Broke Down

I did end-up making some Steam purchases during the summer sale:

• Borderlands 2 Season Pass
• Condemned: Criminal Origins
• Deathspank
• Monaco
• Proteus
• Rune Classic
• Skyrim: Dawnguard
• Skyrim: Dragonborn

Also picked-up the Limited Edition of Shin Megami Tensei IV for 3DS (despite promising myself I wouldn't after sinking so much time in Persona 4 Golden) because, along with my earlier purchase of Fire Emblem: Awakening, Nintendo was including $30... Which has so far netted me copies of Mighty Switch Force 2 and Shantae.

And Borderlands is getting kinda boring. Looks like I'm about 60% through the game, and while I like it, I'm ready to check out... Playing it in shorter and shorter bursts as it becomes a bit of a slog to get to the end.

So cheap!

Steam's sales are incredible, but I'm in no rush to play DmC, Metro: Last Light, or the last two Call Of Duty games (all were down to $20~$30); everything else I've been eyeing (Gunpoint, Monaco, Rain-Slick 4, The Swapper) are all super-cheap to begin with; and Singularity is STILL over $20... Looks like it's gonna be a summer of working through the backlog; I'm cool with that :)

Also, Persona 4 Golden is, like, the longest freaking game ever! Who has time for this shit!? Still awesome, but I don't think I'm gonna touch another Megami Tensei game for a while after this one.

Play with me?

Would just like to mention that I found copies of Ghost Trick, Muramasa Rebirth, the Limited Edition of Project X Zone, and Tetris DS... ALL AT THE SAME PLACE!

Also picked-up complete copies of Ristar for Genesis and SEGA Touring Car for Saturn!

Ooh, and Gears Of War: Judgement for cheap! Like, brand new for $30 cheap!

Damnit.

I purchased Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition, Borderlands 2, and a Borderlands 2 Season Pass - all for about $30 - during various Steam sales, but didn't get around to trying any of them until the other day. I'd heard the first game was essentially a Diablo-esque FPS with hardly any narrative... I'd say it's more of an offline MMO-style grind, but whatever. As for the story, yeah, pretty bare-bones so far; I'm a level-20 Hunter. Anyway, I'm into it... I kinda wish I wasn't, but I am. Gonna wrap the first game up ASAP and hope the sequel's plot is as good as I've heard it is.

Purple

I finished The Last Of Us, and it's definitely worth everyone's time. I can't imagine what it would be like to play that game as a parent, though I'm pretty sure it'd have a huge impact on the player's experience. Anyway, the final 25% is considerably more engaging and interesting than the zombie-apocalypse routine of the first half of the game, but I'm mostly impressed that I ploughed through a stealth-heavy game without save-scumming! It was a very organic experience; one that so many other stealth games have had such a hard time delivering.

Once that one was out of the way, I finally wrapped-up Far Cry 3 and Bulletstorm. Both games were really good, though both would've greatly benefited from allowing me to edit their horribly awkward scripts ;)

Kentucky Route Zero Episode II was as stunning as the first episode, I'm downloading Borderlands, and you really must play Ripple Dot Zero.

Naughty Dog

So I finally got a chance sit down with The Last Of Us, and I'm now a little over half-way through... Really solid stealth-action game with great voice-acting, but I don't see what everyone's so incredibly stoked about. I've been a Naughty Dog fan since Way Of The Warrior on 3DO, and while this may be the most ambitious title they've ever released, I'm kinda disappointed by some of the rough edges I encountered over the first few hours; my character has gotten stuck in world geometry, looped through falling animations, and died; my flashlight has experienced something resembling an epileptic seizure; I've quit in the middle of an encounter only to continue from a point after that encounter when I return to the game; Ellie has straight-up teleported through obstacles on multiple occasions; other NPCs have literally run around in circles; enemies have respawned from previously cleared-out areas; dead bodies have seemingly randomly hurtled themselves through the air; and the entire world - save for me and the skybox - has simply vanished. Even worse, many of those bugs are reproducible. Regardless of all that, the story's pretty interesting, but then I'm just not getting into it; it's very by-the-numbers... I do like the flow of everything though; this is a stealth game that doesn't make me want to reload my game every time I'm spotted *ahem*Dishonored, Deus Ex: Human Revolution*ahem* The Last Of Us is a really good game; don't get me wrong; it's just not a ten for me... Yet.

P.S. Picked-up Okamiden and Sonic Rush Adventure for DS, Lost Odyssey for 360, and P.N.03 for GameCube.

P.P.S. Guacamelee is friggin' awesome!