Not a lot going on with gaming in the last half of March.
Playing
Homefront for PC
I’ve been putting time into this for the past couple weeks and finished it tonight. I enjoyed it. It had a lot of technical problems that kept it from being anywhere near the hype, but it was enjoyable nevertheless. The campaign was about six hours long or so – the perfect length for someone who only plays games once per week. If the story sounds intriguing and you don’t mind some annoyances, borrow it and give it a go. Don’t buy it.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm for PC
Last week I got Cataclysm Dungeon Hero by finally doing the final heroic I needed, and tonight I unlocked the portal to Uldum, the last I needed. I still haven’t hit 80,000 honorable kills, but I’m very close. I’d like to start doing Algaloth weekly and maybe BGing daily.
Mirror’s Edge for iOS
Definitely worth the $1 I paid when it was on sale. This version is a side-scrolling platformer that’s played with one finger by swiping vertically and horizontally. It’s nothing amazing, but the atmosphere matches its console counterpart well. I’m enjoying it.
YumYumBoy for iOS
Here’s a puzzle game I’m reviewing. It should be done, but there’s a freeze on new posts to Game Boyz while we change hosts. More on this later then, I suppose.
Surviving High School for iOS
I can’t believe I’m playing a visual novel by EA. The game is about of a bunch of high school kids who try to date and get into trouble. It’s episodic and comes with a long (2-3 hours) campaign called Football Season. After finishing that, I looked at the other episodes. There are a few standalone episodes and sequels to Football Season as well as various numbered episodes that belong to seasons. I bought a sequel to Football Sequence taking place during college and didn’t like it as much. The numbered episodes each cost a dollar, but the game features a “now airing” episode, which is the newest episode every week, for free. I played through one of those and will probably continue playing the free one each week for a while.
Slacking
Pokémon White Version for DS
Nothing. I need to get back to it.
GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony for 360
If gem and I are ever off at the same time, I’ll play it more.
Johnny Platform’s Biscuit Romp for XBLIG
Too lazy to bring my 360 back upstairs.
Super Meat Boy for PC
Can’t find my PS3 controller.
The Force Unleashed II for PS3
Can’t find the game
Beat Hazard for PC
Couldn’t find my PS3 controller, but I’m not sure I would have touched this anyways. Am I done with it?
Infinity Blade, Doodle Lab 101, Angry Birds for iOS
Nada
To Play Later
So many things running through my mind! I need to finish the Layton series, and I’m only on the second Phoenix Wright. I know I should play Demon’s Souls and finish Mad World since it’s short. There are a bunch of newish Wii games to play – DKC Returns, A Shadow’s Tale, Epic Mickey, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Lately what I’ve been thinking about the most though are Golden Sun, Psychonauts, and Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. I’ll need to replay Golden Sun to properly import into Golden Sun 2 though. Phooey.

Pokémon White Version
I started playing this recently, and it’s been enjoyable. It feels like a reboot of the series. It features all new pokemon, and no old ones will be encountered until after the defeat of the Elite Four. The starters seemed cool, and you your pokemon before even leaving the first room. Unforunately, you can’t trade until after the first gym, so getting all the starters would be difficult. You learn to run pretty quickly, which is nice. I’m not sure why you can’t just start the game with the ability to run though. This seems like a bad design decision. The professor tells you about “someone’s” PC early on in the game, and then within abut about a half hour, you meet this “someone.” It also seemed like a chuckle and nod at that old series staple.
My only complaint so far, and it really isn’t the game’s fault, is that I can’t stop grinding for the correct nature. It’s so time consuming and annoying, but spending countless hours training a pokemon of the wrong nature sounds horrifying. I’m about ten hours into the game yet I only have one badge.
The villains are Team Plasma, an organization who denounce mankind’s enslavement of wild pokemon. They seem sort of… right on, actually.The game also features C-Gear, which is the in-game tool you use to play with others. What’s interesting is that it uses an always-on approach to see who’s playing near you. I’d rather conserve battery life myself though. Also, they seem to have removed the underground, which I enjoyed, and replaced it with the Entranet and Dream World, which I either dislike or don’t fully understand.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Playground Brigade is now 5/6 Blackwing Descent, 2/4 Bastion of Twilight, and 1/2 Throne of the Four Winds. We’re also not raiding anymore. We also cleared up to General Vezax in Ulduar, which was fun. A lot of the guild hadn’t seen much of Ulduar. For some reason, General Vezax never spawned. We did, however, defeat Algalon the Observer, which was awesome. I got the Reply-Code Alpha and started the chain for the key. With 4.1 on the way, I really need to get working on at least finishing Mount Hyjal. I’m also still one heroic short of Cataclysm Dungeon Hero.
GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony
I’m only a few hours into this game still because gem likes to be there when I play it to watch. I’m enjoying it so far though. In the latest level I played, I got to steal a military helicopter and then use it to blow up a yacht and some smaller boats. Pretty fun.
Super Meat Boy, The Force Unleashed II, and Beat Hazard
Here are three games that I was playing a lot previously but haven’t played in a while. I definitely want to get back to the first two. If I don’t get back to Beat Hazard, I at least reached the maximum rank already.
iOS: Infinity Blade, Doodle Lab 101, and Angry Birds
I purchased Infinity Blade recently, which is an interesting action-RPG. I need to put more time into it though to see how it holds up. I’ve also been playing Doodle Lab 101, which feels like a simple little Flash game honestly. You have to draw paths for differently colored bouncing balls to reach the correct goal. You also have to combine the balls to create the right colors. Lastly, I’ve been playing more Angry Birds. It doesn’t deserve all the hype it got, but it’s fun.
To Play Later
As usual, there are a lot of games I’d like to get around to playing. I started both Demon’s Souls and No More Heroes 2 but didn’t put too much time into them. I should finish up BlazBlue and Guilty Gear XX^Core Plus as well as play BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 also looks pretty fun. Mad World, Blue Dragon,Guild Wars, BioShock and Viva Piñata are all games that I own and have played but never finished. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Odin Sphere, killer7, Psychonauts and God Hand are games I’ve wanted to play but haven’t yet I own them. There’s also the latest Layton, the rest of the Phoenix Wright series, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Epic Mickey, Lost in Shadow, and Armored Core: For Answer. And then there’s an itch to play a shooter – maybe Resistance, Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops, or the newly released and negatively reviewed Homefront.

Steam Community :: Beat Hazard :: TheUser
I finally hit the Elite rank in Beat Hazard today! I say finally, but I think I’ve only clocked a couple hours in the game. Still, I think it’s a really terrific game. In the last two days I also managed to snag the Brutal Boss Kill achievement for killing a boss before it fires, the Go Platinum achievement for scoring a million points in a single track, and the I’m Just Starting achievement for reaching five minutes in Survival Mode.

Video games. I feel like I live in their culture but spend very little time playing them.
Cataclysm
I finally hit 85 recently and even met some guildies I didn’t know at a party at my place the other day. Very cool guys! I haven’t even done all the normal instances nor have I tried the new battlegrounds, but I enjoyed the instances I did. Moving the quest givers inside the instances is a fantastic change. I still feel like I’m not sure what’s going on in some of the instances. That said, I only quested in Vashj’ir, and the Throne of the Tides probably felt the coolest to me. I guess the instances are better when I have the lore of the zones backing them up.
Speaking of zones, I still think there are too many quests. Blizzard did a great job making new and interesting quests, but there’s too much padding. Every quest should have some meaning and progress the story in a meaningful way. But I do enjoy the new Orgrimmar quite a bit even if Hellscream won’t even consider a peaceful existence. I’m curious to see where the story will go, but I’m okay with him in the game (even if I wouldn’t care for his politics in real life). Also, “Thrall’s balls” and “Hellscream’s eyes are upon you” are great lines. I’ve always really enjoyed the difficulty of healing and how I need to use many more spells than I previously did.
Force Unleashed 2
Edward bought this game for me for Christmas, and I’ve enjoyed it so far. It’s very similar to the first one. I really enjoy how much it feels like I’m in Star Wars. It’s obviously a bit of a button masher, but I’m not always looking for a deep game. In Force Unleashed 2 I’ve found a good way to allow me to feel like I’m in the Star Wars universe, really throwing around my lightsaber and using cool force powers. The way the quick time events play out to kill certain larger enemies is always the same, which is disappointing, but I’m definitely having fun. I also love the cutscenes progressing the story and the cool transitions.
Super Meat Boy
I haven’t been putting as much time into this as I’d like, but it’s definitely a well designed platformer. I loved N and N+, and Super Meat Boy fits in quite nicely. It has superb graphics, music, and bits of polish. Of course it’s very challenging, but it doesn’t make me angry like bad people in WoW do.
Beat Hazard
Beat Hazard, which features procedurally generated levels based on music, is fantastic. Not only is it fun, but it also provides me with entertainment in short bursts, and I don’t always have a lot of time to play video games. While I’m definitely behind all of my roommates in terms of progress, I am nearing the final rank. Yay!