Forget Flowers, Give the Gift of Pile

After a long relapse into MMO-haze (thankyou Blizzard) - I am clean again and looking at a larger pile than I remembered leaving.

For Feb, I will try and finish up Mirror's Edge (360) that I started back in Dec last year. Scratch that I WILL finish Mirror's Edge.

I am tempted to get The Witcher done before March (aka Dragon Age II month) but I doubt I will get the time and don't wanna OD on fantasy RPG prior to DA2.

mateo wrote:

Can I mention how much I hate Blast Pit in Half Life? Because I do.

No wai! The lack of anything like Blast Pit is my biggest beef with Half Life 2.

One down (Ratchet & Clank) one to go (Dragon Age).

Hemidal wrote:
Jimmy wrote:

Women are very sensitive...

Very true, but not a new game. Please try again.

And DEFINITELY not a new release...

Dragon Age is down! Time to fire up Bioshock 2.

Finished Venetica. Skipped over a LOT of sidequests though, was starting to drag a bit near the end.

Not a bad little fable-style RPG at all (BETTER than Fable 3 in my opinion - although clearly operating on a fraction of the budget).
Quite a good story as well, although it tells it rather clumsily at times. For example, Scarlet's reaction to every terrible, unforseen plot twist seems to be a rather comical drawn out NOOOOOOOO! Vader style

Well, it took an angry blog post and stirring up trouble in the game thread, but Dragon Quest IX is mercifully finished.

Next up, please add Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3) to my list. I started it last night and should be able to finish it this month..... the only hitch is that my wife has declared that I can't play it when she's not around. She watched the opening scene and the first two levels, and was hooked.

I'm giving up on Final Fantasy XIII. I was about 15 hours in already at the beginning of the month. I had mostly enjoyed it up until that point, even if I had been hoping it would open up and get a bit deeper. I've played about another 10 hours in the past 2 weeks and was bored out of my skull.

I'm in Chapter 9, and Chapter 10 is when it is supposed to open up a bit. However, I just read that it really only opens up for a little while, then it's back to running down long corridors and fighting monsters. I actually like the combat, but that's all there is to the game. There is zero variety. Even if it does open up for a bit, I realized that I don't want to play another 20 hours of the game; not when I have other, better games (RPGs among them) to play.

It's really a shame, because almost everything else about the game is great. The Crystarium upgrade system is neat. The massive Datalog (Story notes, bestiery, character dossiers, etc.) is fantastic. I love the character and world designs. The story is interesting (even if the character dialog is a bit goofy sometimes). It's like they decided that they had to get the incidentals right, but forgot to make the actual game fun. Like, I said, I like the battle system (I wouldn't mind seeing something like it in a deeper game), but considering there is nothing else to provide variety, it isn't good enough to carry a 50 hour long game.

I have a rule in general for games, where I will try it for a while, and if I don't like it, I stop playing. For most short games that timeframe is usually between 1 and 3 hours. Since RPGs are longer, I typically give them up to 10 hours to get going. The sad thing is that I actually followed that rule with FFXIII initially. I got it from GameFly, played about 5 hours, and decided to keep it, even though I knew that the game was a slow burn. It was just starting to get interesting, they showed you a bit more of the battle system, plus, it's a Final Fantasy game, so it can't be terrible right? Ugh.

So, yeah, I'm going to sell it, in the hopes that someone else will enjoy it, and find something from the pile that I don't hate playing. Not sure what that is yet.

I didn't follow the plan but 2008 called and I finished A Kingdom for Keflings. Yeah, the first one.

Might as well add Dead Space on PS3 for me. I bought it with Dead Space 2 when it was on sale on Amazon last week.

Also, as soon as I post this I'm going to finish up the last episode of the Strong Bad game so you can cross that off. Episodes two and three were super boring but it was worth it for episode four (the Dangeresque one) and episode five (the Trogdor one). Those two episodes redeemed the entire series for me.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
mateo wrote:

Can I mention how much I hate Blast Pit in Half Life? Because I do.

No wai! The lack of anything like Blast Pit is my biggest beef with Half Life 2.

You, Sir, are a masochist.

mateo wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
mateo wrote:

Can I mention how much I hate Blast Pit in Half Life? Because I do.

No wai! The lack of anything like Blast Pit is my biggest beef with Half Life 2.

You, Sir, are a masochist. :)

Heh, maybe. I was very F5 happy though.

I loved the Blast Pit. Great level.

The Blast Pit was mostly fine, but I got lost at one point and it took me near an hour to figure things out. At least it was memorable in that way?

Oh, and I finally started playing single player games again after a two week break that had little reason behind it. I hope to at least get Castlevania done.

So I have finished Mirror's Edge. I unfortunately had to succumb to using YouTube just to get it over and done with. I appreciate what EA tried with Mirror's Edge, I just don't think it was truly my cup of tea. Faith was such a disappointing character and EA had such a ridiculously good opportunity to portray a strong female lead without her being a she-hulk Female Doggo space marine with penis envy.

I will now move on to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (360).

I am not sure if it qualifies (yet) but I will be attempting to get Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (360) done before Dragon Age II. If so mark me down for that too!

Garden Ninja wrote:

I'm giving up on Final Fantasy XIII............

Definately a shame dude. It took me a while to get into it but I really loved it in the end. Whilst not my favourite Final Fantasy (gogo FFX) the characterization of the 3 females was (imho) far better than the males (Stupid, Emo & Token), even Vanille's weird behaviour gets explained (some-what). Lightning in particular is a very well fleshed out and I felt a lot of sympathy for her character. The burden Fang and Vanille carry did not play out quite like I expected (the guilt at their past was refreshing).

After FFXIII I am looking forward to the sequel!

Wuppie wrote:

So I have finished Mirror's Edge. I unfortunately had to succumb to using YouTube just to get it over and done with. I appreciate what EA tried with Mirror's Edge, I just don't think it was truly my cup of tea. Faith was such a disappointing character and EA had such a ridiculously good opportunity to portray a strong female lead without her being a she-hulk Female Doggo space marine with penis envy.

Whoa - what? IMO Faith was a good strong female lead, and not even remotely over stereotyped like you suggest.

Sad to hear the game play wasn't your cup of tea.... I found it to be very organic once I slipped into the world, and didn't have enormous trouble with the puzzles.... only one got me stuck for any significant length of time.

So I may have to throw in the proverbial towel on my pile games for the month, as my 360 officially Red-Ringed tonight. All told, though, I've had the thing since September of '05 '07 (that's when BioShock dropped, right? Or was it '06? EDIT: Because I apparently have no sense of time.). Either way, just got my repair request in, and I've gotta wait on the label.

So, yeah...bummer.

Wuppie wrote:

I am not sure if it qualifies (yet) but I will be attempting to get Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (360) done before Dragon Age II. If so mark me down for that too!

That one will be eligible next month. I added you to Enslaved (and fixed the title, oops).

My goal is to finish Mass Effect this month. Yeah, the first one. I have 2 here, ready to play, but since I never finished the first one, it just felt wrong to not play it.

I'm about 16 hours in, so hopefully I can do this, ADD not withstanding.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is done. Great adventure game. I'm really looking forward to the next one, but I'll probably take a bit of a break. I'm still working on CivCity. I have no idea how far in I am, but I expect that I still have a ways to go. It's been fun, though not great, and very, very similar to Caesar IV, though I found that one a bit more formulaic.

AndrewA wrote:
Wuppie wrote:

So I have finished Mirror's Edge. I unfortunately had to succumb to using YouTube just to get it over and done with. I appreciate what EA tried with Mirror's Edge, I just don't think it was truly my cup of tea. Faith was such a disappointing character and EA had such a ridiculously good opportunity to portray a strong female lead without her being a she-hulk Female Doggo space marine with penis envy.

Whoa - what? IMO Faith was a good strong female lead, and not even remotely over stereotyped like you suggest.

Sad to hear the game play wasn't your cup of tea.... I found it to be very organic once I slipped into the world, and didn't have enormous trouble with the puzzles.... only one got me stuck for any significant length of time.

So I probably didn't do a good job of explaining my thoughts on Faith.

She was by no means a bad female lead. She was an OK female lead. I probably am a little down on her due to missed opportunities than anything else.

The story in Mirror's Edge was very "shallow". I didn't feel like there was any real depth to the plot and the world itself was very vaguely detailed. This did not allow DICE the opportunity to really dig in and show what Faith was all about. Lightning from FFXIII was a much more fleshed out character (imo) but she had a game that was 50hrs (?) long and a world with bucket loads of codex entries. Mirror's Edge took maybe 5hrs to finish with maybe 30mins (??) of dialogue, not much time to establish a characters persona, goals, moral compas, agenda, fears, history etc, let alone give them the ability to respond:

Spoiler:

to their Sister being kidnapped

.......

Spoiler:

twice

with any level of complexity.

Again, my feelings are one of regret at a lost opportunity not at something done wrong. It's honestly a shame as Faith appeared to be shaping up as the kind of female protagonist that I could really get on board with (unlike Lara Croft).

I hope that clarifies what I said poorly before.

KidDork wrote:

My goal is to finish Mass Effect this month. Yeah, the first one. I have 2 here, ready to play, but since I never finished the first one, it just felt wrong to not play it.

I'm about 16 hours in, so hopefully I can do this, ADD not withstanding.

If I can offer a pointer that got me thru ME1: avoid the side missions - they're terrible, boring, and generally not worth your time. The main quest is stellar... so don't let the poor optional crap kill your enjoyment of the game.

AndrewA wrote:
KidDork wrote:

My goal is to finish Mass Effect this month. Yeah, the first one. I have 2 here, ready to play, but since I never finished the first one, it just felt wrong to not play it.

I'm about 16 hours in, so hopefully I can do this, ADD not withstanding.

If I can offer a pointer that got me thru ME1: avoid the side missions - they're terrible, boring, and generally not worth your time. The main quest is stellar... so don't let the poor optional crap kill your enjoyment of the game.

I'll be a voice of dissent and say that I didn't mind the side missions. At the very least, it's worth going through the Cerberus related missions to get an understanding of why people react the way they do towards your new employer in ME2.

I've jumped heavily into Knights of the Old Republic pretty heavily over the weekend, so I'll add that. I had it on console back in the day, but never made it past the second planet. Picked it up in the Steam sale in '09, I think, and I figure now's as good a time as any to give it another go. Sadly, I've been spoiled on the major plot point in the interim.

Wuppie wrote:

...

Garden Ninja wrote:

I'm giving up on Final Fantasy XIII............

Definately a shame dude. It took me a while to get into it but I really loved it in the end. Whilst not my favourite Final Fantasy (gogo FFX) the characterization of the 3 females was (imho) far better than the males (Stupid, Emo & Token), even Vanille's weird behaviour gets explained (some-what). Lightning in particular is a very well fleshed out and I felt a lot of sympathy for her character. The burden Fang and Vanille carry did not play out quite like I expected (the guilt at their past was refreshing).

After FFXIII I am looking forward to the sequel!

Maybe. Like I said, I like almost everything about it, including the story and characters, but actually playing it felt like a slog. I'd like to find out what happens to the characters, and about the rest of the story, but not enough push through gameplay that I'm not enjoying. I did sell it (mailed it out at lunch actually), but it's cheap enough that I could always get it again, should the mood strike me. For now, though, I'm just not feeling it. I'd watch a movie/anime series/whatever of it in a heartbeat though.

------------------------

For the end of the month, I'm going to try to finish Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on 360, which I think (barely) qualifies. I just got to the second disc, and started Chapter 7, out of 12 I think. Not sure how long I've played, but it is supposedly a 20 hours game, so that should leave me with around 10, which is definitely doable by the end of the month.

I sort of hit my goal of 5 hours on Baldur's Gate, but nearly all of that was messing with the Character Creator, so not sure it counts. Probably gonna play a bunch of that this weekend.

billt721 wrote:
AndrewA wrote:
KidDork wrote:

My goal is to finish Mass Effect this month. Yeah, the first one. I have 2 here, ready to play, but since I never finished the first one, it just felt wrong to not play it.

I'm about 16 hours in, so hopefully I can do this, ADD not withstanding.

If I can offer a pointer that got me thru ME1: avoid the side missions - they're terrible, boring, and generally not worth your time. The main quest is stellar... so don't let the poor optional crap kill your enjoyment of the game.

I'll be a voice of dissent and say that I didn't mind the side missions. At the very least, it's worth going through the Cerberus related missions to get an understanding of why people react the way they do towards your new employer in ME2.

I'll add my voice of dissent as well, driving the Mako can be tedious and some of the insides of buildings do look the same, but the side missions really help flesh out the universe more.

I did the same thing you are doing, got ME2 before I finished ME1. I thought playing through as much of ME1 as possible set the stage so well for ME2 (and not just the Cerberus stuff either) that when I began ME2, I felt like I was even more immersed in the Mass Effect universe and it made where BioWare took the store in ME2 even more engaging. Just my two cents (credits).

I just beat Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Overall, I thought it was a great game. I know people complained that it was "Castlevania in name only", and from a gameplay perspective, at least, they are right. It isn't a Metroidvania, but it is a decent hack'n'slash.

The story and world were at least thematically similar to classic Castlevania, even if the gameplay wasn't. I'm not familiar enough with the series to know if it goes beyond that though.

The ending was... uh, interesting. I'd play a part 2.

Spoiler:

"Eu sunt Dracul!"

I'm curious how they reconcile that if they make a sequel.

Finished:

Art Style: Orbient (Wiiware) - A great and simple concept - use gravity and repulsion of various bodies as well as getting caught in orbit of larger masses to guide your globe to merge with equally sized bodies (to grow) and capture smaller ones in your own orbit. The execution is good and even serene at times. I especially liked that the music would change depending on the number of satellites orbiting your planetoid. The final stage was really frustrating, however, as it took me over 25 attempts and I frequently failed at the very end. Then some "extra levels" opened up. I took one look at the first one and quit out

(unannounced)
Gargoyle's Quest II: The Demon Darkness (NES) - Billed as a combination side-scroller and RPG (lite), this NES follow-up to the Gameboy original is REALLY tough in spots. Seriously, the Doppelganger boss can go ...do something to himself. The concept is neat and the graphics, sound, and contol are respectable, but I just didn't feel agile enough to compete with some of the really fast bosses. I also wished for some more rpg elements such as EXP allowing me to grind and become more powerful in order to make things easier. All I got was the ability to earn more extra lives. While your character does become progressively more powerful, it doesn't matter much as the game becomes harder at at least the same rate. It's pretty good, although the frustration factor will detract from the fun at times.

I'm also getting quite close on Divine Divinity and Mega Man 9, but need to concentrate on Metro 2033 and P.N.03 for the monthly pile thread. I've been grinding trial missions for P.N.03 to get a more powerful suit to make things easier (Intera Blazer, with twice the shot power), but the enemies suddenly became tougher too

Well, Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising are done.

The last mission of Chaos Rising was a pain, but that's mostly because I missed the last boss with both of my orbital bombardments, and had to play the "attack a little bit, retreat, come back and attack some more" game. Eventually, I wore him down, but man, did that take a long time. The last mission clocked in at 72 minutes, and that was my second attempt.

I'm tempted to add Crysis for this month, but I'm going to see how much I play today before committing.

Having trouble with CivCity: Rome. Initially, it had a lot of similarities to Caesar IV. As the game progressed though, I keep running into frustration with the housing upgrades and their importance in achieving mission objectives.

At first it is very easy to get houses upgraded. Some meat, well water, tunics. Each mission adds new building types and it gets tricky to plan city layouts that make all of those resources available to your residences, because each are vital to get houses to upgrade. What's worse is that the same city will span 2 or 3 missions, so as new building types are added, you have to figure out a way to incorporate them into your existing city layout.

And then you get the situation where a house needs something (like a visit to a Bathhouse) in order to upgrade, but the residents simply won't go. Or you have a lot of an item (like olive oil) that accumulates in 1 warehouse/granary, and you have to play a game of Twister in order to spread the resources evenly across your city.