Hey folks,

Just wanted to pop and drop a note to let you guys know what’s been going on.

Since my last post, I’ve started and finished a Chrono Trigger (the PSN version) playthrough, which I streamed entirely on my twitch.tv channel. That game held up surprisingly well over the years and I had a great time playing (and casting) it. Though I will say this, the PSN version is less than ideal, there is some unexplainable delays when going into/out of combat that were quite annoying especially considering how often you go into and out of combat. Story is great, music is awesome, and the gameplay is classic.. it’s well worth your time if you’re into rpgs and you’ve skipped it or forgot it (like I did).

I started a Darksiders replay, that game is still pretty fun though, if I recall the first half is much better than the last half, so we’ll see if I get through it all again, I’ll likely consider this my ‘refresher run’ for Darksiders 2 which is due out in June.

I’m also continuing my Final Fantasy 13 refresher run, I’ll be pushing pretty hard on this one since 13-2 is out in NA on the 31st. I’m in Chapter 11 at the moment, so I don’t have all that much further to go but I’ve run into some pacing problems that come with skipping all of the sidequests so I spent most of the night last night struggling through encounters which ultimately lead to a serious amount of backtracking and grinding.

Tonight will be a bit special though! I’ve got a copy of Rayman Origins scheduled to arrive today so the gf and I may coop cast through some of that tonight assuming that I can get things setup in my living room which I haven’t done before so… Technology permitting, that is the plan. Follow my twitch channel (linked above) to get notified when we go live, I’d guess early this evening (eastern) we’ll get started. Here’s a bit of a preview, I’ve never been so frustrated with her as I was playing Super Mario Bros Wii coop. I assume there will be much face palming and much frustrated grunts and groans and some ‘hurry the eff up’s and some ‘COME ON!’. It should be fun

I started playing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations last night but I am so far unimpressed. Here’s the playlist that will have my playthrough.

I think this game more than any this season will be victim of its release date. The intro to this game, was so uninspiring compared to the ‘epicness’ that came with Skyrim, Uncharted, Batman, and Modern Warfare. I feel all of those games had appreciably stronger hooks at the start of the game than this did. To be honest it felt like I was just going through the motions. I didn’t care about the dude I was hunting at the start at all. Beyond that, it felt like more assassin’s creed, which is fine, and more or less what I was expecting, to be honest my motivation for getting into this one is to hear how the Desmond/Ezio story plays out, and if it had that and it was at least decent would have to conclude that the game had served it’s purpose in my eyes.

I did run into the tower defence portion of the game that I didn’t know it had. Man, what a terrible idea. I love tower defence games, I really do, but if I were to consider tower defence in an assassin’s creed game, I’d have to implement some of they game’s strengths, clearly the traversal. Maybe if they had waves coming from all angles and Ezio had to scurry all over the place to get the right defences in place it would make more sense here (maybe because it was the first one and tutorialized), but as is it feels like a completely different game in those moments, and not a very good game either.

I had a lot of expectations for this game, I thought brotherhood was the best in the series, and had continually got better since the first (which I hated). I’ll keep at it and see if any of those things get any better but this is shaping up to be my biggest disappoint of the year if the first couple hours are any indication. As I mentioned I’m in this for the story so with any luck that picks up and stops feeling disjointed.

I started Skyrim yesterday and I’m really enjoying it. If I were to make one gripe so far it’s that there are some inconsistencies with the voice acting. Some of it is really bad, but a lot of it is really good.

I love the design of the world, they track you up this mountain, and as you climb the score gets more epic and as you reach the top the landscape creates a reveal and in that moment there is a sense of satisfaction that you don’t get very often in videogames. I’ll use the most recent example of Modern Warfare 3, that game is at 11 the whole time, so it becomes the new baseline. In the complete opposite way, Skyrim mixes up the peaks and valleys of action. Before reaching the top of the mountain I was literally walking amongst the critters, following rabbits and goats up the mountain side, as I climbed harsh weather rolled in around me. It was in these moments I was hooked to this game, it really creates some substance and some true dramatic moments.

I find the combat just sort of meh, I suppose it’s because I’m a caster, it seems to be by far the easiest way to deal with enemies at this point. I’m just scratching the surface here, I’ll have more to talk about later.