Uncharted 3 is the latest installment in the wildly successful Uncharted series. It follows Nathan Drake, a modern day fortune hunter, … you know what, screw this. Behold Uncharted 3, my biggest gaming disappointment of 2011.
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Ready Player One is the latest geeky book phenomenon by Ernest Cline and also the January book for the Geek Girl Book Club.
Set in a dystopian future; economic and environmental catastrophes have resulted in a huge worldwide resource shortage. Anyone who can afford it escapes his or her poverty stricken existence by plugging into the virtual OASIS, an immersive Massively Multiplayer Online Game.
Upon his death, the creator of OASIS, wills his entire fortune, billions of dollars and controlling shares in the OASIS Company, to the first person that can find the three virtual keys he has hidden inside the game. Massive treasure hunting fever sweeps the world.
Five years later, not a single key has been found. Until Wade, a young man who, like most of his peers, grew up plugged into the OASIS simulation. He discovers, through luck, tenacity and a bit of brains, the first of the three keys. Pandemonium ensues and we get to come along for the ride.
Professor Layton and his sidekick Luke are back and ready to solve their third adventure filled with murder, mystery and mayhem.
In true sequel fashion, this third installment is identical too its predecessors. Oh the story is certainly different and the mini games changed, but the look, game play, and interactions are essentially the same.
In my case, this is not a bad thing. I had already dealt with my bout of disappointment when I played through the second installment, and accepted that the Layton series is not about to evolve. So more of the same is just I was expecting when I started in on #3.
Title: (Big) Boggle Boardgame
I would have never thought of myself as a word game fan. My Scrabble skills are horrendous at best, even Bananagrams is a challenge, but then it really comes down to my horrible spelling. At least that is what I blame my aversion to word games on. But Boggle changed all that.
Boggle is about creating words out of a fairly large pool of random letters. Short words are encouraged, the more the better. And since there is no need to fit the words on to a board in a specific manner, all that really matters is that it’s a legal word. Yaay!
So I may be a crappy speller, but I certainly can manage a few short words. And even if I did misspell a word, it wouldn’t matter much because there are always plenty more words that I did manage to actually spell correctly.
Way back in the day, when Portal was first released, you know the dark ages of 2007, purchasing a game that I already owned didn’t seem worth it. Portal was bundled in the Orange Box, a Valve game extravaganza including such games as Half-life 2 (owned it), two expansion packs, and Team Fortress 2.
But the Portal section of the box made such huge waves, it peaked my curiosity so I ran a ‘portal game’ search. The result was a poor, browser based imitation that frustrated me within the first ten minutes. This just reinforced my resolve not to purchase The Orange Box and I carried on, blissfully ignorant.
Enter Portal 2 with its cooperative multiplayer. That’s a tag line that is sure to get me to sit up and pay attention. So I begged my buddy to play it with me and after hours of badgering he caved, but set this one requirement – I had to play the original Portal first.
Best blackmail ever!
With Zynga’s purchase of the Words with Friends title, it was only a matter of time before the onslaught of ‘with friends’ titles began. I am positive that ‘Hanging with Friends’ is mainly the flagship, the forerunner in the ‘with Friends’ campaign that Zynga will launch on the social and mobile networks. Quantity over quality does seem to be their modus operandi.
But my Words with Friends devotion overshadowed any Zynga concerns and so I tried the new Hanging with Friends.
Castlevania, though one of the longest and most glorified franchises, has never really been on my radar. It’s a bit of a drawback really, because I don’t have any warm gushy nostalgia surrounding this franchise, to soften any of its rough edges. In short, I’m less forgiving.
This also means I am not usually drawn to any new Castlevania releases, but a friend of mine insisted that this was the greatest game to evAr walk to the earth, so it had to be tried.
Let the slandering begin.
The first time I met Lara Croft was in Tomb Raider 2. She kicked some serious ass and I loved her for it. The whole game made such an impression that I have been following Lara’s trials and tribulations ever since. And though I have hung in there, the quality of the Lara Croft titles has been in steady decline.
That is until ‘Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light’ came along.
What a fabulously appropriate game for Halloween. Hauntingly moody backdrops frame a strange and perilous back-lit puzzle. It is missing a few pumpkins and there certainly isn’t any candy to be found, but it will evoke quite the appropriate mood. =)
Some people have fancy cars or big houses, some have fine clothes and jewelry, but when we have company over, my point of pride is always our game closet.
I have this pattern with guests and it goes something like this: welcome welcome, greeting at the door, rush through living area, kitchen, bedrooms and bathroom, and then finally our game closet! When I open the door, I envision a choir of angels singing, the clouds parting and rays of light illuminating the fabulousness that is the game closet. (Note to self: figure out way to hook up audio and lights to game closet door.)
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