It's been a while since my last blog, which is mainly because I haven't had much time for games since glasses started. My current schedule sees me on campus for most of the day with huge breaks in between classes so I don't get home until relatively late each day.

I was also going to wait until I finished Amnesia to do this blog, but I'm going to put the game aside for the time being for a variety of reasons even though I'm fairly close to the end. One of the reasons is that it's simply too oppressive to play at times. I'll go in thinking "I'll make some real progress this time." Ten minutes later I've quit the game because the atmosphere is simply too overbearing. I found with Penumbra the emphasis was on the puzzles and the horror aspects were in the background so it was basically a puzzle game with the added element of terrifying creatures and a creepy story.

With Amnesia it's a horror game first and a puzzle game second, and the puzzles suffer for it, although the atmosphere definitely doesn't. I found myself doing almost all of the puzzles right away without much thought at all, which means you keep progressing and continue encountering strange and terrible things at a fairly quick pace. I need to be in the exact right mood to enjoy this kind of game, but I'm so damned busy right now that mood almost never comes upon me. I even bought some new headphones and played in the dark to try and instigate this mood, but still my high levels of brain activity meant I found playing the game rather unpleasant due to the horribly oppressive nature of the levels. I recognize that it's an incredible horror game, but until I'm a bit less busy I'm going to put the game aside. Unless I suddenly get the urge to play it, which could very well happen.

I also picked up Darksiders for the PC when it came out on Thursday, and honestly it's a ton of fun. At first I was horrified that it would be a terrible port because there is only one graphics setting – resolution – but honestly it looks great, runs great and controls very well with a mouse and keyboard. I almost never get to play these kinds of action hack-and-slash games because they generally seem to come out on consoles, so I'm really enjoying the experience. Probably about 4 or 5 hours in, and I'm loving the pacing and the brilliant level design. I wish there were a few more weapons, but the different combos and upgrades are keeping me entertained. I'll be reviewing the game, but probably not for over a week because I don't have that much time to game and its supposedly fairly lengthy at around 15 hours.

I also played through the latest DLC for Mass Effect 2 – Lair of the Shadow Broker – and honestly it has what is probably the best Mass Effect content yet. It had the soul and the feel of ME 1 with the improved combat mechanics of ME 2. If ME 3 is like this DLC I will be a happy man. Anyone who enjoyed ME 2 in the slightest should definitely check it out. I did encounter a number of fairly serious bugs though, mostly involving getting stuck in the terrain or in cover. On one occasion you need to traverse the exterior of a ship in space (similar to the ending of ME 1 actually) and I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go at first. It seemed like you were supposed to vault over some nearby cover, but the game wouldn't let me. Eventually I found a way out of the starting area, but it turned out to be a terrible glitch where I was wandering around in a part of the ship that was supposed to be inaccessible. I couldn't get back and had to reload the most recent save. Still, the content was fantastic, and I had a ton of fun playing it.

I've also been devoting an unfortunate amount of time to a free turn-based fighting game a friend told me about called "Toribash" where you have to control the individual muscles of your player in order to get the other player to hit the ground. It has a brutal learning curve but once you get used to the mechanics you will realize how many sweet moves are possible, and each fight turns out differently. How it works is you have ten seconds to change the state of your muscles, while a ghost-image of your character indicates what changing each muscle will do. After the 10 seconds, 90 frames (or less depending on the game mode, Judo is my personal favorite) of action will play out. You then get another 10 seconds to change your muscles until either the frame counter runs out (1000 frames per match in Judo) or one of you hits the ground with anything other than your feet or hands.