I didn’t get as much portable gaming done in my travels as I had anticipated I would however, I did get to try out N.O.V.A for the iPhone which ended up on a lot of iPhone game of the year lists. I must admit, the graphics in that game are pretty impressive, and the controls are intuitive. If I were to get into a shooter on my iPhone, that’d probably be the one. It didn’t suck me in though, and I’m not entirely sure I’d ever be able to play it well enough to actually enjoy it despite the intuitive controls, mostly because of the lack of feedback from a d-pad on a touch screen, I end up with my thumb way out of position and it just doesn’t work. If you don’t have that problem, this portable title seems very promising.

I put at least an hour or so into The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and that has been great so far, it’s providing everything I was asking of a zelda game so far. The traveling by rail is pretty tedious already, becoming a master of the train’s controls is not coming easily to me. The puzzles, and the mechanics between ghost Zelda and Link have been excellent, I will reserve those details for a later post.

[Some site related, but not game related information below...]

Now part of the reason I didn’t get as much gaming done this holiday is because I used a lot of my free time developing a new WordPress theme of my own for this site (not that there is anything wrong with this one, major props to this theme’s developer for a very unique design [I absolutely love the sidebar laying over the header] but I felt that before I could genuinely call this site my own, it should at least be of my own design). I am a programmer by trade and have built many sites of my own but I have never really worked with PHP so it did take some fumbling to get as far as I have. I don’t often get to program as a hobby anymore, so I had a lot of fun with this little project. It’s just about done save for a couple areas that still need work, but I thought it would be fun to show a little glimpse at the direction I will be going in the new year.

I certainly welcome all feedback, but especially feedback of the constructive variety (yes i realize this is the internet and that is a lot to ask).

The past couple weeks

With the console season officially over (there is only 1 console game to come out that I’m dying to play, darksiders), and only 1 console game here for me to give a fair shake too (Saboteur), gaming this week has been a little dry.

Back to a guilty pleasure:
Over the last week or so I’ve been getting back into World of Warcraft (don’t worry I have no intention of turning this into a WoW blog). With the release of The Fall of the Lich King patch 3.3 introducing a new raid my interest was piqued. The Lich King story line is one of the most compelling in video games to me. It caught me at a young age and I feel almost I owe it to myself to see it through. I won’t get too deep into it, but Dungeon Finder is awesome, and it works… sure you get the occasional bad pug group be for the most part its a good time, and an easy way to get you geared up for the new content.

Saboteur:
I played for about an hour, and I had an OK time, I agree with most of what has been said so far in the popular media, the controls aren’t as tight as I would like, and climbing is significantly more cumbersome than I am used to from playing Assassin’s Creed 2. Driving is pretty good though, and blowing stuff up is always good even though I haven’t done much of that yet.

Borderlands: Island of Dr. Ned (DLC):
This finally came out for PC, but I haven’t spent much time in there at all, maybe 20 min or so and I could barely keep my eyes open at the time, so I’m not going to comment on it yet, but wanted to give it an honorable mention because I am excited to get some time in.

PixelJunk: Shooter:
I forgot to mention this one in my interesting releases post, I’ve been looking forward to this one! there is a lot to be said for new classic arcade style games… there is definitely a place in my life for games that I can enjoy in 10-15 minute chunks.

The Next Couple Weeks

I like a lot people will be travelling around to see family over the holiday… So I definitely see this as an opportunity to catch up on my mobile gaming!

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks:
It’s still in the wrapper… been saving it up just for this! I’ve read some positive reviews so far and my expectations are high!.. Don’t let me down Link.

I’ll be posting from the road, but probably nothing at great length, I’ll likely pick up some iPhone games while I’m out there when I get bored if I find any good ones I’ll be sure to share! If you’ve got any good ones I should be checking out do share…

The Saboteur – I hope this gets the assassin’s creed 2 taste out of my mouth, it’s drawing some comparisons because of the release date being so close, but this is clearly more ‘shooty’ than AC2 based on the fact that there are actually guns… I’m noticing the review scores are much lower, but they’re also lower from the same people who though AC2 was a 9, I clearly fall closer to the Jim Sterling school of thought on that, so I’m hoping those silly reviewers are off on this one too.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: The successor to “Phantom Hourglass”, which I loved… actually, I think PH was the most fun I’ve had with a Zelda game since a link to the past, which is saying a lot. I’m hoping this one is just as good.