Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D

I've started this, and got through the first three-day cycle.  I will write more when I have worked out how the game works better, but for now let's just say it's excellent.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: completed!

I'd love to say that I became sufficiently focussed to ignore the chaff and power to the end of the story, but the reality is that I ran out of other things to do - I completed the Cristina flashbacks, and the courtesan missions, and the thief missions, and there were no more assassination contracts unlocked.  Once I reclaimed the Apple of Eden, it was pretty straightforward to the ending, with a bit of a rubbish gameplay element where you were forced to use the apple to defeat enemies rather than using the sword which had sufficed throughout the game.  I could never quite work out what the apple was meant to do - it was apparently meant to turn enemies on each other, but at times it actually killed people next to me and at other times it didn't.  There were points where there was one enemy remaining, cowering before me, but I couldn't progress until he was dead.  The apple didn't seem to do anything, I couldn't select any other weapon to use.  Eventually after enough blasts and running away and coming back, I was allowed onwards.

That wasn't the weakest bit of the endgame though.  You become Desmond and have to get the Apple from its plinth, which means navigating a timed platform bit around the room that it's held in.  Which would be fine, if the game would actually go where you told it to.  I fell down countless times because Desmond hadn't grabbed a platform he was jumping to.  Not fun.

Anyway, story over, endless credits sat through.  Was that it?  Of course not; a couple of new assassination contracts opened up, and I had collected 99 of 101 flags.  I spent a couple of hours running around the world tidying that up.  I'm not going to attempt 100% synchronisation on all the missions though - where you have to complete the mission in accordance with an additional rule (like not killing anyone, doing it in a strict time limit, not being detected) - I think that way madness lies.

So, all done.  What next?

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: getting distracted

Look at this.

Look at it.  Every single one of those icons is something screaming "come and get me, interact, get distracted!".  This is why I have made no progress in the story for the past week, instead running around liberating Borgia towers, finding loot stashes, and recruiting assassins with weird-looking eyes.

I have sent my group out on missions, I have found people who have been ill-treated by the Borgia, I have followed courtesans around the streets.  I have taken part in massive battles, I have destroyed war machines including a handy boat cannon thing.

But more than anything I've just spent time running around and admiring the world, trying to climb towers and exploring.  I know my way around now - previously I thought it was a bit odd to have just one city compared to the multiple locations of previous games, but this way it feels much more of a solid place.  The draw distance helps with that.

Borderlands: leaving Fyrestone

It feels as if we have made a lot of progress.  We had to find Sledge, who wasn't at the top of a snowy mountain unfortunately.  He wasn't a very nice person, and we had to fight our way through a long cave to get to him, but we worked well as a team - eventually - to bring him down.  Sure, there was a bit of an issue at first when everyone sad they were ready, I opened the door and ran through, and then looked around to see John faffing around with his gun selection and Kieron looking in the opposite direction.

When we encounter one of these big boss fights, the temptation is just to split up and all use specialisms.  Kieron does love to go beserk.  Where the battle against Sledge worked well was that the limited size of the arena meant we couldn't do that, so I threw down my turret near to where John was and helped to heal him while he was shooting Sledge in the back and I was throwing grenades at him.  His health went down pretty quickly.

We also cleared off all the other side missions from the Arid Badlands, including the Circle of Death.  I have no idea what happened there - I died after two rounds (with John desperately trying to heal me but to no avail), and everything seemed to reset.  We left the arena, John faffed around with his gun selection for another four hours, then we went back in - and then after killing three skags it told us we had won.

So, we're now in Dahl Headland.  We've invaded Lucky's compound to rescue him and powered up the fast travel network - but we've not been much further than that.  It seems a bit scary out there.

Blok Drop U: completed!

Not the most taxing game, I managed to finish this in about thirty minutes.  The idea is that you start with a screen full of blocks and you tap on the grey ones to get rid of them, with the aim of getting the single red block to rest on a stable surface.

Unfortunately the red block is a bit bouncy, so dropping it from such a height probably won't work.  Instead, by getting rid of some of the blocks and causing the rest to collapse in an organised manner, you need to get the red block to rest quite gently.

That's the idea, at least.  The problem is that it just feels a bit too random as to whether things will happen in the way you expect, which is a fatal flaw in a puzzle game.  On some levels I ended up doing the exact same thing a few times and eventually got past the level when the red block happened to bounce in the way I intended.  At other times I carried out a very controlled descent and the game still didn't let me complete the level - this is blatantly safe:

Anyway, half an hour later, and it's all complete.  i can't see myself going back to it; I'm just glad I got it for roughly 40p.

Another World: completed!

I continued to play this on the 3DS for convenience.  I was quite close to the end, it seems - after fighting my way past a group of guards, assisted by releasing animals that attacked them, I was escorted to a big tank thing which was then repeatedly attacked, and I had to prod at various buttons to fire my escape pod into a public bath. 

I then ran away from the shooters, following my friend, before falling down a hole and being saved by an enemy.  Why he didn't let me drop I have no idea.  He kicked me over and was about to kill me when buddy intervened, leading to a big fist fight.  I crawled over to the control panel ... very slowly ... then killed the baddie as he walked towards me.

I teleported up through the ceiling, and was initially worried by the big bird thing until I realised it was the way out.

Hooray!