Random thoughts about random games

My personal life has been undergoing a bit of turmoil recently, but I’ll leave that for another blog entry. For now, I thought I’d jot down some thoughts about a bunch of games I’ve been playing recently.

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
  Great sequel, although somewhat easier than the first game. That said, it had some great set pieces (the battle on the train was particularly entertaining) and the final boss was a lot more fun than UC1’s. Definitely worth a buy if you own a PS3, but you probably knew that already.
• Sonic and Sega All-stars Racing
  This game honestly surprised me. It’s a Mario Kart clone through and through, but it’s a pretty good one. Decent selection of tracks, and although there are a few too many Sonic characters, there are a few interesting nostalgia Sega picks like Opa-Opa, Bonanza Bros, Alex Kidd and of course Ryo from Shenmue. The balance could be better (right now it looks like flying characters are at a disadvantage while bike characters are overpowered) but it’s still rather fun to play.
• Crysis
  Pretty damn fun. The first half of the game lets you tackle your objectives in a fairly open-ended manner, while the second half ramps up the difficulty and throws tons of gunfights at you. Both are good fun, although the vehicle sections have some pretty annoying controls (VTOL sequence, I’m looking at you). And of course, the game looks gorgeous. I’d recommend not getting the Steam version if you have a 64-bit OS, though – for some reason it doesn’t include the 64-bit binary. On top of that the game occasionally just runs like a dog on my admittedly pretty good PC. Given that Warhead runs so much better I have no idea why the first game is such a hardware hog.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
  I’ve said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this game over at the Orochinagi forums and I don’t feel like typing it all up again, so here’s a link to the relevant thread for you to read.
• Sonic 4: Episode One
  The more I see of this game the less it interests me. So much for classic Sonic – what we’re getting is Sonic Rush Adventure in HD with crappy physics and speed boosters up the arse. I’ll stick to my copy of Sonic CD for my classic Sonic fix, thanks.

As for the backlog, now that I’ve beaten Crysis, this is what’s left:

1. Crysis Warhead
2. Deus Ex
3. PoP Warrior Within
4. PoP The Two Thrones
5. PoP (2008)
6. Resident Evil 5 (STILL looking for someone to play this co-op with me…)
7. God Hand (got to the third area, promptly got my ass handed to me)