Game Diary: A little bit of everything

Firstly, things have slowed down somewhat in Dragon Age II - after completing the first two acts in the space of the first weekend, I have only played 6 hours or so of Act 3 and there are still a ton of quests to do. I will continue to play through the rest of the game this week, but am happy to take my time over it. Aside from my main character (a warrior), I have also dabbled with the other two classes a bit. I have decided to make my rogue and evil son of a bitch who treats who absolutely hates mages, in contrast to my warrior who is out to help everyone and does everything in her power to help the cause of the mages (and her partner is Anders).

Next, I want to talk a little bit about handheld gaming and immersion. Over the years, I've heard from several friends that the reason they've never really got into handheld gaming is that they don't find it as immersive as playing a game on a large TV. Personally though, I found it to be quite the opposite. I've spent many hours at home, in my favourite armchair, with my handheld of choice and a pair of headphones - it's like a window to a pocket universe. Now that the difference in power and technology between handhelds is less than it has ever been, and the capacity of 3DS cartridges outstrips DVD by quite some margin, I am really excited to see what developers will be able to achieve on the new machine. I don't expect any of the launch games to truly exploit the power of the 3DS, as they have been made on a tight timescale, but games like Super Street Fighter IV 3D and Pilotwings should hopefully demonstrate the potential that it offers. I'll be picking my 3DS up at midnight on Thursday - exciting stuff!

The third topic of conversation I had on my list is my nephew, and the games that he likes to play. Because his dad and I have been playing both modern and retro games around him, he doesn't particularly distinguish one from the other - to him, they're all just games and he'll happily spend hours on the MAME cabinet playing something like Streets of Rage 2 just and much as he will playing LEGO Star Wars on the Wii or Blur on the Xbox 360. I find this incredibly refreshing. Maybe eventually he will start to become prejudiced against old games, but I hope not.

Finally, I am planning to make the blog slightly more Nintendo centric. They make the best games by far in my opinion and yet aside from the odd review here and there the content of this blog hasn't really reflected that fact. I am currently (re)playing Super Mario Galaxy, and I will put a review up once I've managed to collect all 120 stars. I'm up to 40 already which is a pretty good start, so in between Dragon Age II sessions I will continue to plug away at it. I also hope to start doing more videos - hopefully some video reviews to go alongside the text, as well as more in the Nintendo Night series, and Classic or Crap. I still don't have a decent camera unfortunately, but I will look into getting a used one on eBay maybe.


That's all for this week - next weeks article is sure to be full of my first impressions of the 3DS and the games, so be sure to check back in if you're interested!