NLU Weekly #67 (March 22, 2008) - Core Objectives Only / Easier Enemies |
 This Week In Games It has been a pretty busy week in games for me, first it started out with finishing that pain in the ass Dragon Warrior VII. Like I said in the last two posts, I enjoyed parts of it, but I will never play it again it is just not worth that 87 hour investment all over again. What is worth a 90 hour investment all over again is the games "sequel" Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. I beat the game back in 2005 in 95 hours, then I started a second game early in 2007 and I got about 35 hours in before I got distracted by new releases. I am about 16 hours in to this third playthrough and I plan on making sure to see this play through right through to the ending of the game. I am also of course playing 007: Everything or Nothing, which is going well... though... I got sick of playing on the middle difficulty, as cool as the cover system is, unlike Gears of War (or any modern shooter) this game has the old-fashioned health meter. To heal yourself you have to find fairly rare suits of body armor (which look like bullet proof vests) scattered around the level. It really ruins the pace of the game, if you take damage you have to look around the level and hope you find a vest so that you can keep going. That and I have never seen James Bond use cover like in this game... you see that is the problem with using licensed characters like James Bond (or Superman, etc.) is that they are basically invincible in the books and movies, but to make a game they have to have a weakness. In the movies Bond's enemies couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, while he can use his automatic rifle to mow down a couple dozen without even a scratch. The funny thing is this game is probably the game that lets you play the most like Bond with its third person perspective and there are plenty of really cool "Bond Moments" in each level that look and feel super sweet to pull off. The point is I switched the game down to the easiest setting, not because it was too hard per se, but so that I could be a little more aggressive with my play (there are also way more health armors laying around). You feel a bit more like Bond this way, though you can still be killed fairly easily if you don't dispatch your enemies quickly. I plan to have finished EoN by the next Alpha's Picks where I will probably pick from one of the other three choices that didn't win from last week. I also spent some time with Call of Duty 4, but playing the single player missions, I tried out Arcade mode and got about half way through the normal campaign. I even earned some achievements, including the annoying survive a dog attack one (annoying because you have a split second window to melee the dog before it rips out your throat). And that is about it for my week in games, pretty good week I'd say. Variety Comin' Up Yesterday's "Games I "Hate"" special went over pretty well and had some interesting lists posted of games that people just don't like, can't understand why others like them so much and games that just made the commenter's upset when they think about playing them, but in the end it got me thinking about the status of the blog... For example, I came up with NLU Weekly so that I would write at least once a week in the blog, but now it has kind of taken over the blog as I just slap all my whole week in to the one post... so I think I am going to throw in more of my other special features more often and try writing more about different things than just about what games that I am playing. I haven't written a retro review since March 07, so I will have more of those soon. I also might do more of those "Pick 5's" which is a nice way to spark a conversation. I also hope to have do impressions more frequently as separate articles like I used to instead of slapping them in to NLU Weekly, I also will write more separate "finished" articles as well. The blog has just become overly structured and if it wasn't for Alpha's Picks, I'd probably only be NLU Weekly all time. As it is, it's only Alpha's Picks and NLU Weekly each week, so I want to do more kinds of entries like I used to with Playthrough Logs, Retro Reviews, special retrospectives on series, Gamer's Rants (when one is called for) and other special features that I can think of to share with the people who do read my blog frequently. So keep an eye on you tracked blogs list for the latest special features on Now Loading. Closing Out That does it for this week, next week I'm probably going to write a retro review on one of my old PC favorites, then it'll probably be Alpha's Picks #8 followed by NLU Weekly #68, though if I think of anything to write about before then and now I will have it. I'll have more soon so I will talk to you then. Loading Complete! |
POSTED ON MARCH 22, 2008 |
