Metro 2033 was something of a surprise for publisher THQ.

A survival horror game based on the novel of the same name by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, it told the story of a post-holocaust Moscow and a young man called Artyom, born in the city’s underground Metro system, where survivors of a nuclear attack now live. On the surface roam unspeakable horrors called the Dark Ones.

The game was played from the perspective of Artyom, and the action took place mostly in dark tunnels of the metro and in the radiation-laced streets of Moscow. The game’s global communications manager, Jeremy Greiner, told me over the phone from Sydney that he believes Metro 2033 was misunderstood by THQ when it was released.

”Metro 2033 turned out to be a cult hit. It flew under the radar. It wasn’t understood by THQ at the time and it didn’t get the marketing push that it should have. It was the gem that not everyone knew about.” Not surprisingly then, Metro Last Light, the sequel to Metro 2033, has THQ’s solid backing, complete with a big marketing drive that includes a live action series setting the story.

Metro 2033 had two possible endings: a ”good” one and a ”bad” one, depending on the player’s actions throughout the game, and Greiner says Last Light carries the narrative on after the events of the ”bad” ending.

Metro Last Light, like 2033, is a little different from most shooters in that it strips away some of the most common on-screen elements, most noticeably the mini-map and the health meter. In Metro 2033, players had to monitor the effectiveness of the filters in Artyom’s breathing mask by keeping an eye on Artyom’s wristwatch. Ammunition, too, was scarce throughout the game, forcing players to scavenge bodies and lockers. When Artyom was injured, blood would splatter the screen.

”By not having an on-screen mini-map telling you where you must go next and by stripping away the HUD [heads-up display] and user interface, it makes things more challenging for the player, says Greiner. ”Metro 2033 and Last Light are all about immersion in the game world and when there is a pop-up on-screen it makes you realise you’re in a video game. It pulls away from the experience.”

Greiner says developer 4A isn’t concerned about the other shooter games on the market but just making the game that they wanted to create with a strong narrative. ”Metro Last Light has lots of emotion and geopolitical themes. It’s a highly detailed world and the conversations, too, deliver a strong narrative experience.”

I asked him how much of the developers’ political leanings are in Last Light. ”A lot of the guys [on the development team] lived under the communist regime so I’m sure that will shape their political and cultural beliefs.”

Greiner believed gamers will be surprised with Metro Last Light and how it handles traditional first-person conventions.

”I think with Metro Last Light, gamers are going to have an ‘Aha’ moment, a revelation, and will question how they used to play shooters. Last Light will challenge how you play shooters in the way you do. You’ll ask why do you feel a certain emotion and it breaks out of the regular shooter mode. With the breathing masks, for example, you have to change air filters yourself – the game won’t do it for you. I feel that in other games you’re conditioned to do things in a certain way but in a game like Last Light, where you challenge yourself, it’s rewarding.”

I woke up this morning with extremely sore calf muscles. How sore? The sore that travels up and down your muscles when you walk around.

I blame former American NFL player Alex Molden for those sore calves. Well, not him personally, I’ve never met the guy, but his virtual self in Nike + Kinect Training, the fitness program for Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor that will get me athlete fit apparently. I think it was the fitness assessment he put me through that bought about those tight calves (and, perhaps, pushing a big gear on the big when I really shouldn’t have been). He was so nice about it the whole time, too.

Nike + is quite a scientific piece of software, unlike other console-based fitness programs  I’ve tried in the past where you might have to wear pick ups on your arms or the exercises were just a little tame: Nike + Kinect Training is based on some serious scientific principles and will push you to your limits (hence the sore calves). By the end of the assessment phase, sweat was dripping off me and my wife thought I’d been soaked with a hose.

The second day (today) was a strength-based workout and it was 30 hard minutes – then at the end of it console Alex asked me if I wanted to do another 15 minutes or try out some challenges so I could brag to my friends! I politely declined: my body had been through enough, what will all the lunges, squats, star jumps, core training exercises, bunny hops, virtual hurdle jumping  and other strength-based moves I’d put my 40+ something body through. Again, the sweat was pouring off me.

I’m impressed with how well Kinect is tracking my body movments, too,  as I’ve been quite critical of Kinect in the past. The voice commands work really well here, too: understanding my Kiwi accent flawlessly most of the time. Sometimes I had an on-screen message pop-up saying “Move back” but sometimes I just couldn’t: I’d moved the furniture as far back as it would go, and a handful of times the Kinect though my jiggling right arm was a signal to pause the game, so it did – mid-session. I just yelled at it to resume session and it did.

Most exercises are 30 seconds in duration, meaning you have to do as many of that exercise as you can in the time limit, or are in reps of 15, and the intensity is high enough to keep you motivated. I also liked how console Alex was able to “notice” that my positioning wasn’t quite right and he’d ask me to correct it – then tell me “Nicely corrected” when I’d done so. Kinect games have come a long way since simple party games like Kinect Sports.

I’m playing golf this afternoon so I’m hoping today’s strength exercising this morning will help in my driving. It’s unlikely, I suspect: I’ll still suck.

A press release this morning announcing that free downloadable copies of Batman Arkham City, Limbo and Vanquish will be available to PlayStation Plus subscribers from December 5 is another compelling argument for PlayStation 3 owners to sign up.

It’s also a strong stance that Sony sees the PlayStation brand as a games player first and foremost. And with the PlayStation Plus service now available to PS Vita owners (who will be able to download Mortal Kombat and Kyhtt Underground for their handheld device from mid-December), Sony is sending a signal to its rivals that it values its user base.

A PlayStation Plus subscription will cost $89.95 for a year (or $24.95 for a 90-day subscription), which gives PS3 owners access to a library of 14 free games, and as many as five new games a month.

Last month, I downloaded Just Cause 2 to add to my instant game collection, and other games that have been offered in the past few months have included Borderlands, Bulletstorm and Resident Evil Gold Collection. Add in 1Gb of cloud storage for both PS3 and Vita, and PlayStation Plus seems like a damn good deal for PlayStation 3 owners, given that a single AAA titles cost more than a yearly subscription.

If there is any catch to PlayStation Plus it’s that the games only remain in your collection for as long as you’re a member of the service and once a game has gone from the service, it’s gone. If you stop subscribing you won’t be able to play those games anymore (but re-join at a later date and they become replayable). If you’re a died-in-wool PlayStation owner, thought, it seems remarkable value.

Dave Hine, the head of PlayStation in New Zealand, told me earlier this year that Sony saw PlayStation Plus as giving gamers ”an opportunity to get an invaluable amount of value in the instant game collection” and that for the $90 annual subscription fee, PS3 owners got 30 times the value of their membership cost if they took advantage of the game collection scheme.

Frankly, a PlayStation Plus-style service is the sort of thing Microsoft needs to look at offering its Xbox 360 owners, especially Gold members who pay around $80 for a yearly subscription. The main benefit for Xbox Live Gold subscribers over their Silver membership counterparts is that they can play games online: Silver members can’t do that.

I have a Gold Xbox Live subscription but to be honest, I don’t do a great deal of online gaming so pretty much it’s $80 wasted, but if Microsoft offered free game downloads for that price and for the duration of my subscription, it would become a more attractive proposition for me. It would prove an incentive for me to remain a Gold member.

So, who else has tried out Sony’s PlayStation Plus service and what are your thoughts? Would you be keen to see other hardware makers, such as Microsoft, offer a similar type service for their hardware?

Little Big Planet Karting
From: Sony
For: PlayStation 3
Classification: G
Score: ***

Sack boy, that hessian-covered floppy toy, has become something of a bone fide superstar for Sony. He’s a real celebrity in the world of virtual game characters.

He’s bounced through worlds of jelly and magical puppets and ridden through spooky tunnels in a mine cart: now he can add kart racer to his resume as an activity he’s tried when he eventually retires from adventuring and settles down for the quiet life.

LBP Karting feels like a Little Big Planet game, with the soothing voice of Stephen Fry gently offering advice as the narrator and tracks that have a painterly feel to them, adorned with whimsical monuments to silliness like wrapped presents and spinning wheels. This is unmistakeably a Little Big Planet game.

The premis is simple, though: race your kart around the track to victory, using a variety of jumps and short cuts to cross the finish line first.  The story involves Sack boy having to rid Craftworld of the Hoard threat.

As with all kart racing games, you’ll start in last place on the grid and have to race your way to the finish but the racing can become frustrating at times as the computer-controlled opponents are incredibly aggressive, especially when they pick up offensive weapons (driving over a weapon will enable it).  I lost count how many times an unavoidable missile slammed into my Sack boy from an unseen foe behind me, with no way to avoid it,  forcing a re-spawn a few seconds later – only to be shortly followed a few minutes later by another missile.

Also like all racing games, learning to drift around corners is a must so you learn early on the need to master being able to slide around corners: do it for long enough and it’ll give you a speed boost.

The co-operative play is fun, but then any game that lets you beat a family member who is sitting right next to you is always fun and as in the other games featuring Sack boy there are prizes to pick up. There’s also a track level editor which, like the other level editors in other LBP games, is intuitive and masses of fun.

After a while, though, the racing starts to feel a little familiar and then it clicked: the developer behind the Little Big Planet Karting is United Front Games, the studio that made that other PS3 racer that features weapons and jump pads to speed you to the finish Mod Nation Racers. The two games share a genetic link.

LBP Karting is a solid kart racing game but with Mod Nation Racers having come before it, it almost seems like a repetition of that game but set in the Little Big Planet universe. It’s solid without being remarkable.

I tested out LBP Karting using both the standard controller and Sony’s Move steering wheel, a T-shaped peripheral with a slot that you plug Sony’s Move motion controller into.

Unlike a normal racing steering wheel, the Move wheel isn’t circular but has a handgrip either side but the right one twists – perhaps it can be used in motorcycle racing games as a switch beside each grips lets it be swung up, almost taking on a handlebar-like appearance.

Above the left-hand grip is the familiar Sony controller D-pad, above the right grip is the face buttons (circle, cross, square, triangle. It also has two triggers and two bumper buttons as well as a start and select button. There are also paddles for any racing games that call for manual gear changes. I used the Move steering wheel in several co-operative races in LBP Karting and it works but it was almost too sensitive: the slightest touch in either direction would send Sack boy and his kart careering off in the desired direction.

I’ve approached this review of Halo 4 differently from other reviews.  I could have done the traditional “gameplay, graphic, sound, MP” review but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to tread the tried-and-true. Halo 4 is about the relationship between Cortana and Master Chief and I wanted to get that across. Read it and let me know if I’ve succeeded or whether you think I should have just done a traditional review. Oh, I have touched upon Halo 4’s Spartan Ops content or multiplayer: I haven’t had time to look at those yet.

Also, I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers – I think I’ve succeeded. Apologies if I haven’t.

At it’s very heart, Halo 4 is a kind of  love story.

Not a love story where boy meets girl, they date for a bit then elope off together, ladder in hand, but one where the boy is a hardened soldier, who does what he is told without question and can wield a DMR rifle  like no other, and the other is an artificial construct, who acts like a mother, a sister and a confidant to the boy. They share an inseparable bond, the sort of bond that could only be formed when you’ve experience what the boy – Master Chief  – and Cortana – the girl – have experienced.

They’ll do anything for each other and Halo 4 is about Master Chief and Cortana and the bond they share.

At the end of Halo 4, there’s a message from 343 Industries, the fledgling studio embarking on the new Halo trilogy, just before the credits roll. It opens: “Every great journey begins with a small step. This is our beginning”. And what a great first step this game is, even if it feels a little familiar at times.  That said, Halo 4 feels like a Halo game should, plays like a Halo game should but 343 have infused it with a little of their own DNA.

There was no doubt that 343 had a lot of pressure to deliver a great Halo experience, especially after the phenomenal job former custodian Bungie did. For me, though, this is the best Halo game yet: better than Halo 2, better than Halo 3. This is the only Halo game where I really connected with the Master Chief and  Cortana.

Set  four years after the Halo event, the game’s opening salvo begins with the Master Chief being woken from five years of cryo-sleep by Cortana.  The UNSC ship they’re on is under attack from a rogue group of Covenant  who have abandoned the peace treaty between their race and the Covenant. Halo 4 is also a game about a new enemy, the Prometheans. Right off the bat, Halo 4 is visually stunning game with a level of richness and detail in the environments I’ve not seen in the series before.

Embedded all through the game, though, is the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana. She’s old now: most constructs only last seven years service but she’s into her eighth year. “I won’t recover from rampancy [an AI form of Alzheimer’s],” Cortana tells the Master Chief as her behaviour gets more and more erratic. Master Chief suggests a solution:  “Don’t make a girl a promise you can’t keep” she replies. It helps that Cortana is voiced, again, amazingly, believably, by actress Jen Taylor. She is the star of this show.

This time, too, Master Chief seems to be coming to grips with his human side and prepared to make his own decisions, rather than do what his superiors tell him.  Halo 4 lets us in, just a little, into the psyche of battle-weary Master Chief who, up until now has suppressed his human side. He’s now reflecting on his humanity. I connected with Halo 4 unlike any game in the series before it.

I keep going on about the relationship between the Master Chief and Cortana but for me that’s the focal point of Halo 4. Yes, there are enemies to kills – and the combat is very good – and objectives to complete, but at times I thought that 343 was playing it just a little safe in terms of game play: sometimes when I entered a complex I just had a feeling that I’d have to push three buttons  and they’d be lots of enemies between me and my objective, and generally I was right. Maybe they will take more risks with the other two games in the series.

To me, the dominant thread throughout the game  is the relationship between soldier and AI: where it has got to after 10 years together. In one poignant moment, as Cortana stares out at an artificial sun, fighting to keep her rampancy under control, she says to Master Chief: “Before this is all over, promise you’ll figure out which one of us is the machine.” It was a moment that struck a chord with me.

But at the risk of being accused of glossing over the other aspects of the game, I should get down to game play specifics, I guess. You’ll see that I haven’t addressed the game’s many multi-player modes or the episodic Spartan Ops content. I just haven’t had the time to even look at those yet. I’ll do those soon.  I promise.

The Covenant Elites seem smarter this time around, more agile – or perhaps it’s that my reflexes aren’t what they used to be – and when it comes to confrontation with large foes, like Hunters, I’m more likely to take the cowards route and stand back from a safe vantage point and bombard them with explosive weapons than take them head on. Don’t judge me for it.

As you’d expect, there’s vehicular combat: flying a pelican is great fun as is the mantis, a bipedal mech armed with rockets and a gattling gun. You can also drive a Scorpion tank sometimes, if you want: I used one as much and as often as I could. It saved Master Chief getting tired from walking too much.

And not only is there a new development studio but also a new composer behind the soundtrack, British producer/musician/composer Neil Davidge. For me, though, apart from one tracks, Arrival,  Davidge’s work  just doesn’t match the lofty compositions of Marty O’Donnell, the American composer who created Halo’s memorable soundtrack. The audio, too, must be mentioned: weapons sound meaty, vocal work is done superbly and things just sound wonderful.

At the end, though, I keep coming back to the relationship between Cortana and Master Chief. That’s Halo 4 crowning glory. Sure, the game play is solid and the visuals rich, but the story of Cortana and Master Chief is the meat here. And I liked that.

Sorry, I just realised I hadn’t posted this review which I wrote last month. My apologies. So without further ado, here is my Darksiders 2 review, a game that I liked. A lot.

As one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death isn’t the sort of chap you’d assume you’d like much, if at all. so you wouldn’t automatically assume he’d be a chap that you’d actually like – but I liked Death in Vigil’s Darksiders 2, the follow-up to an action game that featured one of Death’s brothers, War,  and great voice acting from Mark Hamil.

OK, so Death isn’t the sort of chap you’d take home to meet your mother, but despite his often mean-spirited comments to some of Darksiders 2’s NPC, he’s actually a likeable character. As likeable, I guess as you can make a man who wields fiery scythes and hammers that can smash an enemy in one blow.

Darksiders 2 runs parallel to the events of Darksiders (in which War apparently jumped the gun in bringing about the end of the human race) which Death wanting to confront the Charred Council to see why War got such a hard time. He smells a conspiracy.

Darksiders 2 is a much bigger game than the original,  in both scope and ambition. The game world is huge, which some sequences reminding me of God of War 3, where the lead character is dwarfed by the environment he has to climb. It’s like that in Darksiders 2: in an opening location Death has to negotiate a frozen landscape, giant chunks of ice crumbling has he climbs and shimmies along.

He’s not alone: at the push of two buttons Death’s horse, Despair, green flame licking his equine limbs, appears. It makes traversing the wide open landscapes much easier – but Despair can’t go everywhere, and Death will say as much, reminding you that he must go alone at times.

Combat is a mix of light and heavy attacks using Death’s scythes, as well as Redemption, a pistol that belonged to his brother Strife (another of the Four Horsemen), and defeated enemies will drop more powerful weapons (scythes, hammers, claws, axes) and chest littered about the game world – wonderfully opened by a ghostly pair of winged arms that rip the chest apart – contain potions, clothing items and weapons. Some weapons are possessed and by “sacrificing” other items to them they’ll take on the more powerful characteristics. The colour of collectible items indicates their rarity – and Death can also sell items to non-player character, using the money to buy new attack moves from the Makers, a race of Scottish-accented giants charged with keeping the Cauldron and the Tears of xxx safe from the corruption that has appeared.

Death has a more powerful attack mode, called the reaper, which is activated when he has gathered enough wrath energy from defeating foes. Activate Reaper mode and a giant more horrifying form of death appears and will wreak havoc to all those around him. It’s good for when Death finds himself overwhelmed by enemies, which happens quite a bit.

Darksiders 2’s combat has an almost mini-RPG element to it, which each successful strike popping a number above an enemy’s head, indicating the amount of damage Death has inflicted – or received.

Death is an agile fellow, too, able to leap from suspended pillar to suspended pillar, scramble up walls and flip himself off wall-mounted studs. He can also swim, handy for negotiating many of the water-flooded dungeons.

The game has also introduced a feature seen in many games these days: the ability to fast travel from one location to another. It’s a welcome addition and means once you’ve completed an objective you don’t have to backtrack to the next location. Seeing as Death is a creature of the ethereal realm the fact that he could fast travel seems entirely plausible.

Gameplay involves wall climbing, obstacle negotiating and puzzles (some require more in-depth thinking than others) involving pressure switches activated by glowing balls that Death can roll into place. Then there is the constructs, magic-infused creations formed by the makers out of rock, which Death can ride and use to activate out-of-reach locks (the construct can fire a chain that Death can walk along).

Like all good action games, Darksiders 2 is punctuated by boss battles near the location of key mission objectives, and the first battle was a pain in the proverbial, but chip away at it and you’ll find a game that has a solid combat system, a wonderous world to discover and a surprisingly likeable lead character.

Some of the dungeons go on for too long and sometimes I was wishing to myself that the end of level boss, which usually indicated the end was in sight would just appear. It’s also a little jarring to have the game freeze mid-corridor while the rest of a level is loaded and I hit one glitch mid-boss battle, where my lumbering opponent got stuck on a piece of scenery, making defeating him and his vulnerable spot all the more enjoyable.

Darksiders 2 was a game that pleasantly surprised me, but then, that shouldn’t be a surprise, given that Darksiders was so good. Darksiders 2 is a game that features a rather likable lead character, despite the unusual job description on his CV. Recommended by me.

I’ve been a print/online journalist all my life: I’ve never really dabbled into on-screen time apart from the odd online video and that sort of thing. So when I headed up to Auckland (New Zealand) last week to take part in a charity challenge arranged by PlayStation and Vodafone, I was a little concerned to hear that it would be filmed by youth-orientated channel TVNZU. I  dont’ really feel that comfortable in front of a camera: I’d rather just write and let my words do the talking.

In the end, it didn’t turn out too bad (my team didn’t win, unfortunately – congrats Alan and Che Fu, but we didn’t get last, either). We were in four teams of two: four celebs – NZ Warriors Manu Vatuvai and Ben Matulino, NZ Breaker’s star Tom Abercrombie and musician Che Fu – teamed up with three video game writers – myself, PC World’s Siobhan Keogh and NZ Gamer’s Alan Ball – and Social Media NZ’s founder John Lai). Much to my delight, I was teamed up with Abercrombie, one of my basket-ball mad son’s idols. Seeing it was school holidays he and my wife came up for the two days I was in Auckland so got some photos with Abercrombie and got his autograph).

The winner of the challenge would get a $1000 cheque for the charity of their choice and the challenge involved using PlayStation’s Vita handheld and Vodafone’s 3G coverage to complete a variety of challenges (find Sackboy who was at a watering hole in Auckland’s trendy Viaduct Basin, get a high score on Reality Fighters, Skype someone from PlayStation to find your next location, that sort of thing). It was a lot of fun and competitive, which was good.

The final challenge was to beat a presenter from U-Live’s score on Wipeout 2048 – and I’m sad to say I lost control on the final corner of the track we were racing on and crashed, losing me precious seconds. My score was nowhere close enough anyway. I should have practiced more. Anyway, check out the video and have a good laugh. I’m the one in the blue and white checked shirt. (I’ve been told by a couple of people that the video isn’t working properly. I got it working but it was pretty slow loading up. Let me know how you get on)

Steam Sale: a licence to take my money money

The Steam sale has been going for a couple of days and so far I’ve been very restrained and only bought one game: Portal 2 for $4.99 (despite the fact that I already have it on Xbox 360). It’s not much but the Steam sale is like virtual crack: once you buy one game, another is sure to follow, then another, then another …

I’m convinced there will  be other games that I’ll purchase over the coming days but I’m trying to be very restrained and curb the use of my credit card this month. I’m only going to buy games that are under $10. That’s my plan and my way of making sure that I don’t spend crazy amounts of games that I probably don’t need.

That said, I’m checking the sale every day, seeing what gems are there they I just have to have and then won’t play for months and months.

I’m now contemplating getting Indie Game: The Movie. It’s pretty good, I hear.

How is the Steam sale for you?

I think my fling with Diablo 3 is over.

It was always going to happen, eventually. I don’t think I was going ever have the patience to grind for countless hours in a game that can consume your life if you let it. I played World of Warcraft once: after six months of playing it just about every night I had to wean myself and stop playing it. I didn’t want the same thing to happen with Diablo 3.

I think it was the relentless grinding that finally did it for me: It just became too much, too repetitve. The constant click-click-click on enemies  often more powerful than my mid-level barbarian  as I fought to reach my objective finally got the better of me and I started playing less and less Diablo 3. Even my teenage son remarked how I didn’t play it much any more (just before asking if he could play it instead).

Originally, I wasn’t planning on playing Blizzard’s latest game, but when a review copy arrived  in the letter box changed my mind. I hadn’t actually played a Diablo game before so I was keen to get stuck in. But launch week, as most players will remember, was a shambles: I got lots of “Error 37” messages (meaning demand was so high the server couldn’t log me in) and I moaned about the “always-on” internet connection that the game demanded, even if you wanted to explore world of Sanctuary and take on the Lord of Terror.

Unhappy with the launch week shenanigans, though, I gave up on the game for a few weeks: Constant disconnections mid-quest is never much fun, only resuming after a major patch that seemed to have sorted things out. The connection remained rock solid, which was pleasing, and I was once again guiding my barbarian, lovingly called Rathnulzerok (that’s not him in the picture, by the way), and his weapons of destruction, through the sands and dungeons in the quest to kill Diablo himself.  I was mesmerised by the gorgeous cut scenes, which truly are wonderous, and the intricately detailed world. It seemed blissful.

I had always meant to try out the co-op mode, and much to my delight, a friend, Mike, who informed me he had picked up the game as well, obliged. We partnered up and explored and pillaged, virtually you understand,  smashing all before us: him a wizard shooting magical powers from his fingertips, me a barbarian wielding a huge weapon and stomping the ground, dazing foes.

My friend even helped me defeat the Act 1 boss the Butcher, a huge beastie with a mean ground stomp of his own and a massive weapon that fired spikes on chains. We battled Medusa-like creatures in underground viaducts and fought wasp-like bugs,  me dazing them with my stomp, he freezing them with his magic. I realised that this was how Diablo 3 was meant to be played: with a companion, even though we didn’t bother to use our headsets to communicate with each other while playing, instead chosing to use the game’s in-build chat window to tell the other what we were doing.

But then something happened, as often does when I play role-playing games: it started becoming a chore and I started playing less and less of it. I can’t put a finger on what it was specifically: Maybe it was because I was constantly being smashed by higher level monsters and running out of health potions, maybe it was because I was annoying my wife with the constant “click-click-click” while she was trying to watch TV (my PC is in the same room as the main TV), or maybe it was just because after Act 1, Act 2 seemed  a tad boring and just seemed to be, well, Act 1 but with different scenery. I think my friend is still playing Diablo 3. He’s probably a top-level magician by now, able to defeat big bosses with his character’s pinky finger.

So, yeah,  I’ve stopped playing Diablo 3 for the time being. I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t actually finished it yet, either, but I just don’t think I can make it to the end at the moment. I’m not in the right frame of mind. Besides, I’ve got other games to play and my right forefinger is thanking me for the rest I’ve given it, anyway.

I’ll go back to Diablo 3 again sometime. Probably but I’m not sure when, but I will. Rathnulzerok will have to make do with standing in limbo in the game’s welcome screen for the time being, his sword of magical awesomeness* no longer inflicting damage on the undead of Sanctuary, his helm of unwavering protection** sitting atop his head undisturbed.

I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see me when I venture back into the world of Sanctuary. Who knows? It might be next week.

*I made this name up. ** This one also. Neither of those items exist in Diablo 3. At least I don’t think they do.