Return of the Lag

Haven't written anything for a while!

Went on a trip to Scotland for a fairly belated honeymoon. Had a good time, didn't play any games whatsoever, haha.

Thanks to Xbox Live's Games for Gold thing I own Fable III and Crackdown now. Technically I already have a Crackdown disc but it really belongs to a friend of mine who I somehow haven't given it back to yet. I also downloaded Spartacus Legends because it's free if you have a Gold account. So, three more free games. Oops!

My Unfinished percentage is now hovering at 79.8%, which I guess is a tiny bit lower, but still a far cry from my 65% goal. According to Backloggery I've beaten these games recently: Kirby's Adventure, SoulCalibur II (I actually Completed this one, by doing everything in Weapon Master), RIP2 - Strike Back, RIP3 - The Last Hero, Kirby Super Star (I've actually played this a lot on emulator before, but now I've cooped it with Emily) and Assassin's Creed III (not quite Completed, but fairly close).

A few words about the RIP trilogy: they're arena shooters, which I kind of like, and there's enough variety for it to be fun. RIP2 was my favourite of these, with a higher difficulty than the first one, but not the endless annoying repetition of the third. RIP3 also has a problem with weapons balance; there's never a reason to not upgrade. I've only played through them all on Normal or possibly Easy. I imagine RIP2 Hard would take a long time to get through.

SoulCalibur II was a lot of fun, though some of the challenges in Weapon Master are very stupid. I've previously finished Soul Blade's Edge Master so I knew what to expect, but the randomness involved was very aggravating and it took a lot of swearing to get through some levels. Still, the actual game is good and it made me want to play a little more SoulCalibur V after I finished. So I have a few more achievements on that now too.

Spartacus Legends is a freemium game which is still fairly playable if you don't pay, which is nice, but progress is slow (of course) and the actual fighting isn't the most complex or interesting. If they'd focused a little more on trying to make a good fighting game then it could be a pretty strong title. Unfortunately it suffers from the usual freemium problems and also really irritating music.

Connor Kenway

I love the Assassin's Creed series and I've never really made a secret of it. Ever since playing the first game, my imagination was captured by the possibilities of the storyline and the simple pleasure of exploring an ancient world with hand and foot. The mystique of the game universe Ubisoft have created still makes me marvel.

So naturally I'm playing Assassin's Creed III and enjoying it immensely. America (before it was America) is laid out beautifully and I'm agape at the sheer amount of additional stuff there is to do. Hunting deer or slitting throats, it's all brilliant and I don't know if I'll ever get enough of it.