Got Final Fantasy VI for iOS. The keypad sucks, but the battles work well with a touch screen, and they even put in a fast-forward button to make random encounters somewhat more tolerable. The language is less filtered than on the SNES version. Locke used a mild swear. And Kefka sounds even worse now that he can explicitly say kill.
Playing Shin Megami Tensei atm, holy crap it's difficult. Fire Emblem is still the Dark Souls of DS Gaming in my mind though. Other games - AC Unity -Alpha Sapphire I really am dying for Mass Effect 4, christ I miss that series.
I was handed Alien Isolation by a friend (who I guess was trying to distract me from some not so pleasant stuff) and I thought: Yay! Just the ticket. I have memories of me and my stepson, glued to the telly, trawling through vents on our bellies avoiding it on the Sega Mega Drive. Anyhoo... I got stuck into the game. Many of my favourite games (at least the ones that aren't RPG's) are essentially stealth games, but I love it when a studio gives the player options. I really loved Dishonored and have had a different experience each time I've played it. Because I'm not a particularly skilled player I tend to play the kill everything that moves game first, Then on the replay, I go for a pure a stealth game. I'm a reasonably patient person, and like the strategic part of my brain to get a little exercise once in a while. I got a hang of the controls easy enough, but I still found them lacking. I've heard other people say they found them to be intuitive but sadly I thought they fell far short of many of the games I've recently played. I just felt like I was pushing the character along, or into or under, if that makes sense. I never really felt like she was me, despite playing the gaming equivalent of a first person novel. To me that's a flaw. When playing stealthily I'm a bit OC about crouching... rarely get up from a crouch unless there's a bloody good reason to, and that made navigating round the station really slow going. The first wee while felt like a never ending fetch quest, and although meeting Axel broke the monotony some, boredom drove me to turn the machine off. I haven't went near it since. In fact, of the three of us who've shared the game, I got the furthest. We all had different reasons: too scary, too slow... and in my own case, too boring. Such a pity. No matter whether someone reassured me it gets better, the damage is already done. Alternate ways to play might have alleviated this. Ah, well, I gave it a go, now I'm on to the next.
^ Alien: Isolation was a good game for me, but I'm really not a fan of stealth games for the most part, so sneaking past a thousand Worker Joes wasn't always fun.
Playing Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Wasteland 2 at the moment. Pretty good. If you like turn based combat. I stopped playing FPS etc. when they stopped including Quicksave and Manual save and went with save points. I often play for only a few minutes at a time and I want to be able to stop when and where I want, not when the game thinks I should.
Heavy Rain received good reviews, so I decided to check it out. The overall plot was good; I liked the vision of what it was going for, and it did a good job of holding suspense. But the dialogue was often often stilted and the individual plot events were often cliche. For a game whose strength is supposed to be its story, this was disappointing. Overall, it was still good but not great.
I haven't played a game in ages. I am quite glad about this because I do find most of them quite a monumental waste of time (in the same way that I find most TV quite a monumental waste of time). I think I just get bored of games incredibly quickly, whenever I have bought a console in the past it just ends up becoming a glorified DVD player. I also get this kind of odd guilt from playing computer games or watching crap on TV; this knowledge that I could be doing something worthwhile, I could be at the gym or reading (which puts me in a more pleasant state of mind than TV or games), or writing. I have lived with people who will literally sit and play games for hour after hour, or sit and channel flick endlessly, and it just grates with me incredibly quickly. You just watch your life disappearing one repetitive level at a time or one hour long slot of generic TV at a time. In conclusion I think I'll stay away from games for a while longer.
Very true. I had actually intended to write about games I might play once I am a little more settled, but got stuck with the realisation that I don't miss them at all.
... Other than pointing out what 123 has already pointed out, I'll just say I've over time lost most of my interest in non-narrative driven games. Recently, there are games out there with stories just as strong as quality books. Plus, they have unique storytelling elements that can't be expressed through books or movies/TV, which I appreciate when well-done. Regardless, I don't see reading as inherently more worthwhile than video games. Playing Call of Duty a ton isn't for me, but if it makes other people happy (even as a mindless distraction) then it's worthwhile for them.
I'm playing Alice: Madness Returns lately and finding it a lot of fun. It seems to stick to very similar dialog as the original story.
I try to buy new games when I can, but my budget is pretty tight so the vast majority of games I buy are pre-owned, the most recent purchases being Dead Space 3, RAGE, and The Darkness. I'd completed the Darkness, (not sure what I made of it but the fact I completed it says something) and had started RAGE, when my daughter bought me a copy of Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning. It was a game I was aware of, but had stayed away from as I knew I would most likely unfavourably compare it to the likes of Skyrim and Fallout. I wasn't wrong. It's quite a big game which uses the Havok engine and I went about playing it as I would any RPG. I undertook a multitude of fetch quests, in order to open up as many areas on the map as I could before tackling the main quest line. This ensures my stats and EXP are high enough that I can proceed without the risk of potentially getting my arse kicked each and every time I go into combat. Although the game appears to be open world, the reality of getting from A to B, from dungeon to dungeon is somewhat different. Skyrim was admirable in that respect, as I really did feel I could go where I pleased. The routes between towns, cities, and dungeons in Reckoning feel incredibly linear. My character was constantly being thwarted by invisible walls and had to go the long way round piddling little tree stumps a two year old could have skipped over. The side quests themselves weren't memorable. I can still remember many of the Elder Scrolls quests, and those of Fallout 3. I haven't even totally completed Reckoning and I'm hard pressed to think of any that stood out. The main quest line felt very generic, as did the characters. I'm big on voice talent, and this wasn't great in that respect either. Where the game did manage to come into its own, was during fights. I absolutely loved the combat system, although I felt Reckoning mode—where the fate bar completely fills giving the character a clear advantage when confronted by difficult foes or multiple enemies—a little gimmicky, not to mention the reminder message that kept flashing up reminding me to use it got me killed on more than one occasion due to obscuring my view. Very annoying! The process of leveling up the particular disciplines in order to appeal to playing style felt very refined. I chose to play essentially as a mage with additional abilities with blades, and my choices served me well. As with most RPGs, crafting plays a big part. The weapons found in-world are ok... some are capable of seeing the player through to completion, but a little extra effort can provide some quite pleasing results. I've now completed the main quest, all the radiant faction quests, and the vast majority of little ones....I think I have 20 or so fetch-quests still to do. I've just hit the 200 hr mark. The game might have some fairly big flaws, but the last thing I could accuse it of is being a waste of my daughter's money.
I loved Alice: Madness Returns (of course, Alice being my favourite game) I just played through all of BioShocks again. And Assassin's Creeds. But AC was educational I guess, I put voice and subtitles to German and I think it's a better way to learn language than from TV. I actually learned quite a lot.
What did you think of Bioshock 2? It doesn't have the same reputation as the other two in the series, but I still enjoyed it. My biggest complaint was that it was missing the surreal grandeur in its characters and environment that is so well-done in 1 and Infinite.
Yeah, listening to some of the Journals is really interesting. Especially some of Ryan's. I think BioShock 1 has the best setting (background of Rapture, ideology...), BioShock 2 has the best gameplay (that part with the little sister is a gem), and BioShock Infinite has the best story. What I didn't like with Infinite were Vigors. In 1 and 2, Plasmids are essential, Adam makes Rapture the way it is, it's actually the way of life. But in Infinite Vigors are just there for the sake of BioShock style, you're basically the only one who uses them... They are quite redundant. The weapons are good though. If you like the first two, you can read the book, Bioshock: Rapture, by John Shirley. It's quite good. @Robert_S , which original?
Have you ever played the Elder Scrolls 3, Morrowind? I think you'd like it. It was the first RPG I every played. I loved its world, story, and cohesiveness, but the combat is admittedly a bit lacking. Here's a trailer that sums it up a bit (can't beat that soundtrack):
It was only intended as my own personal feelings on this. I am not going to judge people for spending a day playing games, unless they are doing so in a shared lounge and it is impacting on me.
American McGee's Alice Alice: Madness Returns is a sequel, taking place 10 years after the first game.
@Okon Preaching to the long since converted. Being the age I am, most of my earlier gaming came by way of taking over the kid's consoles once they'd went to bed. That meant I was playing age appropriate games. That piqued my interest. Then, by chance, I came across an early demo for Morrowind, was really impressed by the scope and size, and I purchased it the very day it was released for pc. Playing it was the best introduction to RPG gaming I could have had. Betheseda set the bar high. I still remember that moment after reading many in-game books on the subject, thinking: Wait, hold on a minute! I'm the Nerevarine? (I've always been a slow on the uptake.) Priceless!
I have Oblivion and Skyrim. I believe Skyrim is their most impressive work for graphics. The scenery was spectacular. The game mechanics were a huge improvement over Oblivion, but they still didn't scale well. Oblivion's problem was everything scaled, so you would have epic battles with goblins. Skyrim's scaling problem is that it doesn't scale past 42 or so. Once you hit 50, everything is a cake walk.
50? More like 25 or so. Also sword/shield and heavy armour was so OP there was no point using anything else. Fun game though.
Yeah, most people say there is no reason to get heavy armor. You can cap easily. I've always played a cleric/warpriest because I need self-healing. I never did sword and shield. It was mace in one hand and a hand free to cast spells. Often times, I would just heal my housecarl and let her beat up the bad guy. It was the second best way to raise healing to 100.
