Which game(s) are you looking forward to the most?

On the bus this morning, I figured it would be a good idea to create a poll relating to the updated list of games to be released towards the end of the year. For now the list only contains the games that I'm interested in, and the new generation console titles Assassin's Creed: Unity, and Destiny. I'll add any suggestions posted in the comments below. The poll will run up until 6 October,  the day before the earliest release date of a title on the list.

New games incoming

Last month I had a little poll to see which open-world, first person shooter was favoured by my modest following of readers. Despite the 250 or so hits the blog has received in the last month, no one took the time to vote. This isn't the first time this has happened, so I get the impression you lot don't like voting in polls regarding first person shooters.

Never the less, I decided to resolve the matter in my own way; by purchasing Rage: Anarchy Edition. How did I go about making this decision? It had nothing to do with ratings, reviews, or recommendations. Instead I looked to see which of the three titles I was interested in playing was still available from the various online retailers. Since Rage was the only title available, Rage is what I bought. OK, so it's not a 'new game' as such, but it will be a new game for me.

As an added bonus it was on promotion, so I managed to pick up both Rage: Anarchy Edition and Deadpool for only R299. The downside is it will take nearly three weeks for the package to be delivered. That will at least allow me some time to progress in Diablo III, and possibly even try my hand at playing Call of Duty: Ghosts online. That said, I have spent quite a few of the last couple of evenings watching soccer (or football if you prefer), instead of gaming or reading, so perhaps I wont get all that much further in Diablo III before Rage and Deadpool arrive.

Games I've 'clocked' recently, and a poll

I recently completed the single player story of Far Cry 3. I even managed to do so without liberating any of the outposts on the southern island. So after completing the story I spent a few hours wrapping up all the optional missions, liberated all the outposts, and searched high and low to find all the remaining relics and chests.

I probably spent more time 'cleaning up' in Far Cry 3, than I did playing the entire story of the third game in this post. I even went so far as to unlock all the trophies related to the single player campaign, that's just how much I enjoyed exploring the islands of Far Cry 3. There is still the matter of achieving the six co-operative mission trophies before I manage to gain my first platinum trophy, but those will have to wait until I have someone to play the co-op. missions with. Perhaps I'll get a chance to complete one or two of the co-op. missions next month when my brother comes to visit.

Shortly after finishing Far Cry 3, I jumped back into Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and completed all the story related missions too. I had previously played through about 65% of the game, so thought that I still had quite a few more hours if the story left to play. Hence it came as quite a surprise that the final chapter was so short, possibly even shorter than the credits sequence.

Turns out the majority of the remaining 35% of gameplay was all the naval contracts, assassination missions, and hunting down of the remaining collectables. Unlike Far Cry 3, I probably wont be getting round to completing too many of these any time soon, as I didn't find sailing the Seven Seas in Black Flag as enjoyable as traipsing the jungles of Far Cry 3. Maybe I'll give it another go in a few weeks time, after taking another break from Black Flag.

A few days after finishing Black Flag I completed X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which had a much shorter, but still enjoyable story. The shortness of Wolverine came as quite a relief, as the previous three games I'd completed (Borderlands, Far Cry 3, and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag) had all taken a vast number of hours to finish, not that I'm complaining.

Now that my gaming backlog is thinning out a bit, I'm on the lookout for another open-world, first person shooter. I've been having a look, and the three titles that come recommended as being similar to both Borderlands, and Far Cry 3, without being sequels/ prequels are Dead Island, Fallout 3, and Rage.

As such, I'm setting up another poll to see which of these three open world shooters you think is the best. In the meantime I'm going to take a bit of a break from playing PS3, as there is quite a lot happening in my life over the next  four weeks, culminating in a week long trip to an Indian Ocean island (or two).

October brain teaser solution

Last week I posted the following brain teaser:

Here is the solution, showing all workings

Let's see how smart you lot are

I came across the following brain teaser posted on Facebook. Do you think you know the correct answer?

Instead of commenting below, why not select your answer from the poll to the right (and no cheating!). There is only one correct answer. I'll share the full solution after the poll has closed on 10 October.

Diablo III character class poll

I have a copy of Diablo III sitting in my gaming drawer, waiting for me to pay my proper respect, and load the disc into my PlayStation 3. Before I do though, I want to complete Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, and perhaps even try complete the main storyline in Borderlands. While I work on completing those two games, and before I set about creating a Diablo III, I thought I'd get your opinion on which Diablo III character class was your favourite. 

From left to right: Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor, and Wizard

The poll on the right will allow you to vote for either the Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor, or the Wizard. The poll will close on September 27, or 24 hours after I've completed both Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, and Borderlands, depending on which comes first.

The poll is obviously open to every one. If you haven't played any of the games from the Diablo franchise, or are unfamiliar with the different class abilities, then cast your vote according to which character you think has the best appearance.

I'm leaning towards playing as the Demon Hunter but since I've recently been playing Diablo II as the Assassin, perhaps I should change strategy and try one of the more magic dependent classes. That said I've never really played as a Barbarian much either, so maybe that's the route I should use during my first play through of Diablo III.

First person shooter poll results

The final result of the 'First person shooter poll' was really a no result, since nobody voted. So I took matters into my own hands, and bought Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition and Portal 2, neither of which were titles in the poll.

I played quite a bit of Borderlands on my brother's Xbox 360 while back home. It was amazingly good fun, especially when playing co-operatively.* The comic book graphics and dark humour are brilliant, and I really enjoyed playing as Mordecai. There is little doubt that I will eventually get the sequel too, but I'll hold out until I've finished Borderlands, or a Game of the Year (GotY) edition of Borderlands 2 is released.

I also ended up buying Far Cry 3 (which was one of the options in the poll) as the price was reduced by a further 25%. So from having no first person shooters a month ago, I now have three, even though Portal 2 isn't a conventional shooting game.

--
* Except when my brother (playing as Lilith) ran around looting all the chests, and scavenging dropped ammo from around me, while I was busy taking on various badass bandits, bruisers and psychos; or when he used phasewalk too close to me, inadvertently depleting my shield; or when he ran away from the conflict, waited for me to soften up a couple of the tougher opponents, then reappeared with his shotgun, killed everything with a single shot, and got the experience for doing so.

Which is your favourite shooter game?

My local games shop is having a sale on three of the first person shooter (FPS) titles I've had my eye on since I'd been told that they were pretty good. The titles are BioShock Infinite, Borderlands 2, and Far Cry 3. Since I don't own any FPS games, I figured this might be a good opportunity to add one to my collection at a reduced price.

I haven't played any of the other titles in the three franchises, so these titles would be my introduction into the relevant series. I've heard that all of these play really well on their own, without any knowledge of the happenings from previous games. All three titles score 90% or above in the scoring systems used by IGN and Metacritic, so they're all pretty top-notch games.

This is where you come in, I'm going to run a poll for the next few hours days to see which game comes out tops as far as you're concerned. Depending on the number of people who participate, I may just purchase the game that receives the most votes.

--Updated 22 June 2013--

Results of the 'FPS poll' here.

February poll results

Last month I ran a poll to see what visitors wanted to see more of on the blog. It ran from 14 February, until the end of the month. During that period of time Here be Porpoises received approximately 273 hits. Of those 273 hits, only one person completed the poll, meaning that 0.36% of the site's visitors voted.

This is what 0.36% of 273 looks like

Fortunately I had allowed voters to choose multiple options, as the sole person who took the time to vote selected two of the five categories; they wanted to see more posts about reviews and downloads.

No love for the sea animals

With that information, I wrote a brief review of the new How to Destroy Angels album (that post has had 13 views since 19 February). As for the addressing the downloads part, all I can say is that of the 96 posts I've written so far, just over 20% of those have included links to download free music. I will try post a few more download links in the future, but I like to first listen to the music before I share it on this blog, just in case I think it's rubbish, and undeserving of the promotion.

On the topic of free downloads, if you're interested in free image processing software I suggest you check out GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). So far I have been able to use it to do everything I'd previously used Photoshop for, except automatically stitch together photos to make a panorama. That said, a quick Google search for "creating panoramas in GIMP" returns links to several GIMP plug-ins and how-to tutorials.

What do you want to see more of?

I set up a poll (on the right) for people who come across this blog (whether intentionally or accidently) to be able to give some feedback as to what they would like to see more of on Here be Porpoises. If you would like to suggest another category for the poll, then feel free to comment below.