Injustice, Tomb Raider and Organ Trail

It’s been tough getting game time in these last two weeks. I must have underestimated how busy I would be during the summer. Most of my time has been sucked up playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which as most know is basically unbeatable. But I did finish a game this week at least and made some progress.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Cost: $39.99

Status: Completed

Time to beat: 5 hours and 25 minutes

Shame how Deathstroke just turned into the character for noobs.

Ricardo already posted a review on the site about Injustice, but I had a chance to play through it on my own. What a dumb, but fun, game. Besides the ho-hum character design, this is exactly what I wanted out of a superhero fighting game. Created by NetherRealm studios, the game is similar to the studio’s previous fighting game, Mortal Kombat, but differentiates itself enough to make the fighting mechanics interesting. What am I talking about? I never really play fighting games, but the DC Comics hook and a little peer pressure got me into playing this game.

One of the best parts of the game are the transitional stages. When a player throws a fighter against a wall, they sometimes will break through into another part of the stage in an absolutely ridiculous animation. It’s a joy to watch as much as finding out each character’s special attack, which are arguably crazier than the screen transitions. Actually, pretty much all of the game is off the wall, when considering that the main story arc is about two different dimensions and DC favorites jumping back and forth between them. It’s silly, but completely entertain and a blast to play.

I turned out to be partial to fast characters, like Flash and Nightwing, while still enjoying a few others such as Ares. Unfortunately, I could never win an online game, because people are just too good at fighting games. There is a lot of theory that I simply don’t know and my twitch reaction time isn’t always the best. Still I had fun with the single player and I could stomp down a few friends with a bit of effort. Well worth the price I paid for the game and for anyone who is either a fighting game or DC Comics fan.

Tomb Raider

Cost: $39.99

Status: Incomplete

Time played: 8 hours and 25 minutes

Lara reacts with grief after killing a man, but 15 minutes later, she kills a dozen more.

One of the biggest games to be released this year was Lara Croft’s return adventure. It’s a gritty reboot, of course. I forgot that it was rated M until the first time Lara was violently impaled by a innocent branch. This game holds no punches and could almost be considered a bit torturous to the heroine. She gets her payback though, with out-of-place execution moves that would be nearly impossible to learn within eight hours of being on an island. At least they look cool!

The game is basically Batman: Arkham City mixed with Uncharted, which is not a knock to the game at all. It plays to the idea that every new item or weapon you get will unlock a previous area that was formerly inaccessible. It’s fun, and the game plays best when there is no combat involved. It’s not that combat is bad, it’s just dry when compared to how much fun exploring and collecting is. Maybe I want a game that plays like a modern Donkey Kong 64.

Going to continue plowing through it. My goal is to get this game done this week.

Organ Trail

Cost: ~$5 Android Humble Bundle 6

Status: Incomplete

Time played: 1 hours and 10 minutes

Name them after your friends for twice the fun!

Organ Trail is simply Oregon Trail with zombies. You make a team of four ragtag survivors and attempt to travel to the other side of the country. Along the way, your station wagon gets attacked by zombies and some of your survivors can be bit. At some of the stops there is an option to kill an infected survivor in hopes of protecting the rest of the team. It really isn’t that much different from, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s still fun to play and I hope to get into it more. It also just dawned on me that this is kind of a rogue-like, which is a genre I have been missing on my phone for a while. Hope to put much more time into this in the coming weeks. If you’re interested, it might still be on sale on humblebundle.com and is playable on PC and Mac as well as Android.

Added to backlog:

Android Humble Bundle 6

The Witcher 2

Theme Hospital

About the Author

Ethan Having long been an avid gamer, Ethan found his niche in the PC gaming market, while still occasionally dabbling in the medium that got him into gaming, consoles. Usually, he finds time to play his Xbox 360 and occasionally will dust of his Wii for a bit to play with friends and family when he isn’t found locked in his room playing shooters and strategy games. Follow him on Twitter: @ethanhawkes