With the exception of that Call of Duty post (which was originally birthed from this post) I haven’t put up anything on here for a while, so I figured it was high time I get something new up. Forgetting to keep them updated is what’s killed the blogs I’ve had in the past, and I’m determined to keep this one going for as long as feasibly possible. So, this is for the most part going to be something of an update post, letting you know what I’ve been playing as of late.

And the answer to that is quite a lot.

I’m still knuckles deep in Mass Effect 3. I’m about 10 hours into a second playthrough, this time as a female sentinel (as opposed to my default male soldier). I can see why people are attracted to playing as FemShep: Jennifer Hale’s voice work is pretty stellar, though I’ve never really agreed with the general opinion that her’s surpasses Mark Meer’s voice for male Shepard. At least, not in Mass Effect 3. It’s been a long time since I played the original Mass Effect, so I can’t comment on how good his VO was there, ME2 was fine, not bad, but not amazing, but he really seems to have come into his own on Mass Effect 3. Meer is definitely a talented voice artist (he also voices the Vorcha, as well as numerous smaller characters in the series).

So while I’m in the middle of a single player run, most of the my time with ME3 as of late has been with the multiplayer. It’s fun. Very fun, in fact. I was a bit worried pre-launch, since the gaming world doesn’t really need another take on wave-based survival co-op modes, but something about ME3’s keeps me coming back. There aren’t many co-op games that I can stand to play with strangers. And it’s completely awesome with friends, with whom the vast majority of my time spent with it has been with. The unlock system, while it definitely has issues, is pretty awesome. The fact that BioWare made the unlocks system play like a collectible card game is ingenious, making it incredibly addicting. The temptation to throw real money to get them is embarrassingly high. Gotten get them packs.

I also at some point plan on playing through the original Mass Effect again. Whether or not I’ll get around to it (or even getting around to finishing my current ME3 playthrough) is another story, since I have a bunch more games that I’m wanting to get through.

Two of those being Darksiders and Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. The former being a God of War style hacky-slashy action adventure game which a lot of people have likened to the Legend of Zelda, which was enough to get me intrigued. I’ve played through the first couple of hours and it’s pretty fucking fun. The combat is pretty satisfying, the enemy and character designs are kinda awesome (with perhaps, the exception of War, the main character) and the voices are awesomely cheesy. It makes a nice change from all the shooty action I’ve been playing as of late. Space Marine is a game I was aware of before it launched last year, and I said to myself I would pick it up at some point after being thoroughly impressed by the demo for the game. Think Gears of War with no cover, more meleé and hoards of enemies. Oh, and hilariously stereotypical British accents. SPOICE MAHREENS.

On top of those two, I also have Rayman Origins and Halo Anniversary to play. The latter I’ve put a little time into, enough to complete the first level of the game. It looks… okay. The ability to change between regular old-ass Halo graphics and the updated ones on the fly is kinda cool. In regards to the updated graphics though, they obviously had some constraints they had to be limited to if they wanted the nostalgia-mode button to work, so I feel the game doesn’t look as nice as it could’ve done. Reach is a better looking game, for sure. As for Rayman Origins… it’s still in the shrink wrap. Sure looks pretty though.

And that’s not even all the games I have going on right now. I’ve been putting a lot of time into the Xbox 360 version of Battlefield 3, after getting it to play with friends, since I don’t have many people to play with on PC. There’s also a whole bunch of older games I’m determined to play through as well: Beyond Good & Evil and Psychonauts are two that comes to mind. And on top of that, I’m also in the process of reading the Mass Effect novels, which are particularly enjoyable. So far anyway. I really want to check out the Halo and Gears of War novels at some point as well. I need excuses to read more.

Anyway, that’ll do for today.