Video Games - a general discussion thread — Page 275

Tobar said:

ODST

Nope. We're still playing Zombie Island and then Underdome. And there's a few 'chievos from Secret Armory I still don't have. (We didn't know the order for the DLC, and apparenlty we're doing it backwards)

I really blew it... I had ~$8m in cash and I knew I would need about that much to do the Bullet tour one. Since I died so much getting the bobbleheads, pizza, and oil cans, I'm down to about $1.5m. I should have done the bullet one first. :(

I just finished Crysis 2, which I really enjoyed but was glad to check it off. There were a couple of achievements in that I could have gone back and gotten pretty easily, but I wasn't really tempted. Games like Borderlands- getting all of them has a certain allure... but I think I've officially broken my quest for random achievements in games like Crysis 2.

TV's Frink said:

I've been playing some android games lately...

Nintendo 3DSXL

I finished Alice: Madness Returns- I really enjoyed it, but I think I kept hoping for it to become what it could have been instead of what it was.

It was a bit too linear. It ostensibly encouraged exploration, but also punished it. You would come to a room with multiple exits. All exits would be more or less at the same level of obscura... one would continue the level (and usually lock behind you) and the others would have hidden goodies. Many, many times I took what I thought was the path less travelled only to discover it was a one-way passage into the next segment of the game.

I really enjoy a game with some nice depth. I think hidden objects & puzzles is a fine way of adding this depth. I just think the game needs to allow backtracking if it's going to work this way.

Late in the game, you fight some mightily impressively large beasties. To make things complicated, there are tonnes of tiny beasties around that try to divide your attention. Fine. It's when I can't target the big beasty, because of all of the little beasties, that it doesn't feel like a genuine challenge of the game type, but a challenge of the interface instead. :(

The first level of the game starts in a very colourful, whimsical, and... well... wonderful Wonderland. Due to the story of the game (corruption, destruction, & madness) Wonderland starts to turn... yucky. I enjoyed the setting, but a quick trip back to the first level made me wish more of the game had been like that.

The story seemed to be a complete mess. 20ish year old Alice is in Wonderland to find missing memories of how her family died in a fire (in real life). Like BioShock, the memories play back like little audio recordings from different people who were there. I found them hard to follow. In the sense that I would listen to the entire clip, understand every word in it... but fail to understand what relevance it had. Perhaps this was my problem. But the twists at the end came at me in a very unsurprising way. When the curtain was pulled back, I had't already guessed what was behind it... and I didn't really understand/care what was behind it.

The gameplay is 80-90% Wonderland with 10-20% real life. Real life is grey and sad... but I found some of the design to be surprising and not in a good way. Alice lives in a whorehouse, and one can overhear (or see in cutscenes) various conversations between the women of illrepute and their customers. Words right at the top of the naughty list, and in context too. Really? Is this what you think when you think, Alice in Wonderland? Sure, it's M Rated. Sure, it's "Dark and Violent" but I thought this was a poor choice.

Some of the settings were fantastic, the weapons were fun and varied (though the upgrades were hard to appreciate... I guess my Vorpal Blade is doing more damage now...) the warddrobe changes were pretty cool, the creepy stuff was creepy (baby faces on everything!) and shriking to half size never got dull. The platforming was clever. The puzzles were adequate.

Like I said, I really did enjoy it... but I kept thinking it was the B version of an A+ game. Much kinder to the modern sensibilities than the original AM's Alice, however, which I also just played (first time).

Now onto Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I'm really looking forward to this one!

The original xbox? It's beyond big, like they had not devised "microprocessors" yet and were still utilizing "macroprocessors"

Knights of the Old Republic, for one.

Johnny Ringo said:
re Alice: madness returns - I own the artbook and there's stuff that was cut from the final game, that might account for the disjointed / messy path..I haven't played the game yet, I'm waiting to find it cheap.

Johnny Ringo said:

I've been putting old lucasarts and sierra adventure games on my Android tablet via scummvm with good results so far. scummvm is an emulator.

xhonzi said:

Don't say emulator around 005. ;)

Bingowings said:

Taking into account the titles I have are there any must have original Xbox games you fellas and fillies would recommend?