[caption id=“attachment_7750” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Poker Night 2[/caption]

Poker Night 2 (8 hrs) - I find Poker Night 2 to be a bit harder than the original. Not sure if they upped the AI or changed anything about it, but I find it a lot harder to win Texas Hold ‘Em in PN2. Luckily, this game also includes Omaha Hold ‘Em and I have been doing a lot better with that game. While I enjoy Samson, I find the Banter to be a little lacking compared to the original. I think the developers did a better job of defining the player’s relationships with each other in the previous game and that led to somewhat better banter. Still, it’s fun to play Poker without worrying about real money and it’s a lot of fun so I’ll probably put some more time into the game later in the year.

First of all, a quick reminder that my Game of the Year doesn’t necessarily have to come out in 2012.  Because I don’t have the time to dedicate to video games, the price premium of buying it new rarely makes sense to me.  So my Game of the Year will be my favorite game that I played in 2012.

As I compiled my list I realized that I played a lot less games in 2012.  I may not have played a lot less hours (I haven’t bothered comparing the totals with 2011), but I definitely had a lot less variety.  A lot of that has to do with the birth of my daughter this year.  Only as the year has gone on have I been able to carve out some time here and there to play story-based games.  In addition, I resumed pursuing my master’s degree in the fall, right around the time I was able to have a bit more time to myself.  I didn’t have any gameplay at all in March, September or October.

[caption id=“attachment_5805” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Saint’s Row The Third: The Ho Boat[/caption]

Saint’s Row the Third (14 hrs):  I got a lot of video games for my birthday and Christmas (mostly on Steam).  So I wanted to finish up the last narrative game I had started before playing those games.  I played a few missions in Saint’s Row The Third.  As I had surmised before, the loose narrative based mostly on archetypes and stereotypes made it extremely easy to jump in.  It wasn’t like in Mass Effect or Final Fantasy 10 where I couldn’t remember why I should be caring about these characters.  The missions with the VTOL planes (STAG missions) were pretty hard.