Week ending 1/28/14

Writing these intros is seriously the hardest damn part of this article for me. Most of the time I have no idea what to say, but I feel like I HAVE to put something here, or else it’ll just feel really cold and lifeless if I just jump right into the games. I could feel myself getting into Remember Me last week and a little bit back into GTA, so those will probably be the games that get the most playtime this week. I still have a pretty decently sized pile of unplayed or barely played games. Maybe I’ll try to get into one of those this week?

Wednesday

Not a damn thing, had family issues come up and had to deal with those, leaving me not a whole lot of time for gaming.

Thursday

Borderlands 2
More co-op, we played about an hour and a half or so, up until the point where we got to the first main real town of Sanctuary, and then I saw the metric shit ton of sidequests and knew that we would wind up doing nothing but them if we didn’t stop then.

NOTE: GTA V SPOILERS ARE COMING! BE WARNED!

GTA V
Delved quite a bit into this today. Getting further into the story and having a lot of fun during all the times when I’m not driving halfway across the goddamned map for NO FREAKIN REASON. Seriously I know I went into this last week, but there really is no good reason for for the map to be as big and *boring* as it is. If it’s gonna be that big, there should be more interesting shit to do in it. I understand asking Rockstar not to do shit to excessive levels is a crazy request. Excess is their thing, I get it, but I just wish it was more fun. Played up to the point where Trevor found out the truth about Brad, and left Michael to die at the hands of the Chinese gang. I THINK I’m pretty far in? I should have checked the actual percentage, but I forgot.

Friday

GTA V
Oh man, such a long play session of GTA today. I guess it says something that despite my complaints, I came back again and put in somewhere between 6-8 hours. I feel like I am so close to the end now. Doing the set-up missions for the final heist, but it’s past 3 AM, so I’m going to have to finish this game off tomorrow. I looked at my completion percentage and I’m around the 71% mark, which holy shit, in a GTA game I feel like that normally means I should have beaten the game 10 hours ago. Are the less side missions or am I just doing more of them without realizing it?

Saturday

GTA V
Well yesterday I thought I was going to beat this today, but instead I ended up getting stuck in loop of doing sidequest after sidequest, and not advancing the main story at all. Let me tell you, doing all of the Epsilon side missions in one play session is NOT a good idea. Holy shit those things are just completely tedious and not fun whatsoever. At first I thought it was still worth it because of the giant payday you get at the end of those missions, but then I quickly realized that I don’t give a fuck about money in this game. I’m not gonna buy any businesses, cause who cares about them? I can jack every car I need so I don’t need to buy those. The missions give you tons of ammo so I don’t need to buy that. So, if I’ve got an assload of cash and nothing to do with it, was it really worth getting that cash? Oh well, tomorrow is the day I’ll beat the game more than likely. Also I was incredibly disappointed that the Epsilon robes weren’t actually robes, and just a regular shirt and pants. C’mon Rockstar, THIS is where you’re gonna decide to cut corners? Model a fuckin robe.

Sunday

GTA V
The main story is finished! I was actually surprised when there turned out to be more missions at the end of the final Heist, and I feel like by going with choice C I made the end game last longer than the other choices would have, but c’mon. Who out there ISN’T going to pick option C for the ending? Too bad this game doesn’t have Walking Dead style stat tracking, because I’d be really interested in knowing how small the percentage of people were that picked either option A or B. Also for everyone who has beaten the game, be sure to load up your save file and make one last trip to Michael’s psychiatrist if you didn’t already do so after beating the main game. That was possibly the greatest part of this entire game. So, I should probably do some final thoughts on this game, right? First off, GTA V is the first GTA game where I’ve actually finished the entire story. I feel as if there are good and bad things to take from that. It’s good that the game didn’t just bore the ever loving shit out of me and make me never want to look at it again, like GTA IV did; however it also means that general open world fuckeration that the Grand Theft Auto series is known for just isn’t as fun as it used to be in the PS2 days. That’s how I kept going in the story – by simply not caring about anything else I could do in the world. I also didn’t like how for the last third or so of the story Franklin became completely irrelevant, since he was easily my favorite character of the three. Despite my complaints though, the game is just fun as shit when everything clicks, and it does click more often than not. I don’t give ratings, but if I did this would probably go somewhere in the 8-8.5 range. However, one thing I can say without hesitation is that this game just flat out can’t hold a candle to Sleeping Dogs. Sleeping Dogs is easily the best open world crime game on the market, and that’s fucking INSANE if you remember that it started out as part of the shitty True Crime series before Activision canned it. I feel like I got off course here, but man, Sleeping Dogs is just that good. Maybe I should go back and play through that again sometime?

EA Sports MMA
After the shit that WWE put on for the Royal Rumble, I decided to go to this and just beat up some dudes. Turns out I didn’t know a damn thing about the control scheme and lost every fight in less than 2 minutes. Don’t really feel like sitting through tutorials to learn either so just not gonna play this now.

GTA V
Yep, I went right back into GTA. Decided to try out GTA Online and see if it’s really as bad as most of the reviews say. It’s really awkward getting tutorial missions from this game while other people are just driving around killing you. Maybe they should have instanced the beginning so that you can understand the flow before you start dealing with a city full of assholes? Speaking of assholes, naturally I had to make my character look like the biggest idiot out there. I couldn’t NOT have him run around in his underwear, flip flops, and with his hair slicked back. I mean..I just CAN’T, it wouldn’t be right to not have him look like a fool. After the tutorials I went into a few races and deathmatches against people and just got my ass handed to me completely. But I guess logic would dictate the that only people who are on at 3 AM on a Sunday would be the people *really* into it and would have already gotten really good at it. Maybe I’ll try again at a more casual hour and see how it goes.

Monday

Borderlands 2
Remember how I mentioned getting side tracked in all the sidequests? I must be a freakin psychic or something, because that’s exactly what happened here. We made absolutely zero progress on the story missions, and just went around completing side missions. Oh, and wasting all our money on the slot machine in Moxxi’s bar. That’s not hyperbole either, we just stood there pulling the handle until we couldn’t afford it anymore. Who knew a slot machine in a FPS/RPG could be so addictive? We probably, ok, possibly would have eventually made some actual story progress, but I had to cut the play session short before too long. Also somehow that asshole passed me in Badass rank! I was more than 50 levels above him last week! I think he’s been cheating and playing without me.

GTA V
Back to GTA Online, and at a more reasonable hour this time. I mainly just did more races, which I find really strange because I hated driving and especially racing in the single player mode, but that’s all I want to do in multiplayer. Maybe it’s because there’s no pressure and I don’t have to do the whole damn thing again if I don’t finish first place. My highlight was doing a bicycle race with a few other people, but as soon as we started I jacked a car and ran them all down while cackling madly. It was so stupid and so simple, but it felt so damn fun. Got up to rank 5 and then called it quits.

Rayman Legends
I mainly put this in because I wanted to see one of the much hyped music levels for myself and see what they’re really all about. Turns out I didn’t get that far today, as the first one was made the very last stage of the first world, and I once again didn’t start playing a game until after 2 AM. I really gotta start playing games earlier than that if I want to put in some real time. What I did play was really fun and charming, I think I’ll be going back to it tomorrow.

Tuesday

Rayman Legends
Ok so this game is REALLY trying to fuck with my GADD. If you collect enough lums in a level, you’re given a scratch off ticket where you can win prizes. A lot of the time these prizes are new unlockables, and the way the game is constantly yelling at you “HEY! NEW SHIT! COME LOOK AT THIS NEW SHIT! SCREW THAT OLD SHIT! THAT OLD SHIT IS FOR CHUMPS, GET THIS NEW SHIT!” is really messing with my head. I really want to go in a straight line, cause that’s the only way to get to the music stages man. I really like these daily and weekly challenges though. That’ll more than likely be the thing that keeps me coming back, even though I don’t really even want to attempt to get golds on them, silvers are good enough for me. After about an hour or two of play, I eventually got to the first music stage, Black Betty. Man that was charming as shit. I love it when games can just make me smile and melt my cold dead heart.
So I played absolutely zero Remember me or Cloudberry Kingdom this week, and didn’t even think of them until I looked at my week in this article. Are they going away, or will I get back to them next week? I have a feeling Rayman is gonna start dominating my time, but we’ll find out.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK:

What 2014 release are you most looking forward to? For me it’s still not any of the next gen games, instead it’s South Park: The Stick of Truth. I’ve been so ready for that game to come out for so long, and it’s gonna hurt me so bad when it winds up being absolute trash.