GI exam is over, and it was very hard. Luckily, these feelings were prevalent among my class mates, so maybe some questions will be thrown out (though not likely). I think I passed, but otherwise it was not my best exam. HST is on Wednesday, so after this post I have to stop procrastinating and start learning about all those things that Dermatologists consider important... zits and warts mostly.
If you don't play games... ignore the rest of this post.
It seems that I have developed a routine where around this time of year I start looking through gamerankings.com, bomb, and other sites to get myself caught up on what has happened in the world of gaming. I don't follow the news as thoroughly as I used to, probably because I have less time to play games now. So instead of waiting eagerly for anything decent to come out to fill up some empty time, I now have to carefully pick out what games are actually worth spending my precious free time on.
One thing I noticed this fall is that my PC is now two years old. When I first built it, there were a lot of exciting PC titles coming out. Bioshock, COD4 modern warfare, Crysis, and the Orange Box (with Portal, Episode 2, and TF2) all came out around that fall and kept me busy for my entire senior year at Hope. Two years later, I am looking back and noticing that PC releases have been SLOW since that time. Left 4 dead was good but I didn't play much beyond the demo. While most games are multiplatform these days, the games coming out for PC lately have been ones that I would rather have on a console (Braid, RE5, ect). I kind of ignored Far Cry 2 and Mass Effect, but neither seemed like must play games from the reviews I read. I hope that Starcraft II, Diablo III, and HL Episode 3 will come out (among other good games, hopefully) and give me a reason to fire up the PC and get windows 7, and maybe a new wide-screen monitor.
My first year at Baylor I found time to play Crysis in the fall (which I had put off due to TF2), and I played Super Mario Galaxy and Metal Gear 4 in the spring. I am currently playing Metroid Prime III, and GTA4 is still sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to give it another shot. I was so bored the first hour I played that I put it down and haven't gone back, but everyone says it is so good I feel like I should try again sometime.
Here is a list of games I am considering for this year. I'll order them roughly by how excited I am to play them:
- Uncharted 2: among theives - PS3
- Infamous - PS3
- COD 4 modern warfare 2 - PC
- Flower - PSN
- Final Fantasy VII - PSN (I have never played it before)
- RE 5 - PS3
- R & C: a crack in time - PS3
- Braid - PS3/PSN or PC
- Trine - PSN or PC
- Batman Arkham Asylum - PS3
Uncharted 2 seems to be getting fantastic reviews from everyone and looks like a great game. Infamous didn't have perfect reviews, but the game looks awesome. Flower and FFVII are cheap and both seem like something fun to do. And the first COD modern warfare was such a thrilling single player campaign, I might replay it and then move on to the sequel. From about RE5 down I am not sure if I should waste my time. Let me know what you think, especially if you have played some of these before (or are currently playing)!
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The first hour of GTAIV is essentially the (regrettably unskippable) tutorial, so you should give it another shot. It's probably my favorite game of this generation, and I'm eagerly awaiting the Ballad of Gay Tony DLC this fall. As far as the games on your list:
1. Uncharted 2 - I'm playing it now, and it is pretty good. I was put off at first because it takes some getting used to the style of gameplay (it's very different than other shooters), but I'm liking it more as I get into it. I just finished a level that takes place on a train speeding through a jungle that was absolutely dynamite.
It is very scripted and linear, which I tend to find less interesting than more free-form games, but you may disagree.
2. Infamous - I played through Infamous earlier this fall. I liked the action, but hated the story. I tried to play evil side, and they did a terrible job of really fleshing it out. You go on a lot of missions that only really make sense from the 'good side' perspective. So if you do get this, just go good. But really, if you want an open-world game, you should probably just play GTA4.
3. COD - I'm probably skipping this, due to too much other stuff to play. Did you play CoD4?
4. Flower - Is totally awesome, and playable in 2 hours. No reason not to get it. You could finish it tonight.
5. Final Fantasy VII - Don't get it. It is beloved because it was the first Final Fantasy with 3d graphics and CG. Without the "wow factor" of new technology, it's pretty bad. You'll end up playing it for 30 minutes and then never touching it again.
6. RE5 - Get Dead Space instead. It's the same type of game as Resident Evil, but your character doesn't move like a tank, and it successfully cribs a few elements from System Shock that make it even more awesome. Namely, it has audio logs, brilliant and scary sound design, and some light RPG elements. In fact, I'd move Dead Space to the top of your list (more better than Infamous or Uncharted imo). And, I don't think you'll find anyone out there who prefers RE5 to Dead Space.
7. R&C - I did you play Going Commando? I did, and found it to be more of the same. But maybe that's what you want. Or maybe Crack in Time is supposed to be more innovative.
8. Braid - You should have played this already. It is excellent. I think it would play fine on PC if you don't care to wait for the PSN version.
9. Trine - I'll be getting this myself soon, probably right after I finish Uncharted. I'll let you know what I think.
10. Batman - And if I don't get Trine, it might be Batman. It looks pretty sweet.
I also might pick up Borderlands. If you haven't heard of it, it's Diablo crossed with a First Person Shooter. It's supposed to be very good.
-Still Bryan not logging in
And yes, I did write "more better" in that last comment. I'm going to claim editing mistake.
Would Dead Space be better on PC or PS3? I know you said the sound is a big part of that game, so would it be better to have surround? Or is it FPS style controls where I might much prefer keyboard and mouse?
I'd go with PS3. The surround is crucial. And even though it moves more fluidly, the perspective and aiming mechanism are similar to RE4, so it plays well with a controller.
Windows Vista is a reason to get Windows 7. I've been using the beta and RC since February and I love it. The new taskbar is better than OSX's dock.
Yeah, it seems like Windows 7 might be the first OS that I am excited to go out and buy (a strange concept)! Plus they have finally made the pricing somewhat reasonable. You can get an OEM copy (full version, not upgrade) at newegg.com for $109 for home premium, and the other two versions aren't much more. That seems like a reasonable deal to me.
I too am looking for some new good games to play... I haven't been keeping up with my gaming like I should be.
Uncharted 2 manages to get better as it goes. Be on the lookout for the truck chase near the end of the game, it's one of the coolest action sequences I've played in any game.
The reviews are starting to make sense.
I finished Uncharted today, and I'm very interested to see what you think of the game. It went from challenging-but-fun to stupid-hard at the end of the game (all on the default difficulty).
It has some stats you can check at the end - in the course of my 9:52 of playtime, I died 112 times. Consider that the game has about 90 minutes of interactive cutscenes and probably 2 hours of platforming where deaths are rare, and that I probably died 3x as much during the combat in the final third of the game versus the first part. That means I was dying on average more than once every 2.5 minutes during the final third of the game. That's too difficult to be fun in my mind.
It's especially too difficult for what's supposed to be a story-driven cinematic game. In these types of games you want it to be difficult enough that there's a real sense of danger, but easy enough that a person rarely actually dies. Otherwise, it screws up the pacing of the story. If each Nazi gunfight in Raiders of the Lost Ark had to be replayed 3-5 times before moving on to the exploration or drama, it would be a terrible movie.
What's more, when the game gets stupid-hard, it changes how you approach the combat for the worse. Combat starts as a highly dynamic experience where you are moving among cover, flanking dudes, shooting from the hip, and using a lot of melee. But, the end of the game confronts you with multiple heavily-armored enemies who are immune to melee, kill you in 1-3 shots, and come at you from every direction at once. The tactics that worked early on are totally ineffective. Your only choice is to hunker down in one spot and try to cheese the flaws in the AI.
Like I said, I'm very interested to see what you think of the game, especially if you end up playing it on Easy or Very Easy. The massive difficulty spike at the end isn't the only flaw in the game, but I think the others would be less noticeable without the difficulty. (For example, the camera would have annoyed me less if it didn't cause me to die in a fight I had already replayed six times). Anyways, I'd probably give the game something like a 7.5-8.0 as it stands now, which puts me significantly at odds with most opinions on the game. But maybe I'm just getting old and sucky.
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