I Played These Games Last Week. What Did You Play? Anything Good? [Game Time]

I didn’t think I’d be playing much of anything new last week, so I went and reinstalled the wonderful DarthMod for Empire Total War and imagined seven days spent conquering the world. Didn’t happen! These games happened instead.

MADDEN 13 – Fun fact: despite my inherent Australianness, I’m actually a massive NFL fan. So I try and play at least some of each year’s Madden. This year’s is…well, it’s getting better. It’s still the “worst” EA Sports game, I think, in that it does the poorest job of recreating the sport it’s representing. The blocking and running games, two of the sport’s fundamentals, are still a mess. But I like the improved player visuals, and connected careers is a feature more games could learn from.

GUILD WARS II – I’m trying. God, I’m trying. But this is still too much of an MMO for me. Too many buttons, too much shit flying around on the screen at once. If I’m ever going to play an MMO it’s going to be Skyrim where the other people are real people, and until that happens, I think I’m just going to have to sit the genre out.

MARK OF THE NINJA – Oh boy. Haven’t been this pleasantly surprised by an XBLA game in a long time. The way it turns stealth – normally something passive – into an aggressive toolset is to be applauded. I’m having a blast with this.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: DIASPORA – If you own a PC, and you like BSG, you have, oh, zero reasons at all to not already be playing this. The crummy menu screens are about the only thing reminding you that this is a free game made by fans, and not something you just had to pay $40 for. The best part? The way it nails the little mushroom fields of explosions when the Galactica and Basestars go at it.