Clearly, you’re just not understanding my sense of humor. I goof a lot.
The Destructoid staff does not goof. They’re intensely serious people who do nothing but play videogames all week long, diodes strapped to their heads while the news is written to the page via a neural induction link. We’re from the future, playing your games in the past.
Read on to find out what we were up to this week.
Ross: I have been incommunicado for a week, and that’s because I’ve done nothing except lay on the couch and drink and play video games.
Thanks to my full week off from work, I basically had completely uninterrupted gaming bliss for all of Thanksgiving. I completed Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood a couple days ago. As someone who absolutely hated the first Assassin’s Creed, and skipped AC2, it was pretty decent. Not the best game in the world, and there were some extremely questionable design choices, and some notable glitches, but I liked it enough to actually finish the game and not abandon it in despair. With single-player done, I’ve been playing multiplayer the last couple of days, which is surprisingly good. I do, however, hate the level system, given that high levels and the abilities that go with them are pretty much required to be effective at all. Now that I’m around level twenty, things aren’t as bad, but the initial levels were a complete exercise in frustration, and almost lame enough to make me give up on the multiplayer entirely. A party full of friends is also key.
After finishing Brotherhood, I also started playing Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. I’m not even a big fan of racing games, but Hot Pursuit is fantastic. The Autolog is brilliant, and is one of the best multiplayer innovations I’ve seen in a game in a long time. Haven’t even gotten a chance to check out the actual multiplayer yet, because we’ve all been too busy shittalking each other and trying to beat each other’s singleplayer times.
Razak: I was on vacation in Jamaica so all my gaming was DS related and Bond related. I played through GoldenEye and Blood Stone. Both were actually interesting, but not must-buys. I have to find someone to play the GoldenEye multi with at some point, but I doubt it will be that stellar.
Concelmo: Finished Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I thought got much better as it went on. I was a little frustrated that it didn’t really feel like a Castlevania game … until I got to the very end, after the closing credits. What a fantastic ending! I loved the twist that tied everything into the Castlevania canon. The game really needed that ending.
Also played through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past — it’s a Thanksgiving tradition! And, yup, it’s still my favorite game of all time.
And finally, got some time in with Costume Quest (amazing!), Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (so amazing!), and Call of Duty: Black Ops (more amazing than I expected!).
So much videogame playing! Thanks, Thanksgiving!
Chester: Finished TRON: Evolution, which I will talk more about it my review; played quite a bit of Nail’d; and had to play through the opening chapters of Castlevania LoS again because apparently that didn’t get saved the first time I did it a month or so ago… and neither did this second playthrough, I have discovered. You can save that game, right?
I will also continue my return to Donkey Kong Country as soon as my wife feels like playing again. (We are a team!)
Zimmerman: Still slowly working my way through Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. I agree with Ross on the multiplayer imbalance which is making it really difficult for me to progress in a game that I’ve already had issues connecting to lobbies in. A shame, really, as I love the base game but it’s just not playable for me in its present state.
I also played a little Katamari Forever on Thanksgiving, then left it on the menu screen for about twelve hours afterwards to enjoy the background music. And I played Minecraft for the first time on the Destructoid server. I built some things I don’t think anyone has found yet and am now probably done playing the game forever. My money wasn’t wasted, though, as I got a full day’s entertainment out of it and, more importantly, proved to myself once again that I was correct in assessing my investment level.
And I beat Hamza’s Zuma Blitz score, putting me back where I belong at the top of the Dtoid staff on the leaderboards.
Devore: Pretty much just Minecraft and Fallout: New Vegas. Oh how my eyes burn.
Aziz: STUPID FUCKING ZUMA BLITZ
Sarkar: I was all ready to kick off my five-day Thanksgiving weekend by playing Rock Band 3 for a few hours on Wednesday, but when I went to watch some not-torrented TV episodes on my PS3 on Tuesday night, my four-year-old 60 GB launch model died. (The issue isn’t the more common “yellow light of death,” but a blinking red power light instead.) After throwing a tantrum on Twitter — I was having a really shitty day already — I spent the rest of the week in Florence… in Assassin’s Creed II on my Xbox 360, that is. I’m enjoying the game very much, and not just in a “filling the void until my PS3 gets fixed” kind of way. It’s legitimately awesome, especially now that I’ve learned air assassinations, and now I really want to visit Italy in real life.
North: Gran Turismo 5. Over and over. Non-stop.
Oh, and I had the family over for Thanksgiving. Sony sent me a copy of kiddie game Start the Party, which uses the PlayStation Move. I put it in for my four-year-old niece, but it was fun enough that just about everyone played it a bit throughout the weekend. It’s pretty impressive for a game for kids. I also got my archery on in Sports Champions. That game scales from easy to way too hard too fast.
Bennett, C.: I’ve finally not downloaded Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (the sequel to Hotel Dusk) and it’s fantastic. I never play my DS unless I’m on a plane, but this game is so good I haven’t been able to put it down.
Toletino: I haven’t finished Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood yet either, but I agree completely with Jonathan about the leveling/progression system being totally broken. This is absolutely the last game Ubisoft wanted to put this kind of Call of Duty-like unlocking crap in, because the multiplayer is naturally unbalanced. Locking away so many potentially critical abilities for so many levels is insane and risks killing it off over the long term as new players give up in frustration as they get stomped by anyone who’s been playing longer.
The least they could have done was reduce the overall time it takes to level up. Brotherhood multiplayer could have used at least 20 less levels worth of progression. I’m already at 27 and I’m still getting hammered by players who earned Templar Vision and all kinds of other abilities that essentially negate anything I can do.
Holmes: Played a ton of Pokemon White on the plane. I love it.
Also caught up on some old Wii games that I have at my family’s house. It’s all sort of a blur, but I know I got a ton of green stars in Super Mario Galaxy 2, and that I tried to save that turkey from the cannibals of Animal Crossing.
Sterling: Splatterhouse, which I reviewed and surprisingly liked. The Conduit, which is basically a 90’s shooter that is getting away with it by being “okay because it’s a Wii FPS that doesn’t completely suck”, and Postal 2, which is Postal 2.
Also replaying Lost Odyssey. That game is still awesome, although fuck the worm boss. I forgot how much of a dick that guy is.
