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Post by N3B on Oct 6, 2007 3:39:03 GMT -5
Recently bought and am now playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. Exceptional game.
The gameplay mechanics remind me a lot of Gothic, except of course in a FPS skin, set in Chernobyl. A survival/tactical/non-linear/horror/FPS/RPG is such a novel concept. Definitely a good purchase.
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Post by niff on Oct 6, 2007 6:12:05 GMT -5
i heard it was done suprisingly badly.. hmm. sounds like i'll pirate it when i get a new pc, heh.
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Post by N3B on Oct 6, 2007 20:07:54 GMT -5
People say the game has a bunch of technical issues, but I haven't run into any big ones. Only thing I've noticed is a quest marker on my map that is still there, despte me having finished the quest.
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Post by Draxas on Oct 8, 2007 8:58:20 GMT -5
My goodness, I haven't updated this list in a long time. Lemmie go fix that.
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Post by niff on Oct 9, 2007 3:25:57 GMT -5
currently playing PH, only top-down handheld zelda i really enjoyed apart from LA
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Post by Draxas on Oct 9, 2007 10:00:49 GMT -5
That's because all the others were made by Capcom instead of Nintendo. While I have a great deal of respect for them in general, they didn't really capture the right feeling for the Oracle games. Minish Cap improved on that a great deal, but it was far too short to be as fulfilling an experience as it could have been.
But, such are the risks when you farm out one of the most famous and polished series to a third party.
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Post by N3B on Oct 10, 2007 2:01:36 GMT -5
I liked Minish Cap from what I payed of it. I didn't actually bring my DS with me because I just didn't play it much at all. I may pick it up at Thanksgiving if I feel motivated to play it.
I also left my consoles because there weren't any games that I was all that interested in playing. Fortunately there are people on my hall who brought 360s/Cubes, so I've done some good party-gaming at least.
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Post by N3B on Oct 18, 2007 22:07:20 GMT -5
Beat STALKER. Overall a good game, though always fighting respawn got annoying. The side-quests were all stupid after the first few hours because they were all a bunch of fed-ex type missions ("go here, kill this guy, come back," "go here, clear out these monsters, come back"). Got even more annoying when you'd trek all the way to a new load zone and be randomly assigned a new side-quest and then find out that you have to go all the way back where you came from for the reward. Good game though.
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Post by Draxas on Oct 19, 2007 10:51:18 GMT -5
Well, I finished Phantom Hourglass. While it was certainly unique and enjoyable when I was starting out, I had to revise my opinions somewhat as I was playing through it.
The game is fun to be sure, and controlling everything via the touch screen puts an unusual spin on a lot of the various things you can do. However, for many of the tasks the game asks you to complete, the touch screen controls have a nasty habit of being imprecise and difficult to work with. I lost count of the nuber of times that I thought to myself, "What I'm trying to do right now is only difficult because I have to use the stylus. If I had a standard button-based control scheme available, I would have moved on long ago."
On an entirely unrelated note, I also found the dungeons (while numerous, which I like) to be rather short, simplistic, and frequently dull; apparently, there weren't a lot of puzzles they could think of for the various tools, so you see the ones that do exist reused frequently. The bosses suffered the same problem; while a few were fun to fight and/or somewhat interesting (Bane of Courage, Gleeok, that huge stone robot you see in the commercials), many were fairly dull, tedious, and easy to defeat. The whole "hub world" design tends to wear a little thin after a while, too; The Temple of the Ocean King (the "hub" dungeon that you keep having to return to periodically throughout the game) is an interesting concept at first, but after the first few times you run through the same floors over and over again, it gets grating having to come back and do it again (and again).
Still, the game was pretty fun to play through the first time. I don't know when I'll get back to it, or if I'm willing to attempt to try to collect everything (especially considering the randomized nature of acquiring treasures and ship parts). Still, the game is at least worth a rental, and I might be more enthused to pick it up and play again after a while has passed. It's no Link's Awakening, though.
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Post by Altl on Oct 19, 2007 21:43:38 GMT -5
I haven't really paid attention to Gameboy Zelda games since the Oracle ones, which I really enjoyed; I don't see what people didn't like about them, the story was definitely more followable than LA (Which I'm not criticizing, I liked it best of all the Zelda games [probably because it was my first 100% completed one]). In LA I often found myself baffled as to where to go Oracle I never had that problem.
Just Beat: Sonic III. Childhood Goal 243 complete. It was as good as I remembered it and now that I'm not 6 the intricacies are much more obvious to me, such as the Parallels between the special stages and go.
Currently Playing: Kid Icarus (Gotta play this one on mute otherwise I get to hear the I-just-died music every 3 minutes).
Next to Play: A Link to the Past....(I don't remember if I ever beat it, all I remember about it is a rooster that flies)
I'm definitely digging the virtual console, the games are reasonably priced so I can buy one every week or two and not feel like I'm throwing away college tuition. I guess I could use an emulator, but I was never really down with them.
Unrelated note: Currently Reading: Dune; this is my first time reading it and its very good.
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Post by niff on Oct 20, 2007 1:15:44 GMT -5
i just beat PH as well. i didn't play it with very high hopes, but it was a damn good game. it's no OoT or MM (which still happen to be my favourite games of all time), but it was good nonetheless. controls didn't bug me as much i thought they would - unless you count the drawing. my god, nintendo. not all of us can draw perfect diagrams of stuff.
also unrelated: just watched Pi. what. the. [CENSORED]. that's not even a movie, it's just one big mind[CENSORED].
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Post by Draxas on Oct 22, 2007 9:17:16 GMT -5
You're playing Kid Icarus? Wow, you're a brave soul with infinite patience... I think I made it to stage 1-2 one time. I did finish the GB sequel many years ago, though, which was generally a better game anyway (mostly because you could fall a little ways and not die; thank you downward scrolling screen).
The VC was definitely one of the big draws for me as far as getting a Wii was concerned. I especially appreciate the fact that not only are they getting those super-obscure TG16 titles for it, they're even starting to translate Japanese-only titles for the older systems and putting them up there. This can't possibly be construed as a bad thing.
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Post by N3B on Oct 24, 2007 0:08:57 GMT -5
Dementium: The Ward (DS) looks like it may be up my alley.
Clive Barker's Jericho may be good.
Hellgate: London may be good.
What else is coming up soon? Crysis is son I think.
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Post by niff on Oct 24, 2007 5:03:43 GMT -5
crysis demo is out, or something. dementium is lookin' good. it's out soon. a new megaman game came out recently for DS, and so did the new FFT (albeit that one's in japanese).
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Post by N3B on Oct 24, 2007 18:25:46 GMT -5
Let's see
The Witcher is due out soon.
TimeShifters may be worthwhile.
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