I have been away for the last few days, so I didn’t get much gaming done apart from maybe 30-40 minutes of Bowser’s Inside Story while I was on the plane.. before I left, I had got to spend 2-3 hours with Heavy Rain, just enough to get to the point where the pacing of the story really starts to pick up.

Since getting back, I’m 6 or 7 hours in, and I think I’m very close to the end… all I can say is wow, what an experience so far. I’ve seen all sorts of shady things… It feels like choose your own adventure book, in movie format, that just so happens to be interactive. The result is something that hits a lot of emotions, and through the intertwining story of these 4 characters, you come to some very difficult and emotional crossroads, and tough decisions. I said the same thing about Indigo Prophecy that I’m going to say now… This game isn’t for everyone, but, if you consider yourself a fan of video games, you absolutely should not miss this. I can’t wait to see how my adventure ends.

After the first DLC for Borderlands I’ve been weary, it was clear the second one wasn’t for me, but I also wasn’t really interested in General Knoxx, until I caught the quick look on GiantBomb. This looks like the DLC I wanted Zombie Island to be… we’ll have to see how final fantasy 13 smooths over before I jump on that.

I also think that FF1&2 are over priced for iPhone, as tempted as I am, $8.99 for a game that’s that old is just too much. I’d have no qualms about paying $5 though…not that taking a stand over $4 is going to prove much of anything…

I updated to the beta steam UI last night, and I got to say… it’s pretty slick, I’m missing the hierarchal game list view, but all of the extra details you get are great.. well apart from the obvious display of how much gaming I’m actually doing…

On top of that, the in game overlay is much improved, clock, stats, session tracking, and a bunch of other things… it’s definitely worth updating too.

Only draw back seems to be a few of my games needed to be redownloaded for some reason… very weird.

In other news, I didn’t get a Star Craft 2 beta key, I’m pretty disappointed by that.

Between yesterday and today, there is all kinds of news to share…

I spent a few solid hours getting through the latter part of Darksiders, I plan to have a full review out in the next couple days, so stay tuned for that, but I will say this, the ending was solid, wraps up the whole story while foreshadowing a sequel. The latter part wasn’t nearly as amazing in terms of environment and level design though, I’ll go into more detail in the review.

Secondly, Plants vs. Zombies is out for iPhone, I loved this game on PC, but it seemed like a shame to have to play it on one. I put in a little time at lunch and the controls translate very well to the iphone, and it is full of the same charm so far. I think it’s just a port, but this is the kinda game that I’d love to have for a minute or two…

Finally, I started White Knight Chronicles, it was a pretty long introduction to the game where you are a boy working for a man, who sends you on a trivial task, and ends with a directive from someone else, and/or moral obligation to save the princess… how one goes from A to B is a mystery solved only by leading characters in RPGs, and Mario… In any case… I’m not a fan of the combat system at all… you basically configure a glorified action bar, with some abilities. You gain points you can spend to learn new ones. The problem I have is that all the ones that I’ve learned so far don’t really improve my damage output. I feel as if I’m missing some fundemental information regarding how to setup my party to be effective, it feels like I’m using the same ability over and over, it’s not really fun. On top of that… the interface is very cluttered, you’ve got a combat log looking pane that takes up so much of the screen its ridiculous, you’d think they’d have some way to customize it or at least make it so it doesn’t take up a quarter of the screen. I’m going to give this one some more time to see if it gets compelling story-wise, otherwise this may fall into the DNF bucket.