I’ve been playing so many games over the course of the last few weeks that I really haven’t felt like (nor had any particularly strong inspirations for) writing. This makes me feel like a bad person. So, instead of some targeted design or critical piece, I’m just going to write about some of my favorite moments from the games I’m currently playing. Well. Four of them anyway. I play a lot of games at once.

Borderlands
Going through Borderlands with my friend Mike and the ever-fantastic Simon Ferrari was a very hectic experience. It was clear to all of us that this scenario is the way to best enjoy the game, but at some point the gameplay was incredibly trying and hollow. The three of us were running around just doing dirt-simple and quick quests that took us from very poorly-organized waypoint to waypoint.

And then we met this fella:

Skagzilla is simply a ginormous version of the Skag enemies that overpopulate the entire first third of Borderlands. This guy was enormous, had an abundance of health (too much, in fact, as this segment did get long in the tooth), and required the constant attention of all three of us. The crazed communication over our Xbox Live headsets, however, was both crazy and hilarious as we scramble to find ways to hurt Skagzilla while we avoided his incredibly painful attacks. I kept switching between three different guns of wildly different uses just to feel like I was trying new strategies to kill this guy faster. Skagzilla’s health was depleting so slowly, in fact, that I started getting a bit bored. I turned my attention to observing the actions of my co-op buddies; Simon and Mike were frantically running and jumping around this arena while frantically trying to coordinate via headset. I ended up just chilling in the corner of the arena for about two minutes, taking pictures of the screen with my iPhone and enjoying their interactions. I’m a fantastic co-op buddy.

Half-Minute Hero
After trading in my PSP and some other games to get my long-desired PSP Go, I have found a wealth of games on PSN to play. One of which is XSEED’s Half-Minute Hero, a game which I excitedly read about a couple of weeks ago and was incredibly interested to see its concept in action.

The game is really based on thirty-seconds of gameplay for a given level and there is a timer constantly displayed on the screen reminding players of this fact. If it hits 0.00, then it’s game over. I was running through one of the earlier levels in the game that required me to repair a bridge before I could get to that level’s boss and in constant fear of this timer hitting zero. I tried to balance the frantic pace of leveling up, earning money, getting an item I wanted, and then securing a hammer for one of the level’s characters so this guy could repair the bridge and I could complete the level. I kept running out of time, though. On my fourth try and with only four seconds left on my timer as I dashed into a village with almost no health in order to compose myself and strategize the hell out of this level, I noticed a statue in the village that I hadn’t interacted with up to that point. Turns out, this statue allows me to punt the timer back to the thirty second mark (for a fee). I did that, took some time to level my character up and earn some money so I could get all of the items in that level, and then killed the level boss.

The game’s summary for that level encapsulated the entire experience perfectly:

The path closed off by the evil lord… Trent gave the carpenter his hammer and the bridge was reconstructed. The evil lord was then soundly defeated! He actually fixed a bridge with one hammer. He’s much more amazing than the evil lord.

Forza Motorsport 3
Pretty much everything.

Specifically, I was playing my first multiplayer race with the aforementioned Mike a few guys from Shacknews on my most-hated of race tracks: Laguna Seca. I started out the race in the first grid position and was quickly overtaken by all but one of the other four racers in the race. The fifth-place racer decided to try and overtake me just as I was preparing to drive into a turn, so I was maneuvering to the outside lane in order to aim myself for an easy inside lane transition into the corner, and I, accidentally, side-swiped the fifth-place racer just as he was overtaking me. I was completely amazed. I turned on my rear-view viewing mode and watched as he did a series of spins into the sand; I laughed maniacally over the headset as he cursed at me.

And just as I switched out of my rear-view mode, I realized I was driving straight into a wall. It damaged my engine and I had no chance to beat anyone the rest of the race.

Torchlight
Racing games and hack-and-slash games are two game genres I get unconditionally absorbed by. Torchlight is game made by parts of the same team that worked on the ill-fated Mythos — one of the only MMOs that I ever really liked, even in its early alpha/beta stages. Torchlight is a very intentionally-designed clone of Diablo. Unlike games like Dungeon Siege and Titan Quest, which share a very similar basic structure of hack-and-slash gameplay based on item collection, Torchlight manages to capture just the right balance of combat, dungeon crawling, story (the lack thereof), and item collection. It absolutely nails it.

My favorite moment of Torchlight, though, was when I realized I could give my pet cat spells. He was already an incredibly useful cat that could take a bunch of vendor trash items back into town and sell them all while I stayed and explored dungeons. When I gave him the ability to summon skeletons and cast ice shards, though, he became a valuable ally who I fought side-by-side with. He’s the Blood to my Vic, except instead of finding women he summons legions of undead to join our dungeon-crawling team.

Video games are rad.