Time to dust this thing off

Hello there, whoever is unfortunate enough to be reading this. I haven't posted on this blog in quite some time so I very much doubt anyone will read this, but I feel the time is right to kick this thing off as I intended.

All posts before this one were written during university classes and can pretty much be ignored unless you're really keen on finding out how I write hung-over 3 hours from due time. Don't make that facial expression, you all did it.

Steam sales, Steam sales, Steam sales. It's funny, I'll march in the streets against over-developed mediocre titles like Homefront stealing talent and funding away from more interesting projects, but offer it to me for half the price and I'll buy it. It doesn't even seem to be the price that pushes me to the purchase, it's the fact I'm not paying what I paid for a good game that allows me to justify it. Somewhere in my mind it cheapens great games if I pay the same amount for something sub-par.

Speaking of sub-par, what was with Brink? I actually convinced friends of mine to purchase that. I guess I had it in my head how good the concept could be, didn't take the time to analyse the product they laid out. I tried to play it for about a week, just couldn't do it, it offered me nothing of interest.

So what does interest me these days? I played L.A. Noire and I really, really wanted to love it. I only played it when I was in a good mood, trying to maximize my opinion of it. But it was in vain. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly not a bad game, there's a lot going for it. I enjoyed the voice acting and the case work/notebook system was handled elegantly allowing you to rattle through the cases at a decent pace.

But it just felt so.... disjointed, I never really cared about doing the cases and it didn't take long until I didn't want to do them any more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the type of guy who needs non-stop action in a game in order to enjoy it. In fact, my favourite parts of Half-Life 2 are the parts where you stop for a second and there's some tid-bit of story that offers a glimpse into the game world. L.A. Noir's story feels like a sticky slow swamp you need to wade through to get anywhere interesting. That's not to say it isn't well written, that isn't the problem, the whole game just feels as though it's missing a hook, some great game play spark that makes the ordeal worthwhile. Maybe I just really wanted it to be better, as an Australian I'm well aware of the problems the Australian games industry has had over the last few years. Team Bondi did the industry proud, L.A. Noire is a fine game, a game of quality, it's just not the game I wanted it to be.

A friend and I played the hell out of dungeon siege 1 and 2 back in the day. We loved that Diablo style of co-op. I picked up the new one was actually pretty eager to give it a go. Ignoring the awful monologue/story preview at the beginning I prepared myself for a bit of old fashioned gaming. I played it for three or four hours before I stopped and realized I was was forcing myself to play. Perhaps it was that I was playing on my own, but the style of game play, the isometric click-fest, just felt... well dated. Maybe I'm just out of practice, or maybe I need to actually get together with a friend and play it co-op (sorry about Brink guys...) but I was downright surprised at how bland and lifeless the game play felt. More on Dungeon Siege in the future though, I haven't given it a fair enough run yet to make a decision.

Anyway, this was fun, more in the future.

-Gibbo