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Games I have been Playing

Hostile Waters: A bout of Nostalgia cause me to drag out this overlooked classic from yesteryear.

Medal of Honour Warfighter: I will generally play any shooter good or bad but I am struggling to finish this one. The execution is competent if unoriginal but to be honest the game feels over the top racist to me.

Brutal Legend:  I played a couple of hours of this was was reasonably impressed but other games have since distracted me.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - An unexpected pleasure a short third person action adventure with a good story and fun gameplay. As a bonus the PC version comes with an extra adventure "Pigsy's Perfect 10" which has a completely different play style based more on stealth and guile than strength and athleticism. The only downside is that your sidekick for the main campaign is an annoying beyond belief at times and does everything possible to put themselves in dangerous situations which you are left to sort out. The fact that this sidekick is a cute girl while you the protagonist are a muscle bound man smacks sadly of sexism.

Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3: I have completed a full play though of Bioware's magnificent Opus (ME1 58 hours, ME2 51 hours, ME3 80 hours) . Yes I hated the ending of Mass Effect 3 but that doesn't take from the fact that this trilogy stands at the very pinnacle of gaming achievement. The depth and variety of storytelling in particular is astounding while the game-play is fun too. In fact I thought the gameplay improved substantially from one game to the next. Advice: If you are going to play this game spend the money for the single player DLC campaigns. Yes they are bizarrely expensive compared to the main games and Bioware seems stubbornly resistant to ever discounting them but this is a series which deserves to be experienced in all its glory and the DLC stories add substantially to the overall campaign.

Dawn of War 2 single player campaign. I loved this. Instead of resource gathering , base building and and army recruitment you just get a small squad of space marines with which to compete each mission. It reminds me of the original Ground Control. This is one of my favourite types of game and I wish more games did this.

Aside: In between playing games I have been taking the University of Alberta's online course "Understanding Video Games" though Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/course/uvg  This was not quite as intense as Prof Clayton's Lotro based course on Online Gaming New Media and Literature that I took last year but it is still a great learning opportunity for me. My background is in hard science and technology so I sometimes struggle with the concepts and analyses of art and literature but I love language, I love new ideas and  these courses definitely gives me a new perspective on the games I enjoy so much.




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