Batman: Arkham Asylum

I've finished playing through on Hard mode and completed all of the Riddler challenges. Now all I have to concentrate on is earning medals in challenge mode and I should be able to unlock all the rest of the trophies while I'm doing that.

Bioshock 2

Played through on Hard mode and collected about 40% of the trophies on that playthrough. When I get back to this game, I'll play it on Easy mode with Vita Chambers disabled to get the Bigger Brass Balls trophy. I enjoyed the game, but not as much as I enjoyed the original mainly because I thought the gameplay got extremely repetitive about 2/3 of the way through.

Heavy Rain

Beat the game today and a got a pretty good (but not perfect ending). I held off on buying this one until reviews came in and then decided to pick it up after they were overwhelmingly positive. I completely agree, the story sucked me in from beginning to end and I'm looking forward to going back and seeing how I can change the story again and again. I got about 30% of the trophies on my first playthrough, but I would've had more if it weren't for that damn ApocalyPS3.

On Tuesday I'm planning to pick up FFXIII since I'm a diehard fan of the series and I think this installment is looking fantastic. I've strayed away from my goal of collecting every trophy in every game for the meantime, but my main reason for setting that goal was to give myself incentive to game more and I've definitely been gaming a lot more than usual lately. I still plan to go back and get them all, but 2010 has brought a flood of excellent titles my way so far.

So, as you might have guessed I've gotten the Platinum in AC2 by now. Just haven't had the motivation to write about it. I also downloaded "The Battle for Forli" earlier this week and finished the new content. When doing so, I started thinking about what they might choose as a setting for the third title. I thought it might be cool if they follow the Auditore bloodline to Spain and then do a game where the main character is a conquistador in the New World. However, since AC2 ended in the late 1400's I don't think they'd have enough time pass to do a character like that. I also thought about going back to the Middle East during the Ottoman Empire circa 1850 and do an early to mid industrial setting.

I've also managed to finish one playthrough of Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I thought was a fantastic game. The only letdown IMO was the boss fights. You don't actually get to fight most of the villans per se: Harley Quinn gets locked up after you fight a bunch of thugs, you really just run away from both the Scarecrow and Killer Croc, and the fight with the Joker also revolves around beating up a lot of thugs. It might have something to do with the fact that Batman never actually kills anybody, but, c'mon, you went to all that work perfecting the freeflow battle system, you could at least make me use it on some tough bosses. Right now, I'm in the middle of playing through it again on Hard mode. I'm trying to solve all of the Riddler puzzles in this playthrough, so by the time I'm done I should have every trophy that you get in the main game. This just leaves the challenges that I downloaded and I've heard they can be pretty tough. I'm pretty good at stealth games, so I'm thinking I might have an easier time with the challenges than most, but we'll see. I'm hoping to plat the game in mid February. At which point I'm either going to pick up BioShock 2 or Dante's Inferno. I played the demo for Dante's Inferno and it absolutely blew me away, but at the same time I really want to see how the story continues in BioShock 2. Right now I'm leaning towards BioShock 2, but reviews will certainly play a factor and I might have changed my mind for a ton of other reasons by that point.

So, I've been staying pretty true to my New Year's resolution of getting 1 platinum trophy per month. My game for January is Assassin's Creed II. It looks like I'm going to be done ahead of schedule. I got it for Christmas and beat the main game the other night. That puts me about 60 to 70 % of the way done with trophies. I'm not sure how much longer it's going to take me to get that last 30 something percent. It could go quickly, or it could take awhile since doing things like collecting feathers can be really tedious. As for the game itself, I loved it. I thought it was a huge improvement over the original. It almost seemed like a whole generation of gaming had passed between the two.

In the future I won't be able to make this kind of progress so quickly with my games. I've been off school and off work for most of the time that I was playing AC2. My next game is going to be Batman: Arkham Asylum since I also got that for Christmas. If I finish really early with that one, I think I might make BioShock 2 my official game of February. If not, then BioShock 2 will probably be March's game.

Hey Gamespot!

I haven't been gaming nearly as much as I should over the past several months. It happens; it's the typcial story... you get too busy with work, school, etc. etc. etc. and at the end of the day there's just no time. For my "new year's resolution", I want to change all that. My goal is to completely finish one of my games that have been collecting dust over the past semester or so. Since, I've actually beaten most of my Wii games, I'm going to be concentrating mostly on my PS3 collection. So, by "completely finishing" I mean earning the Platinum trophy. Something I've never done with a game before ever.

Since all the best new year's resolutions start early, I've chosen Fallout 3 for December '09. My real goal is to finish in time for Christmas, so I can concentrate on Assasssin's Creed 2 and/or Batman: Arkham Asylum, but I'm not expecting to really finish until January. I want to beat the basic game with the Platinum trophy by the end of December. I'll worry about the expansions later.

I'll update y'all with my progress along the way. So far I've gotten out of the Vault, visited Megaton, done the Blood Ties sidequest, and started on Moira's sidequests. This is a game I got last Christmas, and, although I poured a good number of hours into it, I don't really feel that I explored it like I could/should have. So, I'm doing it now. Maybe I'll download all the expansions at a later month and work on those, or maybe not.

If you've got any game reccommendations feel free to post them. There's a good chance I already own the game you're reccomending. Though, I can tell you right now that January's game is probably going to be Assassin's Creed 2 and February's Batman. But, I'm always open to suggestions.

- Zombie_eric

Haven't been visiting this site much for the better part of the last year. I was super busy last Fall semester and just didn't have time to keep up with the site. I'm just now getting back into it and exploring some of the features that have been added in the past couple months. I've always liked using this site because its a good way to keep track of what games are coming out when, so I'm hoping to keep it up again for awhile. I've changed my game collection to reflect what it actually looks like right now, because I got rid of my 360 and have decided to be a PS3/Wii owner exclusively. I also took down some pictures from old blog posts, but that's pretty much it so far.

Okay, so after the huge avalanche of games last month I'm finally ready for a nice, slow one. Seriously though, it's actually a pretty good thing since I'm going to be pretty busy with other activities throughout the next month. There's only two games on the list this time and both of them are 360 games that I'm not exactly crazy for, but interested in playing.

Too Human (360): 08/19/08

Oh Too Human, I remember when I looked forward to playing you on the Gamecube. Well, its been a couple years and you're completely different from what I thought you would be, but now the time is finally here. What I'm really worried about with this game is that when things get worked on for insanely long amounts of time, they tend to pass a point where they stop getting better and start getting worse. I'm worried that's going to happen with this one. Though the premise and gameplay st.yle do seem promising, I want to wait until I hear what the reviewers say before making any purchasing decisions.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (360): 08/31/08

I never played the first Mercs game, but the promise of GTA in a war zone is mighty tempting. Honestly, I'm not expecting this game to be much more than average, in which case I'll probably hold off on buying it until the price goes down. But, hey, I've been wrong before and if it surprises me I might just be inclined to pick it up right away.

So that's basically it...

Just as a bit of an update, I bought Final Fantasy IV the other week and LOVE it. That was actually the only game I bought last month since I really haven't been playing that much for some reason or another. Hopefully that'll change soon.

- Zombie Eric

Seriously I love it!

The game is good and hard, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It reminds me of when I was younger and played the SNES Final Fantasies obsessively while eagerly anticipating IX and X to be released. Some people have complained about the less than stellar voice acting, but I think it's perfect that way since its just like back in the 32-bit days.

Well, that's all I have time for, I need another fix...

- Zombie Eric

So after all the rumors, all the speculation, everything Nintendo finally announces its big game for 2008. And what is it? Wii Music... WTF!!!!!!!?????? WHO CARES? I can already play a REAL guitar. I don't need to play a fake one! And I could understand this maybe being a fun little title worth mentioning, but the grand finale of the whole conference? Please!

But, oh no, Nintendo didn't forget about us "core" gamers. Guess what we're getting guys! Animal Crossing!... and GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS!

What? Are you kidding me? That's it? Well, I don't know about you guys, but instead of buying Animal Crossing I'm planning to put my money into MUCH better simulation games like Spore and The Sims 3 for the PC... where games of that nature belong. And if GTA: Chinatown Wars gets treated as well as every other GTA game ever released on a handheld (poorly), it's nothing to jump up and down about.

Thank GOD (yes, I'm thanking God even though I'm an atheist that's how relieved I am) for The Conduit and (hopefully) Tales of Symphonia coming from 3rd parties, or else it'd be a LONG time before I dusted off my Wii again.

Sony didn't suck quite as hard as Nintendo, but that hardly wins them any praise. They showed off a bunch of games that we already knew about, and it was nice to see them but I would've liked a surprised or two thrown in there. They also told us about how they refuse to believe that the PS2 is dead and the PSP is just barely clinging on. And they revealed their evil plans to trick unknowing consumers into buying these dead platforms by releasing bundle packages this holiday season. Oh and there's a Resistance game coming to the PSP... that's kind of cool, I guess.

Overall I just have to wonder what the hell these two companies were thinking. This was their chance to really knock us off our feet with something, but neither took advantage of it. I mean, Microsoft's new stuff isn't exactly the most creative, but at least it's NEW, and we didn't know about it before E3. So all in all, I give Microsoft props, but only by comparison because the other two companies had NOTHING. I'm cool with Sony because they gave me just about what I expected, there weren't any surprises like I'd been hoping for, but that's just the way it goes. And I'm PISSED at Nintendo for completely FAILING to deliver ANYTHING worth spending money on.

- Zombie Eric

For the first time in a long time I am VERY impressed with Microsoft.

The first four games they showed off are all the obvious must have titles: Fallout, Fable, Gears, and Resident Evil. I'm much more impressed with the new Gears of War than I have been. Honestly, if you're on the fence about this game right now, check out some of the gameplay vids. They look fantastic. Other than that, I got just about what I expected from the others.

Now what really surprised me is how they're trying to cut in to Nintendo's market. First of all, the interface is getting a huge overhaul and is going to allow users to create Miis, I mean "avatars", to represent themselves in the online community. Additionally, a flood of casual friendly games are coming that are actually going to use these avatars. Now, I don't really see myself playing "Lips" or that movie game they showed off, but it's something I think casuals will really take a shine to. Also, that new game show feature on Live looks like a lot of fun and actually is something that I'd like to try out. I love how it's all going to be more fluid and user-friendly. Microsoft clearly has no plans to give up their title as the king of internet gaming.

Another kind of big announcement that steals a little of Nintendo's thunder is that the original Banjo-Kazooie is going to be available for download on the Live Arcade. Looks like the Virtual Console has some competition...

But that's not all, they're also cutting in to Sony's market. Square-Enix announced a slew of JRPG's for the 360, all of them exclusive. Well, Last Remnant is just a timed exclusive, but I'll count it anyway. Hopefully this will win over a lot of gamers in Japan, since that seems to be the only market that the 360 underperforms in. The Last Remnant looks like it's shaping up to be a really good title and definately something to check out this holiday season. And, of course, the BIG announcement. Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the 360! :D This game was supposed to be Sony's big exclusive for '09 and now Microsoft gets it too. I honestly couldn't believe my eyes when I watched the trailer.

Overall, from what I saw at the conference, it looks like the 360 has a bright future and I'm very relieved. I thought there was a good chance that a new console could've been announced today, so I'm glad to see Microsoft supporting its current install base. Also, I think it's almost a guarantee that Microsoft is going to beat the PS3 this generation now. However, I'm also very curious as to what Sony's planning for their conference. With their kill app, FF, gone they've got to have something BIG in store for us. I'm incredibly impressed with what Microsoft showed us today and proud to be a 360 owner!

- Zombie Eric

Looks like this game is shaping up to be even better than I thought. :D

I'm actually surprised they got a review out so early. Can't wait to finally play it in... 10 days, I think.

- Zombie Eric