Catching Up: GRID, HALO3, Penny Arcade, Dead Space

posted by Jaitu at 18:31

It's been a little while so here's a quick run down of what's been played in the meantime.
In no particular order.

Penny Arcade Adventures : On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness - Episode Two.
The adventure continues with Tycho and Gabe. Some (very) small tweaks to the controls improve the environment investigation. The story continues on a pace and the humour remains top PA fayre. I had a system crash during the final boss battle but other than that I enjoyed the second installment even more than the first.

Race Driver: GRID.
I haven't actually played this since almost the last post. I think I'm at the top tier of competition now. My only gripe, and it's a pathetic one that I have with all racing games of this nature, is that the rounds become increasingly long and include more races. This makes it harder to pick up and play for a quick gaming hit. I'm at the stage now where to complete a round involves maybe four races that each take ten minutes or more to finish.

HALO 3.
Techmaster and I managed to hook up online long enough to complete another two chapters on Legendary. I'm still peeved that you must complete the whole chapter in one sitting for it to count. We'll have to go back and run one again as despite having gone more than half-way through when we picked it up again from a checkpoint only about a third in the chapter wasn't marked as done when we finished it.

Dead Space.
I picked this up a month or so ago but found it almost impossible to play at the time. I was suffering from flu and the third person viewpoint gave me terrible motion sickness so I put it to one side (and played through Penny Arcade Adventures instead). Returning later I hit a bit of a choke point - I had decided to tackle it on the hardest setting from the get go - but once past that the game picked up some momentum and I've really been enjoying it.

Penny Arcade Adventures

posted by Jaitu at 08:12

Last night I finished my first play through of Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One. If I'm honest I wasn't convinced by the demo when I played it. The game looks great and particularly so if, like me, you're a fan of the Penny Arcade web comic. The problem I had with it was that it seems quite slow to get going and a lot of your time will be spent hitting inanimate objects with a rake in order to find inventory items. The combat is a kind of simultaneous turn-based affair which will no doubt be familiar to players of this style of game. I am not normally a player of this style of game but at the end of the demo and despite not being totally happy with the experience I decided to buy the full game. Unfortunatley I then had to play through everything I'd just completed in the demo (I don't know whether this is just the way it is or if it was because I failed to do something). I said I completed my first play through as I found the game grew on me as it went on and I will quite happily play through again to try and get those remaining achievements. I suspect however that the one for completing the game without losing anyone during the combat sequences will forever be out of my reach. This is also only the first episode in a series which should see new parts released every three or four months. Bring it.