In spite of busy schedules and all the drags of the real world, the 4cr crew managed to sneak in a fair amount of game time during the month of October. Read on to find out what kept us entertained, and be sure to chime in and share what you played, too.

Greg:

My past month has been pretty crazy, with my thesis work and PhD applications filling up most of my time, but I’ve still gotten a good bit of gaming in. I spent a couple of days toying around in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which ultimately left me disappointed. I finally downloaded Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta for Fallout 3. Both of those were fantastic. Point Lookout has been my favorite of the Fallout 3 expansions, and after finishing it, I realized that I would gladly pay Bethesda a monthly fee for more Fallout content. Like Jody, I can’t wait to try out New Vegas. I’ve even been booting into my bootcamp Windows partition for some PC gaming! Runic Games (a company filled with ex-Blizzard devs) just released their loot-fest Torchlight. The neighbors can probably hear me clicking.

On the DS, I finished up Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. It was fantastic! The writing is hilarious, and the game has some of the best 2D sprite-work that I’ve ever seen. I’ve also been having a ton of fun with Scribblenauts. The controls are incredibly frustrating, and most of the puzzles can be solved with some combination of a jetpack, rope, a fan, and Cthulhu. Still, I’m having a lot of fun with it and I really hope that 5th Cell gets to make a sequel to iron out some of the issues. On the PSP, I played through Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble. If you haven’t read my review yet, go do so! Kenka Bancho was an awesome surprise.

Edgar:

This Month, I’ve been playing some Dungeons and Dragons Online. I decided to restart playing Fire Emblem on the DS, too, since I never finished it. And I’ve been spending a lot of time in the 360 Indie Games section. There are some little gems to be found there for really low prices.

GK:

Good god I haven’t really played a game in a while. I don’t know why and it kind of saddens me, but I’ve slowly been losing my interest in gaming. However, I do have a few titles that have been bringing me back into the fold, and I’ll talk about one in particular.

I recently picked up Torchlight off of Steam and it’s simply amazing. Having played multiple Diablo-like games over the years, most of them have felt lacking in one way or another. Torchlight, however, gets it just right, from the pace of the action to the simple UI. Even the music and art direction are familiar, thanks in part to the developer’s former Blizzard connections.

Many games over the years have been described as Diablo clones, but those are clones in the same sense that the kid was a clone in that crappy movie Godsend. Torchlight is what would have happened if Diablo grew up, hit puberty, and is now in his hipster college phase. It’s only $20 but it’s the damn best twenty I’ve spent in a long while (excluding that glow-in-the-dark cowbell with Bluetooth I bought the other week).

Jody:

I have been playing a few games this month. First, I’m still making my way through Mother 3. I am getting close to the end, which is making me slow down tremendously. It’s one of those games that I just don’t want to end. Aside from that, I played through LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias on WiiWare. I have also been playing Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, The Legendary Starfy, and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. And of course I have been playing Fallout 3 which I’ve been doing just about every month for the past year. One of the best games I’ve played in a long time. There’s so much to do, and the world is just begging to be explored. Even a year later, I am finding new things. Can’t wait for Fallout: New Vegas!

Sean Corse:

Without a doubt, it was Halo 3: ODST that took up most of my October gaming time. I wasn’t sure I wanted to play another Halo game at the expense of so many other great original titles this month, but a quick sampling of the first two levels at Phil Bond’s pad convinced me to give this “side story” a shot. The cast is a venerable Firefly “Boys Club” reunion, with a little dash of Battlestar Galactica’s little red dress thrown in for flavor.

As a person who has never before played Halo for the sake of its single player missions, I was surprised that I was being pulled in by the multi-faceted story of this ODST team. The game atmosphere is appropriately lonesome and danger-filled, perfectly punctuated by one of the most amazing scores in a video game that my brain has had the pleasure to process. Its serialized story structure, great voice acting, and intriguing twists on standard Halo gameplay were more than enough to justify $60 from a franchise I thought had reached its apex.

If you’re a fan of treasure hunts and Halo 2’s I Love Bees alternate reality game, it’s well worth it to collect all 30 pieces of Sadie’s Story, which can be found around the Streets of New Mombasa while playing as The Rookie (the mechanism for this is brilliant, but I won’t spoil it for those who aren’t familiar). Also, if you’re behind on the Halo 3 map packs, this game also includes a separate disc with everything that’s been released through Mythic, in addition to the new Firefight mode available on the main ODST disc. If you think Halo is done, think again! I can’t wait to don my helmet once more with Nathan Fillion in Reach.