I'm trying to start the new year off by blogging more regularly.  Not much success so far.  But I can at least share some games I have been playing lately.  The Steam end of year sale was pretty good in December and I picked up a bunch of games on the cheap.  There are a lot of games I haven't gotten to yet, so as I pick them up I'll post about my thoughts on them.

F.E.A.R. 2 (PC) : I really enjoyed the first FEAR game, so I thought I would like this one.  However the aiming/accuracy in the game didn't feel as tight as in the first one.  The graphics were updated nicely, but the A.I. actually feels dumber now.  I don't have them hiding behind cover and trying to flank me.  The story I'm not too interested in either, more about the creepy girl again.  So I'm a little dissapointed in this game.  I hear F.E.A.R 3 was announced so maybe that one will be better.

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue (PC) : This was a fantastic sequal to the first DeathSpank game.  It's longer than the first by a few hours so you'll get more for your money there.  The story was a little more serious this time around, though still pretty crazy.  You are tasked to get the remaining Thongs and you have to kill some interesting characters like a nun and Santa Claus to get them.  Good writing again but with a dark twist at the end that was a little sobering.  Overall a good game for around 10 bucks.

Blue Dragon (XBOX360) : This is actually a pretty old game, but I was so dissapointed in Final Fantasy XIII that I wanted to play a more traditional RPG.  This game fit the bill.  It's a fun game, very simple in it's story.  Since it's an RPG you of course have to save the world, but the plot is layers thick like some RPG's.  It's a nice break from super serious games.  I've got about 25 hours into it and enjoy most of the game. The combat system is fine, though the game seems to slow down when too many characters are casting special attacks. The most annoying part of the game is that you can 'search' almost anything like a pipe, or a bucket and you get either 'nothing' or '10 gold'.  Those are not too helpful, but every now and again you get something nice, so you want to peristanty check every place in the game for these, which is overall a big waste of time.  The game even encourages you to find 'nothings' since 'nothings' can be traded in for stuff. It's weird in that part.  This is a dirt cheap XBOX game that is fun to play during your spare time.

Razor2 Hidden Skies (PC) : This is a top down scrolling space ship shooter which is ok.  Don't know if I'd recommend it.  The game slows down drasticly on my Windows machine (Quad core Intel 9650 with 8gb RAM and ATI Radeon 4700) which it shouldn't do.  Very hard as well.  If you are a die-hard fan of thes genre, you might like it. 

Need 4 Speed: Hot Pursuit (PS3) : I don't normally play racing games, but my friends had all picked this up and loved it.  I also love it. Graphically, the scenery and cars are beautiful. Maybe not quiet as detailed as maybe Gran Turismo series, but very good looking game regardless.  Learning how to race was tricky for me since I hadn't played a racing game since Cruisin' USA for the Nintendo 64.  Yeah, that long ago!  But once I got the hang of drifting and navigating traffic, this game became very fun.  The Hot Pursuit races where you run from the cops are sometimes really annoying, but they are also the most fun.  Crashing into the police and avoiding spike strips really brings a new level of fun to racing.  You can also play as the cop and crash out the racers.  This is the first game in some time that I've played online.  It's really really fun to bring a human element into the game.  Racing against friends is pretty fun, but having 4 players playing, 2 as cops and 2 as racers (you can have up to 8 in an online match) is fantastic fun.

If you want to play a pretty good cheap game, Deathspank is for you. This game I got for the PC is also on XBOX and I believe PS3 as well.  It's a Diablo style game that has a great sense of humor.  The main character Deathspank is a deliverer of justice in many humorous ways.  Overall, it's pretty cut and dry in the missions, you deliver packages, kill bad guys, collect stuff for people, keep mariages intact, stuff like that.  But the humor is great. Each mission is full of awesome and ususally funny dialog for why you need to get items for people.  The game length is about 10-12 hours, but each mission involves unique and funny dialog and the plot that move along at a very good pace.  I never felt that I needed to do any grinding during the gameplay, so each mission was pretty well matched with my character level.  Overall, I highly recommend this game, and it's sequel. 

I've put in about 13 hours into Fable III so far.  Overall it's an ok game that probably wasn't worth the 60 bucks I spent on it.

The Good: Buying and management properties is easier now that you can do it from the map view.  I can be off in some dungeon (or more likely a sewer) and then I get money in from my properties I can quickly re-invest that money into buying additional properties.  I also like how they don't take themselves too seriously anymore.  Aside from the main plot, the side plots are funny and some are ridiculous, but most always entertaining.  I do like how you can customize weapons by performing certain tasks like loving a certain number of people or killing a set number in daylight, etc.

The Bad: Everything else I guess.  The combat is still too simple and easy.  There are no real consequences for dying, though it's hard to die.  I'm trying to play most of the game with melee hammers since using magic or guns is too easy. The people are still ugly and boring.  It's hard to be attached to any of them.  a few are unique and interesting, but too few for my tastes.  Also, you can only have 1 save file, which is stupid if you want to save your progress before going evil and then revert back. My biggest peeve is that interacting with people causes the screen to to black and change view, so it's not seemless. Makes interacting with people more of a headache to deal with since that black screen is about a second each time.

The damn butler keeps asking me if I'd like to visit the stupid freakin 'shop' where I can unload real money and buy stupid things like dog costumes.  Argg! 

In the end, you'd think with the time they had since Fable II they could have put in some more interesting adventures or fix the combat system.  But it's more of the same really.

Sadly I haven't got to play many FPS games like Bioshock 2 and Bordrlands due to a sprained finger I need to keep in a splint.

Fable III (XBOX360): I picked this up on a whim and good praise about it from a friend.  I've only played a couple hours into but already I feel that I might like it better than Fable II, though will it be as good as my nostalgic Fable I memories remains to be seen.  Expect a bigger update in November.

Bioshock 2 (PC): I'm still slowing working my way through this game.  With a hurt finger I can't play it right now.

Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes (PC): This is a fun little game that makes fun of JRPG games (read: Final Fantasy).  It's built a little like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem in it's combat.  The combat is a bit awkward, but the story is good and the characters are interesting and humorous.  A nice title to pick up if it's on sale.

Sol Survivor (PC): Another indie game, this one is a tower defense game. I'm a sucker for good games in this genre (Defense Grid is the best one yet). This brings in more units and powers than Defense Grid, but lacks a little polish and tries to bring a story that really, nobody really cares about. But the combat and tower system is good so this is a good buy for tower defense enthusiasts.

Supreme Commander 2: Infinite War (DLC): This expansion to SC2 is really what should have been in the main game.  New experimental units and maps is all this provides.  That said, it's worth adding this DLC since the experimental units added are pretty good and the game really needed more maps.  The best part comes not from the DLC, but from a patch. They have finally fixed the economy so the game is playable. 

In Supreme Commander 1 (and Forged Alliance, and Total Annihilation before that) you could queue up as much stuff as you wanted, then each game tic (about a second) the game engine would add up all your income (mass and energy) and subtract all you're spending (rate of consumption).  Any positive (surplus) went into your reserves, and negatives would drain your reserves.  The problem many had with this is that if you tried to build too many items too fast, you would run out of reserves. Then each thing you were building would consume a fraction of the income you made, meaning everything slowed down, basically stalling your economy.

For Supreme Commander 2, they decided that was bad, so they altered it to a pay as you go economy. This is good, in that beginners could not deadlock their economy. This was horrible for the veterans who relied on the ability to queue up units and structures.  We could not longer multi-task as we needed to continuously queue up bit by bit the stuff we wanted to build b/c if we couldn't afford it, we couldn't queue it up.

Thankfully, this latest patch strikes a compromise I consider fair.  You can now queue up like SupCom 1, but units and structures do not begin construction until all funds (mass + energy) are available.  This should prevent most stalled economy scenarios and I'm already finding success in using it to multi-task my base expansions.

Borderlands: Claptrap's Robot Revolution (DLC): I bought this, then hurt my finger so I haven't played it yet. Also in the pipeline for borderlands is a patch to up the level cap.  I might wait for this before playing this game much since I'm already at the level cap.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/28/free-borderlands-update-will-raise-the-level-cap/