Exact same thing for me with Vanquish. I played whatever part of the game the demo was from, decided it was technically very qualified, and it all handled rather sharply. But I still didn't feel interested to play it.

Do our brains only have so much room for "X" amount of new shooty games that don't have some major draw right up front (like the characters in The Last of Us)?

Random comment I have to make after going from TLoU to Uncharted 2: The Uncharted series kind of seems downright silly after the [___blank_____words________epic__mushrooms_______________horses_______things____etc.] of The Last of Us. Maybe I've spread out my play segments too much, but 8 chapters into Uncharted 2 and I don't really love it yet. But Drake's Fortune had me hooked in two chapters. It honestly probably is that I've spread out when I've played too far. But also: man, the amount you have to shoot people in Uncharted for them to die is beyond ridiculous. Something I also never fully realized until TLoU. This whole ludo-narrative thing too ... it becomes more and more in my face. Drake and Chloe jumped out of a building which was literally toppling over, smashing through the windows of an adjacent building, and immediately Drake chuckled and said how fun it was. Chloe scoffed, thankfully. He had just murdered at least 150 or more people in the last hour. And he jumped out of a falling building after a helicopter was shooting missiles at him and he laughed about it. Drake really is an asshole. Likable, but an asshole.

One more note, only peripherally game-related. The PS3 4.46 system software released this morning has a nice feature that people have probably wanted since trophies were introduced:

"You can now select whether to show a notification when you earn a trophy while playing a game. You can adjust the setting under [Settings] > [System Settings] > [Trophy Notifications]."

That's nice, for anyone who doesn't mind getting messages from friends but doesn't want trophies interrupting their game. A great feature for when you want to play, say, Shadow of the Colossus.

My problem with Vanquish was that the demo was more enjoyable than the full game. The full game was just the same weapons, the same enemies, the same scenarios and the same boss over and over again. I mean, okay, there were a few sections that were different, like the dark tunnel crawl, the city rail platforms, the forest/park bits, and there were a few other bosses, but generally speaking it had very few other tricks up its sleeve. Hell, the demo boss you fight two or three times over the course of the game. Yaaawn. At first, I thought all the gruff voiceovers, 'tude, cigarette smoking, whiskey references and up-skirt shots were just silly and OTT and ironic in a macho-dudebro-Shootington-McChristmas sort of way but as I played more it dawned on me that perhaps it wasn't being ironic; perhaps this was it. By the end I had no real idea what was going on and all the drama began to grate, as did the gameplay. The demo didn't grate.

As for games I'm currently playing: Natural Selection 2 again, I've installed Sacrifice which I intend on starting soon as well as The Walking Dead. On my Nexus I've been playing Organ Trail which is fun having my friends and girlfriend as fellow survivors. Oh, I completed The Swapper as well which was brilliant. It makes me want to play Vessel again.

I could never get into Sacrifice. Sold it years ago

In other news, The Walking Dead: 400 Days is tantalizing but painfully short. I completed it in less than 90 minutes, so it wasn't even the length of one episode from the first season. Combined with each character's story being about 15 minutes long it actually feels shorter than it is. All the characters come together in the end for reasons yet to be explored. None of them cross paths directly, and only a couple do unbeknownst at the time. It ends with them being offered asylum in some unknown place; this will obviously be our introduction to the second season proper; I just hope dearly that they again create a story almost entirely outside of the comic and TV series - in other words, I really hope season two has nothing to do with Woodbury, since that place is awful, and Season 3 of the show was pretty much total rubbish.

In more other news, The Walking Dead: 400 Days was released today (on PSN, in North America only) with less than a day's warning and even less fanfare. It's not much, even for only $5, but I'm sure once season two is upon us this little origins story, so to speak, will feel a bit more justified. It's rolling out across other platforms and continents over the next ten days or so.

Good luck with that Botch! I started playing on Classic (no Ironman because I don't trust single saves) and eventually threw the towel in even though I was doing well. The heightened difficulty just highlighted how quirky the game's streamlined systems are (like the cover system and chance to hit percentages) and the baffling omissions from the original X-COM. I was going to respond to your previous post but hesitated because my reaction to XCOM was the total opposite (I've got a part-baked article in my drafts outlining most of my misgivings about it). I'm glad you mentioned not being able to get the drop on enemies because that is easily one of the biggest gripes for me too. Anyway, yeah, it's not something I intend on returning to unfortunately. I enjoyed it for a while but the niggles swelled with the difficulty. OpenXcom however, is very much on the cards seeing as it tweaks, polishes, and fixes up the original.

I managed to install my solid state drive; migrating data across drives, backing up and imaging is a pain in the arse.

I started playing Teleglitch again which is still great and still unbelievably difficult. Guns of Icarus, Sonic
Racing and Reus have still got my attention.