Re-Video Games

This continues my previous Video Games review at the end of 2013.

These are the month I played some amount of video games. I thought there might be a pattern since I usually take holidays mid year and spend a while planning for them, but it didn't really seem to be the case.

• September to December 2014
• January 2015
• October to December 2015
• February to May 2016
• July 2016
• April 2017

These months I went on holiday for at least a few days:

• March 2014
• April 2014
• August 2014
• December 2014
• August 2015
• December 2015
• December 2016

Here's the full list:

• 2014
• January
• Grand Theft Auto V (briefly)
• February
• Grand Theft Auto V (briefly)
• Grand Theft Auto IV - The Ballad Of Gay Tony (briefly)
• April
• Grid 2 (briefly)
• June
• Grid 2 (briefly)
• July
• Grid 2 (briefly)
• September
• Saints Row IV
• October
• Saints Row IV
• November
• Saints Row IV
• PlayStation 3: Gran Turismo 6
• December
• PlayStation 3: Gran Turismo 6
• 2015
• January
• PlayStation 3: Gran Turismo 6
• October
• PlayStation 3: Gran Turismo 6
• November
• PlayStation 3: Gran Turismo 6
• December
• PlayStation 3: Gran Turismo 6
• 2016
• Feburary
• Forza Horizon 2
• March
• Forza Horizon 2
• Bioshock Infinite (briefly)
• PlayStation 3: Gran Turismo 5 (briefly)
• April
• Bioshock Infinite (briefly)
• PC: Stardew Valley
• May
• PC: Stardew Valley
• June
• Bioshock Infinite (briefly)
• July
• Final Fantasy XIII-2
• September
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 (briefly)
• October
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 (briefly)
• November
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 (briefly)
• 2017
• April
• PC: River City Ransom Underground

Re-Video Games

This is just another post about the video games I have been playing over the years. I wrote a previous article like this during June 2010. A few observations before the list:

• I again used the xbox achievements to determine which games I was playing and when
• I only went down to the month level - I may have only played games for a few days in a specific month
• There are a lot of gaps between games. I don't really know why the gaps are so small or large in each case, a lot of them do match up with preparing to go on holidays or returning from holidays though. These are the times when I did not play any games at all:
• Most of 2008
• July 2009 to November 2009
• November 2009 to March 2010
• July 2011 to October 2011
• April 2012 to November 2012
• February 2013 to September 2013
• These are the times I went on holiday:
• October-November 2009
• July 2010
• September 2010
• August-September 2011
• October 2012
• August 2013

And here is the list:

2007

• August

• Forza Motorsport 2

• September

• Forza Motorsport 2

• October

• Forza Motorsport 2

• November

• Forza Motorsport 2

• December

• Saints Row (briefly)
• Project Gotham Racing 3 (briefly)

2008

• January

• Project Gotham Racing 3

• May

• Grand Theft Auto IV

• August

• Project Gotham Racing 4 (briefly)

• September

• Gears Of War (briefly)

• November

• Saints Row

• December

• Saints Row 2

2009

• January

• Saints Row 2

• Burnout Paradise

• March

• Half-Life 2

• April

• Half-Life 2

• Mass Effect (briefly)

• July

• Grand Theft Auto IV - The Lost And Damned (briefly)

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 (XBLA) (briefly)

• November

• Forza Motorsport 3

2010

• March

• Mass Effect

• April

• Mass Effect

• May

• Mass Effect (briefly)
• Final Fantasy XIII (briefly)

• June

• Red Dead Redemption
• Bioshock
• Forza Motorsport 3

• July

• Project Gotham Racing 4
• Bioshock 2

• August

• Left 4 Dead
• Gears Of War
• Rockstar Table Tennis
• Grand Theft Auto IV - The Lost And Damned
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 (XBLA) (briefly)
• Call Of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare

• September

• Call Of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare
• FIFA 10 (briefly)

• October

• Forza Motorsport 2

• November

• Call Of Duty - World At War
• Viva Pinata
• Lego Batman

• December

• Fallout 3

2011

• January

• Fallout 3

• February

• Gears Of War (briefly)
• Mafia 2

• March

• Mafia 2
• Crackdown
• Project Gotham Racing 4 (briefly)
• Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 (briefly)

• April

• Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 2
• Alan Wake

• May

• Alan Wake
• Portal 2
• Final Fantasy XIII (briefly)

• June

• Final Fantasy XIII

• July

• Final Fantasy XIII

• August

• LA Noire (briefly)

• October

• LA Noire
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 (XBLA)
• NBA JAM - On Fire Arcade (XBLA)
• Forza Motorsport 4

• November

• Forza Motorsport 3
• Forza Motorsport 4
• Forza Motorsport 2 (briefly)
• Saints Row - The Third

• December

• Saints Row - The Third
• Saints Row
• Saints Row 2
• FIFA 10 (briefly)

2012

• January

• Gears Of War
• Fallout - New Vegas

• February

• Fallout - New Vegas (briefly)

• March

• Fallout - New Vegas

• April

• Fallout - New Vegas
• Dead Space (briefly)

• November

• Mass Effect 2

• December

• Mass Effect 2
• Call Of Duty - Black Ops
• Forza Horizon (briefly)

2013

• January

• Forza Horizon
• Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 3 (briefly)

• February

• Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 3

• June

• NBA 2011 (briefly)
• Deux Ex - Human Revolution (briefly)

• September

• Grand Theft Auto IV - The Ballad Of Gay Tony
• Grand Theft Auto V (briefly)

• October

• Grand Theft Auto V

• November

• Grand Theft Auto V (briefly)

• December

• Grand Theft Auto V (briefly)

A History Of Violence (With Video Games)

I recently came across this great site called trueachievements which tracks all of your 360 in-game achievements. Let's begin this by saying that the 360 achievements system is great fun, in a pointless-rewards-that-noone-but-you-cares-about kind of way (and therefore similar to fantasy sports, which I also enjoy - I might have just uncovered a bad trend), but fun nonetheless (and much better than the system the Playstation 3 has stolen/come up with, as much as I know about it). Let's also state that it is very crap that you have to pay a monthly subscription to play multiplayer games on the 360, and it's basically a nightmare when you want to cancel said subscription. You can sign up automatically via your XBox, even enter your credit card details, but you want to cancel ? nup, that's far more serious, and you need to go hunting online for the local Australian phone number, call up an actual call center, then sit through about half an hour of questions.

Anyway, the thing that makes achievements fun for me is that you have things to aim for while you play the game, getting 250 headshots (BOOM! HEADSHOT!) while playing Red Dead Redemption for example. It evens gives you reason to replay a game, beating Mass Effect on normal, hard and insanity difficulty levels for example. OK looking back that one maybe wasn't worth it, but would I play the same game three times (although with different characters) otherwise ? not a chance.

I'm not playing to be the grand 360 champion of the world. I don't have the time and of course I wouldn't want to even if I did. I'm also not playing it to 100% complete every game (as far as the achievements go) - right now I think my best is maybe 90% completion of three games, and I've had the 360 for more than three years now. It's just a nice, simple reward for the occasional time I find to spend (some might say waste) on video games. Normally via the 360 interface all you see is your total achievement score update, and the list of achievements you have unlocked, but this website brings it all together the way it should be done. Historical data, crazy stats and graphs, leaderboards (just for fun) and so on.

If I owned the same game on 360 and Playstation 3 (although I don't even own the console, yet) I'd play it on 360 just for this reason, even if the graphics were a little inferior. Here's a fun trip down memory lane I had, showing how much (or little) I've played my 360 over the past three years, and the games I've played over that time.

July 2007 - November 2007

• Forza Motorsport 2

December 2007 - January 2008

• Project Gotham Racing 3
• Saints Row (only played briefly)
  

May 2008

• Grand Theft Auto IV
  

August 2008

• Project Gotham Racing 4 (only played briefly)
  

September 2008

• Gears Of War (only played briefly)
  

November 2008 - December 2008

• Saints Row
• Saints Row 2
  

January 2009

• Burnout Paradise (borrowed)
  

March 2009 - April 2009

• The Orange Box (Half-Life 2 only, borrowed)
• Mass Effect (only played briefly)
  

July 2009

• Grand Theft Auto IV TLAD (only played briefly)
  

November 2009 - December 2009

• Forza Motorsport 3
  

February 2010 - April 2010

• Mass Effect
  

May 2010 - June 2010

• Bioshock
  
• Final Fantasy XIII (only played briefly)
  
• Red Dead Redemption

The most interesting things I found when looking back are how sporadically I played these games. I'm not sure why I'd play the 360 for a couple of days, then not again for months, then do the same thing again. I think I lost the passion for gaming the day I started working full time (not a coincidence at all), you might say that I'm not a passionate man in this regard (or any other, for that matter). As can be seen from the above, I tried to have a go at a bunch of games, but just didn't get hooked.

Currently I have an impressive and growing collection of unplayed (or almost unplayed) video games. At a rough guess the list includes:

• Bioshock
• Bioshock 2
• Final Fantasy XIII
  
• Gears Of War 2
• Grand Theft Auto IV TBOGT
• Grand Theft Auto IV TLAD
• Mass Effect 2
• Rockstar Table Tennis
  

And I'm sure there's others I've forgotten completely. Maybe one day...

TF2

I just played TF2 for the first time online. It was released on October 10, 2007. Not a bad effort.

It's also probably the first time I've played an online multiplayer game in several years. There was a few good and bad points that formed my first impressions:

Good

• It resembles the first TF game somewhat
• Heaps of players and servers, and good pings
• In game voice comm, occasionally annoying but mostly entertaining chat from the other (mostly younger) gamers
• Heaps of achievements to unlock with each class
• You get to shoot people and blow things up
  

Bad

• The player movement and speed is drastically reduced from TF and QW
• No bunnyhopping
  
• All of the classes are balanced, but it seems every character has flaws such that you can't really dominate at all or survive for long without dying
  
• The sentry gun is way too strong and fast, with some classes there's simply no weapon to destroy it
  
• The maps are a little repetitive, there's not that many of them, and they favour the defense. Some of the game types are designed purely for one team to "camp" a point and not get overrun - with no offensive goal at all
  

In summary it's a bit of fun and I may keep playing it casually for a bit longer, but I just doesn't seem like the game I could ever play seriously and want to become good at - not that I'd have the time to - it's just not that satisfying to win a map, it feels like more of a grind to get the kills and play on offense (I don't and will never play on defense).