Lately, I’ve been doing some serious gaming on the PS3. For my birthday, I got Red Dead Redemption and ModNation Racers and pre-ordered LittleBigPlanet 2. I also recently grabbed DeathSpank, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light and finally Magic: The Gathering – Duals of the Plainswalkers for Windows.

I rarely buy Windows games these days since my Windows box is getting pretty dated. The graphics card is RADEON X800 series card. Not all that capable for the current games out there. Fortunately, good enough for the M:TG game.

DeathSpank and DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue is an amazing toung-in-cheek game that reminds me a lot of WoW without all the other online players. You have a main quest line to follow with tons of side quests to keep you occupied. All in an environment similar to WoW but displayed in a very unique way. There are puzzles to solve, tons of puns and an incredible amount of audio content that speaks every line of dialog in the game.

You play the not-so-humble DeathSpank. A hero out to locate and obtain “The Artifact”. An artifact of unspeakable power that now one actually knows what it does, but it’s really powerful!

I have not been playing all that long, but managed to get my hands on the infamous artifact, only to lose it and have to track it down again. Money in the game is pretty easy to come by, but there just isn’t all that much in the game that you actually need to buy. You get most of what you need from creature drops.

You gain levels and experience as any RPG would. Instead of skill points, you get Hero cards that increase certain aspects of your abilities.

You carry 4 weapons that if you use them all together, become more powerful. If you use the same weapon twice or more on a single creature, you hit for the power of that weapon. If you switch weapons (using the X, O, Triangle, and Square buttons on the PS3), you double, triple, etc the power of the weapon used. Very important when attacking creatures that are a higher level than yourself.

A downside to the game is that you can only hold 5 health potions which can be a problem when going up against some of the bigger bosses.

Overall, a great game for the measly price of $15 per game. DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue is the second game in this franchise that was just recently released.

Red Dead Redemption has been a huge surprise to me. Sure, it’s by RockStarGames, the same folks that do the Grand Theft Auto franchise, so I should have expected an amazing game, but I didn’t expect a “Western” game to suck me in. I expected it to be fun and graphically amazing, but I am blown away by how real the game feels. Mind you, I didn’t live through the wild west days, but it feels like I am now.

The environment is just unreal. Wild animals all over the place, hundreds and hundreds of NPC’s doing all kinds of things filling the world with some real life. There is never a dull moment in Red Dead Redemption.

You play a bounty hunter with a sordid past trying to bring the leader of a gang you used to lead to justice. There are plenty of wild and wonder characters to meet along the way to help you with this task. Along the way, you build up Fame and Honor as well as challenges like Sharpshooting, Hunting, and Survivalist and others.

Along with the main story line, there are tons of side missions and quite a few mini-games like Five Finger Fillet, Horseshoes, Liar’s Dice, Poker, etc… Plenty of activities to keep you busy with the game for many, many hours.

The think that keeps me going back is just seeing the world. There looks like hundreds of square miles of world to explore with mines, oil rigs, ravines, rivers, a train that travels all around the area, stage coach’s to get you from place to place quickly, and some amazing looking scenery that make you feel like you are visiting Monument Valley, Utah!

Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light was another major surprise to me. I have played a couple of the original Laura Croft games way back in the day, but wasn’t really all that impressed with them. Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light is a totally different vision for the franchise. Mainly it’s an isometric view game as opposed to behind the character view of the previous games. That alone interested me in the game more than anything else.

The game has some amazing graphics that make working the puzzles a real joy. In fact, there is a section where you have to pull together 8 rock spheres in order to open a gate. getting them to where they need to be is just gorgeous. If you play it, you will see.

The puzzles are pretty fun to figure out. So far I haven’t had to look up any hints to figure out what I was supposed to do, and there are some times more than one way to solve the puzzle. Just so long as the puzzle is solved is all that matters.

Controlling Laura is a little strange (the choices the developers made with the PS3 controller) and I have had some difficulty getting used to controlling her guns and other tools.

Each section has certain goals to achieve. There are bonuses to obtain by being agile or getting a part of the environment into another part. The goals are displayed so you don’t have to figure that part out. Achieving the goals are sometimes quite difficult.

In Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light, you play Laura (of course), helping the “Guardian of Light” to stop an evil “over the top” bad guy that was released from it’s prison of stone by some greedy treasure seekers. You know, the usualy story line. Along the way, you find Red Skulls to find and gather, as well as sparkling gems to help bring up your score. There are usually 3 score thresholds to achieve, the last bringing you a new item. You also locate other items, artifacts, and weapons along the way.

I’ve played through 4 stages so far and have been super impressed with all of them. There are 14 stages overall, each has the score challenges as well as reward challenges like the ones I mentioned earlier where you have to do something special.

I can’t wait to see what environments await me in the future stages.

Finally, I recently purchased Magic: The Gathering – Duals of the Planeswalkers. I haven’t really started playing that one yet. I just grabbed it when I saw it was on sale for $18 including all the DLC packs. Quite a deal really. It’s now selling for $35.

I used to play the actual card game way back in the late 90′s. I had a pretty big card collection until I dumped them all. I hate to think how much money I put into those cards. At least I made someone’s day by giving them my collection.

There are now 17,500+ cards to Magic’s name. I can’t get over that. I found an iPad app that is the IMDB of Magic cards. MTG Magic the Gathering Trading Card Game (TCG) database is the name of the app. It currently sells for $0.99 The database holds over 17,500 cards. 99% of them have their pictures along with full details of the cards.

That app was pretty much the inspiration of getting the game on the computer. I wanted to maybe see if I could still play the game without having to actually pay thousands more for the actual cards.

I’ll update you soon on my review of the game once I have had a chance to really play it for a while.