Still Alive
A handful of updates, for those remaining faithful readers who have not yet removed Barts News from their RSSes yet:
1. I started playing Dragon Age: Origins on PC and I absolutely love it. Witty dialogues, likeable protagonists, many, many, many options and choices, branching storyline and lots of respect for LGBT players, including being able to pursue bi- or homosexual romance. Graphics are a little dated and there's a lot of unavoidable fights, which gets somewhat repetitive later on, but overall this game is brilliant and everyone should play it, especially if you value storytelling, atmosphere and witty humour. Highly recommended!
2. A bunch of my gaming articles appeared on Polygamia, the Polish gaming site. For those interested, they were on Hydorah, brilliant indie schmup from Locomalito, Dwarf Fortress, equally brilliant indie strategy-sim hybrid, Voxatron, incoming indie voxel arena shooter, Rogue Survivor, yet another indie (do you see the pattern here?) game, neat zombie roguelike, and finally interesting info about Pink Knight add-on to Castle Crashers, the money from which will fund breast cancer research.
3. I have bought PS3 and huge plasma TV. My old article on games I would play if I had PS3 went through the window, of course. First, the games I considered promising and they delivered:
- Wipeout HD turned out to be great and my girlfriend loves it (she kicks my ass, too).
- Heavy Rain was a blast, I absolutetly love it - this game alone justifies buying PS3.
- Flower is brilliant, albeit short.
Next, games I thought I'd love, but didn't:
- Heavenly Sword is boring and its gameplay is devoid of fun (sadly).
- God of War 3 demo was so violent and tasteless that it discouraged me from buying the full game for now.
- Uncharted 2 is fine and dandy, but a little annoying gameplay-wise and I'm blocked early in the game.
- Valkyria Chronicles so far is meh.
As for the other games, Scott Pilgrim demo was cool, but my girlfriend didn't like it, so we went for Castle Crashers instead (brilliant game, by the way), Killzone 2 is impossible to play on the pad (at least for me) and Street Fighter IV was rubbish, both graphics- and gameplay-wise. Another bunch of games I bought were the ones I have found on the cheap: these include Dragon Age (for replaying it on console instead of PC), Mirrors Edge and Prince of Persia 2008 (prettiness!).
So that would be it for now. Some cool games, some less cool games, some writing, new hardware. Not too bad for mere 30 days period, eh?
