Playing any games?

[Azrael Strife]

I've finally come around to playing Fallout 3, with all DLCs (GOTY edition), very fun, I have New Vegas ready, I wonder if they've improved on 3 or just more of the same.

[Azrael Strife]

New Vegas turned out to be mostly the same as F3, so I got bored with it. Some rule changes, like different ammo and such, but essentially the same game.

Black Ops made me decide to skip future Call of Duty releases unless they are radically different, in opposition to exactly the same game.

 

Just got a copy of Crysis 2, The Saboteur and HomeFront. Crysis2 is simply the most beautiful FPS I've ever played (graphics wise).

[Knan]

Just got a copy of Crysis 2, The Saboteur and HomeFront. Crysis2 is simply the most beautiful FPS I've ever played (graphics wise).

Getting seduced, are you? Played Crysis 1 or Warhead?

[Space Voyager]

Right now I'm playing Stalker complete 2009... And I'm getting ready to dive into Star Ruler once again.

[Azrael Strife]

Getting seduced, are you? Played Crysis 1 or Warhead?

Crysis 1, liked it a lot. Warhead I got a bit bored, didn't get past the first parts.

[Azrael Strife]

Surprisiginly Crysis 2 is boring, it's as linear as a FPS can be, a shame considering the original made you feel like you could go anywhere and do anything. Combat is a bit repetitive.

 

Has anyone here played the Ultima series? I'm trying to get a copy of them, since they are considered a classic in RPGs.

[Lysear]

Well just completed FF13, didnt take that long for a final fantasy game. Graphics are beautiful as per usual (now all i need to do is polish off the last few trophys and get another platinum ^^)

 

Got Killzone 3 lined up for my next conquest

[NKF]

Has anyone here played the Ultima series? I'm trying to get a copy of them, since they are considered a classic in RPGs.

 

 

The Ultima series is old-school RPG fun. You might be able to find a collection of the games on a single disc with a bit of looking around.

 

The early ones may be a bit too old-school for comfort, but do at least try Ultima 7 Black Gate and 7.5 (the add-on, forget its name at this moment). It's probably the most epic of the series. Ultima 8's not bad too and is quite a stand-alone game as far as the story is concerned. Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 are definite must-plays, just be aware that these games were made in the really early days of 3d graphics.

 

- NKF

[Sunflash]

Aw maaaan.

 

Spiral Knights goes live today.

 

*plays taps for his focus*

[Azrael Strife]

The Ultima series is old-school RPG fun. You might be able to find a collection of the games on a single disc with a bit of looking around.

 

The early ones may be a bit too old-school for comfort, but do at least try Ultima 7 Black Gate and 7.5 (the add-on, forget its name at this moment). It's probably the most epic of the series. Ultima 8's not bad too and is quite a stand-alone game as far as the story is concerned. Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 are definite must-plays, just be aware that these games were made in the really early days of 3d graphics.

 

- NKF

Thanks NKF, I plan to I am aware I simply would not be able to stand Akalabeth World of Doom, or Ultima I to III possibly, but how about Ultima IV onwards?

 

Funny storyline, that of Ultima I to III, with Phasers, Space Shuttles, Hovercraft, etc, I wonder what was Lord British smoking when he made those games.

[NKF]

Ultima's 1 - 3 are certainly acquired tastes. Not particularly fond of the food as time-limit aspect of the earlier ones - or more to the point the fact food is eaten every time you take a step. I honestly cannot remember what 4 was like, so can't comment.

 

5 and 6 on the other hand are probably the easier ones to jump into. 5 was from an era where low-res 16 colour graphics and the PC speaker were high-tech as far as multimedia was concerned, but I do recall putting a lot more time into it than the preceding titles.

 

- NKF

[Azrael Strife]

Decided to jump at the beginning of the Avatar saga and trying to get into Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

[Pete]

Games completed:

 

World of Goo: 10/10 for art, sound, gameplay and weirdness.

Portal 2: 10/10 for EVERYTHING. Awesome game.

[Knan]

World of Tanks is eating far too much of my time and racking up impressive piles of scrap metal.

 

Apart from that, happily conquering Japan and laughing at videos of my hapless ninjas in Shogun 2.

[Azrael Strife]

Played a few levels of Portal 2, couldn't resist.

 

This game is genius, period.

[Pete]

I've just got to do the co-op now - single player ending rocked more than last time

[The Veteran]

Ok I'm about to embark on a bit of a crusade as I ordered 9 new games a few days ago and the first two arrived today!

 

Just to rewind on other comments in this thread, I've recently bought and finished both Crysis AND Crysis Warhead. I enjoyed both but the second was slightly better in practically every way imo. I've been told that no.2 is a further improvement so it's worrying to hear it noted as so linear here but thankfully that's not one of the ones I bought so it doesn't matter! Azrael, how can you have enjoyed the first Crysis and got bored with the second? Please tell me you didn't enjoy the levels with the tank/VTOL/alien mountain base and such... IMO they just wasted time when I could've been playing proper levels. Why give a guy a nano-suit that can cloak him and then put him in a vehicel??? Warhead was much better for character, story, and mission design (though one with a hovercraft could have been cut) I'd strongly advise you try to pick it up again in the future as I found it a much more rewarding game than the first. That said both titles have piss weak endings sadly but hey, that's why there's a no.2 I guess!

 

Stalker however (Space Voyager is playing that) is coming to me as part of my new purchase. I've already played and completed Shadow of Chernobyl and I loved it for everything it was. The sandbox feel to it, the environment, the enemies and the story were just great fun. In fact it's rather piqued my interest in the genuine events of Reactor 4 that fateful day so it's even given me the desire to learn which you rarely get from a FPS!

 

Clear Sky I must confess I played as a torrent for sometime... That is partly because I wanted to know if it was as good as the original but mostly because I couldn't for the life of me find a copy for sale cheaply! In the end I enjoyed it to the point that getting it cheaply didn't really matter anymore so I've completed that one too. I really like the faction wars but it's a shame the enemies are just gone once you've beaten them. Would be ncie if every so often they returned in areas and attempted to retake their former bases with large forces. It would allow players like me who really enjoyed spending time in the zone to continue playing for that bit longer before completely running out of things to do!

 

Anyway, the third and final instalment of Stalker is 'Call of Pripyat' which I had the same problem finding at a reasonable price as I did with Clear Sky. I managed to get hold of a copy off Play.com this week for

[Space Voyager]

A nice FPS get-together!

 

When you are playing Stalker 1, remember to get the Complete mod.

 

Now that I did the search, Call of Pripyat has a Complete mod as well! MUST get.

[The Veteran]

What are the mods SV? The only things I've ever changed on either of the games I've already played is to allow me to continue playing after the game is over. Both of them are designed to be one-way deals past a certain point but there are a few tricks that allow you to return to the earlier gameplay... On ClearSky I upped my carrying weight to some seriously super-human Mary-Poppins style backpack because I was sick of always running around to sell guns and having to choose between 2 great weapons. It was worth it and I'd recommend doing the same (it's an easy edit of a text file) as it allows more enjoyment of the game and less scrounging for ammo and health items while keeping cross map journeys to the nearest dealer to a minimum as well. So long as you don't use it as a blatant cheat (say to carry one of every type of weapon and infinite ammo!) then it doesn't affect the rest of the gameplay at all...

 

Anyway, I've played a little into Farcry on the normal difficulty(2 of 5 I think) and it's mostly as I'd expected although rather more dated than I'd expected even on the highest settings. I can let that go as it's by no means a new game and I certainly wasn't expecting Crysis quality graphics when I bought it.

 

Gameplay however is something else and I very quickly ran into an incredibly difficult fight between me and 2 vehicles, one boat and 8 enemy troopers. It's actually not a difficult ight at all as I'm in a hummvee style 4x4 with an MG on top which I can control while driving so all 6 men on the beach and both their vehicles were easy prey. The problem came with the boat just off the shore, I don't know why they put it there and I'm worried it may be an omen of level design to come. This boat has a pilot and a soldier but the soldier is inexplicably armed with a friggin rocket launcher! Try as I might I failed to kill these guys over and over and over again, bearing in mind up to this point it was a breeze... I have a fully loaded assault rifle already but I can only concentrate fire a tiny amount so it was entirely inaccurate and nothing in the area provides cover from a rocket blast that's even 'close' to the PC. In the end I took out both guys from a cliff before assaulting the beach but even then they knew where I was before I fired a single shot and half a dozen rockets passed right by me (one hitting and nearly killing me) before I could take out the rocket man.

 

So yes, not impressed that they've put a guy with a rocket launcher in a moving vehicle miles into the distance who always knows where I am when I have no long range weapons at all... Hopefully it won't be long till I get a scoped weapon as I could do without repeating this nonsense too often...

 

A little further down the beach I came across my target objective, an old aircraft carrier littered with maybe 10 troops and another 2 in a boat. I think this boat only has an MG but there's a rocket on deck and again it's very hard to take out 12 men from long range when they're all trying to kill you and you have only an automatic rifle... hmm... It turns out I actually did very well here, taking out the boat and rocket quick sharp and finishing up all the rest with only a few hits taken (no deaths here) but then I lost all 25 of my remaining health when I jumped down a 2 meter hillock and I quit the game immediately... My biggest problem with this title so far is that there's no mechanic in place to allow carrying of medkits and health simply never improves without them. Do I really have to travel right back to the start of the game to get the one I left in the hut? I KNEW I'd need it later but I couldn't take it with me. Why?

 

On the plus side, driving is pretty crazy fun although even the hummvee seems to weigh nothing and I don't think there is any friction in this game. It's fun but completely unrealistic. And did I mention how awful the voice acting is? Oh... my... God... Aw-ful...

 

Going to have a blast at dead space now, expecting a lot from this one so in a way it'll be easier for it to disappoint but I know it's a highly rated game so I have high hopes going into it.

[Space Voyager]

Just click the links. There is A LOT of information on what is changed (complete visual overhaul is just the tip of the iceberg), along with video demonstrations. Apparently all three Stalkers have the mod!

[Thorondor]

Well, someone seems to be in a lead-dispensing mood...

 

Can't say much about those FPS games you don't already know, but from what I've heard of Metro 2033 it's nicely accomplished in the oppressive atmosphere department (especially with a gas-mask on) but quite painfully linear, making people feel like they're almost on rails.

 

So, in that respect at least, quite a departure from Stalker.

 

Let us know how you find the proceedings.

 

Other games to look forward to are some the classic starcraft which I tragically no longer own and haven't played for so long it will be like my first time and oldie Warcraft3 (...)

Can't possibly go wrong with Starcraft, and owning a copy of the original is mandatory for any self-respecting strategy gamer . There's very good reason for it to invariably appear among the best RTS games of all time.

 

Warcraft 3 isn't, by far, as unanimously lauded genre-wise, or even as right memorable as Warcraft 2 ("We've got explosives!" "KABOOOOOM!" "(singing) Ooooh, it's beautiful!" ) but it's still a decent entry in terms of production values and length.

 

I notice you're a Star Wars fan, so, on the RTS front, you might want to check out 2006's Star Wars: Empire at War. It was developed by the good folks at Petroglyph (which is basically where the people of the fabled Westwood Studios went) at the behest of LucasArts.

 

There's also an expansion named Forces of Corruption (also available bundled with the base game in a Gold version).

 

It's far from settled if it's anything more than a passable game (from a strict RTS gaming experience point of view) but what it doesn't seem to lack is the great Star Wars flavour imprinted on it.

 

If you're curious, there's a demo out there you can try before you buy.

 

::

 

Enjoy the gaming spree, Veteran!

[The Veteran]

Cheers Thor, Empire at War is actually one of the few games I have bought new in previous years. It's also one of very few that I've spent some time playing multiplayer so you can tell I liked it! I think the empire building and space battles were my favourite bits as RTS gameplay (the land based battles) are all much of a muchness even with the star wars flavour.

 

So much as I LOVED taking down AT-ATs with Snowspeeders (even on planets without snow strangely) the ground battles were probably the most repetetive and hence least enjoyable parts of the game for me. I don't have Forces of Corruption but I very nearly bought it when I got this lot of games the other day so I'll no doubt end up with it at some point! If you're a veteran of the expansion can you tell me what's new?

 

As for Metro2033, it's based in the underground railway systems for the most part (hence the name) so it would be mostly linear. I'm hoping the time spent above ground will be less so but perhaps it's not. Either way it looks like it has some nice graphics and pretty awful looking monsters so should be good fun!

 

Starcraft simply IS a classic so yes it's not right that I don't have it in my collection. I don't own no.2 yet but then it is still quite expensive so maybe I'll play through the original first to get back my love of the game. 'Look boss that building is friggin flying!'

 

I'm not expecting warcraft3 to be as good as no.2 just like I didn't expect Tiberian sun to match the original C&C or red alert 2 to be any good at all quite frankly (still better than the third one though ugh) I can't say I'm a fan of the genre if I don't try all the games though so it's a must for me as I like the originals (yes there was a number 1 lol) Besides if I don't know what I'm talking about then I can't have conversations like this with people like you so even a bad experience is adding to my knowledge and knowledge is power baby

 

But back to today's progress... After a less than brilliant start to the day with Farcry, I'm absolutely thrilled to say that Dead Space is everything I'd hoped for and more. The only thing I'm rather regretting is choosing the easiest difficulty (when there are only 3 options I tend to start with easy wheras I'll never choose the lowest setting when there are 4 or more) as I'm not finding it a great challenge. So far I died once because an alien jumped on me and I didn't know how to get it off (turns out there is a flashing 'E' on the screen which you must bash but it wasn't visible from the camera angle I had) Second time I died was inevitable as I was trying to outrun a large piece of fast-moving machinery that was needless to say much larger and faster-moving than I was...

 

Thankfully the latter only occurred as a result of me not knowing where to go, gravity being switched back on unexpectedly, oxygen being inexplicably sucked from the room and lots of aliens appearing everywhere. Panic set in quickly and without thinking too much about it I tried to make a dash for it and went squish is a very Duke Nukem-esque style. Thankfully one of the many pro-points of this game is a feature called 'breadcrumbs' which projects the best route to your next objective right onto the ground. Turned out I needed to go against the machinery and duck into nicely placed alcoves to escape death and this handy tool helped me realise that which I love.

 

On top of the wicked breadcrumb system there is also a 3D map of the vessel which you can rotate, zoom and overlay with pathways to any one of many current objectives. It's all very cool and scifi and like all other in-game media it's projected in hologram form just in front of the PCs face. Very nifty...

 

Level design so far is good and essentially I think we'll have seen most of the ship by the end of the game which is nice (unlike the oh so numerous locked doors and blocked accesses of other FPS titles) There is a fair bit of backtracking and a lot of 'now you've fought through 200yards of aliens to achieve your objective a new door to the room you started off in has miraculously opened' but I can forgive that as it saves going over the 200 yards again and it is, after all, only a game!

 

It is however a very good game, and after completing 3 of the 12 chapters today (I honestly had to force myself to stop playing through the whole game in a single sitting) I'd currently recommend it. I haven't even scratched the surface with this game, there's a lot more that I haven't done yet and plenty that I have done which isn't described here so go and get yourself a copy. You'll be glad you did

[Space Voyager]

Can't possibly go wrong with Starcraft, and owning a copy of the original is mandatory for any self-respecting strategy gamer .

 

Well crap, there goes my reputation and self respect.

 

Sorry, no Warcaft style RTS' in my possession (any more).

[Thorondor]

If you're a veteran of the expansion can you tell me what's new?

Only one Veteran here there be. Point you the path I can, but walk it yourself you must.

 

I have it on good source, though, that a salient feature is exploding Ewoks...

 

That is, apart from the successful introduction of a new, third faction, that just about everyone applauded as well accomplished, resulting in an entire new way of seizing the galaxy and corruption bring it with strategic twist you must adapt to, throughout the expansion's campaign.

 

If you can't tell yet, by all indications one can hardly go wrong with this value-added expansion. So I expect you shall be doing yourself a favour if you go grab it as you originally intended.

 

As for Warcraft III I happened to grab the Collector's Edition in a moment of RTS-less weakness not too long after it came out and the nice big Warcraft artbook included is almost worth it just by itself, plus a Thrall action figure, official sountrack CD, cinematics DVD, etc make for a worthwhile package at least.

 

It's a little off-putting at first to sense a certain RPGness impinge upon the more traditional Warcraft gameplay, but you'll find yourself at ease in no time (this is Blizzard we're talking about after all), and no shortage of things to do and see.

 

Even if I'm perhaps a little partial, and the comparison isn't completely fair, in my book it can't really touch Starcraft's ("Yeah, I got your zerg right here...") or Warcraft 2's comparative level of greatness at their respective launch times.

 

::

 

Just my 2 pence...

[The Veteran]

Isn't it just typical that I write a glowing report on my time with Dead Space and then go back to it and immediately run into a lack of Beta testing? Gameplay is still great and even with the bigger enemies I'm still alive but the 3D map which I like so much is useless in Chapter 4... See, the centre of the map is, well the centre of the map... As oppsoed to being centred on the player which is a bit stupid in itself really. That would be fine if not for the fact that the layout of the bridge complex visited in chapter 4 seems to have a massively long corridor in it for no real reason. That means the centre of the map is halfway along said corridor and it's completely impossible to actually use the map. Strangely google doesn't seem to turn up anyoen but me with gripes about this but I'm certain there's no way to move the map, just to rotate it... pff... Still a great game but they shouldn't have let stupid little things like this into the final release. The map is a great feature that's been implemented really well. To have it be completely useless at any point is just shooting themselves in the foot. And me...

 

EDIT : Bah silly me, zooming in does take the focal point to your character but when zooming out it focuses on the pointless hallway. While it's now slightly usable I still think it should be permanently focussed on the PC as in this instance, even a tiny bit of zooming out can make it impossible to see my route clearly.