January 2011 Gaming Analysis

The results shown below are of course based on the combined data from the Daily Game Log which should provide a clear indication of a game's usage frequency. Bear in mind that even if a game is played twice or more during a particular day, it would still register as 1 in the Day Count column below. In a sense, "merits" are given based on how often a particular game can make me play it again throughout the entire period of the month on a daily basis. A game that makes a gamer play it over and over again or at least spend a lot of time with it... Isn't that what we mostly want from a great game? I don't think it's really fair to count all the way down to the number of hours played since some games only require a short amount of time to properly serve their purposes.

OVERALL BREAKDOWN:

Total Games Played: 32

It is the same old story again for January 2011 - League of Legends for the Personal Computer took another very dominating first spot for the most played game, missing only two days from being played every single day of the month. I did come close to taking a break from the game during the past couple of weeks however because I have been unfortunate enough to encounter negative players nonstop almost every other match that I played. I am not the type of person who would actually acknowledge rude comments made towards me during the game because I just report in the bad behavior after the game is over but after a while, the negativity can be just a bit too overwhelming. I implement a new method of self-preservation now where as soon as I noticed that a player is acting out of line, I would immediately add the person in my ignore list so that I don't see all the nastiness during the game so that I could focus only on the fun.

Tied for second place are two great role playing games, Resonance of Fate on the X-Box 360 and Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City for the Nintendo DS. RoF is a departure from the conventions with its quest system and futuristic gun battles. The story is a bit weak because it is presented in fragments and since you are only exploring one huge city, sometimes the game feels a bit stagnant. The game feels fresh however because tri-Ace is trying something different here and it is definitely one of the better RPGs of this generation. Etrian Odyssey III is a marvelous way to dungeon crawl and all I can say is this - passive healing abilities are the best! The highlight of this game is definitely the deep character customizations and though I made a slight mistake at the beginning with the make of my party, it was nothing that I couldn't fix with a little bit of level grinding... A couple of hours worth that is.

Then, we have Shadow Hearts and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne for the PlayStation 2 occupying the third place slot. Both are RPGs that involve fighting the supernatural but I like the former better because of its goofy humor. I don't know why but I was really in the mood to play Shadow Hearts again. I never completed the sequels to the game so this could be a good start to build up my interest in playing them again. I played Nocturne for the sole purpose of streaming on Justin.tv to see if it would generate a large audience - people seems to like watching Atlus games for some reason or another. It didn't work all that well however.

Best New Game of the Month:

Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (Nintendo DS)

Unexpectedly Forgotten New Game of the Month:

Enslaved: Journey to the West (X-Box 360)

I Missed You, I Want You Game of the Month:

Monday Night Combat (Personal Computer)