Random Thoughts: The Last of Us

This game could've came out on January 1st and I still would've declared it GOY. My mind is blanking on any game that actually lived up the hype. The story? Great. Graphics? Great. Characters? Great. Plot? You guess it. Great. The gameplay is basically the same as Uncharted. There were moments however when I noticed resemblances to Batman (the sneaking and strangling). Most of the time when I play games, I experiment being evil or rude or whatever, but this game is one of the few that actually made me care about the characters enough to not do that. The plot does a great job holding your interest throughout the entire game. You'll laugh, you'll cry. You will never be bored with this game. For me the game sort of ended abruptly without as much closure as I'd like. I just didn't find it 100% believable. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to all the DLC that comes out. If you haven't played it yet, do it. DO IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!

Be Wary of Playing Old Games

You know the feeling you had as a kid playing your favorite game for hours on end? Then somehow over the years you simply forgot about it and one day find it at a garage sale and think to yourself, "How have I not played this in 15 years." So you buy it and race home to relive your childhood bliss. You race to put in the game growing ever more excited. You see the title screen and think this is going to be the best day ever.

Only there's one problem. 15 minutes into the game you come to the agonizing realization that "Wait a minute, how is this possible? This game sucks!" Soon your best day turns into your worst nightmare. How could you not realize how bad that game was? So to all of you readers, ok ok 1 reader and 5 bots, I simply give you this warning. Be wary of playing your old favorites. They may not be as good as you thought they were. So next time you pop in a game you haven't played for a long time, just remember to play it as if you never have before.

Note: This isn't always the case. Lets face it, the original Super Mario Bros is the best game ever made.

Garage Sale Finds

Friday was a day of garage sailing for me and although it wasn't quite as rewarding as last year, I managed to find a few things. Here be a brief summary of what I picked up.

Sega Genesis:Awesome Possum, Thunder Force II, NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat 3, Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition, Primal Rage, Golden Axe

NES: Archon, Dig Dug II, Castlevania II Simon's Quest, TMNT II

Awesome Possum sounded...well awesome...but it didn't look like it lived up to it's name. Definitely a unique game though. Thunder Force II actually turned out to be a pretty enjoyable game. Worth the $.50 I spent on it. Mortal Kombat 3 and Street Fighter II, well I'm not a big fan of fighting games, but they both seemed like every other fighter. So if you like fighters, then you'll like these. NBA Jam is NBA Jam, very solid game. Primal Rage gave an interesting twist on the fighter series, but still just another fighter game to me. Golden Axe simply a classic beat'em up game.

As for the NES games, Archon gave a unique twist to what I believe is chess. Interesting, but didn't grab my attention for more than 2 minutes. Dig Dug II was fairly enjoyable and I could see myself playing it when I'm insanely bored one day. Castlevania II looked promising, but I haven't gotten into it enough to come to a conclusion on it. TMNT II is a fun beat'em up game as all of the TMNT games are.

Overall, not a bad way to spend $25.

Things I'd Like to See From Next Gen Consoles

With the latest announcement of the PS4, a friend asked me what I'm hoping for from the next generation of consoles. My response was basically "Games with better content rather than just graphics." My opinion of newer games is they just try to impress you with how good they can display something. Well, that might bring people in, but it's the content that keeps them there. Skyrim is an example of a game where the content is better than the graphics, and you know what? Skyrim is amazing, plain and simple. On the flip side, lets take Dead Space 2 for example. The graphics were incredible, but there wasn't much else to it which made it a sub-par game. Games need to get back to their roots. Whatever happened to the Suikoden 2s and the Chrono Triggers.

I also don't understand this fascination people have with the downloading of games. Am I the only one who would rather buy a physical copy of a game rather than download it? You can't resell a download and you can't sell a console for more because there's a game downloaded onto the hard drive. To me it just seems like a waste of money to buy a virtual copy of a game. Virtual copies of games also look at lot less impressive than a room full of physical copies. Maybe I'm just a type of gamer that is slowly becoming extinct. I certainly hope not.

Yeah...idk

If you are reading this, then you must be insanely bored. New posts will most likely scarce as I am currently working on a side project and well, haven't been playing too many games the past week. I'd like to say I've just been too busy having a life, but well, that would be a lie so I'll just say I've been too busy having a life. (oops)

Week 4 Quiz

Hey guys, sorry it's a little late. Here's this week's quiz.

Week 3 Quiz Answers

Check your answers for last week's quiz

Weekly Quiz #3

Try your luck at this week's quiz boys and girls!

Weekly Quiz #2 Answers

Answers to Week 2's quiz. How did you do?

Weekly Quiz #2

Here be this week's quiz. Good Luck!

Weekely Quiz #1 Answers

Here are the answers to last week's quiz. How'd you do?

Assassin's Creed 3

So I finally just finished up Assassin's Creed 3. The first half of the game I thought was amazing and I started to actually just explore and forget about the story for a bit. Little by little I got bored and eventually decided to just finish the story and then come back to explore everything else later. I realized that the deeper I got into the story, the less I really liked it. I really wasn't a big fan of the ending.

Weekly Quiz #1

Think you know games? Take this fun little quiz. I will put up 10 new games and post the answers to the previous quiz every week. If you choose to, you're welcome to email your answers to me at borkshiregameblog@gmail.com put Weekly Quiz in subject (please NO SPAM!) and I will post the top 3, 5, or 10 (haven't really decided yet, probably 3 largely because I only have about 3 readers at this point. Thanks for the support peeps!) for each week. So without further ado, here is the quiz for Week 1!

Frantic Freddy

(http://videogamecritic.net/colecofl.htm)

Let's turn back the clock to a time when video games a joystick and a couple buttons. Today I am sharing with you the Colecovision game Frantic Freddy. In Frantic Freddy you play as this (bug?) trying to put out a fire in a building. You do this by shooting water at burning windows while trying to avoid falling objects. Like most games of the time, it's a pretty shallow game as there's not much to it and yet for some reason it's insanely hard. The only reason why you would buy this game is to add it to your collection of Colecovision games. If you aren't a collector then don't bother, it's just a Meh game.

Lego Star Wars

I decided to do Lego Star Wars today because I think that the whole Lego video game series is way too underrated. I haven't played any of the newer games, but as far as Lego Star Wars goes, they're awesome. Full of explosions and lego carnage, Lego Star Wars adds in a nice bit of humor in their cutscenes (Proof you don't need good voice acting for games). There's just something satisfying playing as Chewbacca and ripping peoples arms out of their sockets (sounds gruesome, but trust me, it's awesomely entertaining).

After you beat each level in story mode, you unlock Free Play which lets you play the level as any character that you have unlocked. There's also areas in each level that are only available to certain characters (storm troopers, ewoks, etc). They do a good job at hiding things in each level and giving you a lot of things to unlock which gives great replay value. You can even play with a friend and beat the crap out of them, you know, if you're into that sort of thing.

Don't let the Lego name scare you away from this title. Go get it now, I'm sure it's fairly cheap by now.