This weekend I stayed at home playing video games and watching shows on Amazon Prime. For the past month or so, I had been gone almost every single weekend and the introvert in me just needed a recharge. The timing is perfect because I had pre-ordered the new Spider-Man game for PS4 made by Insomniac Games. I had never been more excited for a video game release in my life. I had seen E3 footage of the game and the way Spider-Man flew around NYC was breathtaking. I wanted to share my first impressions of the game since I’m a couple hours in. I will not be providing spoilers for the story, but if you are someone who wants to play the game without any knowledge about it, this blog post may not be for you.

One of my first impressions of the new Spider-Man game is the graphics. The city of NYC looks amazing and after visiting NYC a month ago, this game allows me to explore the “Big Apple” again. Spider-Man effortlessly glides through NYC allowing for him to travel to each neighborhood quickly. It takes getting used to swinging around the city, but after playing for a couple hours it becomes easier.

This game is detailed specifically with Spider-Man’s suits. There are numerous suits to unlock including his suit in Secret Wars, the wrestling suit and so many more. With each suit, I can craft mods to the suit which provide benefits for combat. One suit allows Spider-Man to build focus faster so he can heal quicker while another suit protects him from melee attacks. Besides suits, the game provides plenty of detail with its collectibles. One of my favorite collectible items so far is Spider-Man’s backpacks which contain clothes and other memorable items he has stashed with his webbing across the city. I won’t list what any of these items are, but they tell his story whether that’s growing up in high school, memorabilia from fighting villains, or Spider-Man merchandise. It’s been fun to collect the backpacks and hear Peter’s explanation of what they mean. As a Marvel fan, this adds to the experience of the game.

This post is only meant to list my first impressions of the game, so I don’t want to go into too much detail. Honestly, I’m loving every single minute of this game! Spider-Man deserves a great video game and I feel this is it. If you haven’t purchased the Spider-Man game and you have a PS4, you’re truly missing out on the ultimate comic book/video game experience.

Since buying my PS4 last November, I have been trying to play the Playstation exclusives I missed out on. I purchased the Last of Us which I’m about a fourth of the way through along with the Uncharted remastered series. Uncharted was a series I dived into because I never get tired of shoot-out sequences in video games. I haven’t played Uncharted #4 A Thief’s End, but I wanted to rank the three Uncharted games based on how much I enjoyed playing them.

Developed by Naughty Dog, the series stars Nathan Drake, an orphan recruited at a young age by his mentor Victor “Sully” Sullivan. Nathan believes he’s a descendant of Sir Francis Drake who was an English sea captain and explorer on behalf of Queen Elizabeth. All of the games somehow have ties to Sir Francis Drake’s past explorations.

1. Uncharted #3 Drake’s Deception

My favorite game of the series was the third game: Uncharted Drake’s Deception. In Drake’s Deception, Nathan Drake is searching for a lost city in the Arabian Peninsula titled “Atlantis of the Sands”. Katherine Marlowe (who could be Helen Mirren’s identical twin) is also searching for this city but has awful plans for the city once she reaches it. Drake and Sully must stop her and another guy named Talbot.

I liked this game the best for a couple different reasons. I liked how some in-game chapters feature young Drake as a child and how he came to meet Sully in the first place. It’s heartwarming to see how Sully saw his potential and gave him a better life than the one he had on the streets. It made me enjoy the relationship between Sully and Drake more when I played through these chapters in the game.

I thought out of all the Uncharted games, this game was the most difficult. There is one shootout where Drake is in the water and enemies are shooting at you from all sides. I would hop out of the water for cover, but the crates would crumble as enemies shot at me. I had to replay this shootout quite a bit because of the level of difficulty involved. It’s more satisfying beating this game with the challenge of the various shootouts.

The final positive feedback for this game is the hand-to-hand combat has improved. In the other Uncharted games, I wouldn’t have thought to run up to an enemy and punch them. In this game, the counters are more prominent which makes hand-to-hand combat easier.

2. Uncharted #2 Among Thieves

In Uncharted #2 Among Thieves, once again Nathan Drake is searching for a lost city, this time in Nepal titled Shambhala. In this game, Drake is battling with Harry Flynn, a former colleague who betrayed him resulting in Drake spending some time in prison. Flynn has tagged along with war criminal Zoran Lazarevic who’s a genuinely horrible person.

Overall, I thought Uncharted #2 Among Thieves was a great sequel, but the third game captivated me a lot more than the second one.

3. Uncharted #1 Drake’s Fortune

This game is probably the most important game in the franchise because, without this game, we wouldn’t have the others. However, Uncharted Drake’s Fortune is my least favorite game I played. I found that this game is slower-paced than the others and the locations don’t intrigue me as much.

However, this game is important because it’s how Drake meets Elena Fischer who ends up being his wife in the fourth game. Elena is a journalist who has made an appearance in almost all of the Uncharted games released. She’s always after the one story that can net her a Pulitzer Prize.

Uncharted was a great series I missed out on being an Xbox gamer throughout middle & high school. I’m glad it was remastered for the PS4 otherwise I probably wouldn’t have played it.

Last night I was playing through Uncharted Drake’s Fortune where I was exploring on one level to figure out how to climb this tower. While doing so, I uncovered one relic. There are 60 relics to find in this first game and I have found maybe 6? Looking back at my history in gaming, I have always been that gamer who would collect as many achievements or trophies as I possibly could before I moved on to the next game. Sometimes if I still had achievements left in a game to collect, I wouldn’t move on to the next game until I collected my achievements. Now, as I’m collecting these relics, I realize I just don’t have time to 100% games.

This stems from having many different video games to play! I still have the second & third Uncharted games to play through. I also haven’t beaten Sexy Brutale or Last of Us. I’m also planning on pre-ordering the PS4 Spiderman game because it looks stunning. I find the more time I spend trying to 100% complete a game, I miss out on other video games being released.

Trying to 100% a game is time-consuming. When I was playing through Lego Marvel Superheroes, it took me four hours to go around and unlock characters, collect gold bricks, and play through all the bonus levels. 4 hours!! on a Saturday just to unlock achievements. Normally, I like to play video games for at least two hours in one sitting, but I realize I could have been cleaning my apartment or out at a brewery with a friend.

In high school or even winter breaks home from college, I had the time to sit down and achievement hunt in a game. With a full-time job, social life and exercise eating into my free time, I want to be able to experience as many games as possible, so I’m okay with not getting all the achievements I want to get if it means I can move on to the next game.

Are there any other gamers out there who have struggled with this?

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of driving to my uncle’s house for a classic tabletop gaming day. Most of the time we played Star Wars X-Wing from Fantasy Flight Games, but after dinner, my uncle pulled out his copy of Doctor Who Time of the Daleks from his gaming shelf. I didn’t know a Doctor Who-themed board game existed and my uncle knows I’m a fan of the show. My group only got to play it for 10 – 15 minutes, but I was surprised by how difficult it was and how I was looking forward to playing it in the future.

To start the game, each player picks the First Doctor, Fourth Doctor, Eleventh Doctor, or Twelfth Doctor. I automatically called playing the Eleventh Doctor because Matt Smith has a special place in my heart with his fish sticks & custard along with his bow tie. My uncle read the rules to help us understand the game. Our ultimate goal is to prevent the Dalek ship from reaching Gallifrey before we do. In order to gain companions, we can visit earth past, earth present, or earth future marked on the board. As our Doctors visit Earth along different timelines, we have to overcome dilemmas. This is where the game is difficult.

Each dilemma piece lists a series of colors along with symbols. This correlates to the dice associated with your doctor. Your Doctor & your companions each contribute dice to the overall dice pool. These dice are used to overcome dilemmas by rolling the correct color die with the correct symbol. If you pass the roll by getting all the symbols & colors needed, there’s a reward which could be moving the Dalek ship backward. However, if you fail… bad things happen like moving the Dalek ship forward.

As the Daleks move, they can set off time anomalies which can punish all the players. In the ten minutes we played the game, each of us failed a dilemma so the Dalek ship set off two-time anomalies and moved the Dalek ship five spaces beyond our Tardis pieces. The difficulty doesn’t turn me away from the game, it makes me determined to keep playing.

In the ten minutes, I played the game, there was a lot I liked. I enjoyed the characters they picked such as Eleven along with him being connected with Amy Pond. I like the difficulty, but I can see where other gamers might be turned away. I’m waiting for the expansion where they include the Ninth doctor.

Overall, if you consider yourself to be a Doctor Who fan, this is the board game for you. I think it works well with more than two players, but you could play it with your best friend or partner. I’m looking forward to playing this game for a full game on our next game night.

My video game guilty pleasure is I genuinely enjoy LEGO games. I think they’re a perfect distraction if you’re stuck in another video game and need a break from that game. I picked up LEGO Marvel Superheroes for the Xbox One many months ago. I was looking for something new to play and I saw it sitting on the shelf. I finished the story mode, but now I’m going back and getting all the achievements which are taking a while. I wanted to pick my favorite characters to play as in their cute LEGO Form.

LEGO Jean Grey 

It’s funny because I’m not a huge X-Men fan, but I like the X-Men Marvel Lego characters the most. Jean Grey’s powers are used a lot in side quests and to unlock items during the free-play mode. She’s a character I heavily rely on because she can fly in her bubble and pick up LEGO pieces.

LEGO Black Cat 

I only like playing her character because of her cute costume. As soon as I unlocked her, I bought her.

LEGO Hulk

The biggest stress release is coming home from work, playing LEGO Marvel Superheroes, and smashing LEGOs with the Hulk.

LEGO Magneto

Magneto flies around in his magnetic bubble and picks up Lego pieces for me, it’s super convenient.

LEGO Wolverine

Wolverine is great in battle because he doesn’t die and causes you to lose Lego pieces. Instead, he turns silver for a minute or two while he regenerates. I hate losing LEGO pieces when I die, so LEGO Wolverine is a nice character to play as.

Ultimately, I’m having a lot of fun collecting achievements for this game. Eventually, I will move on to more complex video games, but right now I like just having a mental break and unlocking all the Marvel heroes.

I discovered a new gaming blog I’m reading titled The Dragon’s Tea Party which combines gaming and drinking tea. There was one post I read titled Adulting and Gaming My Struggle to Do Both. This post just stuck with me because this describes my life at this exact moment. This post details their struggle with getting in the time to game when their time is taken up by exercise, cooking dinner, driving home from work, and fitting in eight hours of sleep. In the back of my mind, I thought about how rewarding it would be to finally get past this part in the Last of Us I’m stuck on. I look at my PS4 on the shelf and feel so guilty for not playing it more often.

Another part about playing video games is I feel guilty for spending the time to play video games. I could have been doing laundry or meal prepping for the week instead I chose to play a virtual game. However, every time I sit down and play a level in Lego Marvel Superheroes, I feel less anxious overall. Nothing is better than beating up supervillains with a Lego Hulk am I right?

Luckily, I have been able to play more video games recently. I just carve out the time to do so. During the week, I often limit my time to play video games to an hour. If I have too much screen time before going to bed, I won’t be able to sleep. One hour is the perfect amount of time to get past a level or at least earn an achievement or two. On the weekends I’m less strict because I have more time, still I will set a timer that goes off every two hours.

I need to stop feeling guilty about not being able to game one day. I also don’t want to be hard on myself by saying “Why am I gaming when I could be doing other things”. Gaming is like any other hobby and I don’t get why there’s this stigma about gaming and being lazy. The Last of Us will be completed eventually along with the Uncharted trilogy. Since I just got a PS4, let me know of other video game recommendations in the comments. Also, check out The Dragon’s Tea Party, it’s my new favorite gaming blog.

This idea popped into my head after I realized I had been using a walk-through while playing Sexy Brutale on my PS4. I had been trying really hard not to use a walk-through because this is a puzzle game it’s meant to challenge me. I eventually couldn’t figure out where I was stuck which lead me to pull up a video on Youtube to get me through this part of the game. It got me thinking, is this considered cheating? Can I actually take credit for finishing the game myself? I did use the controller to play through the part myself, but I didn’t actually figure everything out on my own. I’m curious to know what people think about this topic.

Usually, I will use a walk-through video or article for multiple reasons:

#1. I hate the game, the walk-through gets me through it.

If I genuinely dislike a game, I can’t leave it unfinished. It bothers me to such an extreme that I can’t play any other game unless I finish the game. I use a walk-through because I don’t want to get stuck, I just want to play through it and finish the game as quickly as possible.

#2 Collectibles

I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to look for every single collectible in a game. I use a walk-through to find all the collectibles and unlock the trophy or achievement I have been looking for.

#3 I’m stuck.

The third and final reason I use game walk-throughs is if I’m stuck. Sexy Brutale is a game I’m enjoying, but on one level I was walking around aimlessly trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. After watching a video of where to go, I was able to move on to the next level.

Anyway, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on whether a walk-through is considered cheating, or if you use walk-throughs all the time and it’s no big deal.

I’m devoting much of my gaming to my PS4 at the moment, but every once in a while, the boyfriend recommends a coop game he thinks we should play. I wish there were more split-screen coop games for me and the boyfriend to enjoy, but they are rather limited. He suggested playing Octodad, a game all about being an octopus and managing typical father duties like grocery shopping and taking the kids to the aquarium. Overall, I found this game enjoyable, but I did have a couple issues with the game itself.

When mentioning Octodad, I find it’s important to bring up the origin story behind creating a game with an Octopus as a dad. Young Horses Inc was a company founded by university students attending college in Chicago. They created their original game in 2011 and it was a huge success. Young Horses Inc. launched a Kickstarter to create a new Octodad game that was much more polished which is the game I officially played on my Xbox.

Moving around is actually more of a challenge with the game because his limbs are so floppy. Me and the boyfriend took turns being the arms and the legs so now you’re coordinating with someone else on how to move Octodad. Don’t even ask me how we got Octodad up the escalator, it took some time.

The game is pretty short with only a couple levels. You could definitely beat this in one day if you took a couple hours to play through it. One part of the game I actually disliked was the view. While on the aquarium level, I had my limb wrapped around a ladder and I was physically stuck. I couldn’t get Octodad untangled. I wish I could have rotated the view so I could see how his limb was stuck so I could have gotten untangled quicker.

Ultimately, this game is a fun, laid-back game about an Octopus doing dad stuff. The game is out on Steam for PC & Mac, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Wii U, iOS, Google Play, and NVIDIA Shield.

If you have been following my gaming section on my blog, I have been writing reviews for Life is Strange: Before the Storm episode #1 and episode #2. This three-part prequel made the third episode available for download in December. Once I finished downloading it, I played the entire episode. Episodes #1 & #2 are rather slow-moving, but Episode #3 is easily the best episode of the series. The final decision you have to make at the end of the game is one of those “Oh no what do I choose” type of choices. This gaming review like all the others is going to be filled with spoilers.

Final Warning *Spoilers Down Below*

Episode #3 begins in Rachel’s house after James Amber (Rachel’s Father) tells her the woman he was kissing is her actual birth mother, Sera. Sera has been battling addiction for many years often putting Rachel in danger. Rachel’s father took Rachel away from Sera and is sending money to Sera every month to keep her away from Arcadia Bay. Rachel is beyond devastated having retreated to her room to be alone.

Chloe after cheering up Rachel devises a plan to use Frank to figure out where Sera is because ultimately, Rachel wants to meet Sera. This meeting goes downhill quickly as Rachel is stabbed in the arm by Damon Merrick a known associate of Frank. Chloe visits Rachel in the hospital and requests she goes into her father’s study and searches for any leads to her mother.

This is where things get interesting. As Chloe is searching for James’s study, she finds a secret phone. This secret phone belongs to Damon Merrick, the guy who stabbed Rachel. Damon has been hired by James Amber to locate Sera and kill her so she won’t interfere with Rachel’s life anymore. What the fuck!? I understand wanting to keep Rachel safe, but James is the district attorney for Arcadia Bay. He can’t just hire people to do his dirty work and not expect to get caught.

Chloe drives to where Damon is holding Sera. A struggle ensues and Chloe wakes up with Sera being freed and smoking a cigarette. Sera attempts to convince Chloe to never tell Rachel about all of this. Sera recognizing James’s threat to stay away, wants Rachel to have a normal life with plenty of opportunities she could never provide for her.

This is the “what do I do” moment. Chloe goes to visit Rachel in the hospital again where Rachel asks if Chloe found anything from her father’s study. You have two options: You can either tell Rachel about how cruel her father is or you can lie and say you found nothing about Sera. I chose the latter option. Obviously James Amber is shady and probably has done other illegal things, but I know that he wanted to protect Rachel. It didn’t make his actions right, but I also wanted to make sure to respect Sera. The other scene that hit me hard was when it shows Rachel’s phone on a table with Chloe calling her and the camera flashes in the background. If you played Life is Strange, you would understand how chilling this scene is.

To wrap up, Episode #3 is my favorite episode. This episode featured decisions that I had to contemplate whereas Episodes #1 & #2 had more fluffy choices which didn’t make all that much difference in the story. Please go play Life is Strange if you haven’t already, it’s my favorite game I played in 2017.