I beat Max Payne 3, awesome game, really fun to shoot stuff, the story is also kinda interesting at some parts but in the end it just doesn't feel satisfying. I played on normal and it was actually kinda hard, so hard in fact that sticking behind the cover all of the time was the best strategy. Just peeking out would get me killed in a shot or two, so slow-mo shoot diving was out of the question, it's too bad that the coolest move in the game is only good for one thing, getting you killed. Apart from that some levels just felt too long and repetitive, since they are basically all the same, just walk forwards and shoot the guys in the head. Still I guess it was fun while it lasted, but I have no desire to play it again, unlike the first one, which I've beaten like 10+ times in the past.

Driver San Francisco was just as I expected, just plain fun. Wish more driving games would add such fun supernatural elements as well. The last boss was a breath of fresh air, and the random dialogues were pretty funny, the ending was kinda unexpected, at first the story is kinda slow, but things heat up near the end when everything goes crazy. Definitely a great game.

The Darkness 2 was a really fun game. The story is much more interesting than the first one was, and the action is also more faster and much more brutal. There's just one problem though, it short as hell. I finished it in a single day, not just that, but in a single sitting, only about 5 hours long. And that's with all of the dying included, I died and had to repeat a bunch of checkpoints over and over, so no-raising the difficulty so you could die even more to prolong the is out of the question cause at that point it just becomes frustrating. It also felt like most of the enemies were cheating, they would keep spawning with flashlights and when you are blinded some other guys would appear and steal the weapons from your hands, totally unfair. Still it was very fun while it lasted, a solid rental.

I also got FF XIII-2, but I haven't played much of it yet. I just got into the second level or town or whatever. From what I have seen the combat hasn't changed, it's just auto attack after auto attack. The story so far is kind of interesting, but it does seem to be getting out of hand, I'm hoping there will be a good explanation for all of it later.

I also finally got to play Alan Wake, was waiting 6 years for this game and then they never released it for PS3 :(. Anyway I'm a couple of chapters in so far, and I have to say the story is pretty good, but I'm having a hard time to find any fun in the godawful forest. it just drags on and on and there is nothing interesting to find or do there. Also the enemies are kinda lacking, there only seem to be two types of enemies and they just keep coming over and over and over, it feels like a grind and not really fun.

Last but not least, I got my hands on The Secret World free beta weekend, it was one of the two mmorpgs I have been waiting for quite a while now, and I have to say this was pretty good, as far as mmos go. Unlike Tera or any other mmo, you're not just thrown into the world to kill stuff, there's a lot of story, and every quest/mission has a cinematic monologue at the start like those you would see in GTA. Also the missions have been designed so you can't just take everything and go out to do stuff. You can only take one story mission, one main mission, one dungeon mission, and 3 side missions, and in each hub there's quite a few these, and each of those are not just single missions, but whole chains that keep on going, you don't need to keep returning after each one they just activate as soon as you complete one, and you can claim your rewards as soon as you complete it without going back as well. There's also no leveling up or levels or stuff like that, by playing the game you can get more skills, so as soon as you start you're practically in end game content. As you play you can of course get stronger weapons and more skills, but at any one time you can only have 6 active and 6 passive skills, similar to Guild Wars. Another thing that really surprised is that missions aren't really all about killing or farming, there's puzzles to solve, some of which might even require you to make a quick google search, then there's stealth missions and kind of other stuff, really looking forward to this one soon.

So yesterday I started the 5 day free trial for Tera, the new mmo. I can admit that the game looks good, and that the combat is fresh, because it's a lot like an action game, similar to Amalur. There is no more targeting an enemy and spamming your two abilities, instead you swing your weapon anywhere and the collision detection works well to figure out when your sword actually touches an enemy to inflict damage amidst all other players on the server. This also means you can strike many targets at once if you are wielding a huge weapon, instead of just focusing on only one target at a time.

However there are other things that Tera fails to improve or change at all, and it's the usual mmo tropes of farming and leveling up. Every quest appears to be "go there and kill 5 of these things" or "collect 10 of those and return to me". The combat will soon become old and repetitive if that is the only thing you are doing. Dodging and rolling away works fine, but there is another problem here, why would I bother jumping away when the enemy only takes 1% of my health when he strikes me, it just becomes a trivial distraction, it's not interesting and challenging, instead it just drags on until we deplete each others health bars. 1on1 fights are pretty boring, though I admit things could get more interesting when you're fighting a huge pack at some point, but the problem still persists, you spam the left mouse click to attack over and over, and then you roll away occasionally, it's no different than spamming your two skills overs and over.

Another problem that I have with Tera is the story and this is mostly the same for most mmos. They just toss you in a generic fantasy world and it's up to you to soak in all of the different random gibberish. All of the quests are just walls of trivial text that have nothing to do with each other and just send you on trivial errands, which boil down to the usual korean grindfest. I'll play till the trial ends, you never know if it gets a bit more interesting later on. Basic rundown: combat is fresh but too easy, everything else is old and untouched which you have already seen a thousand times over. Also, the game is pretty huge, it took me about 30 hours to download and patch everything, I'm hoping they didn't count that as the first day of the five I got.

I'll be honest now, I didn't really enjoy playing it all that much, mostly because it's the same game all over again. You run, you climb, you jump, you stab, rinse and repeat until credits roll. I did however enjoy the story, and by a lot, well at least the endings. It's kinda sad that we most probably won't be seeing Altair or Ezio ever again, their endings were awesome, but really sad. I also liked Desmond sidestory, but his levels were just plain terrible. Who thought these "obstacle courses" would be fun in a game that's all about assassination? Ubisoft failed here big time. Overall I liked the experience, I don't think it's worth missing, but I also don't think it's worth 60$. The tower defense minigames were too basic and completely trivial, the city wasn't as pretty as any of the locations from AC2 and overall it jus't wasn't interesting until the finale came rolling, but it's worth sticking with.

Embers was pretty good, but a bit too short :( R.I.P. Ezio Auditore da Firenze QQ. As it turns out there will most definitely be an AC game set in Asia at some point.

I like my Iphone, it can do many wonderful things, like smoothly access mail and forums, but there is one thing that is missing. With all this touch everything to interact style there is one thing they forgot to include on the keypad, some kind of arrows to navigate around. When I type or reply on forums, after I quote somebody the text takes up the whole textbox and there is no way to navigate backwards without deleting or forwards without pressing enter. It's just such a miserable fail that makes me ignore most of the stuff the forums offer.

Then there's the appstore, the only way you can purchase these 1$ apps is of course by signing up wiht a credit card. Why not let me pay with the money I have on my phone account already? Oh and I won't even get started with this Itunes nonsense...

No I'm not talking about quitting gamespot, though I certainly won't be writing every 3 days anymore due to all of the traveling and working I'll be doing. Lately I hardly found time to sit down and gather my thoughts, let alone write about what I've been up to. The thing I'm most certainly retiring from is trophy hunting, I just wont have time to play and farm every game I play, especially not those that are boring or average. Since I finally got a new PC, that also means I'll be playing something on it, and things I do there won't contribute to my PSN score, and I certainly don't plan on opening a new account for PC, I'm just gonna let it go.

I still haven't tried out the new commenting system GS "upgraded" to, I don't think I like how everything says 0 comments.

I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent not that long ago, and I liked it very much, though the ending was certainly disappointing. The light and dark gameplay dynamic was excellent, and it was certainly scary at times, but the "enemies" were just dull and too scripted for their own good. Also I hoped the entire game would be in a free to navigate mansion, instead it was just linear level after level... and sewers ugh...

New that MGO is going offline soon sadden me, enough to go play it one (or a couple) more time/s before the inevitable happens, especially since all 3-ish of DLC are free now. I remember having fun with messing around with it, it wasn't the best game ever, but it was good for a few laughs, the weird nature of the gameplay mechanics made for quite a few laughs, but as much as I wanted to have fun with it yesterday, it just wasn't happening. It's sad to see that the last few hours I'll be having with it were quite boring, and that will also soil the memory at some point. Guess I was just spoiled with the "actually good" online games lately, MGO has so much potential but it just doesn't play to its strengths or charm, instead it just wants to be another military shooter, and a crappy one at that.

The stealth modes were best because they try to play in a MGS-ish kinda way, being Snake in a neutral team with your own unique objective while in a game where others are trying to kill each other is more than a great idea. The biggest problem is that MGO is the online part of MGS4, which is too much warfare focused instead of stealth. I wish it was based on MGS 1-3 instead, where all players would need to focus on stealth more than killing each other, unfortunately it is not so and just boils down to a couple of deathmatch variations. MGO tried to play it safe by being primarily an online shooter with a few stealth elements, mixing the two resulted in a shooter where heavy camping is the best strategy, apart from the kero-capture mode where things just get crazy. Mixed in are imbalanced headshots and CQC which just ruin everything. Add in the mechanic to lose experience and levels even if you performed good in a match and you get a sour experience that punishes you more often than rewarding you.

So I also tried the Raiden DLC in hopes of it being something more exciting and unique, turns out it sucks, but not like that was a surprise. Despite his uber abilities Raiden is stuck to the ground just like everyone else and feels very cumbersome instead of agile, some ninja he is. Also he can deflect all bullets in front of him just by holding a single button with which you can also run, and he can also kill pretty much anyone with a couple of swings. He was a bit too strong to take head one, and everyone knew that so they kept running away as soon as they saw me, the problem is Raiden has the same exact run speed as everyone else so it's not really possible to catch anyone if they decide to flee. I tried every single button combination and input I could think of in hopes of discovering some cool new tricks he might have, but nothing seemed to work. Playing as Raiden felt like a chore and was even more boring than actually shooting at others. There are only about 500 players remaining and I can see why they are shutting it down, I too would rather just play a CoD or BF online round instead, despite the charms MGO offers, it's just focused in the wrong way to be enjoyable for anything other than fooling around with a few friends.

Today I tried two demos, first of which was Ninja Gaiden 3. There really isn't much to say about it, it's just an attack after attack, spamming the two buttons over and over again for every single encounter. The execution close ups kinda got tedious after a while, but at least it was fast. Overall it was a boring demo, I imagine the full game is just like that but only longer.

The next demo I played was a bit more interesting, Dragons Dogma. Since it's Capcom I wasn't expecting much, but one little detail in the demo made me wonder if this thing will have online play. When you create a character you can choose two names, the other one says it will be displayed for players with parental controls enabled, which can only mean other players will be able to group with me. Overall it seems like a more action driven game, like Monster Hunter, so I'm not expecting any heavy dialogues, and I'm guessing our lead character will be mute. The demo has two bosses, both of which are cool but after playing Dark Souls not that long ago I kinda felt this was a bit too spammy and easy. Overall this game made me think about LotR for some reason... and I don't like LotR. Wish DD was more JRPG-ish.

So yeah not much going around here, I'm playing quite a bit of GT5 lately. Finished beginner events and now moved up to amateur events, there's over 500 events so this is gonna take me quite a while to finish. I even heard some races take up to 24 actual real hours, that's just insane. A friend of mine has a wheel but since I don't have room for it I'm not actually considering asking him to lend it to me yet. The game can be pretty fun, when I'm winning that is, but not so much when I'm losing, some events are REALLY hard.

I got into Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier Multiplayer Beta today. Overall it's a good game, but just another military shooter so nothing to get all excited about, I'm still wondering how exactly does Ubisoft plan to go against CoD and BF like this. Future Soldier feels a lot like Uncharted Online and even Metal Gear Online. It's a third person cover based shoot (yep something completely new). I like it how you can sprint straight to cover, and you can also pick your next cover point and automatically run there as well. Apparently some class (scout I imagine) can become invisible while in cover, but you can still see him if you look carefully. You get to see friendly players through walls, and by using certain grenades (I think) you can also mark enemies so you get to see them through walls as well. The lag is what kills my experience currently, so I'll try to play a bit more later before the beta ends to see if there are more tricks hidden there somewhere.

Started playing Gran Turismo 5 few days ago, and I have to say the amount of content is mind blowing, there's just so much stuff it becomes overwhelming at points. Tried playing with manual transmission but I'm just not seeing any improvements, so I switched back to automatic and just focus on the road. One thing that really bugs me is that most cars have the wheel on the right side... There's PS EYE camera support, seems like you can use it for head tracking, so when you turn your head the camera inside your car turns as well, but there's just one little problem I have with this. How they hell am I supposed to see anything if I turn my head and not face the TV anymore? Or face it at an angle while still keeping my eyes on the screen, this hardly makes anything more practical or realistic.

Sniper Elite V2 has a demo. The first sniper shot you fire is just amazing and will make you go "OMG!". You get to see the bullet fly in slow mo (like in Max Payne) and then you get to see an x-ray vision of how the bullet hits the target and goes through the bones and organs, really awesome stuff, though I imagine this gets quite old after killing 500 enemies. When playing on easy your bullet will just fly where you shoot it, on normal however the bullet will be dropping because of the distance so you have to take that into consideration, and on hard mode you also need to fight with the wind so your bullet will be swaying as well. Someone told me you have to time your shots with explosions so you don't get noticed, but that's something I have yet to try out. By using binoculars you can "mark" your targets by adding some arrows above them, not sure how useful this might be, guess it might come handy for seeing some patrols move about, especially when they start switching covers when they spot you. You create a lot of noise when you run so you need to be crawling most of the time. When you're spotted you leave a ghostly shadow in place where they noticed you, which is kinda neat as you can guess where they might be located. There's also this heartbeat meter which you use to slow down time and get to see where you shot will land exactly, you can easily refill it by standing still, crouching and stuff like that. It's definitely a combination of stealth and action, but more like Commandos where you have to study enemies and wait for the right moment to take them out one by one.

So today I finally "beat" Asura's Wrath on this magical next-gen console called Youtube. Yeah I know you think I didn't get the full experience, but I'd say it was about 99%, since everything is basically just one huge cut-scene. I have to say the music is really nice, however everything else is pretty "meh" at best. At least I didn't have to worry about all of the pointless distractions. There are quite a few inconsistancies throughout the plot, for example in the intro they can clearly fly, but at the end they require flying machines to fly.. wtf?! Also the boss battle that takes place on the moon is quite ridiculous, and I'm not talking about what happens, I'm talking about how they actually get to the moon in the first place. They are talking in a hot spring down on Gaea when they decide to fight. Next thing you know they just happen to be standing on the moon, wtf?? How did they get here? Why did they decide to battle here instead of just anywhere else? It's just so that the boss can catapult Asura back down to Gaea with a flashy sword attack. Also the whole story is kinda too basic, hardly anything important goes down between the beggining and the end, it's basically just one boss after another, and every fight is pretty much exactly the same. Asura has only one recipe for dealing with bad guys, and that's a punch to the face. It kinda gets tedious after a while with all of the steroids and Asura repeating the same "Wuaagh!" every 2 seconds. And the ending was complete garbage, just another plot by Corporate Capcom to sell more DLC. Glad I didn't waste 60$ on this. If it was at least fun I would have gotten it to get the best rank on every level, but the levels are completely trivial and restricted arenas and gameplay boils down to mashing punches to increase one gauge for every single battle, except those on rails shooting segments which are even worse. On the flip side I'm almost done with Modnation Races (about 450k/500k exp), but server issues make it hard to play now. I also finally got GT5, so I guess I'll be playing that one next.