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Post by N3B on Jun 18, 2011 17:50:44 GMT -5
I believe Fable 3 is the only game he owns for that console. If you want some recommendations for good games that are probably $5-10 by now, check out Condemned: Criminal Origins, Dead Space, Doom 3. I'd also highly recommend Fallout: New Vegas and The Witcher 2, but these would be in the $30-50 range. Borderlands is also pretty good, especially if you split-screen it with someone.
Meanwhile I've started playing Ass Effect Mass Effect. So far it reminds me a lot of KOTOR from the sci-fi graphics, to the interface, to the way you go to planets for quests. It's a very well-polished and streamlined game. For the most part it's easy to play and it's got well-varied kinds of content so that it doesn't get too repetitive. Pacing is generally good.
I like that humanity, in a galactic community, are second-class citizens. Don't have the same rights as "Council species" and are looked down on by a couple of other species, while other species show respect and positivity. It's a more nuanced angle than you usually see. I guess it's nothing truly unique but it's nice that BioWare aren't being heavy-handed about it. Their morality meter is also a little better than what was in KOTOR, but it still has many of the same problems.
However, there are still aspects of the game that kind of bother me. Enemies and loot seem to scale to my level, which is taking a lot of the thrill out of exploring new planets, because it essentially doesn't matter what order I go in. Driving the dune buggy around the surface of planets looking for minerals and collectable loot is a total chore. I wish there were more of an inventory management aspect; there's scarcely an inventory and you don't actually loot corpses. There's an arbitrary 150-item limit when there's like no inventory management otherwise so it becomes a chore to clear out my inventory. The mini-game you have to do whenever you open a locked container or repair something or even SURVEY a ROCK is annoying and especially out-of-place when surveying a rock. The gameplay's a little too streamlined so it feels like it was designed for little children or complete dummies.
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Post by N3B on Jul 5, 2011 2:24:52 GMT -5
I've finished Mass Effect. Overall, the game felt kind of shallow. The parts of the game where you explore worlds that house a main story mission are "pretty good," but virtually every other aspect of exploration and gameplay become shallow, generic, and repetitive. I'll probably write more about it later, but for now I've got a few other updates to mention.
I started playing Mirror's Edge the other day---the first-person running simulator. If I remember correctly it got mixed reviews, and I can see why. It's pretty fun to run through levels chaining maneuvers into a fluid stream of momentum, and it's also extremely thrilling trying to do all of this stuff while dodging bullets and outrunning enemies. However, some of the platforming mechanics are a bit rough around the edges. For example, there are times when you have to jump across a pit of death aiming for something you can't see until you're already in mid-air, and at other times you'll be right next to the ledge you're trying to grab onto and fall to your death. Sometimes this seems to be because I didn't have it perfectly targeted in the center of the screen, other times it seems like the game just being finicky. A fair amount of trial-and-error is involved but so far it's been a unique, fun experience.
I also started up Singularity. I'm not very far into it (I suspect I'm not even past the introductory area), but so far it reminds me a lot of BioShock, with a slight element of Fallout 3/NV. Which makes a little concerned. It's got the whole "alternate history" plot device with an isolated community doing mysterious things, and you're a lone guy thrown into the fray by an inconvenient aircraft crash. You seem to spend the game piecing the history of the island together while using the mysterious technology to battle enemies. So far I've enjoyed the scenery/atmosphere and the slow buildup, but we'll see if it goes beyond my expectations of being like BioShock. Cause I didn't care for BioShock.
I also put a few more hours into Dragon Quest VIII. It was pretty easy to pick up where I left off several months ago, thanks to the caravan talks where the party gives suggestions about what you should be doing. Right now I've just obtained the Illuminated Sea Chart, and I'm in a hidden village somewhere ultimately trying to get the bird goddess Empyrea to give me flight somewhere.
Steam's also got its annual summer sale going on, but so far I've been more restrained than in previous sales. I think I've only purchased three games that were in bargain bin price range. It helps that I've basically already bought most of the games that I really wanted in the past sales, and that so far everything that's been for sale I've not been interested in, or it was still too expensive, or I already owned it. There are still 5 or 6 more days left in the sale, so I may pick a few more bargain titles up.
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Post by niff on Jul 5, 2011 18:50:33 GMT -5
finished red dead redemption, and my god, what an epic game. haven't been so involved in a game in so long. the multiplayer is also one of the best i have ever played - mandrel (if anyone remembers him) and i play it most nights.
been meaning to play bad company 2 and la noire but red dead is just too good. am about to go and purchase borderlands, arkham asylum, GTA IV and new vegas (once the price drops). i love this thing, reminds me of the simplicity of console gaming on n64.
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Post by Draxas on Jul 5, 2011 23:13:37 GMT -5
I also put a few more hours into Dragon Quest VIII. It was pretty easy to pick up where I left off several months ago, thanks to the caravan talks where the party gives suggestions about what you should be doing. Right now I've just obtained the Illuminated Sea Chart, and I'm in a hidden village somewhere ultimately trying to get the bird goddess Empyrea to give me flight somewhere. As long as you can persevere for a little longer, like many JRPGs, once you have the ability to fly, the game is coming to a close. Of course, there is the bonus dungeon and bonus bosses afterward, should you have the desire to keep at it, but given our previous conversations about the game I suspect you'll be satisfied just finishing the game and looking up the bonus content on the web. Feel free to prove me wrong, though. Thanks, Sony, for your two free games in exchange for the dissemination of my personal information! Fortunately, it was not as if anyone with a search engine couldn't find that same info easily, and I never linked a credit card to my PSN account. So yeah, I got Little Big Planet and ModNation Racers from their "welcome back" program as an apology for the hack. I've played only a few hours of each so far, but both are interesting games I suppose. I feel like I still haven't seen most of what LBP has to offer in particular. Time will tell, I suppose, but I haven't been immediately turned off by either one.
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Post by niff on Jul 6, 2011 17:35:57 GMT -5
wahaha, set up the kinect that came with my 360 slim. great for novelty, and the little red light looks disturbingly like HAL. especially when it moves by itself, trying to scan you. too bad my room is too small for it to actually work well.. i have to play on my bed.
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Post by N3B on Jul 7, 2011 17:13:38 GMT -5
That's reassuring news about DQ8. I've been sick lately I've had troubles getting into Mirror's Edge and Singularity. Both are first-person action-heavy games that I can't keep up with when my head's congested and all of that. As a result, I've been able to appreciate DQ8's slower pacing more.
Also, Steam currently has (what I guess is) all of the X-Com games for $3.34 each. At least through the 10th of July. Is there one or two that are especially worth checking out?
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Post by Draxas on Jul 7, 2011 20:41:26 GMT -5
UFO defense is an awesome game and I can't recommend it enough. Apocolypse is good, but not nearly as good as the original. Terror from the Deep is a ludicrously difficult (moreso than X-Com is normally, which is saying a lot), bug ridden mess of a cosmetic upgrade to the original, and is best left alone, though maybe less than $4 isn't too bad a deal. Anything else with the X-Com title is best forgotten.
If nothing else, you owe it yourself to get UFO Defense for that price, just to own one of the greatest classic PC titles ever. Just be aware that anything with the X-Com name on it is going to be mercilessly unforgiving. It's been 20 years, and more attempts than I can remember, and I still have never managed to finish any of them.
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Post by N3B on Jul 8, 2011 18:09:58 GMT -5
And, of course, for the third time in a row, no one makes a move to say or do anything about the cursed staff that we've been hunting this whole game, and it falls into corrupt, idle hands, again.
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Post by Draxas on Jul 9, 2011 14:02:12 GMT -5
Does that surprise you at this point?
Anyway, some of you may have noticed that it's mah berfday today. The term "X-Box" has been bandied about rather a lot as far as gifts go, so I figured this would be a good time to check in with AltL and see if he's still interested in selling.
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Post by N3B on Jul 10, 2011 21:56:53 GMT -5
Anyway, some of you may have noticed that it's mah berfday today. I hadn't scrolled down that far to notice. Happy birthing to you. As far as I know, Alt is still undecided about his box, but he should be showing up 'round these parts sometime in the near future. But man, talk about a long-winded ending. First I gotta fight the big boss, who turns out to be an annoying prick. Then I gotta backtrack and collect a bunch of OOT-style sages. Then I gotta fight the big boss again. Then I gotta fight the big boss again. Then like 30 minutes worth of cutscenes roll by. I was expecting them to be all "you saved the world, yay! /the end" and was all set to complain about not becoming king of the realm. But apparently I got to score with the princess in the back of the carriage, so I'm content. The Steam Summer Sale has also come to a conclusion (or at least it will in ~14 hours from the time of this post). I ended up buying: Assassin's Creed 1+2, Singularity, Dragon Age: Origins (some kind of deluxe version that has all of the DLC and whatnot), and Portal 2. Still wavering on X-Com Ufo Defense. Strategy's not usually my scene and I've still got a crap ton of other games to play. Let's see, more thoughts on Singularity: it's beginning to feel heavily "consolized" and that's kind of bothering me. The FOV is extremely narrow, the ironsights feel like 2D overlays, there are no manual saves, the autosaves are like airlocks that don't let you reload anything other than the most recent save. The main selling point of the game, the Time-Manipulation Device {TMD} is kind of an interesting gimmick, but a lot of its function is "press Q to trigger a scripted event" which is underwhelming when you think about it. The gunplay's generally kind of average and the exploration feels too confined, but the scenery is interesting and I like the atmosphere. I also put a little bit of time into Portal 2. Since this game is still recent I'll try to avoid spoilarz. I really liked the intro, it was varied from the first game and had some interesting writing and voice acting. The way they implemented the tutorial was nice, as Valve is always good at, and the general set-up seemed very promising. But then after a short bit it kind of fell back into routine and I felt my excitement dwindle. It stopped being a unique, interesting experience, even though the puzzle mechanics have changed. Still, I look forward to the rest of it.
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Post by Draxas on Jul 11, 2011 10:02:09 GMT -5
But man, talk about a long-winded ending. First I gotta fight the big boss, who turns out to be an annoying prick. Then I gotta backtrack and collect a bunch of OOT-style sages. Then I gotta fight the big boss again. Then I gotta fight the big boss again. Then like 30 minutes worth of cutscenes roll by. I was expecting them to be all "you saved the world, yay! /the end" and was all set to complain about not becoming king of the realm. But apparently I got to score with the princess in the back of the carriage, so I'm content. If you're not completely sick of the game yet, there is a somewhat more satisfying alternate ending available if you can defeat the first bonus boss. He's difficult, but not brutally so like a lot of other jRPG bonus bosses (but that's only the first of 8 or 9, mind you), so it's definitely doable with a little effort. Of course, if you are completely sick of the game, I suppose there's always Youtube.
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Post by Altl on Jul 14, 2011 5:07:15 GMT -5
Sorry, about the delay I think I'm gonna hold off on selling it. I've yet to get much use out of it, but it's hard to let go of the option [especially when I'm rolling around in graduation money and overtime pay].
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Post by Draxas on Jul 14, 2011 9:21:22 GMT -5
That's cool, no worries. My wife was getting antsy to "just buy it already" anyway, so she'll be happy to have the opportuinty to do so.
If you're into Fallout, by the by, Best Buy was selling new copies of New Vegas for the 360 for $10 the other day, which is a steal considering they wanted $35 for a used copy.
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Post by N3B on Jul 15, 2011 15:54:05 GMT -5
I highly recommend getting New Vegas. I can't recommend Fallout 3 at all. That game's terrible.
I've played substantially more of Portal 2. I get the impression I'm in the final stretch before the climax and finale, though it's possible the game could still take some surprise turns on me. So far I've enjoyed some of the new puzzle mechanics. The pacing is pretty good, as evident that I'm more compelled to play P2 than any of the other three games I have active, right now. I still get annoyed with the "Valve typicality" of scripted linearity, though.
I started playing Siren, sometimes/somewhere known as Forbidden Siren on the PS2. And so far I'm totally unimpressed. It's supposed to be survival-horror but there's been no survival and no horror. The two biggest problems:
1) the game is told out of chronological order from a bunch of different playable characters. So you play random characters in random orders in random situations. (It's not actually randomized but it feels random because nothing happens in order.) This makes it so incredibly hard to care about what's going on because you don't have anything invested in the characters or what's going on, and there's never any context for what you're doing and no continuity between missions, which are all objective-based.
2) the "sightjacking" gimmick, which lets you see from enemy perspectives, in first person, so far only adds tedium to the gameplay. Since it's a console game on a PS2 the FOV is so narrow that you don't see much except for straight ahead of where the enemy is looking. Which makes it incredibly hard to tell where you are in relation to the NPC, since your little icons don't show up unless you're on screen. You sightjack ahead of you, further into the level to places you haven't yet been which makes it even harder to tell where you are in relation to the enemies because you don't know the area. So ultimately you just sit there watching them cycle through their patterns until you get a chance to sneak past them and it just breaks the suspense for me.
It's therefore really difficult for me to motivate myself to play. A lot of the gameplay is trial and error based. I can appreciate trial and error, but in this case where there's no context or continuity for anything I do it becomes a chore. I honestly don't know if I'll be able to finish it at this rate. Reading forums it sounds like nearly every single player needs a guide to even get through the game, which makes it sound like even more of a chore.
I was considering playing Persona 3 or Persona 3 FES whatever it is (I have "FES") but I didn't want to jump into a hundred-hour game. I wanted something shorter to break up my RPGs, and I'm not real satisfied with Siren at all.
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Post by Draxas on Jul 15, 2011 19:12:26 GMT -5
Persona 3, especially the FES version, is an amazing game. Once you find the motivation to play it, I guarantee you won't regret it.
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