Aeterna's Blog

This past weekend I apparently really wanted to spend some money as I spent roughly 500 euro on games or gaming related stuff… kind of crazy but I guess the heart wants what it wants. It’s the discussions on the giant bombcast that led me to be enthusiastic about the 3DS and seeing how hard it tends to be to get one post-launch… I figured I’d dive in early. I was very interested in Homefront initially and definitely a game I kept my eye on but the podcast BASH made me want it enough to actually pre-order it. I’m expecting it to be a sleeper hit, though I’m frankly not sure how well-known it really is at this point.

So here’s the quick’n'dirty rundown:

1. Black 3DS
2. Playstation Move
3. Pokemon White
4. Homefront
5. Lost Horizon
6. Penny Arcade episode 1+2

Monday Night Combat

During the 2010 Steam-sales there was a sale on Monday Night Combat, a game I previously saw gameplay of on XBLA, it looked like a lot of fun honestly and I then wished it would release for PC. And so it did, I bought it on the sale which gave me access roughly a month early to the beta. So I had my access and tried to play a round or two and… honestly? It just kept freezing and crashing every some minutes. I had plenty of games to play so I just left it be, just before release though I gave it another shot and had a blast with it.

The game is a sort of mix between team fortress and day of the ancients- type games. There’s 2 teams with 6 players each with different classes who each have  3 abilities each. There’s also robots spawning all the time that have to reach the opponent’s base and do damage. When you kill the robots or players they’ll drop and/or give you money. This money you can then spend on upgrading your class abilities or build turrets to defend your base. This makes for a very active and quick-paced game which is right up my alley and I advice you to give it a look at least.

Mount & Blade

I’ve not been playing as much Mount & Blade as I did previously, partly because I know that to get anything done in Prophesy of Pendor it’ll take many many hours. Now I still like the game of course, but I want the LP to continue in a meaningful way, aka – being able to take on a castle, but the amount of troops is just crazy high and honestly I’ve never had as big of an army as I have in the let’s play’s savefile. So instead of continuing that I was  looking at some other mods and came across Brytenwalda (Bryten –  Britain, Walda – Ruler).

Brytenwalda is a mod based upon what we now know as the United Kingdom, around the year 600. It’s supposed to be highly historically accurate but I honestly wouldn’t know if that’s true or not. But it makes some big changes to the world and factions and even the character generation. For example when you kill some bandits you can decide to loot, bury or leave them… doing anything other than burying the corpses makes you lose honor which is a nice feat. This makes fighting in enemy lands very dangerous as burying and looting the corpses takes some time, in which you may be ambushed yourself.

There are also 20+ small factions with each different “Major Cities”. I also really like the fact that you may get ambushed yourself, there’s random events on the worldmap and that all the camps around the world have an authentic and unique layout. I saw some wooden forts with small wooden walls on top of some small hills with small cottages inside, much how I’d expect a settlement to look. It’s really a very interesting mod that I’m looking forward to playing more of in the future, I might also be tempted to show some of it.

Dead Space 2

I initially didn’t buy Dead Space 2 as I really loved Dead Space but expected it to feel like a forced sequel just to milk some more money out of the dead space name. That was until I saw the video reviews. It made me realise that it is in fact a real game and a very good one at that. After looking around a bit more to make sure I decided to buy it as I really liked to play more Dead Space. Now it could’ve been a game to let’s play but… I didn’t do the first and simply wanted to be greedy and enjoy it for myself.

So far I’ve only played roughly 3 to 4 hours and got to chapter 7, which I’m assuming must be roughly halfway of the story. A big change is that Isaac actually speaks now and has a face, this changes a lot from the first game but I’d say it’s a positive change as it certainly helps with the storytelling which has become a significant part of the game. There’s several characters I’ve interacted with and it all seemed to work well and it really helps you immerse into the game. A lot of people found Dead Space to be scary and I’m going to say that’s still the case. It has some creepy moments and 2 or 3 jump-scares so far, but nothing really unique there. It’s the darkness and excellent sound design that sets the atmosphere and therefore is really a game that needs to be played with headphones at night.