Currently playing 4: Guns of the Patriots

[Monk Ed]

I beat Duke Nukem 3D's bonus episode and thus all of Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition (except for the other options Steam lets me boot into when I choose to play the game, whatever those are, so I guess I'm not completely done with the game) so for some reason I decided to give Duke Nukem Forever another try after like a year.

And holy fuck this game gets disturbing. I'd read in a review that the game gets to a very "un-funny" section and I wondered how bad it would get but this goes beyond what I imagined. I reached The Hive and the way it's all presented is just like ... whoa. And Duke's inappropriate wisecracks just make him look like a total psychopath.

It reaches its pinnacle when you find the girls who were jointly blowing Duke at the beginning of the game. They actually have names and everything, so there's some buildup there that actually gives it some emotional punch and makes the experience all the more bizarre when you see what's happened to them. They've been impregnated by the aliens, and it's clear by the fact that there's more level beyond them and they're blocking your way that they're going to have to die for you to advance -- and knowing that this is their final exchange makes it all the more bizarre and horrifying: When you meet them Duke cracks "Looks like you're ... fucked". And then they pathetically respond "It was our first time -- with an alien." "We'll work the weight off in like a week, we swear!". And that's the last exchange you have with them before they explode into little baby aliens, which, when killed, Duke quips, "You've been aborted".

Yeeeeeash. This game turns suddenly into gonzo horror and it's just whoa. I'm left wondering if the developers knew how this would all come across. The fact that it doesn't seem intentional at all that it's this creepy makes it all the creepier.

And now I don't know if this makes the whole thing terrible or awesome. On the one hand, it's highly offensive and drastically alters the story by showing a side of Duke we probably never wanted to know. On the other hand, I haven't had a good creep-out like that in a while, and it's not like Duke had much of a personality or story in the first place and this is at least a noteworthy thing about the game. It's the fact that it comes across as completely unintentional that makes it work so well, so it's like a hidden treasure experience that you can't replicate on purpose.

Madness or genius? Either way, I'm glad to have experienced it.

[Oz]

Having given up on the second Gabriel Knight (due to the FMV/VMD style and silly acting), I dedicated myself to completing Moebius: Empire Rising at the very least. I pre-ordered it before its release and now I have learned that I shouldn't buy just anything - at the very least pre-ordering is not a good idea.

Moebius is a mess despite being helmed by a good designer (Jane Jensen). The screenshots of the game make it look decent for an adventure game, but they are deceiving: the character animations are terrible and buggy, character designs turn out to be bland in general and the soundtrack is forgettable. The gameplay is fairly straightforward although a tad frustrating with some of its elements and often not very challenging. The game revolves around the protagonist's ability to analyze people and objects and while that is a refreshing mechanic, it is sometimes infuriating because sometimes the analysis doesn't make much sense and the player can only repeat the mechanic without knowing what went wrong. The gameplay is also frustrating when it forces the player to do thins in a certain order, which results in a lot of useless running back and forth because the player can't pick up all the items from the get-go.

Adventure games can be rewarding even if they stumble technically, but Moebius is the rare case in which the writing stinks even more than the visuals and gameplay. Characters are paper thin and lifeless, the setting uninteresting and the entire scenario of identifying people who are close to historical figures is just silly. To top it off, the dialogue is very clunky and awkward. The characters' motivations and emotional reactions are often very confusing and the quality of the dialogue writing is just shameful. In short, the game is ridiculously "America, fuck yeah!" without being ironic at all - and it's capped off by a very anti-climactic and annoying ending that only caters to the shippers of the protagonist and his unsubtly homoerotic but not explicitly gay sidekick.

At least Moebius is playable and offers enough content for its price, but I can't say I really enjoyed it. It was easy enough to complete so I decided I should just finish it quickly and shelve it.

[Dream]

I beat Duke Nukem 3D's bonus episode and thus all of Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition (except for the other options Steam lets me boot into when I choose to play the game, whatever those are, so I guess I'm not completely done with the game) so for some reason I decided to give Duke Nukem Forever another try after like a year.

Heh, yeah that sequence was notoriously awful even for a game that failed to emulate Duke Nukem 3d's irreverent style and slick action resulting in a rather shallow/adolescent product. I have not played Forever but have seen videos here and there, specially of the hive level. The alienized women (intended as an "Alien" reference) in the original 3D were already a pretty off-key experience for what was an extremely vanguard game at the time, but at least they didn't polish and play out the moaning, sobbing, and despair of the women the way Forever did.. as well as the disturbing inferrences of what's happening to them inevitably culminating in explosive death. By itself it would already be disturbing enought but the complete indifference from the direction, not changing the tone from the usual humor/cool of the game, made it worse.

With Duke Nukem 3D, i always felt that Duke took the base set by Doom and built up/expanded on it to create a FPS with unprecedented levels of interactivity at the time as well as discarding a more "serious" tone/story in favor of a character that was unabashedly -to the point of parody- and completely cool as well as a direction that pushed slick style and attitude above all else. Compared to the relatively sparse levels in Doom, my 10-year old mind was blown away by flying in a jetpack accross Hollywood (always loved that first level) or the sheer amount of things in the game world you could interact with. While Doom is probably more important historically than Duke Nukem, i personally always preferred the latter because of how much attitude it had.

Some might say that the reason Forever tanked so hard was because it got published at a less "simple" time than it's predecessor, but personally i think a lot of it had to do with it not bringing much new to the table compared to 3D as well as a studio that seemed to see only the "un-PC" surface of the game's style and thus ended with a really shallow result... As well as whatever caused the Hive level shit like tickling the pussy-walls to open them and the monster titty-slapping animations, which might or might not have been the biological remains of a former human

Only one thing i somewhat disagree with, i vividly remember Duke sounding noticeably distraught when the girl die and swearing vengeance agaisnt the alien queen. Also, oOne LPer throught which i watched the level commented he thought the "Looks like you're fucked..." line was Duke's dark humor attempt to cope with the fact he knew there was nothing he could do to save them.

[Monk Ed]

As well as whatever caused the Hive level shit like tickling the pussy-walls to open them and the monster titty-slapping animations, which might or might not have been the biological remains of a former human

I thought they were vagina-doors too (note to Reichu: I actually mean vagina here, not vulva) but then one time when opening one Duke said "I thought this was exit-only" and that's when it occurred to me that they're probably closer to anus-doors. Could also be that they're supposed to be both.

Only one thing i somewhat disagree with, i vividly remember Duke sounding noticeably distraught when the girl die and swearing vengeance agaisnt the alien queen.

No, that happened in my playthrough too, rather it was his attitude before it happened ("Looks like ... you're fucked") that made him come across so, um, poorly. His anger at the alien queen after their deaths didn't change that because even a psychopath can be mad at the destruction of his "toys".

Also, oOne LPer throught which i watched the level commented he thought the "Looks like you're fucked..." line was Duke's dark humor attempt to cope with the fact he knew there was nothing he could do to save them.

That's the most charitable reading possible, and I'd believe it if there'd been any other subtle indications of it. It's still possible regardless but I'd see it more as a charitable player reinterpretation than as something that I feel was actually being tried to be communicated.

[robersora]

Shadow of the Colossus catapulted itself into my heart and thus onto the list of my all time favourite games. Such a beautiful work of art, I really love it.

[IronEvangelion]

I love that game. I'm still amazed at how fun, moving, and captivating it is for a game with almost no dialogue, very little story, and absolutely no NPCs to interact with. I'm still waiting for somebody to make another game like it, but that will probably never happen. Shadow of the Colossus is truly a unique work of art.

[Alaska Slim]

XCOM: Enemy Within

Though I had already bought the Slingshot Expansion pack for Enemy Unknown, along with Elite Soldiers, I went ahead and bought this stand-alone expansion that came with each of them. I bought it, first, to try out the new MEC-Trooper class to see what it's like. And yeah, using them is every bit bit as jarring and off-putting as I imagined it would when I read about it.

The moment Dr. Shen states "we will begin the appropriate amputations" I get the feeling that I destroyed these soldiers lives, just to settle a curiosity. They're called "volunteers" but that's load of bull, as I clearly ordered them to do it. My first choice for this option may have also been a bit... racist... He was Japanese... which didn't enter into my thinking, as I thought he was S. Korean for some reason (no, it's not because he's Asian, the character models aren't good enough to differentiate them in any case. No, it's because I could have sworn I had a S. Korean, which may have been a rookie I deleted).

The next soldier I chose was a Dutch women, just so I could hear what the female voice type was like, along with being a chance to try out the opposite branch in upgrades. I ended using her more as she was a support class that offered +10 defense bonus to everyone in the squad.

I however ended leaving both behind in the final battle, opting for 6 gene-modded Psy-troopers. And that's because I think I "built" both of them wrong, and at that point the Psy-troopers overall were just more practical.

In the end, I think the class is sub-par for most of the game unless you plan to make it a dedicated support class, or a dedicated Robo-killer. Their aim is just... crap, typically ranging from 60-75%, which of course means in *game logic* you'll be missing at least half the time. The Flamethrower, though useful, rarely has the opportunity to be used to its highest effect (and in tight-space UFO-capture missions, possible counter productive). Their grenades don't seem to be updated to the alien standard, so late-game their utility suffers, and at times it just really sucks that they can't grab cover.

Wardog, the Japanese one, had high mobility, which was useful for getting an early strike in, but due to the lower aim percentage, it was also something of a gamble.


Beyond the MECs, I wanted to try some of the new missions types (which were fun), the Exalt missions certainly freshened things, thought I kind of wish now that I could instead run things from their end, be the bad XCOM. I also wanted to open some new achievements I heard were available... but they never unlocked, I don't get why.

Anyway, still a fun game, I'm not disappointed at all on the ~$20 I dropped on it, even for just expanded content. I may just end buying yet again for the PC so I can try all the cool mod content, but that's probably a little further down the road.

... Oh BTW, did I mention my highest ranked, and most decorated soldier was an Irish sniper *I* nicknamed "Lucky"? A name which was a complete coincidence. I gave it to her ironically after she missed a few head shots, which early game is to be expected of snipers.


What was not coincidence... was me changing David Cole's given nickname from "Shield" to "DropTheBall", because

FU Cole Rant  SPOILER: Show

Cole F****** sucked. Seriously Cole, I hate you, you're lucky I didn't decide to let your squadmates shoot your ass when you were mind controlled after missing a 96% shot. Or let you die when you missed a 97% that would have kept the alien you were aiming at from firing on you, and getting a critical.

OR that time you missed a 92% that instead hit a car, that then blew up, and criticalled three of your squadmates, and then I had to reload because the fail was just too much to come back from.

That's why *you* alone remained a Major. That's why I never trusted you with a med pack despite your being a support class, or grenades, or even a flashbang. I did consider making you Psi-troopers, all for the sake of making you the volunteer, just so you would die forever, but I knew you'd probably make "the Rift" ability useless by missing with it every time, and that's just too awesome of an attack to waste on something like that.

So I gave it instead to the French Teenager who had primarily been the one charged with saving your ass. Good luck staying alive now that she's gone.

[Shinoyami65]

Shadow of the Colossus catapulted itself into my heart and thus onto the list of my all time favourite games. Such a beautiful work of art, I really love it.

Sounds like something I should really look into, wish I'd known about it earlier

[Dream]

A few months ago i got into Planetside 2, a free to play open world FPS. It's main draw being that literally thousands of players are in the massive-multiplayer game at any given time, so even when the playerbase is somewhat divided on various servers (one per character slot) mostly set in the US and Europe, and divided throught the four continents of the world of Auraxis, battles with hundreds of players and small skirmishes are common throughout the game world. If there's one thing you can sure of is that there'll never be a lack of action in the game.

And it is this sense of scale which is the main draw of Planetside 2. Repelling a TR attack on our outpost before running to assault theirs among 20 other soldiers from random outfits, playing a cat-and-mouse stealth game with an Infiltrator within an enemy base at the dead of night to raiding an NC fort as a tanker with a strong and well-organized outfit have all been absolutely breathtaking experiences. Even if i hadn't fired a single shot, just being there was all worth it.

Outside of fairly frequent glitches the game doesn't really suffer from any major flaws and only has a couple of notable design "problems" if they can even be called that: Most notable of the two is that the game can be rather hard to get into in the sense of a very steep difficulty ladder (the first few sessions i thought i was going to make this post about how shoddy or poorly thought balance can ruin an otherwise great game) caused not so much by the leveling/upgrades -in fact barely at all- as by the game's "meta" and the varying levels of proficiency and experience among the playerbase. The very chaotic and fast paced nature of the gameplay, which pretty much entirely encourages aggresive spirit and not worrying about spending your nanites or dying, can make the game confusing to the level of frustration for a lone rookie... Which leads me to the other "problem":

Planetside 2 isn't really meant for single-playing lone wolves. It's not that you can't play or enjoy the game playing alone -on the contrary-, it's just that this massive-scale game is designed with squads or other type of team-based playing as the main focus. You can think of it as trying to bring the concept of a major, organized army to an MMO game, and in fact PS2 achieves that pretty well in my opinion. When fighting alongside experienced and clearly organized outfits like GOKU not only have i never known defeat, but every single time was one to remember.
Finally, given my appreciation for flight, i'd like to focus on the air part of the game. Spoiler alert: I thought it sucked.
From the moment i found out my relatively modern joystick wasn't supported in the game i knew it wasn't going to be a nice ride. Those fears got confirmed when the clumsy controls and a surprisingly limited array of aircraft whose technical capabilities are more reminiscent of Korean war era aircraft than some sci-fi stuff got me killed again and again and again and again... And again. And that would be fine if it were just the difficulty ladder or me not understanding how hovercraft combat works (which is admittedly a part of it) but when even basic functions like flares or ejection seats are feature you need to buy then it's pretty clear how it all rolls. That and the air section seems to be purposefully "gimped" for balance reasons. As you can probably tell the dissapointments with the air part of the game were a pretty sore spot in my experience. Even when i love to fly i resigned myself mostly to infantry or land vehicles, and in the occasional air sortie i already assume nothing much will get done.

Anyways, in general the game is a bit difficult to get into if you're by yourself and suffers some of the trapings typical of F2P games but once you acquire some idea of how things are done it becomes an insanely fun game both in the inmediate battlefield as well as assisting your faction in winning over as much territory as it can.

[soul.assassin]

Saints Row the Third -- me coming from Skyrim, the game becomes even more amusing considering that "Female Voice 1" is also the voice of Serana in the Dawnguard DLC. And what else? Oh yes, she can actually sing!

[Ornette]

I remember when the first Planetside came out, didn't realize that was still live. It was a pretty radical idea back then and Verant (or maybe it was Sony Online Entertainment by that point) gave out like a couple of weeks for free for all of their current subscribers. You can tell right away that it had a lot of potential but I never played much beyond a week or so because it was pure mayhem, only thing people wanted to do was kill each other, and all the people were just from Everquest that logged in to check it out. So much like when you first started a character on an Everquest PVP server, 95% of your gaming time is a load screen.

[IronEvangelion]

Just finished my marathon playthrough of every pre-Unity Assassin's Creed game (except mobile games), which I started back in January. I could take up a lot of space writing about each one, but I'm just going to keep it short and give my scores for them:

AC1: 6/10
AC Bloodlines: 4.5/10
AC2: 8/10
AC Brotherhood: 7/10
AC Revelations: 7.5/10
AC3: 6/10
AC Liberation: 7/10
AC4 Black Flag: 9/10
AC Freedom Cry: 7.5/10
AC Rogue: 8/10

My favorite main characters ended up being Ezio Auditore, Haytham Kenway, Edward Kenway, Adewale, and Shay Patrick Cormack. Adewale was probably the most fun to play as because BLUNDERBUSS! Getting 8 guards to chase you, funneling them into a confined space, and taking them all down with 1 shot was a truly religious experience. Second most fun was Edward Kenway because he can carry up to 4 pistols at once. Revolver Ocelot, eat your heart out.

[Alaska Slim]

Halo 3: ODST

This is the first Halo game I've played all the way through (I've only played the 1st level of Halo, and 2 matches of Reach before now).

Gotta' say... disappointed. The setting, the intro, even the noir-esce soundtrack, promised a story that was more about the everyman, and the human loss apparent. This set in the ending stages of a war where humanity went from spread across several dozen planets, to just Earth and 700 million souls left. So I thought tragedy was going to be around every corner.

Instead, I feel like someone who has only slightly less plot armor than the Chief himself. Combat is sometimes gritty, but many times ends up with you facing down cartoonish levels of enemies and simply routing them all, with no losses to your side. The focus also doesn't even seem to be the war, but whether if Sgt. "Buck" (Nathan Fillion) and Cpt. "Dare" (Tricia Helfer) will get back together.

There are of course times when soldiers die (all nameless), but there's rarely any pathos about this. The fact that of the dozens of marines we run into, not a single one of them survive to escape with us, isn't reflected on. The one time I can recall any acknowledgement of the fact is when "Buck" and I walked into a room filled with dead soldiers and he states "grab ammo, they won't be needing it."

The other time I thought was the death of the surviving cop who fights alongside you in the tunnels, but nope, turns out he's a bad guy. It's a good thing he's dead (and the last time through, I was the one to kill him).


So I guess my problem with the game is tone. Game-wise it's all wrong, clashing directly with how it was advertised, and what the setting itself implied. Both the campaign and the story in the audio logs had me making frequent comparisons to Disney films (actually, the audio logs story virtually is one), only people can swear and acknowledge sex is a thing.

What I wouldn't give to have played the story in the commercials...

[soul.assassin]

So much like when you first started a character on an Everquest PVP server, 95% of your gaming time is a load screen.

Considering that game (and MMOs in general) was in its infancy, and that people have to use either dial-up, ISDN, cable or 128mbps broadband, and that a crowded server will force the end-user's PC to load everything within very limited specs (128mb was a huge amount of memory 15 years ago), of course very long load times can be a pain.

[r1cepurin]

I've basically been on a game playing frenzy since I quit my job and school not starting until autumn.
So I've been going back and forth from Meccha! Taiko no Tatsujin DS, Bravely Default for the 3DS, Warioware Touched!, and Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass. These are all wonderful, wonderful games and I think next I'm gonna finish Tales of Innocence

Also, I got my N64 to work and I'm gonna play Mischief Makers B)

[Catamari]

I've been playing a lot of Besiege, lately. Goddamn, is that game fun. There's something very humourous in the way the people and animals move. The models don't actually deform, they just hop away.

I also bought Stronghold Crusader 2. Compared to the original Stronghold Crusader (arguably the best Stronghold game), it doesn't hold up too well. That's a pretty damn high standard to meet, though. By itself, the game isn't bad, but there a lot of things that just bug me, for example, everything uses more supplies than in previous games, so it's less efficient when building a castle. I suppose it's to add realism, but it makes gathering resources for a quicker skirmish a bit of a drag.

[Tankred]

MechCommander 2 - Back into BattleTech again, still as fun as ever, stuffing 4 PPC's onto a Zeus or 2 on a Bushwacker is still hilarious.

[Stryker]

@slim: That is such a shame, especially considering that the ODSTs were such an interesting concept fighting force.

There is a mod for ARMA 3 called The Eridanus Insurrection. I hope this will give the ODSTs the love they deserve.

[Trajan]

Just finished my marathon playthrough of every pre-Unity Assassin's Creed game (except mobile games), which I started back in January. I could take up a lot of space writing about each one, but I'm just going to keep it short and give my scores for them:

I always felt like Brotherhood was the best game, felt like the most complete experience while not being so utterly massive that you get lost in it like Black Flag sometimes did.

[StarShaper7]

I liked the original Half-Life. Just didn't expect it to be as difficult as it was. Maybe I just suck, but I played it on normal and had a harder time than I felt like I should have. I actually appreciated the challenge. But it was near the end that I started to really get frustrated. I actually used god mode to skip the hordes of aliens between me and the Nihilanth after dying too many times to flocks of flying aliens with giant heads and those dudes that shoot green electric beams at you. Maybe one day I'll load it up and try to get to the Nihilanth without cheats.