Playing any games?

[FullAuto]

Darksiders. I think this game has showed me that it's not individual games I'm dissatisfied with, but gaming as a whole. Mostly, it's just not that good.

 

You play as WAR (not War, but WAR) an angry, angry man (or anthropomorphic personification, however you like). Perhaps this is because, thanks to the messed-up scale, WAR is about five feet tall, judging by doors, cars, etc. Which makes the normal humans you see about 3-4 feet tall.

 

Anyway, the Apocalypse happens, and you see a city of these pygmy Americans being devastated, then WAR turns up (announcing "WAR is here!" to a street full of demons, angels, and humans. Now, aside from the fact that speaking about yourself in the third person makes you an idiot, why is WAR announcing who he is? Surely the angels and demons know? And so, why would WAR, a force responsible for millions of human deaths, give two shits about half a dozen people knowing who he is? Are the devs frightened that you won't know who you're controlling, or what?).

 

As you pass onto new areas, old ones are blocked off behind you (you could be polite and say these things are just accidental consequences of the Apocalypse tearing the city apart, but actually it's because the devs don't want you backtracking. Why, when there's nothing to find or fight, who can say).

 

Bosses are big things where pattern recognition is key. God, isn't that a bit old now? Is no-one else thoroughly sick of it? Hasn't that been done for decades? Can't we have bosses where skill is the deciding factor?

 

It's actually a competent hack and slasher, but I just keep getting poked in the eyes by its flaws.

[Azrael Strife]

Just Cause 2. Amazing game by Square-Enix. The action is very fun, the explosions are awesome, and I just can't get enough parachuting.

 

This thing is what a child between GTA and Project IGI would look like.

And IMO, it looks better than Crysis.

[NKF]

Aside from playing through all the Ratchet and Clank titles currently out for the PS3, I've just tried my hand at Gundam: Target in Sight. It somewhat de-glamorizes the fights between the giant robots compared to some of the other titles in this series (sort of like the 08th MS Team). You're stuck on the ground with gravity weighting you down and not just some airy fairies fluttering around in space with giant beam cannons. Not as difficult as say the Armored Core series (nor does it have the same depth of customizing) but still quite amusing. You command a mobile suit team (for either side) over the course of 3 months, picking missions and taking training missions all the while purchasing and modifying mobile suits. Though you do control a squad of 2 teammates , you don't have too much control over your team until you gain some ranks. Even then it ends up being stop moving, follow or attack target. You do get to pick what suits they ride in and their main weapon (which is advantageous as the sods get unlimited ammo - while you don't. Nothing like unlimited raketen bazooka rounds at your disposal)

 

It's otherwise pretty average as far as action games go. Perhaps what really impressed me was how I managed to clear (on the hardest difficulty level) some mid-level tough enemies with one of the weakest units in the games with both arms blown off, head destroyed, one leg crippled and the torso ready to explode. Yes, you can defeat (some) vicious foes many times more powerful than you by just kicking them to death. On the other hand you can be piloting one of the more powerful suits in the game and still get your main weapons blown off by a bunch of weak enemies if you are careless. I guess a bit of luck and bit of skill is necessary.

 

On an unrelated note, it seems to me that a lot of games these days don't have very much in the way many maps to play on. They are often a selection of a few fixed theme maps that you get to play over again and again over several scenarios. Not too much variation involved beyond the scenario and the scenario's map boundaries. They get rather stale once you've learned all the ins and outs of the terrain or learn all the event triggers.

 

- NKF

[Azrael Strife]

Splinter Cell Conviction. Stealth shooters have never been my cup of tea, but the cinematic feeling this game has all over it makes it very enjoyable.

Also have on the backlog Company of Heroes, anyone played it? looks like a wonderfully entertaining WWII tactical game, not exactly RTS, but it's close.

[Azrael Strife]

Hey FA, I got a gorgeous Point-and-Click adventure for you. The Whispered World. Beautiful, hand-drawn, adventure, really old school, a dream come true! Looks like some of the games I used to play back when making games was an art, sweet!

[Gimli]

AS, we talked about this in the adventure games thread.

[Azrael Strife]

AS, we talked about this in the adventure games thread.

[Gimli]

Don't worry, FA told me the same thing in that thread, because he posted about it long ago. The game is really sweet and it looks like one of the guys who worked on Broken Sword wrote the English dialog.

[FullAuto]

I can forgive you two little scamps. I posted about it years ago, but as the demo was hard to find, and it was doubtful the game would ever actually get finished, it disappeared from my radar.

 

So, I hate you, but thank you.

[FullAuto]

Red Dead Redemption, or Grand Theft Western, as it should be known.

 

Pretty good, but the problem is, open worlds that aren't really open are getting old. You've got a massive game world, but must follow a very narrow, linear path to progress. A lot of the activities are actually quite fun, but up against the rest of the game, they feel like make-work, not because they are, but because they have little to nothing to do with the main storyline.

 

Why can't I just drop in, and do nothing but hunt deer, or catch and tame and sell wild horses, or become an outlaw, or any one of a hundred things, and still progress meaningfully through the game? Really it's just GTAIV in the Old West, and GTAIV is really just GTAIII and Rockstar are still using it as the blueprint.

[Azrael Strife]

Playing Aquaria, a highly recommended indie-game.

Is it me, or are indie developers the only ones still left who know what a game is supposed to be like?

Awesome game.

[Azrael Strife]

Also, Penumbra is making me highly nervous.

Both open source, I might add (Penumbra is, at least, last I read they were preparing the code of Aquaria before releasing it)

[FullAuto]

I got Penumbra as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, and it shit me right up. Quality game.

[FullAuto]

Just Cause 2 has finally clicked with me. Been trying to get into it for months.

 

First go at taking out a military base. I parachuted in from a helicopter, and duked it out with the enemy guards, running around and blowing up what I could, and was basically chopped to bits by the constant stream of guards and the helicopter that turned up.

 

Second go, I drive a speedboat up the beach, zoom over the wall and eject and watch it ram into some fuel tanks. I swoop down in my parachute, climb into a truck, bull through the base, swerve onto a runway, jump out of the truck and let it crash into a taxiing fighter jet, leg it up some stairs, nick an attack helicopter, strafe the base to shit with rockets and minigun fire, eject and let the heli drop onto a power generator, coast down in my parachute onto an AA gun, take out an enemy helicopter as it rocks up, take out more fuel tanks with the AA gun, bail out when I come under fire, fight my way through some guards to the gate, rip a minigun off its mounting, shoot everything that's left to bits, and in the peace afterwards, grab the few collectibles remaining. 100%. Base done.

 

About time!

[Matri]

Congratulations!

 

Now you just have to do it a couple hundred more times.

 

For added fun, ask a friend who comes from Malaysia or Singapore about the meaning of the location names. It's a hoot, I guarantee it! It has to be Singapore or Malaysia, the dialects from the Phillipines or Indonesia are different enough to lose the humour.

 

As an example, the nuclear power plant named Awan Cendawan.

 

Mushroom Cloud

[NKF]

I might be of some assistance. I spent the first 20 years of my life growing up in Malaysia. Might be a bit rusty now that I've been away for 10, still...

 

- NKF

[FullAuto]

Aw, that's excellent, thanks Matri. I'll have to look them up!

[Azrael Strife]

Fun game, that too bad it gets a bit too repetitive at the end, getting to 100% requires an insanely obsessive person >:]

[FullAuto]

I think my main mistake was trying to play it like The Saboteur, with stealth, doing a lot of it on foot, trying to kill all the enemies, etc. I was playing Le Sab a lot when I bought JC2, so it's bound to have affected me.

[Matri]

I recommend the Bolopatch. Indestructible grapple cables open up a whole new world of destruction & mayhem.

[NKF]

Been listening to classical music on my local classic music station recently while driving to and from work. Just having one of those phases. Heard a piece I think was called Anneus dei, or something along those lines. It was the choir music used in the game Homeworld. As a result I've been thinking of it so much lately that I have to play it again. Probably just repeating myself from the last couple of times I've posted in this thread, but that does not matter as it's a fun game.

 

I love the sense of scale it presents in the battles with the dinky fighters buzzing around the giant capital ships. The piracy aspect of having teams of salvage corvettes latch onto a bigger enemy vessel and try to drag it back to a bigger ship so that you can replace the crew with your own is brilliant, if hard to pull off sometimes in the heat of battle. One bushel of the enemy's rice is worth ten of your own sort of thing. Oh, and the default side's mothership is a flying banana. There's something very poignant about that, but I'm not sure what. >:]

 

- NKF

[Matri]

I was feeling nostalgic, so I searched around and stumbled upon this. I mean, just look at the Cobra MkIII! And best of all, it's fully 100% compatible with your old savegames from the original versions!

 

I recommend getting the version posted at spacesimcentral.com as it contains all the released enhanced models. Only a few still retain the original flat polygon look.

[NKF]

After talking about Homeworld, I've now been completely derailed and am now playing Br

[Space Voyager]

Lately Fallout:New Vegas is eating all my playtime. I feel l am reaching the turning point where I might stop, meaning I'll step onto a straight story path and end it, but it is a great game.

[FullAuto]

I have a strange void inside me when it comes to some big titles. I have absolutely no interest in playing them at all. Fallout 3 and NV dropped into this hole, along with plenty of others. It's not that I don't want to play them, there's just an absence of feeling either way. I suppose it saves me money...

 

Finished Red Dead Redemption, which had a good ending. Most game endings are a bit crap, but RDR's was well worth playing for.