What's hell... Without a little fire?"

Grasping Friday by the skin of the teeth once more (I'm getting sloppy ladies and gentlemen), it's that time again.

I started the week off with Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, as I touched upon last week, as I'd slid all of my Christmas games into strategically placed spots in my shame pile, streamlining it by taking out games like Metal Gear Solid IV that I'd already finished at least once (I do desperately want to play it again sometime but there's so many unplayed games in my pile right now). Anyway, it was all going very well at first, seemed a solid enough RPG (from the perspective of an RPG rookie at any rate), but about ten hours into it all of the horrific voice-acting and repetitive gameplay just built itself up into a twitching tumour in my left-frontal lobe (or slightly shit game in my PS3, for those who read things too literally), and I slammed my Dual Shock 3 down in disgust. Well, I placed it down gently anyway, I had sat on my SixAxis a few weeks beforehand and the L2 trigger had come off, and after a botched repair job during which a spring and a screw went AWOL and the poor little thing hasn't been the same since (although I might add, it still works). I'm almost in danger of having to buy a new controller, and buying things that aren't Games or DVDs goes against my moral code. But I digress.

The worst thing about Sacred 2, besides the soul-crushing dialogue and delivery, is the fact that the difficulty spikes are dizzying. When I left it, I was swatting regular enemies aside with one or two hits at a time, but then getting all but literally fucked by the bosses who could pretty much heal faster than you could attack them. The last boss I fought before I banished the game to the shelf was (that which has haunted my dreams since Dragon Age) a Fuck Off Dragon (copyright 24 Hour Gamer), and in case a Fuck Off Dragon wasn't hard enough, he is surrounded by what I have come to refer to as 'respawning bastards'. Without a shit-load of level grinding, which I am not prepared to do, it's impossible. And look, it's made me swear too much already and I'm only 21 hours and 37 minutes into the year.

Moving on, I've spent a few more hours with Tekken 6. It has become very apparent to me that it's pretty much Tekken 5.5, or Super Tekken 5 if you will, because there's not much different aesthetically and nothing seems to have moved forward gameplay wise. They've just changed everyone's moves to throw us all off and tossed in a few new characters. There's Lars; a man with ridiculous hair (no surprising he's yet another Mishima), Bob; a fat bastard who moves pretty quickly (See Street Fighter IV's Rufus), Zafina; a girl who moves a bit strangely (A bit like SoulCalibur's Voldo, but less uncomfortable to look at), Miguel; some kind of stereotypical Spanish bull-fighter guy (who happens to be quite fair-haired and Caucasian, as is the norm in Japanese videogames), and the two who actually seem to be pretty good fighters, Leo; Either a very tall male child or a pretty butch lesbian who is pretty fast and has some awesome easy-to-do combos and Alisa, robot daughter of Tekken 3's Doctor B. who looks like she's been ripped straight from a dodgy Japanese H-Cartoon and is packed with more hidden weapons than North Korea. "It is not my fault if you get hurt", she quips sweetly as we prepare to fight. That's easy for you to say love, you've got chainsaws for arms, I'm just a prick in a Leopard mask. It's still a good game though, it's still Tekken.

And the last major story of the week, I had been waiting until I had all of the Riddick films on DVD before getting the games so I could receive the story in chronological order, only to find out last night (having achieving my goal) that not one but both of the fucking games are prequels to the films! So I spent about two hours last night and a large part of today flying through the PS3 remastered version of Escape From Butcher Bay, and enjoying it greatly. The lighting in the game is nothing short of amazing, and Starbreeze have managed to get around the whole detached feeling that most FPSes give me by making your 'hands' react to your surroundings and interact with NPCs in the game world, which I initially noticed when I played the also fantastic The Darkness a year or so back. I reckon I'm pretty close to the end of it actually, but at the same time I don't think I am, because it's just around this point that the plot twists usually set in and snatch victory from my grasp. As much as I'm enjoying the game, I'm hoping to finally bag me a copy of Assassin's Creed II tomorrow so I'd like Riddick to say what he has to say and move on if he wouldn't mind. After all, he has a whole 'nother game and three films for me to watch, whereas Ezio can only express himself using one medium. Actually that's not true, he made a bit of an appearance in the ACII short movies on the PSN store, which I watched the other day while off work with the winter vomiting, and which were pretty damn good.

Last off, I got Virtua Fighter V today, and priced up King Of Fighters XII, as Tekken made me realise that all of the major fighting game franchises have a Seventh Generation title out and I ought to do a round-up piece or something. Made the 15000 GamerScore mark this week with a Fable II achievement called The Swinger, which I received by having a lesbian foursome. Also fed the PSN store some cash and came away with Vagrant Story, Trine and Hero of Sparta, the latter of which is absolutely godawful. It's not hard to copy God of War, just look at Dante's Inferno. Byeeee!