Portal 2 is out today, and I’m going to be all over it. If you’ve been following the blog, you know ps3 is my go to platform, but I generally prefer the digital download route of acquiring games. Portal 2 has created a big dilemma for me but I eventually settled on going out and getting the PS3 version, since it comes with a steam copy anyway, it would be silly of me not too.

I didn’t even finish the original portal in fact I was quite late to that game in general, and it did feel dated when I did get around to it. I loved the concept and the humor though in the parts I did see. Maybe I’ll hammer my way through it today before I get into the sequel.

I will be passing on Mortal Kombat as tempted as I am, fighting games just aren’t fun if you don’t have a rival and I really don’t have one at this point as I mentioned in my Tekken and Super Street Fighter IV articles.

It has become clear the Cataclysm has every intention of ruining my life, I’ve been having a bit too much fun with the latest World of Warcrat expansion, so much so that I have been totally neglecting all other gaming.

I played a bit of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, but not enough to get to the point where it’s good. and my G27 racing wheel has been neatly tucked away in my office for about a week now. I’ve come to the conclusion that everything not driving in GT5 feels like it was designed many many years ago, and wish that the shell of it was a lot closer to Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit in the community sense.

I’ll probably be low content until the new year where there are some exciting games coming up, I’ll also do a full round up on my Warcraftings and give my full impressions of the pre-end game portion of the expansion.

It’s been a while since I’ve really chimed in about gaming, and I’m starting to feel a little guilty about it, but I can tell you I’ve got a good reason (..ok you got me, I don’t). Truth is I couldn’t tear myself away from World of Warcraft long enough to write, I’ll get to that later. It’s not the only game I’ve been playing though, without further ado here I go!

Call of Duty: Black Ops

I like everyone else on the planet have been playing Black Ops, I got through the single player quickly (it felt a little longer than MW2 thankfully), and while from a story perspective it was one of the most interesting of all of the COD games it’s not without it’s flaws. The issues with the barrel level went fairly well documented, but I too got stuck here, and the areas where you encounter non-stop enemies is just annoying. I played a lot of multiplayer the first couple weeks but that has tapered off for me now too. It’s pretty fun, I wouldn’t say it’s better than MW2, but it was fun because people hadn’t unlocked or figured out all the load out exploits yet (although it seems that they’ve started showing up).

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

I’m not gonna lie, this is a Burnout game (this is not a bad thing at all), except you’re driving cars that feel like they actually have some weight which was my biggest complaint about the Burnout series. The result is a fast paced arcade racer, that requires a bit of finesse to really eke out every last millisecond on your time, and you want to because of Autolog, basically an internal social network feature that compares your times versus the times of your friends lists. Depending on the commitment of your friends, this can create some truly frustrating, and rewarding competition, meaning a lot of replayability and tons of value to this game. They were lucky to get this out before Gran Turismo 5 and the lack of a cockpit cam is disappointing, but I can honestly say that both of these games can coexist on your shelf. If you can get your friends to pick it up, you would be wise to get this game.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I haven’t played much of it, actually I did the first 4 objectives or so and they were so mundane that it made me want to turn it off, I haven’t turned it on since, but I’m sure I’ll be back to it. I don’t know why I keep buying these, I was not a fan of the last one despite it being one of the two games I’ve platinumed.

Donkey Kong Country

It looks and more importantly sounds like Donkey Kong Country, I haven’t played it yet, but I watched the gf play for a while, so I will defer to her for comment. “It’s cool! It’s like (punching motions) BOOM! BOOM! BANANAS!”… couldn’t have put it better myself. Looking forward to some quality time with it later.

World of Warcraft

This has been the biggest time sink for obvious reasons. I got back into it because the events and changes for Cataclysm have started and I wanted to give the “old” leveling experience another go so I can look at it comparatively post Cataclysm. I was able to get to level 71 in 7 days (real life time, not played), and I had a pretty good time doing it. The map changes go live today, so I can’t wait for the realms to get back online so I can check it out.

Dance Central

This is the only reason to own a Kinect, it’s still getting a lot of play around here, and it’s fun… moving up to medium routines and the extra challenges are making it more fun for sure. it would appear that it has legs and Harmonix spit out a new set of DLC today including Cameo’s “Word Up!”… oh yea, that’s gonna have to happen.

My apologies for the lack of content lately, but no wonder I haven’t had time to write my Blops and NFS reviews, that’s a lot of games to play. Also, Gran Turismo 5 is out tomorrow, and today the Wheel Stand for my logitech G27 arrived, I’m STOKED, I will be spending some time in the driver seat this evening and tomorrow.