Alan Woke

I just finished Alan Wake. It was really good. Despite that I will now critique it, as my nature demands I do with all things.
     The story kept me coming back to the game eagerly. The game play, however, got to be a touch redundant by the end. This could be because I played the game start-to-finish in about four days, though. The environments were cool and creepy. Unfortunately there were only about 4 different environments to enjoy: Scary Woods, Scary Abandoned Farm-ish Town, Not So Scary Building Interior, and...well...more Scary Woods.
     People who get their hackles up about ambiguous endings will probably (read: definitely) be frustrated by this game. I don't mind ambiguity too much. I'd prefer the writers hold my hand at the end explaining (but not over explaining) exactly what happened, but I can deal with it.
     Replay has become a huge concern for me. Had I bought it instead of renting I would get at least one of the two available DLCs. Beside the DLC I could see myself doing another play of Wake and then (realistically) trying it on hard then losing interest and not finishing it. That's a long way of saying I think the replayability is not so great.
     All of that being said, I really enjoyed Alan Wake and would recommend it to anyone that enjoys horror...and good things.
     I also met up (in game) with a new xbox friend from the Fear the Boot forums. We played a few levels of Lost Colony 2. Good times.

For the sake of posting

I don't know if the trend has become apparent yet, but I am mostly posting about things that happened the day before. So what I blab on about today is usually in the context of what happened yesterday.
     True to form, here's what happened yesterday: Other than spending time at school yesterday I also did a little bit of leg work that I hope will boost my traffic a bit. I submitted myself to some search engines, I posted a link on the Fear the Boot forums, and I added myself to Digg and Stumble. I also tweaked the appearance of Blogsothoth Gaming to make it (hopefully) more user friendly.
     Fear the Boot is my second favorite pod cast. It's all about table-top RPGs (and a little bit more). Even if you're not into tabletop rpgs you could still enjoy the show, assuming you have a love (or at least tolerance) of nerd-stuff. My favorite podcast is Radiolab, an NPR podcast about science-y type stuff. I can't give a better description because words fail to do it justice, but if you listen to podcasts at all I highly recommend it.
     If you don't know what Stumble is than you've never been bored on the internet. Stumble is similar to digg in that it's content is selected and submitted by users with a similar sort of vote system to digg (if you don't know how digg works, ask google). But you install a toolbar, click a button and it brings up a psuedo-random page that can be some of the craziest things. Stumble has led me to some of the funniest things on the interwebs including my favorite flash game ever.
     Uh...anyway, this is supposed to be about games. I played some more Scott Pilgrim yesterday. I am upsettingly close to the end of the game. At least I think I am, I have only Ramona's 7th evil ex to defeat. But I found out something that makes me think it will keep some of it's re-playability. I started up with a different character, just for giggles, and found that the levels seem to change a little based on what character you choose, so maybe that'll be enough to keep me playing for awhile.
     Blood Bowl is making me more angry than it should considering I have yet to play the actual game. I decided yesterday that since the BB tutorial is kind of confusing I should read the manual first. I bought it on Steam, so I right clicked Blood Bowl and hit "Read the manual". It then directs me to the 80+ page rule book for the table-top version! Apparently it is based so closely on the table-top game that they share a rule book. I was not prepared to learn a complex table-top game's entire game system just to play a damn video game! I don't have a problem learning a tome of rules when I'm prepared to do so, but I was caught so off guard by this that I feel like I have to take some time and mentally prepare myself to learn how to play this video game! Am I being dramatic? Probably. But it's my blog, and it's about my innermost thoughts...about video games.
     To conclude, I've been reading a book on my new Kindle called This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities by Jim Rossignol. It's pretty good non-fiction. I'm only about 1/3 through but it seems to be about this guy arguing that video games can be good for people. I'm not writing a particularly stunning book review here, but I recommend checking it out. At very least read a review about it written by someone more verbose on the topic than myself.