Saturday!

So I’m in The Last of Us. This is the game that’s getting all of the “Citizen Kane” awards from folks and I’m struck by how linear the storyline is. Maybe that’s the price to pay for this sort of thing… but, so far, it’s like hearing that they made a Citizen Kane Video Game, then made all of the action scenes interactive between walking scenes with dialog exposition. That’s not what made Citizen Kane Citizen Kane, guys.

Which is not to say it’s a *BAD* game. It’s an awesome game. The main thing that I want to say about it so far is that it’s the first zombie movie where I haven’t yet said “WHY IN THE SAM HILL ARE YOU DOING THAT???” at one (or both) of the protagonists. That achievement alone is worth something.

But, of course, today I have to be not playing something. Sigh.

So… what are you playing?

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

18 Comments

  1. Minecraft 1.6.2.

    I have some weird luck with it. Or I don’t obsessively create new worlds all the time. I have yet to find a plains biome EVER, and that’s where the new horses should spawn. In this last world I got, I finally found a swamp! (Took me a few days of travel to find it, passing through TONS of taiga biomes, but I found it!) Stocked up on slimeballs. Managed to snag two dogs along the way.

    I still have yet to encounter any of the generated structures (aside from fortresses in the Nether). No witches huts, temples, or villages. And certainly not strongholds. (And with as far as I traveled on this map, it’s going to be a headache to find one here.)

    My inventory is now completely full (managed to find diamonds and redstone in a cavern system in a desert near the swamp), so I’ll probably just run around another few days looking for a place to camp. Or plains. Or temples.

    Or I’ll just generate a new world and start all over again.

    • I’m your opposite; I worldbuild obsessively (though in survival mode, not creative-hate hate creative).
      My current project is a tiny village I found which I’ve surrounded in massive walls and am in the process of transforming into a megaopolis aswarm with hordes of those obnoxious villagers and their golems. It’s going well.

      • Oh, I love building out, starting farms and ranches, building palaces (usually inside hills), and breeding every color of sheep possible.

        If I could only find a village, oh the fun I could have…

  2. Far Cry 3. It’s another well-made, competent sandbox game for me to binge on every now and again.

    *spoiler*

    But with all the craziness of the plot, the characters and the Alice in Wonderland references, I’m assuming that the entire game is going to be revealed to be a convoluted hallucination. I think I’ll actually be disappointed if everything in the game is played straight, just because it’s fairly ridiculous. It works better as some privileged kid’s fantasy/hallucination about saving his friends and the poor, helpless islanders.

  3. I finished my playthrough of Mass Effect 3. The extended ending and the Leviathan DLC (which I highly recommend by the way), added a lot more context to your end decision. This upgrades the end to “poor, but forgivable”.

    I’m now playing Civ V with the new expansion.

          • I mean, seriously, you have no reason to take the statements of the Star Child at face value. None.

            “Hi. Pick up this gun, shoot yourself in the head, and I promise to quit killing your friends.”

            “Okay.”

          • Plus, if conflict between between synthetics and organics is inevitable, then why on earth did the game just let me resolve the conflict between the Geth and Quarians peacefully? Why is it that in a game where everybody else is a hero in their own story with motivations and attitudes that make sense, who can therefore be reasoned with, we’re supposed to buy the inevitability of conflict?

          • I have not played the Leviathan DLC, no. Something something ONE RED CENT something.

            I have, however, looked up some small spoilers. Something about the provenance of the Leviathans and the Reavers, something something.

            I still felt like they were trying to cover up a bad decision. I think Citadel was their response to looking at the DLC numbers (which, if rumors are true, were horrible compared to Mass Effect 2 and each single-player DLC did worse than the previous) and they came out and said “okay, maybe we can give *SOME* emotional closure.

          • Don, that’s one of my issues with the ending. I wanted a paragon ending where you could persuade the Catalyst that peace was possible, using your own achievements as an example.

    • Civ V Brave New world is devouring my scant free time. I love so much about it:
      -The world congress: clever, fun, interesting and crazy fun in multiplayer.
      -The trade routes: brilliant! Seriously gives people reason to generate at least modest armies and navies to safeguard their most lucrative trade lines and also lets you boost up newly built cities charmingly.

  4. i want to make a genasi warlord but i won’t be able to play anything ’til landscaping season winds down

  5. Vampire the Masquerado – Bloodlines. Again, for the nth time.

    It is old, but a very good game, and one of the few that gives you choices, but there are no ‘evil choice’, ‘good choice’. One of the few where being a asshole is just that – being a asshole, and not being a idiot.

  6. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Borderlands 2 so that my son and I could play together on the PS3. It was great. I played a little bit of the first one, but it did not hold my attention enough to stick with it. I am just not a shooter guy. We have a PC copy of Borderlands 2, but I heard co-op is where it is at.

    Playing with my son changes the experience, because it changes it from “crap, died again,” to “did you see that stupid way that I died?” Also, I am not the only one dying, so I can laugh at him too.

    We probably put a good five hours in, and anything that a son can enjoy with his dad for five hours is a win in my book.

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