What games are you playing currently

[Scythe]

He said "shooter", didn't he?

[eMTe]

Sure, yes.

But as for the scripted sequences... Wasn't the mirror scene in Prince of Persia truly the first one?

[Zyx]

I don't believe HL was the first game ever featuring scripted sequences.

Of course not. But it was one of the first first-person shooters that first of all tried to tell a story and tried to do it all within the game. For example, Quake 2, released in the previous year, relied on walls of text and CGI cut-scenes.

[Pater Alf]

I started to play "Bully" (the schoolyard version of "GTA") and I like it a lot. The older I get, the more I feel it's a little stressful to fight for my life in computer games all the time. So it is nice that this game takes place in a school. Of course it isn't non-violent, but at least I don't feel hushed the whole time. And there are lots of nice mini-games and tasks you can perform besides the "real" missions. The only thing I don't like is that it seems to be a lot easier than "GTA" and so I fear it will be over faster than I hope it will be.

[Chroelle]

It looks pretty good - though very GTA'ish. I am considering if it shouldbe my next Wii-purchase...It actually looked pretty good on the Wii, and not the usual blocky graphics...

[Scythe]

Bully is pretty awesome, and if you're playing the Scholarship Edition at least, it's not over that easily.

[Pater Alf]

I play the normal version for the PS2. But I still think it will keep me busy for a while (but probably not as long as the GTA games did or still do).

[Chroelle]

I am getting a bit irritated with myself that I cannot seem to find my old games - which means they must be in a box in the basement.... I would really love to try out that mod of GTA i posted about recently...

[Scythe]

Scythe is always hip to the scene and just breezed through Dear Esther, the "new" artsy indie visual "adventure" game. Stranded on a deserted island, you set out to explore the environs... or do you? "New" because it's actually an old Half-Life 2 mod that's been dressed up. "Adventure" because all you actually do is walk around. But it's beautiful for sure, and yes, there is a story to it, even if it's not in your face.

[Chroelle]

I finally did it - I finally opened up Mass Effect yesterday, and it allready has me pulled in more or less. I am only in my first battlefights on the starting planet, because my dear baby decided to take a short nap. That being said I got a battery level warning which pullled me out of the game (it was still running in the back) and then I decided to plug in and go get Molly. Then late last night before going to bed I decided I should probably go save the game, and when I pressed the icon in the process line it opened up on me and it was suddenly night on the planet I was on. I knew it was real time but not that real time... Does it have an affect that I had the game standing still for hours? Should I restart or see if there is a previous autosave...?
Oh and it runs kind of weird on my laptop (win7). I have it running in combatibility mode for XP sp3, because it could start oteherwise... But I installed some patches and set the combatibility and pressed the shortcut....nothing happened. Then I went and made myself a cup of coffee, and decided to go look over some stats on my blog. After about 5-6 mins doing that I decided I should perhaps try to google a solution to my problem with ME, and so I did. While I did this I wanted to go read on CWF in the Mass Effect thread if someone posted aboutthis issuee there... Just as both Google and CWF came up with my searches the game started up - approx 10 mins or so after pressing the icon.... I hope it will start up faster next time. Perhaps I should go check.

[Scythe]

No idea, played it on the X360.

[Zyx]

That is strange. I ran the game OK on on my Win7 partition on my Mac (without any compatibility mode or other special settings). Note that there is a free DLC, Bring Down the Sky, for Mass Effect 1 that gives you an additional mission or so. You can probably find the download quite easily, but you need to contact EA support to get a CD key for the DLC (the old key gen on site doesn't work anymore). Also, if your copy isn't from Steam, check that it's has the latest patch etc.

I'm a bit wary of investing in ME3 at launch. I bit dislike the Bioware/EA DLC scheme, so first paying a lot for the game and then later on quite a lot on the ensuing extra stuff is a bit fishy. Especially because there's no way they will ever have a "Complete" (or GOTY) version out and the DLCs prices never go down so I think I'm better off waiting for the base game to go down in price.

edit: Also, I don't understand at all why the pre-order things for ME3 are weapons and armor. (The same goes for ME2). Aren't those just making the game potentially easier for you? Why would anyone do that? Says the man who played ME2 through with the Incisor sniper rifle that shot 3 rounds at once (until the Widowmaker came along. That was a fun one.)

[Scythe]

Finally got around to playing Alice: Madness Returns (see current avatar). I tried it on the PC, but my comp couldn't handle it, so I got it for the X360. I love the art design in this game. Unfortunately the game drags a bit and feels too long actually. Even worse, the final boss glitched on me, so I can't complete the game. Due to the way the game saves, there is nothing I can do about it. I guess the journey was worth it, just have to youtube the ending...

[Zyx]

I love the art design in this game. Unfortunately the game drags a bit and feels too long actually. Even worse, the final boss glitched on me, so I can't complete the game.

So, it sounds just like the original...

[Pager]

Let me know how Dead Island plays...no wait...dont tell me...I.... I gotta know...Is it scary? Like as scary as I expect of the forwards/backwards trailer? TEll me... Nah dont tell me... I cant stand the excitement of how much the trailer had my skin crawling... Let me know..Or not.

Ok...I will try to keep this as non-descriptly descriptive as possible...Dead Island was everything I always wanted Resident Evil to be. Now to put this in perspective, I liked the idea of Resident Evil...when I first played it I had never read anything about it, to me it was a zombie hunt in a house game...then as I got further in the game and encountered more enemies I grew to realize I hate Resident Evil games. I'm sure if the 15 y.o. gaming community read this I would be tarred and feathered in the public forum, but from my perspective, the thing I hated about RE is that ammo is few and far between, the enemies are ridculously insane to beat unless you have awesome guns, which you hardly ever have ammo for, and did I mention that they just feel like a bunch of developers sat around and said, "ya, this is fun, but how do we make it harder?".

Now, fast forward to Dead Island (and I am going to skip Dead Rising, which I thought was a great RE replacement before this), I didn't get a gun until I was well into the second area, but that didn't really matter, because you can pretty much use anything you find to fend off the hordes and you can modify those weapons as well. The game was super creepy, and some people may find it freaky...I didn't find it scary per say, not nearly as scary as when the creature jumps through the window when you step on the porch in Nocturne, but that is because I am fairly de-sensitzed to zombies (in games and tele, in real life, I'm sure I'd ruin my drawers). Something else this game had that RE doesn't...the enemies are all zombies and humans...different flavours of zombies, but there are no killer birds, or giant spiders, or giant mutations...all zombies and jerk people...

Curly, I hope I didn't give too much away, but I would definitely recommend it. There is a levelling up element to it, and you gain better skills for each level, and some pretty awesome weapons. I was going to play through it again, but I decided to play some ME again, but I couldn't see myself getting rid of it anytime soon.

[Chroelle]

Dead rising was actually on my TOO-WATCH (And most probably never play) list. What was that like?

[Pater Alf]

I started to play "Rebel Assault II" on the Playstation 2. Can't say that it is really good. The mixture between animated scenes during the levels and movie scenes during the cutscenes is a little irritating today. And the missions aren't really great as there isn't much variety (mostly it is just about avoiding stuff during flight). Also the gameis hard to control, because you have to get used to the fact that you can only move around your ship around in very narrowed limits.

And I have another question: I can't save, the game asks for a memory card and won't recognize the one I have in slot 1. Do I need a special one for PS1 games?

[Scythe]

Yes you do, PA. PS1 games use a different kind of memory card (same slot though).

I put Mass Effect 3 away for now and focused on a game that I stopped playing on my PS3 almost a year ago, Yakuza 4. I guess you can best compare this to a sort of Grand Theft Auto without vehicles. As in you around a city district playing various mini games while advancing an overall story. The series was at first known for its game director to have said that it would never ever be released in the west because it was so inherently about Japanese culture. Now we have 5 of these suckers with English text (but original Japanese voice acting).

Storywise it's a bit incoherent if you haven't followed all previous games (though there's a handy "reminisce" function so you can watch movies of earlier games), but let's just say it involves the mythical "honorable gangsters", as if there was such a thing, opposing the "evil gangsters." Fair enough, been done to death in movies, regardless of realism.

Most of the game revolves around hand to hand fighting. Or hand to head. Or foot to head. Or any object lying about to head. Really, this is over the top violence done to the point where it starts to become artistic. While you end up doing the same effective moves over and over, sometimes it's nice to be able to pick up some weird object and batter your opponent to (near) death with it. Smartly, unlike previous games in the series, this one has four protagonists with different fighting styles, so you don't get as sick of it as I did of Yakuza 3.

Also, the game has so many mini games it becomes kinda scary, but of course you can pass on most of them. You've got every sort of casino game in the book, you've got classic Japanese games of dice, cards, mahjongg, shogo and what have you, you've got your bowling, batting, table tennis, karaoke, massage, darts, pool, dating, chasing/being chased, arena fighting, hostess maker, collectible finding, photo shooting and all the ones I forgot mini games... Plus side quests...

It's not so much for lack of things to do that you stop playing this game, it's more for the number of times you have to do them to reap the rewards. This is a very scary game to get into for completionists. I spent most of yesterday just getting to the top rank in mahjongg, which is a bit troublesome when you only know the basic rules but not all the scoring combinations, and certainly not enough to know how to figure out scores. This is a problem with most of the Japanese games, you don't really get rules support in the game. I gave up on shogo very quickly. Good thing you can just go out in the streets and bash some heads afterwards. Everybody knows how to do that.

[Pater Alf]

Rebel Assault II might be the most unbalanced game I've ever played. It took me about one and a half hour to complete the first 14 missions and I was able to get through most of them in my first or second try. The 15th and last mission on the other hand seems to be impossible to beat. I don't know how many times I've tried by now and I always end up at more or less the same point...

[Scythe]

First there was Cloud, then there was flOw, next there was Flower. Now Scythe dons his indie cap and grabs thatgamecompany's next piece of work. It's a long way through the desert to get to the mountain, so why go? Who cares, it's not the destination that matters, it's the Journey. Light platforming aside, this is art.