j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 12/3/2010 5:06 AM · Permalink · Report

You just wanted an excuse to post that picture again.

My RPG buddy and I finished Breath of Death VII today. It's silly and entertaining, if not particularly balanced. A fun RPG diversion for a dollar though. We've decided against FF13 for now, so we're going to play Tales of Vesperia instead.

Oh, and to anyone with an Xbox 360 who lives in a country that has XBLIG: The Indie Games Winter Uprising started yesterday. Three of the games are out now, with another dozen or so to come in the next few weeks. Several of them look really solid. I'm personally looking forward to Cthulu Saves the World and Alpha Squad.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 12/4/2010 6:03 PM · Permalink · Report

Just finished Batman: Arkham Asylum and to answer my previous question: Yes, it deserves the praise. The atmosphere is great and even if the story is standard stuff (super soldiers, meh) it was good enough to keep me interested. The other parts of the game are polished and nothing shines out negatively. Even the keyboard controls are surprisingly well for such a game!

Next up: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Grey Matter

Parf (7871) on 12/4/2010 8:51 PM · Permalink · Report

I'm currently switching between Puzzle Quest 2, 'Splosion Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled. The former two are really nice games, while the latter doesn't really stand up well against the SNES conversion of the same arcade game (even if this is supposedly truer to the source material). The added 3D graphics make it harder than it needs to be at times since you can't properly determine in which direction the turtle will swing the weapon next. These types of games should always be done in the faux 3D they originally used.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 12/11/2010 6:13 PM · Permalink · Report

I play Borderlands right now. I have no idea what about this game: it is mindless, has next to no story and the quests are stupid and always the same. But I can't stop playing it.

The Fabulous King (1332) on 12/20/2010 4:54 PM · Permalink · Report

I finally started playing New Vegas. Bit late, yeah. But I was too burned out on other Fallouts to play it sooner. I planned to play Fallout 3 before, but... all I really wanted to play was New Vegas and so fuck fair comparison.

So yeah. New Vegas. Loving it. After Goodsprings, I was like "fuck the plot" and I sneaked past the deathclaws, looted the Repconn building, got myself a nice plasma rifle and now I kick ass New Vegas. I know how to play my Fallout. Tried to sneak into the super mutant land too, but that didn't turn out too well.

One thing I noticed though, since I wanted to do some writing on the political and social commentary in Fallout series, is that they've really turned New California Republic into a USA allegory. Kinda fitting too, considering the US government was like this evil undead monster who you had to kill in Fallout 2. And then these new guys want to create a Brave New World of liberty and justice too and fall into the same traps. But the "sending our boys into desert to fight some war" was a very obvious comment.

Only this time this desert is Nevada.

Actually, and I try not to ramble too much, it was neat how in Fallout 2 on one side you had this evil undead US government who ran these social experiements on people even after the war (the whole "vaults were a lie!" thing) and on other side these new baby governments who were just figuring out how to do the same manipulation and social control too. It was so cute. But daddy US didn't love them. :(

I'm playing Hardcore obviously. And I love it. It brings me back to old rpg's like Betrayal at Krondor or Ultima 7.

Serious loving.

Zovni (10504) on 12/21/2010 2:02 AM · Permalink · Report

Guess I got into the sci-fi spirit and I'm now playing Kotor 2 with the restored content mod. So far I'm having an uneven, but interesting nonetheless, experience.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 12/21/2010 7:52 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

I'm playing Dead Space right now (Chapter 2). It is much closer to System Shock 2 than Bioshock ever was: atmosphere, limited inventory even for ammo, every aspect is regulated with limited supplies, almost the same RPG elements, sound, the feeling of helplessness (even when accomplished with crippled controls). For the rest of the game I wished a more open levels and less "Oops, the monster breached out of the vent. Again. I am supposed to be frightened now" design.

Gray Matter is pretty much what you'd expect: a good adventure. No more, no less. Gets considerably more interesting in Chapter three when you take control of Styles.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 12/26/2010 8:17 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Due to recent developments, I've finally been able to hack my PSP. While doing a bit of the...less legitimate things people tend to with such hacks, I've actually spent the bulk of my time replaying Cave Story. This game is just as fantastic as I remember it being four years ago. I've been doing for a 100% run this time (missed the alien badge, but who cares about that), and I'm just before the normal last boss. I love this game so, so much.

And even better, now I'm not tethered to my PC while playing it, either! Bonus!

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 12/30/2010 12:11 AM · Permalink · Report

Finished Kane & Lynch 2. Thinking about adding it to the Whac-A-Mole variants group.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 1/16/2011 9:11 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Has nobody been playing anything recently? Strange lack of posts here. :P Guess I'll be the one to jump back in.

Recently finished Sacrifice of the Secret Room, which had a surprisingly great story combined with obtuse puzzles and Reboot-esque CG. Unfortunately it's completely in Japanese with virtually no hope of ever getting a localization (and the dialogue is crucial to understanding anything), but I still thought it was pretty great. Some of the endings are almost overwhelmingly depressing -- Asuna's in particular was downright bleak -- but that makes reaching the true ending all the sweeter.

Slowly chipping away at Tales of Vesperia. It's fun in that light anime sort of way. Also been playing bits of Nier on and off. It's some kind of post-post-apocalyptic Zelda. Lovely music, too.

Played through the second landscape in Crush. The puzzling is interesting, but the visual style is, honestly, hideous. Mostly makes me wish Fez would hurry up and come out.

And lastly, right now (almost literally -- I paused the game to take a break and type all this up) I'm playing Stretch Panic. I remember having trouble with this game when I tried playing it years ago. This time I've defeated six of the twelve sisters in less than an hour. Short game is short. May well finish it tonight.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 1/16/2011 10:13 AM · Permalink · Report

Venetica: Very nice German RPG with action-focused fights. The story was not that predictable like I originally thought and the (gamepad) controls are fluid.

Lost Horizon: simply put the best adventure I played in a long time.

Right now I am playing Darksiders. I use a gamepad but still have a hard time because I have no sense of timing and horrid reaction times.

Adzuken (836) on 1/16/2011 8:02 PM · Permalink · Report

I finally finished Ogre Battle 64, wiping the largest mass from my backlog. It clocked me at nearly 80 hours (though, it is somewhat inaccurate, as it counts time spent on the pause screen, but not when I lose a battle and have to reload). What amuses me is that the back of the box proudly states the game is "Over 50" hours long. Never have I seen a company undershoot a game's content in its packaging blurb so massively. Usually they like to say "Over 30 hours gameplay", but really they mean that you might reach that time if you do every single side quest, seek out every totally arbitrary collectible object, and run around in circles for a while.

I'm now trying to get Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood off my list. If you were ever given the impression that the development team didn't spend all their time on multiplayer and just slap together a story mode for those of us who don't like playing online, don't believe it. The main game is criminally under-polished, and tries to make up for its anemic main quest by padding it heavily with absolutely arbitrary secondary missions. It has bred nothing more than antipathy within me for not just this title, but the series as a whole. The control scheme is in dire need of revision, there's a lot of fat that needs to be trimmed, and if I have to climb one more friggin' cathedral interior, I'm going to cry.

So congratulations Ubisoft, you tricked me into giving you my money, once again. Chances are, I'm still going to buy the next game in the series, but only because I'm hoping to see its absolutely preposterous story wrap-up. It will be like attending a autopsy, I'd just like to confirm that it's dead. Okay, I'm being a bit harsh, that's just how disappointed I am in this game.

Slug Camargo (583) on 1/18/2011 4:34 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Just finished Metro 2033. Make no mistake, it's nothing more than a glorified shooter, and in a strict shooty-shooter sense it's nowhere near as good as Half-Life 2 or even Singularity, but it's just so good at what it does. Right off the bat, there's the immersion factor. It's awesome. The way the environment, background NPC chatter and whatnot tell their story is right on par with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Further proof (if there was need of it by now) that these USSR guys sure know their way around atmosphere building. These games make me want to not ever play any game that hasn't been developed in Russia or Ukraine or somewhere around those places ever again.

But it's not just that. As much of a linear, by-the-numbers corridor shooter as it is, Metro 2033 nails the concept of "survival" in a way no other game has in years. And yes, I am thinking about New Vegas' so much talked about "hardcore mode". You see, the Metro 2033 guys hit the nail that Obsidian missed olimpically (and yes Bethesda missed it even worse, don't start with that plox): That if you plan on making resource management a core part of gameplay, the player shouldn't be able to hoard stuff like a packrat. What's the point in having your character suffer from thirst or hunger or having weapons degrade if you stumble on food, clean water and repair kits with every second step (and even if you're not paying attention you have so much money you don't even need to check the prices anyway)?

In Metro 2033, whenever you're told to gear up for a mission you might want to take that seriously and give some serious thought to what you'll be taking with you. And once you're outside you better search every nook and cranny, because every single bullet or air filter counts like you wouldn't believe. Failing to prepare properly means you're not surviving your next mission. Simple as that. I think the only game in which every piece of inventory felt so vital and downright essential that it makes you wanna think it three times before using it was the first Fallout (during the first 6-7 levels anyway).

On top of that, the fact that the military grade ammo, the only bullets that actually make serious damage are also the only kind of currency in the world is about the most brilliant idea in the history of gaming. Finding yourself surrounded by enemies and going through every clip until you're finally forced to start using the good ammo is so indescribably desperating it almost makes you wanna cry --you're literally burning money with every shot you take!! D:

Now I've complained about ammo starvation repeatedly in the past, specifically about ammo starvation used as a way of increasing tension by certain developers I took the liberty of codenaming "lazy-ass crappy horror game designers", but in Metro 2033 it just makes sense. Everything in this world is scarce and in terrible shape. There are hand-made pneumatic weapons you need to pump periodically in order to keep them working, the flashlight gets weaker with time and you need to fiddle with a manual charging device to recharge it, gas masks can be cracked and broken by hits and need to be replaced, so-called grenades are actually makeshift pipe bombs, and such. Everything is in the brink of breaking down or running out all the time, and maintenance requires you to actually fiddle with clunky, bulky pieces of equipment, as opposed to just clicking a button or picking up an item. These guys built a world in which ammo starvation not only makes sense, it actually wouldn't make sense any other way.

Plus, it's one of those rare shooters in which taking the stealthy approach actually works.

Edit: Hey, I just realized there are no reviews for Metro 2033. Could this rant be submitted as one? Also, what the hell is wrong with you people, etc., etc.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 1/19/2011 10:21 AM · Permalink · Report

My attempts at reducing my backlog are successful so far. I've finished Crush, Sonic Rush, Stretch Panic, and Timesplitters in the last week or so. Almost done with Retro Game Challenge (just need to finish Guadia Quest and Haggleman 3 for the last challenge), and started playing through Shinobi (PS2) yesterday.

One more completion and I'll have finished enough to buy a single new game after my resolution this year. Unfortunately, my car exploded last week so...not really any cash for that now. I suppose that's just as well...anything I wait on will still be there later. :P

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 1/28/2011 1:23 PM · Permalink · Report

Started F.E.A.R. 2. Has no quick save anymore and doesn't let me assign mouse button 4 and delete (which worked absolutely fine in the predecessor). Already pissed.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 2/1/2011 7:08 AM · Permalink · Report

Since I'd finished enough games, bought something new with the 80MSP I had left on Xbox Live: Aban Hawkins & the 1000 SPIKES.

Hard game is hard. Not as good as Super Meat Boy, but still damn good for the $1 the guy who made it is asking. I've made it to 3-1 so far...and we'll see if I can soldier on to the end.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 2/1/2011 8:28 PM · Permalink · Report

F.E.A.R. 2 is a decent shooter which is in almost all regards worse than its predecessor (which wasn't that great to begin with). The enemy AI behaviour is less impressive, the combat is less fun, the story and the shock effects are as uninteresting as before and the graphics are generic and lifeless.

The only aspect which is much better is the level design - a lot of details and no more generic office after generic office. But in a shooter where I spend most of my time in shooting guys in slow-mo I would prefer fun combat over interesting levels. The save problematic was less annoying than expected because I would not have saved much more manually anyway. And there were no challenging fights anymore.

The Reborn DLC is, prepare for a surprise, overpriced. If I wouldn't have gotten it for free during the Steam sale I would not be pleased. The length is OK (about 90 minutes; the main game is about 8 hours long) but it feels generic and boring. Don't get me wrong, they used a very varied level design - too varied for my taste. It is like "entering office area, fighting four guys, entering sewer area, fighting five guys, entering street area..."

Lain Crowley (6629) on 2/4/2011 1:33 AM · Permalink · Report

Killzone 3 beta! Is totally available for download right now! I'm unnaturally excited about this, even though I'll probably never buy the game.

Someone join me and we'll pew pew dudes!

Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 2/7/2011 4:25 AM · Permalink · Report

Playing Blood Gear.

Very interesting game. Side-scrolling giant robot action RPG with free character customization? I don't think there was ever anything like this...

Downside: hard as all hell. It took me well over 20 attempts to beat a boss with save states...

Yeah, yeah, I suck at side-scrolling action, can you tell? :)

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 2/8/2011 6:17 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Oops, wrong thread.

Well, let's talk about a game I am playing right now: Sniper: Ghost Warrior. I am baffled: A Call of Duty clone with quick save? Wow, what can be go wrng from there? But I have to admit that the game itself is halfways competent. It doesn't have the Kaboom-factor of Call of Duty and the shooting sections feel very bland but the sniper sections are fun.

beetle120 (2415) on 2/11/2011 2:47 AM · Permalink · Report

Got to play the 3DS for the first ever public viewing in Australia. :D

I heard about the event only in the morning of the event, that the afternoon of the 10th Feb 6pm to 9pm at the Nintendo Experience Store in Melbourne CBD. I finish work at 5:30pm and as quick as I could got a train to the CBD to experience this event. I knew it was going to be popular but how much so took me by surprise. I got to the store at about 6:06pm there I saw a line that was about 7 people wide and stretching back as far as I could see. There was some media at the front interviewing people. What Nintendo's 20 or so staff where handing out numbers to avoid queue jumpers. So I joined the back of the line to await my number. They where only handing out 360 numbers as that is the number they expected to get though in the 3 hours, I missed out by 10 :(. They told the remaining people that you can wait in hope to get in but it is very unlikely before the 9:30pm cutoff. I really wanted to see the 3DS (I am a bit of a Nintendo fanboi) but waiting in line for 3 and half hours for a small hope of playing was pushing my fanboiism.

So I met up with my older sister who is has already pre-ordered the 3DS (her thinking is that even if I don't like it she can sell it for triple the price on ebay as Nintendo products always sell out in Australia) and wanted to go as well. Well I returned to the store at 8:45pm to see how the line was going and too my surprise there was only 20 people in line still by that quickly turned to disappointment as they where the last 20 they where excepting, about to turn around and admit defeat I overheard that 2 people talking saying that this is the second time through the store. I talked to the staff there and complained that they shouldn't get a second go when we haven't got a first go yet. They talked to them and they reluctantly gave up there place in exchange of them going in and just looking.

Now for my review. We only got 10 minutes in the store playing as all the other groups had. Not much time as it really flies when playing but I managed to get though 4 games in that time. The first game was Kid Icarus, the 3d was amazing, it didn't come out at you like I was expecting but went in like looking into a moving diorama placed behind the screen extending about 5cm behind the screen. Honestly it was a but off putting at first as this is not expected. At first it bit distracting at first but quickly you get use to it but still remaining cool. The girl that the 3DS was attached to (Nintendo sexifiying the 3DS, see E3 3DS videos to know what I am talking about) showed me the 3D slider on the side to bring the image closer to the screen until it becomes 2D. Honestly I don't know why you would want anything but full or off but this opinion might change after extended use. The image goes double when viewing on a bit of an angle but it is easy to keep it in an optimal viewing angle without too much trouble. The graphics is a vast improvement over the DS but you can see a bit of narrow pixels needed for the 3d effect but that is much better then the 3d flicker of 3d TV's (so hate that). It wouldn't be that good for viewing text only I imagine, but yet to try. For Kid Icarus it was a simple flying demo shooting down enemies using the lower screen to navigate the target on the top screen, nothing new to the old DS. Having the top screen 3d and a larger size to the lower screen I imagine that the lower screen will be dedicated to only maps and menus no more 2 screen cut screens.

Next is Street Fighter, to be honest I hate fighting games, I gave them a chance but never could get into them I was only playing this waiting for the game I did want to try, but didn't want to waste time lining up for. Nothing new to report about the 3d Street Fighter, it had a moves you could do on the lower screen you could touch to perform which I believe that fighter fans would think is taking the fun out of the button mashing, but not been a fan I wouldn't know.

Now for the game that I wanted to try, the Augmented Reality Game. I have seen augmented reality before and apart from the first time I saw it I haven't really been that impressed, but this demo blew my mind. As you look though the 3d camera it is like your looking through the 3DS onto the table and the card below, unlike the normal camera where your just seeing a 2d view on the screen. After it measures the distance between the DS and the card (36cm apparently, this in itself could be a useful tool) the magic happens. The card turns itself into a array of targets popping out of the table surface (I am sure there are screen shots of this if you want to look it up). You move the 3DS around the card to change your perspective of the target to shoot the harder to hit targets (as the 3DS babe pointed out). The most impressive is when the card dug a deep hole into the table, forcing me to go over looking down at the table to see into the hole to shoot the target. The 3DS comes with a few of these cards which puts my mind into a spin of what the future holds here. Two player monster battles with both players shooting the different sides of the monster, sports games with the match played on the table looking at different views by moving the 3DS, Pokemon and Magic card games battles getting played out on the table in real time as two players play, possibilities are endless. But the Augmented Reality Game brings out a major floor in the 3DS, as you move the 3DS around you need to move you head in perfect sync or you get double vision seeing the 3d effect in reverse. I can see the original game of this getting old fast but I can imagine developers really jumping on this to always keep it fresh and new (and a lot of dodgy cheap games as well).

Last game was Zelda Ocarina of Time. Love that game even love it more in 3d wanted to keep playing all the way though the game, but soon after getting into the game time was up. Something I did realise when playing that game is that the text that looks like it is on the under side of the screen my eyes naturally try to unnecessary focus on the nearer text when glancing at the text on the top screen. I can see the need for the warnings as I don't know what this would do in the long term.

I missed out trying the camera and the Mii creator (take a picture and 3DS makes a Mii of you) as there was two many people there and I didn't want to waste time waiting (and you can't look over the shoulder of anyone else as you don't get the 3d). My sister says the camera is not that good quality and the resulting images the 3d look layered, but it might be better if it is not faces but other objects. But wait for dedicated 3d cameras in the future if you want to take good photos.

I love the 3DS (as you could tell by this super long post) and pre-ordering today for the Australian 31st March release, can't wait :-D

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 2/11/2011 6:00 AM · Permalink · Report

I love you XNA Indie Games. Finished up 1000 Spikes last week (screw you last boss. seriously.), and just now finished the main levels in Nyan-Tech, which is basically a platformer combined with Twister. On your controller. It's interesting!

Also played a bit of Ninja360° which is a nicely-done speed-run platformer where the whole world rotates based on the player's movement.

Also, also played some of Curse of the Crescent Isle, which is a pretty great (if slightly buggy) retro throwback that plays a lot like Super Mario Bros. 2.

It makes me wonder why so many people just buy stuff like "Try Not To Fart" or "Baby Maker Extreme 2" when there's so much better stuff on there. :(

chirinea (47516) on 2/17/2011 11:48 PM · Permalink · Report

Yesterday, after almost 20 years trying, I finally beat the first Mega Man on the NES. Well, not that I played it everyday, but I remember trying 3 or 4 times with an emulator with no success (my cartridge stopped working years ago). What was preventing me of finishing it? That Yellow Devil bastard. This time I just got the sequence right and beat him. And after I beat the whole game I discovered the pause trick. I'm actually glad I didn't discover it before, so I wouldn't be tempted to cheat.

Today I decided to give Mega Man 2 a try for the first time (everybody talks much more about this one than the first). Wonderful game, a whole lot easier than the first one. I beat it this afternoon in just one sit.

I'm planning on playing the 3rd one next, which I've already played in the past. I remember when I was a kid and me and my parents went to a department store. There was this famiclone being displayed and a kid playing Mega Man 3 on it. I approached him and asked him to play next. He say "hey, get out, my father is a friend of the manager here". I went away cursing the kid.

Adzuken (836) on 2/20/2011 1:36 AM · Permalink · Report

I'm more or less done playing through my backlog. I have a few games, but I'm mostly unexcited by them and it has been a push to try and get through them. I might stow them away for a rainy day, instead.

I've slowed down a bit and have been revisiting older games. Most notably Chibi-Robo for the Gamecube. It's hard to believe it was five years ago that I first played through it. It's quite a bit more of an emotional tale than I remember. Maybe it's because last time I played it, a friend was spectating for most of the play-through. The theme of Giga-Robo really gets to me, though I'm unsure whether it's the song itself, or just how it's related to the game that gets me all misty-eyed.

I was actually surprised to find I enjoyed the game more this time than I did the first time I played it. I guess my memories of it soured slightly over time. I knew I really enjoyed the game, but I kind of chalked it up to the warm memories that surround my playing it and shrugged the game itself off. To say the least: I'm quite enamored with it.

With that in mind, I decided to look up how the second DS installment was coming along - the one whose gameplay closer resembles the Gamecube version than Park Patrol did. Turns out, it has been out in Japan for quite a while. Furthermore, it's long past its "best localized by:" date. Plus, I doubt it has a large enough fan base over here for an unofficial translation. I guess if I want to play it (and I do), I'm going to learn Japanese. Maybe I shall.

Parf (7871) on 2/20/2011 9:19 PM · Permalink · Report

I've gotten home from our trip to the US and I've gotten back to my somewhat irregular gaming schedule by now. At the moment I'm trying to finish up a bunch of XBLA Games I got before leaving, such as Puzzle Quest 2. To the dismay of my enormous backlog, however, I foolishly decided it was a good idea to get even more games when I was in the US... so... I'm up 17 more games than I was before leaving making my current backlog something like 173 games that I haven't finished, and probably a bunch that I'll eventually feel like 100% completing.

Although I have to say, it's a problem I don't really mind having. Too many games to pick from? Damn that sucks! ;p

For those interested (probably noone), here is my list of shame for all to see: http://www.backloggery.com/main.php?user=parf

vedder (71172) on 2/22/2011 9:21 PM · Permalink · Report

Finished Cave Story. After dying thrice in the second to last boss-fight (there's three bosses in a row without saving :S) I decided to triple my hitpoints though. I really don't have the time or the patience to spend 1200 hours fighting the same two bosses 12000 times just to fail again at the third one. It might be a nice feature to have in a hardcore re-run mode for the fans, but really, what's the use of making the ending so out of proportionally more difficult and frustrating than any other part of the game? Left a bitter aftertaste for an otherwise very nice game.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 2/25/2011 9:16 PM · Permalink · Report

I just gave up on Overlord II after about ten hours. I liked the first game but I just don't enjoy playing this one.

I also finished 007: Nightfire. I can't agree with all this negative reception this game gets here. Sure, everything it does was clearly made better by No One Lives Forever but it really is no piece of crap. It is not like I want to debunk the points of criticism because they are true but I don't think they are that important. The story is ridiculous, the characters are unbelievable and the dialogues are moronic - but if a product says "James Bond" on it I would be disappointed if these aspects were better (never was a fan of the franchise).

The AI is horrible but aside from that the gameplay is at least decent. I also like the varied level design even if I am disappointed that the game evolved into a corridor shooter after the promising mansion level (keep in mind that the loading times are near zero on my current PC).

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 2/27/2011 3:51 PM · Permalink · Report

I briefly played Driver: Parallel Lines. Seems like a fun game but unfortunately it resets my control settings after every game start. Seriously, I have enough good games in my backlog so I don't have to put up with this. Especially because I didn't even buy it (covermount from a magazine)

Next up: Far Cry. I am excited to try it out because I heard many great things about it. Of course there is also one very bad drawback: no quicksave. So don't be surprised if you see another "I stopped playing this game" post in a few days.

chirinea (47516) on 2/27/2011 5:32 PM · Permalink · Report

Today I finished World of Goo. I'm interested in getting the OCD flags but I guess some of them are just too hard. And I didn't get the "Subversive Traveler" achievement on Steam, still have to check what that is about.

Parf (7871) on 2/28/2011 10:39 AM · Permalink · Report

I just recently got done with Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for the DS. I've noticed that I'm slowly replacing reading books in bed with these kind of puzzle/interactive fiction games. And it was a great game at that! Very low-key with good characters and a nice jazz soundtrack. And how many games take place in 1979? :)

Currently playing Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth in bed for the DS. In the living room it's a mix between Puzzle Quest 2 (I'm right at the end) and a second playthrough of Brütal Legend on the Brütal difficulty setting. So far it's kind of easy, but I expect to get my ass handed to me in the stage battles since I generally suck at RTS games... and I even had problems on the normal difficulty beating some of them.

After I've finished up a couple more games for the 360, I think I might get back to some of my older backlog (Ps1, Ps2, Xbox, Saturn)... but we'll see if I'll do that or if I'll just realize that I'm too lazy to get them out and keep on playing on the 360 some more. ;)

Adzuken (836) on 3/3/2011 2:35 AM · Permalink · Report

I've made the mistake of picking up Minecraft again. It was innocent enough; I was looking for something to do and decided to load up Minecraft and check out some of the updates that have come out since I last played. Then I was standing outside my city walls thinking, "I should really cultivate the land out here and make a couple farms." Hours later I find myself standing in my newly constructed bakery (all that wheat and sugar has to go somewhere) wondering where the day went. Great, there goes the next couple weeks of my life. I have more constructive things I could be doing. But try convincing me of that when there's still vacant lots to be filled within my city walls.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 3/5/2011 7:45 PM · Permalink · Report

You can import your savegames from The Witcher in The Witcher 2. Unfortunately I lost my savegames from my original playthrough. So I decided I really need to replay The Witcher before the launch of the successor. I already reached Chapter II so I am confident I'll see it through; big backlog or not.

I played the game in 2008. There were a lot of great RPGs I played since then. But one thing I know for sure: If you want to play a better RPG than The Witcher you need to go back all the way to Baldur's Gate II.

Parf (7871) on 3/6/2011 9:09 PM · Permalink · Report

Finished up Puzzle Quest 2 last week and I've made some progress in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Brütal Legend as well. The stage battles so far are much easier than I expected them to be for some reason. I must have really sucked last time I pleyed the game. ;)

I thought about picking up Enchanted Arms again seeing as I have no slow paced game at the moment, and I really need to get this stupid character levelling out of the way and stop procrastinating already!

I also picked up a little gem of a game from XNA Indie Games; Epic Dungeon (still pending most likely). It's something as unusual as a Rogue variant that plays in real time! I really liked it a lot, so this one will have be occupied for a while as well I'm sure. :)

Zovni (10504) on 3/15/2011 1:30 PM · Permalink · Report

Lands of Lore: Here we go!.

Damn, this game is pretty cool. Its always a pleasant surprise to pick up a game from 15+ years ago and discover that it was so ahead of its time that its still playable today.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 3/17/2011 9:01 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Finished The Witcher. Awesome game. Tried two of the fan missions provided with patch 1.5. but I didn't like them much. I hate it when modders just reuse areas from the main game.

Today I also started to play Dragon Age II. I'm only two hours in so of course it is way too early to present a conclusion but my first impressions could be described with the formula Deus Ex/Invisible War = Dragon Age: Origins/Dragon Age II

Enemies which spawn directly into your face are the universal ammo of 2011.

Parf (7871) on 3/28/2011 8:58 PM · Permalink · Report

Wohoo! One less game in my backlog! :)

I just finished Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth yesterday. Superb, as the rest of the games in the series (I have yet to get my hands on Apollo Justice however).

So, next up is a round of finishing up half finished games (and that list is preeeeetty long by now). It includes (but is not limited to)

vedder (71172) on 4/4/2011 10:58 AM · Permalink · Report

Tried a bit of Gratuitous Space Battles. It's an interesting idea, but it's also very non-interactive. Most of the time you're just watching the screen doing nothing, which is a bit of a shame. It would've been nice if during the battles it was still possible to do some small scale tactical micro management which could give you just a tiny bit of an edge if done well.

The game would've also done well to ease the player in a bit more with restricting initial content and slowly unlocking things. Now right from the start there's hundreds of ship parts you can buy each with dozens of different variables and you have no idea what's what causing you to just buy random things.

All-in-all I'm glad to have tried it, but the game didn't entertain me enough to keep on playing.

Now started Assassin's Creed II. Disastrous start, but once it picks up it's really good.

I got the game from Steam during the last holiday sales. After downloading I was a bit surprised that Steam asked me to memorize (or copy) a CD key as my PC is perfectly capable of doing such things automatically. Then the troubles again. Instead of launching the game it's launching an updater for Ubisoft's naziware. Which downloads something and then the screen disappears and nothing happens. So I try to launch the game from Steam again. Again it starts downloading a file, this time of a different size. When it's done, it seemingly starts over. Then when it's done it does the same as before, it just quits without any warning. So without any real hope of the game going to launch I try to launch it for a third time using Steam. And now I do get a loading screen for Ubisoft's naziware. Which then slowly greys out, apparently trying to tell me that it's trying to install the three updates it downloaded. So when the screen is greyed out the main window launches. But I can't play until I have an account.

It took me about 20 tries before I finally had an account name that it would accept. Apparently everything is already taken. Including all nicknames I use and variations thereof, everything from "ihatethiscrap", "pleaseletmein", "leavemealone" and all variations thereof. Then I decided to use the Dwight K Schrute method and just start with zerozerzerozero and work my way up from there. Finally finding a account name that's not taken (after only two tries of brute forcing) the naziware gleefully tells me it's now going to bind my CD key to the fictive e-mail address I just filled in. Oops, back to start, let's make an account with an actual e-mail address, so I can maybe also play this game in a possible future.

So then the game finally launches. Here we notice the first improvement on the original game: there's an exit to windows option in the menu! Whereas in the first game you had to press alt+f4, here you can click on an actual button. Bravo Ubisoft, you've managed to include a feature that most PC games since the early 8-bit days already featured.

Then it goes downhill again, with the 360 controller which mapped ridiculously. Like in the previous game the stick used for moving is also the pause button... The triggers are bound to moving the camera, meaning you can't look up or down and The action buttons are wrongly assigned compared with how it is shown in the tutorial HUD elements.

After that the introduction scene is INCREDIBLY BORING. For a game that's all about platforming, there's nothing of that kind in it and the location is extremely boring.

Then I got hooked to the animus thingamajig and got to play in Florence (where I've been a few times so everything is very familiar) where things start to pick up, if not for the retarded English voiceacting. But wow, the game actually lets me switch to Italian! Bravo again Ubisoft! This is a feature I hope more games will copy, being able to play in the language of the location. Definitely helps the immersion!

So then the game suddenly picks up and turns out to be pretty awesome. Much better than the first. For those who didn't play the first, I'd even recommend to just skip it; look up the little story it had on the web and just skip straight to this one. Unless you want to make a case against nazi DRM, in which case you definitely shouldn't play it. Because this one's definitely out of line.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 4/8/2011 6:59 PM · Permalink · Report

Right now I am playing Far Cry 2 (53% or something). All the complaints are true: this game is repetitive. I did all side quests in Act 1 and decided to skip them completely for Act 2. I get enough diamonds during the main missions anyway.

Fighting is fun. Driving five minutes until I reach the fighting not much.

Adzuken (836) on 4/21/2011 3:05 AM · Permalink · Report

Well, Portal 2 was released yesterday, and already I've finished it. Then I finished co-op with a friend of mine. Now I'm not sure what to do with my life.

Sigh Something productive, maybe.

Parf (7871) on 4/21/2011 4:08 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

I've got so little time to sit down and play games as of late, but when I manage to do so it's been mostly Comic Jumper. Very average game in terms of gameplay, but it's funny enough to keep you going regardless. I also thought I'd slog through Beowulf while I was at it. Not the best game, but it's just sitting there on the shelf looking at me. :\

Havoc Crow (29906) on 4/21/2011 6:48 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

I played a little Super Mario Bros. 3, so far I have went through World 1, and I have only one thing to say.

Worst controls ever.

Seriously, what the hey is up with the friction in this game? Maneuvers that should be easy are nearly impossible due to the way Mario atrociously slides around as if on ice. I've played a lot of other platform games, and I always felt like I'm in control of the hero, but in SMB3 I feel like I'm arguing with a clumsy jerk who only very reluctantly listens to my commands.

This part is what eventually convinced me to give up:

It couldn't be easier, Nintendo. There's a gap with the width of one block. It's not that difficult. I should be able to just walk right, then release the D-Pad and watch as my protagonist falls straight down. But not Mario, who slides waaaaaay off to the right and suddenly the ridiculously easy drop requires utter precision. (You can gobble up mushrooms as much as you like, but they won't save you from Mario's random idiotic missteps where it looks like the damn plumber has deliberately stepped off the platform to his oblivion.)

What truly baffles me is that the game is usually praised for its controls...

mobygamer (92) on 4/21/2011 10:14 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Well i was really disappointed with Portal 2.

Short(4 hours, didn't play co-op, only multi-player i play is versus).

Day 1 DLC(where are the values ?)

No DX11 or even DX10 and doesn't look like a 2011 game, looks more like a 2005 game or something ported from consoles.

No challenge maps like in the first or leader-boards or anything really....

Super easy(1st was much harder).

No split-screen like in the console versions.

The game tried way to hard to be funny and failed a lot of the times, i probably only laughed once.

No "versus" multiplayer only co-op, i can imagine a race multiplayer mode where the fastest to finish the map wins or where lava goes up and 5 people have to race to the top of the map, the last one getting striked by the lava wins. etc

Not nearly enough new game mechanics, even Pseudoform which was a "clone" of Portal had more ambition then this.

Lots of the puzzles were reused from the first one.

Overpriced(if this were for 10 or 5 bucks then these issues wouldn't be much of a problem).

Loading times were very frequent.

etc

My recommendation is get Portal 1, play challenge, advanced maps and download the hardest custom maps. Get Portal 2 when its for 5 bucks or something.

Starbuck the Third (22601) on 4/24/2011 9:11 PM · Permalink · Report

Just finished Assassins Creed. Has got to have one of THE most predictable, unintresting, boring endings I've seen. Which is a shame, really, because it was a fun (if repetitive) game. I just AC2 has a better ending.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 4/28/2011 6:08 PM · Permalink · Report

So, Assassin's Creed II is finished. The main quest is definitely much better and varied than the first but especially in the middle part it drags a bit nonetheless (assassinate him, now assassinate him, now assassinate...). What I didn't like about the endgame is that Enzio suddenly suffers from severe cutscene stupidity. So what is the best way to proceed if you face the big bad guy in a perfect disguise which fooled him completely? Exactly, reveal yourself needlessly so the enemy can start a direct fight. Of course at the end of the fight (in which Enzio kicked his ass) a cutscene starts in which the baddy kicks Enzio's ass. God, I hate it when games do that. And of course this games also feels the need to pull this trick multiple times.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 5/3/2011 7:41 AM · Permalink · Report

Finally got a replacement video cable for my PC Engine. Just played some Cratermaze and some Gain Ground. So much fun. Probably gonna play some Star Soldier tomorrow.

Parf (7871) on 5/12/2011 9:42 AM · Permalink · Report

Plowed through John Woo Presents Stranglehold yesterday. Pretty enjoyable, even with the game not being to kind with the context sensitive areas.

Started Overlord right after it. Hehe... I'm really enjoying it. It's like an evil fantasy Pikmin! :D

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 5/14/2011 8:57 AM · Permalink · Report

I just finished Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods (the patched Enhanced Edition re-release). I love the first two games and like Gothic 3 but this one stinks. The fighting system doesn't work, the cities have almost no named NPC (and most can't be spoken to before you have the related quest. And then they have maybe three lines) and the quest design is just atrocious. The Gothic games were always a welcome challenge but this one I set to easy. Well, I guess it will help me to appreciate The Witcher 2 next week.

The day before yesterday I picked up an episodic games for 2,5 Pounds named Blue Toad Murder Files which is not in the database yet. Seems to be similar to Puzzle Agent which I liked a lot.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 6/2/2011 10:49 PM · Permalink · Report

I'm really not able to work off my backlog. It seems for every two games I beat four new games materialize on my shelf/Steam account.

vedder (71172) on 6/3/2011 9:20 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

I'm continuing Lands of Lore 2. It's a bit of a mixed bag. It never gets really good, or really bad, but it's full of surprises.In some areas you can just explore for hours, finding various secret paths and strange puzzles. The rediculously easy combat and heavy item management and puzzles make this game more like an Adventure game than an RPG. It's not as good as the first game in the series, but it's definitely worth continuing past my first annoyances and hurdles.

Also I'm in the Civ World closed beta. It's definitely another step forward compared to oter Facebook games, but a huge leap backward compared to previous Civilization games.

First of all, like all Facebook games it dictates to the player when and how long the player should play. Why I'd want a game to dictate me anything is beyond me. I want to play WHEN I WANT TO PLAY. Not at 4 AM because else I'll lag behind.

The gameplay is totally disjointed. The general idea is good, with each player having control of a town (within one of many civilizations) with food, production, culture, research and money as an output based on the villagers' activities. But once you set that up there's only two things you can do. Mouse-over pop-ups that show above villagers to gain bonusses or play mini-games. The mouse-overing is totally ridiculous, becuase it's the most boring gameplay mechanic I've ever seen and it gives insane bonuses if you're willing to to that 24 hours a day. No doubt some people are capable of that (or write macros), making them much more powerful than others.

The mini-games can only be played once in a while and range from navigating a maze to boost research, a pipe-dreams puzzle to boost money and solve a tile laying puzzle to boost culure. WHAT THE HELL SID, WHAT THE HELL. I'm surprised there's no colouring book or simple math and spelling games either. This is the average content of an edutainment title, not a Civilization game.

Combat is also never going to work on Facebook. Toghether with a couple dozen other players I was part of Germany. At some point Japan attacked us, which gives a 12 (?) hour advance notice in which players can assemble their armies. The problem was when I logged in it was just 2 hours away and while I had a sizeable army, I could not contribute any of it because others in our nation had already filled up all slots with stacks of a single crappy unit. While there are chat capabilities in game, there's no way to contact these people to remove their crap, because they played the game for five minutes 6 hours ago. They won't get back from school, or work for hours more. There's nothing you can do about those fights unless you are the first to notice or you and everybody in the nation plays the game 24 hours a day straight.

Conclusion: A-synchronous multiplayer games just DON'T work. They never have and never will. Too much frustration, too little you can do. To end on a positive note, I must admit that had more fun with Civ World than with any other Facebook game, simply because you actually have to make tactical choices in what you do, and they do matter in how your city develops and thus for 1% of a bit determine the faith of your nation.

Edit: Also theres quite a complex Market mechanic where everyone influences prices, but people don't directly interface with oneanother - that works really well.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 6/3/2011 4:11 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Playing Splinter Cell: Conviction right now. And wow, it is boring. I really don't understand how it manages to get 90% in all those reviews. In the previous Splinter Cells the gameplay was very rewarding and fun and the story very bad. In Conviction the gameplay is dull and the story is better. Of course "better" means still retarded, but that's a given if you see "Tom Clancy" on the cover.

I played about two hours and peek at a level list. I already beat almost half of the game. At least something positive. Well, this and the fact that shootouts are not whack-a-mole despite the cover system. Mostly.

Parf (7871) on 6/6/2011 7:04 AM · Permalink · Report

I'm almost done with Puzzle Quest for the DS now, so I started another game. I decided to finally play through the original Shining Force using the Ultimate Mega Drive Collection for the 360. It's a pretty sweet little game, and I normally have absolutely no patience for tactical RPGs. :)

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 6/13/2011 8:59 PM · Permalink · Report

Right now I'm playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and it is much better than Assassin's Creed II - which is a great game to begin with. The whole Rome rebuilding and brotherhood training mechanics are just genius, even if insanely unbalanced. Normally I really don't care about side mission stuff like this but I want to rebuild Rome 100% - alone this speaks for the quality.

The mission design is much more varied than in the predecessor. This is even true for the side quests. The new "100% Synch" challenges for (almost) each mission is an awesome idea which, if you want to fulfill it, brings even more variation to the missions.

I'm currently in Sequence 5 (no idea how much is left) and I find it hard to find real negative points. Well, one thing: I don't think that the stealth sections should fail it a guard sees me a split second before I ram my blades into his throat.

vedder (71172) on 6/18/2011 8:24 PM · Permalink · Report

Gave up on Lands of Lore 2; for every novelty and surprise there seem to be a dozen annoyances.

Started on Riven. I've been meaning to play this since it came out in 1997, but somehow never got round to it (and consequently skipped all the other sequels as well). Love it so far. Like Myst, the atmosphere is just wonderful and the diaries suck you right into the world of islands and Ages.

chirinea (47516) on 6/19/2011 3:12 AM · Permalink · Report

Beat Portal yesterday. I got this when Steam gave it for free and didn't play it until now because my machine wouldn't handle it well. My laptop was stolen 2 weeks ago and I had already ordered a desktop machine, which unfortunately came only after the theft (meaning I lost lots of precious info).

Anyway, Portal is awesome, although short. I beat it in 3 hours, and now I'm trying to beat the advanced levels. Haven't figure out what to do in the 18th one yet.

GTramp (81961) on 6/19/2011 11:55 AM · Permalink · Report

Started Alice: the Madness Returns today. Man, I've been waiting so long for this game. So far it's superb: the nerve, the overall tone, the heroine, the colors, the music.. loving it so far.

xroox (3895) on 6/23/2011 3:01 AM · Permalink · Report

Playing Fallout 3. God, this game is amazing. It's utterly blowing my mind.

chirinea (47516) on 6/23/2011 3:21 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Finally playing Penumbra: Overture. I've wanted to play this game since the tech demo came out, but only now I'm having the opportunity. I've just made my way to the northern section of the mine; so far, so good.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 6/23/2011 12:03 PM · Permalink · Report

Currently I play "Both my hard drives died". So much fun!

Parf (7871) on 6/24/2011 11:16 PM · Permalink · Report

I decided to play through Prison Break: The Conspiracy. I figured "it can't very well be any worse than season 2-4 of the tv show, now can it?" Well... I kind of is on par with them. :\

So far the game is just a long line of fetch quests with the gameplay of some budget stealth title and the occasional QTE and pointless fist fight. Oh, and while the character models look ok, they sure didn't spend many dollars on actually animating their faces at all. At times it's like playing an HD early Ps2 game (which wouldn't be bad at all if the game was actually any good).

Goddamnit Backloggery, why do you taunt me with your blaring red "unfinished" buttons making be play all my games to get the numbers down?! Why?! ;_;

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 6/26/2011 7:05 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Contract J.A.C.K. is just as great as No One Lives Forever! If you take out the fun gimmicks. And the dialogues. And the story. And the stealth. And the good level design. And the humour. And the great setting (seriously, if I didn't play NOLF, I wouldn't know)

I'm currently in what I assume to be the last level. To be fair, it is kinda fun when you forget how great the predecessors are. But definitely worse than 007: Nightfire. And when I play the bad guy, I expect to fight actual good guys and not just other terrorists.

vedder (71172) on 6/30/2011 7:05 AM · Permalink · Report

Playing through Singularity. Not sure what to think yet, so far it feels as if Raven put BioShock and Modern Warfare in a blender and fired all the writers. The writing is REALLY bad. There's no incentive whatsoever to read all the abundant notes and activate any audio logs. They should've simply left it all out. The corridor shooting is decent, and I haven't unlocked enough gizmos yet to make it really stand out from other games.

There's definitely something wrong with the graphics. I get zero loading screens, which is nice, but 20% of the time I'm walking in blurry environments because the game only loaded the poorest quality mipmaps it could find. I have the game installed on a SSD and have a good video card, so that can't be the problem. I'm not used to Raven games being buggy like this... In BioShock 1 and 2 I also had everything blurry looking at the start of a level, but there you'd literally see the textures being loaded, here it stays blurry forever or until I die and it reloads the part of the level.

When the graphics do load, they are adequate, only the time aging effect really stands out positively, the rest looks very 3 years ago. Not that that really bothers me as I do more retrogaming anyway, but it just struck me as odd, because in the past Raven was more in tune with technological advancements.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 7/2/2011 8:46 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is out today here. Only played a couple hours so far, but I feel like writing down some thoughts on it.

If the original Sandlot games were like Japanese monster movies, then this is more like American gung-ho military sci-fi like Starship Troopers. It's flamboyantly American, for better or worse. Your CPU teammates sound like a gangsta and a redneck.

Missions are longer with multiple objectives, rather than just simply "kill everything on the map". Actually, everything has been complicated a bit. There's active reloads. Multiple armors that level up separately. Reviving teammates. You now have to plant explosives to take out anthills. You can buy new weapons between missions, and customize your appearance.

Enemies continually respawn as you progress through a stage, meaning there's always something to be shooting at. At the same time, the overwhelming numbers of enemies from the previous games have been reduced to compensate (unless this steps up later in the game). Moment-to-moment, it still feels like EDF, but it's a very different EDF.

Have yet to try it co-op, and haven't played around with the other armors yet. It brings a lot more to the table than the previous games did, but a lot of their appeal was that elegant simplicity: Here, have some weapons, have some bugs to kill, have fun!

Not sure quite how I feel about it yet. At the very least, Sandlot has announced they're working on a proper EDF4. Best of both worlds, I suppose.

Parf (7871) on 7/3/2011 8:34 AM · Permalink · Report

I finished up Prison Break last night, so now I thought I'd get on wrapping up some of my half finished games that have just been sitting around for too long. Psychonauts perhaps?

I'm also working my way through Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom in the Phantasy Star Collection for GBA. For as much crap as this game gets, I still like it more than Phantasy Star II (which I still need to finish up as well, come to think of it).

chirinea (47516) on 7/4/2011 4:25 PM · Permalink · Report

Last night I finished Penumbra: Overture, and the day before I finished Indigo Prophecy. I decided to play Indigo Prophecy because I only wanted to play Penumbra at night (I'm obedient to what the developers say).

I loved Indigo Prophecy. I started playing it a couple of years ago, but my machine then kept overheating and slowing the game down, and my control pad sucked so I couldn't play the "jumping over fences" parts properly. The storytelling is great, though I felt the quick time events are sometimes a bit annoying and end up breaking the immersion (if I have to pay attention to the commands, I can't pay attention to the action). Near the end the game felt a bit rushed, as I don't have a clue what the Purple Clan was until I read something outside the game. But anyway, still it is one of the best adventures I've ever played.

Penumbra was great also. The three final scenes were just great, specially the final one. When I played the tech demo, back in 2006, it was the very first time I felt "horror" in a horror game; the full game did a good job on that part too. Near the end I grew tired of avoiding those bastard dogs and cleaned up my way with the pick axe, which lessened the horror factor and gave a bit more of action to the game, but I don't see that as something bad. I just installed Black Plague and I'm gonna start playing it tonight.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 7/4/2011 8:32 PM · Permalink · Report

I finished Fable 3 yesterday and it was somewhere between decent and good. The quests are standard fare, the plot nothing special and the fights, well, decent. The only thing that really hooked me was the "buy all shops and become rich" mechanic. I also liked how I could make decisions as king, unfortunately this segment is a bit short.

Next up: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (only single-player, of course). Played about one hour so far and it seems decent enough for 7€. The destroyable environments are nice and I like the sound.

Slug Camargo (583) on 7/5/2011 5:49 AM · Permalink · Report

So, I picked up Assassin's Creed II at the Steam Summer Sale for like 6 US dollars, and boy I'm so glad I did it.

And by "I did it" I of course mean "not spend more than a handful of bucks on this f'ing abortion". As I write this, the game has been "updating launcher" and "patching" and such nonsense for no less than 35 minutes. Even Games For Windows Live doesn't take this long to patch and run a game. FOR F'ING SHAME.

Right now it's 2.43 AM and I'll have to go to bed because I gotta go to work in some 4 hours, so I guess my firstlook on the game proper will be postponed for tomorrow. If it is indeed true that there is a game behind all these loading screens, because at this point I'm thinking this might very well be all there is to it; like some sort of Andy Kaufman-esque prank of gaming.

Goddamnit.

Slug Camargo (583) on 7/9/2011 11:53 PM · Permalink · Report

Well, Steam's summer sale is one day from over, and I'm left with a huge list of great games to play. I don't even know how am I gonna fit them in my usual schedule.

Let's see. Besides a second (and maybe third) Alpha Protocol playthrough and my usual, eternal third Fallout 3 one, I have Singularity, Sanctum, The Witcher 2 (though I may wait to get the first one first), Assassin's Creed II, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Portal 2... and I'm sure I'm missing one or two --and I don't even know which one to play first!!!! =O

Also I never finished Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood nor Assault on Dark Athena, and I definitely want to do that.

Plus I'm extremely likely to get Arkham City and Human Revolution as soon as they pop up (which I think is sometime during the next three months).

I should really consider quitting my job.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 7/10/2011 12:42 AM · Permalink · Report

I've seen Penumbra and Amnesia brought up multiple times in these threads with a fair amount of praise, and from looking at the screens on file they look to have fantastic atmosphere. So I'm wondering...

As someone who can't stand regular horror -- I've seen two Halloween movies and...that's about it, and the only "horror" game I've played through to the end was Deadly Premonition which is hilariously campy -- but loves a good interesting world to get lost in -- think Limbo or Metroid Prime or even Mirror's Edge -- are these games I might like? They look really interesting from the screens, but I am pretty much 100% a console gamer and am thus quite reluctant to dive in to anything outside my comfort zone...

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 7/11/2011 3:34 PM · Permalink · Report

I'm playing Singularity right now, and I can't think of a just-a-linear-shooter game since Half-Life 2 I had more fun with.

St. Martyne (3648) on 7/11/2011 5:29 PM · Permalink · Report

I'm currently playing a lot of games I've had for a while.

Shogun 2 An outstanding continuation of a venerable PC franchise. I find nothing to fault it with. Except that I suck at it. ;)

Call of Duty: Black Ops. Ugh. Disgusting. The worst design in FPS ever. Zero exploration. Nothing to do. And whenever I try to do something outside of the box, I get stuck into a bug.

Splinter Cell: Conviction Half a step forward, three steps back. Sandbox is there, but what is the fun of it, if they take away all your toys?

Fable III I don't get this game. The map is unusable, the interface is supposedly streamlined, yet I have a lot of trouble doing even the simplest tasks. Art direction is passable. I hope it will get better when I'm a king.

Dawn of War 2 Not sure about this yet, but so far it's been rather disappointing. Getting rid of base builiding in RTS is not a new idea. But I'm not sure if I want it replaced with an RPG full of samey scenarios and locations.

chirinea (47516) on 7/12/2011 3:19 AM · Permalink · Report

Today I beat both Penumbra: Black Plague and Penumbra: Requiem. Black Plague is awesome, but I kinda failed to see the point in Requiem. I finished Black Plague with 9 of the 10 artifacts, and I don't know if I want to play it all over again just to find the last one. In Requiem they're much more well hidden and I only found two; is it worth the search?

Anyway, I got Alien Breed 2: Assault for free on Steam's summer sale, and I've been playing it while taking breaks from Penumbra. It is a fun game; I played a multiplayer mission with my brother and it is a whole lot harder than the single player game, but it is fun also.

The only game I bought during Steam's summer sale was Batman: Arkham Asylum (Game of the Year Edition). I guess I'm playing it next.

Slug Camargo (583) on 7/12/2011 11:47 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

So, I've finally decided to give my full attention to Portal 2.

What can I say? I'm really really sorry it took me this long to get this game, I was an unforgivable idiot. But I'm much more sorry for everyone who's not playing this right now. And even more sorry for those who haven't planned on doing so anytime soon, because you might very well be dying after a sad, incomplete life without even knowing it.

This is pure, unfiltered, out-and-out genius. It's clever, it's hilarious, it's thrilling, it's gorgeous, it's captivating --it's all of that and more, and it's all the time. There are simply no slow moments in this game. Every f'ing second is a highlight. And it's genuinely amazing just how much bigger and ambitious this is compared to the first one, and even more so how it manages to successfully pull every insane thing it tries.

And it keeps getting better and better as it goes on.

Further proof that Erik Wolpaw is the smartest, funniest man alive. And that we need oh so badly to have Valve release games more often. It's incredible just how mediocre every other thing in the world feels one you're playing these.


Also, I might be in love with Stephen Merchant.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 7/15/2011 8:28 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Picked up a few games on XBL the other day. Nin2-Jump is a visually interesting platformer -- it's designed to look like a shadow puppet play -- that just doesn't quite have enough to it. Took about two hours to S-rank every stage and get all the achievements. A cool concept, and it was fun for those two hours, but it's altogether not really worth the 400msp. I mostly bought it because Cave was donating all proceeds to disaster relief in Japan, but then today I find out that was only until the end of last month. =\

On the indie games side of things I picked up LaserCat which is like VVVVVV only without the gravity flipping. I haven't actually played VVVVVV. This game is pretty great for a dollar, though. It is also filled with trivia questions where sometimes the correct answer is to make fun of the person asking the question.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 7/16/2011 8:47 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

I recently played, finished and contributed Puzzle Agent 2. I still find it charming and fun, but I somehow thought the puzzles were a bit easier (except those two horrible number puzzles). Unfortunately there is not even a slight summation of the first game. Come on, I played it over a year ago - I don't remember the name of every side character you reference.

I also started to play Two Worlds II. It took me a while, but finally it made "click" and I am hooked again. It is refreshing to meet enemies which are actually too hard and need leveling up first.

The Fabulous King (1332) on 7/19/2011 11:50 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Tried Portal. Hmm... a bit surprised. Is this game just basically a collection of rooms where you solve the puzzle and go to the next room? Cause I first thought it was a tutorial, but then I became somewhat suspicious.

Also tried Star Control 2. Does anyone know if there's any fuel nearby Zoq-Fot-Pik area, cause I'm low on fuel and chased by both Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah, and they just keep on multiplying. And all I ever wanted was just to masturbate to some hot blue skinned space babes :/ But I'm not so sure if I'll bother. While all the alien creatures are interesting and fun to interact with, I just can't get the hang of the combat and the resource gathering just brings back too much painful memories from Mass Effect 2.

Back to the Future by Telltale. When it's like the movies with the awesome music and tension then it's cool, when it's like a Telltale game then it's bad.

Donatello (466) on 7/23/2011 7:05 AM · Permalink · Report

So I have quite a few games on the plate but not much time:

Started Gabriel Knight 2 recently. I'm in Chapter 3 and while it's less heavy on pixel-hunting (the real photo backgrounds make the interaction with the environment minimal), it still has a few things that I wouldn't have thought of. Another thing is that because of the same thing, it suffers from the dreaded pacing issue that is characteristic of well-written point & click games: the puzzles don't feel organic and just become a hindrance to the advancement of the plot. However, having said that, I feel that Gabriel Knight 2 is still "light" on that, and so far I've found it easier than the first game (which had quite a few puzzles that I would've never solved without the use of walkthrough, not in a million years). FMV-style isn't that alienating as I thought it would be, and while the first one had always a bit of cheese in it (a healthy dose, however, as a whole it was quite dark), this one goes a bit more into the cheesiness territory because of the, well, performance of the actors. I think they're lovely, though. The plot seems intriguing, so I'm sure to follow it to the end. I do think the first game had more style.

To complement the problem-solving, I've had my hands full with Resident Evil 4. I actually beat it two years ago, but this time I finished it on Professional difficulty, did the bonus scenarios and now I'm messing with the Mercenaries. I think the genius design becomes more apparent when one has played it on Pro. Say what you will, but it is surely one of the tightest, design-wise, games of the century. I do have a few irks with it, but it is very much on par with the classics of Resident Evil 1 (which I continue to appraise for its excellent "onion-like" design) and Resident Evil 2.

Oh, and Neverwinter Nights 2. But I've had problems with my computer and the game doesn't load the areas properly. I'll get it fixed though.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 7/23/2011 9:01 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

I'm still playing Two Worlds II, currently in New Ashos. It is really, really good. Sure, it has the same balancing problems like the predecessor (the game never recovered from my early two-hour-desert-exploring; since then I am almost untouchable), but the quests are great. It is one of the few RPGs I ever played, on top of my head I can only think of Baldur's Gate II, where most of the side quests feel like main quests. They are varied, fleshed out, and have (sometimes even surprising) story turns and succession quests. Even the few fetch quests tell motivating stories.

Only the exploring is totally unrewarding (if you find a house or cave you can bet it is locked or empty until you get the associated quest). But I don't care much about that. Oh, and the lockpick mini game manages to be both challenging and not annoying.

If you like RPGs, do yourself a favor and play Two Worlds II. It is much better than the predecessor, even the voice acting is mostly top and at worst times average (playing with German voices, though). But I generally prefer non-open-world RPGs, so take that as you will.

Slug Camargo (583) on 7/26/2011 12:53 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

So is someone opening a new thread or what? Because this one is taking its sweet time to load already. Have we reached a MobyGames record already?

Edit: After knocking a couple Steam-summer-sale titles (surprisingly fast I might add --are Alpha Protocol, Portal 2 and Singularity as short as they felt?) I'm now playing Mass Effect full time. It's pretty good. But I guess all of you already know that.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 7/28/2011 9:07 AM · Permalink · Report

So Catherine is finally out in English. It is something to behold, and it hits all my weak spots for massive damage.

First, there's the fantastic puzzle action with incredible depth. On day 5, I'm only just barely starting to get a handle on how everything plays together, and some of the more advanced ways of manipulating the blocks, and yet the game just keeps throwing new things into the mix every stage.

Then there's the visual design. Sure, it may be pretty similar to Persona 4 only with a more adult tone, but it's by the same team and there aren't many games that look like the Megaten games anyway.

As for the story, well...there aren't really a lot of horror-action-puzzle games out there to really compare it with, much less ones where the focus is on human relationships. Pretty much every character in the game has their issues and regrets, and Vincent's interactions and decisions really feel like they have weight in determining how the story unfolds. Only halfway through the game so far, so I hesitate to call it good, but it definitely has me hooked to see where it'll go.

The English voice acting is (mostly) pretty great, too. Though, the mysterious Voice sounds a bit too much like Dagget Beaver for me to take him seriously (I thought it was Horvitz at first, but apparently it isn't).

Also, boobs. Erica really makes the Ronald McDonald look work.

That said, this is the very definition of a niche game. I'm not just amazed it got localized, I'm amazed it even got made.

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 8/1/2011 7:22 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

I finished Medal of Honor. It tries so hard to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (which isn't that great to begin with) and fails directly into mediocrity. It tries so hard to be varied, but every level which is not the usual run & gun is just flat out boring. Edit: I forgot to mention that the story is absolutely stupid, useless and redundant. But I assume you already guessed that.

It is probably bit unfair to compare, but directly after I started to play Crysis. I'm about an hour in, and this really feels like a good FPS since minute one.

Parf (7871) on 8/1/2011 8:55 PM · Permalink · Report

I finished Phantasy Star III a few nights ago (with some aid of an FAQ). While I think it has several really big faults, I still kind of liked it better than PS II (which I still have to finish at some point).

I moved on to some other games I'd started before but didn't finish, namely;

Slug Camargo (583) on 8/2/2011 12:39 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

I got Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines last weekend, and since now I have a PC that can easily muscle through any memory leaks I decided to finally play it all the way. Currently working on two simultaneous playthroughs, one with a Gangrel and one with a Ventrue --hence, a savage brawler and a sexy conversationalist.

I wanted to go Toreador for option two, but frankly I found it to be a pretty shitty class, in the end I found myself forced to invest way more points in guns than I expected, and their powers suck ass. Ventrue, on the other hand, has the Dominate dialog options that allows to solve a lot of potential confrontations with the power of the word. And it's funny trying to Dominate more powerful vampires :D


At any rate, I had forgotten just how incredibly good this game was. It pains me to say that nothing that has come afterwards is anywhere near as good. I can't believe we're at a point in history where big studios get AAA budgets for games of the scope of Mass Effect and Fallout 3, and yet noone can scratch the heels of a 7-year old half-broken game that was so badly received it ended up killing its own developers.

The quests are amazing. You can count on something happening in every single one of them. Even the blandest fetch quest turns into something much more interesting when it involves some manner of surprise twist or other. Or just a wonderful display of plain old design genius (Ocean View Motel FTFW!!!). The use these guys made of the soundtrack to oh-so-subtly set the mood and the pace is something to commend (Gimble's Prosthetics is a beautiful example). I love the quests in Fallout 3, I still think almost all of them are brilliant; but they still pale in comparison.

Slug Camargo (583) on 8/3/2011 1:45 AM · Permalink · Report

Yet another reason to love Bloodlines.

So, I probably played the Santa Monica quests at least a good dozen times already, what with my old truncated playthroughs and then all the experimenting with the different clans and whatnot.

However, yesterday was the first time that it occurred to me to try and Dominate the cop at Gallery Noir into opening the doors. I worked, of course, and so I promptly dismissed him with the option "Now go hit the Asylum dancefloor". I thought that was just a colorful way of blowing him off. Well guess what...

YOU GO, DIBBLE! SHAKE THAT BELLY LIKE A BOWL FULL OF JELLY!!

chirinea (47516) on 8/3/2011 6:32 PM · Permalink · Report

Working through my backlog I just finished Heretic II. I just can't count how many times I've installed this game and stopped playing for a reason or other. Well, this time I beat it and it was great. I could only run in in windowed mode, but the game still is beautiful even after all these years. It was this game which first made me see the difference between software and hardware accelerated graphics (I remember installing my Trident Blade 3D with 8 MB of video memory just to think "well, it didn't change the game that much", only to realize I had to select "OpenGl32" as the renderer; man, what a difference!).

As I just finished a 3rd person action game I decided to start another: Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2. I don't remember why I stopped playing it when I first installed, so I decided to give it another try, specially because all reviews say it is short.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 8/3/2011 10:43 PM · Permalink · Report

I don't know what's wrong with me. I have a huge backlog, stacks of great games I need to get around to playing. Neir! Red Dead Redemption! EDF! Vanquish! Bayonetta! So what am I playing?

This. Combine the worst parts of Dragon Quest, Zelda II, and Labyrinth, add a heaping helping of that trademark Micronics kusoge suck, and this is what comes out. Even the guidebook I have is buggy.

...but the saddest thing is: If I can finish it, I want to record a second run through and make a Research Indicates style LP for it. God help me, I am a madman.

j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (100156) on 8/7/2011 8:23 PM · Permalink · Report

As I mentioned in the other thread, I've been giving my N64 some love. Played through Blast Corps, then a few hours of Tetrisphere, then started up a fresh game of Super Mario 64. I was going to play Legend of the Mystical Ninja but I don't have a memory card handy. Curse you awkward transitional period between battery backup and memory cards!

Slug Camargo (583) on 8/7/2011 10:49 PM · Permalink · Report

And now we're back to our Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines report.

The Nosferatu sewers were indeed as shitty and crammed with awful ideas and plain f'ing infuriating as I thought I remembered, but once I finally made it past them it didn't take me long to forgive the game and love it all over again. It's just the amount of awesome in it seems to have no end. Everywhere you look at there's one little detail that will make your day.

Here are some more examples...

“He was Chris' womanizer older brother ...”

This one is hard to get right with all the lamps and stuff. It reads: “Vote Robert Thorne - Not a murderous child pornographer” XD

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 8/14/2011 9:07 AM · Permalink · Report

I just finished Crysis and I have a hard time coming up with flaws. It has a great atmosphere, flawless handling and is overall fun and well balanced (middle difficulty). I even liked the alien ship level everyone likes to bitch about.

The only part I didn't like much was that flying level. I hard a hard time getting used to the controls and then it was already over without the opportunity to use them.

vedder (71172) on 8/14/2011 9:32 AM · Permalink · Report

I finished Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I loved it. Rome is my most favourite city in the world and I loved being able to run and climb around it. I also felt it looked quite a bit better than its predecessor, particularly the more rural areas which I thought looked pretty ugly in Assassin's Creed II, but were now on par with the city parts.

My only annoyance with the game are that quite often the controls are misinterpret. I'll be on top of a roof and want to jump to the next one,but instead Ezio will jump 5 meters to the left into the void. Or I climb up a ladder, but due to a funny cinematic camera once I get on top holding the thumbstick up suddenly means moving forward, which is on the ladder again so it's almost impossible to get off. Or the game showing a single assassination target in a large crowed but absolutely refusing to autotarget it now matter how much you fiddle with the camera. The previous two games had the same issues and I had hoped they would have improved on it, because it's not impossible.

There's a lot of grinding in this game (and the previous), but somehow it didn't bother me. The primary mechanic (freerunning) is just so much fun it gets away with it.

Slug Camargo (583) on 8/14/2011 8:59 PM · Permalink · Report

I've finally gotten around to replaying Deus Ex; I figured now that the New Vision texture upgrade is out it would be a good opportunity.

Turns out the game has aged way, way better than I thought I would find out. If you haven't played it in a long time, I totally recommend to do it. It officially, empirically goes: Deus Ex - Bloodlines --and then there's nothing that comes remotely closer. Alpha Protocol might be the closest next thing, but it would still be a way distant third. If not for anything else, freedom of choice becomes much more real when you don't have huge pop-ups telling you what to do at every turn. And when cameras don't have a gigantic colored spot announcing which direction they're pointing, stealth becomes much more interesting. And a thousand other similar details. Deus Ex simply doesn't treat you like a mouth-breathing 13 year old, and it's something I really appreciate.

Anyway, as I was walking down the UNATCO hallways, a revelation hit me: What ever happened to mirrors in which we can see the protagonist reflected? Remember those? When was the last time you saw one?

vedder (71172) on 8/16/2011 7:14 PM · Permalink · Report

During the Steam summer sale I bought Jamestown (not in database yet!?).

This impulse buy was based solely on the description shown on metacritic:

"Summary: Jamestown is a neo-classical top-down shooter for up to four players set on 17th-century British Colonial Mars."

I mean, what more could I want?

Turns out it's freakin' awesome as well!

Slug Camargo (583) on 8/21/2011 4:30 PM · Permalink · Report

Yo dawg, we herd you liek Deus Ex, so we put a Deus Ex in your Steam so you can Deus Ex on opening day!

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 8/26/2011 6:20 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

it shouldn't be a big surprise that I'm playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution right now. And yes, I like it. Of course I am only four hours in (it was released today after all) and only played the first real mission so far. But a (relatively) complex augmentation system! Grid inventory! No universal ammo! Quick save! No reason to be unhappy so far.

Nevertheless I already declare: Most likely better than Invisible War.

Slug Camargo (583) on 8/27/2011 9:01 PM · Permalink · Report

Got to the first boss fight in Human Revolution. It's every bit as stupid and shitty and character-breaking as I was expecting, but at least -while annoying enough, what with the deadly combo of one-hit kills and no quicksave- it wasn't nearly as infuriating as the ones in Alpha Protocol, so I eventually made it.

Then I got to thinking. For some days now I've been wondering what could have gotten into these guys' (undoubtedly clever) heads to make such a stupid decision, especially after Obsidian made the exact same one; and last night it suddenly dawned on me: It's the Japanese's fault.

Think about it: Stealth game where the sneaking mechanics are periodically thrown down the drain to make room for classic, coin-op style, stupid, stupid boss fights --isn't this exactly what Metal Gear Solid does? Obsidian and Eidos are trying to emulate Metal Gear Solid!! It's the motherfucking Japanese's fault!! Fuck them and their stupid ideas! And fuck whoever thought following Metal Gear Solid as inspiration for a stealth game was a good idea --TWICE!!! How stupid are we? D:

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 8/29/2011 7:48 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Besides Deus Ex: Human Revolution (that second hub is big) I also did a few other things before last Friday:

Crysis: Warhead: More of the same. I liked it.

Tomb Raider Legend: Believe it or not, my first Tomb Raider game ever. It is fun, but currently on hold because of Deus Ex: HR.

Prototype: Played it about 90 minutes. Really not my type of game. Most of the time I was bored and then those monster things kicked my ass. I'm just not used to playing with a gamepad.

Chrome Specforce: Again, played it about 90 minuted directly after Warhead. Maybe I'm spoiled, but I currently don't feel like save scumming after every instant-death enemy.

I also pre-ordered Arkham City (I really loved the predecessor. Did I mention the flawless keyboard controls?), Skyrim and LA Noire: This way I'll never clear my backlog...

Parf (7871) on 9/15/2011 12:35 AM · Permalink · Report

So, while the rest of you are all playing the new-fangled Deus Ex I decided to play through Medal of Honor: Underground instead. It's a pretty capable FPS for being played on a Ps1 and probably the last Medal of Honor game in the series I'll ever play volontarily. Call of Duty and Medal of Honor are series on my never-play list nowadays as I just can't see what's so awesome about them.

Anyway, back to Underground. It's pretty much a mission based walk-along-the-set-path-while-meeting-objectives kind of game. Back then it was because the hardware couldn't work out anything else... nowadays developers are just lazy. The graphics are pretty good, but it's marred by horrible pop-up issues leading to the enemies being able to start shooting at you before you even see them yourself. And it also has a bunch of really interesting bugs. I found myself falling through a bridge when I looked through the sniper scope once. And on one level you carry a camera around. For some reason at random intervals it seemed to get a soldier attached to the front of it in certain angles. No idea how or why it happened, but it was pretty amusing. On the last mission now, which insists on making the game ten times harder by slowing down immensely as soon as there are too many soldiers on screen at once. The irony is that those are the times it'd be nice to be able to aim properly... well, you can't. And you die because of it. A lot.

There, so I've done my part in breaking this thread away from the next big installment of whatever is the hottest cool game of awesome everyone's playing here at moby at the moment. Any other takers? ;)

Patrick Bregger (303298) on 9/20/2011 1:03 PM · Permalink · Report

Now playing: The Last Remnant, 18 hours in (according to Steam). Let's just say it doesn't give me the urge to buy a console so I can play more J-RPGs.