feminist_geeks

New Tomb Raider game! Yay!

The Good--while it's a totally different kind of game than the original series, it still has the same kind of feel in the controls and overall gameplay. Lara can still do all of the things she did before--swing from poles, shimmy across cliffs, double jump up ledges, etc, so while it's no longer a platformer, it still kind of feels like one.

Also, her reactions to situations are pretty realistic and understandable. She freaks out, going "shit shit shit!" with her hands on her head when a friend is seriously injured, she vocally hypes herself up and steels herself when she has to do something really dangerous, admitting to herself that what she's doing is probably stupid and she'll probably die. She's very relatable and feels very real and it's therefore easy to empathise with and get into her headspace.

And I like the little environmental details they put in like seeing her breath in the cold and her teeth chattering--the latter I've never seen in a game, before.


The Bad: So far, just quicktime events. I'm horrible at them and I've accidentally killed her about 15 times so far. Also it keeps bugging me that, in the intro, she gets injured in a way that would normally impede movement, but it doesn't affect her at all after that point. But that's not really a huge deal, more a nitpick than anything else. It probably wouldn't be as glaring if they hadn't made everything else feel so realistic.

But yeah, I recommend the hell out of it.

Decided to download Gameloft's MLP-themed-FarmVille game because while I do like that sort of game as something to relax mindlessly with, I don't care for the artwork in most of them. But a game that essentially becomes a FiM aquarium? Sounds great!

The paywall is the stupidest I have ever seen in this genre. Too bad for them my iPad is jailbroken and I found a game save editor to give myself all the premium currency I'll ever need. HAH. Honestly I would have rather paid $5-10 outright for this game just to play and enjoy it without the premium currency crap.



My other iPad obsession is Puzzle and Dragons. If you like Bejeweled and Pokemon it's basically the best thing ever. This game also has premium currency available - and I've bought some - but there's no paywall. Everything is playable without buying special stuff, it just might take you a bit longer. Since I only play at lunch and before bed, the "stamina" limit doesn't bother me.
The trailer shows some good examples of how the gameplay works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCX-Tz8KpXE

There's a lot of clones of this game floating around, but none of them match up to the original. P&D has excellent charming artwork, and now that the 5.0 update has launched the massive library of monsters just got even bigger.

Psych is wonderful because its politically correct even though its not trying to do anything but entertain. More than I can say for Mad Men.
I've read green eggs and ham in Spanish this week to the classes I subbed for and by and large kids love it. No one should outgrow children's books!
And I'm reading HP number 6 in Spanish.

I finished Spec Ops: The Line yesterday (or technically this morning)—best. military shooter. ever. I have a more fleshed out recommendation here. I also won a raffle and need help choosing between Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3...hrmmm...not a fan of EA in general but it's a free game so...

Choose Dead Space 3! Not as much creepy fun as the previous ones but still a good game. And the co-op option lets you draw in other players to help you in the tough spots.

Spec Ops was good. Trippy and good lol.

Am also playing Tomb Raider, doing my second run. Have never played the originals so I've got nothing to compare it to, I just like it a lot. Wish they'd done some co-op for the multiplayer, personally I find it boring when the multiplayer consists of running around and killing other players.