I've not been playing much substantial over the last couple of weeks, or months for that matter, because work has been particularly busy. I've dipped into HAWKEN for an hour or two here and there but over the weekend I decided it was time to stop messing around with multiplayer games (that really don't help you deal with your backlog) and start something important. So I downloaded UFO: Enemy Unknown and OpenXcom. I was honestly worried that my XCOM rant wouldn't hold much water on returning to X-COM but I feel even more resolute on the matter now. It holds up beautifully, thanks to OpenXcom ironing out the wrinkles in the interface and game flow (things like remembering your soldier loadouts, tooltips(!), previewing soldier pathing and TU expense at every square, and showing vital stats on the inventory screen so you can quickly allocate gear efficiently). Between this and Xenonauts, it's an incredible time for fans of the original X-COM.

PS+ is offering Vessel for free on PS3, which is great because it's a fantastic game that's all too often overlooked! By the sounds of things it was also a nightmare to port.

I hear the DLC is fantastic Dix, from pretty much everyone I know who's played it. I own Brigmore but am yet to play it! I'm getting tired of hearing myself say that.

I recently finished OpenXcom which was fantastic although the latter third really dragged once the research had dried up and my operatives were being psionically trained to be more or less useless on the Cydonia mission.

I've started Doom again using the prBoom+ source port and it's every bit as good as I remember.

Mario Kart 8 is a riot with friends and a pain in the arse on your own trying to three star each cup. A by-product of this is that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has been getting a lot more attention from me. God I love that game, easily one of my favourite racers ever.

I also started playing Infested Planet which is just frickin' nuts. It's not uncommon to blow away 30,000 aliens in a single 20 minute mission-- that's 1500 aliens per minute! You also rarely have more than 6 marines doing the shooting as well so, as you can imagine, it's a pretty intense game!

Murdered would have been much better without the silly combat. It made no sense to me. I did like the banter between Ronan and the teen-aged medium (whose name escapes me at the moment).

He didn't know anything about the witch trials because he spent so much time in jail and/or getting tattooed?

Toger said
Murdered would have been much better without the silly combat. It made no sense to me. I did like the banter between Ronan and the teen-aged medium (whose name escapes me at the moment).

He didn't know anything about the witch trials because he spent so much time in jail and/or getting tattooed?

Joy, yes.  Their relationship struck me as a not-terrible Joel/Ellie wannabe.

Maybe Ronan's criminal past was principally beating up history nerds for their lunch money.  Knowledge of arcane torture devices is for dweebs.

I've started playing Tomb Raider on PC and The Wonderful 101 on the Wii U and they're both doing their damnedest to distract me from one another. Thankfully they're entirely different games so I can choose which one to play depending on my mood.

Tomb Raider has been surprisingly fun and solid, and certainly more 'gamey' than I expected. The bow is stupid powerful -- much more so than Joel's in The Last of Us! -- mainly because it shoots like a gun in that you hit where your reticule is pointing. In The Last of Us there's a parabolic arc you have to aim so it makes sense that it's much harder to use. I think they've hit a really nice balance though between open world and linear and littered enough in the environments to keep you poking around. I especially like that they've gone with Uncharted's treasure collecting and allowed you to examine the items with Lara giving you some background on them. I'm really quite amazed how resilient Lara is, it's getting to the point now where it's almost getting funny.

The Wonderful 101 is a strange beast though and one I really wanted to play but knew I'd have difficulty with. Its camera can be downright obnoxious at times, its lack of explanations about basic things just as bad and the controls are really awkward until you get used to them -- and you do eventually get used to them. There's a lot of discovery and working things out for yourself here which can be fun or infuriating depending on when and where you are and ultimately the margin for error. I think a lot could be done better but there's just something about it: the tone, the style, the mechanics of forming giant weapons out of lots of super powered little dudes, the challenge of perfecting levels, the set pieces, the bosses, the combos and spectacle of it all clicking together. If you have a Wii U, definitely consider this because I love it, despite its learning curve and foibles.

One game I've been sinking (ha!) a lot of time into recently is Luftrausers, something I played at Rezzed in March and have been wanting on my Vita ever since. It's the perfect system for such an addictive short burst scorechaser. I say 'short burst'; to be honest, I've found it very hard to peel myself off it once I've started. There's something intoxicating about its simple risk/reward systems so for example, shooting kills enemies. Shooting enemies gives you combo multipliers. Combo multipliers give you higher scores. But shooting also stops your ship from repairing itself so do you keep shooting for combos and risk dying? Or do you stop shooting and sacrifice your combos? Of course, you have to try and do both but there's a knife edge tension to the dogfighting thanks to this one tiny element. And with the ship customisation there's even more risk/reward dynamics on top. It's a very tight little game and one of my favourites on the Vita so far.

@Dix: I'd love to co-op Divinity with you but I think the time difference and our availability could really hobble any momentum we pick up, and that'd be a shame. What's your timezone again Dix? EST/EDT? That means weekends would only really be feasible: http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/.....;sln=15-24

I would have died in the cabin after banging my head; there's no British pluck or derring-do here. The way she shrugged off the bear trap was just remarkable though.

I'm not sure what to make of Roth's Yorkshire accent. It sounds like it's coming and going at times which leads me to believe he isn't a True Yorkshire Man.