My Week of Vacation: Part One

For the first time in my life, I actually have a week of paid vacation and I have been spending most of it playing video games. I mean what else would I do? Especially when I'm broke.

Anyway, this sweet vacation has been full of cool toys and games for me to check out as I spend my days watching Batman: The Animated Series, eating finger foods and wearing my comfy clothes.

On my list of games to check out this week are:

World of Goo: This wiiware title put to use your bridge building skills and knowledge for the laws of physics as you use little balls of goo to build structures to bring the balls over to the pipe on the other side of the stage. Great game so far and a well worth the 1,500 Wii points.

Secret of Mana (Virtual Console): Yes, I know I bought this game already for the Super Nintendo, but I haven't got the actually console to play it on and since Nintendo released it on the VC this week, I couldn't help but use the extra 800 Wii points I had to download it. Final Fantasy fans will love this series and I personality think it is one of the best RPGs out there.

Lego Batman: If everyone doesn't know already that I am a huge Batman fan, then allow me to throw this out there now... I love the Dark Knight. I have loved Batman since I discovered the Adam West version on old reruns when I was a kid and then the whole love for the Batman was solidified when I saw the Tim Burton movies.

This cute lego version of the dark knight's adventure is much like the lego Star Wars games but with less freaks in it. The humor of the previous lego games is in there too, but there is still the serious tone of the Batman comics mixed in as well. I personally can't wait to get to the villain stages so I can play as Harley Quinn or Poison Ivy.

Hellgate London: I know this title was released last year, but I got a new toy to play with for 30 days that finally allowed me to run a hardware heavy game like this: Area 51 Alienware Desktop.

Yep, the nice people at Alienware have set me up with one of their sweet gaming rigs for the next 30 days in order to review it for the Pulse Niagara. Being that my PC gaming collection stinks, they sent along Hellgate London and Call of Duty 4, so I could see how the Area 51 rig handles the big games.

So far, Hellgate reminds me a lot of Diablo but more in a 3D world. Characters give you quests in exchange for loot or gold and you plow through the post-hell stricken world of London killing monsters in search of loot and new missions. Character creation is pretty limited but the controls are easy to handle.

Infinite Undiscovery: New jrpg from SquareEnix on the Xbox 360 and surprisingly its a great and different game so far. The main character isn't the same bruiting emo guy as most rpgs and the combat system is somewhat like Final Fantasy XII. Lots of promise for this game.

I have a few others I'm yet to crack into yet, but I still have 4 more days to go.

More to come on:
Mario Super Sluggers
Dead Space
Crash: Mind over Mutant
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
Buzz Quiz TV
Civilization IV: Colonization
Igor
Mercanaries 2
Soul Calibur IV
Too Human
Chocobo Dungeon

Also I have a few products I have to review as well. Look for part two of vacation week for information of those.