Looks like Wednesday is becoming my new update day. Due to the days I work, Monday has been designated “rest day” – coming off four days of work is quite tiring. I feel more perky and talkative on a Wednesday though, I’m more likely to want to do things like type and waffle.
My phone is now 100% Mangoed up, all my apps are up to date and everything is going great. It’s an even better experience than when I first got my WP7. I think having a Windows Phone has helped me be accepted as a beta tester for the new Xbox dashboard, as I got an email confirming I have been accepted this morning. Should be interesting, seeing the new dashboard before most other folk (but not being able to talk about it!).
Batman: Arkham City is done and dusted. I feel I have got all the Achievements I can from it. It’s a great game. It’s definitely more open than the Asylum, and you’re free to go and tackle the numerous side-quests rather than advance the story. Combat is even more varied, more empowering, and a little more fair. When you nail your first triple counter you feel like a God. The Challenges are fun, as are the new addition: Campaigns. These comprise of three varied Combat and Predator maps that you have to tackle in sequence (fail three times and it’s back to Challenge one), with the interesting addition of modifiers. Some make the enemies harder or litter the arena with weapons for the thugs, some give you advantages like regenerating health or powered up gadgets that take down thugs instantly. Going by the hints dropped along the way, there’s undoubtedly going to be a third game – I’m already looking forward to it very much.
Jane and I have started this new game called Dungeon Defenders on Xbox Live Arcade. It’s a mix of real-time combat and tower defence, and also quite addictive. I can see us pouring many an hour into it.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary came out yesterday, and like the good little Halo fanboy I am, I bought it. I finished work too late to play it last night, but I woke up extra early this morning and played the first level in bed. Initial impressions are… not good. It feels so wrong. 10 years of subtle upgrades and tweaks play havoc with the memory. I thought Halo: CE played just like Reach – how wrong I was. It’s nice to go back, but pretty much everything Bungie did with Halo 2, 3, ODST and Reach were improvements to the formula. I played a bit of Anniversary multiplayer (which is basically the Anniversary map pack for Halo: Reach), including my first ever game on Timberland. It seems a quite nice map. It reminded me of Tempest, but with more trees. I also played a game of Firefight on Installation 04. I don’t think it’ll be a favourite of ours. There’s a massive choke-point in the default spawn area which seems counter-intuitive. It’s no Unearthed, that’s for sure.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I’m off to play something. Dungeon Defenders or Halo?