Hi SuperViv!
It's strange how things change in a short amount of time. Four days ago, you were sitting in front of me in the office. Now you are gone, and you'll be in Australia soon... It's strange. Will you still be playing games there? Or maybe you'll spend your whole time in the desert, catching snakes and photographing kangaroos? (By the way, the first and only time I ate a "kangaroo burger" was here in Frankfurt!) My best friend spent a whole year in Australia too, but he came back. I was fearing he would get to love Australia (and/or Australian girls) and stay there forever! But that could also happen to you, you know.
Even with your new life, I suspect you'll probably have more time than me to play games. I've been struggling to find time to play the really short campaign for Modern Warfare 2. I'll probably wait until I'm done with it to say more, but I'm definitely underwhelmed. It feels like an "expansion pack" for the previous game. Which for many people is probably a great thing.
For your travels, sites like Steam or GOG.com (especially GOG!) are just perfect. You can download your games anywhere in the world, so you can have 500 games (like me!) and you can play them anywhere in the world (well, almost... Steam is blocking some games in certain territories) but you don't have to carry the discs with you. You just need a decent internet connection!
And now, let me catch up with you:
So you fell from your GTA IV bike many times! Well, I think they fixed that in The Lost and the Damned (well done!). I used to ride a motorbike a few years ago. I really enjoyed it, at first. Then I started hating it... but then I had to do it for my job! Thank god I'm doing what I do now so I don't have to go back.
Sadly, DJ Hero bombed. I guess manhandling a turntable hasn't got the same pull as pretending to be a rock god.
I have Dragon Age: Origins, but it's the last one in my RPG Chain of Play. It goes like this:
-Family 1: FALLOUT -> FALLOUT 2 -> FALLOUT TACTICS -> MORROWIND -> OBLIVION -> FALLOUT 3
-Family 2: KOTOR -> [KOTOR 2] -> JADE EMPIRE -> MASS EFFECT -> MASS EFFECT 2 -> DRAGON AGE
I probably won't play Knights of the Old Republic 2 because it's not available on Steam.
There's a thing I really hate about Bioware's new releases: they offer some great "exclusive items" if you pre-purchase the game. That's just nasty! So if you don't have the money now, or you are on vacation and you don't have an internet connection, you lose the chance to get an advantage forever. And then you also have to pay $10 extra for the "Digital Deluxe Edition", which gives you more great items. It's so unfair! I wish someone would just hack the game to give those items for everybody.
I wasn't impressed by Avatar. It was just like "Dances with Wolves" dumbed down for kids. And I wasn't that impressed by the 3D effect. But maybe that was just me.
But it's not me who says that the Avatar game is terrible. All the reviews are terrible, so I'm sure it really sucks! I will still play it when I can get it for $5, though.
After saying this, let me prepare our own special GOTY post! Too bad I haven't heard from JR in a while, but I'll include him somehow...
Later,
Danda
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta GTA IV. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta GTA IV. Mostrar todas las entradas
martes, 19 de enero de 2010
jueves, 17 de diciembre de 2009
Hello Danda,
How's life?
Oh, it is a shame how little I have written, but quite frankly, I hardly played any games at all in the past few weeks. I did play some GTA IV again, which managed to frustrate me quite a bit at some mission. Basically, I had to drive all the way across town to follow someone on a motorbike, and of course I fell off the bike at the first unexpected turn. So the guy got away. I restarted the mission, drove all the way across town, fell of the motorbike again, and again the mission was lost. After four or five tries I was so frustrated that I decided to do something else. So I was glad to hear it when a friend of mine told me that for the add-on The Lost and Damned they implemented checkpoints in missions, so you wouldn't have to start all over again. What a great idea!
Apart from that I have only played some DJ Hero on a friend's Xbox 360, and I have to say I found it quite entertaining. I didn't know most of the songs and I'm not a big fan of DJ mashup-music, so I suppose that's why I had more fun playing Guitar Hero with a friend on her Playstation 2 earlier this year. But both games are a lot of fun.
In other news, they released the game Dragon Age: Origins last month that looks really great. You bought it on Steam, right? Did you play it yet? I will definitely have to check that out at some point.
Well, Christmas is approaching and if all goes well, I should be able to do some serious gaming over the holidays/vacation. What's more christmasy than blasting some hellish spawn to pieces? Not much!
Later,
-- Superviv
How's life?
Oh, it is a shame how little I have written, but quite frankly, I hardly played any games at all in the past few weeks. I did play some GTA IV again, which managed to frustrate me quite a bit at some mission. Basically, I had to drive all the way across town to follow someone on a motorbike, and of course I fell off the bike at the first unexpected turn. So the guy got away. I restarted the mission, drove all the way across town, fell of the motorbike again, and again the mission was lost. After four or five tries I was so frustrated that I decided to do something else. So I was glad to hear it when a friend of mine told me that for the add-on The Lost and Damned they implemented checkpoints in missions, so you wouldn't have to start all over again. What a great idea!
Apart from that I have only played some DJ Hero on a friend's Xbox 360, and I have to say I found it quite entertaining. I didn't know most of the songs and I'm not a big fan of DJ mashup-music, so I suppose that's why I had more fun playing Guitar Hero with a friend on her Playstation 2 earlier this year. But both games are a lot of fun.
In other news, they released the game Dragon Age: Origins last month that looks really great. You bought it on Steam, right? Did you play it yet? I will definitely have to check that out at some point.
Well, Christmas is approaching and if all goes well, I should be able to do some serious gaming over the holidays/vacation. What's more christmasy than blasting some hellish spawn to pieces? Not much!
Later,
-- Superviv
jueves, 5 de noviembre de 2009
Kids, Uwe Boll and the Malaria Medicine
Hey Danda,
No, I wasn't aware that Al Lowe was the guy behind Leisure Suit Larry. I played several of those games before I was old enough to understand them, and in retrospect, I wonder how I managed to solve them way back when, as an innocent prepubescent girl! And I wonder how my English vocabulary sufficed. At any rate, it's good he's okay and that he called the doctor right away. I read that often times, people don't really notice they have a heart attack because sometimes just their arm hurts and they think, whatever it is, it's probably nothing serious.
To jump right to the next topic, I wonder why you wouldn't be able to play violent video games anymore as a father. You sound like one of those crazy German politicians that calls first person shooters "murder simulators" and claims they turn juveniles into maniacs. I guess when your child reaches an age where video games get to be interesting, you just have to make sure that he realizes that reality is different from video games and real violence is not okay. After all, I don't think it's the video games that causes people to go on killing sprees, I think it's their isolation and social problems. Either way, you can always just play any game at all when your kid is sound asleep (think headphones), and I don't see how that would make you a bad father.
Having said that, of course I also think that some movies and possibly games aren't appropriate for young kids, and I recall an episode of This American Life where someone talked about watching The Shining when he was six years old, and how that basically kept him from sleeping for two years. But yeah, send your kid to bed early, and the rest of the night is all yours. ;)
And speaking about movies, I really like Uwe Boll since we went to meet him, he was so nice and pleasant, and I don't think Bloodrayne is as bad as it's made out to be - it can't be, because it seems I must've lent my Bloodrayne DVD to someone and whoever has it never gave it back. Dungeon Siege also wasn't bad. But I admit, BloodRayne II was a complete piece of garbage, and even I can't find it in me to defend it, hehe.
I myself haven't gotten around to playing much lately, so I'm still stuck in GTA IV somewhere. My brother finished Far Cry 2 not too long ago, even though he thought it was frustrating that you always had to go back and forth between locations and enemies came back to places where you killed everyone earlier. A friend of mine said he stopped playing it when he couldn't find malaria medicine anymore. So I guess that game is not high on my list of games I want to play.
Well, keep playing while you still can, and if you ever feel being a father is so stressful that you can't find time for your Playstation 3 anymore, I'd be kind enough to take it and take care of it for you. ;)
Regards,
-- SuperViv
No, I wasn't aware that Al Lowe was the guy behind Leisure Suit Larry. I played several of those games before I was old enough to understand them, and in retrospect, I wonder how I managed to solve them way back when, as an innocent prepubescent girl! And I wonder how my English vocabulary sufficed. At any rate, it's good he's okay and that he called the doctor right away. I read that often times, people don't really notice they have a heart attack because sometimes just their arm hurts and they think, whatever it is, it's probably nothing serious.
To jump right to the next topic, I wonder why you wouldn't be able to play violent video games anymore as a father. You sound like one of those crazy German politicians that calls first person shooters "murder simulators" and claims they turn juveniles into maniacs. I guess when your child reaches an age where video games get to be interesting, you just have to make sure that he realizes that reality is different from video games and real violence is not okay. After all, I don't think it's the video games that causes people to go on killing sprees, I think it's their isolation and social problems. Either way, you can always just play any game at all when your kid is sound asleep (think headphones), and I don't see how that would make you a bad father.
Having said that, of course I also think that some movies and possibly games aren't appropriate for young kids, and I recall an episode of This American Life where someone talked about watching The Shining when he was six years old, and how that basically kept him from sleeping for two years. But yeah, send your kid to bed early, and the rest of the night is all yours. ;)
And speaking about movies, I really like Uwe Boll since we went to meet him, he was so nice and pleasant, and I don't think Bloodrayne is as bad as it's made out to be - it can't be, because it seems I must've lent my Bloodrayne DVD to someone and whoever has it never gave it back. Dungeon Siege also wasn't bad. But I admit, BloodRayne II was a complete piece of garbage, and even I can't find it in me to defend it, hehe.
I myself haven't gotten around to playing much lately, so I'm still stuck in GTA IV somewhere. My brother finished Far Cry 2 not too long ago, even though he thought it was frustrating that you always had to go back and forth between locations and enemies came back to places where you killed everyone earlier. A friend of mine said he stopped playing it when he couldn't find malaria medicine anymore. So I guess that game is not high on my list of games I want to play.
Well, keep playing while you still can, and if you ever feel being a father is so stressful that you can't find time for your Playstation 3 anymore, I'd be kind enough to take it and take care of it for you. ;)
Regards,
-- SuperViv
jueves, 8 de octubre de 2009
The Sim that cooked itself and the ubiquitous GTA IV
Hi Danda!
Oh yeah, I've heard a lot of bad things about Acer. This girl I knew had a laptop by them, too, and after a while it kept switching off randomly. I suppose it also was related to an overheating graphics card, even though she probably didn't have the best of the best, since the only games she was ever interested in playing were Minesweeper and The Sims. (I think she got annoyed with The Sims and stopped playing when she finally found her Sim a husband, who then promptly set himself on fire and burned to death when he tried to cook a meal.)
I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 and I've had it since 2003 or 2004, I believe. A few months ago it broke, showing graphic errors and not loading correctly. Customer service told me it was most likely the graphics card (duh) but that they didn't have parts for such an old machine anymore, so they couldn't fix it. Then, a few weeks ago, my brother took it apart, cleaned everything out with a brush and put it back together, and miraculously, it worked again for a few days before it once more refused to start up. At any rate, it was a good laptop and I was happy with it for a long time. Maybe I'll find a used graphics card for it on eBay.
As for Beyond Good & Evil, I actually played it for a while before I had to reinstall Windows. However, I didn't find it particularly gripping, or at least the first hour wasn't. But I suppose I should give it another shot, since you seem to like it so much!
I think the city and the cars in GTA IV do look really nice, and it's fun to see the effects on your car that come from crashing into stuff. The other day I crashed into a concrete block on the road and the car headlight broke and the concrete block got cracks. As for the characters, I suppose some look better than others but I find they're generally nicely animated. Maybe the style isn't entirely aesthetically pleasing for everyone. Maybe it's your projector's fault! (Kidding.)
As for some of the negative things about GTA IV, my brother pointed out recently that sometimes there is a lot going on at the same time (someone talking, you have to watch the map, instructions show up on the screen that you have to read), and he found that rather annoying about the game. However, I for one will keep playing!
You're the second person to tell me that Ghostbusters is awkward. Someone told me it doesn't look nice and most of the time you have to use some device that slows you down, which he finds annoying. I've watched the movies way back when, but from the two minutes of the game I played in a game store once, it didn't seem like something I'd want to get. Then again, it was the Wii version I tried, and I suppose you shouldn't judge a game by its Wii version.
Well, let me know what you think of Jade Empire. I haven't played it, but it looks promising on Gametrailers.com.
So long!
-- SuperViv
Oh yeah, I've heard a lot of bad things about Acer. This girl I knew had a laptop by them, too, and after a while it kept switching off randomly. I suppose it also was related to an overheating graphics card, even though she probably didn't have the best of the best, since the only games she was ever interested in playing were Minesweeper and The Sims. (I think she got annoyed with The Sims and stopped playing when she finally found her Sim a husband, who then promptly set himself on fire and burned to death when he tried to cook a meal.)
I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 and I've had it since 2003 or 2004, I believe. A few months ago it broke, showing graphic errors and not loading correctly. Customer service told me it was most likely the graphics card (duh) but that they didn't have parts for such an old machine anymore, so they couldn't fix it. Then, a few weeks ago, my brother took it apart, cleaned everything out with a brush and put it back together, and miraculously, it worked again for a few days before it once more refused to start up. At any rate, it was a good laptop and I was happy with it for a long time. Maybe I'll find a used graphics card for it on eBay.
As for Beyond Good & Evil, I actually played it for a while before I had to reinstall Windows. However, I didn't find it particularly gripping, or at least the first hour wasn't. But I suppose I should give it another shot, since you seem to like it so much!
I think the city and the cars in GTA IV do look really nice, and it's fun to see the effects on your car that come from crashing into stuff. The other day I crashed into a concrete block on the road and the car headlight broke and the concrete block got cracks. As for the characters, I suppose some look better than others but I find they're generally nicely animated. Maybe the style isn't entirely aesthetically pleasing for everyone. Maybe it's your projector's fault! (Kidding.)
As for some of the negative things about GTA IV, my brother pointed out recently that sometimes there is a lot going on at the same time (someone talking, you have to watch the map, instructions show up on the screen that you have to read), and he found that rather annoying about the game. However, I for one will keep playing!
You're the second person to tell me that Ghostbusters is awkward. Someone told me it doesn't look nice and most of the time you have to use some device that slows you down, which he finds annoying. I've watched the movies way back when, but from the two minutes of the game I played in a game store once, it didn't seem like something I'd want to get. Then again, it was the Wii version I tried, and I suppose you shouldn't judge a game by its Wii version.
Well, let me know what you think of Jade Empire. I haven't played it, but it looks promising on Gametrailers.com.
So long!
-- SuperViv
Am I a graphic whore? Yes I am.
Hi SuperViv!
Ah, the old "buy a new graphics card or not" dilemma all PC gamers have at some point... Yes, I was tired of struggling with the newest games, so when I had to buy a new laptop, my brother convinced me to buy a model that had a really powerful nVidia card. So now I can play almost every PC game released now...
...but only for five or ten minutes. Then, the graphics card overheats, and the screen goes black. No!!! So that's why you don't play games on a laptop. I'm so annoyed. Hey, listen to my advice: never buy an Acer laptop. They really suck. My last Acer laptop just died just as the guarantee expired. And then I bought this high-end Packard Bell. And then JR let me know that Packard Bell belongs to Acer since 2008. So no wonder I'm now screwed again.
Oh, I nearly forgot! I don't want to embarrass you in public, but you should definitely play that Beyond Good & Evil game that you got from me. And you shouldn't play Raven Squad. According to Metacritic, it's a dud (with an average of only 38%!).
I know some day I will play GTA IV again, but it's so ugly! For me it's not one of those games that look awesome, and then one day you realize that the graphics are really blocky and simple. I think it's probably one of the worst-looking games I've played using my projector. Everything is so dark and dirty! A good reason to keep playing would be the new downloadable content, but it's just an Xbox 360 exclusive, so I'm screwed.
I played the first level of Dead Space, and it looks really promising, but I didn't want to scare my wife (I had to put down Condemned 2 for the same reason). She's going to Spain next week, so I guess I may keep playing now. But I'm already busy with other games! I'm trying to finish Ghostbusters, which is an awkward game. A lot of people say "hey, this is great", but no, it isn't. In some aspects it's really a poor game, but the love for the original movies shows, and it's enjoyable on that level.
I would like to see a game where moral decisions mean something. For that reason, I've bought a bunch of Bioware RPGs to see how they deal with that. Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire... Oh, and I have to keep playing Mass Effect soon. If only my graphics card didn't play tricks on me!
Later
- Danda
Ah, the old "buy a new graphics card or not" dilemma all PC gamers have at some point... Yes, I was tired of struggling with the newest games, so when I had to buy a new laptop, my brother convinced me to buy a model that had a really powerful nVidia card. So now I can play almost every PC game released now...
...but only for five or ten minutes. Then, the graphics card overheats, and the screen goes black. No!!! So that's why you don't play games on a laptop. I'm so annoyed. Hey, listen to my advice: never buy an Acer laptop. They really suck. My last Acer laptop just died just as the guarantee expired. And then I bought this high-end Packard Bell. And then JR let me know that Packard Bell belongs to Acer since 2008. So no wonder I'm now screwed again.
Oh, I nearly forgot! I don't want to embarrass you in public, but you should definitely play that Beyond Good & Evil game that you got from me. And you shouldn't play Raven Squad. According to Metacritic, it's a dud (with an average of only 38%!).
I know some day I will play GTA IV again, but it's so ugly! For me it's not one of those games that look awesome, and then one day you realize that the graphics are really blocky and simple. I think it's probably one of the worst-looking games I've played using my projector. Everything is so dark and dirty! A good reason to keep playing would be the new downloadable content, but it's just an Xbox 360 exclusive, so I'm screwed.
I played the first level of Dead Space, and it looks really promising, but I didn't want to scare my wife (I had to put down Condemned 2 for the same reason). She's going to Spain next week, so I guess I may keep playing now. But I'm already busy with other games! I'm trying to finish Ghostbusters, which is an awkward game. A lot of people say "hey, this is great", but no, it isn't. In some aspects it's really a poor game, but the love for the original movies shows, and it's enjoyable on that level.
I would like to see a game where moral decisions mean something. For that reason, I've bought a bunch of Bioware RPGs to see how they deal with that. Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire... Oh, and I have to keep playing Mass Effect soon. If only my graphics card didn't play tricks on me!
Later
- Danda
miércoles, 7 de octubre de 2009
Graphics, Dead Space and some more GTA IV
Hi Danda!
Ah yes, I still have your Tex Murphy: Overseer DVD. I have to make a list with what games to play in the near future. I think I still have a whole game box from you!
Last weekend, I played some GTA IV on my sister's PC, and while my graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 3600 with - I believe - 256 MBs of RAM, my sister has twice that and so on her system, GTA IV looks a LOT better. My PC is only one year old, so I'm a little bummed out, and I'm wondering if I should buy a new graphics card for it. Then of course the question would be which one and who knows what problems a new graphics card would bring. But since I have a super-fast CPU, it just seems a waste to only have a slow graphics card.
At any rate, I've never heard of Raven Squad before, but the screenshots on Gamespot look interesting. You don't seem impressed by it, though.
Another game I recently read about and watched a review to is Dead Space, which is supposed to be really good, very immersive, and extremely creepy. Have you ever played it? I'm very tempted to get it, if only because they say it's great how the HUD is integrated into the game and doesn't distract. However, I get scared very easily and this doesn't sound like a game I would want to play in a dark, empty apartment. (That's also why I only read House Of Leaves in daylight.)
As for GTA IV - remember how I told you that I wasn't impressed with their "moral decisions" that much? Well, saving that one guy at the beginning now gave me lots of missions with him, so that's nice. But now I'm in a much bigger pickle, as I have two friends who want to kill each other, or rather, they want me to kill the other one for them. That's an interesting development, and I haven't decided yet what to do about it.
I believe a good way of introducing morals into a game would be to actually have to decide between doing the "good" thing and having big disadvantages because of it, or doing the "bad" thing and being rewarded for it. That would be much better than making the "right" decision and being rewarded for that, because as they said in one of my favorite films, The Contender, "Principles only mean something when you stick to them when its inconvenient."
On that note, have a good day!
Later,
-- SuperViv
Ah yes, I still have your Tex Murphy: Overseer DVD. I have to make a list with what games to play in the near future. I think I still have a whole game box from you!
Last weekend, I played some GTA IV on my sister's PC, and while my graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 3600 with - I believe - 256 MBs of RAM, my sister has twice that and so on her system, GTA IV looks a LOT better. My PC is only one year old, so I'm a little bummed out, and I'm wondering if I should buy a new graphics card for it. Then of course the question would be which one and who knows what problems a new graphics card would bring. But since I have a super-fast CPU, it just seems a waste to only have a slow graphics card.
At any rate, I've never heard of Raven Squad before, but the screenshots on Gamespot look interesting. You don't seem impressed by it, though.
Another game I recently read about and watched a review to is Dead Space, which is supposed to be really good, very immersive, and extremely creepy. Have you ever played it? I'm very tempted to get it, if only because they say it's great how the HUD is integrated into the game and doesn't distract. However, I get scared very easily and this doesn't sound like a game I would want to play in a dark, empty apartment. (That's also why I only read House Of Leaves in daylight.)
As for GTA IV - remember how I told you that I wasn't impressed with their "moral decisions" that much? Well, saving that one guy at the beginning now gave me lots of missions with him, so that's nice. But now I'm in a much bigger pickle, as I have two friends who want to kill each other, or rather, they want me to kill the other one for them. That's an interesting development, and I haven't decided yet what to do about it.
I believe a good way of introducing morals into a game would be to actually have to decide between doing the "good" thing and having big disadvantages because of it, or doing the "bad" thing and being rewarded for it. That would be much better than making the "right" decision and being rewarded for that, because as they said in one of my favorite films, The Contender, "Principles only mean something when you stick to them when its inconvenient."
On that note, have a good day!
Later,
-- SuperViv
jueves, 24 de septiembre de 2009
No choices! & Sony leaks (part XXVII)
Letter 1:
Hi SuperViv!
One of this days somebody will create the definitive action-strategy hybrid (which is not Raven Squad). But even then, I can't guarantee that I'll play it! :D
I admire the Command & Conquer series because they kept having FMV sequences even after they were officially declared to be uncool. And with great actors! If your game has Michael Ironside or Tim Curry, for me it's automatically promoted to "worth playing", even if it only had a loading screen. Maybe someday I will play them all, if we get another "definitive" compilation, or when a less lazy reissue of C&C: The First Decade includes a more user-friendly instalation process (when you install it you have to enter seven CD keys!)
Letter 2: (replying to my buddy JR, who just sent me this)
Hi JR!
The house that Sony built is certainly leaky! So now everybody knows that they do have the technology to emulate the PS2 on the PS3 (of course they do! They had it two years ago after all). To tell you the truth, I think it's great that they start selling PS2 games on the PSN store, because I don't own one single PS2 game. You know, I almost bought a re-issue of ICO in Dublin in 2005, but it was too expensive!
Of course, if they can do that, there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't play the game if you already own it. You know, like with Xbox games. If you have, say, Conker: Live & Reloaded, you can play it on your Xbox 360 because it's on their retrocompatibility list. I completely assume Sony will do the same, right? I hope their customers won't accept less than that.
Oh, but there's actually more interesting information in that document, even if it's not highlighted as "the more interesting bits":
Alpha Protocol:
You know, I already preordered this for PC on Steam... but at some point I considered playing it on PS3. It's being developed by Obsidian, the company founded by members of the original Fallout game. According to Sony, it feels "barely RPG", and it's too challenging at first (it reminds me of how I got owned time after time by the rats on the first Fallout screen! You don't want to know how I fared against the radscorpions that attacked the first town...). Sony's product evaluator produced a great quote: "Mass Effect felt more RPG". Of course, many people feel Mass Effect can't be considered an RPG at all.
Planet 51:
Hi SuperViv!
One of this days somebody will create the definitive action-strategy hybrid (which is not Raven Squad). But even then, I can't guarantee that I'll play it! :D
I admire the Command & Conquer series because they kept having FMV sequences even after they were officially declared to be uncool. And with great actors! If your game has Michael Ironside or Tim Curry, for me it's automatically promoted to "worth playing", even if it only had a loading screen. Maybe someday I will play them all, if we get another "definitive" compilation, or when a less lazy reissue of C&C: The First Decade includes a more user-friendly instalation process (when you install it you have to enter seven CD keys!)
My brother is a die-hard strategy gamer (he loves the Civilization and Alpha Centauri games, and is now playing the heck out of Hearts of Iron III), but he usually skips RTS games altogether, unless they are in space! I guess he just wants to have (virtual) power in his hands, but he doesn't care much about explosions and stuff. Though it's always interesting to have nukes in a game, and he says the nuclear bombs from Rise of Nations are very cool.
Now here's a GTA IV tip for you: If you want to date that lawchick, just keep looking for dates on the internet after the game requests you to date some dude for a mission.
I think the good/evil "decisions" in GTA IV are a joke. You are forced to act evil all the time! There was one mission in which I didn't want to shoot some unarmed guy on behalf of a paranoid scumbag I didn't even like, and the game didn't acknowledge my attempt to walk away from the murder. Some other times, I was given the chance to spare one guy or the other. But I wanted to kill both!
That's an interesting link! The matter of "moral choices" is a hot topic right now, but it's not very well done in games. It hasn't moved forward since Jedi Knight: you got "dark" powers and a bad ending. And that's it. Not really challenging, is it? So we are now offered lots of meaningless choices (if any) which don't change anything other than adding a +1 to the evil counter. You become too evil and a bad ending is silently triggered. Morality in games hasn't gone very far, don't you think?
Later,
- Danda
Letter 2: (replying to my buddy JR, who just sent me this)
Hi JR!
The house that Sony built is certainly leaky! So now everybody knows that they do have the technology to emulate the PS2 on the PS3 (of course they do! They had it two years ago after all). To tell you the truth, I think it's great that they start selling PS2 games on the PSN store, because I don't own one single PS2 game. You know, I almost bought a re-issue of ICO in Dublin in 2005, but it was too expensive!
Of course, if they can do that, there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't play the game if you already own it. You know, like with Xbox games. If you have, say, Conker: Live & Reloaded, you can play it on your Xbox 360 because it's on their retrocompatibility list. I completely assume Sony will do the same, right? I hope their customers won't accept less than that.
Oh, but there's actually more interesting information in that document, even if it's not highlighted as "the more interesting bits":
Alpha Protocol:
You know, I already preordered this for PC on Steam... but at some point I considered playing it on PS3. It's being developed by Obsidian, the company founded by members of the original Fallout game. According to Sony, it feels "barely RPG", and it's too challenging at first (it reminds me of how I got owned time after time by the rats on the first Fallout screen! You don't want to know how I fared against the radscorpions that attacked the first town...). Sony's product evaluator produced a great quote: "Mass Effect felt more RPG". Of course, many people feel Mass Effect can't be considered an RPG at all.
Planet 51:
For me this is specially interesting. Pyro Studios, from the Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines series, is behind this. Sony is worried because movie tie-ins traditionally underperform. Well, they underperform because they are crap. But I think this case is different: Pyro Studios hasn't been hired to create "the game from the movie". Actually, the game developers from Pyro Studios are directing the movie. Yeah, you read that right.
Yakuza:
Japanese imports? Yes! (And I don't even understand Japanese!)
Game + movie bundles:
Of course! Why didn't they even thought of it before? I even bought the Collector's Edition of Stranglehold just to get Hard Boiled in HD. And in Germany, you can buy Ghostbusters with the movie.
Of course, "the movie" means "the movie in HD". Some UK stores offered Wanted: The Videogame for the PS3... with the DVD! Why?! I already have a PS3 and I want the Blu-ray!
It's funny how the big secret from the document (the potential PS3 price cut) was already leaked weeks ago!
I know you're very busy, but I hope you have time to reply!
Hope to hear from you soon!
- Danda
martes, 22 de septiembre de 2009
Real-time strategy vs. turn-based strategy
Hey Danda!
I'm not entirely surprised that you don't like strategy games if your only real contact with them was Stalin vs Martians! Although that viral campaign looks like fun... A dancing Stalin? Why not!
Seriously, though, I realize that strategy games aren't for everybody. I played Command & Conquer mostly for the video sequences when it came out in the mid-90s. (A lot is possible with animated cut-scenes these days, of course, but videos of real people do have their own appeal.) I also vividly remember playing Command & Conquer against my brother via null modem (who does that anymore?) and also losing constantly. But I still liked the game.
Meanwhile (with age?) I prefer turn-based strategy games over real-time strategy games, though, as they're generally a lot less hectic. Games like Civilization III and, before that, Colonization, or even X-Com: UFO Defense and SimCity have captured my attention for many more hours than real-time strategy games have. Of course, it might also be that it's because Civilization, Colonization and SimCity were less about war and more about nation-building.
At any rate, as you know, I'm now quite taken with GTA IV now, even though I didn't yet get to the part where it's possible to date that "lawchick". There's still a lot to explore in the game, and the in-game Internet is one of those things. By the way, it's a shame you can't choose to play the game as a woman, although I do admit that in this particular game, the story so far wouldn't really work if you could. (I recently read an interesting article about the "issue" of having to play male characters as a female gamer: Writer Ann Aguirre talks games | GameCritics.com.)
I was surprised to find out yesterday that I could make a "good" or an "evil" decision in GTA IV, and I wonder what the effect on the story will be in the future. However, shortly after that morally sound decision I made, I had to execute someone, and I don't think there was away around it, which makes the importance of the earlier decision doubtful.
Anyway, I'm curious to see what happens next, and I'm just glad that the people I accidentally hit with my car in wild chases through Liberty City don't weigh negatively on my karma!
Speaking of moral decisions in video games, there's another interesting article (Decisions, Decisions | GameCritics.com) about that on the same site as the other article, which agrees with you in the assessment that the moral choice system in BioShock was lame. (That's what you think, too, isn't it?) In retrospect, I have to admit that I was never tempted to replay BioShock as "evil", harvesting all the Little Sisters. From what I understand, the only difference would be that I'd get to see a different ending. That's not enough payoff for a casual core gamer!
Game on,
- Viv
I'm not entirely surprised that you don't like strategy games if your only real contact with them was Stalin vs Martians! Although that viral campaign looks like fun... A dancing Stalin? Why not!
Seriously, though, I realize that strategy games aren't for everybody. I played Command & Conquer mostly for the video sequences when it came out in the mid-90s. (A lot is possible with animated cut-scenes these days, of course, but videos of real people do have their own appeal.) I also vividly remember playing Command & Conquer against my brother via null modem (who does that anymore?) and also losing constantly. But I still liked the game.
Meanwhile (with age?) I prefer turn-based strategy games over real-time strategy games, though, as they're generally a lot less hectic. Games like Civilization III and, before that, Colonization, or even X-Com: UFO Defense and SimCity have captured my attention for many more hours than real-time strategy games have. Of course, it might also be that it's because Civilization, Colonization and SimCity were less about war and more about nation-building.
At any rate, as you know, I'm now quite taken with GTA IV now, even though I didn't yet get to the part where it's possible to date that "lawchick". There's still a lot to explore in the game, and the in-game Internet is one of those things. By the way, it's a shame you can't choose to play the game as a woman, although I do admit that in this particular game, the story so far wouldn't really work if you could. (I recently read an interesting article about the "issue" of having to play male characters as a female gamer: Writer Ann Aguirre talks games | GameCritics.com.)
I was surprised to find out yesterday that I could make a "good" or an "evil" decision in GTA IV, and I wonder what the effect on the story will be in the future. However, shortly after that morally sound decision I made, I had to execute someone, and I don't think there was away around it, which makes the importance of the earlier decision doubtful.
Anyway, I'm curious to see what happens next, and I'm just glad that the people I accidentally hit with my car in wild chases through Liberty City don't weigh negatively on my karma!
Speaking of moral decisions in video games, there's another interesting article (Decisions, Decisions | GameCritics.com) about that on the same site as the other article, which agrees with you in the assessment that the moral choice system in BioShock was lame. (That's what you think, too, isn't it?) In retrospect, I have to admit that I was never tempted to replay BioShock as "evil", harvesting all the Little Sisters. From what I understand, the only difference would be that I'd get to see a different ending. That's not enough payoff for a casual core gamer!
Game on,
- Viv
lunes, 21 de septiembre de 2009
I don't want to join that club
Hi SuperViv,
I'm really sorry that I can't say anything about Rise of Nations. I never play any strategy games whatsoever. They are just not made with me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my brother is the king of strategy games at home, and I just don't want to compete with him.
And I guess I'm really unlucky, because the last "strategy" game that I tried to play was the abysmal Stalin vs Martians, easily one of the worst games ever made. I think they were going for the high camp seen in some of the Command & Conquer games, but obviously they didn't even try. The final result is something like a fan-created, horrible Cannon Fodder-like arcade game. You just move your units around, trying to shoot martians with a non-existing interface (just point and click, no statistics whatsoever) and dying arbitrarily. Oh, and you are forced to listen to god-awful techno tunes.
I bought this game because the viral campaign for it was so insane I thought maybe it would be fun. But it wasn't. This game was so bad that it was pulled from Steam after a few months. Or maybe it was because some of the martians in the game were ripped off straight from Toy Story, Pikmin and Doom. Look it up, it's true! Sadly, this is not a case of "it's so bad, it's awesome". This is just soul-crushingly bad.
Now, to GTA IV... Well, I played that game on my PS3, and of course taking your friends out is a chore, but... you know, the game doesn't exactly force you to do it. You know, it's a bit like real life: you neglect your friends, you lose them, and that's it (hey, that's what I usually do in real life!). Just consider this option an "extra" advantage, in a purely pragmatic way. You know, the conversations and stuff get old quickly, but it's still good to date that "Lawchick" you meet on the internet ocasionally to get your "Lose police heat" free card.
I also have the PC version. I bought it on Steam as it was part of a "all GTA" package, but I never even installed it. The Rockstar Social Club and Windows Live membership requirement is one of the most stupid ideas ever. I've been a PC gamer all my life, but I've jumped ship and become a console gamer because I just hate those intrusive "activate the game on the internet" schemes. They are really stupid, and only punish those who buy the game (you won't find any of this crap in the pirated versions!). The same happened to me when I bought the House M.D. DVDs and I had to suffer through that annoying (and unskippable) "Piracy is a crime" video in every single disc. But I already bought the DVDs and I'm not a criminal! Hello?
I have many of the Unreal Tournament games. I even played intensively the first one (offline!), but a couple of weeks ago I tried playingg UT 2004. It didn't help that I never played when it was first released, so I lasted ten minutes before I uninstalled it. I have UT III, so what's the point?
Speaking of the Unreal engine, I'm currently playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, and in my opinion it is very good, but not amazing. And it's ugly as sin. It's really sad that this game is regarded as A+ material; it indicates that video game design has been slowly declining into mediocrity. For me, this game can be accurately described as Metal Gear Solid with Batman.
Hear from you later!
- Danda
Being a bad conqueror and an illegal immigrant (Rise of Nations & GTA IV)
Hi Danda!
Sorry for the radio silence. Another week and weekend has gone by. I recently bought Rise of Nations that they gave away for 4,99 EUR or so in a German gaming magazine, and I have been playing that vigorously for a few days. It's ideal for casual core gamers! You can start a mission, and those that I have played mostly require you to win against your enemy in 90 minutes. So after 90 minutes, you either won or you lost, but the mission ends and you can decide that you've played enough and go do something more productive. Like the dishes.
Of course, the bad thing about the game is that it is somewhat difficult and so I kept losing after a while and then decided it wasn't fun anymore. It doesn't help that they hide some options as advanced options that are really important for the game, like the option to make your soldiers protect your catapults. Catapults can be destroyed very easily by an enemy, so imagine how happy I was when I found the hidden option to use all my military to protect them! That certainly rid the enemy of some of his buildings quickly.
However, I kept building a huge military and attacking my enemy's cities and still ended up with nothing but dead soldiers. I might not be using the right strategy.
At any rate, I have now switched to GTA IV. If you look at amazon.co.uk (where they are selling the game for 14.99 GBP, which currently is only around 17 EUR), you will see a lot of negative comments. In fact, as I'm writing this, the game has 5-star reviews 48 times, and 1-star reviews 120 times. Most people are complaining about the Rockstar Social Club and Windows Live, which I completely agree should be an option and not a requirement. I don't want to play online, so I wish they'd just leave me alone. Also, I have a fairly decent system and can't even play the game on highest details, let alone my screen's full resolution, 1680 x 1050.
The story so far is interesting, though, and I'm sure it will be nice to turn my fresh-off-the-boat Eastern European immigrant character into a notorious ruler of the underworld, or whatever the goal will be. I'm skeptical, though, about having to take your friends in the game out for a night on the town in order to stay friends with them. That seems like incorporating a bit of The Sims into GTA. Who wants that? But I will report back to you when I played it for a while longer.
In other news, my brother managed to fix my laptop this weekend (a Dell Inspiron 8200 with graphics troubles) by taking it apart and cleaning each part with a brush. Now, strangely enough, it works again (it was probably a loose contact) and so I spent some of my Sunday playing Unreal Tournament against him. It's also amazing to see how many people still play the game online, considering that it's been released quite a few years ago.
Game on,
- SuperViv
Sorry for the radio silence. Another week and weekend has gone by. I recently bought Rise of Nations that they gave away for 4,99 EUR or so in a German gaming magazine, and I have been playing that vigorously for a few days. It's ideal for casual core gamers! You can start a mission, and those that I have played mostly require you to win against your enemy in 90 minutes. So after 90 minutes, you either won or you lost, but the mission ends and you can decide that you've played enough and go do something more productive. Like the dishes.
Of course, the bad thing about the game is that it is somewhat difficult and so I kept losing after a while and then decided it wasn't fun anymore. It doesn't help that they hide some options as advanced options that are really important for the game, like the option to make your soldiers protect your catapults. Catapults can be destroyed very easily by an enemy, so imagine how happy I was when I found the hidden option to use all my military to protect them! That certainly rid the enemy of some of his buildings quickly.
However, I kept building a huge military and attacking my enemy's cities and still ended up with nothing but dead soldiers. I might not be using the right strategy.
At any rate, I have now switched to GTA IV. If you look at amazon.co.uk (where they are selling the game for 14.99 GBP, which currently is only around 17 EUR), you will see a lot of negative comments. In fact, as I'm writing this, the game has 5-star reviews 48 times, and 1-star reviews 120 times. Most people are complaining about the Rockstar Social Club and Windows Live, which I completely agree should be an option and not a requirement. I don't want to play online, so I wish they'd just leave me alone. Also, I have a fairly decent system and can't even play the game on highest details, let alone my screen's full resolution, 1680 x 1050.
The story so far is interesting, though, and I'm sure it will be nice to turn my fresh-off-the-boat Eastern European immigrant character into a notorious ruler of the underworld, or whatever the goal will be. I'm skeptical, though, about having to take your friends in the game out for a night on the town in order to stay friends with them. That seems like incorporating a bit of The Sims into GTA. Who wants that? But I will report back to you when I played it for a while longer.
In other news, my brother managed to fix my laptop this weekend (a Dell Inspiron 8200 with graphics troubles) by taking it apart and cleaning each part with a brush. Now, strangely enough, it works again (it was probably a loose contact) and so I spent some of my Sunday playing Unreal Tournament against him. It's also amazing to see how many people still play the game online, considering that it's been released quite a few years ago.
Game on,
- SuperViv
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)