The year started off with the joys of the Christmas bundle of gaming! This years haul saw NFS: Hot Pursuit, Fable III, Rock Band 3 & a stash of sale bargains. NFS: Hot Pursuit turned out to be a huge disappointment. Fable III whilst great fun, seemed to fall short of greatness and Rock Band 3 to my love plastic instrument bashing to new levels of nirvana (thats if the 2LG's ever let me play it with taking over!).
The best games came from the bargain bin. Enslaved turned out to be an incredible game and piece of storytelling and really deserved to much better than it did in the shops. Alpha Protocol is another gem of a game that has had me dipping in and out of it since January.
February brought me two new experiences. The first was paying 39.99 to bug test a game that was severly broken to start off with. I'm looking at you Test Drive Unlimited 2! Second, the realisation that I in fact suck at fighting games even if I have Spider-Man and Wolverine on my team! Marvel Vs Capcom 3 brought the beat em up back in my life with a huge psychedelic colourful KA-POW!
March saw many changes, mainly the change to 37 years old. Depressing, huh? How do you cope with that? Why buying yourself a brand new 28" 1080p gaming monitor! Having spent many years runnning 720p on a 22" monitor for both 360 and PC gaming. I would be heard saying things like "Why do you need 1080p? How much more HD do you really need?" and other sarky comments. The truth is now revealed to me... because 1080p is just so... so... more shiny! Now this means that I revisit games like Red Dead just to watch tumbleweed go across the plains and the pollen dust floating the air AC: Brotherhood. Oh crap! it appears I am that sad.
April brought me the delights of Stephen Merchant's game stealing performance of Wheatley. Portal 2 was a triumph for me. It proved that games do not need to be 100 hours long and have intricate plots and sub plots. A simple tale told well with a major dash of ingenious gameplay is all you need. It was also around this time that also gave up on my first playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins.
The crowning moment of the year so far came in May, when I was finally reunited with what seemed to be an old friend. My friend had obviously had some work done since we last met and even had a name change. LA Noire may of been on the package on the outside, but inside I saw my old friend Blade Runner the game. LA Noire is a glorious achievement and a glimpse in to the future of gaming. Not without its faults though, the amount of characters in game where the new Motionscan technology renders them into some strange replicant, destroys the illusion that game does its best to convincingly to create.
It was after playing and completing the main game of LA Noire and moving on to play Saints Row 2 did I truely realise the impact the game had. I couldn't take the SR2 characters seriously the facial animation was just so fake.
Which brings me to July and after resisting for long as I could, the release of Ocarina of Time in 3D was to much. I got a Nintendo 3DS about two weeks ago and I love it. Playing Zelda (for the first time...ssh, don't tell) is great, but the prospect of 4 years worth of DS titles that I have missed out on is very exciting.
So that's the year so far and its only halfway there!
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