The Sampler Platter

I feel that a lot of PC gamers have the same problem I’m having: getting through that backlog of games without adding any more games to the pile. Personally, I have my own backlog, but of PS3 games. I decided to tackle it this week,and boy did I fail miserably.

I guess my problem is that I can’t focus my attention on any one game at a time. To combat my short attention span, I ended up sampling some of the various games I own on PS3.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was a return to First-Person Shooters for me. I’ve stayed very far away from FPS games (with the exception of BioShock) since the first Black Ops. I resumed a save I had from years ago, because I didn’t feel like restarting the game. Actually, jumping back in was painless and I commend DICE for making it this way. I especially loved the sound, humor, and how the narration (especially with your team) carries the game. I look forward to beating the campaign soon.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare brings what I love about movies into video games. Rockstar hit this one out of the park, and I feel like they’re the right developer to do something like this. Taking a fairly serious game and making it feel more like a cheesy Spaghetti Western was unique, despite being another zombie game.

Personally, I’m never tired of zombies, but others have grown sick of it. Either way, it’s all good fun in Undead Nightmare because of the unique blend of B movies and Spaghetti Westerns in a game.

To be honest, I have never really devoted any of my time to the Final Fantasy series. My brother is currently playing Final Fantasy IX and he thinks it’s his favorite Final Fantasy so far (he’s recently played VII, IX and XIII).

Taking his opinion into consideration, I put in a little over an hour just recently. Surprisingly, this game doesn’t feel all that old, despite supposedly going back to the basics of Final Fantasy games (thanks Wikipedia). I went through some battles and a bit of the tutorial so far with Vivi and Zidane, but I’m having a fun time exploring as well. I definitely will be going back.

Ambience can make or break a game, and that’s the driving force behind the Dead Space series.

Having barely played much of the first Dead Space and completely skipped the sequel, jumping into Dead Space 3 felt odd. Initially, the game felt familiar, but I noticed the great sound of the first Dead Space felt muffled by the rest of the game. It feels more “actiony” which works, but was unexpected. Oddly enough, this makes me want to go back to the original Dead Space. At least I didn’t pay for this game (free on PlayStation Plus).

Final Verdict

Okay, it’s not that I really have a short attention span; it’s just that I have such a mess of video games and I didn’t know where to start. Overall, I can say I’ve enjoyed sampling these games because I wasn’t necessarily bored with any of them.

Sampling also helped me focus on cleaning up the major mess of games I have. I picked games at random and weeded out the less interesting games. I’ll probably be skipping Dead Space 3 but it did make me want to go back to finishing the first game in the series. More importantly, I believe I’ll pick up Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Final Fantasy IX, and play them in tandem. Fingers crossed that I’ll beat both of them!