Since working all day long and then moving to Gentoo stuff is what caused me to burn out around two years ago, I’ve decided last year that I’d be trying to take time to play and enjoy my life, especially now that I got a life back, when I thought I almost lost it. This evolved from getting a Nintendo DS to play Pokémon to getting a PlayStation 3 to watch movies and now to buy games to spend my free time relaxing. If I didn’t have to still pay for Yamato I’d consider getting a PSP now since a friend of mine shown what the Bleach games (which aren’t available in Europe unfortunately) look like there.
At any rate, when I got the PlayStation 3 I had in mind to expand my movie collection to BluRay, since I enjoy the HD quality, I pragmatically don’t care about the copy protection (I’m not interested in copying my own media; I don’t have a single copied DVD movie, nor I ever ripped one), and whenever a way to play BluRay content on Free Software stacks appear, I’ll be there ready to try it out. But since then stuff changed: games were released and I ended up getting a few, between Amazon (the standard price of games on Amazon is about 2⁄3 of what I’d pay for the same game here in Italy — and this was before UK dropped VAT from 17.5% to 15%), and a local supermarket chain which sometimes gets games out for less than half the price (Unreal Tournament 3 paid €20 rather than €70, I don’t even want to know).
With my last order from Amazon, I got two very interesting pieces. The first is Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm which is an obvious choice since I got a friend, who’s also a Naruto fan, with whom we’ve been playing almost any kind of beat ‘em up that could get emulated on PC (since my favourite has always been Street Fighter Alpha 3, I’m really looking forward to the new Street Fighter). I have to say, the flashback mode is very useful to recap the whole Naruto story so that I can resume watching Naruto Shippuuden, which I stopped watching after I went to the hospital the first time. The only thing that I would have watned from that was network challenge support, but you can’t get everything you want, can you?
The other game I got is somewhat older but very nice too: Assassin’s Creed. I’m actually using it as a tool, to let my nerves relax since I’m having some nasty breakdown lately with some free software and job related problems. Being very different from the usual jump, shoot, run, it really helps me focusing back into normalty. I only have one beef with it, but I’ll get to that soon.
One thing that I really like about PlayStation 3 is the ability to try lots of game before going to buy them: I tried Naruto beat ‘em up style before ordering, I tried Valkyria Chronicles and I’m looking forward for that too, I tried Mirror’s Edge and… I’m not going to get near that game again at all!
It’s not like the game is dull, but for an acrophobic, already feeling ill on simple suspended levels, a game like Mirror’s Edge is just too much, you end up running over the rooftops of skyscrapers, and you can easily fall down. But it’s not just specialised games; Naruto’s stage mode often enough require you to get over the roofs of the Hidden Leaf village to gather scrolls, and in Assassin’s Creed you got the “leaps of faith” that almost make me puke.
Hey is it asking too much to keep on the good old solid earth?
I happen to enjoy a lot of space simulation games……You insensitive clod! (As the saying goes.)The Mirrors Edge demo was a blast, but I blame that on the fact that I’ve been gaining interest in Parkour in general, and Mirrors Edge epitomizes that to a grandiose extreme, and you know that now :P. (And attempts to look a lot like a 3 hour esurance commercial…)Parkour itself isn’t so extreme as Mirrors Edge, but I’ll spare you the details. Well, it can be, but the sane Parkour…’ists?, tend to not go vaulting between skyscrapers and what not :P. (Apologies if that description doesn’t sit well with you.)If you actually check out Parkour videos on YouTube it’s actually pretty exciting, just the ability to run through a city in such an original manner.Assassin’s Creed was bought for me as a Christmas present last year. I blame the TV we were playing it on for one part, but I just couldn’t get into the game. I don’t even remember why anymore. (Can you blame me? It’s already been almost a whole year since I played it :P.) We wound up taking it back and got some other stuff instead.Valkyria Chronicles demo was awesome, I think that’ll be my first post-christmas purchase.You should add me on PSN ;), I’m at least fairly sure you’ll be able to guess my tag. (Chances are good I might be able to guess yours too…)