Videogames

[Cable]

Just played and finished Dead Space 2. First thoughts: Jesus H. Christ. Second thoughts: It's a damn good game. I can't recall ever playing a real horror game (only played a little of Resident Evil) and it sure was intense. I'm kind of a pussy with regards to horror movies, and apparently games, but I do enjoy watching them from time to time. I guess that's why I picked this up. I found myself lowering the volume to a much quieter level more than once during my play through. As the game progressed I became less concerned with the horror aspect and more with the fighting, upgrading, and general winning, if that makes any sense. Still, it was very fun. I'm glad I didn't buy it as I can't see myself replaying it much (didn't even try the multiplayer though) but I'm glad I got through it once.

[Muttering Bill]

Cable, did you play the first one? My main complaint about DS1 was that it was too linear, and there was WAY too much ammo. I never ran out of ammo, because the enemies dropped ammo for the guns you had, not guns you didn't have. How can I be afraid if I know that killing this enemy will drop me the ammo I need, you know?

It still had a pretty creepy atmosphere. It's probably the closest a game has come to being scary since the original Silent Hill.

[Arthmail]

I'm with Fez on this one, Bullestorm is something else.

It's violent, over the top, pure male agression punched in the face and fired out of the barrel of a gun. If that doesn't make any sense, don't worry, play a few hours of bullestorm and you'll see what i mean. The combo's can be fun to pull off, but having finished the game, i'll admit that it all gets a little stale by the end. The leash needs to be able to do more: like something similar to the Force. Instead of just pulling guys towards you, you should be able to fling them off roof tops, or smash them into the ground. Though i will admit to having a great deal of fun standing behind spiked barriers and pulling them in to their deaths.

I would rate this game a solid 7. I had more than a few laugh out loud moments, soemtimes from the sheer brilliance of the violence, sometimes from the dialogue, or even just from some of the violence combo names when you pull off something particularily gruesome. The multiplayer mode is a bit of a chunky mess, however. I would have preferred the ability to play through the main game on co-op over the few maps they have set up. A friend and i tried a few of the multiplayer maps, and as the waves come in (similar to Halo:ODST), you need to pull off better and better finishing moves to get the required points to advance to the next stage. But having completed one multiplayer map through to its entirity, up to level 21 i believe it was, i can't see myself doing it again. Considering that the campaign is only about 6 or 7 hours long, and the multiplaer is at most a few hours, however, this game is better left until it drops in price. Fun, but not worth cover price.

Some of the outdoor environments, however, are stunning.

[Cable]

Cable, did you play the first one? My main complaint about DS1 was that it was too linear, and there was WAY too much ammo. I never ran out of ammo, because the enemies dropped ammo for the guns you had, not guns you didn't have. How can I be afraid if I know that killing this enemy will drop me the ammo I need, you know?

I didn't play the first one but ammo was certainly not plentiful in this one, at least for me. I believe you get less ammo from drops and such the harder the difficulty, and I was on difficulty three out of five (just after normal). There are a lot of drops and there are shops you can obviously buy from but I found myself running dry, or at least very low, quite a bit. I'm not sure if the whole 'nodes for upgrades' bit is in DS1 too, but I'd imagine you could sacrifice buying nodes and upgrading in order to be pretty much always stocked on ammo, though that'll likely come back to haunt you.

The game was very linear though, something I don't mind much every once in a while and I obviously didn't with DS2.

[Emery Silverstein]

Enjoying Rift quite a bit at the moment. Some really cool concepts with the Rift events make it more enjoyable than the usual MMORPG.

[Inigima]

Got my first hat trick in HoN the other day. (I'm new, not very good, and I don't play often.) Torturer is awesome now. With the changes to his abilities it's about a trillion times easier to land things now. I was mid, called enemy mid missing, top lane (solo Pollywog) of course ignored me and nearly got killed. While he was falling back I ran up to help; unassisted, I accidentally killed all three of them. Bonds, Chain, Impalement, boom! Unfortunately only the Chronos on my team registered any brain activity so it didn't matter. But I felt awesome anyway.

Everyone else fed relentlessly and died constantly, sometimes to the stupidest stuff. Predator jungled, and AFKed early while doing so and died to neutrals as a consequence. He then got caught in the jungle twice more and died because he was looking at the shop instead of paying attention. Chronos asked Flint to go assist top since it was clear Polly couldn't handle his lane; Flint ignored him completely so Chronos went up and did it himself. Flint himself didn't buy anything of value and did nothing but steal kills. (I don't mind my carries taking kills, it makes them stronger. But he'd stand around and not contribute to a fight except to walk up and take the last hit. Farmed carries don't mean shit if they don't contribute to any fights.)

I bought and upgraded our courier (and I didn't know I'd be mid, I thought Flint would take it), and I -think- I was the only one who bought or placed wards the entire game. After getting exploded a few times Flint ragequit and Chronos and I agreed it was time to throw in the towel.

[Fez]

I'm with Fez on this one, Bullestorm is something else.

It's violent, over the top, pure male agression punched in the face and fired out of the barrel of a gun. If that doesn't make any sense, don't worry, play a few hours of bullestorm and you'll see what i mean. The combo's can be fun to pull off, but having finished the game, i'll admit that it all gets a little stale by the end. The leash needs to be able to do more: like something similar to the Force. Instead of just pulling guys towards you, you should be able to fling them off roof tops, or smash them into the ground. Though i will admit to having a great deal of fun standing behind spiked barriers and pulling them in to their deaths.

I would rate this game a solid 7. I had more than a few laugh out loud moments, soemtimes from the sheer brilliance of the violence, sometimes from the dialogue, or even just from some of the violence combo names when you pull off something particularily gruesome. The multiplayer mode is a bit of a chunky mess, however. I would have preferred the ability to play through the main game on co-op over the few maps they have set up. A friend and i tried a few of the multiplayer maps, and as the waves come in (similar to Halo:ODST), you need to pull off better and better finishing moves to get the required points to advance to the next stage. But having completed one multiplayer map through to its entirity, up to level 21 i believe it was, i can't see myself doing it again. Considering that the campaign is only about 6 or 7 hours long, and the multiplaer is at most a few hours, however, this game is better left until it drops in price. Fun, but not worth cover price.

Some of the outdoor environments, however, are stunning.

Agreed with all of that (except multiplayer, which I haven't tried). The final couple areas of the final act was a bit of slog, and also despite the enemies being incredibly tough there was one incredibly easy way to breeze through all of them (flyswatter!!) so that was a little disappointing. Other then that I really did like this game a lot, and I won't go into the details all over again. One other thing that I really liked was the single boss fight in the game; that was something else.

[madking]

Haha, oh wow. I used to the that the previously realistic Red Dead Redemption deciding to having a zombie DLC was out of left field, but that? That was just on a different level.

okay noob question magicka is this online only game or can it be played on like xbox

[Jon AS]

Hm, the DoW-Retribution campaign was more fun than the first boss battle led me to belive, but then I got to the final fight which turned out to be the most drawn out and tedious of all DoW boss fights yet.

Another disappointment is that apparently the campaign is essentially the same no matter what faction you play as. Sort of limits the replay value you'd expect when you're told that there are six campaigns to choose from. I think for the next DoW, if there is one, I'll be back to waiting for it to drop in price.

[The Anti-Targ]

That actually does make a lot of sense, and to be honest I've never really thought about it that way. The downside though is that I can't afford to just spend the $300 or whatever current price is for a PS3, I'd need to save up for quite a while and not have any new games to play during that time.

That dang cashflow snag which ties us down to paying more overtime because we can only afford to pay small amounts. Of course the other option is to buy a used PS3 or Wii. Get yourself a 120Gig slim PS3 and that will save you even more money. There's bugger all risk of product failure on you compared to launch model. And Wii seems to be pretty bulletproof as far as hardware breakdowns go.

On another topic, I just finished Dragon Age Origins for the first time. I gotta say I thought the end of the final battle was somewhat of a let down. I would have thought with having the ability to decide on how things will end would lead to a bit more of a dramatic visualisation of the cutscene showing the final blow. But it's just generic. Or is it that the endings are individualised, but the Morrigan ending doesn't relly show what actually happens with Morrigan?

Anyway, I have to play through at least once more to get my 1000 darkspawn kill trophy, and I assume the Logain ending trophy. I deleted the "upgraded" game patch data and installed what's on the disk so that it's not just my character's final blows in a single game that's required to get the 1000 darkspawn kills trophy. Seems like they made that change in the upgrade patch to make you buy the DLC in order to get the 1000. My whole party didn't even kill 1000 darkspawn in that first play through.

[Third Knight on the Left]

So am I the only one ridiculously excited for L.A. Noire. I just bought a 360 pretty must just to play this game.

[Alcibiades]

I'm thinking of buying a ps3 when the price drops down again, if only for the BluRay.

I might do this as well. I've been playing a lot of Sony IP on my psp of late (Metal Gear Solid and God of War) that makes me want to play the real deal.

[The Anti-Targ]

I'm thinking of buying a ps3 when the price drops down again, if only for the BluRay.

I expect you'll be seeing a $50 cut at least this year. Though I think you just recently missed out on some $50 cah back deals through a few retailers a few weeks back.

I'm thinking all the consoles will be getting a cut this year.

Blu-ray isn't the only reason to get a PS3. Its list of high quality exclusive games is pretty sizeable now*, and a lot of them are at bargain bin prices now too.

*depending on the variety of your genre preferences.

[Muttering Bill]

I'm thinking of buying a ps3 when the price drops down again, if only for the BluRay.

Rumor is that Sony is releasing a new "hack-proof" model soon, and they'll be cutting the price on the current model to clean out stock. It'd be worth keeping a watch for.

-

I went ahead and picked up Bulletstorm (I wanted to do a mass trade in anyway, to clean up the game shelf). I'd guess I'm about halfway through. Act 5, I think, just after the plant monster. It's a good game, but the bugs are starting to ruin it. First, the cut scene's were choppy early in the game. But it was only a few second, not a big deal on it's own. Then all the ammo for my alternate weapons vanished. And then at the start of Act 5 (I think) I lost use of the leash - although re-loading the game did fix it. And I haven't been on-line with it, but I hear that's ridiculously finicky.

I'm also going to take another try at Dragon Age: Origins. I tried it before, and wasn't really impressed, but I didn't hate it either. I was thinking of giving it another chance anyway, and then I found it on a good sale over the weekend. Not that I have time for it really, with Bulletstorm in progress now, and I'm still only halfway through Mass Effect, with Mass Effect 2 waiting on deck. I could have gotten Awakenings on sale too, but wasn't sure it I should. I'm still debating on whether I should go back for it - or just wait until I've finished the main game, and then look out for a sale on Awakenings or the Ultimate Edition of Origins.

[Fez]

I went ahead and picked up Bulletstorm (I wanted to do a mass trade in anyway, to clean up the game shelf). I'd guess I'm about halfway through. Act 5, I think, just after the plant monster. It's a good game, but the bugs are starting to ruin it. First, the cut scene's were choppy early in the game. But it was only a few second, not a big deal on it's own. Then all the ammo for my alternate weapons vanished. And then at the start of Act 5 (I think) I lost use of the leash - although re-loading the game did fix it. And I haven't been on-line with it, but I hear that's ridiculously finicky.

What platform are you playing on? The only bug I ever encountered on the 360 was that I once power-slid into a wall and got stuck; no other issues though.

[Muttering Bill]

What platform are you playing on? The only bug I ever encountered on the 360 was that I once power-slid into a wall and got stuck; no other issues though.

On PS3. I can't justify paying for XBL, I just don't play online often enough to be worth the cost - so I buy all multi-player games for PS3. They're supposedly working on a patch to fix MP. But I'm sure they've heard more than enough complaints over the other bugs too, and will work up a fix for those as well.

[Anatole Kuragin]

I mostly do FPS. I know Killzone is there, but what else?

As far as exclusives? Resistance, but it's pretty weak as far as FPS multiplayer goes.

Otherwise, Black Ops.

[Jacen]

The dumbing down of everything in videogames is really depressing me.

[Inigima]

Gonna have to elaborate a bit there, champ.

[Fez]

The dumbing down of everything in videogames is really depressing me.

I've been playing console games ever since I my parents bought me a SNES in 1993 (admittedly from 2006 to 2010 I played very little) and computer games since I figured out the DOS command that would let me play Dune II and I never noticed any sort of 'dumbing down'. In my experience gameplay mechanics are more complicated then ever, there are more games with well-written plots and characters then ever before, and of course thanks to advances in electronics the graphic artists and designers really get a chance to shine these days. The only bad trend is that a lot of games are shorter then they used to be.

Nostalgia is a powerful force, a lot of the old games really aren't that great compared to the newer ones. The one exception I'll grant you is strategy games, particularly turn-based ones but also many RTS, those have gotten weak. Other than that though, I think things are gravy. You just have to know where to look. Of course there's bad games, there always have been, but the good ones are really good, better then ever imo.

Of course there are some amazing old games that put almost all new ones to shame in one field or another, usually in the writing department when they didn't need to worry about VO work (looking at you xenogears and planescape) but I think the trendlines are much higher then before.