Clearing the Pile is a Labor of Love

Late to the party I suppose, but I'll blame it on no internet for a week or so. Here's my pile games for the month:

Mirror's Edge - 360/Multi
The Force Unleashed - 360/Multi
FFXII - PS2

The cool part is that all I have left is FFXII, since I beat the other two while waiting for internet. The bad part is that FFXII will probably spill into next month, since I'm a sidequest whore.

AnimeJ wrote:

The bad part is that FFXII will probably spill into next month, since I'm a sidequest whore.

I wish you luck with this one. I'm the same way, and I still haven't finished FF12.

Add on Lit (WiiWare) and Condemned: Criminal Origins (360) for me, please. I'm mostly done with Lit, and I think I'll tackle Condemned while my wife and son are out of town next week. I try not to play excessively violent games while he's around, so I'll take this opportunity to play a particularly bloody one.

adam.greenbrier wrote:

Condemned: Criminal Origins. I try not to play excessively violent games while he's around, so I'll take this opportunity to play a particularly bloody one.

Oh man, that one's on my pile as well (along with its sequel). Hope you get further than I did - I tapped out after the very first fight. The investigative stuff seemed pretty eerie; good atmospheric attention.

I've finished Resistance: Fall of Man, earlier than I expected. I was slightly underwhelmed. The great reviews made me expect too much.

I should put something else up here, so I think I'll go for Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction for the PS3. Brightly colored and silly sound good right now.

philucifer wrote:

I've finished Resistance: Fall of Man, earlier than I expected. I was slightly underwhelmed. The great reviews made me expect too much.

System launch goggles.

And the story of Solid Snake comes to a close. Metal Gear Solid 4 is off the pile (though I fully expect to play it again, possibly many times).

I'm gonna be bold and sign up for 2 titles; GTA4 and Dead Space, both on 360. When GTA4 came out I played it a lot and liked it, until I got stuck in one of the later missions for the italian maffia boss. Now I want to get back in and finish this one.
Dead Space isn't very long and I'm about halfway through, so that one should be doable too. I have to finish these two before I can justify getting something new, like perhaps Dirt 2 or Batman: Arkham Asylum...

Metroid Prime is complete! Well, about 87% percent complete. There isn't much I can do about that. I found as many items as I could on my own and I have no idea where those final items could be. I've been through every single area multiple times and I'm still missing creatures from the log book. As a result, I saw the incomplete ending. I had to check youtube to see the good ending but it was something I already knew. Oh well.

Side Note: Metroids are freakin adorable.

Until they latch onto your face.

Vrikk wrote:

Until they latch onto your face.

Aww. That's just their special way of saying "Hello!"

The most adorable thing about the metroids in MP was their method of attack. They perform a really cute mid-air dance before charging their target. Skip to 3:00 to see it. It reminds me of the way cats wiggle before they pounce. So cute!

There, I'm done, I finished GTA4 today and I can safely say I will not be returning to Liberty City any time soon. Not to say my stay was an unpleasant one, but it was long and frustrating at times.
I got the game on release day and played probably through 80% of the main missions and a LOT of side missions. Then I got stuck in a very frustrating mission for one of the italian maffia guys, which made me not wanna play anymore. Recently a friend borrowed my copy and finished it in less than a week, which made me wanna try again. I plowed through the last 20% of the story mode, ignoring the side missions this time. Some very cool shootouts, but quite a lot of frustration too. So now I'm done, up next, Dead Space... And my final thoughts on the game? Very good, not great, not worthy of the hype, but over a year after its release, that seems to be the general consensus...

I just finished the second mission of Thief, meaning I've now played twice as much TDP as I ever had—though that had still been enough for me to declare possibly the greatest game ever made.

Beatles: Rock Band took a big chunk out of last week, but now it's back to Garrett. It also took me 3 hours to play those two missions on Hard, so I think I better set it to Normal and step it up if I'm going to finish this before the hockey season starts.

I don't know why I always just played Lord Bafford's Manor over and over without progressing. Maybe it was the zombies in Cragscleft. Well the Bonehoard is next, so...

Mystic Violet wrote:
Vrikk wrote:

Until they latch onto your face.

Aww. That's just their special way of saying "Hello!"

The most adorable thing about the metroids in MP was their method of attack. They perform a really cute mid-air dance before charging their target. Skip to 3:00 to see it. It reminds me of the way cats wiggle before they pounce. So cute! :D

Except cats don't feed on your life force.

As to pile games:

Mirror's Edge was really good. Not $60 good, but most definitely $15 good. The story was kinda so-so in a cheesy 1984 kinda way, but I really enjoyed it. The gameplay was over the top, if annoying in cases.

Force Unleashed, however was probably the biggest letdown of a game EVER for me. Especially the star destroyer sequence. Oh man, I wanted to shoot someone over that.

But onwards with the palette cleanser: FFXII. I was most of the way through that when I got stuck on a sidequest and started over for the month; I'm about 5-6 hours in now.

AnimeJ wrote:

But onwards with the palette cleanser: FFXII. I was most of the way through that when I got stuck on a sidequest and started over for the month; I'm about 5-6 hours in now.

You cleanse your palette? The colours, they will never come out!
/Wordsmythe

FFXII is a great game, but one of those games I have never managed to finish. I wish I had your fortitude!

Y'know, I'm on a roll with Mass Effect right now, so let's add that.

Drop me in for Mass Effect as well... I'm about 1/3rd of a way through playthrough #3, and I think I can balls it out within two weeks.

Clemenstation wrote:

Drop me in for Mass Effect as well... I'm about 1/3rd of a way through playthrough #3, and I think I can balls it out within two weeks.

First Shadow Complex, now this? If we are both playing the same game after Mass Effect, I'm going to think that you're stalking me, either that or that I'm a pretty good sleepstalker...

I finished Lit. I'll post a review of it later when I get a chance.

Clemenstation wrote:

Drop me in for Mass Effect as well... I'm about 1/3rd of a way through playthrough #3, and I think I can balls it out within two weeks.

I don't think it counts as clearing your pile if instead of playing something you never got around to you choose to play a game you've already completed twice.

trueheart78 wrote:

First Shadow Complex, now this? If we are both playing the same game after Mass Effect, I'm going to think that you're stalking me, either that or that I'm a pretty good sleepstalker...

;)

I call dibs on Condemned next month! Don't try to copy me...

kuddles wrote:

I don't think it counts as clearing your pile if instead of playing something you never got around to you choose to play a game you've already completed twice.

Yeah, but the way I view my pile is rather different from most. For me, Mass Effect remains on the pile until I polish off the last achievement. It's something that I've itemized 'to do' in terms of finishing backlogged games.

My name is Clemenstation and I'm an achievement addict

Rallick wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

But onwards with the palette cleanser: FFXII. I was most of the way through that when I got stuck on a sidequest and started over for the month; I'm about 5-6 hours in now.

You cleanse your palette? The colours, they will never come out!
/Wordsmythe

FFXII is a great game, but one of those games I have never managed to finish. I wish I had your fortitude! :-(

Knew I misspelled that, too lazy to look up a fix

As to FFXII, I was 70 hours in when I hit a brick wall trying to get into Nabudis; I had 3/4 pieces of the first medal and couldn't get the last, because the guy you talk to near the old guy in lowtown vanished.

Just put Silent Hill to rest with the good+ ending thanks to usage of a walkthrough...some of the things necessary for the good endings are impossible to know without having played through the game at least once before.

The graphics for today look awful, but sometimes this works to the game's benefit, allowing your imagination to take over and expect the worst. The limited hardware produced a limited draw distance, which the designers used to full effect by simply hiding everything outside of a certain radius via fog or darkness. This allows the sound design to shine and your imagination to run wild! The sound and music are downright STELLAR and arguably contribute more to the oppressive gloom and outright spooks than any other element in the game. Controls are archaic as expected, but can be mastered to some degree, although I never quite felt like I had the combat down as well as I would have liked. Some poor camera angles also allow a few enemies to hit you without you having any chance to see them first (see: Sewer section). The voice "acting" is another part of the game that fills you with terror; it's that bad! However, the story manages to overcome this in glorious fashion, and features a few downright touching moments; something I completely didn't expect in a survival horror game!

Overall, Silent Hill has plenty of things it can be faulted for, but it bears remembering that this is one of the earliest titles in the genre. It was very ambitious and it succeeded! Anytime I felt I was getting "comfortable" with the game**, it would throw new challenges at me which would ratchet up the tension again, leaving me creeping along walls, and running blindly through the streets from seen and unseen horrors, desperately looking for refuge!

HIGHLY recommended!

**This is the big fault of Clive Barker's Undying - it was only scary in the early going when everything was new and I was weak. Later, having "learned the ropes" of the game world, enemies, and my own powers, and having gotten better weapons, the fear factor nearly vanished.

-----------------------
I'm feeling ambitious - please add Bone: The Great Cow Race (PC) as a cheery, colorful palate cleanser.
Coming back to "gory", however, let's also see if I can knock off Prey (PC/multi) and Call of Duty 2 (PC) before the end of the month!

AUs_TBirD, since you liked Silent Hill so much, I encourage you to check out Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams and Silent Hill 4: The Room, if you haven't already. They're both simply brilliant. (I haven't played the third or fifth entries in the series, but I'm told they aren't as good as the others.)

Silent Hill 2 scares the pants off me. Sure, I could just be a coward, but even with the lights on I can only take about ten minutes of that game at a time. Never mind alone and in the dark. Great game though!

I am made of fail, the 17th of the month and Valkyria Chronicles hasn't even come out of the case. Hopefully, I'll pay it some before the end of the month.

adam.greenbrier wrote:

AUs_TBirD, since you liked Silent Hill so much, I encourage you to check out Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams and Silent Hill 4: The Room, if you haven't already. They're both simply brilliant. (I haven't played the third or fifth entries in the series, but I'm told they aren't as good as the others.)

I have played some of SH2 on the XBox, but became distracted after maybe 2 hours (this was back when I just sampled a bit of almost every half-decent game that came out), but I liked enough of what I saw to pick up SH1 on the Playstation (which I finally dug into now 5+ years later - the shame!), as well as SH3 and SH4 for PC, which I haven't even put in the disc tray yet, years after buying them.

SH2 will be reattempted in the coming months - it's gotta be fantastic if even Yahtzee likes it

Hemidal wrote:

I am made of fail, the 17th of the month and Valkyria Chronicles hasn't even come out of the case. Hopefully, I'll pay it some before the end of the month.

Don't feel horrible; DDO has grabbed my attention and refuses to let go for FFXII. I think I'll make a stab at it tonight though, after the kidlets are in bed.

AnimeJ wrote:
Hemidal wrote:

I am made of fail, the 17th of the month and Valkyria Chronicles hasn't even come out of the case. Hopefully, I'll pay it some before the end of the month.

Don't feel horrible; DDO has grabbed my attention and refuses to let go for FFXII. I think I'll make a stab at it tonight though, after the kidlets are in bed.

I haven't double clicked Witcher, I've been playing Empire Total War. Now I am installing Elemental too. Sorry Geralt, not this month.

On a related note, I think October will be the last Pile clearing for 2009. Too much new hotness in November and December. We'll pick it back up in January 2010.