This Week, I 'Ave Been Mostly Playing... (15/05/2011)

Infamous

Last week I wrote about my shaky first impressions of this game. When I picked it up for a second time this week I was very pleasantly surprised. Now that I know not expect much from the still shallow and mostly uninteresting story, I've focused all my attention on the gameplay. It turns out that it's a lot of fun. As I've picked up more of the powers I've really begun to enjoy the overall feel of the game.

Also keeping me interested are the abundant side missions which are short enough that, depending on how many of them you do, don't detract from the main path. It's due to these that I found myself able to play for a good few hours without feeling the need to stop. Usually I like to save and quit a game when I've just completed what feels like a complete 'section' of the game, usually ending with a boss fight or the conclusion to a major mission. With Infamous I've actually found myself immediately running to the next yellow exclamation point on the minimap to start doing some more of the side missions. It's GTA syndrome all over again.

The Sims Medieval

Still addictive but the old Sims flaws are starting to show. The camera controls haven't been well adapted to the complex buildings of medieval times. Zoom out too much or rotate the camera the wrong way and you find yourself staring at the outer wall of a building with no way of getting back inside other than auto-zooming to your Sim. But the main annoyance is the reliance of some quests on the non-playable Sims. Sometimes you need them to be in a certain location to complete a task and they'll be bumbling about halfway across the kingdom. This isn't too much of a problem if you can invite them to your abode but if you're playing as the King and you need his wife to be at the castle, you can't exactly invite her over to her own home.

I imagine these sorts of kinks will be ironed out in forthcoming patches. It's not the first Sims game to be released with bugs and gameplay issues and others have been fixed up in subsequent patches.

I don't want to be too negative about the game though. I am still enjoying its RPG qualities and I'm impressed with how much there is to do. I've completed a fair amount of quests and I'm still only in the first chapter.

World of Warcraft

This week, me, my other half and our friend in Norwich got back to leveling what I suppose you could call our 'main' characters. This is my first time leveling through the newly improved old world zones and "improved" is indeed a good way to describe them. The zones I've enjoyed the most are the ones that include a story arc that spans the entirety of its questlines, similar to the Dragonblight in Wrath of the Lich King. Storylines like this allow some involvement in the quests and at least give you a reason for killing x number of this mob and collecting x number of that item. Thousand Needles was the last zone we finished and was a good example of one of these story heavy areas.

Team Fortress 2

I played a first person shooter this weekend. Anyone that knows me likely just spat coffee all over their screen, even if they weren't reading this. FPS games are something that I've just never been into. But, I have a weekly multiplayer session with an old WoW guildie and after finishing Portal 2 we found ourselves stuck as to what to play next. I already owned Team Fortress 2 as it came with the Orange Box but I'd never had a proper look at it. This weekend we decided to give it a shot.

Though I say I've never been a fan of FPS games, I did have one insane moment in my youth when I played the first Team Fortress for a while. I was never any good at it but it at least means I knew a little bit about TF2 before jumping in. To my surprise, I had a really cool couple of hours playing it. I still have an issue with my shots mostly missing other players but it was satisfying when I managed to score a kill, even if it was a lucky shot.

I'm looking forward to getting into this some more. Who knows, maybe it'll be my gateway to the FPS genre.

What's Next?

You've probably noticed that Civilization V isn't listed this week. That's because I haven't found much time for it, which is why I'm loading it up right now to get my fix.