Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC)

I’ve only spent about two hours with the Batman so far. Since, I’ve already played through the game once on the 360 I decided that this run through would be on the hardest difficulty. It’s very strange playing the game without a controller but, I’m getting used to it. It’s not a terribly long game so I’m hoping to actually get through it in a reasonable amount of time.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Beta/Demo (PC/360)

This past week EA released a PC beta and a 360 demo of “BFBC2″. Both versions are basically the same thing, having a single multi-player map and game mode. That hasn’t stopped me from sinking in a handful of hours with each and having a good bit of fun. I’ve never really followed the Battlefield series very closely, only playing a little of Battlefield 1942 quite a while ago. Anyway, I’ve been enjoying myself enough that I’m actually considering picking up the first game as well as pre-ordering from Steam. Playing on the 360 is fun and all but it just can’t match the quality of my PC.

Team Fortress 2 (PC)

I know two people that combined have about 700 hours of Team Fortress 2 play time. 700 hours! Hard to believe that I’ve only played just over 25 hours. I’ve been spending much more time with it lately, trying to unlock some of the Soldiers weapons. It took a bit of time but I did finally unlocked the Direct Hit, the rocket launcher with a faster firing rate but smaller splash damage. Why did I want it? That comes from my desire for a faster firing rocket, I’ve always been a fan of the Quake games so that may be where that comes from. Now, I just need to spend some time getting used to the new way of playing.

Anyway, that’s really it for this month, still working my way through some old games and not working my way through new ones.

Torchlight (PC)

I’m still slowly grinding my way through the gound below Torchlight. I had a bit of a setback when they released the Steamworks update since I needed to start over to get the new achievements.

Street Fighter IV (PC)

Just picked up Street Fighter today as part of the Steam holiday sale. $9.99 is just too good to pass up. Now I just need to get my PS3 controller working.

inFAMOUS (PS3)

I’ve managed to squeeze in a bit of inFAMOUS here and there. I’m not sure how far I am through the game though. Still enjoying it – it’s the only PS3 game I have at the moment so that’s good.

Happy New Year.

*Twenty Ten Update* The PC port is so good it’s just as cheap when you get to Seth as the 360 version.

According to Steam I currently own 76 games. Out of those games there are 22 titles that have a clear start and an end, which I have yet to finish. There are a couple I do want to get back to like, Beyond Good and Evil, Indigo Prophecy and definitely The Witcher. The others I want to finish at some point I’m just not in a rush to get back to them. On the PS2 side of things I really need to finish up ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, as well as Killzone. Then there are games I doubt I’ll ever actually finish, like Persona 3 (not to mention FES), Persona 4 and Devil Summoner 2. I just don’t have the time to give Atlus titles what they deserve. I feel a bit better about not working on Persona 4 that much more since I’ve caught a few random episodes of Giant Bomb’s Endurance Run.

I need to check out the Xbox 360 back catalog and see if there are some console exclusives that I want to go back and play. I say console exclusives because lately due to Steam, and buying a new computer, I’ve finally swung back around to being more of a PC gamer. Not that I ever stopped playing games on the PC it’s just that I find myself turning on my 360 less and less. Also, I have to figure by the time I pick up a PS3 it will probably have a OK library of exclusives as well. I’m thinking maybe I’ll do a full catalog of games I haven’t finished and start forcing my way through.

Oh, and I did pick up Mirror’s Edge… so the Steam game count is up to 77.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not turning my back on my 360 – after all, I need some place to play Gears of War 2 and Fable 2.  Everything else that’s coming out (Dead Space, Call of Duty: World at War, Fallout 3, Mirror’s Edge, Saints Row 2) is multi-platform so, I can grab it on either PC or 360.  I’m not sure which of those I’ll be picking up when (I’ve got some mid-terms coming up – one of which I will probably post about).  I am seriously thinking about joining GameFly finally, but, that would only work if I can get find a few minutes to play.  It would at least let me get through the game season flood without spending an arm and a leg.

Rock Band (Xbox 360)

Mike and I finally sat down this past Friday (or was it Thursday?) and played through a bunch of Rock Band.  We hadn’t really played since St. Patrick’s day and I’m not sure you can really call that playing.  We had to start a new band because Mike, the drummer extraordinaire, managed to break one of the drum sticks.  We still have quite a way to go before finishing the Band World Tour so who knows if we’ll actually do it.  Don’t tell anyone from Activision but, Guitar Hero is terrible in comparison to Rock Band.  Especially, if Harmonix and MTV come through with the in-game music store.

Company of Heroes (PC)

I finally reinstalled CoH and started inching my way through the rest of the campaign mode.  Hopefully, by the time I finish it Opposing Fronts will be less then $29.95.  It’s a bit of a pain – only playing a few minutes at a time.  Although, I’m ending up with a ton of save games so if something goes wrong I’ve got a bunch of fall back points.

Prey (PC)

It was on sale for $4.95 through Steam last weekend and so far it’s a decent game.  The portals and gravity effects are pretty cool.  Nothing too special besides that though.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (NDS)

Dragon Sword is without a doubt my favorite DS game ever!  The graphics are fantastic, the controls are perfect and the story is spot on.  I’m about four and a half hours into it and hopefully will get around to finishing it some time soon.  I pretty sure that beating it unlocks hard difficulties which, for once, I’m looking forward to.

Persona (PS1)

I haven’t made it nearly as far as I wanted to but, I have been playing a little bit here and there.

Since I managed to receive cash from most people this Christmas is decided to spend a small chunk of it on games. So, I finally picked up Guild Wars: Nightfall and Eye of the North – with no purchasing issues this time around! I also picked up Company of Heroes (via Steam), a game which I had played the demo a couple of times but, never got into due to my needing to upgrade my video card before it would play decent. On the Xbox 360 side, Kris picked me up a copy of Mass Effect. I certainly could have picked up more but since they would just sit on the shelf I decided to wait until I managed to finish a couple.

On the gift giving side of things, life was made easier by Steams gift giving feature and the sale they had going on. I sent out a few of copies of Psychonauts to some people who I know haven’t played it – and probably won’t until they break the hold that Team Fortress 2 has over them.  Anyway, I need to finish some work so I can get back to Guild Wars…

So there is my dilemma, should I re-buy Team Fortress 2 at $29.99 or the entire Orange Box at $49.99? Or should I just go play some Halo 3 and be done with it? Looking at Game-Monitor I can tell I would have no shortage of US based games I could join. Maybe I should just make use of Steam’s gift buying feature and tell my PC playing friends to get it for me… hint hint.

While all that is going on, I had decided I would play some Guild Wars. Well, I wanted to play but, I didn’t actually get a chance to. After logging on I decided that I should finally pick up Eye of the North and Nightfall, after all if I bought them now I’d get 50% off Nightfall. I believed I had finally moved past the need to own the physical box and game disc. What a mistake that was. During the check out I received an error: “Product distribution failed (Code=1751126)”. That’s just great! Looking at my debit card account I can clearly see there is a charge pending for the exact cost of the PlayNC transaction. Perfect! The charges go through – and I don’t get my games. I’m so glad I decided to give digital distribution a try. Looking at my PlayNC account you can clearly see that something has happened to my account yesterday – as a new serial number was applied. But, still I don’t have access to the games.

Blargh. I hate Fridays.

The rest of my vacation time consisted of playing Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings.  It was an odd choice since I’ve never played FFXII and had no idea who any of the characters where.  But, the game quickly grew on me and I’ve managed to get about 70% through the game so far.  Basically, the game is an RTS/RPG type thing but, either element overpowering the experience.  Battle are a bit simplistic, with victory being decided with how many melee combatants you summon.  However, there were a few battles where I did find that to not work and instead had to approach the situation with a more thought out attack plan.  Graphically, the game is very well done – the character sprites can become very pixelated in a few scenes however, the cut scenes are typical Square-Enix things of beauty.  I found the controls to be decent – I had no issues navigating menus, issuing commands or moving my characters.  The sound is again typical for a Square-Enix game, the sound track is great – so play with headphones.  Over all a great game – hopefully, I’ll be able to finish it some time soon.