Sorry for the delay in posts, everyone! Have been a little busy trying to do several things at once, as is so often the case (and quitting smoking! Seriously!).
So, here's a little check-in note. How are you handling the legendary post-Christmas drought? I have been handling it by sucking hard at Geometry Wars. Every day. What are you playing, and how do you like it?
53 comments:
Well, there's only a drought in games if you keep up with them. When you have a backlog like I do, it's a whole different ballgame! :P
Been trying to finish at last Zelda: Oracle of seasons. I'm up to the final boss. Also want to finish Lego Star Wars II on the PS2. And that's just 2 games out of too many...
Things will only get worse once I get my Xbox 360 (in a near future). Already have Mass Effect, a must for the Bioware fangirl that I am.
Oh man, I remember I played Oracle of Seasons/Ages for like EVER. So good.
I'd saved Fallout 3 for my early-January doldrums, so that took up a good 80 hours (working from home + slow time of the year = hello, level cap). Now I'm chipping away at Dragon Quest IV, and after that I'll finish up Valkyria Chronicles.
Oh, and Leigh, try nicotine lozenges if you aren't going cold-turkey. They worked incredibly well for me...although I've been on them for two and a half years now. But my apartment doesn't smell anymore!
bleh, the lozenges would give me heartburn. i'm patched!
I made a raincatcher during the holiday floods, so I've got a nice little reservoir to keep me playing throught the drought. Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 are still eating up my time, and I'm still picking at a final push through the last of P3:FES so I can finally start that copy of Persona 4 that's been burning a hole in my media shelf.
Hey, I'm quitting, too. Got a pocket full of nicorette gum. It's like smoking three cigarettes at once, without deriving any pleasure from it.
Let's go, Doug!!
I tried quitting once with the gum, and yeah -- it really just made me ill and want to smoke even more, ha.
Bouncing around a bunch of games at the moment. Played The Maw, which was a fun diversion for a couple days. Slowly making my way through Final Fantasy VII. Started Fable II and liked it quite a bit. Also started Beyond Good and Evil for the Vintage Game Club. Also dusted off my DS to give Moon a try.
I think I might have more games to play then I did during the holidays. :/
I'm going through an immense backlog as well, while still trying to manage a social life and my penultimate semester at University. So here's what I've been doing:
* Finished Super Mrio Galaxy with 60 stars, with the intent to earn 120 over the coming month.
* Closing in on the ending of Chrono Trigger DS. Will probably replay afterwards because it's short and I hear good thoings about New Game+.
* Finished No More Heroes a couple weeks back.
* Trying desparately to finish Persona 3: FES. In November of The Journey and still need to play The Answer. Persona 4 is waiting =_=
* Playing various other games in short burst (Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Puzzle Quest, Smash Bros Brawl, etc.)
And that isn't even 1/4 of my backlog =(
Me? I'm just about at the end of Growlanser Generations, Working Designs' final release before it shut down. After that, I'm not sure what I'll play. Probably either Arc the Lad Collection, SMT: Nocturne, or Dragon Quest 8. Yeah, I'm a little behind the times.
I've also got World of Warcrack going on, and on the DS, I picked Shiren the Wanderer back up.
Like Sean, I'm switching between a few games. I still consider Fallout 3 my "main game" and figure I'm probably halfway through it.
When I need something twitchier I'm firing up CoD:WaW, which is both harder and better than I expected.
Also, I'm watching my son play Prince of Persia and trying to figure out if I like the game or not.
And for some reason, I keep thinking of Patapon recently so I may dive back into that soon.
Scott
Like everyone else, plenty of backlog to see us through. Only game journalists feel like they have to play the game within the first month or so of release. :) In my case, it's Persona 4.
Seriously though, you of all people Leigh would I think appreciate that there can be no drought when Ar Tonelico 2 just came out!
drought my ass! I'm almost done with P4 (at the final final boss, grinding a bit so I can get a bit more of the compendium completed), then starting Beyond Good & Evil for Michael Abbot's Vintage Game Club, then replaying Persona 3 + FES because the school trip in P4 made me homesick, then replaying Ar Tonelico as I never finished it and I want the whole story before I start on Ar Tonelico 2.
I suspect this will keep me going until at least summer.
I don’t know if I agree that there is a drought yet. In Feb there is Fear 2, Street Fighter 4, GTA 4: The lost & Damned, Godfather 2, and in March there’s Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, Resident Evil 5, and Halo Wars. I find that the real drought happens square in the middle of the year - the long haul waiting for Christmas to come again.
Oh, I forgot to mention the DLC for Fallout 3 which I think is coming soon.
Curbsidebandit
@beeporama
hey, aren't you friends with Kelly Ashkettle? and a DJ? if you're who I think, she's played a mix of your or two for me, which was very awesome :D
I just finished Bioshock and now I'm hooked on Call of Duty: World at War. I imagine I'll be playing Fallout 3 soon enough.
Using the drought as an excuse to finally give Persona 4 a shot. Impressions on my blog.
Just finished Dead Space (review on blog) and I have a whole bunch of games I bought in the January sales still to play. In other words I've enough supplies to survive the games drought.
I've currently got the exact opposite problem - way too much to play. Fallout 3 is slowly destroying my life, though.
Thankfully the drought began with the start of my classes, so my gaming is naturally cut a little short with school starting up again.
But every few minutes I get I play GOD HAND. Stepping on people's heads has never been so much fun
Passing the video game doldrums by spending time with my new love - tasty, tasty cigarettes. Just kidding. Age of Empires Mythologies.
Money is kinda tight for me, and I would rather spend most of my funny money on tabletop gaming stuff, so I am mostly working through older games, or games being made newly re available to me.
For portables its currently the second campaign on Front Mission for the DS.
On my iMac its City of Heroes, a welcome return to a game I hadn't played in 4 years or so.
On the consoles its Arc the Lad 2, which has mostly taken a pause for CoH.
I have tons of existing games to play I already own, so why buy more?
I've got the new DS Castlevania on the way (had to order a tax program that was on sale this week AND I could get VM Ware's Fusion 2 for ultra cheap letting me play lots of low end Windows XP compatible games without the need for OSX 10.5 or a partition) so that will go on after Front Mission is completed.
Upcoming it will mostly be DS RPGs (Mostly from Atlus of course. Dark Spire, Ys 1 and 2, Dragon Quest 5, Trackmania DS, and maybe the FF4 remake if my income tax check is sizable enough.) and probably Resident Evil 5.
In December before the CoH went live server I rolled a D20 to figure out which game to play. I probably could have used a D100 and filled every slot with unfinished or even untouched titles.
Plus I have a few bucks in Wii points. About a half dozen titles I want to buy in that.
So really, there is never a drought for me. I currently have enough games to make it through 2012!
Having finished P4, I'm playing Ar Tonelico 2 now. The visual novel aspect is kind of cool, and the battle system is interesting, but the translation is so awkward.
Hey Leigh, good for you for quitting smoking!
I'm kind of all over the place with games right now:
- Still slowly making my way through the wastelands in Fallout 3, and alternately loving it and getting seriously annoyed with how buggy the PS3 version is.
- Finally making a serious attempt at playing through Viewtiful Joe, which I bought almost 2 years ago. That fucking shark boss is going to be the death of me.
- Started playing through No More Heroes again, on Bitter difficulty. I'm already feeling anxiety over how much of a pain some of the later bosses are going to be.
- Been playing Spider-Man: Web of Shadows quite a bit. From a technical standpoint, it's a pretty terrible game, but now that I've gotten into a groove with it, and accepted it for what it is, I'm having a lot of fun playing it -- mostly because I have an unhealthy Spider-Man obsession.
- Sucking at Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix, wishing that SFIV was out already, so that I can start sucking at that too.
In no particular order:
Gears 2, which is far better than I was expecting and a highly guilty pleasure. Not long to go - am into Act IV but it's solid, memorable, and has lots of good shooting. I don't like the bits when Dom has Feelings, but I'll let them slide for now.
Bunch of iPhone things, notably Drop7 and Edge.
Still firing up Left 4 Dead with friends online, and it rarely ceases to be fun.
Skate 2 looks like the next impending purchase. Playing catch-up, I really need to attack Fallout 3 properly, but I've really not clicked with it in 8-10 hours, and I'm not sure if I ever will.
Funny how everyone in gaming seems super busy at the moment!
I'm going nuts trying to set up something special dealing with indie gaming.
As for gaming...I have a TON of games in my backlog I've been trying to get through.
The only time I really have for gaming is on my psp/ds on the F train (Queens baby!)
Gonna finish off Crisis core, then pop in something for DS. THEWY or Phoenix Wright 2 i'm guessing?
Been doing a little fallout 3 and gonna give the PS3 some love with SSF2HD:R and maybe get to completing Lunar or Persona 3 =x
I'm so behind on my RPGs!
Thanks, Leigh. I'm on day ... six. We'll see. It wouldn't be the first time I failed at this. It's like dying of thirst on purpose.
The gum does so totally make you sick. My head spins, my stomach hurts, and my gums feel like the dental hygienist has applied the local preparatory to the novocaine.
As for the actual question, I'm playing Forza 2 because I'm a skinflint, and Portal because I came late to the party.
Haha! I've been on backlog since about the 7th grade :-)
I got a PS3, The Orange Box, and LittleBigPlanet for Christmas. So I'm playing through those (just reviewed Portal and Team Fortress 2), though I may skip the Half-Life 2 episodes in favor of the No More Heroes that's been sitting on my shelf since November. Otherwise, I'm playing Final Fantasy Tactics 2 when I should be reading :-)
Whipped through Chrono Trigger right after new years (I'll be going for the new ending after the old lady is done playing through it). Started in on the new Viva Pinata yesterday, after picking up a used copy on the weekend for 5 bucks. Score!
After that? Lost & Damned and Braid.
To reiterate Lady Jaye's point, there's only a drought if you follow new releases. There is so much good stuff to play right now, it boggles the mind!
For those quitting: Hang in there, it feels so awesome in a little while!
I'm also playing Beyond Good and Evil with the VGC. I gave up on Fable 2 cause it was sucking up too much time and it wasn't that much fun. Also trying to finish World Of Goo before I get the DLC for fallout 3.
Hah...this week's episode of First Wall Rebate is all about this "drought"...alike minds, yadda yadda yadda. Either that, Leigh, or you're riffing off us now, which, really, is incredibly cool and gracious of you. ;)
Seriously, though, I too am just getting into Fallout 3. I tried spinning it for the first time about a month ago but my Xbox red-ringed upon the initial load. Is Bethesda trying to tell me something? Should I just go ahead and quit now?
University is a great way to keep me busy. Oh and operation Anchorage coming out today so I guess the drought is over for me as I only have time for one game before falling behind in my readings :(.
Drought, what drought? I've been drilling into the Dawn of War II beta, kicking ass in Skate 2, capping the infected in Left 4 Dead and the Resi 5 demo and look forward to putting a few more hours into Fallout 3 and practicing my Super Street Fighter II HD Remix fighting in preparation for SFVI.
Drought, ha, what drought!
Oh, right, in Adelaide, Australia it is currently 45 degrees Celsius and our river is drying up. THAT drought.
I've joined the ranks of the recently unemployed, so it's fortunate that I wasn't looking to buy any new stuff -- playing the same things I've been playing for several months. On the PS2 it's Persona 3: FES on PS2 (halfway through December!), and on the PC I'm playing L4D, TF2, and Spelunky -- the last of which is surprisingly awesome.
I've also put some time into World of Goo and Aquaria but have gotten distracted.
I've been replaying Final Fantasy X-2 and liking it far more than I ever did originally. It's great GREAT playing an RPG whose central plot does not involve saving the planet. And, as a fan of Full Throttle, I dig all the Charlie's Angels references.
There's a drought?
Well first off congrats on stopping smoking. It really does get easier as time goes by, said the random Internet poster.
Like pretty much everyone else here, there's a backlog to get through.
I haven't even scratched the surface of Fallout 3 and now Anchorage is out. Ditto Mass Effect.
There's still Soul Calibur IV, though I've already squeezed it for every Honor it came with. Same with Force Unleashed, which I'll pop in for the occasional guilty pleasure of torturing Storm Troopers.
Little Big Planet is sitting there halfway done.
Nathan Drake is on a shelf judging, just judging.
But here's the real crime - I've had Bioshock for a week and haven't even had time to get past the first Big Daddy.
Got through Prince of Persia but now Valkyria is there, starved for attention.
And here come Street Fighter IV in less than three weeks. I'm literally drowning in half-finished games when less than a year ago, I wouldn't put a game down until it was bled dry. On the bright side, so many great games to look forward to.
By the way:
Good luck in dealing with the nicotine withdrawal.
This Scientific American article has some interesting information about nicotine and its effects.
Still playing the backlog, the quiet season is rather nice.
And Mount & Blade has me hooked like a heroin addict, the game is brilliant.
Good luck with quitting smoking.
I assembled a list of games I own that I have not yet played all the way through (most of them RPGs), in an attempt to build an itinerary for playing through all of them at least once, and came up with over 50. This is after selling the ones I knew I would never get around to playing. I also recently purchased The Witcher Enhanced to go with the new PC I built, and already started playing it out of order. AND I finally got Final Fantasy VIII working on my PSP so I might become lost in that again in the near future. At this point, I'm honestly hoping nothing comes out that I would be interested in for at least six months.
I've been playing Rez HD, Castle Crashers and Shadow of the Colossus on console, as well as Half-Life 2: Episode One (a replay) on PC. So many games, so little time . . .
Grats on quitting smoking!
Right now, I'm back to my beloved sports games (NBA 2k9 and Tiger 09), as I just finished Fable II.
I picked up Assassin's Creed on Amazon, so that's next o nthe list.
I rarely purchase games at retail, because I can't afford them full price... so I'm usually a good year behind everyone else :)
Going back through SMT:Nocturne on hard mode. Always been meaning to, and due to the console generation shift, I have the time and lack of resources to do it.
@chesh: hey, aren't you friends with Kelly Ashkettle? and a DJ? if you're who I think, she's played a mix of your or two for me, which was very awesome :D
Whoa, chesh, small world! How the heck did you...?!?
If you want to take this offline, I'm brian.j.parker at Google's popular webmail site.
I'm spread a bit thin right now. I recently started replaying Mass Effect (going full Renegade). Also going back to the PS2 for Shadow of the Colossus, Fatal Frame II (creepy isn't even close to describing that), and SMT: Nocturne.
I'm really not sure how far along in Nocturne I am, it's really hard to judge progress. I'm about 15 hours in at level 41. At first I was a little harsh in my view towards it (as I kept comparing it to the Persona games), but I've started to warm up to it and accept it for what it is. It might also be that I have a huge backlog of PS2 games to play through.
Meanwhile... in the netherlands...I got a couple of great games for a great price through play.com (a UK site): for only 25 E a piece: Prince of Persia, Fallout 3, Fable 2 and Gears of War 2.
too bad that just before these offers I bought Conan & Overlord.
Well, Overlord is one of the rare Dutch games (together with Killzone... but I don't want to mention it because I think it's going to suck like the first one)
I finished Conan yesterday.
On the smoking bit. week nr 3 is the hardest. I didn't have so much trouble in weeks 1 & 2 - but wk 3... Damn. I could claw the walls with my bare fingernails.
After that it's pretty smooth sailing. Trust me. I quit again half a year ago & am still very happy (especially when we go out and friends have to shiver outside or stand in very sad & smelly rooms)
No drought for me, as I've only just bought a 360 today.
I'm positively overwhelmed!
(not to mention my current playthrough of Okami)
Mike
http://wildtyme.blogspot.com
Still plowing through the good games from last year. Making steady progress on Persona 4 and Fable 2; Prince of Persia is on its way from gamefly, and if I finish any of those, Gears of War 2 and EndWar await me.
I'm playing Persona 4, on your recommendation, Leigh. For the first three hours, the game drove me crazy because I had almost no agency (I'm not used to JRPGs). Now it's driving me crazy because I can't put the damn thing down. SO GOOD.
ndef -- I can definitely relate to how the early lack of agency can be very off-putting, especially to people who aren't really prepared for it. I wrote earlier on the blog about the value of allowing it to kind of steer you at first, even if it's not what you're used to. Not normally something I advocate, but I think it works for P4.
Now that you're further into the game, do you see what I mean? It is a very long game, and part of why it's addicting is that you become emotionally invested in the choices and mechanics. I feel like without that long exposition, it would have been harder to get more immersed. What do you think?
Its just too hot (47ºC/116ºF in the shade) to play anything sitting in a couch so mostly Final Fantasy Tactics A2. I did randomly play Pokemon Silver last night though and its so much better paced than the new titles.
I'm currently in Hong Kong for Chinese new year (happy year of the ox!), so I only have my DS with me. I'm working my way through Ninjatown at the moment, and enjoying the fact that I am not greeted with looks of derision as I flip my DS open on public transport XD
I've been playing with myself, and I like it....alot.
I guess if I had to be serious though, I'd say I've been playing Persona 4 new game+ (just cleared the Naoto dungeon in one game day, fuck yeah!) also recently picked up Phantom Hourglass and Phoenix Wright for DS. OBJECTION!
During the holidays I went on an Atlus- and Castlevania-buying bender, picking up every Shin Megami Tensei PS2 game, and also Mana Khemia and Ar Tonelico, and every Castlevania GBA/DS game I could get my hands on.
And Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, 'cause I never played that one.
So in between bouts of playing games I have to review, I'm working through those -- currently I'm just starting up SMT Nocturne, having put Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance down for a while.
I blame you, by the way. I wouldn't have bought most of 'em if you hadn't talked about Persona and MGS so much here.
So count me as yet another person who experiences no drought currently. I've got plenty to tide me over until Prinny, RE5, F.E.A.R. 2, and that Fallout patch that fixes the ending so I can actually play it.
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