The Christmas break is over and regular service (having to go to work, cooking your own food, washing your own dishes etc.) has now resumed. Boo! On the bright side, it does mean that I’m back home, back online and back to my regular gaming schedule (which is essentially, all the time I’m not working).
I finally got hold of my Pro Drums for Rock Band 3. Marie had ordered them long before Christmas but the snow conspired to deny me my present. She got a message from our office manager that they’d been delivered to work on Christmas Eve (after we’d both left). Anyway, I have them now and they are awesome. Ridiculously awesome. The cymbals add an amazing level of extra depth to the gameplay. I did have an issue with one of the cymbals double-hitting, but I think I fixed it. I’ll try to do a full review later (and a walkthrough of how to fix a double-hitting cymbal) soon, perhaps this weekend if I’m disciplined enough!
Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the first of my new games of the year. It’s predecessor, with its spectacular level design, beautiful graphics and razor-sharp controls is probably within my top ten games of all time. Only a few hours in and SMG2 is already working its magic on me. It doesn’t perhaps produce quite the same feeling of fresh, newness that the original did, but it’s lost none of its polish nor that wide-eyed excitement and desire to explore you experience every time you load up a new level.
I think most of my time this week has been spent playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. I was a bit ill late last week, so I had quite a vegetative weekend sat in front of my TV not doing much else. I want to do a big, proper review once I get it finished but it’s fair to say that it is an excellent game. It takes the improvements AC2 made over AC1, refines them yet further and then just gives you more. More, more, more. Within a few hours of play, your world map is chock-full of stuff to do, it’s amazing. It might also surprise you to know that I’ve been playing a lot of the newly added multiplayer mode and it is also fantastic. If you’ve got AC: Brotherhood and have only stuck to the singleplayer thus far (I know a lot of people were quite sniffy when Ubisoft announced there would be a multiplayer mode), I urge you to try it. It’s unlike any multiplayer game I’ve ever played. Once you understand the mechanics and get into the game flow, it really is very addictive!
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a regular fixture in my 360’s disc tray so regardless of what else I play, I’ll nearly always sneak on for a few games most evenings with my Xbox Live chums. Vietnam is a fantastic add-on which manages to feel quite different to vanilla BFBC2 but be just as good. The main problem is getting a decent game of Rush. In the event we get all the EGers on one side, we’re normally so effective with our communication and tactics that if we absolutely hammer the opposing team whilst, for example, attacking, we hardly ever get to play the defence as everyone will have quit. Very frustrating!
I picked up Carcassonne on XBLA in the Christmas deals and gave that a few goes against the AI the other day. It seems fun, not as good as Settlers of Catan of course, but it does benefit from not having cards, therefore local multiplayer is possible. I’ve got a bit of a board game thing going on at the moment (I’m waiting for my copy of Civilization: The Board Game to arrive at the moment), so Carcassonne is a nice addition to the arsenal.