Games that I can't stop playing & games that are just okay

It's been so long since the last post that I actually had to go and look at my GameFly e-mails to see what games I've had lately (Little King's Story, Beatles Rock Band, Punch Out!!, and Oblivion Game of the Year Edition). There's also been more Shadow Complex than I care to admit. That, Oblivion, and Burnout Paradise are games I keep coming back to. We have one of those unhealthy relationships where we know we're bad for each other but we keep coming back. What's that called? I googled it but couldn't think of the right search terms. Also, Google now thinks I'm headed for a divorce. Great.

So the "Game of the Year Edition" part of Oblivion is important. It seemed to be a cheaper route to getting the expansion content (Shivering Isles) that's still pretty expensive for some reason. I've played the crap out of the original game. I saw a 59 hour save for my main character. I think my secondary character has several hours invested too. And then I started a new one so I could try my hand at archery. After I figured out that the new content lives on disc two and gets installed to your hard drive I was able to send the discs back and use my own copy for the main game. Marginally legal but hey, lets run with it.

The Shivering Isles content is different enough from the main game to make it seem fresh and interesting. The prince that you do tasks for is insane, and pretty amusing. The developers seemed to take the DLC as an opportunity to change up the visual style for the world a bit too.

I've played through Shadow Complex several times now. Once for the story, once for the minimalist achievement, once for the completionist achievement, and I started again to keep on the way to the level 50 achievement. I'm obsessed. I know.

I spent a little bit of time with Little King's Story and didn't hate it. It had a neat art style that was almost cartoony, but semi-realistic too. I played it on the Brainy Gamer's recommendation but didn't fall in love with it the way he did. Fun for a while, but I don't often get into real time strategy games, which is what this sort of was.

Punch Out was fun for a day or so, but I quickly realized that it was exactly like the old one. Which I was terrible at. I could never get past Bald Bull back in the day, and couldn't even make it past Great Tiger in the new one. I suppose I should be shamed, but I realized I wasn't really enjoying myself, so it got sent back too.

Beatles Rock Band was absolutely beautiful and really pleasant to play. Also really short. Which is fine when you're paying by the day. A neat little tweak to the Rock Band formula was the carry over of your multiplier and star power from song to song when you play a set. I think they were called Challenges in the game. Basically, you'd play 4-6 songs back to back at a particular venue. This was after you played through the chronological story mode. Playing through this, I could have used more educational factoids or interviews like in Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, but I still managed to learn a bit about Beatles history. Like I didn't realize they stopped touring and started doing a lot of drugs in the late 60's. Granted, there seemed to be some bonus content that explained the history a bit better but you had to seek it out.