Right now I am playing playing these games.
Mass effect 2
Halo-3
Need for speed-Underground.

Was doing HoN for abit. kinda like DotA

HoN?

i've been severely hooked on 'Anno:1404 - Dawn of Discovery'.

the easiest way to describe it so far is like simcity crossed with civilization during the middle ages. it's more of a 'city building' game where the focus is primarily on developing your island colonies and managing ocean trade routes. i'm up to the 6th of 8 missions in the campaign and have yet to develop a land army and only started building combat capable ships on the last mission.

anyone looking for a change of pace from the typical run and gun FPS games or 'new' sports/racing titles (with updated rosters / shinier cars!!!) will find plenty of game to chew on with this title.

http://static.4players.de/premium/Sp...over_hires.jpg

Haven't actually gotten to try it it yet, really want to though. Anyone here played it?

^ haven't tried it yet but the reviews i've seen aren't exactly thrilling. it looked like a cross between STALKER and Hellgate London when i checked the trailers a while back, unfortunately from the reviews it seems to have fallen more on the Hellgate side of the fence.

Phantasy Star Ep. I & II on GameCube. chea....

really?

Watch the quick look on giantbomb.com

It looks like a really strong narrative expireance, with sub-par gameplay. Which I'm cool with, because i love post-apocalyptic shit

Wasn't hellgate a mmo? I don't get the connection

giantbomb has the same trailers i've already seen, and i'm not watching the entirety of the 25 minute 'quick' look, either way.... hellgate 'was' an mmo in that you could pay to play online.

in reality it was a very linear shooter that took place primarily in underground tunnels though in hellgate's case it was more of a spiritual apocalypse that lead to the downfall of modern society. while it's a novel twist it's a boring game.

after 5 minutes of that quick look all i can think is hellgate dressed up like stalker. if that sounds appealing to you by all means do it up, personally i'll go back to stalker's zone before exploring metro's tunnels. (if you haven't tried stalker in the past it's definitely worth a shot).

so... after 10 minutes they finally get into action and yeah... not horrible but not exactly awesome. especially not the first footage with the glaring screen slicing going on.

has 81% on metacritic, which is great in my book.

Game is based off a promising book. Plus, did you watch far enough into the parts where they go above surface?

Kinda interesting how you gotta wear a oxygen mask which gets noticeabley damaged without the use of any corney meters or stats.

The thing is, i dig FPS, but i'm limited to consoles. So that gives me the option of playing Call of Duty or some FPS exactly like COD.

Something like this is enticing.

But yeah, it definitly looks kinda rough around the edges.

yeah i jumped ahead and saw the surface stuff, again, very hellgate via stalker but whatever. if you're liking it then great. the oxygen mask thing sounds pretty novel too, just hope it doesn't end up feeling like a gimmick when you're actually playing.

just that to me it looked too familiar and derivative, then again, it's an FPS, the last time i played one that truly wow-ed me was the original Unreal Tournament. holy crap did that ever break our dorm, one guy even had it running on my old Pentium 120 after i sold it to him after our first term (yay student loan P2 400 wooo! haha)

as for being limited to consoles... how do you post? hehehe it's also too bad you end up missing out on the odder games that don't have the appeal or financing to be ported to the consoles.

Ugh, FPSes on consoles .. I'm sure if it was possible to set up a team of pc players vs. a team of console players in a multiplayer FPS on XBOX live, the PC players would on average kick so much ass. In FPS games, the keyboard/mouse combo is so superior to the current joysticks I don't even bother playing such games on my xbox :p: Of course, I have to get some value out of my expensive gaming mouse as well.

http://www.gametab.com/images/ss/gcn/1010/box-l.jpg

I'm really enjoying this one. The fact that it's one of the most visually striking games I've ever played really puts it on the short list of favorite games for me. What amazes me though, according to things I've read about it, is that the visual style was actually "controversial" at the time of its release.

^Zelda : The Wind Waker was brilliant, I thought .. A pleasure to play from start to finish. :)

I'm saying. Cryostasis looks pretty interesting to me too. I had to slog through Orange Box on ps3 :(

this was the original trailer for it in 2000.



It blew my mind

then the next a couple years later we get got this..

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/preview...nd_waker_3.jpg

I think the final design is way more visually appealing than the earlier design you posted. The initial design looks like "generic 3D video game" to me, while the finished version of Wind Waker has a style that I find quite unique.

The still image you chose, of course, is lame looking. So for comparison's sake I found a beta trailer for the finished design that's a more reasonable comparison to the video you posted:

i used to hold fast to this attitude as well. but after a couple of years with a PS3 in the living room, it feels weird to play FPS games on the pc now.

there's also the fact that most FPS games are tailored to play on consoles now and a lot of those tweaks get ported to the pc as well. like the slight auto-aiming to compensate for having to use and analog stick instead of a mouse. a lot of times it doesn't matter how accurate you are with your mouse pointer since the game is either going to be compensating for the sticks on the gamepad of the 'realism' effect based on the quality of your gun. your shot will be within the targeting reticle but not necessarily where you're actually aiming.

it's like anything else though, the more you do it the better you get at it. i remember people getting kicked out of Quake servers for 'cheating' by circle strafing. for those unfamiliar, circle strafing is to move sideways while shooting and turning to keep facing your target. that used to be called a cheat because not all gamers had developed the ability to click the mouse AND move it AND hit 2-3 keys at the same time. in today's games that normal movement and i'm sure that with more and more FPS games coming out for consoles first and pc second we'll see more and more advances coming from that side of the spectrum.

not too long ago i played through the entirety of Borderlands on the PS3 and not once did i find myself thinking man i wish i had a mouse. whether that's a change in myself or a change in the development of the games is anyone's guess. while the pc vs. console experiment would be super interesting, i'm thinking it would turn out to be a whole lot tighter than most people expect.

Yeah my views are more or less the same when it comes to console FPS's. I'm quite competent at both and really don't have a preference anymore. Certain games are more tailored for the PC, just as Crysis and STALKER: Shadows of Chernoybl which use a good portion of the keyboard. Developers cannot not make console ports for the modern FPS's because of how many people have switched over from PC Gaming.

Hold up, lets clarify,

I LOVE Wind Waker.

If you had watched the original trailer in like, 2000? Your would have gone crazy. Especially after the crazy ****fest that was Majoras Mask. Then here comes a game that looks like it intended for toddlers.

Anyway, of course everybody was wrong. But still, Nintendo went right back around to a darker artstyle with Twilight Princess, so they must have felt like they hurt the other demographic a little bit.

Sometimes I think I'm the only person who genuinely enjoyed Majora's Mask over OoT.

Uh..no. I meant "crazy ****fest" in a positive way :)

Naa, Majora's Mask, while shorter, has a lot more attention to detail and concentrates on the characters while Ocarina doesn't as much. I have to say it's a close call, along with all the 3D games because i enjoyed them all massively, but the dark, narrative feel MM took for all the perspectives kind of pips it for me, if nothing from an artistic point of view.

I actually really enjoyed obtaining all the masks and MM is one of the few games I actually bothered to complete 100%

You make all valid points though, especially the darker feel to the game.

It's a stupidly hard call which i think the N64 games have the best argument for.

Id would have to disagree in saying Oot was a hell of a dark game. The music especially made sure of that since the very beginning when your going crazy in the never ending woods. Although I never 100%'ed MM so maybe I missed something.

I don't think I would have thought that about the original trailer. I think I would've thought it looked like a generic 3D game.

Wind Waker doesn't look like a game for toddlers at all to me. It maintains the feel of the original game (which is fairly cutesy), unlike Twilight Princess which looks like it's trying to foist some kind of pseudo-grittiness on a decidedly un-gritty game series.

I loved OoT over MM... I just found it much more engaging. The first time I played it I was quite young so I thought it was really dark and exciting, too. That being said though, like RezZ I never 100%ed MM.

I have never actually played Wind Waker but I've heard good things about it. Any other thoughts?

Agreed, that's why people who hate on cell shaded graphics can go screw themselves.

Sometimes "realistic" isn't better, and The Wind Waker is the best looking Zelda aesthetically, the characters are so expressive and everything animates beautifully, and the designs for everything from the characters to the environments are really inspired and unique. I hope that we'll get another cel shaded Zelda for a home console eventually.

As for OOT vs MM, I'll take the former, partly because I grew up with it and havent played MM until recently.

Despite their similaries, they're quite different, it always seems like whatever one game lacks, the other one has, so they compliment each other beautifully.

OOT has more dungeons and a more fleshed out story campaign, MM has a more original story, more inspired visuals and more sidequests. Gameplay is about equal, MM is just a bit more out there and thus not for all tastes.

Link's on a boat!

But seriously: fun game. Sure it's cute, but that doesn't stop it from being good.
The one Zelda game that always brings me back is Link's Awakening for gameboy. Yeah, it was for gameboy, but it was my first Zelda.

It's kinda like your first album: it may suck, but it's still your first album.


This is kinda off topic(ish) but does anyone play the Elder Scrolls games? Oblivion has gotta be the greatest thing I've ever played. Pure beauty.

Oblivion is awesome. So much to do.

Yeah, sometimes too much!

I gotta be careful with how much time I play it. It's addicting. Back in the day, I'd often find myself neglecting my real life to play that game (which I must admit is a whole lot more exciting than my life). ha

What's wrong with being cute? Many of my favorite games fall into that category.

Today we have all kinds of games that try to be "badass" and Nintendo wanted to do something different with the series, if the Wind Waker was all "badass" it wouldn't have standed out as much visually. Besides, WW isn't really any more cutesy than the original or LTTP or Link's Awakening, it's more like a return to form than anything.

Anyone who is gonna turn down a game just for looking cutesy is an idiot. A lot of Nintendo games are cutesy looking but are also very inspired and interesting in the visual department, Super Mario Galaxy looked great, so did Wind Waker. I also prefer older video games not just for the gameplay but aesthetically 8 and 16 bit graphics have a lot of charm and appeal to me, and the music was better too.

Also, Link's Awakening by no means sucks, it's still one of the strongest and most underappreciated games in the series. Great gameplay and a sense of humor.

Nothing's wrong with being cute. That was the point.

And i didn't necessarily say Link's Awakening sucked. I said, like a first album, it may suck. Or one may just suck at playing it... I never did get out of that very first town. I was always more of a Pokemon guy. yep.

There wasn't a Link's Awakening equivalent for a more high powered console was there? Gameboy games (no matter how "strong") have their limitations.

Nope, Link's Awakening was a Game Boy exclusive.

It's not that hard (though I think I know where you got stuck at, it's the forest with the racoon guy right?) but it's hella fun.

I'd also recommend The Minish Cap for the GBA, the closest to a true LTTP sequel as you're ever gonna get.

haha! I think so!

Its muchhh better when you use some of the crazy plugins and mods people make for it.

What do they do?

I've only played it on consoles.

It's hard to describe the aesthetic of original when it was limited to like 8 pixels on screen.

I actually prefer a darker zelda. The twilight world was pretty cool in TP. And i loved how trippy Majora's Mask was.

I didn't really like the enemies in Wind Waker. Also a lot of the series standard characters (Gorons, Zora's etc) were replaced with less-cool looking people.

I did like how Wind Waker gave Ganandorf a little more backstory and motivation for why he's so evil.

I think they should make a remake of ALTTP, with new graphics.

Burnout Paradise
Prey
DJ Hero ( <3 )
FarCry 2


and starting Tuesday, Splinter Cell Conviction

Anything. For example I have one that lets me Summon a Dragon that I can ride anywhere throughout the game. Another is a ton more weapons and **** like that.