Recently it has been NHL 2k10. I'm not a big hockey fan, so the arcade feel on this game really works well for me. I probably will adjust the difficulty sliders a bit though, took the Hurricanes to a 16-1 whooping of the Maple Leafs on my last game. My created player had 13 of those goals by himself. Found out that a simple crossing pattern from stickside to gloveside gets past the goalie pretty reliably if you're fast enough. I quite often would speed across and have half the net open to just wrist the puck into easy as pie.
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Cobra Star
I got Dragon Age. Wondering about the DLCs and the Expac. Should I play the entire game through before getting any of of the DLC or expansion?
I finished Shadow of the Colossus on Friday night. Usually a game doesn't leave enough story impact for me to still be feeling its atmosphere or resonance days later, but here I am and it's still on my mind. It's a very beautiful game in more than just the aesthetics. Everything people have said about it is true. People using it as an example of Ebert's wrongness in the whole "games as art" debate were right after all.
Currently playing through Silent Hill 2 as well. Tried it when I was in high school and I got frustrated pretty early. I think it's still a little frustrating--there seems to be a real lack of direction often enough--but it's very interesting. I was more into the Resident Evil games when I was younger, but those are the B-movie horror games. This is clearly the A-game, because it keeps you tense even when there's absolutely no reason to be. It just being dark and hard to see does wonders for scariness, with or without monsters.
Currently playing through Silent Hill 2 as well. Tried it when I was in high school and I got frustrated pretty early. I think it's still a little frustrating--there seems to be a real lack of direction often enough--but it's very interesting. I was more into the Resident Evil games when I was younger, but those are the B-movie horror games. This is clearly the A-game, because it keeps you tense even when there's absolutely no reason to be. It just being dark and hard to see does wonders for scariness, with or without monsters.
figmentPez
Staff member
I played some Altitude during it's free weekend on Steam. I don't think I'm going to purchase, but mostly because I've got a huge backlog of games to play. It's a fun game that plays great with a gamepad (didn't try keyboard). It's a little puzzling that almost all the planes and upgrades are locked to begin with, but there's enough to get used to in the play style without trying a different plane every round. The controls are pretty simple, but they're by no means easy. Keeping your plane from stalling while in a firefight is challenging, as is maneuvering in tight spaces while under fire, which makes for a nice sense of accomplishment when I started getting the rhythm down. Overall a fun game, but not something I'd choose over the half-dozen plus games I've already bought but haven't played/finished yet.
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Soliloquy
Buy it while it's on sale. That's what I did. Well worth the $2.50
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I"m picking Red Alert 2 back up, to play against an old highschool friend of mine.. I forgot how fun this was.
figmentPez
Staff member
Valve added achievements to the PC and Mac versions of Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode 1. Now I'm going to be extra tempted to replay those two.
Replaying the HL2 games now that they've been updated. Half-Life 2 on hard is quite a nice challenge after a long break away from it. Those fast headcrabs are harder to hit than Scouts.
The new graphical buffs are cool too. The most noticeable is the dynamic shadows from your flashlight, a la Episode 2.
Oh, and does anyone have any tips on how to get Dog's ball into the basket? The thing bounces around like a hamster on crack, and it's not like I can vary the amount of force I put on it when I throw it...
The new graphical buffs are cool too. The most noticeable is the dynamic shadows from your flashlight, a la Episode 2.
Oh, and does anyone have any tips on how to get Dog's ball into the basket? The thing bounces around like a hamster on crack, and it's not like I can vary the amount of force I put on it when I throw it...
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Cobra Star
Decided to go back a bit and picked up "Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood". Finding myself quite enraptured in the theme and setting so far.
Tried playing "The Witcher" but the tutorial area was already boring me to tears and had me groaning at the voice acting and the combat system. I may come back to it, but right now it's not looking positive for that game.
Tried playing "The Witcher" but the tutorial area was already boring me to tears and had me groaning at the voice acting and the combat system. I may come back to it, but right now it's not looking positive for that game.
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Cuyval Dar
Face of Mankind, got elected to the Senate recently. Now have a huge gank me sign above my head.
I got just past the first castle area and stopped on Witcher. It was just boring to me.
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Cobra Star
Yeah, the gameplay just is NOT drawing me in. I'm not one of those that's berates a game on graphics (I love 2d and simplistic games as much as the next guy), but Witcher has some serious clipping issues, bad animations and all around awkward character movements. Like I said, I'm enthralled by Call of Juarez right now so I'm going to finish that up and maybe Witcher might get better... I dunno.... Didn't help matters that I played Batman Arkham Asylum THEN Witcher either....
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Occasional Poster
Fourteen years late to the party, I just rescued the princess in Super Mario 64. 
I got 92 stars of the total 120, but I think I'm done. The last level (Rainbow Road) is just too ridiculous for me to struggle with. It feels good to finally have played through the game, it was one of the classic games I missed due to not having a Nintendo 64.
I've also recently finished Dante's Inferno and gotten 100% in Red Dead Redemption's single player. The multiplayer of RDR is fun to goof around with for a bit, but I doubt it will hold my interest for long.
I'm soon going home to my parents over the summer to work so I won't be buying any new games for a couple of months. I'm thinking about giving Majora's Mask a go before then. It's another of the classic games I never got far into. The premise is amazing but I remember that the time travelling got tedious the last time I tried to play it six years ago.
I got 92 stars of the total 120, but I think I'm done. The last level (Rainbow Road) is just too ridiculous for me to struggle with. It feels good to finally have played through the game, it was one of the classic games I missed due to not having a Nintendo 64.
I've also recently finished Dante's Inferno and gotten 100% in Red Dead Redemption's single player. The multiplayer of RDR is fun to goof around with for a bit, but I doubt it will hold my interest for long.
I'm soon going home to my parents over the summer to work so I won't be buying any new games for a couple of months. I'm thinking about giving Majora's Mask a go before then. It's another of the classic games I never got far into. The premise is amazing but I remember that the time travelling got tedious the last time I tried to play it six years ago.
figmentPez
Staff member
I liked Majora's Mask a lot, it has some really interesting dungeons and a very big world. However, there are a lot of points in the game where it feels like the designers, unwittingly, put in elements of point and click adventure games, without ever having played anything like Monkey Island or King's Quest. They got a lot of things wrong in that respect, and didn't learn a lesson from games that had already made the same mistakes long before.
Before I gave Majora's Mask a try, I thought rewinding time over and over sounded like garbage. Then I played it and loved it. There's so much you can do, and though it doesn't match up to Ocarina of Time's stature, it's a great game to at least play through once.
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Occasional Poster
I think I will give it a go tomorrow.
This time I am planning to avoid the cattle abduction sidequest and try to move on to the temples instead, if that's possible. I remember that the alien sidequest was where I grew frustrated and lost interest last time I played the game. It was a long time ago though, it might not even be difficult today.
This time I am planning to avoid the cattle abduction sidequest and try to move on to the temples instead, if that's possible. I remember that the alien sidequest was where I grew frustrated and lost interest last time I played the game. It was a long time ago though, it might not even be difficult today.
I did every single thing in that game and can't remember that at all :/.
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Occasional Poster
Oh, I was thinking about the cow thieves mission at Ramona Ranch. It seems the thieves were ghosts and not aliens. It's really early in the game, I did not get very far the last time I tried. I still haven't been able to find the first temple...
figmentPez
Staff member
Yesterday I finished Far Cry 2. It got repetitive after a while, but I was still having fun right up until the final missions where it really started to grate on me. At least it didn't devolve into an escort mission like I was afraid it was going to.
Today I started Assassin's creed on the PC, and damn you Ubisoft! It's bad enough that your latest games are burdened with absurd DRM, but can't you at least make the games functional beyond that? Why the hell did camera controls default to the analog triggers on my gamepad? It's a frikking Xbox 360 controlller (albeit a MadCatz one) and your game came out in 2008! Overlord came out in 2007 and worked flawlessly. I didn't have to reassign any buttons at all for it to work. On Assassin's Creed I can't assign the triggers to anything but camera controls!!! I'm so glad I'm only giving AC a try on Gametap, and didn't actually buy the game.
Today I started Assassin's creed on the PC, and damn you Ubisoft! It's bad enough that your latest games are burdened with absurd DRM, but can't you at least make the games functional beyond that? Why the hell did camera controls default to the analog triggers on my gamepad? It's a frikking Xbox 360 controlller (albeit a MadCatz one) and your game came out in 2008! Overlord came out in 2007 and worked flawlessly. I didn't have to reassign any buttons at all for it to work. On Assassin's Creed I can't assign the triggers to anything but camera controls!!! I'm so glad I'm only giving AC a try on Gametap, and didn't actually buy the game.
Finished Silent Hill 2 last night...
That James killed Mary was the big thing I knew. I didn't know why or how. I had a feeling he smothered her, because the Lying Figures always seemed like they were smothering under their own flesh.
The "why" was a bigger mystery. It didn't seem like James even really knew, but Silent Hill sure fucking did. Maria, who I interpret to be Silent Hill manifesting a form of Mary to address exactly what James misses at this point, came right out suggesting that James hated his wife. Her illness made him miserable and he blamed her for it, even though it was out of her power.
I can see why this game has endeared to so many people for so long. It's a powerful story, despite (or because) being so damn simple. I appreciate the lack of manipulative narrative which we surely would've gotten had this been Americans writing an American story rather than the Japanese. The narrative makes no point in judging James--Silent Hill and James himself are busy doing that. If anything, despite how irritably he acts sometimes and how horrible it was that he murdered his wife, you can't help feeling sorry for him too. He's pathetic at times. A Youtube person on some analysis video said it pretty well, "It's very hard to hate James." It is. I can think of how different I'd have acted in his place in so many occasions. He says the wrong things to everyone he meets, but he really honestly tries to do good by them, at least until they attack him where he's weak--his feelings about Mary.
I got the "Leave" ending, which after looking at all the ending summaries I could consider to be the best and happiest ending. If Silent Hill is pulling all this awful shit out of James's psyche, there's no reason it can't somehow pull this good place from him as well, where Mary forgives him and hands him the letter Laura was looking for.
It doesn't seem to me like James goes on with his life properly so much as he continues wandering a between-worlds situation with Laura, but with a clearer outlook in his soul.
The "why" was a bigger mystery. It didn't seem like James even really knew, but Silent Hill sure fucking did. Maria, who I interpret to be Silent Hill manifesting a form of Mary to address exactly what James misses at this point, came right out suggesting that James hated his wife. Her illness made him miserable and he blamed her for it, even though it was out of her power.
I can see why this game has endeared to so many people for so long. It's a powerful story, despite (or because) being so damn simple. I appreciate the lack of manipulative narrative which we surely would've gotten had this been Americans writing an American story rather than the Japanese. The narrative makes no point in judging James--Silent Hill and James himself are busy doing that. If anything, despite how irritably he acts sometimes and how horrible it was that he murdered his wife, you can't help feeling sorry for him too. He's pathetic at times. A Youtube person on some analysis video said it pretty well, "It's very hard to hate James." It is. I can think of how different I'd have acted in his place in so many occasions. He says the wrong things to everyone he meets, but he really honestly tries to do good by them, at least until they attack him where he's weak--his feelings about Mary.
I got the "Leave" ending, which after looking at all the ending summaries I could consider to be the best and happiest ending. If Silent Hill is pulling all this awful shit out of James's psyche, there's no reason it can't somehow pull this good place from him as well, where Mary forgives him and hands him the letter Laura was looking for.
It doesn't seem to me like James goes on with his life properly so much as he continues wandering a between-worlds situation with Laura, but with a clearer outlook in his soul.
Spoilers in Regards to Silent Hill 4...
It's actually been made pretty clear that James is still missing after his trip from Silent Hill, as his father is the Manager of the apartment complex of SH4 and there are some tidbits about him not knowing what happened to his son. So it's likely that James is ether still stuck in/never left Silent Hill or that he died (like he does in the Into the Water ending).
Playing with the demos of Galactic Civilizations 2 and Civ 4. I like both, but I'm not sure which I'd rather buy.
figmentPez
Staff member
ARGH! This is a such a lazy port. Not being able to assign the analog triggers doesn't seem to be a game-breaker, but damn is the interface annoying. Check out what it takes to exit the game when you're done playing:
You have to quit the memory (confirming you want to do that), let the future/present load, quit that menu screen, hit escape, quit that, confirm, load the main menu, select your damn profile again, then quit the game and confirm you want to do that. It's a stupid frigging bunch of hoops to jump through just to exit the stupid game. That alone may be enough to make me give up on AC. The game looks beautiful, but the gameplay doesn't seem worth putting up with bad UI design.
Got started on Deus Ex: Invisible War.
I can see why people say it's a good game but an unworthy sequel to Deus Ex. So much has been dumbed down, or "streamlined" if you want to politically correct term. The story, the gameplay options, etc.
Some of the changes are to my liking though. Doing away with the skill system and giving you a bunch of augs at the beginning of the game makes Alex actually feel like a genetically engineered, nano-augmented super agent. JC Denton at the beginning of the first game felt like a spastic who couldn't even hold a gun steady. The graphical upgrade is also quite nice, though I notice everything STILL takes place in the dark.
I can see why people say it's a good game but an unworthy sequel to Deus Ex. So much has been dumbed down, or "streamlined" if you want to politically correct term. The story, the gameplay options, etc.
Some of the changes are to my liking though. Doing away with the skill system and giving you a bunch of augs at the beginning of the game makes Alex actually feel like a genetically engineered, nano-augmented super agent. JC Denton at the beginning of the first game felt like a spastic who couldn't even hold a gun steady. The graphical upgrade is also quite nice, though I notice everything STILL takes place in the dark.
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Oddbot
Playing Mario Galaxy 2. Pretty much as awesome as I knew it would be.