Incredibly busy these days with school work, trying to figure out where I am going next year, and playing all the games that keep piling up in front of me. Things in the foreseeable future are only going to get crazier, so I'll have to endure this insanity for a long time yet even though I'm already pretty burnt out. Oh well, lots of great games to play right now and not many coming out after November so I should be able to catch up on the gaming front.

Gothic 4

I was aware going in that Gothic 4 wasn't really a proper Gothic game because it was made by a different developer, similar to Ubisoft developing Far Cry 2. The outcome was pretty disastrous – the game looks absolutely stunning, apart from some aliasing and clunky animations. Textures, lighting, and environments are all really great looking. The rest is pretty rubbish though, read my review to find out why. It works ok as a simple action RPG but it has none of the components that made the Gothic games and Risen so compelling. It would be like a Stalker game with Call of Duty styIe weapons and health regeneration and absolutely no depth.

New Vegas

I've only been able to put about 8 hours into New Vegas so far due to time constraints, but I am loving it so far. If it continues to be as good as it has been it will likely end up being my favourite game to have come out this year, and by association my favourite new game since Mass Effect 1 came out in 2008. It has the same great gameplay as Fallout 3, but with a bunch of tweaks that make it so much more compelling – also it doesn't give me BSOD's every 20 minutes like Fallout 3 did, although I think that can be blamed on faulty ram that I have now replaced. The writing and voice acting is on a level only paralleled by Bioware games, and even then the writing seems to be even sharper in New Vegas. So many interesting characters to meet, and so many interesting places to explore and quests to complete. The faction system is really interesting, there are no clear good or bad guys, but rather each faction stands for different things. I've fallen in with the NCR, but other smaller factions like the Children of the Apocalypse seem really interesting as well.

The number of ways you can complete some of the side quests reminds me of Dues Ex, one quest I completed recently required you to adjust a number of solar panels that would increase the power of an NCR power plant. Once you enter the building where the controls are, you are faced with a large and complex automated security system. You can either try and blow it up, or hack into a nearby computer to disable it. Later in the mission, you learn the control panel is damaged, and if your repair skill is high enough you can repair it. If not, you there is a nearby robot that can be activated if your science skill is high enough, otherwise you will need to search for an activation card. Brilliant, brilliant stuff when combined with the great exploration and improved combat, which while still not great outside of VATS is much improved with the addition of iron sights. The game also runs perfectly with that .dll fix that is floating around, and it looks better than I expected. Bugs have been minimal thus far. I can easily see myself dropping a hundred plus hours into this game.

Lost Planet 2

Just picked this game up recently after hearing the PC version was way better than the console version, I remember enjoying the first Lost Planet game on the PC so I figured I'd check this one out. I'm about 2 hours in so far, and I'm not a big fan of the co-op only design of the game, but once I figured out how to set up missions and such its actually decent. The knock back attacks are really annoying, but some of the boss fights are pretty epic, the gunplay is solid, and the visuals are spectacular. Honestly, I feel that with games like Metro 2033, Gothic 4 and now Lost Planet 2 the bar for visuals on the PC has finally been raised after so many years of little graphical advancement. Too bad most of the games boasting these great visuals haven't been anything special.

I'll post a review of Lost Planet 2 once I've spent more time with it, but so far it's better than I expected.

Upcoming Games/gaming

Next week Black Ops comes out, and I think I'm going to get it. I was going to skip out on MW 2 altogether but it came with my graphics card so I did end up playing it. It was ok, singleplayer was probably the weakest of any COD game on the PC, and the multiplayer was full of hackers which really brought down the overall experience. Black Ops is looking pretty full featured so I'm not overly unhappy about spending 60 dollars on it, wager matches look particularly interesting.

After black ops, there isn't much of anything coming out until January that I'm interested in, so I'll probably catch up on some of the games I already got and put some serious time into New Vegas and Left 4 Dead 2 versus, which I have dabbled in but haven't been able to really get into due to time constraints.