons and armor drop, and it feels like whenever a really good upgrade does appear it's always corrupted.

Gaming Progress Report - March 12, 2014

Shining Ark:

Still chugging through Shining Ark! I just made it to Chapter 4 yesterday, and while I still adore the art style I'm beginning to lose my interest in the game. The battles are really, really short and have massive chunks of text both before and after them, and it's really not doing much to hold my attention. That said, the ship battles are pretty great and I wish they happened more often. Having to balance using the cannons while fighting enemies off your deck is tense and these fights were the only point I even came anywhere close to dying.

The game keeps throwing new characters at me that are essentially inferior to the ones I have in every way. I rotate them around for variety but elf chick and dog dude are miles more useful than the others.

Lost Planet:

So, this game. I've been wanting to play this since it was first announced for PS3 back in the day, it looked like a fairly cool 3rd person shooter, which I'm definitely into. The reality, however, is that the game is just kinda boring. Rather than a well scripted 3rd person action game with fun gameplay it's ended up being something of a slow, monotonous slog from the start of a mission to the irritating but easy boss battle at the end.

At the very least the game still looks great despite being several years old, and while the boss battles are kind of lame, they're still great to look at. Plus, the game has giant robots, and I'm pretty sure everyone knows how I feel about those.

Gaming Progress Report - March 8th, 2014

My girlfriend has been away for the weekend visiting family so I've been able to burn through more games than I would otherwise, and despite feeling generally ill over the past few days I actually managed to check a few off my backlog and beat them.

Costume Quest:

This little piece of awesome had actually been sitting on my backlog for years with me constantly telling myself I'd get to it eventually. Let me tell you, it was worth the wait. Costume Quest easily blew my expectations out of the water and I was so entranced by it I even grabbed the lone DLC and played through that as well. I think I blew through both in a combined total of 4-5 hours, but I enjoyed every minute of them.

Why can't they make more console style RPGs for the PC? They don't even have to be serious affairs like Final Fantasy or whatever, this game proved that! I'd love for more games like this to be released, because it's getting harder and harder for me to play newer console style RPGs on actual consoles (on account of my not having any of the new ones).

Homefront:

I almost feel like I'm doing a bad thing by putting this average-on-its-best-day FPS in the same update as Costume Quest. But yes, I played and finished Homefront. It looks and handles identically to every other modern military FPS, but it's single player campaign was somehow even shorter and jankier than Call of Duty and the like. A real shame, too, because the setting for the game was fairly interesting, and the introduction sequence actually had me pretty well hooked despite it being completely unrealistic.

Apparently a sequel is in the works despite the average to negative reviews the game got, though, so maybe that will improve on a lot of the things that held this one back.

Gaming Progress Report - March 5th

I'm actually at a point right now where I have way too many games going at once and I'm in pretty desperate need of hard drive space, but can't pick any one game to delete because I haven't finished any of them yet. I should just buckle down and pick one, but I'm indecisive by nature. Anyway, some thoughts on a couple of the offending titles.

Unrelated to what I post below, here's a link to my youtube channel. I upload far too much and I'm always happy to get new viewers: FlamingGnats' Channel - YouTube

Defiance:

This should be the perfect game for me. 3rd-person shooting in an MMORPG setting with Guild Wars 2 style public events? Hell yeah, that sounds awesome, and for the most part it's not half bad. However, my first foray into the PVP side of things kind of left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I haven't felt like logging back in for a few days now. 

Essentially the PVP is dead, but those dedicated enough to wait out the 10+ minute queue times to get into a battleground are treated to being consistently killed in a single shot by people with literally 50x their EGO rating, all sporting the same semi-automatic sniper rifle and stealth ability. This has apparently been a major problem for the game for a while now, with most of the community abandoning PVP altogether because the devs have done nothing to fix things. I don't blame them, and I won't be trying it out again.

TESV: Skyrim:

Yes, I'm going to play this again. I spent a good chunk of yesterday downloading far too many mods and I just finished installing them all this afternoon. I've done this many times in the past and have only ever beaten the game once before (and even then, I ended up rushing through the main story about halfway through) so hopefully this will be different and I will be able to complete everything. I'm hoping the fact that I have a much better GPU now than I did the last time I played will make it easier to get into the game, but we'll find out for sure soon enough.

Gaming Progress Report - March 3rd

Since I'm not quite ready to throw together another review or article about any one game in particular, I thought I'd just leave a few snippets of information regarding the games I'm currently playing instead. I'll likely use this format as a way to space out reviews and give myself time to get them all edited and such.

Shining Ark:

I had been wanting to pick Shining Ark back up for a while after I'd done the little teaser for my youtube channel, which really only consisted of the first quest, but was continually sidetracked with other things to the point that I'd basically forgotten about it. With Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X finished, however, I figured now was as good a time as any to get back into the game.

Unfortunately, the Japanese wiki for the game has been down for some time now and with it the only quest flowchart or anything even approaching a guide I've been able to find after hours of searching online. So I'm flying blind, and while I'm sure I'll be able to make it through the main story without any problems (already on the 3rd chapter), it's a bit frustrating to constantly be walking past NPCs with that little frowny face over their heads because I can't figure out what the hell they want me to do with their sidequests.

 

WHAT DO YOU WANT??

Regardless, I'm having a decent amount of fun with the game, though I'm likely to slow down with my playing and focus more on PC games so as to avoid burnout. It's so facerollingly easy and the quests are incredibly repetitive, I'm sure if I wasn't a fan of the franchise and art style I wouldn't have the patience for it.

 

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon:

The only other game I've really been playing the last couple of days has been this beauty, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon. From what I've gathered online it's considered one of the worst entries in the franchise, but I'm having a decent time of it. The last EDF game I played was for the PS2 (the name escapes me), and I'd forgotten how good they were at making giant ants destroying low resolution cities look awesome.

At this point I have maybe two or three more missions before I've beaten it and can start uploading my playthrough to youtube, and I may toss up a full review tomorrow.