Vacation Gaming

Over my break I played through Borderlands again (this time on PS3). This is one game that I really really enjoy and which I'm excited for the sequel. Just to illustrate how much I like the game, I've purchased 10 copies of it in total. I think even terraria I've only bought about 8 copies of. I am really excited for Borderlands 2 to come out later this year.

In addition, I played quite a bit of the indie game Stacking. Actually it was mostly watching my family play that game. I have to recommend it because it definitely has appeal to quite a wide audience, including my siblings that don't normally enjoy playing video games.

Infamous 2 and SCC

In the last 2 days I complete both inFamous 2 (on PS3) and Splinter Cell: Conviction (on PC). For inFamous, I played through the game continuing the evil story from the first game. I had a really good time with it and found the story interesting. In particular, the ending was pretty surprising to me. I can't wait to play through the good story line. I would recommend this game to anyone that has played the first one (which is free to download from the welcome back program).

As far as Splinter Cell: Conviction goes, I wouldn't really recommend the game to anyone. The story is pretty forgettable to me (having not played any of the other titles in the series) and the gameplay was only sort of good. I initially tried playing the game with a controller, but the controls made the game unnecessarily hard. Once I switched to mouse and keyboard, the difficulty went from impossible to easy. The random bad guys walk around swearing all the time, so if that is something you don't want to deal with, then there is no reason to play this game.

Console game stores

With the recent "Welcome Back" program that Sony is running I've had a chance to use the PSN store. The store is somewhat useable, but it has a lot of areas in which it could be improved. I think perhaps the biggest improvement would be a web browser based store similar to the Steam store. I would be much more likely to buy stuff if I could have a tab open on my web browser all the time showing me what the current deals are, and letting me manage and view wishlists directly from the web. I think then Sony (and Nintendo could do this too) could afford to have many more sales on games, which would lead me to buy even more. Basically, I want my playstation to have access to the excellent Steam store user experience.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

I beat AC:B recently. The game was pretty fun. The plot was kinda silly. The multiplayer is quite enjoyable. Blog post done.