Last Game you have played...

Been on a gaming binge for 3 days now, starting when I bought an XBox 360 and a couple of games (all for heaps cheap, now that it's no longer a "current" console).

So, in 3 days, I've finished 10 out of 16 story-lines for Dead Or Alive 4, along with unlocking 1 of 5 hidden characters; done the intro mission (twice, second time for practice) and the first mission for Perfect Dark Zero; finished either 4 or 5 missions in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty; and finished 2 missions (completing the second campaign of 11 total) for Heroes Of Might And Magic VI Complete Edition.

So yeah, 4 games, 2 bought in the past 3 days, and I'm making somewhat decent progress on 2 of them (DOA 4 and StarCraft 2).

And I had a question for all you gamers... Do any of you go through phases of not gaming at all, and then becoming obsessed with gaming for a while, then not gaming at all again, etc.? I mean, the stereotypical image of a gamer is someone who plays video games every single day, as often as they can, but I'm sure there must be others out there who are like me, and only get bit by the gaming bug occasionally.

It depends what one plays games for.

I suspect many sit like zombies frantically thumbing buttons and disposing of everything in sight 24/7 but there will be many others who don't. All have our own reasons for playing, I guess.

I enjoy a decent storyline, preferably using my brain, and taking things at my own speed. There were some good military flying simulators some twelve years ago DID's Total Air War, and Falcon 4 spring to mind and I used to enjoy real-time flights to target/attack and return.

the last game i played was dragon age: origins. [POTENTIAL SPOILERS?] i love knowing who dies and who doesn't because i can steal all their stuff and sell it before it happens. that's... probably a pretty terrible thing to do now that i think about it.

Cliff Face said:

And I had a question for all you gamers... Do any of you go through phases of not gaming at all, and then becoming obsessed with gaming for a while, then not gaming at all again, etc.? I mean, the stereotypical image of a gamer is someone who plays video games every single day, as often as they can, but I'm sure there must be others out there who are like me, and only get bit by the gaming bug occasionally.

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i tend to play video games nonstop for a while, get stuck on some section (one word: riku), and ragequit for weeks at a time.

Last game I played? I don't really remember. it's been months. but I'm with Shiva xD I love doing that

Right now I'm on Majora's Mask 3DS. Probably taking a break soon though.

So, I've finished 8 whole missions in Heroes of Might and Magic VI Complete Edition now! I don't know exactly how many missions there are, but I suspect it's around the 30 mark. Considering how many game-hours I've put in, I fully expect it'll take me another 200+ hours to finish this game... Which probably won't happen this year, and next year I'll be a full-time student again, and won't have time to play a 10-hour long mission...

Anyway, that's what I've played the last couple of days. I'll probably mix it up a bit later this afternoon, and bust out something with a much faster style of gameplay.

I was playing Bioshock, but after a break due to life/computer troubles I decided to play Portal again to get back into games. Then I had to play Portal 2, of course. I love those games. I still hope to get back to Bioshock eventually...

Oh, that reminds me to ask a question: I was recommended Portal and Portal 2 a while back, and they do look like fantastic games. Now, I could find Portal 2 for PC, but the only time I've ever seen Portal is in "The Orange Box" with a couple of other games, for the XBox 360. Is this the only way to get the original Portal? I mean, it doesn't bother me much, as I recently acquired a 360, but yeah... Wasn't really sure whether Portal was available on its own or anything.

Cliff Face said:

Oh, that reminds me to ask a question: I was recommended Portal and Portal 2 a while back, and they do look like fantastic games. Now, I could find Portal 2 for PC, but the only time I've ever seen Portal is in "The Orange Box" with a couple of other games, for the XBox 360. Is this the only way to get the original Portal? I mean, it doesn't bother me much, as I recently acquired a 360, but yeah... Wasn't really sure whether Portal was available on its own or anything.

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Both Portals on PC are the way to go, IMHO. You can find Portal: Still Alive, which is the first one, on the Xbox marketplace.

The Orange Box, btw, was and still is, one of the best game collections. Half-Life 2, Portal, and TF2.

Tamlyn said:

I was playing Bioshock, but after a break due to life/computer troubles I decided to play Portal again to get back into games. Then I had to play Portal 2, of course. I love those games. I still hope to get back to Bioshock eventually...

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Never been a fan of the original Bioshocks personally, but Bioshock Infinite is one of my top 20~ games of all time. You can skip straight to it, as it's not a sequel.

Osulagh said:

Both Portals on PC are the way to go, IMHO. You can find Portal: Still Alive, which is the first one, on the Xbox marketplace.

The Orange Box, btw, was and still is, one of the best game collections. Half-Life 2, Portal, and TF2.

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Mmm, okay. I've never seen Portal: Still Alive anywhere, ever. But I was thinking that The Orange Box might be the best value-for-money in the long run. Because yeah, I've heard very good things about the Half-Life series. And while I can't for the life of me recall right at this moment what TF2 stands for, I recall recognising the game's name and thinking that it had been recommended to me before, too.

I'll probably hold off on buying The Orange Box for some time yet, though. I really want to actually, y'know, *finish* a few games before I add to my collection. I mentioned elsewhere that I have 8 unfinished games at the moment. I'm trying to avoid buying any new games until that number is cut in half. But yeah - seeing Portal mentioned reminded me that I wanted to ask that question. So thanks for the prompt answer.

My son enjoyed Portal.

Today, I played the Pokémon Trading Card game, and was actually able to play against Miss Strawberri of AW. It was intense! I lost.

I can't say enough wonderful things about the Portal games. Hilarious jokes, mind-bending puzzles, bizarre levels, great characters and voice acting, even the soundtrack is excellent... I can't think of a single nit to pick in either one. Half-Life is great, too.

And yet here I am, building a model of Balmoral Castle in Minecraft. And then building a Nether-themed roller coaster with clay button-eyed fake ghasts that shoot fireworks as you plunge past them next to it. And next to that, I built a school for Creepers with a sign reading "Absolutely no spontaneous combustion on premises. Students are to remain intact at all times." Creepers follow school rules as well as any group of students have ever followed school rules.

Yeah, I've never heard anyone say anything bad about Portal.

As for Minecraft... I've never bothered with it, primarily because the retro-style graphics are a big turn-off for me. I mean, I can't say anything about the style of gameplay, having not played it, but yeah... Once games moved beyond the retro style, I never looked back. *is biased for no readily obvious reason*

Cliff Face said:

Yeah, I've never heard anyone say anything bad about Portal.

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Portal 2 is better than Portal, and Valve needs to get off their ass and make a new game--either Portal 3 or Half-Life 3. That said, Half-life was more of a technological demonstration with well-rounded edges than anything. It was amazing in the past, just no so much now.

As for Minecraft... I've never bothered with it, primarily because the retro-style graphics are a big turn-off for me. I mean, I can't say anything about the style of gameplay, having not played it, but yeah... Once games moved beyond the retro style, I never looked back. *is biased for no readily obvious reason*

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Minecraft is voxel-based, not retro. Yeah, it's blocky, but it's far more advanced than any retro games. It's pretty much virtual legos. You mine, battle monsters, collect blocks, and make stuff from those blocks. You can do almost anything in it, and not just including building things; custom maps have made it possible people to play fully custom games within Minecraft.

And, hey, it's the third most popular video-game of all time. Had to have done something right. I've been playing it since it came out in Alpha in 2009, and have several accounts.

If you don't like the graphics, you can always change them. Textures and shaders make a big difference: https://www.google.com/search?q=min...ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMI_KmrisOWyAIVS6GACh3URAXj

I wish to say: You're missing out on great games if you're knocking them for being "retro" or "retro-styled". One of the best games of last year was Shovel Knight, which is fully based on retro video games, but is nearly perfect.


As for me, I finally got Sonic Adventure Battle 2 on PC. I've played countless hours on Gamecube when I was a kid, and returning to it is just pure nostalgia. And yay! I get to play with the Chao. Those FUCKERS who don't eat or evolve when I need them to. FUCK! Do it already. Eat, evolve. Do as I command, you shits!

I wouldn't say I'm knocking retro games, exactly... I mean, yes, for some reason the graphics turn me off, but I try not to say anything about the gameplay, or to influence other people's decisions to play them or not. And like I said - there is no readily obvious reason as to why I feel this way. I mean, I know rationally that the graphics quality has virtually nothing to do with whether a game is a pleasure to play. But initial impressions tend to be irrational, and hard to move past. To each their own.

And for me personally, I play games at such a slow / intermittent rate that I'll never run out of pleasurable games to play even *with* my irrational bias towards first impressions of graphics.

The Strange Man Trilogy, I'm in the middle of The Boogie Man, One Night 2 and Mogeko Castle

Rise of the Tomb Raider: I liked the plot of this installment much more than the last one, especially the savvy combination of Core's Mr. Croft and Crystal's Mr. Croft (turns out Lara was estranged from her father when he died, their last conversation was an argument, and she hasn't been back to Croft Manor since. Seriously, the only way they could have made that better would have been revealing his full name was Richard Hemingsly Croft). There are more lost cities, more mysterious artifacts, and completing optional dungeons now gives you power-ups. It plays the same otherwise, but that's not a bad thing, since the mechanics were the last game's strongest point.

Dragonball Xenoverse: A pretty good game, with a lot of customization options, and a surprisingly-entertaining Quantum Leap plot in which you're a time-cop out to repair DBZ's history after a mysterious villain's meddling makes it go all wacky. This has you doing everything from re-railing major fights to helping Guldo pass his entrance exams (no. Really. This is a thing you do). If I have one complaint, it's the autotargeting system, although you can switch targets manually so it doesn't interfere too much.

Fatal Frame 5: Well, it's cool so far. Unfortunately thanks to the Wii U's infamously glacial download times, "so far" amounts to the trial version of the prologue and first two chapters while the rest trickles in. That said, I love the prologue and first two chapters. A detective who uses a Camera Obscura to find missing objects and people leaves for work one day and doesn't come back, so her coworker goes looking for her. So far, the camera is pretty solid with room to grow (it's less like Lunar Eclipse than a streamlined version of Spirit Camera), and there's a nice variety of ghosts in these levels, although given how early it is in the game, nothing too bizarre has appeared.

the last game i played was final fantasy 7. i kept accidentally mastering materia and getting freaked out when new materia was born because of it.

At last! I just finished StarCraft II Wings of Liberty for the first time. Even though it came out about 5 years ago, I only bought it this year. But hooray for actually finishing a game! I'm definitely going to be buying Heart of the Swarm at some point soon, I think. It's a fun game, even though I still prefer the gameplay in the original StarCraft, but the Zerg were always my favourite anyway. Plus, I want to find out where the story goes from here (no spoilers please!).

Half-Life and its sequel have been on my meaning-to-play list forever. Absolutely you should get the Orange Box if you haven't already--Portal is, after all, basically a Half-Life mod. I'd also really suggest playing the first Portal first.

I remember chatting with you about game ideas awhile back, and I don't remember if I linked this or not but if you're interested in Half-Life 2 this is a GREAT read.

As for me, Ni no kuni was another game that was on my meaning-to-play list for the longest time, and then I got it last year and didn't get around to playing it until a couple weeks ago when I got sick. And... wow. In all sorts of ways, but mostly disappointing. As in, the score is freaking amazing, the art is beautiful (though I don't have an HDTV--don't ask--so slightly muddy in SD), and I want to love the tone so much even though it's very, very aimed at kids. It's like everything Ghibli touched in that game is fantastic--and the gameplay just completely undermines all of it. I haven't seen gameplay so actively negative in a long, long time. It's smooth enough, technically proficient, but it just asks constant tedium for almost no tangible reward. And I'm someone who usually enjoys JRPGs and doesn't mind a little grinding. What I can't deal with is when there's absolutely no pressing tension in the story or game situation. I got about six hours in--and I know it probably gets better--and I just couldn't handle the "go to this shop and "go get this trinket for NPC X". It's like the game's story isn't even trying to cloak these things. It only gives you enough content to give you a character who needs something. There's no drama. The characters are just characters, not people (or creatures) and it makes the colourful tone look like a mistake when it should be dream-like and engrossing.

I did like the Welsh sidekick, though. Would have been nice if he had more than three idioms, but those three were so well voiced that I didn't actually care that much.

Blurgh. I hate when games don't live up to the hype. I'll probably hack another 6-10 hours into it at some point and see if it gets better (I'll never forget just about ditching Tales of Legendia because the opening 4 hours are awful before turning into one of the zaniest, most endearingly imaginative games I've ever played) but I peeked at some reviews and they said the combat just gets harder while still managing to be inconsistent more than actually challenging, so I'm not hopeful.

Any thoughts? Am I being needlessly cynical? Should I keep going?

VeryBigBeard said:

Any thoughts? Am I being needlessly cynical? Should I keep going?

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I finished the story. There's a post game dungeon, but I declined. My impressions were pretty much like yours, and they never changed. Capturing monsters (you've probably not yet got to that?) is fun for a while, but that, too, becomes repetitive and dull much too soon. It's been a while, but I remember the combat being clunky, and there being no good character development (you basically just unlock a pre-determined path). The most annoying parts are "quests" like talk to all X, so you run back and forth through the same area a lot... I didn't like the game play much. They did do some interesting things, but mostly I was just glad I finished the game.

(Aside: I played the game with the Japanese track, so it took me a while to figure out who the "Welsh sidekick" was.)

Ahh! I figured something out just a little bit ago. Basically, having installed the first part of StarCraft II only this year, then when I created a battle.net account, it did, like, a 15GB or something update. At the time I thought, "Jeez! How many freakin' patches have they needed?" And then there was another massive update right after part 3 came out recently. Anyway, I bought part 2 today (hooray for Christmas sales!), and yeah - I didn't need to do any real installation. It was a very short update to battle.net, then redeem my code. Which means (if my logic holds) that I technically have part 3 already downloaded, even if I don't have a code to redeem for it yet.

Huzzah!

After dinner, I'm going to launch into a mission or two. Zerg campaign here I come!

Dawnstorm said:

I finished the story. There's a post game dungeon, but I declined. My impressions were pretty much like yours, and they never changed. Capturing monsters (you've probably not yet got to that?) is fun for a while, but that, too, becomes repetitive and dull much too soon. It's been a while, but I remember the combat being clunky, and there being no good character development (you basically just unlock a pre-determined path). The most annoying parts are "quests" like talk to all X, so you run back and forth through the same area a lot... I didn't like the game play much. They did do some interesting things, but mostly I was just glad I finished the game.

(Aside: I played the game with the Japanese track, so it took me a while to figure out who the "Welsh sidekick" was.)

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I got just enough capturing done to realize that there wasn't enough depth to the system to seriously affect the battle tedium. The only thing I didn't get to were the companion characters but I poked through enough reviews to realize their character alone wasn't going to do it for me.