What game are you playing?

[Coco]

I had no idea there were that many games for N64! I had a Zool game for SNES — pretty good platformer but difficult as hell.

I'm still playing FFVI — just after the beginning of the World of Ruin section of the game. So far I can tell this will become a favorite.

[lisa needs braces]

 FFVI is one hell of a game.

[DavidW]

Woah, that is neat - hadn't seen it before :3

I just saw a preview of Space Marine, and this may be the first Warhammer action game licence that hasn't been a letdown for me. It has some of crunchiest combat I've ever seen, and yet looks very fluid too. Next up: waiting for independent reviews of Deus Ex 3 that haven't been bought out by the publishers.

Reviews on Deus Ex 3 I'm wanting are Jim Sterling and Yahtzee.  But it's on my queue at gamefly, no harm in renting it even if it turns out to not be good.

[ibanezmonster]

I'm still playing FFVI — just after the beginning of the World of Ruin section of the game. So far I can tell this will become a favorite.

Awesome! 

[Rinaldo]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is absolutely brilliant, most of the time on par with the original and surpassing it when it comes to stealth and hacking.

Can't wait to see its cover system implemented in the new Thief (same company).

And speaking of Thief, if you like open-ended games, keep an close eye on Dishonored, which shares some of its gameplay and aesthetic elements. The legacy of Looking Glass Studios / Origin lives on.

[Mirror Image]

Four games I eagerly await:

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo Wii) - Release date: Nov. 20th
Batman: Arkham City (PS3) - Release date: Oct. 18th
The Last Guardian (PS3) - Release date: TBA - maybe next year?
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3) - Release date: Nov. 1st

[Lethevich]

DE3 SPOILERS (from very early into the game and not major):

It looks like the developers were just as cowardly as I suspected - the opening area and setup is a Metal Gear Solid-style interactive movie. The first zone has a few similarities to UNATCO (music included), but the difference is that you cannot explore at your own pace, the game proceeds as a series of "atmospheric" POV walk-and-talkathons which demonstrate a total contempt for player control or individual experience. Just as terrible, very early on a "boss" character emerges and it includes a cut scene of you being ambushed and taken down without any control over the matter - and all in the aid of a sickly "they stole mah girl" plot. There's the little things too - talk to a secretary from behind their desk and the cutscene shows you talking to them from the front - the game actively dislikes you not playing on the rails. I'll pick this back up if reviews indicate the start was all just a terrible misjudgement (with its total lack of alternate routes because of the scripted scenes playing out in front of you - even DE2's near-identical intro did not do this quite so badly iirc), but atm rage mode is stuck on

It's as if developers can't even visualise what a good game of this type is like, they are so corrupted by all the silly, cheap tricks available to them If they can even claim to enjoy the original, then its qualities flew right over their pea brains.

Edit: a friend has been playing it in the background, and the next area seems a bit more open, which is good - but I do object to the developers deciding when or where you should go into "adventure mode" and "corridor mode" - it's contrary to the core style of the game. I feel that the target market for the original DE were somewhat inquisitive people looking for something very different and radically slow-paced and text-based, but the next two games were produced to try to appeal to people with shorter attention spans. While this is a nice idea, it's just not going to result in a game that is as worthy - and as long as the franchise retains the name of the original I don't see any reason not to hold it up to the standards of that game.

[Rinaldo]

It's as if developers can't even visualise what a good game of this type is like, they are so corrupted by all the silly, cheap tricks available to them If they can even claim to enjoy the original, then its qualities flew right over their pea brains.

Calm down. It opens up when you reach Detroit. They sort of had to ease players that never experienced the original into it.

[Lethevich]

I'm feeling pretty content irrationally hating it right now, but I'll inevitably continue it sometime soon. I've even played DE2 through about three times for wont of any other acceptable games in this abortive genre... I am being silly, though - of course

[Lethevich]

Meh, DE3 turned out to be okay but not worth finishing. The cover system is completely misguided and design decisions often change the experience to something I am not looking for in a DE game. There wasn't a moment where I felt like it was me walking through the areas because this illusion isn't just broken all the time, it seems to be discouraged. It just felt like I was playing yet another video game with the same old plastic bloomy environments.

Moving onto Crysis 2 on Xbox, it's great. I didn't get the PC version because the visuals were disappointing once you took the time to examine anything for more than 1 second. It's surprising how the developers managed to combine a rail shooter with unusually open areas which allow you to do your own thing to some extent - it combines an illusion of freedom with a very tight progression, good stuff. I hope there will be a sequel, whether on a next gen console (wishful thinking) or not.

[DavidW]

Lethe are you criticizing 3rd person view?  I think that is the only real solid way to do anything involving cover.

I thought this was funny, an alignment but from the escapist magazine:

[Lethevich]

Lethe are you criticizing 3rd person view?  I think that is the only real solid way to do anything involving cover.

The previous games didn't need cover, though. This is the thing that I don't understand about games that go away from pure FP - it doesn't just break immersion, but in the obvious desire for fluid, movie-style firefights, the whole concept stops making sense to me. For example, being able to pick your target's exact bodypart and then pop out, fire two shots and go back down in a second. It looks impressive but it's working against immersion for me because it's an eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head thing which feels like game-logic and not real (and a realistic approximation of real-life perception is the primary reason for utilising a FP viewpoint). Any move from pure first person results in a game that becomes more about artfully using the mechanics of the specific game rather than just doing what comes naturally - for example, I tried to take cover around a corner at one point, but it covered me on the wall before the turn where I was exposed. Any such system can never have all those "clunky" parts ironed out and even if they could it seems unneccessary given how elegant pure FP is. I could've just run around the corner myself and used lean, making flashy cover systems unneccessary.

It's not just that, though - in the original DE's the main characters, whether intentional or not (I lean towards the former considering DE2 followed the same line), were wooden and faceless. In DE3 I can only view my character as a bearded greaseball with a pre-designated girlfriend. In the previous two they were rather more anonymous, somewhat sexless entities which didn't distract as much from my perception of the gameworld.

These points probably only apply to myself, but they really grated on me I get the Metal Gear experience from DE3 - I'm not playing me, I'm playing Solid Snake.

Edit: some of this made no sense.

[TheGSMoeller]

Haven't played a console game in years, which really saddens me...   thinking of buying "Portal 2" for my computer, the original "Portal" is one of my favorite games.

But I've been playing "Plants vs. Zombies" on my iPad which is fun. Otherwise, Gin Rummy, all the time, sort of became my game.

[DavidW]

Portal 2 is alot of fun Greg!

I played Bulletstorm (good, stupid fun) and as of this weekend I'm now playing Deus Ex 3.

[Lethevich]

Bulletstorm is so cool - I love the mostalgic feeling of gaming circa 1996 with all of its "you can't jump over this waist-hight obstruction" stuff

[DavidW]

Bulletstorm is the most fun I've had in a game in along time!  I miss the days of high momentum run and gun shooters!!  I would like to see the whole genre come back and the tactical shooters take a back seat.

[Lethevich]

Indeedie, the whole tacticool genre is a nice idea for an multiplayer experience, but the market is beyond saturated (and watching people run around in full field warfare gear knifing each other like in Action Quake is kind of painfully retarded). I blame Half Life for ruining the Quake 2-style singleplayer experience Sure games like Q2 were a bit plain, but it was the same kind of action that Doom offered and the obsession with realistic weapons that came with HL seems to have moved the genre to an ever more faux realistic playstyle.

It's strange how I never really got into Serious Sam, considering how much I like straight-up action shooters. Even the minigun-type weapons felt light as a feather and there wasn't a lot of satisfaction in taking down countless waves of dudes with that lack of impact and weight. I'm looking forward to Space Marine precisely because of how ridiculously weighty the combat appears to be.

[Rinaldo]

Meh, DE3 turned out to be okay but not worth finishing. The cover system is completely misguided...

Interesting. I remember hating the inclusion of 3rd person camera in the third Thief (and never used it) but I absolutely loved the cover system in Human Revolution and thought it was one of the game's highlights.

[Rinaldo]

I absolutely loved the cover system in Human Revolution and thought it was one of the game's highlights.

(and I mean HIGHLIGHTS)

[DavidW]

I thought the cover system needed work.  It's not fluid like in Gears of War... because the control scheme doesn't work right. 

In most shooters you would push lt to aim, rt to fire (on the 360).  You push A to grab cover.  You push A again if you want to jump over the obstacle.  This is a very intuitive overloading of the A button since the second action is really the extension of the first action.

So I play DE 3, I push lt and... I grab the nearest wall!  How do you unlearn lt to aim since every other game uses it??  Not only that but aim is lt+left analog, seriously!?  While the A button is still used for jumping over obstacles or switching walls, there is a weird disconnect that it had nothing to do with finding cover.

After a little bit of playing you get used to it, but still... I wouldn't call it a highlight of the game.