…Darksiders.

Honestly, I was surprised at the number of votes for Darksiders, because I’ve heard so little praise for the game. It was a Zelda rip-off, the hack-and-slash gets boring (that complaint never made sense to me…it’s hack-and-slash for God’s sake), the story isn’t that great, yadda yadda yadda. But hey, it’s a game I’ve always meant to finish, and since putting up this poll, my Twitter feed has been ablaze with praise for Darksiders.

Good thing I own it for the Xbox 36o, because I’m not turning on my PS3 anytime soon. So if God of War and Enslaved had won, they would have had to wait. And they wouldn’t have waited for Darksiders, as I still have that Mass Effect addiction thing going on.

Speaking of which, that is what I played this weekend, because I didn’t check the poll results until Saturday night. I’m on my second set of recruits, and I’m burning through loyalty missions. The only side missions I’m going to complete are Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival. This time around playing, if I fail any loyalty missions, I fail them. No repeats. Since I’m also not going to mine planets, if I don’t upgrade my ship fully, ah well. A Renegade seems like he would rather get the job done and get it quickly instead of horsing around through space. That and, I don’t want to.

But I fully expect to honor my poll results and shelve my second playthrough of Mass Effect 2 for now. It’s been well over a year since I’ve played Darksiders, so I believe my best bet would be to start over. I don’t think I’ve even made it to the first boss yet. Or maybe I have. Who knows. It’s been that long and I’ve played numerous games since then. I can’t remember what distracted me from playing Darksiders in the first place; it could have been either Bayonetta, or Final Fantasy XIII, or both. Guess it doesn’t really matter as I’ll be restarting it from the beginning.

So what will I be playing during the week? I have Portal 2 and LEGO Star Wars III for the Xbox and the DS (they’re actually two different games!) slated on the agenda. One game to stress me the hell out and the other(s) to make me laugh. Why do I do this to myself?

FOR SCIENCE!

I try to make weekends the time I play games just for me and not for reviewing, whether it’s for the game or for the strategy guide. I know I’ve discussed my stack of shame at length before, and this is the first year that I’m really making a sizable dent in it. My biggest two to complete this year were Mass Effect and its sequel, and I’ve checked both of those off my list with a bit of force. I recently finished my second playthrough of the first game (something that I’ve never done before), and I’m working my way through all of the ME2 DLC. I really want to play ME2 again with my Renegade Shepard, but my stack of shame is out in the open in the living room, staring at me and making me feel guilty. I technically have plenty of time before needing to play ME2 again, and really, I know I’ll play ME3 with my Paragon character first, so I really do have plenty of time.

The question remains though, if I put off Renegading ME2, what game do I tackle next from my list? None of them really jump out of me (which may be really foretelling), so I’m reaching out to the blogosphere, twitterverse, and facebookia for votes.

Please note that the list in my poll is not complete for several reasons:

• Red Dead Redemption is not listed because that’s going to be my December game (similar to what I did for FFXIII);
• Dragon Age: Origins is not listed because I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about it; and
• None of my DS games are listed because I’m going to Japan in a month and will have oodles of travel time to spend on DS games.

So please help me decide! Or encourage me to keep riding the Mass Effect train! (And while you’re at it, hope that my Portal 2 guide arrives soon so I can start with that and stop avoiding spoilers.)

It’s clear to me that either my poll questions are lousy or no one really has any interest in participating in the polls, because for the last couple of weeks, I’ve had meager responses. And that’s fine. So I’ve decided to make these polls monthly, and this first poll I’m bringing over from my article at Games Are Evil, where I question the necessity of boss fights at all.

Depending on the game, I don’t mind boss fights. In the case of one game I’m playing now, Mass Effect, I really don’t mind them because they are implemented well. The types of boss fights that I hate are those that are giant time sinks. You know, the ones that take several minutes to chip away at their health bars or those that morph into multiple phases with no save points (sometimes, no checkpoints either).

I understand the need for boss fights, but I just don’t think that as a whole they are presented well. There are so many instances where a boss fight makes little sense, and it’s quite obvious the developer needed some padding or they couldn’t think of a better way to spice up the gameplay.

I’m about halfway through Mass Effect, and so far, every boss fight has been my ideal. Bosses come in at specific plot points. They aren’t there for mindless and frustrating leveling up. It actually makes sense why you have to fight them right there and then. And best of all, they don’t take longer than a couple of minutes to defeat.

So strategy guide-loving community, do you love or hate boss fights?

The response to last week’s poll was incredibly underwhelming. I’m so glad I wasn’t waiting for all the responses, because I would have missed out on some great gaming this week. Dragon Age: Origins is the first game in years (really, years) that I have to stop myself from playing. I could easily play this game all night. I have to force myself to stop when it gets to midnight, because I don’t have the luxury of getting up whenever I want to the following day. I’m probably about 8 hours in, and I have to say, the sheer number of sidequests is going to be the death of me. There’s no way I can finish it before Dragon Age II releases next week, but I really want to get these games finished before the end of the year. [Read more…]