3rd and 4th days of the vacation - Skullgirls (PS3), Of Orcs and Men (PC)

First come the Skullgirls.

It's a fighting game that most of you guys might not even notice, and so would I, if I didn't see some awesome cosplay of Painwheel last weekend. That's when I got interested (and let's be clear with it: I'm keen on fightings), and yesterday I finally bought the game.

So... what's it like? The first description that comes on my mind is 'FUCKING HARDCORRRE!' - 'cos that's what the game really is. Besides the fact that Skullgirls was released this spring, it smells like the deep-deep past of the game development, when the gamer could sweat themselves out to death before they finish the level. Not like now, when the gameplay is so laid-back.

Skullgirls is a very challenging game, which requires that you man up and try the hardest you can. Because you won't survive otherwise. Speaking about myself, first i tried the game at easy level of difficulty - and I was soooo close to smashing my gamepad into million pieces in rage... Well, that's the story mode that I'm talking about, and it's really unmerciful: sometimes you just have no chance to push a single button, while your enemy performs their 9000-hits combos.

And this may be pionted at as the worst component of the game. Many game developers say that they could make such an AI, that the player would just yell furiously feeling their own helplessness. But no one would do that, because the main task of AI is not to make gamers feel schmuck, but to lose gracefully. Maybe, except KONAMI, because Skullgirls' AI leaves not a single chance to the player. Most of the other fightings are desined so that we have a small, but still a chance to dodge the attack.

But still... when you play against a living person, it looks like a fair play much more. Well, that's what the fightings were originally designed for, I suppose. And I don't know who started spreading the 'story mode' disease in the genre. And now it's time to say that, beyond the rascality of the story mode, the game is really pretty. The fighters are cute and funny (except Painwheel, maybe), the game itself is full of a very specific humor. Beating your opponent with a naked men, for example, or ripping your own head off and playing with it like a kitten - it's hard to descibe verbally, but when you see it, you definitely say "DAFUQ???"

The game is funny, stylish ang challenging. What else do we need to enjoy the process? =)

Then comes Of Orcs and Men.

It's a new game that was released just today in our country, it pretends to be a role-playing game, but actually it's a brain-fucking and PC-breaking game, where you play the role of HULK. And HULK CRASH, HULK SMASH, HULK VERY ANGRY, ALL GET INTO THE CAR.

To be serious, it's a very, VERY specific game. And it's not even about playing with a huge green creature that's extremely aggressive and not very intelligent. It's more about the game being totally boring and monotonous.

The typical quest looks like the following: you find your self on the one side of the location and your objective is on the other one, and you go there getting into a fight around each corner. If you lose - and you are most likely to (I'll tell later why) - you start it again. If by any chance there was a long cut-scene before the fight, you watch it again. And thank the orcish gods for the ability to skip the scene! Otherwise I'd already have learned all the dialogues by heart.

Everything wouldn't be so bad for me, if the battles were designed in any other way. History knows loads of examples when monotonous gameplay wasn't a reason to give up playing (Darksiders 2, for example). Here the main problem is fighting in battle. The system looks like this: you learn some special attacks and build them up in a queue that can't be rebuilt at the specific moment when you need it the most. So if you are totally busy fighting, you won't be able to raise or heal you ally, when he's in trouble. He will just perish while your HULK stops one action and starts some another, like Windows '95 -_-

BTW, our Hulk can fly into rage from time to time, and this mode is supposed to make him give out tons of damage. But mostly in the moments of irrepressible RAAAAAAAAAAGE he just stands like a tree or starts killing everyone, never even thinking if that was an ally or something. Sad -_-' I just don't have enough patience to continue playing this. And the edition for our country is so laggy, even can't be described.

I can't say that the game is bad, but it's definitely NOT for me.