5 games, one mailman.

Tuesday had a slow start. We had pushed out a big deadline, and even though there was more work to be done, I think we earned a little downtime. We actually met with another cotractor, and actually hired him to work on our upstairs. So we start mid Feburary.

Lindsay and I went to early lunch at Pho Hoa. Daaaang was it good. It's been a while. We spent the day catching up with clients we'd ignroed in the madness. After work we went to St Paul to pick up Francesca. It was her first day teaching at CVA, so we met her at Cafe Latte and got some wicked food and cake. I got some Tres Leche and ate the crap out of it.

When I got home, I had gotten 5 games in the mail. 4 from Goozex, and 1 from Amazon. It's been a couple days, and I've almost tried all of them, so here's some thoughts...

Little Big Planet 2: I put this in to get the install/updates out of the way, I dind't really have any plans to play it yet. But the intro started, and it's interactive, so I just went with it. So I played about 10 minutes of it.

It seems more story driven than before, but otherwise it's pretty similar. The graphics look about the same, and the games feels the same mechanic-wise. And although I wasn't in love with LBP 1 (although I thought I would be), I think this will be a solid sequel.

I've seen some the absolutely crazy things people created in the beta, and there's a lot of new stuff added into the creation features, so I'm excited to see what's going to come from that.

LBP is weird because it's almost like I have the game just to see what people do with it, not really because I want to play it a bunch.

ModNation Racers: I put this in the night I got it. I started the update process... and didn't get to play it until the net day. I was only awake for 4-5 hours, so it probably took about 6 hours. Pure stupidity.

This is why I never play you, PS3.

I actually got to play it last night... and I might be done.

The kart racing seems fine. But I already have the Sonic Kart game from last year, and it seems to have tighter controls, better tracks and more clearly defined power-ups than ModNation.

But the point of ModNation is the user-created content. I know. But I'm not going to make anything, and (like LBP) I'd rather play a tight game than a sloppy game that has user-generated content. But unlike LBP, the user content in ModNation Racers has less potential to be mind blowing.

I like the chunky, big graphics (the karts/characters seem HUGE on my TV) and the bouncy physics. But the tracks seem kind of blah.

I spent a little time and made a character from scratch. 9/10 of the stuff you can use to build is locked when you start, so it was a little limiting. I started to make a kart and decided I couldn't care less after a couple minutes. I have no patience for this kind of thing.

I did 3 mission races and 1 online race. None stood out as being particularly fun. And the loading times are TERRIBLE! Like, I'm talking MINUTES. Which is nearly as long as the races! I heard the patches improved load times, so I'd hate to have seen what it was like previously.

I didn't hate the game or anything, but as I turned it off I had the realization "this could very well be the last time I ever play this game..." So yeah.

Dragon Quest IX: I played this before bed a couple of nights and in the car waiting for Lindsay to finish class. So maybe an hour? 1 1/2 hours?

So far, it's... boring; JRPG style. I don't have any real party members yet and I just got out into the real world. I'll keep going for a bit to see how combat changes when I've got more going on.

Right now I literally put it down and just pushed 'A' while I was saving some files on my computer. Snoozefest.

King Of Fighters XII: Not 1/2 bad, I kind of like it! The graphics aren't QUITE what I was hoping for. They're a bit pixelated and not all the characters are as smooth as they could be. They range from looking great to just Ok.

King of Fighters has always been far behind Street Fighter in terms of the actual gameplay, and the same applies here. But it's not bad. In fact it's pretty good.

One thing I did notice is that the Achievements are CRAZY stupid! I got 3 while I played, and that might be all I'll ever get. Kind of annoying. But whatever.

Bioshock 2: What? Anyone who reads this blog (which is me and Jesse, unless if he quit from boredom) knows I played Bioshock 2 a while ago. And I liked it, but wasn't crazy about it. Kind of a grind. So why would I re-acquire it?

Because I wanted to play Minerva's Den, the single player DLC story arc, which is supposed to be phenomenal. It's completely stand-alone story-wise, and it's supposed to out-shine Bioshock 2 (and in some people's opinion, the original Bioshock).

I haven't touched it yet, but I have the highest hopes for Minerva's Den.

So there you have it. I have a feeling I'm going to pass ModNation Racers onto the next Goozex user, give Dragon Quest a little more of a chance before sending it away. I'll keep LBP 2 around to see what the community does. And I'll keep King of Fighers around because I love 2-D fighters that much. And hopefully I'll get to Minerva's Den before Dragon Age 2 takes over my free time.