Gaming Diary - Day 1 (09.12.10)

Hello again. After having a short nap I got down to gaming. I'm currently downloading Batman: Arkham Asylum... and I have been for more than six hours now. Which is really silly. I don't know why this happens, but it's really irritating.

I removed Red Alert 3 after playing a single skirmish and remembering that as far as the game's ambience and shiny factor are great, the gameplay itself is everything I don't like about RTS games anymore. We'll soon see if Kane's Wrath shares the same faith.

I started playing Timeshift. Nice game, good shooter, though the plot doesn't seem to make any sense, and the time-control mechanics are mostly a gimmick. Shame, I was hoping for more. But I'm enjoying it so far and I'm planning on finishing it properly. It's not bad, and it's not even as bland as I feared. Fun game.

I also got to half of Mafia. I'm still not impressed. The game leaves a very dull feeling. On the one hand, it is kind of like GTA 3, but on the other, all Mafia really is, is a series of shoot-out levels with unskippable (and usually quite pointless) driving sequences, with added cutscenes which seem to take almost half the amount of time the gameplay takes. Plus, my obvious gripe about NO SAVING ANYWHERE I WANT, which results in me cursing that I've got 4 HP left and two or three mission sections to complete... I made it, but it wasn't any more satisfying than if I did that with a 100 HP. I begin to feel Mafia is one of the overrated games which did something revolutionary and did it right, and so any flaws that the game had were kind of ommited in the reviews. Against GTA 3, this game just doesn't defend itself. Sure, you could argue the setting is better, but the story is 'meh, whatever', the dialogues are actually rather bad, and the gameplay isn't all that gripping...

I'm off to play one last game before going to sleep. I'm thinking a short match of Soulstorm or Kane's Wrath.

Plan for tomorrow: play Arkham Asylum if it actually downloads, install and play King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame (again, since it's off Steam, if it actually downloads), play Timeshift and maybe Mafia, perhaps play some Left 4 Dead, and maybe even install and play Left 4 Dead 2. All other games optional, but possible.