What I’ve Been Playing

Well folks, time for another semi-regular round-up of what I’ve been playing in the way of video games. Quite a strange mix this time around I feel.

Dead Space (PS3)

Not such a strange addition to begin with, because many people agree that this game is awesome- although what is strange is the assortment of hideous, parasite-zombie-aliens who are coming for your blood in this game.

You play the helmeted space-miner Isaac Clarke in a third-person, over-the-shoulder survival horror game, trying to survive an invasion of murderous aliens aboard the USG Ishimura, a stranded intergalactic mining starship. The game controls very well, the graphics are decent and there is plenty of atmosphere, suspense and general spookiness that, if caught unaware, you’ll be made to jump more than once as you are startled one of the space mutants trying to kill you.

The key to stopping these creatures is dismembering them- even if you shoot off their heads, they’re likely to keep on coming; shoot off their legs and they’ll crawl or vault themselves at you and carve you up with their hand-blades; shoot of their arms and they’ll run at you, try to bite you and maybe even sprout another appendage specifically made for cleaving you in two.

Dead Space is a lot of fun and has a story that keeps me coming back for more. I would highly recommend this to any gamer, and it is available for both Xbox 360 and PS3.

Rock Band Unplugged (PSP)

It’s not often I bust out my old PSP, as I have very few games for it (and that my PS3 gets a lot more love), but the other day I felt like playing this game again after a period of absence.

Rock Band Unplugged is… yeah, Rock Band on a PSP. This might not sound the most enticing idea, and it begs a couple of questions.

First of all, how does it control without actual instruments? The answer: pretty well actually. There are four notes on the handheld version instead of five (as in the handheld equivalent of Guitar Hero), so from left to right you use the left, up, triangle and circle buttons for the red, yellow, green and blue notes respectively.

The second question then is, how is it possible to play all the instruments? Well, you play them all at once. Hear me out on this one: basically, you play a sequence of notes on one of the four instruments (guitar, drums, bass and vocals), then when you are done you use the L and R buttons to switch left or right to another instrument. It may not sound easy or intuitive right now, but there’s definitely enough time between sequences to do this, and it becomes second nature in no time as you get into the game.

Is this game any good? I’ve played Rock Band, Guitar Hero 2 and Guitar Hero 3 and the DS title Guitar Hero: On Tour and yes, this is certainly good, especially for the £6 I paid for it.

The Sims Social (Facebook)

Yes, I’m still playing that game.

Not as much as I was the last time I wrote about it, however. I had a period of deep loathing for this game when I thought that it had deleted my entire living room, along with all of the furniture inside it, only to discover I could get it back because I’d only stored it. Silly me.

So once I got it back I set to levelling up my skills (I some how managed to become Master Chef simply by microwaving a tonne of Nachos) to make more money and basically trying to improve my house. This is pretty much the only thing for me to do now, since I can’t really do the quests (for example, one of the quests requires me to confess my attraction to another Sim- something I did way before I got the quest. Dumb).

Angry Birds (Google Chrome)

Angry Birds? For Chrome? Sheesh, that game really is on everything.

Yes, I’ve been playing Angry Birds on Google Chrome, and I enjoy it. It might not seem much fun without it being on a touchscreen device, but using a mouse is just as easy, it’s on a bigger screen with no compromise of graphical quality, and is available in both standard and high definition.

Not much to say really, other than its Angry Birds, and is great on Chrome if you can’t get it on anything else (like me, since I don’t have an iOS or Android device of any kind)

But Wait, No Portal 2?

Yeah, strangely I’ve not played much Portal 2- but that’s mainly the fault of studying for exams, and spending what time I have had to play games on Dead Space. Hopefully I’ll get to play play it over the weekend though.

Well, that’s it for now, keep checking back for more snippets on the games I play day-to-day.