“Hi… uhhh… we’re here for the, uh, swingers’ party?”

Noah

Because I’ve talked about it enough, I’m happy to report that I finished Enslaved on 360 last weekend. You may recall last week that I was having a lot of issues with the “enslaver” of the the game– annoying hippie hacker Trip– and that I was hoping somehow her character would be at least marginally redeemed to justify the ridiculous warming up between her and gamer protagonist Monkey.

Fortunately, there is a small scene near the end of the game when that happens, and then something else that’s inexplicable to anyone but masochists, and the ending, while not the climactic boss battle you’d like, is all sci-fi twisty and something I liked. The sad thing about the ending is it’s a nice setup for a followup (not completely a cliffhanger, but definitely one of some sort), but the game sold too poorly for publisher Namco Bandai to feel comfortable to allow developer Ninja Theory to continue a potentially great franchise. Unless you’re into casual games, which is what Namco Bandai has hinted is the future of Enslaved. Uhhh… I love Bejeweled, but I’d rather not see the primal, post-apocalyptic sci-fi awesomeness of Enslaved distilled to Mario vs. Monkey Kong.

Speaking of, I’m nearing completion of the main levels in Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem and it’s still great. I’m finally being stumped a little here and there, but still powering through.

Just– just turn the damn siren on, already.

I also got some more time in with L.A. Noire and was relieved to find out when you don’t have a wise-cracking friend next to you making fun of everything, the game’s pretty cool. Also a godsend was the realization I could just turn the damn police siren on whenever I went through an intersection to get the unpredictable and crappy AI traffic kind of out of the way (though I was unexpectedly t-boned and rear ended a couple times, still). But as soon as I could turn the siren off, I would, because listening to ’40s music within a videogame is appealing, though I still don’t plan to tune my Sirius to “’40s on 4″ any time soon.

And yes, of course there was more League of Legends time! I’m loving flipping at will between favorite heroes and new homework assignments for our new Channel Massive Legends podcast series. This week and next I’ll be getting into Teemo, a cute anthropomorphic panda-koala thing that shoots poison blow darts and plants exploding, invisible mushrooms. How is that not fun?

Mark

Still playing The Witcher

I’m still playing The Witcher and I’m enjoying it more and more.  I’m not sure why but this game was hard for me to start playing…three times now.  I think I’m past the barrier to entry at last.  I’m enjoying the game and its different take on the traditional fantasy RPG.  Once I finish it, I may even allow myself to play the Witcher 2 as a reward.

Ah...lovely Kayle...

Per our last Channel Massive Legends podcast, I’m trying out Kayle.  Keeping with my usual theme for champion selection she is a support champion (I alternate between DPS, Tank and Support).  And the primary theme for any champion selection, by me, is that she must be annoying.  I’ve been hunted down and slain by Kayle so many time with her horrifying run speed debuff that I just couldn’t resist trying it out on an unsuspection LoL population.  Muhahaha….MUAHAHAHAHA….MUHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

Jason (pictureless because all of my screenies for The Witcher are NSFW)

At the recommendation of Mark and Scott, I decided to pick The Witcher back up and give it another shot.  So far I’m really enjoying it.  It has an old school CRPG vibe going for it that I haven’t seen in quite some time.

My only gripe is that the UI and inventory system was made by a bunch of mongoloids or something.  Kind of shocking that they couldn’t have come up with something better and I’m hopeful they’ll learn a few tricks when they develop the console version of The Witcher 2.

Fun note:

The other night, I had a crazy idea – get drunk and then play The Witcher for as long as I could stand it after getting Geralt into a drinking contest.  Needless to say, I didn’t last very long.  Watching Geralt stumble around town with his vision blurred made me so queezy that I almost blew chunks all over my monitor.