Whatcha Been Playing?

This weekend I spent some time plugging away at the stack of games on my shelf, in preparation for Left 4 Dead’s imminent arrival.

I finally went back and finished the last two chapters of Dead Space.  To make an understatement, playing that game is not a relaxing experience (and while it’s a bummer for a guy who uses games to wind down, that was a compliment).  I’m glad I finished it though–in my mind this game deserves far more support in the way of sales than it got last month. It’s bound to be viewed as a classic horror game.  Maybe not survival horror in the strictest sense, but a horror game none the less.

Dead Space feels polished throughout, but it is book ended by a spectacular opening “cut scene” and an excellently designed final chapter.  Issac’s final nemesis in particular had a superb sense of scale and weight behind it, and although the last battle still falls into classic video game archetypes (re: shoot the glowing weak points), it was a fitting and gorgeous closing to the action.

I hit a wall in Fallout 3 last week.  I think I felt paralyzed by all that I could do, so much so that I simply chose not to do anything.  What I don’t like about the quest structure is that you can inadvertently skip parts of the main quest by talking to people who begin a subsequent quest first.  This happened to me when I went to Rivet City and ended up talking to a certain NPC who then sent me on to main quest two, closing the first quest in the chain.  I’m thankful I had the wherewithal to reload and redo that action, because the first quest has an amazing setpiece that I’ve already alluded to in a previous blog, and I would have missed that entirely.

What it’s made me do is reverse my normal way of approaching things.  Typically, my plan of attack with a game like Fallout or Oblivion is to delay the main quest chain as long as possible, while doing every side activity I can.  With Fallout, I’ve had to readjust–I’m now working on the main quest, determined to stop just before it’s finished and then explore all the side areas.

I made level 20 today, and I had a particular perk all picked out in my mind for the last ten levels, but changed it at the last second to go with the Explorer perk, which reveals every map point.  Now I salivate just looking at my pipboy’s world map.  My plan is to explore the entire D.C. wasteland with my ultra good character, and then to go through the story again as an evil female character.

Besides Dead Space and Fallout 3, I also played the demos for Metal Gear Solid 4 and Valkyria Chronicles.  I was excited to catch up with the rest of the PS3 crowd by playing MGS4 at some point, but the demo didn’t really draw me in.  I just didn’t get it.

Valkyria Chronicles is a hidden nugget of this fourth quarter–it’s a tactical RPG for the PS3, and it certainly impressed me with its clever (though admittedly short) demo.  I’d like to pick it up, but there’s no time or money now.  Because of it’s “niche game” tag, it’s one of those games that’s sure to be marked down to half price within weeks.  I’ll bide my time, awaiting it to fall frugally into my hungry maw, like a spider waiting for its prey to expend all of its energy as it attempts to escape the devious web that has been spun around it before striking suddenly and without warning…or…something like that.

Anywho, what did you play this weekend?

–WG