A Green Mushroom

This makes the game look way more exciting than it actually is. The Forgotten Sands is a lesson in being underwhelmed.  I wanted to love it, I really truly did.  I loved The Sands of Time, The Two Thrones, and the re-imagined "Prince of Persia" but I just couldn't make myself enjoy Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. It's all been done before by other games in the Prince of Persia series.  The Forgotten Sands has the same old platforming without any new or interesting mechanics.  I got the same feeling I did when comparing Bayonetta to the Devil May Cry series.  It's the same gameplay mechanics with a new coat of paint. The combat feels extremely out of place.  It amounts to a generic hack and slash.  Most of the time the combat flow goes like this: hold x for 2 seconds, release, hold x for 2 seconds, release.  It got in the way of the platforming and probably should have been left out altogether. The platforming isn't anything new....

I've had a busy week.  Between getting married and starting my summer hours at work I haven't had much gaming time.  That's ok.  Real life always needs to take precedence over hobbies like videogames. I thought I'd throw out an update on what I'm playing and what I intend to play since I'm feeling overwhelmed by my backlog of games at the moment. StarCraft 2 Beta - Still loving it and working on Newbie Guide posts. Bayonetta - Working my way through the crazy story.  I may not finish this game, but it is highly entertaining because of the ridiculousness of it all. Halo 3 Reach Beta - Only a few days left.  I really like the arena and invasion playlists. Trine - Indie game I own but haven't gotten around to trying out. Osmos - Indie game that inspired me to buy an indie game pack on steam the other day.  I really like the gameplay. Guild Wars - Giving it another chance.  It has interesting dynamics because characters can only have 8 ski...

Most of the games that hit the market today are not new.  They may look new or sell themselves as new, but the majority of the time they use old gameplay mechanics.  Developers constantly take each other's ideas and recreate the same type of game. Think of all the shovelware out there.  So many games aren't even worth five minutes of your time.  It is really sad. Playing Bayonetta is like playing Devil May Cry 3, which is like playing Devil May Cry 2, which is like playing Devil May Cry.  That's really the spark that got me thinking about rehashing gameplay mechanics.  Bayonetta has a crazy story and different visuals, but it is essentially an old game with a new layer of paint. When developers have really high production values they can get away with remaking the same game.  The Halo series comes to mind.  Between Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: ODST not a lot has changed.  All the games basically play the same.  If you didn't like...

Bayonetta is not a great game, but I can't seem to stop playing it.  It isn't a bad game by any stretch.  It's almost a re-imagining of Devil May Cry with a female protagonist.  The gameplay feels like Devil May Cry; slash and hack with some dodging thrown in. The story is where Bayonetta goes absolutely nuts.  One cutscene had gratuitous ass/crotch close ups, headstones falling like dominoes, a random black guy with one-liners, losing all of the main chick's clothes, making new clothes out of hair, and a dragon.  It's like a train crash.  It's so bad that I just can't look away. One gameplay sequence had me fight on top of a falling clock tower which proceeded to explode three separate times while being attacked by a giant dragon. By the way, Bayonetta has guns in her hands and on her feet.   If you thought duel wielding was intense just wait until you see quad wielding. She also has the habit of using all of her hair to finish her attack com...