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What video games are you playing at the moment? You scum, you... degenerate... scum...

  
  

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Mooot
14:11 / 04.07.07
KOF 2002 which has a brillianyly fun control setup. There's an excellent diversity of fighting styles between characters who share the same martial art too. The best fighter, of course, being Ryuji: "His treasured possession is anything that financially benefits him, and dislikes labor".
 
 
Janean Patience
12:51 / 22.08.07
Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction rewards perseverance, as I was wisely advised it would on the page before this. It's very well weighted. Just as you're meeting massive resistance armed with all kinds of nasty stuff, you're able to buy moves which counter them. The moves are intuitive, each a natural progression from the last, and it's not long before you find yourself laying some devastating smash down on urban areas. It's a good game.

The only problem is, what with holding down the left trigger to run and pulling the right to target and using my left thumb to move and my right to mash buttons and kick ass, and the length of Hulk vs Hulkbuster fights being what they are, it's fucking up my hands.

Seriously. My typing is impaired today, my thumbs click like mice when I flex, my hands are like claws. I would not be a dextrous lover tonight. Damn you Hulk for fucking up my hands.
 
 
foot long subbacultcha
14:43 / 22.08.07
Have been quiet disappointed with the bugginess of Medieval 2 after a few months of initial joy. It caused a disk crash on my machine, resulting in a huge loss of media. I've only recently attempted to play it again, but find it impossible to even start the game with the updated patches. Ironically, I can only play it if I DON'T patch it. Which probably means I won't be able to play the Kingdoms addon.

I'll probably need a new machine to play their next game, anyway.

http://www.totalwar.com/en/newsandpress/index.html

Hard not to get excited about that one!
 
 
Janean Patience
05:19 / 23.08.07
My thumb really hurts.

I bet this is exactly what happens to Bruce Banner. He wakes up, half-naked in a pile of twisted girders, pursued by local police and specialist army units, and on top of that his thumbs fucking kill. He can't even text, let alone send emails from his BlackBerry. And he's got no idea that it's because, twelve hours ago when he was Hulked up, he was using his giant green thumbs to gouge out Ultron's adamantium eyes.

He has my sympathies.
 
 
wicker woman
07:20 / 23.08.07
Finally managed to hunt down a new copy of R.A.D. (Robot Alchemic Drive). There are few things in life more enjoyable than using one giant robot to punch another giant robot through several polygonal city blocks at a time...
 
 
wicker woman
07:30 / 23.08.07
I also just finished Final Fantasy X again. I actually took the time to really build up my characters this time; everyone had their ultimate weapons except for Wakka and Auron (I HATE Blitzball, and I'm not taking the time to capture that many fiends for Auron's Legendary weapon). Lulu and Yuna both had Doublecast and Ultima, Yuna had Holy and all of her Aeons, and Tidus, Auron, and Wakka were all doing disgusting amounts of face-crushing damage.

Having taken the time to accomplish all that, I've found it really sucks any challenge right out of the last couple of battles. Seymour Omnis almost goes down after a couple of Ultimas and Shiva's Overdrive, and Jecht doesn't last long against the Magus Sisters' Overdrive and a few solid hits from Auron and Tidus. Some of the random encounters leading up to Jecht were several times more difficult; the Demon Wall, Mandoraga, and whatever that thing was that would put its arms up in defense for nearly every attack and launched mortar shells out of its chest, just to name a few.
 
 
mkt
11:39 / 23.08.07
I've been taking in the rather tame, pedestrian delights of Another Code: Two Memories. I found it to be nothing to write home about, especially considering the number of fairly enthusiastic recommendations it received.

My sister rather optimistically lent me Silent Hill 4: The Room, but I was nearly sick during the intro and became so frightened after twenty minutes of play that I had to leave the flat just to make sure that I still could.

Of course, the real reason that I'm posting is that I'm getting my paws on both We Love Katamari and Final Fantasy XII just in time for the bank holiday. It's safe to say that I am stoked.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
11:56 / 23.08.07
Nico, The Dark Aeons and the final few creatures that get synthesised in the arena are where the challenge is at in FFX 90 hours play, and I can't even scratch the fuckers.

I've recently had days sucked from my life by X-Men Legends 2 : Rise Of Apocalypse It isn't a good game by any stretch of the imagination, it's completely unsatisfying, totally unengaging, repetetive, simplistic and awfully written, but I couldn't tear myself away.
 
 
wicker woman
03:31 / 24.08.07
I think I'll just have to try my hand at the arena creatures; to the best of my knowledge, we poor US souls got screwed when it comes to accessing the dark aeons.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
01:49 / 04.09.07
Really having a terrible time with 'Manhunt' at the moment. I've been playing the wretched thing (I say this only because I can't get out of the White Trash level - however much I hide the bodies, use the nail gun sparingly and so on, I still seem to get filled in at the last minute) for an hour and a half now, and I wonder if it isn't possibly warping my mind.

In the past, when I used to stay up late, I'd routinely listen to mid-Sixties Bob Dylan, or possibly watch an improving movie, by Fellini or whoever. I like to think I was a person of the Arts.

But these days, all I seem to do is lurch about the place, shooting. Or, as in this case, beating virtual people to death with a baseball bat. It being no good if the enemy's down on the ground in Manhunt - you do have to finish them. You have to ... well you can't take any prisoners, let's put it that way.

And some might say that I should go to bed and stop worrying about it, and maybe I should, it's only a game, after all. But here's the thing - they will all still be there tomorrow morning, my enemies. Laughing.

I don't know if anyone's encountered any similar difficulties with Manhunt, but at this point I'm reminded of the words of Samuel Beckett - 'I can't go on, I'll go on.'

One last try, then ...
 
 
Alex's Grandma
04:26 / 04.09.07
Finally, I've got out of there, after two hours of what I imagine trying to murder a series of White Power types in a dystopian junkyard must actually feel a little bit like.

So it's on to the next section, which, for those unfamiliar, is called Fuelled by Hate.

Realistically, things are going to get worse before they get better. I may have a short break; stage three of the White Trash level is supposed to take fifteen minutes, apparently, and not three and a half hours at all.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
07:23 / 04.09.07
Funnily enough I found the earlier levels of Manhunt harder than the later ones. I think it just takes a while to get into the flow of things. Give it a couple of levels and you'll be a full on sneakin', murderin' machine.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
13:21 / 04.09.07
Yeah, totally agree- I remembered it as being really easy, then I (in anticipation of the ill-fortuned Manhunt 2) reinstalled it and it was bloody difficult.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
01:05 / 10.09.07
The only problem is, what with holding down the left trigger to run and pulling the right to target and using my left thumb to move and my right to mash buttons and kick ass, and the length of Hulk vs Hulkbuster fights being what they are, it's fucking up my hands.

As someone who had to resort to using a cigarette lighter instead of my thumb during the button-mashing sections of God Of War 1, and 2, I understand your pain. For a while back there, it felt like Olympus itself was trying to cripple me.

Now working my way through Hitman 2, anyway. It's not all that much sunnier, conceptually, than Manhunt, but it is more varied; that dirty city, and what you must do to survive there, was beginning to get me down.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:25 / 10.09.07
Granny, why do I get the distinct impression you may be one of the few people on Barbelith other than myself who'd appreciate the much-maligned Postal 2?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:46 / 10.09.07
Just googled that and it does sound excellent. In fact in my unpublished, late Nineties novel 'Sorry For Laughing' I invented a video game called (I think) 'Maturity' which involved the repressed suburban anti-hero having to blast his way through an average day in London (the tube, the office, lunch at Pret A Manger, a maternity class, dinner with his fiance's parents etc) in order to get to the pub before closing time, all of which seems like a less accomplished version of some of the ideas in Postal 2.

According to the reviews, it sounds like the gameplay let Postal 2 down a bit, but I'll be following developments on '3' with interest.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
18:47 / 10.09.07
I suck at GTA: Vice City so bad it makes me cry sometimes.
 
 
Janean Patience
20:31 / 11.09.07
I finished the Hulk game and am about to start a thread that includes it. My abused hands are recovering though my thumb still has a nasty click to it. I have Manhunt lined up ready to play but I'm waiting until the nights draw in. Daylight is no time to make snuff movies.

In the meantime I'm on Destroy All Humans! which I'd been looking forward to and turns out to be annoyingly insubstantial. It's quite fun, it looks lovely and I keep running around in search of depth but there is none. It's a joke game and I don't see there being time for the joke to wear thin. I've done 20 per cent already and I've hardly played it. Perhaps I should try harder with Metal Gear Solid 2 instead.
 
 
Mug Chum
23:14 / 11.09.07
I'm having a go for the first time both with Psychonauts and Garry's Mod.

Really, just amazing. I hadn't got into a game's environs, story, humor and characters since... well I don't know. I am now inside a painter's mind, a spanish platform world in black light, where you have to be careful to not be hit by the bull of anger and art that runs the streets while having to find the right paintings to get inside and talk to artists dogs who were the models for Dogs Playing Poker. A few hours before I was stuck in a paranoid janitor's mind as a suburbia with vertigo-inducing streets that loop itself into nauseating manners (the skys are faraway upside-down streets) while spies and secret cameras make every bit of the world while not being sucessful in pretending to be in their jobs and objects. And before that I was inside a fish's mind which was a urban dry fish environ and I was a kid Godzilla. And the first mind ever of the game is your Military teacher's, it's like Mars' bowels. The creator thought of the game while making Full Throttle. He wanted a game about the experience of Peyote, but made into "family friendly".

And Garry's Mod is just fun. The sort of thing you can create if you let your imagination explode is way too fun and funny for a game "that's not even a game".
 
 
Feverfew
14:15 / 12.09.07
War of the Monsters is currently giving me the joy. It's simple, it's easy, it's every monster movie from the fifties mashed into one and injected with Japanese Super-Robots. Simply put, you and another giant monster roam cities, beating each other up until one stops moving. All manner of objects can be used to this end; if you can see it, you can usually pick it up and throw it (up to a point). Buildings are destructible, as is pretty much the entire game environment. It's pick-up-and-play disposable pleasure, and great joy is achieved via the two-player mode.

However, I'm dubious of the shop's assertion that copies of the game are "as rare as rocking-horse poo", being as they had two, for £9.99 a pop.

Has anyone out there played ObScure II? I'm really intrigued by the idea of a two-player co-op Resident Evil style game, where players can drop in and out at will.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
02:19 / 13.09.07
In the meantime I'm on Destroy All Humans! which I'd been looking forward to and turns out to be annoyingly insubstantial. It's quite fun, it looks lovely and I keep running around in search of depth but there is none.

I enjoyed Destroy All Humans 2, but, fair enough, it did seem a little insubstantial. I'm interested in this idea of depth in a single player kill-fest though; God Of War, for example, seems far more meaningful than Destroy All Humans 2, but I'm wondering why this might be, when in both cases all you're essentially doing is running about the place, fucking shit up.

Is a jokey tone basically inappropriate to the video game format?
 
 
mkt
09:46 / 14.09.07
Ah, Psychonauts. That's got to be one of my favourite games of recent years (with the exception of the big lungfish battle and the penultimate level, both of which made me so angry and frustrated that I very nearly threw the PS2 out of the window).

If you like Tim Schafer, you should definitely check out Double Fine's latest offering: Epic Saga - Extreme Figher.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
03:08 / 16.09.07
In keeping with the original "guns, the mob, crack cocaine, cleaning the filth up off the streets" theme of this thread, I've mostly been playing The Darkness and Stranglehold today.

It's been said by other 'lithers that the Punisher game is the best thing Garth Ennis wrote. Given that he also wrote (the writey bits, not the codey bits) The Darkness, I think The Darkness is better, and that he should perhaps stick to writing scripts for games in future, because they're a fuck of a lot better than his comics. The Darkness is cool- the actual Darkness powers seem a little counter-intuitive to start with, but once you get the hang of them they are AWESOME. There's nothing quite like being that supernatural force that rushes through a scene and GRABS THE GUY, then devours his heart. It's like watching The Evil Dead, only with a controller.

Stranglehold is great in an entirely different way. According to reviews, it really starts to suffer in the later levels, but having only played the first hour or so I can report that they are BRILLIANT. Once you've stopped expecting it to be Max Payne and realised that it's ACTUALLY a John Woo game- "actually" in the sense that it is to gaming what "Hard Boiled" was to movies (and it really is)- it becomes something beautiful. It's an entirely different style of play. Max Payne was about killing the bad guys to get to the objectives. And the "bullet time" thing meant you got to look cool while you were doing it. Stranglehold takes it from the other direction- it's ALL ABOUT the "looking cool". It steals a lot from Max Payne (unfortunately it doesn't steal its story or atmosphere) but it really IS all about the style, the combos- scenery is all there to be either destroyed or used, and if you shoot people while using it, you get extra shit. Swinging on chandeliers, sliding down or running up balconies- you can do it all.

As I say, I hear the level design gets shitter as the game goes on, but it starts FUCKING BEAUTIFULLY. And it's ALL ABOUT THE LOOKING COOL. Which makes it the perfect translation of film to game, given that it's the "official" sequel to Hard Boiled.

I'm lovin' both it and The Darkness (which I did actually start weeks ago, but for some reason couldn't save my games in. Now it seems to work okay).

They both seem to be filling different parts of the Max Payne-shaped hole in my soul. And that's FUCKING GREAT.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
04:59 / 19.09.07
Currently playing 'Constantine' on PS2.

I appreciate my opinions are valueless; I'm effectively like Emily (god bless her) on Big Brother this year when she talked about the new music called Indie that no one had heard about, but she liked, when it comes to video games. 'Constantine' is perhaps the equivalent of the first Coldplay album, insofar as any old crap seems good if you're unfamiliar with the format, but I am quite enjoying it, all the same.

On easy ('Trickster') level, I'm still struggling to blast my way through the material, and for the more experienced gamer, I figure it might be worth a shot if you're buying anything else on Amazon, on the basis that the copy I own cost less than a pound; I can honestly say that it's worth at least three or four times that.

To begin with, yes, there's a lot of walking aimlessly round corridors with nothing much happening, but that's arguably only to lull you into a false sense of security. Once the demons get going though, they *really* get going. In a sort of ambient, oddly soothing way.
 
 
Mug Chum
05:30 / 19.09.07
(I almost wrote this in portuguese because of sheer baffledness)
The 'easy' mode on Constantine is called 'Trickster'?!

(I might give it try for pc now...)

I've been giving Dreamfall a try. Adventure game, bit mystic sci-fi, bit mystic fantasy. It was alright in the beginning, it constantly felt like "it probably gets better soon". It had nice moments (a few plot bits, a few cool scenarios, nice characters moments), some moments showed how old it was -- but nothing jarring (but the worst combat system ever). Then I realized most of the "quests"-things was running from point A to point B, from B to A, from A to B etc etc etc.

And then the fantasy part became straightfaced D&D LOTR Warcraft material, "I was a fairie in the life before this one"/"I'm gifted to see another dimension", Matrix with elves etc. I uninstalled with extreme prejudice.
 
 
Janean Patience
06:38 / 19.09.07
I enjoyed Destroy All Humans 2, but, fair enough, it did seem a little insubstantial. Is a jokey tone basically inappropriate to the video game format?

A jokey tone is fine. The Grand Theft Auto games, beneath the cop-killing surface, are full of jokes. There's hardly a company name or character in the trilogy that's not a Simpsons-style joke on some level, usually a reference to something from Roger's Profanisaurus. And Press The Issue with Miguel Chavez still makes me laugh when I drop back in to Vice City for a nostalgic murder spree. The humour has been a part of the game since the top-down days and that mission where your boss goes crazy and tells you to blow up a train.

The trouble with Destroy All Humans is that it's trying so hard to be funny, nudging you in the ribs saying 'Get it? Eh?' every minute. When you're disguised as a human you're scanning a mind every 30 seconds and it doesn't take long for the soundbites to get repetitive. The setting is fun, but the cutscenes are trying so hard to be comic that they fall flat, and the gameplay is extremely thin. The GTA games have many, many missions where you're getting a car from one place to another with a short gunbattle en route but they disguise it with atmosphere and imagination. The designers of this game have exhausted their imagination coming up with the admittedly amusing basic premise so it's just destroy this, protect that, sneak in here. It's by Pandemic, the producers of Mercenaries and seems to me to have much the same flaws; enjoyable for a little while, then annoying the minute it gets seriously difficult because so much of the gameplay is random. I've got about seven missions to go but I know I'll give up with few regrets if it asks me to try too hard because it's just not worth it.
 
 
Janean Patience
07:08 / 24.09.07
As predicted. With only three missions to go on Destroy All Humans! I've given up without regret. Trying to do a three-stage mission which wasn't hard but where at any moment I could fail because of an unlucky shot, the sudden failure of my holographic disguise without warning, or simply a bug sending me falling through the floor, it was simply too much trouble to be bothered to pick up the controller. Graphics great, concept nice, gameplay deeply flawed.

I tried Metal Gear Solid 2. I want to like this. It's meant to be fantastic. But it assumes I already know how to play, and in fact am pretty skilled at, playing Metal Gear Solid. Where in fact I've never seen any of the series before, so most games consist of me stepping out from behind a crate and being shot, then the shooter shouting his mates over for a three-way orgy of rapid-fire bloodletting. Meanwhile I gyrate ineffectively, doing something which looks like a breakdancing move before throwing myself to the floor for a quick The Worm. It's not a dignified death, and it's not helped by my final demise being signalled by blood jetting out of my abdomen like I'm a burst balloon. Even in the VR missions, which I assumed would help train up a novice like myself, I stab buttons, can't find bombs, and on many don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. I can't even guess.

Manhunt is safer ground. I've already killed most of a gang using only items I found in the rat-infested streets, like a homicidal Womble.
 
 
The Strobe
21:06 / 09.10.07
I appear to have fallen down the hole that is Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSP. (American gamers note: this title never came out in Europe, and has been import-only on PSX for ten years).

I like it. I'm not a huge FF fan, but I liked FFTA. This is good - a timesink, a big spreadsheet of a game, but every time I play it I get a better "feel" for what's going on, and ignore the numbers and just go with my gut. My gut says: shouldn't have let those people die, and now I need to powerlevel.

It, and being very tired and going to bed early, are keeping me from my Halo 3. There will be many years for Halo 3.

TeamFortress 2 is out this week. Cannot. Wait. To. Play. TF. On. A. Telly. I've waited a decade.

Oh, and as FFT finally sees release, Sony decide to cancel the release of Jeanne d'Arc in Europe. They are asshats.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
21:13 / 09.10.07
Wait, is FFT out in the UK now?

Bollocks. Pre-ordered the US version and am still waiting on delivery.
 
 
akira
21:55 / 09.10.07
I've been playing TeamFortress 2 since saturday, preordered Orange box and you can play it in beta mode. Didn't play the first one so can't compare, but am enjoying it so far. Lots of nice little stats and the animation is spot on. Gameplay wise I can't really coment on that either, since I spent most of my time as an engineer trying to upgrade my turrent and getting blow up.
 
 
invisible_al
19:31 / 10.10.07
Just finished Portal, wow that was fun. The first time you really get how to use the Portals and momentum together had me going 'Wheeeeeeeeeee'. Also possibly the best evil AI since Shodan, seriously your sarcastic mad AI task mistress is an amazing villain.

For example on completing one of the 'live fire' tests she says "Good job android. The enrichment center would like to remind you that android hell IS real, and you will be sent there at the first sign of any disobedience."

I haven't seen a sense of humour in a game like that in a long time, possibly since some of the Lucasarts adventure games.

Now I need to wait until HL2:2 loads *booo*.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
21:30 / 10.10.07
YES. I read a review of Portal yesterday, and they also said the AI voice was the most sinister since Shodan. My spatial awareness being none too great at the best of times, I was a bit wary of the game (Prey goes a bit over/under/beside my head at times...), but a sinister robot voice will ALWAYS drag me in. I'm now living in anticipation.
 
 
akira
09:18 / 11.10.07
Sinister voices and cake make a great game. And shes not a bad poet either!
 
 
Hieronymus
15:56 / 11.10.07
This footage of the final boss fight in Portal still has me grinning from ear to ear. Please don't watch if you plan on buying the game soon. It'll ruin the yummy bits.

But lines like "That thing is some kind of raw sewage container. Go ahead and rub your face all over it" make this game so awesome.
 
 
Mug Chum
09:58 / 17.10.07
I finished Portal last night and it just might be the best game I've played in years. Short as hell, yes, but each second was extremely fun joycore. And laugh-out-loud funny in a way I've never seen in any other game. It's not hard but they're puzzles that leave you satisfied and are fun to think (and most of all, do!).

It's odd, it can set up a nice "big tiny epic" half-life industrial world environ while being very easy-going and funny (and that somehow adding to the overall world and experience without losing the solidness of it ... it's like if Pixar had done a game or something).

SPOILERS

The Ladyrobot is just too great, too funny, and setting a "story", proper atmosphere (while at the same time still being funny!) and backworld in the most simple of ways.

(monotunous tone-deaf female Stephen Hawking-ish voice):
-"We'll. all. look back. one. day. and laugh. about. this. Remember. when (two minutes ago) I "pretend". to try to kill you. and you were. all like... 'aahw no way'... that. was. funny."

(squiky girl child-like voice filled with annoying wonder):
-"Oooh, what's that? What's this? Oh look at that! Is that a gun? Hey you're that lady! Hi! What's up with your legs? Oh wow, do you smell something burning?"

I'm just so goddamn happy that there can be another levels (while still being some bonus ones already included). But at the same time sad that probably there'll won't be in this little story and with that character (or I hope her voice is like those in virtual dictionaries so it'll be able to be used again -- but still, the humour will be hard to reproduce, what she says and the contexts were brilliant).

I wish I could see what could have been done with occasional firearms, occasional gravity guns, occasional human foes (add FEAR bullet time and Bioshock little powers, and... (mouth foaming)), and appropriate puzzles for each, this would have been easily "the best game ever". Yay, this was so great...
 
  

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