Here?

 When was the last time I update this thing? Holy crap, that long ago!!  Sorry folks, but I did say I wouldn't be posting very often here. 

Currently gone back to Dead Rising 2. Trying to finish the game so I can move on. Next up will be Blur. Sounds like it's Mario Kart but with nicer cars and graphics. 

Tried playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadows, but the game kicked my ass. It was very difficult for me, even on Normal difficulty. Tried playing it on Easy and that helped for a while. But the game was still a struggle to get trough.

Here's a brief synopsis:

The Good: The game looks great. The story is interesting, and the enemies are interesting and varied. Very good voice acting adds to the mood and feel of the game. RPG elements add to replay-ability.

The Bad: 1) Game has too many attack moves. - Sounds weird, but it's true. Half the time you're not sure which ones are useful and worth upgrading and which ones aren't. And way too many can be easily countered even by the weakest enemies. Worst of all, many bosses can easily defeat and counter your most powerful attacks. So you'll find yourself constantly dodging and counter attacking, over and over again.

                  2) Game doesn't always help you. - I don't need constant hand holding, but a little help would be nice. The puzzles are really hard, almost insanely hard. The timing puzzles will make you want to rip the disc out of your console and stomp on it. And in what should be the easiest parts of the game, the Titan battles, the game doesn't give you a clue as to what to do, and when sometimes it does, the clues are cryptic. I spent half and hour trying to take down one Titan (while on Easy difficulty) because a symbol kept popping up telling me to rotate my left stick in a counter-clockwise direction. This action would let me hurl a giant rock back towards the titan, giving me time to approach it and begin the process of climbing it. I tried performing that throw over and over again, failing miserably. It wasn't until by pure chance I timed it right and performed it perfectly that I realized I had to time the rotation  of my left stick with the animation. Once I realized that, success was easy. Another example of how the game doesn't give you enough info or no info at all : I was riding a large beast lycan, using him to leap gaps in the trail. First of all the instructions given to achieve this were very vague. I was stuck across a ravine for 15 minutes until I finally figured it out what the instructions meant. Once I had crossed several gaps and was near the end, I approached a walk and as I saw no further need for the Lycan Beast, I killed it. Then approached the wall and was given the message, a little too late that wall can only be climbed by the Lycan Beast. WTF!! It would have been nice if the game had told me as I approached the wall, that I might still need the beast. Because of this mistake, I had to restart from a really far away check point and replay 20 minutes of gameplay to catch up. The game does this a lot. It might be because the developers were Spanish, that the help info is sometimes confusing but for the most part, I think it's because of poor game design. They should have played the game more and look for moments in the game where the player would benefit from a little help. If you play this game, you'll find yourself at times completely unable to figure out what you're supposed to do or go next.

                   3)Game combat feels slow. - Maybe it's 'cause so many of your attacks can be countered, but combat always felt slow to me. Maybe I was expecting something more like Devil May Cry, but to me, the combat felt slow.

                   4)Difficulty level ramped up too high. - The game was really hard. Not so bad on Easy, but you don't get as much XP on Easy. I guess you could play the whole game on Easy, rank your character up, and then replay it on the higher difficulties, but that won't do anything about the puzzles, which are really hard, and you'll still have to deal with gameplay that feels slow and like a grind after a few hours. BTW, part of the difficulty is that the game doesn't save very often. Checkpoints are rare and far between. The only guaranteed checkpoints are right before you fight a boss, and right before you fight a new type of enemy. It should be noted that the developers have said that the difficulty is higher than other games by design, not accident. They wanted to make a tough game.

All of this put together resulted in me giving up. I may still try to pick it up when it's on sale and try again, but for now I'm done. I'm a bit of a masochist, but not enough to keep playing Castlevania: LOS  for now.