Back from a long vacation and ready to rumble!

I'm back! Actually, I was back for over a week now. Unfortunately, I had caught a cold on the way back from my travel and that put me out for another week.

But fear not, I've recorded Stage 9 for the project and will begin working on it this week.

In the mean time, I'd like to report my progress with my collection of games. This year has started off pretty good for my gaming accomplishments. Here's a list of games that I've been able to complete so far. Again, note that I generally stay away from multiplayer modes of most games and concentrate entirely on single player mode for most games.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
Assassin's Creed: Revelations
Gravity Rush
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
Uncharted: Golden Abyss

I'm a fan of G1 transformers as I grew up with it and the two games by High-noon have generally been very good games. The only issue I have with the second game is that it felt shorter compared to the first one. This might be because you only get one playable character for each chapter unlike the first which let you choose one out of the three available in each chapter. Despite that, I love the subtle references to the G1 universe as well as some references to the comic book series.

Revelations was a short game but I still enjoyed it. There wasn't much progress in terms on the story which was kind of disappointing.

I had a lot of fun with Gravity Rush. It used the vita's controls very well and I had fun exploring the world in it. I just wish the story actually finished. There's still a lot that is not explained and they're definitely going to need to tie up all those loose ends in the sequel...

Liberation was a game I actually didn't really enjoy playing very much. The economic game was an interesting way of making money but there's only one place you can access it. This made money making very arduous. I actually ended up finishing the entire game with just the default equipment. As for the story, I was disappointed with it as it didn't really explain anything on who was using the Animus and what that person is thinking. Maybe it will get revealed in a sequel or something but I wish they had some reveal within the game. Thankfully, I wasn't plagued with too many glitches though.

Golden abyss was a fun game. It was definitely an uncharted game and they generally did a good job with implementing the vita controls. I did hate one thing in the game which was the swipe boss battles. There's only two in the game but the last one in the game especially would sometimes register a correct swipe as wrong. Despite that, I did enjoy finding all the treasures and doing the simple puzzles in the game.

I have one function I hope that never gets used in any other vita games. It was used in Liberation and Golden abyss. The stupid "point the camera towards a bright light" to reveal the hidden writing in the game. Golden abyss thankfully did it just once, although you'd have to repeat it each time you play that chapter (even though all other puzzles can be skipped once solved). Liberation had several and it was extremely annoying. Sometimes I'd be playing it in a place where there is no bright light. On other times, even when i have the camera pointed directly at a light source, it wouldn't detect it. If there's a game that has a puzzle which needs a light source to reveal hidden messages, I hope the light source is already provided in the game and you just need to move the object using the vita's motion sensor or touch screens.

I'm quite happy that I've been able to finish 5 games with only 2 months into this year. It's a big accomplishment for myself as I tend to have a hard time finishing even 1 game each month. I'm currently working on Metal Gear Rising as my next game to complete. I've already finish one play through on normal and trying to get all the collectibles right now. The hard part is probably getting S rank on everything however. We'll see how far I can get...