So, Sony got hacked, and I got free games out of it! I chose Little Big Planet and Infamous of the choices available. I'm very pleased with my choices, both of them seem really awesome. I felt like a kid again sitting here all day and plowing through Infamous for like 6 hours. I die an awful lot, but I keep enjoying it. Like any game, it got even more fun when I gained the ability to grind rails (you have this ability from the start in Mia's Happy Day, just to maximize the fun). I only played Little Big Planet for two or three levels so far, but it's really impressive. I just want to keep cranking on Infamous! Instead of working!
In other games-I-am-playing news, I finished Lego Batman 100%! Fun like Lego games are. I also joined
Goozex (that's a referral link, just in case anybody joins! I would love some freebies). It's a game trading site, basically like swapping games with your friends, except for a couple differences: it costs $1.99 to get each game, and you don't trade one-to-one. Instead, you list games you have, people request them, and you earn points (more for better/newer games) when they say they've received it. Then you use those points to request games from other people. It's a good system, with a bunch of protections against bad traders, and so far I have disposed of about 20 of my games, and received 2, with 2 more in the mail. Because you list all the games you're interested in, and it matches up what it can based on who is offering what and how many points you have, I managed to end up with two Metroid games (Prime 3 and Other M - from 2 minutes of testing out each, Other M seems infinitely superior! But alas, I must play in order) as my first two games. That's a little lame, but I am excited to be soon receiving Heavy Rain and Madworld.
It's been
years since I played significant amounts of non-WoW games, so this is kinda special and new to have this ongoing source of new games, and it's really firing up my game design organs. Every game I play fills me with ideas to rip off, and I can already see dozens in just the little bits I've played of these. As much as I like to joke about "doing research", the truth is that playing lots of different games really is great for me, and not at all a waste of time. Sure, it becomes a waste of time when I keep plugging away at every game for hours and hours until I finish them, but that's the part of the game-playing that's for fun. The other part, the first few hours with each game, is real honest-to-goodness quality research. It's as useful to see stuff I like and want to steal as it is to see terrible things I should avoid. Sometimes, on moonlit nights, I even see things that inspire me to have my own semi-related original idea rather than just stealing!
In other news, Mia's Happy Day is really-super-almost done, and I have something else I'm doing that I will discuss later!