Post-Holiday Haul and Activities

This season was very kind to me. Here's what I acquired:

PC: Plants Vs. Zombies GOTY, Bully: Scholarship Edition, NWN2 Platinum (all from the Steam sale)
PS3: Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, God of War III, Prototype, Darksiders, Bayonetta.

I also got the PS3 keyboard. This thing is great. The hunt/peck with the controller and the on-screen keyboard a few times was bad to the point where I nearly resorted to txtspk. Thankfully this little keyboard saves the day. It's costly considering what it is - just a Bluetooth keyboard - but to me it's a worthy accessory. I think the more you use PS Home or send console-mail the better it is. I don't go to Home much but I do like to send the occasional lengthy console message...

All that aside, the only games I've been tooling around with over the last few weeks have been Ghostbusters and PvZ (until last night when I fired up Assassin's Creed). GB is all about acquiring trophies. I had a vague idea of what needed to be done for a handful of them and those few came easy. I was working on some game-spanning activities (collecting all the cursed items, drinking from all the water fountains) when I picked up Plants Vs Zombies for about $5.

Plants Vs. Zombies
My cursory complaint with PvZ is that they tie you to the story-based "adventure mode" to unlock other game play modes. Having already been familiar with the PvZ game I wanted to see what else the title had to offer but sadly discovered they want you to toil through level after level of "adventure mode" in order to slowly reveal mini-games. I have yet to unlock anything in "puzzle mode" and I only have three out of twenty mini-games available. Still, it's a casual/puzzle game to begin with so I shouldn't really be too upset with it. I do not like the first mini-game you unlock where the zombies shoot back. Zombie bowling is fun, as is the slot machine mini-game.

In bowling you are supplied endless Wall-Nuts to roll at the oncoming horde. Some of these explode on contact, though mostly they will bounce among the enemies like a pinball, racking up precious coins you use to buy upgrades. The slot machine game is a crap shoot on what defenses you will have. You use Sun power to activate the slots then pull the handle. You may get 1 or 3 of any number of defenses, upgrades or more sun power. It gets frantic when you are lacking defenses and the zombies are closing in.

Assassin's Creed
I started Assassin's Creed last night. I had already heard it had some screwy controls and I was prepared. At one point I was running from a guard and went to climb up a building to escape. I scrambled upward, dodged right, ran around a tower and climbed upward some more. The next thing I knew I was sailing through the air to my death. The game reloaded faster than I could utter a "what the f..." and I continued on. Again I found myself being pursued by the law and attempted to escape by climbing to safety. I found Altair grabbing on to some random parts of the building and just sitting there. The guards were hacking apart his kidneys but the deadly assassin was dangling like a dumb ape from an awning.

Then it hit me - I've experienced this kind of bullshit control before: inFAMOUS. Cole did the same stupid things. Once I equated AC to InFAMOUS I was in a better place.