It’s Monday morning and there’s not enough coffee in this office to fill my need.

I hope everyone had a most enjoyable weekend. I had the pleasure of painting our bedroom with the wife so you know I had a great time. Besides those most excellent 8-10 hours, I did manage to get in quite a bit of gaming this weekend (huzzah!) so I figured I share my time with you fine people. *Minor spoilers to be expected*

Games played:

FFX HD

I continued my journey through Spira this weekend, making it past the Macalania Temple and on to Bevelle. I suffered my first “Game Over” screen trying to defeat the Guardian Wyrm of Bevelle Evrae, but managed to be successful on the second try. I won’t go into too much detail as I don’t want to spoil anything for people playing along with the Backloggers Anonymous crew but I will say that the Bevelle Temple was the low point of the game so far for me. I’ve enjoyed the previous temples as it adds a puzzle element to the gameplay but the Bevelle Temple is more frustrating than puzzling. The frustration stems from navigating the temple, which is both dodgy and confusing. You have to rely upon directional arrows on the floor by pressing “X” at the appropriate time to maneuver the platform you travel upon. The problem is that these arrow locations change direction as you approach so you are required to time your button press to concur with the direction you want travel in.  I found the controls here to be flimsy at best and found myself covering the same ground many times while I attempted to catch the direction I wanted to go in.

Bevelle Temple - you're wrecking my head!

Other than this however, I’m still very much enjoying the game. I feel as though the difficulty has stepped up somewhat so I’m looking forward to facing tougher challenges ahead. I’m staying away from guides so I’m not sure how much is left but I’m guessing I’ve another 10+ hours to go.

Stealth Inc.

First of all, let me say that I highly recommend PS Plus subscribers to download Stealth Inc. if it’s still available in the Instant Game Collection. The game is massively entertaining but at the same time proves extremely challenging at places. I die……… a lot, but the games quick restart ensures I avoid any real feeling of frustration. Stealth Inc. does a great job in forcing you to fully plan each move and punishes you harshly for every mistake. The games great success however is that it never feels cheap, just challenging. I have, many times, felt a great sense of accomplishment when I figured out how to complete a level which is only truly obtainable if you’re failing a lot in advance. At present, I’m on level 6-3 and am officially stuck but I’ll continue to work through it to try and complete.

Age of Empires II HD

And so onto my second game remake of the weekend. I downloaded this HD remaster of Age of Empires II some time back but never got around to installing it. Anyway, I fired it up yesterday and was happy to discover that everything I remember from my previous experience with AoE II remains intact. I played one standard game as the Celts and won using my token cheap method of building a Wonder. Let me say that while I was massively into the initial release of AoE II, literally putting 100’s of hours into it, I was somewhat expecting my enjoyment level to decrease due to playing Civ V since. I’m trying to think which game style I rather, but I think the games are different enough to enjoy both.

Wishlist:

Age of Mythology

This just arrived onto Steam and therefore landed directly in my wishlist. I’ve never played an Age of Mythology game before but look forward to experiencing it once I see a price drop. With Steam nowadays, I can’t see the reason for buying this a full price ($40) but will dutifully pounce when it hits a sale.

And that’s it folks. I do hope that everyone has a relaxing, trouble free week, full of sunshine and good food. Stay happy mo chairde.

Later