What have you been playing lately?

[Echolocating]

I'm playing Final Fantasy III for the DS right now and I have to say that I'm caught between two worlds. On one hand, the game is gorgeous and the visual design works for me, even the clunky looking menu system. On the other hand, the whole plot of the game is very juvenile. Maybe I'll get sucked into the world as I continue to grind at it, but I think I've become a bit of an RPG snob or something. Bioware's offerings (BG, KotOR, and Jade Empire) showed me a glimmer of how a story can motivate a player and make a game. FFIII (I realize it's a remake) just seems like one goofy, incapable person after another sending you on silly quests within a stylistically jaw-dropping world.

As I said, I'm impressed with the game so much visually that I'm sure I'll be able to digest its apparent narrative shortcomings. I've heard that these sorts of games start to win you over after 20 hours or so... and I'm only on my 4th hour. ;-)

If not, I have a copy of Hotel Dusk just sitting, waiting for me. I popped it in a few days ago at a time when my household was a little distracting and I was so impressed with the dialog and flavor, along with the masterful penciled art style, that I had to stop after 15 minutes and put the game away until I could play it with no distractions. I don't want anything to ruin the experience of what could possibly be the type of game that I've previously complained doesn't exist.

With what I've read regarding the game and experienced with it, young children will find this game boring... and I couldn't be happier. If games want to be taken seriously as an art form (or a medium of cultural importance), they need to stop with the plumber and mushroom crap and start creating mature dramas... that don't appeal to children.

It's so easy to get into a rant when you post on this site, isn't it? ;-)

 

[ReedRichards]

Your description of FFIII sound a lot like DQVIII. I loved the latter, haven't played the former, but you do a lot of running from town to town running errands and killing monsters for incompetents. In my opinion it plays like an offline MMOG. The focus seems to be more on leveling, and learning new cool attacks, and getting the best armor and weapons as opposed to finding Dhoulmagus. As an RPG purist and snob this is okay with me as things always eventually come around to him. It also gets a pass on the strength of being DragonQuest. I mean, the first RPG I ever played was Dragon Warrior for the NES.

That being said I am still playing and still loving DragonQuest VIII. And you're right Echo, it is easy to rant.

 

[vaga_koleso]

I just finished Gears of War single player campaign. This might seem like a perfectly regular statement for somebody, except for me it's anything but, since I normally don't play shooters, much less FINISH shooters... I am an adventure gamer at heart. You know, story, depth, plot, that kind of thing. Before GOW I have only tried a single shooter (Star Wars Battlefront II) since the time the original Wolfenstine 3D came out. Which used to make me physically dizzy.

With GOW, I feel like a born again killing machine If I had to use one word (though I am going to cheat and put a dash in it) to describe this game it would be "well-oiled". The graphics, the dialog, the narrative, the mission structure, the controls - it's all done just soooo smoothly in this game, and stopping is a real slippery affair. I can't remember last time I saw a game that was so well put together, and so free of typical gaming frustrations. Dreamfall maybe, but they are such different games, it's almost impossible to compare them. Anyway, great game, and a personal re-awakening for me. Who knows, I might actually try the online mode tomorrow. As in "playing with other people". Shivers!

 

[vaga_koleso]

My only problem is that the 360 is hooked up to the TV in the living room, making it harder to play a game when I want. For some reason my wife does not enjoy watching me play videogames?

Had the same issue, but recently decided to blow $40 and get the cable that lets me hook up my Xbox360 to my PC monitor instead of the TV. Totally worth it, IMHO. I don't have to occupy the TV and the game looks mad sharp running at 1280x1024. If you've got a decent size monitor (17 or 19 inch flatscreen), I strongly recommend looking into this option.

 

[mrplaid]

Rocket Slime for the DS was a really pleasant surprise. It's a quirky little adventure game with a really inventive tank battle system. I wish they had added more mini-games to it (near the end, it was just starting the drag a bit), but what's there is well worth the ticket price. Clever, inventive, and pure fun.

It's cool to find someone else who played Rocket Slime. Yeah, it's totally 'kiddie' and quirky, but I had a blast with it. I wish I could find someone to play multiplayer tank battles with.

I've been trying to finish the bonus case on the first Phoenix Wright game, lately. I wasn't too impressed with the first game as a whole, but I'm finding the bonus DS-centric case to be much more enjoyable than the other cases. It's almost a whole game to itself. The amount of experience the developers gained making two other Phoenix Wright games really shines through when you're playing, because everything just makes more sense. I find myself taking fewer blind guesses or clicking at random points on the screen to advance the plot. The new touch screen gimmicks like luminol testing and dusting for prints are really cool, too.
I'm still not %100 sure about Justice for All, though. I might pick it up in the bargain bin, but I'm much more psyched for Hotel Dusk.

 

[ReedRichards]

I just finished Gears of War single player campaign. This might seem like a perfectly regular statement for somebody, except for me it's anything but, since I normally don't play shooters, much less FINISH shooters... I am an adventure gamer at heart. You know, story, depth, plot, that kind of thing...

Amen brother.

 

[Ray Barone [deprecated]]

Pro Evolution Soccer 5 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Xbox)

Football Manager 2007 and Company of Heroes (Windows PC)

I hope to have an Xbox 360 in the summer!

 

[Joe]

Sorry.

How do you like Pro Evo Soccer? I keep seeing it at Blockbuster and considering it, but end up running back to FIFA 07's warm embrace.

 

[TheBlaze [deprecated]]

Just beat Fire Emblem on GC, not a bad game.

Right now I've gone back to my Madden '05 for awhile until I borrow a friends God of War and Twilight Princess (GC ver).

 

[te2rx [deprecated]]

lately I've been (re)playing a lot of "urban" RPGs... I don't think that's actually a genre, but what I mean is the kind of game where you prioritize your conversational skills before your combat skills. Namely:

Planescape Torment, Vampire Bloodlines, and Jade Empire (PC). In a way I see Planescape on one end of a spectrum and Jade Empire on the other, with Bloodlines straddling the middle. The conversations in Planescape always kept me on my toes -- I never knew if I was being lied to or swindled by an NPC. Even playing a "good guy" character, it was often difficult to discern what decision was the "right" one, or which was the lesser of two evils, because there were just so many of them. It's really cool to play a game that demands so much intelligent comprehension that it's impossible to play more than 3 hours of it in one sitting without frying your brain, as opposed to most other games where you can play with your brain turned off all day. Part of its good design seems to come from the multi-dimensional morality system in the game -- chaotic/lawful good/evil.

Vampire Bloodlines (while nowhere near as heavy as Planescape) also presented multi-dimensional moral choices to the player. There were weird things to consider like upholding the masquerade of vampires and maintaining your humanity. Doing the "right" thing wasn't always obvious when you were a creature of the night. At one point in the game, I chose to strike down this poor, defenseless half-vamp boy because he was blowing our vampire masquerade. I had to choose between the law of vampires (one kind of morality) and my own humanity (another kind), where ideally you'd want to uphold both at the same time. Choosing to kill him or letting him run free would've put a bad feeling in my gut either way, so it was a really interesting decision to make.

What really bugged me about Jade Empire is how you could play with your brain pretty much turned off at all times. If you want to play a "good" or "evil" character, it's always obvious what dialogue choice corresponds to what path, seeing that there's only two of them.

"I baked some cookies, would you like some?"
1. Yes please. ("good" choice, might give you some treasure/powerup or something)
2. No. (Neutral, bypasses the dialogue or quest, or maybe gives you a lesser amount of money)
3. NOW YOU DIE! (evil, gives you more money or something)

Every critical dialogue choice was pretty much between that: Yes, no, and die. If you wanted to be the good guy, just never choose the arbitrary third "now you die" choice and you'll be alright. I don't really see the appeal of playing a nonsensically villainous character anyway. People always seem to hype Bioware RPGs for their allegedly sophisticated storytelling, but Jade Empire was no more challenging or thematically sophisticated than Peter Molyneux's cartoony Fable. There seems to be a lot of stress on integrating one-dimensional good/evil paths into games now, but I miss the moral ambiguity found in earlier games like Bloodlines, Planescape, Thief, Ultima 8 and so on -- where the moral struggle was between more than just cookies and murder.

 

[donquixote]

Doukutsu (aka Cave Story)

 

[David Miscavidge]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernyobyl.

As a shooter I'm finding it a refreshing challenge---at least at the mid-range difficulty.

As a setting and a story I find it unsympathetic to the point of ghastliness. For anyone who found Half life 2 to be bleak, wait till you see this. Something about it being rooted in the reality of one of the worst ever man-made ecological disasters makes it so creepy that I almost stopped playing it. (Also, it distantly references the desperately somber Tarkovsky film incorporated in it's name.)

Has anyone here heard of this game causing any kind of outcry or controversy? I'd imagine if I'd been affected somehow by the Chernyobyl disaster I'd feel a first person shooter videogame set there would be a gross trivialization.

(Anyway, that said, I'm going to go back to playing it now.)

 

[Ajar]

Choosing to kill him or letting him run free would've put a bad feeling in my gut either way, so it was a really interesting decision to make.

I love it when games put these kinds of decisions before the player, and I wish more games would do that.

Has anyone here heard of this game causing any kind of outcry or controversy?

No, but the way you describe it really makes me want to play it. Sadly, I doubt there will be a Mac version, and I don't have an Intel Mac.

----------

I've been (re)playing Oblivion, developing a new character to take to the new Shivering Isles areas. This time around I paid attention to the workings (and, IMO design flaws) of the level system, and I'm finding I enjoy it much more. No need to adjust the difficulty slider this time. I'm playing a class I built myself especially for the Theives' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines (which I hadn't done before) and am completely ignoring the main quest -- a lot more satisfying. I'm looking forward to seeing the new areas.

As an added bonus, en route to my first contract killing for the Dark Brotherhood, I happened upon a unicorn. I rode it to the appointed place and then abandoned it. Later, when I went to the capital city, I got a message saying that my horse was stabled outside the city. Sure enough, there was the unicorn! I've been riding it from one crime scene to the next ever since. All that stuff about unicorns only accepting innocents is baloney, at least in Cyrodiil.

 

[David Miscavidge]

I've been (re)playing Oblivion, developing a new character to take to the new Shivering Isles areas.

Been enjoying little dips into Shivering Isles. I'll start playing it in earnest soon.

You'd think that after clocking the obscene amount of hours with Oblivion that I have, I wouldn't be interested in coming back, but what I've seen of Shivering Isles is really cool. Gameplay is basically the same & can be done on autopilot, which frees me to really appreciate the environment and scenario.

The first area of the world is top-notch and full of intrigue---A dungeon full of froglike hostiles, a creepy village inhabited by extreme eccentrics, some kind of necromancer witch in the room next to you at the inn, and a scary colossus. It's like a collaborative fairytale by the best literary fantasists--Clark Ashton Smith, Gene Wolfe & Jack Vance with maybe a dash of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Kick Ass.

Not to mention the visual design, which reminds me of parts of Morrowind.

 

[Myan]

Now that Guitar Hero II for the 360 has come out, I'm again realizing the addictive nature of games. I'm infamous for not finishing any game I start (from Oblivion to WoW), be it out of frustration, time commitment or just boredom.

However, with the format of Guitar Hero II being as it is, I feel I can actually finish this game. The best part? That I didn't have to go out and buy a PS2, it was well worth the wait for the 360 release.

 

[Ajar]

The first area of the world is top-notch and full of intrigue---A dungeon full of froglike hostiles, a creepy village inhabited by extreme eccentrics, some kind of necromancer witch in the room next to you at the inn, and a scary colossus. It's like a collaborative fairytale by the best literary fantasists--Clark Ashton Smith, Gene Wolfe & Jack Vance with maybe a dash of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Kick Ass.

Not to mention the visual design, which reminds me of parts of Morrowind.

Fantastic. That's everything I'd hoped it would be. I'm looking forward to going through the portal, but I'm still working through the Theives' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines. I'm contemplating becoming a vampire -- from what you've seen of Shivering Isles, do you think that would cause me any problems?

 

[David Miscavidge]

from what you've seen of Shivering Isles, do you think that would cause me any problems?

Sorry, but I'm one of those folks that when I contract porphyric hemophelia I run like heck straight to the temple. One day I'll try out vampirism, but for now we'll have to ask someone else.

 

[Ajar]

When I go to temples, they just tell me to repent of my crimes.

 

[Andy Chalk]

STALKER. STALKER, STALKER, STALKER. I can't say enough about this game. I was so hot for it, I had a friend from England ship me a copy of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl Collector's Radiation Edition (Not For Sale In North America) and it was totally worth it. (And yes, I very much enjoy saying telling people I have STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl Collector's Radiation Edition (Not For Sale In North America) as opposed to just, you know, STALKER.)

If you have the hardware for it - and my system is very borderline - the DX9 rendered dynamic lighting will absolutely knock you on your ass. It is without a doubt the most realistic day/night transition I have ever seen. It's remarkably powerful and effective. And of course, it would mean nothing without hot hot HOT firefight action, which STALKER delivers in spades. Quake-style will get you dead in this game; in combat terms, STALKER is far more tactical that you might think. Position, grenades, and headshots are absolutely VITAL if you're going to succeed. It's tough, it's a damn tough game at anything over the normal difficulty level, but wow. Engaging and immersive and absolutely entertaining.