Things I've Noticed: My Wife is Pretty Amazing

Sorry I didn't get this post up earlier in the weekend; I came home on Friday expecting to have an evening's worth of stuff to do, and would hopefully get out a review of the book I was planning to finish (should come next week), when my wife told me she had a surprise for me - which turned out to be a copy of the new PS3 game The Last of Us from my local library.

So, as a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories, I've spent my weekend working my way through the game (also schoolwork, hanging with the family, visiting friends, etc.), and so far I've got to say it's pretty amazing.

The company who produced the game, Naughty Dog, are the same folks who created the Uncharted series, so I've found a lot of the controls are similar (which is nice), but what really amazes me about the game is just how amazing it looks - considering I'm playing a guy fighting zombie-like creatures, the sheer level beauty of game, showing a world where nature is slowly creeping back up on the remnants of our modern world.

I'm still probably in the first quarter of the game, but wow; it's a huge amount of fun.

Have I mentioned how amazing my wife is?

Dead Space 2: First Impressions

Having finally finished up Grand Theft Auto IV, I moved on to the game Dead Space 2 this weekend, and with two Chapters (levels) under my belt, here are my first impressions

The Opening segment is amazing!  Dealing with the Necromorphs (alien zombies) throughout the first game was pretty darn terrifying.  Spending the first level of the sequel running away from these creatures while drugged and in a straight-jacked was one of the more intense gaming experiences I’ve had.

Like another of my favourite PS3 Franchises, the Uncharted series, the game does an excellent job of giving you tutorials on how to play while moving the story forward.

Unlike the first game where everything is pretty straightforward, the second game starts by informing you that the protagonist is crazy – you literally don’t know if what you’re seeing actual monsters or not throughout the early stages of the game.

Overall the game is a lot of fun – pretty darn scary, and has just the right level of space suit/engineering mixed with survival horror to keep me coming back for more.  Unfortunately it creeps out the majority of the people in my house, so I have to play it quietly, and in the dark.

Game Review: Assassin's Creed II

This morning I got up early and figured I'd play a little bit more of my latest PS3 game, Assassin's Creed II.  The game has 14 chapters (called sequences) and as I had just finished Sequence 11 yesterday, I figured I would try sequence 12 today and finish the game up next week.

Interesting note about Assassin's Creed II, Sequences 12 and 13 are downloadable content, not part of the main game, so when you finish Sequence 11 you go straight to Sequence 14, the end of the game.

Luckily for me, I wasn't quite finished my latest book for review, so I can now do a game review.

Assassin's Creed II continues both right where Assassin's Creed left off and a few hundred years later.  You still play Desmond Miles, but instead of inhabiting an Assassin during the Crusades, you instead inhabit an Assassin during the Renaissance in Florence, Venice and ultimately the Vatican.

Like the previous game the set up is that you are a guy in the near-future who has been kidnapped and put in a machine (kind of like The Matrix in reverse) and are living the life of an Assassin in the past to discover stuff about the future.

The game is sandbox style, which means that while there is a main story line to follow, it has a large number of side quests and areas to explore.  It feels kind of like the Grand Theft Auto games in that way.

The visuals are great, the music is fun, and in one particularly interesting set of side quests you have to make your way through a number of ancient tombs to find secret seals (items not mammals) which feels an awful lot like Tomb Raider or Uncharted.


In the end the game was fun, worked for me for about a month and a half (remember, I only play on weekends) and definitely has me interested in continuing through the series if I can find the discs for a good price ($20 or less).

Game Review: Infamous

As I've been off on vacation for the last couple of weeks, I was able to finish my most recent game for the PS3, Infamous. The game is a sandbox-style game (wherein you can follow a main story, do side missions or simply explore the environment) and follows a bicycle messenger named Cole MacGrath who begins to develop super powers after being at the epicentre of a massive explosion.

The game itself was a lot of fun, as the explorations through the city showed me a lot of really neat environments and allowed me to interact with the cities population. Actually one of the best parts of the game, in my opinion, was the ability to be a jerk or a decent guy throughout and have your choice actually affect the gameplay. Playing as a good guy, I eventually had a lot of people helping out in my battles and being friendly to me overall. I'm looking forward to coming back to the game at a later date and trying it out as an evil guy, so the replay offered by the game is actually quite high.

The graphics were fun, the story was engaging, and although there were a few glitches (mostly falling through parts of the environment that should not have let me fall), overall this was a really fun play. I'm excited about checking out the sequel as well, but next up for me is the sequel to one of my favourite games for the PS3 so far, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This new title, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.