New - Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Metal Gear Solid HD Collection

It was a big day for releases on Friday. There were three games I would have happily bought out on the same day; Soul Calibur V, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.

After reading reviews, I decided against Soul Calibur V. The single-player content has apparently been reduced to very little. I have no desire to play a Soul Calibur where my only offline options are a single Story mode and arcade battles. Where's weapon master mode? Individual stories? Challenge tower? Hell, even that sort-of strategy mode from the third one would have done. I have little to no desire to play against others, especially using my spotty internet, so I gave it a pass.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on the other hand was always going to be a must-buy. It came out elsewhere back in November and I have no idea why it took them so long to bring it out here, but hey, at least I didn't have to split my time between Skyrim and Metal Gear. I've only played it a little bit but how GOOD is Metal Gear Solid 3? I played it back on the PS2 way back when it came out and it was actually top of my favourite games ever but I forgot how awesome it was. There are bits I didn't even catch back then - like Snake making dick jokes. It's going to be great going back.

Finally, there's Final Fantasy XIII-2. There were a lot of things I hated about XIII. I could go on at length about boring environments, too-lengthy battles, little party customisation and the enormous amounts of exposition that explained nothing. I got halfway through Chapter 7 (about 14 hours) before giving up and trading the original in, and have no regrets about doing so before reaching the end of the 'tutorial'. However, after reading the reviews for XIII-2 and playing the demo, I felt confident that not only had they fixed most everything I hated about the first, and in the process made what was probably going to be everything I like about JRPGs in one game.

And out of what I've played so far, I don't think I'm far wrong. At this early stage of 8 hours in, I'd happily recommend it for full price.

New - Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights

I saw this in Grainger Games yesterday. It was a pretty good deal, and I was so surprised to see it was out, I snapped it up.

It's Professor Layton meets Pokemon meets Metal Gear meets Indiana Jones. It hasn't been getting great reviews, but I think that's because everyone expected it to be exactly like Professor Layton. It's got puzzles, yeah, but there's also sneaking past guards, collecting living treasures and battling said treasures in a JRPG-like interface. Add beautiful animated cutscenes and good voice-acting and you have a pretty great game.

Alright, I haven't played huge amounts, but I am really enjoying it so far. Don't listen to the haters.

3DS is Pretty Ace

So, yesterday was my birthday and I got the usual "have some money because who knows what you want" for the most part. Except for one massive, major exception, from my boyfriend.

It's even more awesome IRL.

It came with Ocarina of Time, obviously, and I promptly downloaded Four Swords onto it and hied myself into town and came home with Star Fox 64 and Super Pokemon Rumble (both of which were £15 off, which was really nice).

I can't even see 3D, but I'm still blown away by the device. The AR games are really neat and Face Raiders is totally hilarious, and I was completely amazed upon loading up Ocarina of Time. The graphics are nothing short of breathtaking.

I'm not even sure I have enough words.

All I need now is a 3DS remake of Majora's Mask or even, god forbid, Wind Waker. I wasn't even a huge fan of Ocarina of Time, but I am a total convert to the 3DS after that.

Having said that, I'm not paying the extortionate prices for the Virtual Console games!

New - Empire Earth and Beneath a Steel Sky

Good Old Games is having a massive sale/giveaway sort of thing right now. A couple days ago, they gave away Empire Earth totally free, which is cool and slightly annoying because I bought it at Game ages ago and it's still in its shrinkwrap, but what you gonna do. I also noticed that they had Beneath a Steel Sky free too (except that's always free) so I added that to my account too.

Who knows when they'll get played, but hey, that's what holidays and retirement is for.

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!

New - Dark Souls

I bought Dark Souls. I'm so ashamed. It goes against my commitment to myself, and I can't even complain that I have no self control and that it was an impulse buy. I was always interested in Demon's Souls, but I still don't have regular access to a PS3, so it's a no-go until such times.

Dark Souls came out the week before Forza 4. I was interested in it, but Forza was coming out and I had no room in my head to get invested in such a game then. But the weeks have gone by, Forza has faded from my brain a little, and I keep seeing Dark Souls articles linked everywhere, and everyone I speak to speaks really highly of it.

So I set out to town today in pursuit of two things: new shoes and Dark Souls. I don't regret it, not one bit.

I haven't even taken my shoes out of the box yet.

New - Forza 4 and Skylanders

I bought Xenoblade Chronicles a couple of weeks ago because it was getting fantastic reviews and I was jonesing for a fresh JRPG. When I tried to play it, however, it tried to install an update. And failed. Three times. My Wii refused to be updated, possibly because I softmodded it an eon ago (and there were no files of that sort left). So I returned it to Gamestation with a heavy heart and promised them that I'd get Forza 4 a week from them if they could pretty please put it on a card. So, that's Forza 4 accounted for, at least.

Skylanders is sketchy at best, I admit. I professed to be considering trading in my Wii, and asked for the trade-in price - which was £40. The manager, wonderful man that he is, offered me 50% extra, £60 against Skylanders because I'm a regular and because I'm so awesome. I can't refuse an offer like that, commited to not buying games or no. I very rarely play my Wii, and there is a smaller, cheaper one coming out soon so if I really feel the need to play Skyward Sword or whatever I'll be able to buy that one.

Justified? I have no idea. But Skylanders is really fun and completely up my street, so even if it does break the rules, I have no regrets. Even if I've failed here, no matter, I forgive myself and can just redouble my efforts - and by my standards, I was doing really fucking well anyway. And I have a new way to reward myself if I go a week without buying anything - a Skylanders figurine!

I have this dude and he is crazy awesome.

New - SpaceChem

SpaceChem is a game that I've had on my radar for a while, but never got round to buying for whatever reason.

The explanation for this new game is that I donated to the new Humble Indie Bundle when it started, and they added it to the pack today for free, so there we go. And to think, I donated despite having everything offered.

New - Cute Knight Kingdom

Yes, yes, a new game already I suck blah blah blah.

This one was free from BigFishGames. I went to the website to cancel the membership that I had totally forgotten about - I only remembered because the free month was up and PayPal emailed me yesterday to say the payment had gone through, whoops! I suppose that's the whole idea behind free month trials; you sign up and forget to cancel it before the first payment goes through.

Anyway, the BigFish membership gives you a stamp for every game you buy. 6 stamps gets you a credit to spend on a game. Having gone to my account, I had a credit, which they told me would expire with my membership. So obviously, I had to spend it. After staring a while at the demos I'd downloaded, I had it down to either Cute Knight Kingdom or Aveyond. I decided on Cute Knight because Aveyond, while presumably a decent RPG, is an RPG, and I have much greater and much longer RPGs yet to play. And Cute Knight was pretty damn fun, so why not?

So according to my rules, I'm still in the game. :)