The Video Games Thread

[Muttering Bill]

thats really what I should do, I can't tell you how many games I have traded back in left 1/2 done. But thats just kinda who I am as a person. kinda like the crown molding that I still need to cut and put up in the dinning room (it's been sitting for 2 years now)

Well if you've got the extra cash to waste... what the hell. But I don't. A $16 per month Gamefly membership is a lot cheaper than buying 3 games a month and then trading them in at a $20-30 loss (which I never really did; I'd hold onto them, telling myself that I'd come back to it, but never touch it again and end up trading it in a year later for practically nothing).

This way gives me a constant stream of new games to play, and I still have time to spend with some old favorites while I'm waiting for the next one.

[AIP]

Well if you've got the extra cash to waste... what the hell. But I don't. A $16 per month Gamefly membership is a lot cheaper than buying 3 games a month and then trading them in at a $20-30 loss (which I never really did; I'd hold onto them, telling myself that I'd come back to it, but never touch it again and end up trading it in a year later for practically nothing).

This way gives me a constant stream of new games to play, and I still have time to spend with some old favorites while I'm waiting for the next one.

guess I do have extra cash to waste........... where is it? haha

[Muttering Bill]

So I got Heavy Rain on Friday. I wasn't really sure that I was going to like it. The idea that all of the action is done in QTE's put me off a bit, and the demo was kind of boring. But it got so much praise that I really thought it deserved a chance. And after playing it... this game is awesome!

The story is a dark mystery, somewhat reminiscent of Saw (the first one, not the shitty sequels). There were quite a few glaring plot holes. With around 5 years of developement, they really should have worked them out better. But I found them forgivable because they got so much else right. The voice acting was mixed. Most of them sucked, but a couple of character done really well.

The way the scenes were set up just added so much tension and emotional involvement. And your actions have a real impact on the story. There is no game over screen. If you screw up and fail a mission, then your failure is part of the story and you'll have to deal with the consequences later. If you get a character killed, then they're dead and you move forward with the others. Player involvement is minimal, but enough to make you feel like you're interacting with a movie, rather than just beating levels in a game.

It's such a refreshing change of pace for a game, and I can't praise it enough. I finished the game in 2 nights, then immediately started it over so I could get a better ending - I screwed up a few things the first time. I'm just about done with the second playthru now. This time has taken a bit longer since I stopped to replay a few chapters to get trophies.

I'm going to play it one more time, aiming for the worst possible ending, before sending it back.

[denstorebog]

I think Heavy Rain is an important game more for its experiments with mindfucking the player than its actual narrative. One scene that comes to mind is

when you have to cut off your own finger

- it's a new way of delivering the mixture of horror and fascination that has driven the violence porn movie genre for so long now, simply because you're the one caught in the grisly situations. I do wish that the story had also had some weight or sense of sympathy inherent in its themes - like Seven - unfortunately, it's bland as hell and would not survive the Tomatometer, had it been a movie. Two things that stand out are

why the hell *did* the father repeatedly 'wake up' in the rain with the origami figure in hand?

and

the whole premise of the mass murderer's motivation; his father abandoned him, so now he's going all Saw (complete with overly contrived setups) until he can locate a decent father figure somewhere out there? No.

[saint777]

Just got two shoot em ups.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor(Wii): Fast, frenetic, and furious. Distilled Armageddon.

Deathsmiles(Xbox360): The whole gothic lolita angle is glorious. Teenage lolis fighting the forces of hell. I'm sold.

Both these games also feature warped and creative monsters.

[Werthead]

Enormo gigasales week on Steam.

I picked up Overlord and its expansion, Thief: Deadly Shadows and - old-school! - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for £8.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Dragon Rising, Overlord pack, The Force Unleashed, Flatout: Ultimate Carnage, Majesty 2 expansion.

So far I've done the first two missions in DR and then hit a difficulty wall in the third. Force Unleashed, I'm near the end of the game and have run into a common bug which makes most of the sounds, like, not work anymore, which has mostly killed my interest in continuing.

Fuck Aspyr. Seriously.

[Durckad]

Enormo gigasales week on Steam.

I have also spent some money on the Steam-sales (Damn you Steam!).

I picked up the THQ pack (mostly for Metro 2033 and Red Faction: Guerrilla, but some of the other stuff looks good), L4D2 for $10 (even if I think the game is horribly overrated, at $10 is a goddamn steal), and Plants vs. Zombies, which is way too much and time consuming.

I played some Metro 2033 and, while I really like the game, the whole Checkpoint saving, in a game about properly conserving and procuring survival gear, is fucking awful. I ended up running out of gas masks on the first surface level (because I got lost) and the game saved just as I was about to choke to death. Fuck you checkpoints.

[Raskolnikov]

Enormo gigasales week on Steam.

I picked up Overlord and its expansion, Thief: Deadly Shadows and - old-school! - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for £8.

I just picked up Thief: Deadly Shadows as well, upon The Wolf Maid's recommendation. I've hoarded around 20 titles from the sale so far, and I don't know where I'll find the time to play them. For old times sake, I grabbed the Half-Life titles - except Episode 2, which is kinda daft of me because that's the only one I haven't played. Anyway, by the time I get to finish all of them, it will probably be just in time for the Christmas sale.

Also, I'm not the MMORPG type, but I picked up EVE Online. It's 2 bucks, how can I resist?!

[Werthead]

Monkey Island 2: Special Edition launches on Wednesday. Excellent :)

[Renasko]

Goddamn my predilection for finishing video games. Why did I ever think it would be a good idea to go back and play Fallout? I want to move on and play something released fairly recently. Damn game is overrated.

[kungtotte]

Your FACE is overrated.

[Durckad]

Your MOM is overrated.

FIFY

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Damn game is overrated.

Die in a fire.

[a wooden chair]

Am I the only one that picked up Jagged Alliance 2 during the sale? So much love for this game after I apply the v1.13 fan mod.

[Daeric]

Me and a couple of friends now and then have a "game league" running, not really a league as only three of us turn up regulary and we made the fool mistake to let one guy chose the majority of the games that we play, which amazingly he chose games that hes plays alot and is good at.

So last night I got introduced to Freelancer. It didn't start well as I got the disk about 15 minutes before we started and thrown into it with no clue beyond supposedly its one of the few games that Microsoft has made that doesn't suck.

Well I have to say I hated it, the travelling was annoying and took too long to get anywhere in just one system never mind travelling to a different one and the combat was really really really annoying, no chance to properly lock on to something and even if your aim was half abit off the actual ship you'd miss. It just made me grrrrr.

Beyond that I've just being down more DoW2 multiplayer with my scrim partner Moonwolf. We had two games in a row that the enemy eldar player spammed wraithguard. First time we just kept luring his allies 'nids onto my commander and watch them being blown to smitherens when the guard shot at me (friendly fire splash damage ftw) the 2nd time I just turned my warlock commander invuernable and tied them up in melee and when they tried to move to shoot me I d cannon'd them in the face as the platform has a much bigger range.

[Durckad]

Started playing X-Com over the weekend.

Fucking Chryssalids.

[Renasko]

Your FACE is overrated.

FIFY

Die in a fire.

Where is the damn Fallout topic on here? All I got from searches was the Vegas add-on crap. I'm up for a discussion...

[Werthead]

So last night I got introduced to Freelancer. It didn't start well as I got the disk about 15 minutes before we started and thrown into it with no clue beyond supposedly its one of the few games that Microsoft has made that doesn't suck.

Well I have to say I hated it, the travelling was annoying and took too long to get anywhere in just one system never mind travelling to a different one and the combat was really really really annoying, no chance to properly lock on to something and even if your aim was half abit off the actual ship you'd miss. It just made me grrrrr.

Freelancer is okay, but in many ways a massively flawed game (most notably in that the randomly-generated mission and sandbox elements are embarassingly badly-handled in their own right, and then collapse completely when contrasted to the various X titles or EVE or even the ancient Frontier). It isn't a patch on its own semi-prequel, StarLancer, let alone the godlike Freespace 2 in the same genre.

On the plus side, it has Gimli from LotR doing traditional John Rhys-Davies-type mentor dialogue stuff, which is amusing.

Where is the damn Fallout topic on here? All I got from searches was the Vegas add-on crap. I'm up for a discussion...

New Vegas isn't an add-on, it's a self-contained follow-up. Assuming there isn't a total collapse of programming talent, it will almost certainly be superior to FO3.

[Jacen]

Started playing X-Com over the weekend.

Fucking Chryssalids.

Did you buy the Steam version? Does it run okay on a modern PC?

/topic

Still playing Splinter Cell Conviction, Napoleon Total War (when the #%^! is total war center's website going to be online again?!), and playing a bit of Mirror's Edge, all on the PC.