What I am playing: Week 15/03/2013

It has been a few weeks since I've last done one of these, but this is perhaps the first week since those few weeks that I have actually played something more than just Counter-Strike.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (PC)

Have been toying around with the idea of streaming the casual play and some of the competitive matches I play, have streaming set up and only recently broadcast a match or two. I'll have to see. I don't really have anything else to say about this game, it'll be here in my list more often than not, there isn't anything to say that hasn't already been said.

Crysis 3 (PC)

You know I own all the Crysis games on PC, boxed? That is the only series this generation that has happened with for me. Not because I'm a fan of the series, I've just always found them cheaper boxed and wanted to play around with the engine. Crysis 3 is similar, it is certainly more compelling than Crysis 2 with some of the good elements from the original Crysis, but overall they're still just a tech demo to me. It has great core gameplay mechanics, but nothing else about the game is particularly compelling.

Amazing looking game on PC (max settings), but other than that, pretty average, I'm afraid.

Guacamelee! (PSVita)

Charming and fantastically well made 2d beat-em-up, brawler, platformer, etc, perfect for portable play. I have yet to get all that far into it, but have been introduced to a few of the interesting game mechanics. Hopefully I remember to keep playing!

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PSVita)

I'm not sure what made me pick this up, but I'm glad I did. A relatively light game, it hasn't really presented much challenge yet but it plays extremely well and again, I feel like it is well suited to portable play.

Dishonored (PC)

Picked it up on Steam whilst it was on sale, and I'm gutted. Gutted I didn't buy this earlier. This game plays so well, it is the type of game I have been looking for. I have, however stopped playing, I need to save it. I don't really want to get into a story based game too much at the moment because I'm afraid I'll be pulled away due to work at university piling up, if I stop there is a danger I won't start again if I'm past a certain point in the campaign.

Also, this game looks really rather good on PC. But, it looks so much better once you get into downsampling, I'm currently rending this game at 3200x1800 then downsampling to 1920x1080 - and thanks to a quirk of the Unreal Engine, it brings out much more detailed textures because of how texture streaming works in displaying detail at different resolutions. It runs at a rock solid 60fps, because it is a really well optimised game as far as I can see.

Dark Souls (PC)

I've finally caved. I didn't want to buy it because of the awful port, but From Software are saying all the right things about Dark Souls 2 and it just pushed me over the edge. I'm using Duarte's fix to make the game actually playable, and look decent, and whilst it is still biggest straight-from-console port I've seen in many years, it plays well enough. I haven't given enough time to it yet to have any sort of opinion, but good initial impressions.

Sleeping Dogs (PC)

I've started this up again.. for similar reasons I'm not playing Dishonored much. I already know how Sleeping Dogs plays and how the campaign progresses, I want to play something familiar but not new, something that I can put down and go back to because I've experienced it all before. Something that won't keep me away from work..

Grand Theft Auto: Ballad of Gay Tony (PC)

Another one of these games, I've completed it before - but wanted to have another play through for similar reasons to why I'm playing through Sleeping Dogs again. I'm quite surprised at how well this game has held up (on PC at least), it looks rather good, and it is such a shame there isn't any option for anti-aliasing.