Gaming Habits, First Impressions, and Greatest Hits

With the lack of any particularly enticing gaming news today I had the majority of the day to sit around and play some video games and watch a movie or two. Over the past couple of weeks I've been playing the Assassin's Creed series, a series which I didn't give much of a chance when it was first released. The games aren't without their faults by any means, but I've been enjoying the narrative quite a bit. But before I pass judgment on the games I'm going to finish out the games that have been released. Tonight I finally beat Assassin's Creed II and am about to move onto Brotherhood.

I've also been intermittently playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. I've haven't sank as much time into as I'd like, mainly because I've been absorbed by Assassin's Creed. But my first impression is it's a well polished game, the characters are fantastic, the combo system works wonderfully, and I love the addition of the mission mode. For those of you who haven't played MvC3 yet, mission mode is a gameplay mode that essentially teaches you how to play a character. The first couple of missions start off easy, doing one special move or maybe combining a regular attack with a special move, but they quickly escalate into 15-hit combos you have to pull off flawlessly to pass the mission. Every fighting game should have some variant of this mode, it works far better than the standard training dummy to improve your skills. I think the biggest selling point of the game though is the crossover aspect, who doesn't want to beat the living hell out of Zero, Wekser, or Chris Redfield using Spiderman, Wolverine, and Deadpool?

My only complaint about the game is the way the menu system is set up and the availability of online matches. The two kind of go hand in hand. When I attempted to find a match via XBL I couldn't connect to any, this could be because of my low ranking or the low player pool to choose from at the time I was on. But for whatever reason it would say it couldn't find any ranked or non-ranked matches and would boot me back to the main menu. That's where I found a problem with the menu system, each menu takes a few seconds too long to load for a menu for me, especially when the menu is just giving you three text options. And you have to go back through the main menu, select the XBL-mode, then go through those options selecting between ranked matches, non-ranked matches, finding lobbies, or creating a lobby. The lobby system, although I haven't messed around with it too much, seems to queue you up for matches in the lobby and you have to wait your turn to fight, all the while just sitting there on a barely active screen. The most entertainment in the lobby is watching the health bars of the current match; not very exciting and very poorly implemented.

Playstation is rereleasing some games into their "Greatest Hits" collection, the entire list is God of War III, Uncharted 2: GotY, Heavy Rain, Mod Nation Racers, and UFC Undisputed 2010. This is some exciting news for me because maybe I'll actually be able to justify buying Heavy Rain and Uncharted 2. I've been wanting to play Heavy Rain ever since I heard it was coming out, Indigo Prophecy was one of the hidden gems of last generation and I expected Heavy Rain to be just as good. It got spectacular reviews almost across the board, but I heard the replayability was so terrible and the game was relatively short, that I couldn't being myself to part with $50 dollars for it. Uncharted 2 is another of the games I couldn't justify paying the price they wanted for it, I've heard nothing but fantastic things, but it takes more than just hearing about it when the first incarnation of the series was barely above-average. I enjoyed Drake's Fortune but not enough to spend the $40 on the second game.

As far as the PS3 goes, the only game I'm excited for coming out soon is InFamous 2. I cannot recommend the first InFamous enough, it is one of the best PS3 exclusive games, yes PS3 has exclusives, released. And they just released a new trailer for the second installment. So enjoy.