Resolution 8 - Beat 6 Specific Games -1/6 Complete!

I hate to call it this early, but I have a bad feeling I will not complete this resolution by year's end. I set it at the beginning of the year thinking if I concentrate most of the year on this specific set of adventure games and western RPGs I have been neglecting forever I can at least knock them out this year and have them out of the way. Of course, nearly halfway into the year I neglected these three things: all the running I have been doing has been eating away at my usual game time (a sacrifice which I am happy to make by the way), I am easily distracted by other games and that a lot of these games are long! Ok, ok, here are the six games in question:

Fallout 3
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I have not started Miles Edgeworth yet, and have only put 15 hours into Skyrim, and it has been at least a few months since I have threw it in. All I played in Mass Effect 3 was several rounds of its awesome wave based coop multiplayer with a friend and have yet to start the story as I am only just a few hours into the main story of Mass Effect 2.

That leaves me with the two primary games I want to discuss in this blog with Fallout 3 and Apollo Justice. Fallout 3 I started when it came out late in 2008, and much like another Bethesda game, Oblivion, I only got the urge to play it in week intervals a couple of times a year. Thus chipping away at Oblivion at that pace took me just shy of five years to beat the core campaign and all the guild side quests that resulted in 1000 gamerscore. Fallout 3 was almost a similar tale, though I guess you can say I technically completed the core Fallout 3 campaign within two years after its release according to my achievement progress. I also immediately hopped into its DLC sequel, Broken Steel to pick up where the campaign left off and quickly plowed through that within a week or two. However the last two and a half years I have slowly been picking away at the four remaining DLC packs. I would just pick one and plow through it within a week and wait several more months before hopping into the next one.

About a month ago I threw in Bethesda's post apocalyptic open world RPG, Fallout 3 again and did as many as miscellaneous quests that awarded achievements that I could do from the core disc. I could not do a few of them because they became unavailable at certain points past the main story. I finally hopped into the last DLC pack, Point Lookout and am glad I saved it for last. I loved the big open world it delivered compared to the other smaller in scale DLC packs (for the record I loved them all except for Mothership Zeta, which I appreciate for being different, but was an absolute bore). Its core campaign was only a few missions long, but like the main game, there was enough side quest content to do and discover that I easily got a dozen hours out of it before completing everything there was to do in it. I had a final achievement score tally of 1160/1550 for Fallout 3 with 95 hours in total playing time. I am tempted to just put in another hour or two to get one or two more achievements I am close to grabbing, but I should really just move on.

Apollo Justice I officially hit the halfway mark on. It is the fourth game in the cult hit lawyer/detective Ace Attorney game series, and like the other games before it, is split up into four cases. The first case is usually a short tutorial case which takes about 2-3 hours, with the second and third cases being longer affairs that are around ten hours each with a final epic case being around 12-15 hours. At least was the case in the original trilogy. The original trilogy on the DS were all GBA ports, with the exception of the original game having a fifth bonus, DS exclusive case to show off the DS touch features and I vividly recall being shocked at what I initially thought would be a throwaway "bonus" ended up lasting nearly 20 hours.

Apollo Justice is the first Ace Attorney game designed from the ground up for the DS. Graphics are about the same minus a few noticeable little flourishes here and there with the 2D sprites which were previously unmatched and a few brief 3D modeled cut scenes which were never possible on the prior games. I just finished the second case and am loving the trademark witty dialogue and charm the series always had on display. I am still shocked at the surprising fate that has bestowed the series trademark protagonist, Phoenix Wright in this installment, but is definitely keeping me on my toes for the mysteries that are still to be revealed in the final two cases.

The reason why Apollo Justice is taking me forever to finish is because most of my DS game time is usually a few times a week for 15-20 minutes before passing out. I usually beat 2-3 DS games a year this way, but getting the Vita a little over a year ago has caused me to split up my handheld game time and my DS progress has since suffered. Now instead of DS time 2-3 times a week, it is more like 2-3 times a month. Last couple of weeks I stepped it up a bit to finish this case, so I hope to at least finish Apollo Justice by the end of the year. And I have a good feeling I can get to Mass Effect 2 and 3 as they are much shorter affairs compared to Bethesda games. We shall see how the year progresses, and while I would like to finish all six by year's end, four is looking more realistic.