Recommend me a Video Game

So, I'm getting ready to take a few well-deserved (or maybe not well-deserved but fuck it) days off of work. I'm thinking about picking up something cheap to indulge in over the break while the GF is at work and I'm relatively free to do whatever.

Need to find something a)around or under 30 bucks b)for the Xbox 360

I'm thinking about Burnout Paradise which is ultra-cheap now, but also looking at maybe Soul Caliber. Left 4 Dead looks fun, but it's mostly an Online game I know, so I'm a bit hesitant to pick it up.

So, WATMM, in your infinite wisdom, any suggestions?

You could have gotten Soul Calibur IV at Best Buy this past weekend for 10 bucks. Burnout Paradise is a solid choice.

  Joyrex said:

You could have gotten Soul Calibur IV at Best Buy this past weekend for 10 bucks. Burnout Paradise is a solid choice.

Yeah, I fucked up - just saw that they had their uber sale but now its sold out :fee: Gamestop has BO:Paradise for like 17 bucks so that's looking good right about now.

don't get burnout paradise. it sucks. the map is impossible to use and the design of the city is made especially to frustrate the player beyond belief. there are walls right after jumps, hitting a tiny little tree will stop your car dead in it's tracks, there are roads that lead straight into walls. not to mention every time you crash it slow-mos to really rub the crash in your face. really poorly designed racing game.

and i personally thought left4dead was really disappointing.

what about dead space? fallout 3? mass effect? played them already?

  catsonearth said:

don't get burnout paradise. it sucks. the map is impossible to use and the design of the city is made especially to frustrate the player beyond belief. there are walls right after jumps, hitting a tiny little tree will stop your car dead in it's tracks, there are roads that lead straight into walls. not to mention every time you crash it slow-mos to really rub the crash in your face. really poorly designed racing game.

 

and i personally thought left4dead was really disappointing.

 

what about dead space? fallout 3? mass effect? played them already?

Thanks COE - yeah, I'm torn as the reviews of Paradise veer from "awesome" to "really annoying." The price-point helps.

Already played through a friends copy of Dead Space, Have Fallout, Mass Effect annoyed the living fuck out of me. Considered picking up Dead Space for repeat playthrough, but won't until it drops under 20$ (though, it's a fantastic game)

  catsonearth said:

don't get burnout paradise. it sucks. the map is impossible to use and the design of the city is made especially to frustrate the player beyond belief. there are walls right after jumps, hitting a tiny little tree will stop your car dead in it's tracks, there are roads that lead straight into walls. not to mention every time you crash it slow-mos to really rub the crash in your face. really poorly designed racing game.

 

and i personally thought left4dead was really disappointing.

 

what about dead space? fallout 3? mass effect? played them already?

i think you're missing the point of the burnout series

Left 4 Dead is a brilliant game, but it's only fun online if you play with people you know.

I was actually just thinking how much I miss the Ghost Recon games. Really solid strategic shooters even though they're 2-3 years old.

get a first person shooter where the dudes wear lots of armor and the levels are all wasteland looking.

tiger woods golf

fifa 09 or dead rising both fun fun fun games

i just relized there isnt any F1 games for the xbox at least GOOD ones.. strange.

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust

Police Quest 4

  mrx said:

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust

Police Quest 4

lol?

Hmmm - fifa 09 - didn't even think about that one. . .

edit: had Dead Rising and finished it - sold it back because I couldn't stand the interminable loading times.

  beneboi said:

  catsonearth said:

don't get burnout paradise. it sucks. the map is impossible to use and the design of the city is made especially to frustrate the player beyond belief. there are walls right after jumps, hitting a tiny little tree will stop your car dead in it's tracks, there are roads that lead straight into walls. not to mention every time you crash it slow-mos to really rub the crash in your face. really poorly designed racing game.

 

and i personally thought left4dead was really disappointing.

 

what about dead space? fallout 3? mass effect? played them already?

 

i think you're missing the point of the burnout series

not missing the point at all. i've played all the other burnout games and loved them. i bought paradise on the day it came out, that's how excited i was for a new burnout game and it still fucking sucks. just lazy all around. there isn't even a day/night or weather generator to mix it up a little bit...the city just looks exactly the same, all the time. the fact that you can't shunt cars anymore was a lame change (since i played the fuck out of revenge and got really used to it). but the thing that really kills the game is the map. there are no courses, no preset paths - which sounds like a good idea at first, you can make your own route, but in reality it's the worst addition to the game. the map doesn't orient itself to your direction, so everytime you want to reference it you have to give it a good look to figure out your orientation on the map, then see what direction your target is, then figure out where to turn, then figure out what direction that translates to in the game world...all while racing down the street at 200mph**. it just doesn't work. couple that with the fact that almost every sweet jump in the game has a conveniently placed wall, fence, divider, tree, mountain at the end of it and you've got yourself a game that really fucking hates the people playing it. everytime you try to have fun, the game does everything in it's power to stop you.

it's not the worst game ever, but it's not better than burnout revenge.

honestly, GTA4 does what burnout was trying to do 1000 times better. just play that instead.

**this figure is just an estimate because there isn't actually a speedometer in the game either, so you just have to guess how fast you're going the whole time.

If you have friends gets Castle Crashers

or Bionic Commando Rearmed (omfg this game is pwn)

  acid1 said:

If you have friends gets Castle Crashers

 

or Bionic Commando Rearmed (omfg this game is pwn)

Seconded on the BC: Rearmed, but be prepared for a long, long slog to the end - the game is very, very challenging.

castle crashers is a pretty good casual game, doesn't have the kind of depth that would entertain me for more than a couple hours though.

with friends it's quite good though.

  theSun said:

castle crashers is a pretty good casual game, doesn't have the kind of depth that would entertain me for more than a couple hours though.

why is this a negative thing now adays? is it really necessary to play a videogame for over 4-8 hours straight?

Almost all my favorite modern games always get the criticism from reviewers that they are 'too short' and 'don't have many achievements'. Why when we were kids did we not require these extra methods of wasting time in videogames? I was very content with being able to beat a game in under 4 hours as a child, now that i've grown up im still very content with that but the rest of the gaming community seems to desire an epic week to month long game slough and on top of that achievements that 'unlock' on the 2nd or 3rd time playing a game.

  Awepittance said:

  theSun said:

castle crashers is a pretty good casual game, doesn't have the kind of depth that would entertain me for more than a couple hours though.

 

why is this a negative thing now adays? is it really necessary to play a videogame for over 4-8 hours straight?

Almost all my favorite modern games always get the criticism from reviewers that they are 'too short' and 'don't have many achievements'. Why when we were kids did we not require these extra methods of wasting time in videogames? I was very content with being able to beat a game in under 4 hours as a child, now that i've grown up im still very content with that but the rest of the gaming community seems to desire an epic week to month long game slough and on top of that achievements that 'unlock' on the 2nd or 3rd time playing a game.

well it's just kind of repetitive. i've played games like that before endlessly; golden axe, street fighter, river city ransom. but it's nothing like immersing yourself in the world of GTA III+ or mass effect.

plus, if i play $60 for a game (castle crashers is like $23), it better have more play time than 4 fucking hours.

i thought the halo 3 campaign was pretty fun, especially in co-op, but that was fairly short as well. halo online never gets old unless i'm sucking at it.

  theSun said:

plus, if i play $60 for a game (castle crashers is like $23), it better have more play time than 4 fucking hours.

well this is exactly my point, why was it ok when you were younger to pay $60 for an NES or Genesis game that had under 4 hours of gameplay? Is it just because that was old technology or has your attention span grown as you've aged?

because the potential for more hours of gameplay is pretty easily realized when the game disc can hold thousands of times the data and process the data thousands of times faster.

game designers were new at this when they were releasing NES games and stuff, there is a certain standard that i expect from any game release that simply didn't exist in the early 90s. you expect architects to build more efficient, better quality buildings over time, why not expect the same out of game designers?

  theSun said:

you expect architects to build more efficient, better quality buildings over time, why not expect the same out of game designers?

because longer does not connotate better quality or more efficiency, to me it's mostly used to cover up for what is usually not too great of a game to begin with and they pile on all these achievements and long winded gameplay quests in order to make you forget about how truly banal and repetitive the game actually is. in short it is a distraction.

There were plenty of games for NES that took weeks to beat, they were called Role Playing Games.

This was something for me personally that always separated a role playing game from a normal video game, so from my perspective almost all new major release console games are essentially role playing games, its just really surreal. Its like how all the new scifi TV shows have continuing episodic stories so you can't just be a tourist and enjoy one episode you have to commit to the entire fucking series and even then you may not get a payoff

Bioshock

The Orange Box

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

all $19.99 at your local targé/wallyworld

jesus christ i hate it when people call walmart wallyworld

get the orange box! Holy shit why has this not been mentioned? You get 5 games of incredibly quality.

Half life 2, plus the story expansions episode 1 and 2. All told this is easily 30 hours of solid gameplay. The storyline, gameplay, level design, and overall quality of the game is WAY higher than any fps or other game I have ever played to date.

The whole experience is rediculously cinematic at times, probably some of the most frantic intense action i've ever played in a game. For example, early on at one point you are being chased by a helicopter with an intense machine gun. Several points throughout a 3-4 level stretch you emerge from buildings/sewers to find the helecopter raining bullets down. You need to run from cover to cover as the hail of bullets will tear you apart in seconds.

So the single player game is fantastic in every possible way. It also comes with Portal and Team Fortress 2. Portal is a really awesome fps puzzle game where you shoot two different coloured portals onto walls/floors to solve momentum puzzles. I can't really do it justice but its a superb puzzler and its really really trippy.

Team fortress 2 is basically a souped up, polished version of team fortress classic. The cartoonish art style works really well, and its just an overall amazing team based game. Each of the 9 classes are very well rounded and specific to certain playing types, and the matches are very team based and generally not typical Deathmatch free-for-alls.

Anyways there's my shpeel. I can't even begin to tell you how awesome this game is. Get it!