Happy Halloween!!

Since I embarked upon this endeavour I’ve only completed games that I had previously started, and it was a good way to begin, as I needed to make a sizeable dent in that monstrous pile. That strategy has paid off as I’m now well into the pile without feeling too overwhelmed about what’s ahead.

When I came to tackle the sci-fi horror Dead Space 2 I was looking at starting a game completely fresh, right from the beginning. I wanted to play through it in a really short space of time, and so I attacked it with the intention of blasting through it within a week. It was the complete opposite to the way I’ve been playing my games over the last few years. If you can call leaving them to fester on the shelf ‘playing them’, that is.

It was fantastic to play a game that I hadn’t started months or even years ago. I hadn’t forgotten important characters or major plot points. I wasn’t struggling to remember the controls. I was able to fully digest the game in several big chunks in a short space of time, and it was a refreshing experience.

Of course, it helped that Dead Space 2 is a fun, exciting game with locations and set pieces inspired by Aliens, Event Horizon, and Return of the Jedi. I tore through it and had a blast.

When I’d finished it I looked at Alan Wake, the next game I’d set for my "Horror Month", but I just couldn’t bring myself to play it. I’ve developed some sort of mental block against it. It’s not a bad game, I just can’t be arsed to trudge through it all again after completing so much of it and then losing all the save data in the ‘Great 360 Hard Drive Disaster of 2011’. Not yet anyway.

I needed a change, something I could jump in and out of, so I opted for Driver: San Francisco. It was great to play a racing game that tried something so completely different. The premise that your character is in a coma and driving around a dream world San Francisco in his mind, while possessing the ability to float above the city, jumping into any vehicle he chooses, must have raised a few eyebrows when first pitched, but I’m glad someone had the balls to go with it as I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. I finished the story elements yesterday, and I find myself struggling not to put the disc back in right now and complete all the race, stunt, and dare challenges that I’ve yet to do.

But I must soldier on, and I decided to start a game I’ve been aching to play, a franchise that I love that was also a victim of the ‘G3HDDof2011’, Mass Effect 3. It was heartbreaking to lose my Mass Effect saves that I’d carried over since starting the trilogy in 2007. All my choices, hard made decisions, sacrifices and victories, gone.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind, within half an hour of starting it up I could see that it never really mattered anyway, and I was so swept up in the thrill and majesty of the Mass Effect universe that I didn’t care. Good God, I love this game.

So with the completion of Dead Space 2 And Driver: San Francisco that brings the number of completed games to 10. I’m 20% of the way through. I’ll be very happy to keep up this pace, but I’m more than aware that there are a lot of games left that I haven’t even started, and there are also a lot of long, time consuming games in there too.

I’d better get my head down.