shrekfan246 said:
All this talk about Final Fantasy recently has got me wondering whether I should have a stab at getting in to JRPGs again. I've never had a particularly good relationship with them, especially FF, but there's something about them that makes me feel like I
should like them. I guess I should get around to finishing the few JRPGs I've found I do like before I start looking for more, namely Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Story. I'll probably not bother with the former though. I do enjoy it but it's been so long since I played it I literally have no idea what's going on with the story and I've gotten to a point where I need to do a lot of grinding to past a boss.
I was thinking about what I would say if I was on the panel too. I often feel like I want to chip in with panels and podcasts I hear. Sometimes it can be annoying when they're missing something that's so obvious to me, but I digress.
I can never pick a single favourite for anything, but I guess I would pick something like Okami, the Zelda series, or the Forza series. I can't even narrow down to a single game in each series either! I just finished Darksiders 2 today and I really loved that game, even if the end boss was a kind of disappointing cakewalk. That seems to be a trend with games recently. End bosses are relatively anti-climactic and pretty easy.
As for games I think should have been more popular I also have to mention Okami. I feel like such a scratched record saying that though. It seems pretty much everyone knows about that game now. It's gotten round thanks to word of mouth a lot recently. Hopefully that'll help it to finally get the success it deserves on PSN (Bring it to XBLA! Grrr!) even if the money for it will no longer go to the people who created it. So sad that Clover was shut down. We'll never get a true Okami 2.
If I wanted to pick something a bit less obvious I guess I would go for something like No More Heroes or Muramasa. NMH has captured my attention more than any other Suda51 game by far, and I think the IP is brilliant. It really deserved a lot of attention. I guess part of the reason it didn't do so good was because it's a Grasshopper game (they tend to be obscure) and that it was on the Wii, even if the control method was actually suited to the console. Muramasa probably didn't do great because of its platform either. It might have found more success on XBLA or PSN. The game also has pretty much zero publicity behind it and the production run was minute. I actually had to order it twice because the first place didn't actually get it stocked even though they said they would. That place wasn't a small shop either, it was Amazon! Really glad I got it though. More people should try it out.
My most hated game was Fable 2. No contest. I've talked about how much I hate that game at length many times, and I've already done a lot of talking so I won't cover that ground again. I'll just say it felt like a massive betrayal to me as a lover of the first Fable and I hated pretty much every aspect of that game. I have a very special loathing for it.
I don't really have any games I'm ashamed to like. I have games that I like that I know are technically bad, but I still enjoy their good aspects and I feel no shame in doing so. I know they're not perfect, but they still make me happy. I guess the closest thing I have to a guilty pleasure does actually fall in the same category as games I like even though they suck. SRS: Street Racing Syndicate. The game has a lot of problems but it has a charm to it that I enjoy. One aspect of the game I
really don't like though is the "girlfriend" system. You do these special events to impress a girl (who is a real glamour model of some sort) and as you win them you unlock progressively provocative dance videos featuring them.
That part of the game can go die in a fire. It's stupid, pandering, condescending and completely pointless. Perhaps the pointless aspect is actually a plus, because it means that you can ignore the whole thing all together and just concentrate on the rest of the game and it won't effect any other aspect of it.
I don't have any games people keep pestering me to play. I guess for a short while my friend tried to get me to try Borderlands, and I did. I was in a really crappy mood at the time so I only gave it like five minutes before giving up. I really wasn't interested. Borderlands has always seemed disinteresting to me for some reason. But seeing all this stuff about Borderlands 2 recently has kind of got me interested in it.
But why do you say Halo and Crysis are shameful? I enjoy Halo, I feel no shame. They're really good games. I've never played Crysis, but I thought that was supposed to be a pretty well respected FPS. Visually stunning and mechanically interesting.