What I Have Been Playing (And What I Will Be Playing)
I’ve been a naughty girl. I’ve shunned my ‘one game woman’ approach in favour of simultaneous variety. The reason being that I recently finished Splinter Cell: Conviction, and with only a week or so until Skate 3 is released, I didn’t want to start — and not be able to finish — something else entirely. This gave me the opportunity to tie up some ‘loose ends’.
My friend and I completed the co-op mode of Splinter Cell: Conviction on Realistic, which took longer than anticipated merely because of the connectivity issues we regularly experienced. I’m not sure what the issue was, but neither of us had a dodgy connection and were chatting without interruption over Xbox Live. This usually indicates it wasn’t an issue on either of our ends. I’m assuming it is, as usual, down to Ubisoft’s paltry Multiplayer programming. Bear in mind I’m a huge Rainbow Six: Vegas fan, which is also a Ubisoft (and Tom Clancy) title, but that would have never won any awards for running smoothly online, and I’m the first to admit that. As fun as the Tom Clancy games are in Multiplayer mode, they rarely seem to run fluidly.
With Conviction, you can guarantee the frame rate will drop repeatedly, and at one point you will inevitably get booted from the game. And with each co-op mode campaign being split into 4 chapters, you can rest assured that when you do get booted out, you’ll have to play through a fair bit of the game again. Considering the approach to SC:C is slow and stealthy, this gets frustrating.
With that said, there’s a lot to the Multiplayer that adds some much needed overall substance to Conviction. Even though we’ve polished off the co-op campaign, we’re now attempting the other co-op modes!
On top of Splinter Cell, I’ve made a come-back to a game I hadn’t touched since Januray 2009. Fallout 3 was a bit of a revelation for me, but by the time Bethesda started releasing all the DLC, of which there was a lot of, I had moved onto other pastures. Recently Microsoft ran a deal where all DLC was 400 MSP, so I snapped ‘em up.
I toyed with the idea of starting a new character and honing my bad karma (my original character was a saint), but after seeing there was an Achievement for reaching Level 30 with good karma, I stuck with my original as I had already reached Level 20, which used to be the cap.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned my thoughts on DLC before. In general I find DLC to be underwhelming; the quality doesn’t usually justify the price. I’m glad I waited all this time for the cost to come down, though, as Operation: Anchorage had left a sour taste and I was subsequently reluctant to fork out for the rest of the Fallout DLC. Maybe this is simply a by-product of how huge a game Fallout 3 is; when buying the DLC I was hoping for an expansion of sorts as opposed to a couple of additional quests for 800 MSP.
Anyway, I’m letting the stingy Scot in me shine through…
So this is what will be holding me off until Thursday or Friday (depending on when Skate 3 gets shipped). I’ve also been hooked up with Alan Wake, which means I’ll likely be playing both Alan Wake and Skate 3 at the same time. Like I said, I’m a naughty girl.
With two stellar titles just around the corner, which one gets your money?
I don’t have anything derogatory to say about Alan Wake. My advice to you? Spend a night in Bright Falls and soak up the eerie atmosphere. Alan Wake excels at thrilling you psychologically. Which is why it’s called a psychological thriller, I guess…
Christoffer Radsby