New - Rayman Origins

Reasons I bought Rayman Origins instead of just ignoring it in favour of Skyrim:

• Quality 2D platforming games are incredibly rare these days.
• The art is incredible and I have no doubt the sound will be too.
• It's Rayman returning to it's best - the 3D versions didn't have the same oomph the first did.
• Ubisoft is completely idiotic for releasing it at the tail-end of the most packed videogame season we've seen in years, perhaps ever, and giving it next to no advertising.
• The dickheads at Ubisoft will be taking Origins' success into account when deciding whether to let Michael Ancel continue to make Beyond Good & Evil 2.

My reasons can be simplified as thus; games that are crafted so thoughtfully like Rayman should be bought by the million instead of left to languish on the shelf because their publisher is inept.

Despite making an effort to not buy any new games, I had to make an exception to support a vision of what the games industry should be.

New - Skyrim

I've been meaning to post this since Tuesday, but pretty much my entire free time has been taken up by this game.

Skyrim came out last Friday, and upsettingly, I had a trip to London booked for that weekend, so I couldn't pick it up until Tuesday. I did have Tuesday off, but due to various circumstances, including dentists, family members and Significant Others, I only got to play it for a couple of hours.

Having played for roughly 12 hours in the past two days, I can wholeheartedly say that it's fucking fantastic and I'm having so much fun. I love how there's seemingly an endless supply of quests to keep me occupied. Yes, yes, radiant engine blah blah, but these aren't miscellaneous quests I'm talking about. I have to scroll down to see all of the quests I have and I know for a fact I've barely scraped the surface. I'm so excited to spend time in this world, I think I'm going to have to go back and play now even though I quit 30 minutes ago because I'd gotten pasted by some mages. Ta-ra!

:C: - Fallout: New Vegas

After many hours and almost as many crashes, I've done everything significant in Fallout: New Vegas, and am comfortable with checking it off as completed. By no means does this mean I've finished all the quests or collected all the unique items, but given everything that's in the games I think it's fair to have just finished all the DLCs, seen all of the endings and done most of the sidequests.

I played the DLC out of order, which was a mistake. I played Old World Blues first, followed by Dead Money, Honest Hearts and finished with Lonesome Road. I would have got more out of them storywise if I had played them in release order, but what I really should have done was played them in quality order, building up to the best. I definitely shouldn't have played Dead Money after Old World Blues, as playing the worst DLC after the best can only reflect poorly on the poor one. Reflecting on it, Dead Money probably wasn't as awful as it felt at the time.

Having finished Lonesome Road, I'm not sure why everyone's got a hate-on for it. Alright, it wasn't as epic as the trailer made itself out to be, and it was a touch linear, but it was fun and it was nice to find out some of the Courier's backstory, and the equipment I got out of it was pretty bloody awesome.

Soon I'll be moving onto the Capital Wasteland. I have the Requiem for a Capital Wasteland mod installed so I can go there, and I'll be putting my playtime onto the Steam version of Fallout 3. I'm looking forward to it as Fallout 3 was special to me, but first I need to figure out why my level cap mod isn't working.

Sometime soon I'll put up a list of the mods I have installed, so you can play New Vegas the real way.