Pokemon Pearl has brought back my childhood recently. The purchase of a new DS Lite has also convinced me that I need to spend time with it to pay off the investment in tears.
What have you been playing lately?
- Thread starter te2rx [deprecated]
- Start date
played Knights of the Old Republic II... interesting game. I couldn't finish the first one because the dungeons were way too tedious, but this sequel is more balanced, at least in comparison to what I can remember of the first game. I like the variety of dialogue options offered despite being a game that follows the increasingly standard 1D good-evil scale. If you want to be the good guy, you still have to think about how to justify your actions to your crew and your advesaries. I also like how the game takes place in the aftermath of a devestating war. Several of the characters including yourself are veterans of that war, struggling to find meaning and to come to terms with that conflict. Because of that, the game carries a somewhat somber reflective tone, and does a good job blurring good & evil. It helps that your crew is a rather seedy bunch... an assassin of jedi, a couple of sith, a mercinary, a war-hungry commander, a couple maniacal robots and so on.
Also interesting is the amount of content created but not implemented in the game due to rushed development:
at Wikipedia
damned realities of production art
Also interesting is the amount of content created but not implemented in the game due to rushed development:
at Wikipedia
damned realities of production art
Since I got an XBox360 for my birthday I've been playing Viva Piñata - a real nice sandbox style game that's targeted at kids but it's really good for adults too. It's a nice change from all the button mashing that you get in arcade games and a nice change from the tension of strategy and sim games. Anyone who liked Black and White will like it and actually I think plenty of others will too as it's just a lot of fun.
I've been playing Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade. A space RTS akin to Homeworld, but not as good, and it's only on a 2D plane (can't go up or down.) It did introduce an interesting mechanic to the ships, almost all the ones you control are genetic, flesh, and you can mutate various weapons onto the ship, provided you have the genes and the ship has open gene slots. There's a fair variety of genes, and each has various levels of power, but you'll most likely be sticking to pumping a lot of the same genes, in order to increase their power.
The Campaign is pretty monotonous, with a few semi-unique missions, but nothing that hasn't already been done in another game. The action is pretty slow, and the controls for activated powers is unintuitive. Eventually while playing the game, you'll get the thought, "Why the hell am I playing this game...", then uninstall it, which is what I did :/
The Campaign is pretty monotonous, with a few semi-unique missions, but nothing that hasn't already been done in another game. The action is pretty slow, and the controls for activated powers is unintuitive. Eventually while playing the game, you'll get the thought, "Why the hell am I playing this game...", then uninstall it, which is what I did :/
Decided to dip a toe into my roommate's new copy of GalCivII... ~10 hours later I tore my depleted husk from the computer and flopped into bed, having completely forgotten dinner and the laundry cycle I had started earlier in the day.
The game is really well written, and I don't mean plot/storyline, because I was just playing a single match, not the scenarios. Every tidbit of info, from the upgrade you just finished researching, to the various events that occur throughout your galaxy, is presented through a tongue-in-cheek delivery. This really lightens what could be the dullest managerial minutiae.
The sheer number of options, the depth of the tech tree, there is just so much to do. Blame it on my relative newness, and on my OCD-lite, but that ~10 hours was all spent on a Tiny galaxy, at Beginner difficulty with 5 opponent races, (so, something like 12 habitable planets). I couldn't resist the urge to research absolutely everything, and thus its been a very delicate dance to avoid winning accidentally through influence. Plus, the ease of "just one more..." turn, or research item, or awesome new ship, makes it truly addictive.
And that, in the end, is what scares me. I lost sleep to it last night, and I was almost tempted into turning it on this morning before work (which would've undoubtedly made me late). I've had trouble not thinking about what I'm going to do next when I get home. All in all, it seems like a very dangerous game for me to own. I see now how this [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=161570&site=pcg] happened.
The strange thing is, I'm not typically like that with videogames. And it's rare for me to enjoy a turn-based strategy game, or any other which has such delayed rewards. But man oh man, am I looking forward to getting home from work today...
The game is really well written, and I don't mean plot/storyline, because I was just playing a single match, not the scenarios. Every tidbit of info, from the upgrade you just finished researching, to the various events that occur throughout your galaxy, is presented through a tongue-in-cheek delivery. This really lightens what could be the dullest managerial minutiae.
The sheer number of options, the depth of the tech tree, there is just so much to do. Blame it on my relative newness, and on my OCD-lite, but that ~10 hours was all spent on a Tiny galaxy, at Beginner difficulty with 5 opponent races, (so, something like 12 habitable planets). I couldn't resist the urge to research absolutely everything, and thus its been a very delicate dance to avoid winning accidentally through influence. Plus, the ease of "just one more..." turn, or research item, or awesome new ship, makes it truly addictive.
And that, in the end, is what scares me. I lost sleep to it last night, and I was almost tempted into turning it on this morning before work (which would've undoubtedly made me late). I've had trouble not thinking about what I'm going to do next when I get home. All in all, it seems like a very dangerous game for me to own. I see now how this [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=161570&site=pcg] happened.
The strange thing is, I'm not typically like that with videogames. And it's rare for me to enjoy a turn-based strategy game, or any other which has such delayed rewards. But man oh man, am I looking forward to getting home from work today...
Final Fantasy VI Advance. Been getting every item in the thing, beeting all the bosses, leveling up everyone to 99. Been working through the dragons and couldn't figure out which one I missed, cause I don't do the strategy guide thing. But I figured out that is was the one right where you get raiden. How i missed that i will never know.
I technically have only been playing Guitar Hero II, and that's off and on for an hour or two every couple of days. I just learned of the wonders of co-op mode due to finally finding a second guitar, so that's fun. When you suck at a song but your friend is sucking worse beside you it doesn't seem as bad.
Single player however I haven't touched much besides finishing up The Darkness last week and trying to tackle the rest of Rainbow Six: Vegas on the 360. The Darkness was a great little game that I had immense fun with. I felt like it was the exact length of time I wanted it to be, and had an excellent plot that was carried for the most part by great characters and voice-acting that really got me thick into the game. I really had the urge to kill Paulie. It's rare that I feel the same as the main character in the game.
Vegas is fun. I've never liked its sort of game, but I'm having a good time with it. I still haven't grasped the fact that I have to stay behind cover a lot or I'll become a bag of blood. I still prefer Gears of War.
Up next? Hell, I dunno. I may try to complete another 10-hour game to decrease the Pile of Shame list over at GWJ.
Single player however I haven't touched much besides finishing up The Darkness last week and trying to tackle the rest of Rainbow Six: Vegas on the 360. The Darkness was a great little game that I had immense fun with. I felt like it was the exact length of time I wanted it to be, and had an excellent plot that was carried for the most part by great characters and voice-acting that really got me thick into the game. I really had the urge to kill Paulie. It's rare that I feel the same as the main character in the game.
Vegas is fun. I've never liked its sort of game, but I'm having a good time with it. I still haven't grasped the fact that I have to stay behind cover a lot or I'll become a bag of blood. I still prefer Gears of War.
Up next? Hell, I dunno. I may try to complete another 10-hour game to decrease the Pile of Shame list over at GWJ.
Lot's of WoW...
I have Spaceforce on the backburner, haven't started it yet, but my expectations are low, as the demo was unplayable. Also hold off on a bunch of PS2 games, GoW2, FF12, and Odin Sphere, among others :/
I have Spaceforce on the backburner, haven't started it yet, but my expectations are low, as the demo was unplayable. Also hold off on a bunch of PS2 games, GoW2, FF12, and Odin Sphere, among others :/
I've been playing Sam and Max recently and as such have been getting into a bit of a point and click adventure obsession. Also I've been hauling out older Gamecube games that I never really spent much time with. Megaman Network Transmission, Sonic Adventure 2. Even tried to finish Mario Sunshine, but realized why I didn't like it after collecting 2 more shines. I'm up to 17 now!
Fired up System Shock 2 a few days ago for a replay. I've futzed around with it a couple times since my first play-through (when it was released), but my interest would dwindle and I never bothered getting past Engineering - quite early in the game, for those unfamiliar. This time, I installed SHTUP (the Shock Texture Upgrade Package) and the Rebirth mod and had a serious go of it. I almost wish I hadn't installed the mods; they do a great job with the enemies, but the human models get very repetitive, and some of the replacement textures are very obviously out of place in such an old game. Neither take away from my sublime enjoyment of the game, though; this thing is a goddamn masterwork, and playing through it a second time - knowing what's going on and how it's all going to work out - is still more intense than anything I've played in years. System Shock 2 represents three great tragedies: that Looking Glass Studios is no longer with us, that the System Shock franchise is for all intents and purposes dead, and that games these days just don't bring this level of design brilliance to the table. (oh please bioshock oh please oh please oh pleeeeeeeeeeeze)
When I played it for the second time a few months ago, I bruised my knee on my desk jumping scared because my dog licked my leg while playing... best. atmosphere. ever.Malygris said:
Quadradius is still crack. I discovered some of the games at adult swim. Bible Fight, 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) are entertaining.
I've been working on seriously cutting my WoW time. And in the process I've slowly been developing this theory on how to squeeze the most enjoyment out of the game for the casual gamer. Amazing how you can squeeze extra life out of a game by deconstructing it.
Lord of the Rings Online - Just hit level 50 last night. First max level character in an MMO since Ultima Online. I still like the game. Miracle.
Pokemon Diamond - Not going to go into it ;P
Pokemon Diamond - Not going to go into it ;P
OMFG, that was released and I didn't notice? I'm going to EB right now. Literally.rdeegvainl said:
I too tried playing it recently, but the quicksave feature is broken, making me go back from hours of gameplay at a time due to crashing, since it wasn't meant for XP. Even after all the compatibility tweaks, it was still unstable, so I stopped playing it... yeah... that's my excuse >.>thefreemarket said: