“Summer” of Gaming, interim report

Well, summer’s over. I didn’t spend any money on games and I didn’t start yet another new character on Mass Effect or Dragon Age (not counting my ME playthrough with my neighbor, in which our slightly Renegade BroShep of ME2 is evolving into an extremely purple DadShep in ME3). Goal achieved! But I certainly had no lack of novelty or entertainment to while away the hours between work and dusk when it was too hot to do anything else, so while I’ve finished a few of the games I listed in my opening post, there are so many more that I’ve downloaded for free on Xbox Live–even some new ones this summer. The experiment of playing them all will continue apace until I acquire a next-gen console!

Completed

Dance Central 3. As in, I completed the main quest (such as it is) and saved the world from a time-traveling megalomaniac who wanted to regulate dancing. However, one can really play indefinitely–there are at least a dozen songs I haven’t unlocked yet, and there are already a lot of great songs.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Pros: Beloved classic music. Beloved planets and people. The force mechanics are pretty cool–it’s much more fun to force-fling stormtroopers from precipices than it is to hack at them with lightsabers. Cons: plays like a cart ride at an amusement park: you just go along the tracks, and then you go along the same tracks again and do the exact same quest but with a different configuration of bad guys. The voice acting is painful. The romance is forced. The plot is tenuous. I thought, several times, about quitting, but I knew you could load your save into the sequel, and fortunately…

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 is way more dynamic and fun. Less repetition, more unexpected gameplay in beautiful environments. The romance still makes a flimsy plot driver–maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with it if played Sith instead of Jedi?–but in general I played through this game a lot faster and enjoyed it a lot more.  All the same, despite my usual completionist tendencies, I’m not tempted to replay for dark side options. As soon as I completed the second game, I deleted both games to make more room for surprise free downloads, like Bayonetta.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. When I last played several years ago, I was stalled out by the Bruma gates–couldn’t keep Martin alive. But I also hadn’t recruited all the city guards, mainly because closing Oblivion gates is such a chore. Reopening my old save, I downed a bunch of invisibility potions and closed the last few gates outside cities, obtained a follower and a couple of conjuration spells, and finally made it through the Bruma gate. After that, the rest of the game was a breeze. To my surprise, I discovered that at some point I’d acquired two expansions for this game–Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. My completionist heart yearns to finish these sometime, but I still count this game as won. And I need a break before I head to Sheogorath’s world–as the god of madness, his aesthetic seesaws wildly between delightfully whimsical and first-year writing workshop “crazy.”

In progress

Bayonetta is a ride, isn’t it? I downloaded it shortly before some friends dropped in for an afternoon of gaming, and I’m so glad I had company and wine when I started this noisy, chaotic, campy game. Bayonetta’s character design is pretty ridiculous, and the camera-swinging combat style is a little hard for me to follow, and I actually yelled NO when her friend Rodin appeared as a bartender at The Gates of Hell–yet I’m interested enough to continue. I just can’t do it at night when I’m trying to wind down or I’ll have guns and bells jangling in my head when I try to sleep.

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. I don’t know, y’all. I might hate this game. I feel a little like a monster–minifigs are so cute! everything’s so colorful!–but 1-player Story Mode is weirdly difficult and it seems wrong to achieve “True Jedi” status by blowing up everything and collecting as much currency as possible. I’ve been stuck in several chapters and had to look up hints, and the answer is always “blow up more things” or “jump better.” On the plus side, this game offers the perfect way to revisit the three prequels, which I have not seen since theater release. Playing those chapters essentially provided a recap with no uncanny valley and no awkward dialogue.

Borderlands 1

Beyond Good and Evil HD

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Dishonored

Under consideration

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean

Tomb Raider