Author Topic: Rate The Last Game You Played  (Read 187174 times)

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Offline FZeroBoyo

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #275 on: April 15, 2011, 11:43:16 PM »
Pilotwings Resort - 8
Really enjoying this game. Have completed all of the missions with 3 stars up to the Diamond level. Really like Free Flight mode.


Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition - 9
I'd say it's just as good as the console version.
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Offline Killer_Man_Jaro

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #276 on: April 24, 2011, 01:58:09 PM »
Quick fire round of mini reviews. These are titles I've been playing through very slowly the past couple of months. Sorry if some of these seem terribly behind the times.

Boom Blox: Bash Party - 9/10
A brilliant example of accessible but deep, carefully considered gameplay. It's simple to play and simple to understand, hence why I actually managed to convince some people to play multiplayer, which is a rare occurrence - they had great fun with it. However, earning those high scores once the difficulty curve gets going requires a lot of thought. Furthermore, the excellent variety of level types prevents you from becoming bored with it, an important trait considering the enormous quantity of levels. And in terms of making a unique, compelling use of the Wii Remote, I'd say this is the second best on the system, closely behind only Zack & Wiki.

Picross 3D - 9/10
Addictive for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. It really is a 'just one more' puzzle game, and I have to tear myself away because of my work situation.

de Blob 2 (Wii) - 8/10
Totally worth it for the music. Seriously, the funky jazz soundtrack is one of the best I've heard in recent years. Even if you have no plans to purchase the game (which I regard as a good improvement over its predecessor with more platforming, but still suffers from repetition), I recommend searching for a de Blob 2 sound dump on the internet and shoving it onto your mp3 player.

Mini Ninjas (Wii) - 8/10
While it may lean slightly towards a younger audience, I enjoyed Mini Ninjas for the unexpected level of freedom for exploration and the cohesive, if sometimes childish, presentation; somewhat similar to de Blob 2 in that way, I suppose. Anyway, there are many things to commend, including stealth sections that are surprising effective and some cool magic powers. Combat is a bit too simple due to how hapless most of the enemies are, although the bosses redeem this to a certain extent. It's also a shame that you aren't really given much incentive to switch between the six playable ninjas - I swapped amongst them regularly for the sake of it, but there's no impetus to do so. Overall though, it's a fun little adventure, worth at least a rental for those sceptical about value for money on a purely single-player game.

Rayman 3D - 7-ish/10
My first time with Rayman 2: The Great Escape. Naturally, the design is starting to show its age. That said, I like the seamless transitions from ordinary platforming to fast set-pieces like riding a missile or jet-skiing. Some might be against the "collectathon" nature of the progression, but that isn't a problem if you are thorough, and in fact, I appreciated the presence of little nooks and crannies to find. The pacing is strong, as is the audio, although there are annoying bugs related to the music in the 3DS port. Speaking of which, the 3D effect works fine during gameplay -- less so in cut-scenes, with the character renders clearly splitting into two despite being in the sweet spot. I have a couple of significant gripes: the camera is hard to work with, and the flying controls have no option to turn off inverted control. In one level, the player has to navigate a rocket barrel through tight passages, and I died a dozen times because the inversion screwed me over, which was immensely frustrating. The finale was fairly weak as well. Still, I don't regret playing this, especially for the discount I bought it for.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #277 on: April 24, 2011, 02:16:06 PM »
A couple of mini-reviews from me as well:

The Saboteur - This game has excellent atmosphere, well-designed story missions, and has some much-needed additions to the Open World formula (like when you place a marker on your map, if you're in a car the game traces a GPS route for you to take to get to that marker.  Collectables and side missions are also marked on your map when you buy maps).  Unfortunately, despite being very "inspired" by Assassin's Creed (very funny, Pandemic: you named your starter car "Altair"), Devlin really sucks at climbing buildings and escaping from alarms is tedious.  Also, pretty much everything in the game boils down to sneaking to spots and blowing stuff up, which can get pretty repetitive.  Still, it's a pretty good Open World game IMO, and does an excellent job of capturing the feel of Paris (having actually been there, I can attest to the game world being a pretty accurate simplification of the real city).

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time HD (via PoP Trilogy PS3 Collection) - Sands of Time was one of my favorite games last generation, but I'm sorry this version of the game kind of sucks.  It's extremely buggy (I had several instances with exploding polygons, 1 occurrence of a character just appearing in front of me who shouldn't have been there, and there's a very frustrating sequence in the game where the game won't let you use your best ability for no apparent reason); the camera really sucks (which is odd because I remember the Sands of Time camera being quite good); and the visuals are just "meh".  I have a strong suspicion that this was converted from the PS2 version, because I didn't see any of the lovely Bloom Lighting I remember from the GCN version and the game as a whole looks quite flat.  In fact, it can be pretty hard in this version to make out what you can and can't interact with.  What's really a cardinal sin, though, is that the volume on the voice acting is extremely random.  Sometimes you can hear it quite easily, and sometimes it's so muffled you can barely hear it.  And although it's not a fault exclusive to this HD version, the combat in Sands of Time is still atrocious.  Bleh.  Easy Platinum, though (as was Saboteur to some extent).   :D   I hope that Warrior Within and Two Thrones shaped out better from being newer games, especially Two Thrones since it's my favorite of the trilogy.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2011, 02:22:59 PM by broodwars »
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Offline Killer_Man_Jaro

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #278 on: April 24, 2011, 02:25:51 PM »
Easy Platinum, though (as was Saboteur to some extent).   :D

I don't know how you have the motivation to go for Platinum trophies. Without owning a PS3, maybe I can't understand its appeal. My experience with achievements on Steam games, though, has been nothing more than incidental. A lot of them I see just seem like so much effort that it would become tedious, and perhaps even risk feeling antipathy towards a game when before there was none.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #279 on: April 24, 2011, 02:48:50 PM »
Easy Platinum, though (as was Saboteur to some extent).   :D

I don't know how you have the motivation to go for Platinum trophies. Without owning a PS3, maybe I can't understand its appeal. My experience with achievements on Steam games, though, has been nothing more than incidental. A lot of them I see just seem like so much effort that it would become tedious, and perhaps even risk feeling antipathy towards a game when before there was none.

Well, I'm one of those freaks who likes to "100%" things (most of the time.  I draw the line at crap like Star Ocean: The Last Hope's trophy list and the sidequests in Final Fantasy X), so it's fun to do so and get a little virtual sticker for it.   :P:   Besides, if a trophy list is done well, by going for the Platinum you tend to explore every facet of a game's mechanics, and it gives you a better appreciation for how the game comes together.  For example, I actually gained an appreciation for Saboteur's climbing system after all the monument climbing I had to do to fulfill all the side missions.  I just don't think that system works when you're trying to do something quickly like escape Nazis during an alarm).

...or it can be completely tedious and only serves to feed my obsessive compulsive nature, which is usually the case in Japanese games since they have that quaint love of grinding.   :(    I can totally understand why people wouldn't be into Achievement/Trophy hunting, but I enjoy exploring every facet of my games.

That reminds me, I forgot a game earlier...

Portal 2 - Unlike apparently everyone on the internet, I don't think this is a perfect game.  The singleplayer campaign has pacing issues.  It's divided into essentially 3 Acts, and of the 3 I found the middle act incredibly tedious since you spend most of it playing with the frickin' gel painting walls and floors.  It can also be really hard in some environments to tell what you can and what you can't stick a Portal on, so there were occasions where I got stuck purely because I couldn't see where I was supposed to go.  The first Act is also essentially the first Portal again, which gets old.  The game does recover nicely in its final Act as the designers combine all the game's mechanics, but it doesn't quite make up for the 2-3 hours of drudgery painting walls with gel.  As for the humor, I found that some of it worked (Cave Johnson and Weatley's lines) and some of it didn't (much of GlaDOS's).  I haven't tried out the co-op campaign yet, but to be honest I don't see myself enjoying that very much.  I like to take my time with Portal Chambers figuring out solutions, and that just doesn't work in online play.  Still, the game is fun and the test chambers are very well designed, with a definite "aha!" feeling of supreme intelligence when you figure out the solution.  It's just not as well-paced or funny as its predecessor.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2011, 02:50:26 PM by broodwars »
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Offline Killer_Man_Jaro

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #280 on: April 24, 2011, 03:00:44 PM »
I can't speak about the game mechanics beyond the Hard Light Bridges in Portal 2, but I agree on other points. The humour for GLaDOS is starting to feel one-note to me already, and I'm only about a third of the way through. At the start and end of every puzzle, it's like "okay, what roundabout way are you going to insult me this time?". Unlike the first Portal, the progression of her personality isn't really grabbing hold of me. Wheatley, on the other hand, is a character I have a great affinity for, and in my opinion, he's a testament to why designers should allow voice actors to ad-lib their lines.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #281 on: April 24, 2011, 03:16:35 PM »
I can't speak about the game mechanics beyond the Hard Light Bridges in Portal 2, but I agree on other points. The humour for GLaDOS is starting to feel one-note to me already, and I'm only about a third of the way through. At the start and end of every puzzle, it's like "okay, what roundabout way are you going to insult me this time?". Unlike the first Portal, the progression of her personality isn't really grabbing hold of me. Wheatley, on the other hand, is a character I have a great affinity for, and in my opinion, he's a testament to why designers should allow voice actors to ad-lib their lines.

That's exactly my problem with GlaDOS in Portal 2.  In the first game, my favorite lines of hers were just little incidental ones often related to what was going on at that particular moment, my favorite being her "Weeeeeeeeeeee!" when you finished your first chamber where you flung yourself across the room via portal drops (because what she said was basically what I was thinking at the time).  But in Portal 2, all she has are insults, and that gets old really quickly.
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Offline KDR_11k

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #282 on: April 29, 2011, 06:09:10 PM »
much-needed additions to the Open World formula (like when you place a marker on your map, if you're in a car the game traces a GPS route for you to take to get to that marker.

Isn't that standard in open world games? Saints Row did it (in SR2 you could unlock shortcuts by taking them which made the GPS route through them instead of the long way around) and in Red Faction Guerilla you even get a trail of arrows displayed in the regular view.

Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #283 on: April 29, 2011, 08:36:18 PM »
much-needed additions to the Open World formula (like when you place a marker on your map, if you're in a car the game traces a GPS route for you to take to get to that marker.

Isn't that standard in open world games? Saints Row did it (in SR2 you could unlock shortcuts by taking them which made the GPS route through them instead of the long way around) and in Red Faction Guerilla you even get a trail of arrows displayed in the regular view.

Well, the only Open World games I've played in recent years are Infamous and the Assassin's Creed series, which don't have that UI feature.  You can place markers, but they just sit on your minimap as markers you just head in the general direction of.
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Offline Halbred

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #284 on: April 30, 2011, 07:46:43 PM »
Conduit 2 -- Wait for the review (I'm struggling through the writeup), but the bottom line is "Meh."

Combat of the Giants: Dinosaurs 3D -- As Josh said in his review, it's dinosaurs fighting in 3D. I wish there was more meat to this game, but...it IS dinosaurs fighting in 3D.

Super Meat Boy -- I'm getting to the really hard stuff now. This game is boneriffic.
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Offline ShyGuy

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #285 on: May 03, 2011, 02:08:30 AM »
I disagree.

Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #286 on: May 03, 2011, 02:22:04 AM »
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Eh, this game was ok, but really felt like a missed opportunity.  The central core of the story with the Marvel Civil War (which was a big Event story in Marvel Comics a few years ago, which I haven't read) is very good, but unfortunately the moral dilemma of Pro and Anti Superhuman Registration put forth by the game feels half-hearted and is abandoned relatively quickly.  The story splits at one key point, but the twin storylines cover the same maps, have extremely similar boss fights, and ultimately cancel each other out.  As for the writing, it's just...bad, something I do blame on the original comics.  Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic's actions are just comically badly written (they literally do what they do because a calculator told them bad things would otherwise happen), to the extent that they practically become Looney Tunes characters.  And in the final 1/3 of the game, the story just takes a totally stupid twist that's just lame and contrived, not to mention makes the main characters look exceptionally stupid.

As for the gameplay, well it's a further evolution of X-Men Legends' "Marvel meets Diablo" concept.  It's certainly enjoyable enough, though the hero Fusions are ridiculously overpowered and definitely cloned many times over between the 276 different combinations.  There are some nice touches like being able to swap out your characters at any time and having auto-leveling, but ultimately the formula gets a bit old and repetitive towards the end.  Not having your AI teammates continually die from falling into pits was definitely appreciated.

Ultimately, I recommend the game if you can get it for a pretty cheap price.  It doesn't do the excellent job that X-Men Legends did of easing newcomers into the Marvel Universe, but it's still pretty accessible.  Otherwise, there are better superhero-licensed games on the market.
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Offline Dasmos

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #287 on: May 04, 2011, 06:20:34 AM »
Red Dead Redemption - Man, this is leagues better than just "GTA with horses" as I had the unfortunate preconception it was. This shits all over GTA IV. Everything is fun, there's not too much filler here. The story is perfect. More than once I had thought it was going to end, but the story kept going strong. The ending is probably one of the best out there, sad but satisfying.The characters were great, and even the smaller ones were memorable. I was sad I didn't get to see some of them again. My horse, who I had named Jolly, stuck with me for most of my initial stay in America, was killed by bandits as soon as I arrived in Mexico astre I had stopped to help some lady. I was horrified, that horse was the only one I could trust. Jolly 2 died in a flash after being attacked by cougars and Jolly the third died with me after I fell of a bridge.

The controls are great. Horse-ing around is a little jarring at first, but after a while feel natural. Dead-eye is pretty cool, I found my self using it less and less as the game went on though. I started to use it just as I was about to die in some last ditch effort to survive.

The character animations were great also, looked much better than GTA IV's (which I felt looked abit like Sims when the were talking). Horses looked amazing. And the landscape never felt too same-y wherever you went. The soundtrack fit perfectly too.

I can't wait to get stuck into Undead Nightmare, but lol PSN.

9/10: Rockstar need to make more games like Red Dead Redemption and less games like GTA. Despite having so much to do and see in GTA, it just feels empty in comparison. I have high hopes for LA Noire though.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #288 on: May 09, 2011, 08:01:16 PM »
Majin & The Forsaken Kingdom - It's a shame that Namco-Bandai decided to release this in the midst of a busy Fall 2010 with absolutely no fanfare or marketing, because this is a pretty decent game that you can actually get for pretty cheap these days (I paid $12 for the PS3 version).  The game's budget shows in its mediocre visuals and weak voice acting (outside the Majin, who I liked but his voice is an acquired taste), but I still just found something really charming about this game.  It reminds me a lot of what we're being promised with The Last Guardian, but splashed with a little fanciful Winnie the Pooh-esque atmosphere.  And honestly, if that child-like atmosphere doesn't appeal to you, you're not going to like this game.  I thought the game had some clever puzzles (if sometimes obtuse where it's hard to tell what the game wants you to do), a well-implemented teamwork mechanic, generally functional controls, good exploration, a well-told if very simple story, and a generally smooth difficulty curve.  With the exception of the last area of the game (which is incredibly tedious with difficult combat), this is actually a game I wouldn't have much trouble recommending to children (and that's not an insult).

I'd also like to give the game a little gold star for bucking the trend a bit with these sorts of games: the game informs you very early on that there's a kidnapped Princess sleeping in a crystal.  Your character being the archetypical hero, you'd think that when she's woken up that she'd be a demure flower or something.  Turns out, when she wakes up she's actually a bit of a badass and is actually much cooler than your character.   :D   Aside from a bit of grinding towards the end of the game, it's also a very easy Platinum (unlike the next game in my list.  Seriously, **** playing that game on Hard).   ;D

I also recently finished Infamous' well-known rival Prototype, and man does that game suck.  The city design is bland and ugly, the enemies are obnoxious, the difficulty curve is utterly ridiculous (towards the end of the game, raising a military alert will send waves of tanks, helicopters, superhumans, and guys with rocket launchers at you.  And it's very easy to raise an alert near the end of the game), there are way too many powers and you'll never use most of them once you gain the "extending arm blade" power, the story is generic and poorly told, and the game is just boring and frustrating to play.  The collectibles are also incredibly annoying to collect and due to the frequent draw-in; fog; and Alex's insane speed they tend to be very difficult to see.

The only thing that Prototype arguably does better than Infamous is the way that you get around the city, but even that raises control problems.  Instead of climbing buildings and slowly gliding over rooftops like Cole, Alex Mercer sprints up the sides of buildings and flings himself through the air at Mach speeds with the propulsion of his own blood.  That works great for getting around the city quickly and getting out of close quarters situations, but when he's moving anywhere near top speed Alex becomes very difficult to control.  Have fun trying to keep your bearings in some of the enclosed environments.  I'll give props to the Helicopter controls in the game, though.  They are really well-done.

Other than that, though, stick with Infamous and its upcoming sequel.  It's a far, far better game.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2011, 08:08:14 PM by broodwars »
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #289 on: May 11, 2011, 09:48:41 PM »
The nice thing about Shooters is that you can get through them extremely quickly, as was the case with my recently-finished Resistance 2.  I never played the first Resistance, but the series is generally well-regarded so I thought I'd check it out.  Playing through the single-player campaign, probably my reaction to it can best be summed-up with "meh?"  The story is badly told, players new to the franchise are not given a good sense of the first game, the levels are decently designed but loosely connected, and I never really felt anything fighting the Chimera.  The game just comes off as bland to me, and towards the end of the game the campaign gets frustrating with some poorly-designed scenarios (with particularly useless AI teammates).  The game's graphics don't impress me on either a technical or artistic level, the former I can excuse due to its age but the game just looks bland.  And despite the game supposedly being set in the 1950s, there really isn't anything outside the well-done instruction manual that sells that setting.

That said, despite its mediocrity I did have some amount of fun with the campaign, helped greatly by the nice variety of weapons.  Many of these inventive weapons would return in some form or another in Insomniac's later Ratchet & Clank games so they weren't particularly new, but I thought they were well-implemented (especially the Auger, a weapon that lets you see and shoot enemies through walls as well as deploy an anti-projectile shield).  There were some portions of the campaign that were very effective as well, such as the trial & error Predator-esque sections where you have to keep an eye out for invisible chimeras with one-shot-kill melee charges.  The campaign is also paced much better than most modern shooters, with periods of calm to complement the hectic firefights.

Overall, I'm surprised this game is getting a sequel later this year, because my impression of this franchise from this game is that it's decent but just nothing special.  I only hope that my next PS3-exclusive shooter, Killzone 2, fares much better.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2011, 09:50:39 PM by broodwars »
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Offline Ymeegod

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #290 on: May 12, 2011, 02:49:10 AM »
Not sure if you'll like KZ2 that much better.  Yeah it looks pretty but that's about it, it really doesn't pull you into the story that you seem to love.

What happened to your PSP?  No reviews yet :0

Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #291 on: May 12, 2011, 03:02:16 AM »
Not sure if you'll like KZ2 that much better.  Yeah it looks pretty but that's about it, it really doesn't pull you into the story that you seem to love.

What happened to your PSP?  No reviews yet :0

Yeah, story's a bit of an important thing with me, since I primarily play games for their Single-player content.  The story doesn't have to be massively elaborate or anything, but it at least has to be well-told.  Vanquish, for example, looks like a game where story is not the least bit important.  But what I've played of Vanquish shows me that the game in return is just having a massive amount of fun with the concept, and that's just fine with me. It's all about balance and pacing in single-player modes.

My PSP has been neglected for a bit, that's true.  There's just been too many console games I've been enjoying lately.  But if you're curious, there is a PSP game I have "beaten" but have refrained from talking about because I haven't completed it, and that is Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.  I've only beaten one of the 3 stories in the game, so I was refraining from talking about it here until I had completed the other two characters' stories and seen "the whole story". 

In general from what I've played of Ventus' story, I really like the game.  It ditches a lot of the pretentious stupidity the franchise has built up since Kingdom Hearts 2 in exchange for a much more straightforward tale of 3 warriors battling "The Darkness" (my god, the Kingdom Hearts series has a dangerous drinking game with the number of times characters say "darkness") in their own way.  And better still, the story isn't a throwaway sidestory like most KH spin-offs, as the story seems to directly lead into threads for Kingdom Hearts 3.  And even though you visit the same planets with each character, you see different parts of the story each time since characters visit the worlds in different orders and explore different areas.

The battle system's also quite possibly the best in the series, and the game looks gorgeous for a PSP game.  From what I've seen, the 3 characters all play significantly differently: Ventus is fast with light attacks like Sora (and thus is my favorite character), Terra is incredibly slow but powerful (and thus my least favorite character), and Aqua is...I don't know, I haven't played her story yet, but I've heard she's frail but with extremely powerful magic.

I can't give final judgement on the game just yet, but so far I recommend it if you enjoyed the first few Kingdom Hearts, but lost interest when the series went off the rails after Kingdom Hearts 2.  The game's a lot of fun.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2011, 04:36:53 AM by broodwars »
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Offline NWR_insanolord

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #292 on: May 16, 2011, 03:00:09 AM »
Now that I got my roster update, I've started putting time into MLB 11 The Show for PS3. I originally wasn't going to buy a baseball game this year, but my Indians have been really good, so I caved and bought it. I've played previous versions of The Show and never really cared much for them. I would have bought a different game, but 2K has the exclusive third party license for Major League Baseball and they have yet to make a good baseball game going all the way back to World Series Baseball 2K1 on the Dreamcast, so I didn't have much choice.

My main issue with previous games in the series was the pitching. I could never seem to get the hang of it, and I had no real way of figuring out what I was doing wrong. One of the reasons I gave in and bought The Show again was the news that they had introduced a new control option for pitching. I'm glad I took a chance, because I absolutely love this new meter. It's a lot clearer on what you're supposed to do, and when you mess up, you see exactly how you messed up, and the pitch misses in a way that reflects how you missed. If you push the stick too far to the right in your follow-through, the pitch goes farther in that direction than you aimed it. Starting the forward motion too late or too soon will result in pitches being high or low. After a little while with the meter, you get the hang of it. It's still challenging, but it's easier to understand.

I am personally a huge fan of the late, great MVP Baseball series that was an unfortunate casualty of EA's exclusive deal with the NFL. To this day, I still consider MVP 2005 to be the best baseball game ever made. The pitching meter in this game is the first time I'd argue a baseball game did a better job than MVP '05 outside of presentation or online capabilities.

I like the new hitting controls, too. The analog control doesn't add as much to it as it does with pitching, but it still feels like an improvement. The same can't be said for the fielder throwing controls, though. Luckily, you can switch back to the old style of control, and you can do so independently for each of the three control types, so I can use the new analog controls for pitching and batting and still field with the buttons.

Outside of the controls, it's basically the same game as last year, which is not a complaint at all. The game is PS3-exclusive of course, being developed by Sony, and it definitely looks like it. The presentation is top-notch, and while I haven't put much time into them, the various modes seem to have seen a fair share of polish and tweaking.

This is by far the best baseball game to own this year. If you don't own a PS3, you're really out of luck, due to 2K's complete incompetence. Luckily, their exclusivity deal ends next year. I'm already looking forward to the inevitable MVP Baseball 2013. Until then, though, you can't go wrong with MLB The Show.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #293 on: May 16, 2011, 11:50:03 PM »
With PSN back up, I finally put in my best friend's copy of the Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition so I could play the 4 non-Broken Steel DLC (I already played Broken Steel when I originally completed the game) I hadn't played.  Overall, I'm pretty indifferent to all of them.  None of them work well on PS3, with frequent crashes and horrendous slowdown common in all the DLC packs.  Operation Anchorage has an interesting premise, but in execution you're just walking down Call of Duty corridors and shooting dudes with barely any story.  The Pitt has a fairly interesting story with an excellent moral choice near the end, but fairly dull execution and a bland environment.  Point Lookout has the massive exploration you expect from Fallout 3, but in the end the story is lame and there just isn't much of interest to find wandering the Maryland swamp.  It does have one moderately-well done hallucinogenic sequence that's cool to play, though.  Mothership Zeta is just...dull.  It's 2-3 hours of just wandering down corridors shooting Aliens you can't understand with barely any narrative.  The DLC as a whole has some nice trophies, all silvers and golds mainly for just playing through the DLC.   :D

Well, it looks like it's time to turn my attention to Killzone 2.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2011, 11:52:14 PM by broodwars »
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Offline Ymeegod

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #294 on: May 17, 2011, 10:04:00 PM »
Yeah, I haven't finished all of Fallout 3's DLC but Operation Anchorage did annoy me because it was just VR meaning you couldn't keep any of the gear.

Speaking of Fallout, I just finished Fallout Las Vegas and it's a total disappointment.  It's just plauged with bugs--and I'm not talking about the ugly kind that you blast, I'm taking about the ones that wipe out your save files by corrupting them.

The damn game is just plain BROKEN.  This game shouldn't have been shipped period.  If you ever want to be in a beta then all you have to do is play a Bethesda Softworks game.  Worst publisher around when it comes to quality control and this game is by far the worst in the lot.

Can't recommend this one until they patch it the fook up. 

5/10

Offline jrlibrarian

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #295 on: May 25, 2011, 11:10:15 PM »
As it is my birthday today, I decided to sit down and start a brand-new game of Chrono Trigger. I played all the way through up to the final Lavos fight before, but could never beat him. In one sitting, I blasted through all the way to the Masamune fight, which I just finished.


Also, with my birthday Amazon gift card, I bought Mega Man Zero Collection, Retro Game Challenge, and FF: 4 Heroes of Light. Looking forward to playing those whenever they arrive.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #296 on: May 27, 2011, 01:02:48 AM »
Two more games off my pile:

L.A. Noire - A favorite hobby of mine is listening to old detective radio dramas from the 1930s and 40s: the Golden of Radio, and as such I was really looking forward to this one.  Having finished it, though, I'm pretty conflicted: I really enjoyed my time with the game, but it's a very flawed experience and smells of meddling from Rockstar to make the developers put out a game that's more like GTA/Red Dead Redemption.  Watching the trailers, it's kind of funny to see so much emphasis on action sequences, because in the end this is a modern evolution of the old-school Point & Click Adventure game.  You drive to crime scenes (or if you're smart, you order your partner to drive you to them); you collect evidence; and you interrogate witnesses.  Once in a while, you pull out a gun or enter a foot/car chase, but this is fairly uncommon outside of the non-story "street missions" you can do during a story mission or after completing a full set of cases.  That's a good thing in the end (I love Adventure games!), because the "action" elements are pretty weak, with some odd controls and a lack of much of interest you can do in combat outside of standard cover-based shooting.  The Open World aspects of the game feel completely tacked-on and dull, as there's really not much you can do outside of some tedious collectathon-ing (collecting the 95 cars was especially tedious, but I did manage to do it and obtain my 39th Platinum  ;) ).

While the game absolutely nails the 1940s atmosphere and the facial animation (thanks to the much-touted facial capture technology) is both wondrous and frightening at times (especially on female characters), the game ultimately runs into a problem story-based games shouldn't have: the over-arching story is pretty weak in execution (though fine in the individual cases), and by the end of the game you'll probably hate your main character (I certainly did).  You should also play this game in small chunks, as I felt the game's formula really got repetitive as I played in longer sessions. This game's also going to be more dependent on DLC than most due to the lack of replayability in the various cases once you know the solutions.

Overall, it's an excellent game, but one not really designed for your typical Rockstar fan.  Just know what you're getting into before you try it.

I also recently finished the Killzone 2 single-player campaign, and while it has some issues with not having enough downtime and some control issues I really enjoyed the campaign.  The weapons are your standard-issue shooter weapons (outside of the fun gun that shoots javelins that nails enemies to walls, as well as the really awesome Electricity Gun) and the plot is your standard-issue Sci-Fi War Story, but unlike something like Resistance 2 the game isn't putting any emphasis on these things so they didn't really bother me.  Instead, the emphasis is on what the game does well: big action set piece moments; constant movement; and cover-based "trench warfare" with weapons that have a nice weight to them, making you feel like you're clawing for every inch of ground in the game world.  The game also has an interesting graphical style (there's a lot of rounded edges with soft colors) that helps it hold up several years later when most "realistic"-looking games would look pretty dated by now (such as Resistance 2 or CoD 4: Modern Warfare).

I'm currently playing Killzone 3 now, which seems to fix some of the minor control and camera issues I had with the last game, and it's quite fun.  Melee combat is especially awesome now.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2011, 01:04:53 AM by broodwars »
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Offline ymeegod

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #297 on: May 27, 2011, 02:34:41 AM »
Just finished Medal of Honor SP on the Xbox 360 and while I enjoyed it there was some glarring flaws.  For one it's freaking short (4 hours and that includes the 10 intro and 25 minutes of credits)--was able to finish it in one sitting.
Two, the AI hasn't improved at all with the series IMO.  There's two types of guys, there's the type that will stop in plain sight and the other who hids and pops out of the same damn position.  The game also relies on scripts way to much.  For example there's an AA MG nest and I storm the damn thing only to find out that I couldn't destory it at all and had to backtrack down the hill to an specific spot to get scripted scene. 

Overall, an solid 7 out of 10.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2011, 02:37:25 AM by ymeegod »

Offline Ceric

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #298 on: May 28, 2011, 04:11:43 PM »
I just got to the credits on Donkey  Kong: Jungle Beats and let me say this game should be a solid 9 but I give it a 7.  Mostly due to controls.  Every water level I felt I was fighting the controls more than playing the level.  Which would have made this just an 8 but, then the developers in their infinite wisdom made a level where I had to race 4 Turtles in water. What got me was not that the turtles where that fast but, more that I couldn't get DK to go up and down like I needed him to.  Also whoever bright Idea was it to make the birds disappear after touching anything should be taken out back and flogged. Besides water levels and anything to do with those birds I think the game is very enjoyable and polished.  Its a fun game and I especially enjoy the bull things level.  This game ironically really reminds me of Sonic 2. It has that type of pacing and feel but, as I said the developers insisted on those birds and the water way to much and that's mainly why it get a 7.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2011, 03:32:23 PM by Ceric »
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Offline Ymeegod

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Re: Rate The Last Game You Played
« Reply #299 on: May 28, 2011, 11:57:42 PM »
Did you play with the WII remote or the Bongo's?  I've been looking for the bongo's myself.