While last week was fairly light on purchases and play time, I did my best to make up for that this week. Most of that play time went to Mass Effect: Andromeda, but I did manage to get a little time in on mobile. I also couldn’t resist this weeks PSN sales Let’s start with purchases.
PS3
Sony often gets me with their Flash Sales and weekly deals. I just can’t resist a good deal on a game I want to pick up at some point, especially games that are at the $5 (or less) price point. This week Sony ran a weekly sale titled “Playstation Essentials” to go along with a Flash Sale over the weekend. I ended up with six total purchases, four of which were on PS3.
God of War: Ascension: I picked up The God of War collection on a Black Friday sale about two years ago and needed this title to fill out my God of War library. This series is the perfect example of why I started this blog. I’ve never played a game in this series through to the end but desperately want to. At a sale price of $2.49 I just couldn’t resist picking this one up.
The Walking Dead: Michonne: I loved seasons 1 and 2 of Telltale’s Walking Dead and have wanted to see this side story for some time. When it launched I didn’t have time for it so decided to wait until a sale when the whole series was out. At $4.99, this seems like the right time to pick it up.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: I played a little of the original Sly Cooper back when it was originally released on the PS2. At the time, I was in college and was starting to lose interest in games so never finished it. I’ve come to appreciate PS2 era platformers like this series, Jak and Daxter, and Rachet and Clank. Even though it’s the fourth game in the series, at $4.99 it was hard to pass up.
Red Faction: Armageddon: I only bought this game because it was $2.99 with a science fiction setting filled with mindless action.
PS4
Until Dawn: I’ve been interested in this game since release. I am a big fan of the Heavy Rain/Beyond Two Souls style of game, and this is supposed to be one of the best, if not the best, in the genre. I actually may try and get my wife to play this game with me. She isn’t a gamer, but she likes horror movies so I figure this may be the type of game to pique her interest in gaming at least a little bit.
The Evil Within: I was able to pick this up with all the DLC for $9. Word of mouth on this game over at neogaf is positive so for that price with all DLC I figured why not. It’s a genre I enjoy and the price was right.
Xbox One
Only one big purchase on Xbox which I’ve already talked about – Mass Effect: Andromeda. I will have more thoughts on this as I progress through the game and already talked about my initial impressions in an earlier post. Simply put, this is my favorite series in gaming so there was no way I’d miss out on this game at launch, even with the problems it has had with performance and lukewarm reviews.
Now for what I’ve been playing.
Virtually all my time has been committed to Mass Effect: Andromeda. I’m now about five hours in and loving it. I arrived on Eos and just finished my first encounter with the Remnant and was intoduced to Peebee. I’ve enjoyed the game so far. It feels like the proper way to reboot the series while keeping the lore and the world intact. I know most people say the game gets better after Eos, but I am already pleased with the game. I’ll continue to add deeper thoughts and opinions as I progress through the game.
The only other game I spent any time with this week was Final Fantasy IX on mobile. I had some technical issues with my tablet over the weekend so lost about 30 minutes of progress and had to play through the same sequence twice. I played through the sequence where Zidane, Vivi, Freya, and Quina defend Cleyra from the attacking forces of Alexandria. At the end of that attack Beatrix steals a jewel that allows the user to summon Eidolons and returns to the Queen’s ship. You then transport to Queen Brahne’s airship and discover she has plans to kill Dagger and watch her summon the Eidolon Odin who goes on to destroy Cleyra. After this, Beatrix starts to question her role as Alexandria’s General.
Adding this layer to Beatrix is a nice touch that I think is underappreciated. By now the player has interacted with her enough to know she is on the opposite side of the fight and a superior warrior to almost everyone we have encountered to date. In all of our interactions with her have she has been doing Brahne’s dirty work and keeping our heroes at bay whenever we come across as a threat to Brahne. To be blunt, her character has bordering on being nothing more than a one dimensional lackey who only does what she does because she’s supposed to be the bad guy and is therefore evil. But here we see that she has questions about Brahne’s actions, cares about the princess, and even seems torn between her duty as a soldier and what is ethically right. It’s an unexpected piece of storytelling that adds another layer to this game that I missed the first time around.
So that’s what I have been up to the past week. This week will likely be more Mass Effect. I’d like to get back to The Swapper and try to finish that since it is a shorter game. Persona 3 is pretty much on indefinite hiatus for me while I work through the bulk of Mass Effect. I’m off the following week so I hope to have lots of updates and progress then.
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