Celebrate Freedom by Clearing Your Pile

Hemidal wrote:

It's just...not...that...good.

That's right, I said it. It's like an enormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'M FREE!

Now, should I try and play HL2 next month? :P

Hold him down, guys. I'll get the scrotal shears.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Hemidal wrote:

It's just...not...that...good.

That's right, I said it. It's like an enormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'M FREE!

Now, should I try and play HL2 next month? :P

Hold him down, guys. I'll get the scrotal shears.

Dude, I'm married, you need to check with my wife to figure out where she keeps those.

Just under the wire, I polished off Call of Duty 4's single player the other day. It was excellent and I plan on going through again on Veteran some time.

Yeah, CoD 4 is awesome. It's one of the very few FPSs that I finished (other than Half Life 2 + episodes). And Hemidal, I agree with both you and QS - HL1 was awesome in its day, but it hasn't aged well. I'm struggling to replay it myself.

In the meantime, I think Oblivion will remain unbeaten this month, and probably next month too. I'm replaying Mass Effect (yes it was that good, and I want to play the DLC too) and I am slowly being sucked back into WoW, not to mention Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and a few other games which shall be the subject of next month's pile!

It's going to be a race. I'm nowhere near done with Bioshock, but my wife and daughter are leaving town thursday night. Maybe I should have taken Friday off.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

It's probably not THAT good; probably just had the most cohesive story and level flow ever (for an FPS) at the time. Now you've played far better, and you can't go back.

FPSes before HL1 were a series of levels that if you were lucky were loosely collected on a merely thematic level. Doom, Quake. Quake in particular has no story at all and no real level flow.

Those games were more a test of stamina and FPS enthusiasm than anything else.

I agree that HL1 was a genre-changing game, but I disagree that previous FPS games were a stamina test. I think it was more that there was nothing else like them at the time where you could run around in real-time, killing other people (if you had a LAN at least). And that was great because we didn't know any better. Then HL1 came along and made FPS games need some sort of story to be compelling, along with all the running around shooting stuff. You need a reason to be doing that stuff. That's a big reason Doom 3 sucked (in my opinion) - there was no real compelling story (that and the monster closets).

Don't forget the non-stop darkness.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Don't forget the non-stop darkness.

Dammit, I did forget. Finally. Thanks for making me remember - now I need to drink heavily and hope to forget again.

Nightmare wrote:

Dammit, I did forget. Finally. Thanks for making me remember - now I need to drink heavily and hope to forget again.

I'll wait two weeks and remind you again.

Hemi, just what was it about HL1 that you couldn't bear?

I know this is a bit of a sacriledge, but I just don't think I can stomach any more Rock Band. I have strummed and pounded these things as long as I can. Never got into the vocals part (only played easy solo mode there) very much. But I think it's time to put the sticks down for good.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hemi, just what was it about HL1 that you couldn't bear?

I was playing HL: Source. It just felt a little rough in the controls. I was too fast, so some of the platformer-type elements were much less than precise. Couple that with no checkpoint saves (every single save I had was one I made) and it created a huge break in the flow of the game. I'd play, start to get into it, then die for a dumb reason, and then have to replay the last 30 minutes again because I forgot to save. So, then I start saving all the time, and the game lost the immersion factor. Honestly, I'm amazed at how much I take a chekpoint/autosave system for granted now. I fired up HL 2 on the 360 last night and played for an hour. I'm enjoying that much, much more.

Looks like I won't be finishing Diablo 2 (or expansion) anytime soon. I haven't touched it for a couple of weeks now, and I probably won't again for a while.

On a happier note, I've finished Lego Indiana Jones (story wise) and am currently working on getting myself as close to 100% as possible by Friday, before I ship it back to Gamefly.

Down falls Final Fantasy VII! Man that game rocked. If only Planescape: Torment wasn't bugging up 3/4ths of the way through I could have probably put that to rest this month as well.

Ah well. Someone let me know when next month's thread is up! I think I'll have Suikoden II to finish, and maybe start and complete the second Phoenix Wright.

Man I really need to focus. Not only have I not finished anything in my pile, but I started playing FFIX.......

FFIX is my favourite FF game. I know it's much maligned by the purists, but I really enjoyed the whimsical characterisation and the story. Also, the music is bloody fantastic. Nobuo Uematsu is a genius. Oddly enough, I have never finished it

I am still progressing in Jeanne D'Arc, and I *appear* to be very near the end, so technically I could still pull this off. On the one hand, I'd like to finish it "on time." On the other hand, the more I play it the longer I want it to go; it's such a great game. Highest recommendation. Not quite as good as FFTA because I really loved FFTA's Job system. The way skills work in JDA is a pretty cool substitute, but doesn't give quite the feeling of ownership towards your dudes that the Job system does.

Rallick wrote:

FFIX is my favourite FF game. I know it's much maligned by the purists, but I really enjoyed the whimsical characterisation and the story. Also, the music is bloody fantastic. Nobuo Uematsu is a genius. Oddly enough, I have never finished it :-P

I haven't finished it either. I just passed the point at which I quit last time (near the end of disc 2). Hopefully I can press on.

Good luck mate, I'm cheering you on from the sidelines!

Just under the wire, I finished Brothers in Arms: R2H30 on normal difficulty. I don't forsee myself playing it on the harder modes since I already had some problems on a few missions.

Overall, I feel positively inclined towards the game. The team really succeeded in creating a fantastic atmosphere, and seeing real pictures of the locations I just fought through in the extras was pretty eerie. The music was nice, and the game was well paced and commanding squads about was (usually) a cinch.

On the downside, far too often, the enemy had a tendency to wait patiently in one spot for us to flank them. Other critiques often cited include it being a corridor-style game with obstacles breaking up the corridors - that's true, but you're usually too busy to pay much attention to it. I had heard complaints that it's very hard to hit enemies even when shooting directly at them - I didn't seem to have this problem. Unfortunately, some of the more "dramatic" scenes completely fell flat for me because of voice work that didn't fit.

Oh, and it's difficult to care about your buddies when no matter how badly they get mangled by the enemy (example: killed by a tank's MG, then the body gets tossed about a few times by exploding shells), come the next cut-scene they're perfectly fine again.

...but when you're tasked to charge across an empty field through artillery smoke and gunfire at fixed enemy positions, MUCH can be forgiven!

Hemidal wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hemi, just what was it about HL1 that you couldn't bear?

I was playing HL: Source. It just felt a little rough in the controls. I was too fast, so some of the platformer-type elements were much less than precise. Couple that with no checkpoint saves (every single save I had was one I made) and it created a huge break in the flow of the game. I'd play, start to get into it, then die for a dumb reason, and then have to replay the last 30 minutes again because I forgot to save. So, then I start saving all the time, and the game lost the immersion factor. Honestly, I'm amazed at how much I take a chekpoint/autosave system for granted now. I fired up HL 2 on the 360 last night and played for an hour. I'm enjoying that much, much more.

Hm, I never played HL: Source. So I guess I have to let you off the hook.

FOR NOW

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hm, I never played HL: Source. So I guess I have to let you off the hook.

FOR NOW

Phew!

Zen Mutty wrote:

Wonder what side-quest/wormhole Wordsmythe has been sucked into.

So many side quests...

I cleared out the Shrine of Dagon last night. Turns out they're all Female Doggoes. I mean that; it seemed like the designers tweaked them down because they knew you'd be fighting without your gear. You know, as if I wasn't going to pickpocket back my sword, kill the guy, and then suit up before fighting the rest of the chumps.

All bad humanoids in Oblivion are chumps. Chumps with stupid voice acting. I will destroy them all.

So... I think I'm turning evil. Also, I did the little plot point afterwards (Bruma) and have a few options to pick from to complete the next step (artifact). I think this puts me just past halfway on the main quest.

I really ought to make sure I'm ready to DM on Saturday rather than try to dash forward when I get home late tonight. I guess I'll be a carry-over. I blame not having any free weekends, and will continue to blame such until I get a free weekend some time around September.

My Kingdom for the Duke.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Nightmare wrote:

Dammit, I did forget. Finally. Thanks for making me remember - now I need to drink heavily and hope to forget again.

I'll wait two weeks and remind you again.

Hey Nightmare, remember all that non-stop darkness in Doom 3?

I'm imagining Quintin sitting at his desk, tapping his pencil on his lip, thinking, What was I supposed to do? What was it?

CptGlanton wrote:

I'm imagining Quintin sitting at his desk, tapping his pencil on his lip, thinking, What was I supposed to do? What was it?

I figured he was digging around for his necromancy spell book and finally dug it up next to his old hula skirt...

IMAGE(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v161/Takai_desu_yo/demotivaters/necromancy.jpg)

Hi,

I am currently trying to finish off Yakuza (PS2) after a freezing problem with the PS3/PS2 emulator and i had to transfer my saves. Very good game!

Aww Quintin, now look what you've done. You've confused the new guy.

Zolos wrote:

Hi,

I am currently trying to finish off Yakuza (PS2) after a freezing problem with the PS3/PS2 emulator and i had to transfer my saves. Very good game!

Hey Zolos, welcome to the GWJ forums. You actually stumbled upon a fairly old Pile of Shame post. A new one is posted every month or so. Here's the latest one.

As for the freezing problem, I had a similar issue on my PS3 with Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Luckily it happened early enough in the game that I realized I didn't actually want to play it. I guess there are a few PS2 games that just don't get along with the PS3, even the 60 gigs.

AmazingZoidberg wrote:

Aww Quintin, now look what you've done. You've confused the new guy.

Hey Zolos, welcome to the GWJ forums. You actually stumbled upon a fairly old Pile of Shame post. A new one is posted every month or so. Here's the latest one.

Thx! I will post on the newer thread.