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i think out of all the bethesda and bioware games, Fallout 3 is still my favourite experience. However janky it all was, there is nothing comparable to wandering around the wasteland and finding little stories dotted around. Even just how objects are arranged can reveal rich detail. A lot of the humour and poignancy was around the edges, often the empty houses containing more story than anywhere else. I think i prefer that style of story telling to character interaction.
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quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: Fallout 3 is still my favourite experience. However janky it all was, there is nothing comparable to wandering around the wasteland and finding little stories dotted around.
I have to agree for much the same reasons - FO3 was one of the most immersive games I've played in a long time... despite it falling over at random and forcing me to reboot.
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I've been keeping an eye on Infinity: The Quest for Earth for a good 3 or 4 years now. Alas, it's an indie game written by a "community" so it's basically screwed for getting any further anytime soon.
It's a lovely concept and would fit in with my style of playing space MMOs rather well - it uses a procedurally-generated galaxy to give - literally - billions of stars to visit and explore any planets they might have (with a 'realistic' atmospheric entry ability). Some of the work done to date is very well executed... however, I despair of ever seeing a complete product.
Octavia
I hate Valentine's Day. Stupid commercialised crap
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Oblivion:...awful dialogue...terrible voice acting...every conversation involved the character staring straight out of the screen at you...tedious
Yes, that was pretty much why I hated it. I like it that when I turn DragonAge off I can go on thinking about the characters and making up conversations between them in my head. Some of the conversations the characters have behind you when you're just trotting around are hilarious, especially when one of them starts to like you. Morrigan threatening Leliana was my favourite. It makes it more like a TV drama or something that you can really get involved in. The 'stuff to do' element isn't as important for me.
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Octavia
I hate Valentine's Day. Stupid commercialised crap
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quote:Originally posted by Kanye West: mass effect 2 tonight though, so we'll see.
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Squeezed in a few hours of ME2 over the weekend, in between travelling to and from Reading for an 'intensive weekend' learning about marketing planning.
The first game was one of my favourite experiences on the Xbox. Engaging, exciting and rich. But you had to forgive an awful lot - jittery graphics, so-so shooting, tedious vehicle sections and repetitive side missions. Also, after playing Fallout 3 a year later, Mass Effect felt a bit frumpy, with it's main saving grace being the awesomely excellent dialogue wheel which, for some reason or other, no other game has copied.
So in rolls Mass Effect 2 and it's fantastic. The combat is tightened up to the point where it could stand on it's own as a pure shooter. You get to use proper tactics, thanks to some refinement on the biotic and tech powers, and cover-system is useful and intuitive, like in Gear of War.
Pretty much everything that you had to overlook in the first game is gone. There's no shitty Mako to drive around, the game runs much smoother, texture pop-in is much toned down, painful elevator journies are gone (although, replaced with a loading screen). There's a forgiving auto-save in place, so you're no longer breaking out of the game to save.
All the good elements seem refined. Characterisation seems much stronger. Graphics are crisper. The dialogue is excellent, and funny without ever undermining the atmosphere. The mannerisms and camera angles in conversations are used brilliantly - just as they would be in a great sci-fi film.
The only fly in the ointment so far is the wretchedly tedious planet scanning mechanic. It's like they thought a Mass Effect game isn't complete without some colossal and glaring flaw that threatens to sink the whole enterprise (like that goddamn Mako). As though they thought that unless there was a terrible game mechanic in there somewhere, then people would take the rest of the game for granted. Still. It's a good, braindead thing to do if you're reeling from 12 hours of marketing training on a Sunday evening.
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i wish i was doing marketing training. Seems like 'a pathway to a rewarding career' or something. A good way to earn riches.
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Try lying in bed at four in the morning trying to imagine what you'll be doing at the age of fifty. See what happens after that.
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It was four in the morning for me. Maybe that was the difference. Also, I didn't really spend too much time weighing up the pros and cons. I committed a load of my own money to it before I had a chance to talk myself out of it. That and ringing everyone I know and telling them I was going to do it. Otherwise it never would have happened. Basically the same process I used to talk myself into getting my hair cut, 11 years ago.
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well as I said, I do it most (not every) nights, and I generally conclude not to think about it too much, and accept that I'm going to fail to be successful in many of the areas that seem important.
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I did buy Bayonetta. Unfortunately it appears that I can play for about 15 minutes before I get asked to do something by either Kate or Amelie. One asks far less politely than the other one.
I've probably put about an hour and a half into it and so far I'm enjoying it a lot. I love the style of the game. The cutscenes are fantastic and the soundtrack is just brilliant. A J-Pop version of "Fly me to the moon" playing while you're destroying angels just seems to fit really well.
I thought the actual gameplay started off quite badly as it starts you falling off a cliff on a clock face having to run around fight a load of angels but it hasn't actually given you any idea of how to play and so I had to pause it and read the instruction manual which I don't really like to do. It does then teach you how to play in the next section so I guess the first section is meant to give you a bit of "holy shit, what the fuck is going on".
I'm playing the game on normal level and it is quite easy so far with the enemies basically tapping you on the shoulder and saying "I'm about to swing my axe at you, any second now, so if you wouldn't mind pressing dodge in about two seconds you'll enter witch mode and be able to kick shit out of us" so I've been cruising through it so far with a lot of pure platinum medals but I don't realy know if the constraints for that is just not taking damage or if I've just been lucky and strung together good combos, I guess I'll find out as the game progresses.
The main characters voice acting is annoying. That's just a personal feeling, it's like they've said to some actor "pretend to be a prim librarian" and she's gone "alwight luv, i'll do ma best!" and it seems a bit forced.
There was a moment that had me laughing out loud when I was fighting some big baby headed angel outside the station and noticed the "press for torture attack" thing flash up, so I pressed that and rather than doing a normal torture attack, her clothes (which seem to be made out of her hair" flew off her, wrapped around her a few times and dove into the ground. The hair then came up next to the enemy, turned into a massive head of a dragon and bit the enemy in half. That was amazing and well worth the £4 I spent on the game.
I expect the game to get a lot harder but I'm looking forward to it.
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I would have posted about it yesterday but I had the day off work and my computer now sounds like a jet engine taking off when I turn it on as it appears something has gone on with the fan on the graphics card. I've taken it out and cleaned it completely and if anything that has made it louder so I'm either having to run the computer really loudly in the corner or unplug the fan from the graphics card which I suspect is probably not an ideal situation.
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the game does get harder, but never really impossible. The main thing I found is that after I'd got few the few levels, I was getting a 'stone' award for each chapter, no matter how hard I tried. I think that you kind of need to play it is short bursts because it's fairly exhausting.
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Sweet. I loved the DMC games. Actually, I loved the first one, didn't really like the second one, liked the third but couldn't get past the first massive boss, and never actually bought the fourth. But the demo for the fourth was awesome. I think I may have to get myself a copy of Bayonetta.
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Thought you said you weren't going to say "awesome" anymore. Although I have spent 5 minutes searching and can find no evidence of it on the web.
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I've not bothered with ME2 as I've still got the first one sitting on my shelf. I think I got one achievement on it before I got fed up and gave it up.
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Although, if you don't like Dragon Age, the Mass Effect games probably won't be up your street either, as they play to the same strengths.
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I wasn't averse to reading, I was averse to having to read the quests to know what I needed to do but being actually unable to read what the quests said without getting to within a foot of the TV.
The codex on DA is pretty hard to read as well so I haven't read a lot of that but I make the effort for quest related stuff. I think I'm missing out on a lot of the history by not reading it all.
Anyway, I suspect that ME2 doesn't have a woman whose clothes come off as they are made of hair and then the hair form into dragons that bite enemies in half which means that ME2 is worse than Bayonetta.
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