What games are you currently playing?

[Ufgt]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I wish Trine was more like Lost Vikings.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Redoing Lost Odyssey and finally made it to the 4th disc after 95 hours. And if I remember correctly, this disc has a shit load of stuff to do on it too.

[Khalus]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Redoing Lost Odyssey and finally made it to the 4th disc after 95 hours. And if I remember correctly, this disc has a shit load of stuff to do on it too.

Oh man...loved that game but never got to beat it. Get this, I buy a brand new 360, I had it for about 2 months before I purchased this game. And the entire time playing I spent countless hrs in every zone getting as much XP as possible, every chest, searching everywhere and doing all the side quests before moving on. Almost maxed out every character!

So now I'm at well over 100 hrs, and getting ready to confront the final area, and I quit for the night. The next day I go to fire up my 360 and my HDD had crashed and locked up and I lost my save files. I did everything possible to retrieve them before sending it into MS to get it replaced. Couple weeks later when I got the new HDD back, I decided to just sell the 360 which helped me fund the 40" HDTV I use for my PC monitor now...rofl

I lost saves for many other RPGs and games too, including a competed Tales of Vesperia I was working on getting all the achievements for that require multiple play-throughs to acquire....blah

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Finished Shadow of the Colossus, only one thing kept it from absolute greatness for me and it was the one enemy I wasn't allowed to kill.

The "cinematic" camera.

Seriously, it made the first and last fights of the game much, much harder than they needed to be. Giants trying to shake me off them I can understand, they aren't supposed to be reliable footing to start with. The camera panning against where I want to see things, though, annoyed me to the point it really just killed the immersion factor.

It was cool to see how it kind of could be connected to Ico, too, but I can't consider it a better game because Ico accomplished many of the same things this game did without needing violence to market it.

Also, if Ico and SotC do not get the "trilogy" collection treatment that God of War has gotten, then Sony just fails at marketing hardcore.

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

1- The camera needed improvement, but for the most part is was a great addition. The only part I can think of where it really gave me troubles was like you mentioned on the final boss, when he was waving Wander around.
2- Ico had violence. It didn't have fighting like SOTC, but you still had enemies in your path. Either way, SOTC is still an incredible game; why would violence make it any worse? It wouldn't work without it.
3- You really haven't heard of Trico? It's been talked about so long that they've already released a teaser trailer, and then ONE YEAR LATER released an actual trailer with newer graphics. They announced the name and I've forgotten it. We're talking like last summer here.

Here, I googled that for you: The Last Guardian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

3- You really haven't heard of Trico? It's been talked about so long that they've already released a teaser trailer, and then ONE YEAR LATER released an actual trailer with newer graphics. They announced the name and I've forgotten it. We're talking like last summer here.

I'm well aware of The Last Guardian, hence that whole comment about a trilogy collection. Ico more than deserves a reissue in some form. Preferably a nice widescreen, HD one.

Also, you and I know they made a more violent game in SotC because Ico didn't sell for the lack of it. Don't tell me there wasn't a little boardroom decision affecting it. They could spin it however they liked, but they needed to make up for Ico's lacking sales. Sony couldn't just take it on the chin as an artistic effort and put them up to making something in a similar vein with more outright violence.

Ico had a kid waving a stick at whispy shadows to drive them away - they would only come back later. People complained about it because it didn't feel violent.

If you think boardroom decisions don't affect game design, feel free to explain the disparity in difficulty and image with the six Zelda games. Listening to fans too much has been the franchise's core problem, Spirit Tracks is not really any less mindbending than Majora's Mask was, Majora's Mask just dare to ditch formula.

Team Ico managed to pull something classy off with SotC anyway, but it still didn't accomplish anything more than what Ico had already done - it just sold to more people because you could stab things and watch them bleed. The narrative portions boggled the minds of anyone that needed their hands held, you know, just like Ico.

Goes back to my whole problem with people being spoonfed narratives for so long, we really need less heavy-handed storytelling in games.

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I'm well aware of The Last Guardian, hence that whole comment about a trilogy collection.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Nevermind abotu that part.

And no, I don't believe SOTC was influenced very significantly by Ico's market performance. If Sony wanted Team ICO to do something with mass market appeal, they would've made something far, far different. I don't buy the 'people didn't like ICO because it lacked violence' argument because nobody fucking bought Ico; including myself. I'm still hoping for some way to obtain a copy at a sane cost. People that are mindless wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

Maybe Team ICO has a plan laid out for the 'series', maybe they just have little references to create a world while telling otherwise unrelated stories. But I don't think Sony has much interest in fucking with their product, and I don't think SOTC was created as the result of some executive saying "ok, Ico, but with stabbing". I don't seem to recall people bitching about SOTC saying that Argo should've been huge, winged, not a horse, and central to gameplay mechanics, yet that's what we're getting out of The Last Guardian. Chances are that--if they didn't need the violence to convey this part of a story they want to tell--it was done because that's the gameplay they wanted to do. People that go and make revolutionary games tend to realize that the way to keep things going is to continue to be revolutionary, instead of releasing the same thing again. Really, do you want to play games by Team ICO, or do you want to play ICO2: More Hand-holding? There's absolutely nothing wrong with the formula either game took-- they're different, and that's it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

And no, I don't believe SOTC was influenced very significantly by Ico's market performance. If Sony wanted Team ICO to do something with mass market appeal, they would've made something far, far different. I don't buy the 'people didn't like ICO because it lacked violence' argument because nobody fucking bought Ico; including myself. I'm still hoping for some way to obtain a copy at a sane cost. People that are mindless wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

Uh, you do realize that there was nothing else to play on the PS2 when Ico came out, with the possible exception of Devil May Cry a few weeks later. That whole drought between PS2's release and games really picking up lasted about eight months.

Ico released to no competition whatsoever. That being the case, it should have sold well, but it didn't. So that's why I reach for the violence argument. A lot of people complained about the lack of violence, for some people blood and M ratings are selling points. Not you, and not me, but it is the case for a lot of people.

A month later, you had Devil May Cry and a month after that, you had FFX. People held out for those. SCEA's lack of marketing for Ico did not help matters.

[Lmnop]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I remember someone telling me about Ico. Something like "It's a puzzle game, not an action game. You have to get this princess through a series of puzzles to escape the castle." I was picturing something like FFT-graphics, flash puzzle game mechanics. Obviously, the game didn't appeal to me.

And now it's one of my favorite games ever made.

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

That being the case, it should have sold well, but it didn't.

SCEA's lack of marketing for Ico did not help matters.

Just because there isn't a competitor doesn't mean something will do well. Think of how few people heard of Ico, knew what it was, and had that concept appeal to them. As Lmnop points out, there's also the problem of the game being hard to describe. Also keep in mind that people will hold out for other things-- those people could just as easily have been clenching their fists for FFX. People waiting for the PS2 were a big reason for the fall of the Dreamcast. Maybe the lack of violence did hurt sales, but that has nothing to do with SOTC's gameplay, and definitely does not make SOTC a worse game just because it didn't follow a pacifist formula.

[Khalus]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Mass Effect II now!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Actually, Ico is pretty easy to describe:

Remember how Super Metroid made you really want Mother Brain dead? Remember Prince of Persia had all the platforming he did? Remember the language barrier of Out of this World and the intro to Zelda: A Link to the Past before Zelda is kidnapped? Remember how half of Castaway with Tom Hanks had little dialog before he started talking to a volleyball? Ico is all those things and then some.

Its an experience that's more organic an elemental than it is cinematic. The story is interpreted, not told.

That wasn't too hard.

Anyway, what am I playing.

Started Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, downloaded Dark Void Zero and Trajectile for the DSi. All are awesome.

Dark Void Zero is probably 100x better than the PS3/360 game. Its such a throwback to stuff like Bionic Commando they even make you blow out the NES cart on screen before you can start the game. You also get five lives and no continues. And the MIDI music is classic Capcom.

Trajectile is like a hybrid of Breakout and Missile Command by Nintendo and Q-Games, except the ball and paddle is replaced with the missiles. You break targets embedded behind other bricks with missiles that can either ricochet off of. drill through or detonate a certain number of bricks. Its very cool.

Both Dark Void Zero and Trajectile are 500 points each on DSi Ware. Worth every penny too.

As for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - Enjoying it so far, its pretty much what I want from a Silent Hill game. The series would be better served to actually play up to the differences between thier protagonists rather than make them all the same. Harry Mason is a hack writer, he should be running scared from these things, not fighting them.

And all that rubbish about a cult and and evil god - not here. Its the video game version of the Twilight Zone I've always viewed Silent Hill as, only expressed better this time.

[Gobo]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Tales of Eternia. Working on unlocking Reid's Hi-ougis before going after the Cameo fights and beating the game.

[Durahansolo]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Mass Effect II now!

I wish I could go to the midnight release >_> but I'll get mine Tuesday.

[DakAttack]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I wish I could go to the midnight release >_> but I'll get mine Tuesday.

I don't understand how people can enjoy standing in line for that stuff. Instead of staying up late, just wake up early. Sheesh.