Video Games What video games are you currently playing?

I got desperately hooked on black ops and dantes inferno for a long period but in the end I always return to Fifa. Its difficult to match the joy of thumping someone online 5-0 and hearing them complain on the headset or cracking in a 30 yard free kick in the last minute to win the game. Priceless moments.

I bit the bullet and bought Homefront. It looks pretty good. The only reason I bought it was to play it with a friend of mine. Now I really have too many games to play. Looks like I'll not be getting Crysis 2 anytime soon.

Dreamfall

Just got to the cerberus breeders fight in god of war 2, holy shit they are annoying, i always end up missing one and end up with like 5 of the fuckers around me spitting puppies and fireballs at me after i run out of magic. Gonna tackle that one tomorrow.

  On 3/18/2011 at 9:24 PM, Fraxinus said:

I got desperately hooked on black ops and dantes inferno for a long period but in the end I always return to Fifa. Its difficult to match the joy of thumping someone online 5-0 and hearing them complain on the headset or cracking in a 30 yard free kick in the last minute to win the game. Priceless moments.

fifa i find i can hate it and not play it for ages then i have a week of just playing it and love it, but there is so much they need to do to make it truly amazing (same for most EA sports game imo)i found they put one step forward with fifa world cup 2010, and one step back for Fifa11. especially the on-line tournaments (im not a big ultimate team fan and thats the only online tournaments you can play)

onlien team play is good if you have enough friends and a club, but i dont, so it sucks

in fact, i find it hard not to compare any sports games with the ultimate experience of NBA2k11 it does everything right, and makes fifa11 feel empty. deep my player mode, deep franchise, Superb commentary ect;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38CoDat2Yyw

itll be intresting to see what happens in Fifa12 but normally EA just bring back things from past games or make the game include somthing which they could patch well easy. i mean look at gameface, its pretty awesome tigerwoods had it since 2008, fifa in 2010 NHL series needs it big time..

least fifa12 wont have andy gray on it hopfully.

  On 3/19/2011 at 1:56 AM, Bubba69 said:

Just got to the cerberus breeders fight in god of war 2, holy shit they are annoying, i always end up missing one and end up with like 5 of the fuckers around me spitting puppies and fireballs at me after i run out of magic. Gonna tackle that one tomorrow.

the Block+Square move works WONDERS on those damn fucking dogs.

that fatass Medusa fight was a bitch....get the fuck off those columns!!

on act 3 of dragon age 2. bit more plot now, which is good. tired of the same old maps though. the whole game feels like a rush job, but it's still really good.

after that, my roommate's brother lent me BLADESTORM: THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR

which is a koei game

about the hundred years war

it has joan of arc in it

this should be good.

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

UNBELIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVABLEEEEEEEEE

  On 3/19/2011 at 2:02 AM, chris moss acid said:

fifa i find i can hate it and not play it for ages then i have a week of just playing it and love it, but there is so much they need to do to make it truly amazing (same for most EA sports game imo)i found they put one step forward with fifa world cup 2010, and one step back for Fifa11. especially the on-line tournaments (im not a big ultimate team fan and thats the only online tournaments you can play)

Yeah, I loved the online World Cup thing. Playing an online final is intense! Never liked Ultimate Team either.

I don't mind just playing ranked matches on FIFA 11 though. You can filter our >10% DNF and the matchmaking is quite good. Once you get your score up a bit it can be quite challenging and satisfying.

I've been playing Test Drive Unlimited 2 (still broken) and Shogun 2 (shouldn't have bought it because I'm getting bored with it already.)

Two Worlds 2. Lol-worthy voice-overs and cutscenes, story is a bit meh, but it's somewhat entertaining and should hold me over until Dungeon Seige III. It isn't nearly as broken as the first game so far, which is a definite plus.

:sup:

  On 3/19/2011 at 4:33 AM, disparaissant said:

on act 3 of dragon age 2. bit more plot now, which is good. tired of the same old maps though. the whole game feels like a rush job, but it's still really good.

 

after that, my roommate's brother lent me BLADESTORM: THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR

which is a koei game

about the hundred years war

it has joan of arc in it

this should be good.

yea i think im like 75% of the way through act 3 ... there was pretty much no main story the whole way through. it felt like just a bunch of mage vs templar themed side quests that didnt really go anywhere.

it definitely lacked the feel of 'impacting the world' that dragon age origins had.

from the very beginning of DAO you had a feeling that it was leading up to something epic. you were building up an army to get revenge and take over the throne and all that. it gave you something interesting and cool to keep you going.

the only thing that keeps you going in dragon age 2 is that you want to see WHEN THE STORY ACTUALLY STARTS. WHEN DOES IT GET INTERESTING, PLEASE HAPPEN SOON.

oh well. the characters have been good, the side missions have mostly been good (even though its felt like its been ALL side missions), the graphics are great, but the areas are reused too many times for any of the missions to feel special at all.

its like you go to the exact same cave 7 times in a row, and each time you are like WELL i just finished in this place and now a dragon has settled in, or a band of robbers, or a apostate mage.. etc etc

its also a bummer that you dont get to explore the land at all. you get a few places to go to on the outskirts of the city, and ONE city..thats it..

kind of disappointing . im giving the game a medium to strong 7 at the moment. the first one got a strong 9 for me .

at least we know portal 2 and mass effect 3 wont disappoint .

yeah the map thing drives me mad. i mean if you're going to reuse the same environments over and over, at least make a new minimap for them or put a wall up or something. gets so irritating to see the same old minimap thing but oh look there's a door i can't open blocking me from going over there. the whole game is like the end of KoTOR 2, just feels like a rush job. hopefully there will be some kickass huge DLC like awakenings or w/e.

i do think the combat is a huge improvement, and the characters are definitely fleshed out enough to keep me interested. really like merrill a lot, she's adorable. weird that she is apparently from cardiff whereas the rest of the elves seem to be from ireland, though.

yea lol that the elves are from ireland. ..

  On 3/19/2011 at 7:20 AM, illfly mandog said:

the only way I could beat that damn underwater stage was to enter debug mode....i fucking hated that stage...has to be on par with Battletoads' Turbo Tunnel for hardest levels of all time.

  On 3/14/2011 at 9:16 PM, Squee said:

I was REALLY disappointed by it. Actually, the more I played it the more I hated it. It started out alright with a few jumpscares here and there, but if you've played the first Dead Space you'll quickly figure out when the scares come. But after a while the effect wears off and everytime a monster jumps out of its 'monster closet' you'll go, 'Oh...' and then shoot its legs off and then its head. Dead. Boom. Next. But the thing is that the game is not scary at all. A friend of mine actually got mad at me for saying this and pretty much told me that I didn't know how to play video games (lol) and that I lacked the ability to get in touch with the characters and what not. But Dead Space 2 is not a survival horror game - it's a third person shooter with a few scares here and there. I was not once afraid of what was around the next corner or inside the next room, because after a while you know how to deal with monsters and you start to recognize the ambience/soundscapes so you can easily identify what sounds you don't have to pay attention to. And while we're on the subject of sound design; the sounds are great. They're crisp. No doubt about it. But it's so fucking LOUD! All the monsters scream their lungs out, and when you get attacked by five monsters it's five times as loud. It's unbearable. Now when there aren't any monsters on screen you would expect the game to be pretty silent, because... I mean, it's space, right? There's something space and silence or at least that's how I imagine it. Also silence would be a great thing contrary to the noisy monsters... but no. Again, everything is fucking noisy. Everything sounds like it has been turned up to 11 whether it's a machine room or steam coming out from a vent.

There are a couple of levels that aren't jampacked with monsters though and that's pretty cool, but it almost seems as if they ran out of ideas half way through the development and went, 'fuck it, let's just fill this room up with monsters... aaaand do the same with the next one. Yep.' The last couple of hours felt like I was playing Serious Sam.

Another thing that bothered me (sorry, but I really ended up hating this game) was the death scenes. Ok, fuck... I get it, Visceral! You enjoy taking things over the top and frighten moms all over the world with your gory gameplay, but do I really have to watch Isaac getting mouth raped and torn to bits for 15 seconds everytime he dies? This ends up getting extremely tiresome since you will end up dying quite a bit the last couple of hours because of the hordes of monsters they end up throwing at you.

 

And I'm not trying to be against what everyone else has to say about Dead Space 2 but it ended up being more frustrating than entertaining.

 

The graphics are great though and it had some pretty fucking epic cutscenes and boss battles.

I'm still playing Dead Space 1 but I see what you mean. Other than you, I get frightened of it because I am always afraid to get startled. But I'm not dreading the monster encounters for what they are, I just don't want them to jump out and be loud cause that will sometimes make me twitch. Once they're on screen, the fear is gone. And that's why it gets annoying. If I just ran through the levels, I probably wouldn't be scared at all. But of course I have to play this game at night with all lights off, over a projector and pretty loud as well. And I walk reeeally slowly, so I make it scarier on myself than it actually is. But there's still too many similar monster encounters. And I also got used to the background sound loops so that I know which noises don't mean anything (although the sound design still is pretty damn good, not that innovative but very well executed) - Another example for something that Silent Hill 2 and 3 did a much better job at - they play a scary noise once and only once. Remember the morgue from the alternate Brookhaven Hospital in SH3? I almost died there.

Indeed. Silent Hill 2 and 3 blew everything and everyone out of the water.

I always walk through survival horror games as well, and just like you I only play it at night, with the lights off, and really loud. I would go as far as to say that Alan Wake scared me more than Dead Space 2 did. Not that I was afraid of what would come next in Alan Wake, but the atmosphere was way better, and they didn't throw monsters at you all the time. It seems pretty weird to compare those two games but I just thought about something that might be one of the reasons why I the Dead Space games get less scary as you progress:

In Alan Wake you meet new people, you talk to people, there's daylight, there's music you know, and there's a small lumber town. These are all things that happen alongside all the scary shit that goes on in the forest, whereas in Dead Space once you hit New Game it tries (and fails) to scare you right from the very first moment and to the very end. In Dead Space there's no chance in hell that you'll get a couple of minutes for yourself or actually interact with another humanbeing which could help you get your mind off of the monsters and dark rooms. They do the same thing in the Silent Hill-games. You meet strangers, talk to them, and forget all about the fucked up things you've just gone through and it feels like such a relief to actually meet someone who isn't trying to kill you and once the cut scene or alternative gameplay is over you find yourself shitting your pants again. Once you're back in fucked up world in Silent Hill after having talked to someone who seems relatively normal you realise what a fucked up place Silent Hill really is. In Dead Space there's no alternative to the horror scenes which is a shame.

  On 3/19/2011 at 7:20 AM, illfly mandog said:

the earthworm jim art really inspired me at the time.

24 Megs of Play Action

  On 3/19/2011 at 9:32 PM, Squee said:

Indeed. Silent Hill 2 and 3 blew everything and everyone out of the water.

I always walk through survival horror games as well, and just like you I only play it at night, with the lights off, and really loud. I would go as far as to say that Alan Wake scared me more than Dead Space 2 did. Not that I was afraid of what would come next in Alan Wake, but the atmosphere was way better, and they didn't throw monsters at you all the time. It seems pretty weird to compare those two games but I just thought about something that might be one of the reasons why I the Dead Space games get less scary as you progress:

In Alan Wake you meet new people, you talk to people, there's daylight, there's music you know, and there's a small lumber town. These are all things that happen alongside all the scary shit that goes on in the forest, whereas in Dead Space once you hit New Game it tries (and fails) to scare you right from the very first moment and to the very end. In Dead Space there's no chance in hell that you'll get a couple of minutes for yourself or actually interact with another humanbeing which could help you get your mind off of the monsters and dark rooms. They do the same thing in the Silent Hill-games. You meet strangers, talk to them, and forget all about the fucked up things you've just gone through and it feels like such a relief to actually meet someone who isn't trying to kill you and once the cut scene or alternative gameplay is over you find yourself shitting your pants again. Once you're back in fucked up world in Silent Hill after having talked to someone who seems relatively normal you realise what a fucked up place Silent Hill really is. In Dead Space there's no alternative to the horror scenes which is a shame.

It might be down to the same reason why films that rely on one mood only often don't grab you as much. At least not me. I mean like a very dramatic film - when it's all sad all the time, you tend to get kinda numb. But when there's some humor, it makes it way more realistic and allows you to "feel" for the characters more when bad shit happens. Also the going in and out the scary world in Silent Hill sort of "resets" the fear each time and restores normality for a while, thus forcing the player to experience the horror anew again and again and introducing the "unknown enemy" feel again for each new location. And about the monsters - this was the most brilliant idea of Amnesia The Dark Descent imo. They realized the more you see the thing the less scary it becomes. So they pretty much make you die as soon as you try to stop and take a look at them. Or it drains your sanity and the monsters notice you more quickly, so you have to look away to avoid the consequences of looking at it, even though your instincts would tell you to grasp the new enemy once you get the chance. It's probably a survival mechanism for our minds to always fill in the gaps with the scariest possible images. IRL, it's better for us to run from what could be a grizzly than to not run from what could be a poodle.

I'd like to play Alan Wake at some point but I guess it won't happen unless someone amongst my friends will buy an XBox but none of us like that console very much, so ... what I've seen so far looked nice, even if it's a bit of a copycat. I think there's realistically moving branches in the wind and stuff in it, is that right? I would love to see a forest in a game that actually looks like it's alive and not just still polygons.

The forest in Alan Wake looks very much alive. Best looking forest I've ever seen in a game anyway. The lighting in the game is fantastic as well and I think that is what makes the forest look so amazing. Unfortunately the gameplay gets a bit repetitive (though still fun) but I for one really liked the story and the DLC (especially the last episode) only added extra depth to it. If you like David Lynch, Stephen King, mysteries, and so on then you'll definitely be into Alan Wake. They, unfortunately, cancelled the PC version of the game so you'll probably have to play it on an Xbox360 :)

finished up dragon age 2 the end was (and there are not REALLY spoilers here, no specifics)

I am now a proud Playstation Plus member. I got it mostly for the new PSN feature where you can store saved game files on Sony's servers. So if my HDD fails, I'm not at a complete loss.

Homefront is decent. Just decent. Nothing special.

Will be playing more Killzone online. I started playing it today and was having a blast. Right off the bat I got a 7 kills streak. The next game I was at 17 kills and 7 deaths, and as I was brutal melee killing a guy I was disconnected from the server. @#$%!!! I was doing so well.

swap it for a rental copy? or buy it at walmart and then return it with the scratched disk? wally mart is easy to dupe

(or the most similar walmart like senor citizen employing chain store in Aussie ville)