The Official "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU PLAYING!!!?" Thread

[Chase 209]

I'm just waiting till Gears Of War 3 comes out!

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

Homefront was well done but the single player was too short.

[Jareth Cutestory 678]

Recommend me some ps3 budget titles. I literally have littlebigplanet, nba 2k11, and ratchet and clank and nothing else except for a few old school titles I bought on psn.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

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Xenu has been playing Fable 3, Dragon Age II, and UFC Undisputed 2010.

 

Fable 3 continues the long tradition of Peter Molyneanwioerux promising much more interesting games than he delivers, Dragon Age II starts shouting "MIDDLE GAME IN A TRILOGY!" about 3 hours in and never stops doing so, and UFC Undisputed 2010 suffers from timing issues with the controls and the fact that I was able to beat career mode on normal without ever using the block buttons or dodge buttons, because mashing punch repeatedly while putting points into toughness to be able to take more damage without being KO'd was more effective than trying to make timing hitting block before a punch was even thrown.

 

All 3 games entertained Xenu, but the former two were a step in place and a step sideways respectively, and the latter still suffers from overemphasis on striking as opposed to anything else, like submissions.

 

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[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

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Xenu has been playing Fable 3, Dragon Age II, and UFC Undisputed 2010.

 

Fable 3 continues the long tradition of Peter Molyneanwioerux promising much more interesting games than he delivers, Dragon Age II starts shouting "MIDDLE GAME IN A TRILOGY!" about 3 hours in and never stops doing so, and UFC Undisputed 2010 suffers from timing issues with the controls and the fact that I was able to beat career mode on normal without ever using the block buttons or dodge buttons, because mashing punch repeatedly while putting points into toughness to be able to take more damage without being KO'd was more effective than trying to make timing hitting block before a punch was even thrown.

 

All 3 games entertained Xenu, but the former two were a step in place and a step sideways respectively, and the latter still suffers from overemphasis on striking as opposed to anything else, like submissions.

 

*******END TRANSMISSION*******

 

 

I feel like RPGs are extremely underwhelming these days

 

apparently DA2 doesn't have a central goal.

[Berto 338]

I'm pretty much done with games until the next big thing. I'll just play sporadically untill then. The new PSP looks awesome though.

[Berto 338]

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Xenu has been playing Fable 3, Dragon Age II, and UFC Undisputed 2010.

 

Fable 3 continues the long tradition of Peter Molyneanwioerux promising much more interesting games than he delivers, Dragon Age II starts shouting "MIDDLE GAME IN A TRILOGY!" about 3 hours in and never stops doing so, and UFC Undisputed 2010 suffers from timing issues with the controls and the fact that I was able to beat career mode on normal without ever using the block buttons or dodge buttons, because mashing punch repeatedly while putting points into toughness to be able to take more damage without being KO'd was more effective than trying to make timing hitting block before a punch was even thrown.

 

All 3 games entertained Xenu, but the former two were a step in place and a step sideways respectively, and the latter still suffers from overemphasis on striking as opposed to anything else, like submissions.

 

*******END TRANSMISSION*******

 

I did the same thing in Undisputed 2010. I would just mash overhand rights and knock everyone out. Along with toughness, I'd increase takedown defense.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

I feel like RPGs are extremely underwhelming these days

 

apparently DA2 doesn't have a central goal.

 

 

*******BEGIN TRANSMISSION*******

 

DA2 is essentially divided into 3 Act (with a brief prologue), and each Act has it's own central story and goals.

 

In that regard, man-animal, it is similar to Dragon Age: Origins. The difference is that the Acts in Dragon Age: Origins were defined as "Do these 5 Acts in any order, then fight the Arch-demon".

 

In Dragon Age II, the Acts are longer than they are in Origins, but they are chronological and there is no over-arching big bad. It's a game that attempts to tell what is, at least for a video game, a much more intimate story: How one man or woman went from being a destitute refugee to being "The Champion of Kirkwall" and

 

inadvertantly bringing about the complete collapse of Fereldon society

.

 

As someone who has played Origins and DAII, Xenu can tell you that many of the especially bad reviews of DAII were made out of a sense of betrayal, not legitimacy. Bethesda and Bioware were considered the last two true PC-style RPG developers in the West, and both have made great moves to make their latest RPG series more friendly towards casual gamers and console players by simplifying them, a blaspehmous act to the hardcore RPG crowd (Of which Xenu is a reformed member).

 

If you want to see another example, go read some of the early player reviews of Fallout 3. It's the same thing. It's a long set of metaphors for and rephrasings of "This isn't MY Fallout/Dragon Age game".

 

DAII is a game Xenu would give a B. It has problems, it's not as good as its predecessor, it feels rushed in places, they reuse maps and had release date DLC(and both of those things are especially bull****), several of the characters make you want to press R for rocket launcher every time they open their whiny, Teegeeackian mouths, and the sequel baiting was a nuisance.

 

The combat also looked much smoother, the classes were MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more balanced, you no longer have to put skill points into 3 useless skills to get to the 1 good one in a tree, they added combat chaining which makes stacking ability effects both less cumbersome and more useful in combat, the voice acting is superb and makes Hawke a much more interesting character than the hero of the first game was, and the writing in what amounts to Act II is legitimately fantastic.

 

Ultimately, the game has flaws but is still worth playing, and unlike Fable 3, it's at least a challenge.

 

As for the state of RPGs, that ties into the console problem. Making a hardcore RPG for a console that isn't a JRPG is difficult because JRPGs and Western RPGs have separate, if overlapping, fanbases, and the latter doesn't have the native audience that the former does to allow for their much longer lead times, so Western RPGs HAVE to try to appeal to console gamers, and the simplest way to do that is to make the games simpler, more stream-lined, and to put more emphasis on combat.

 

When it's done right, you get a game like Mass Effect II, which managed to be, in essence, an FPS with RPG elements for combat and an RPG's everything else.

 

When it's done wrong, you get Borderlands, which managed to somehow be released despite clearly only being half-finished.

 

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[BMP 424]

Recommend me some ps3 budget titles. I literally have littlebigplanet, nba 2k11, and ratchet and clank and nothing else except for a few old school titles I bought on psn.

 

Play the God of War trilogy, idiot. . .

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

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Lord Xenu just read through this entire thread.

 

You all discuss Pokemon far too much.

 

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[Sir Raven 12]

So how bout that Battlefield 3?

[jec 427]

My friend lent me the first KOTOR. It's a little buggy and there's some serious slow down at times, but it's pretty amusing. I actually passed on Dragon Age Origins because A) I don't have the time to be engaged in more than one RPG at once, and B.) I heard it was buggy and better for PC.

 

Is it still worth playing? Are the issues exaggerated? I'm thinking of getting special edition version for Xbox 360 with all of the DLC included.

 

I'm playing Dead Space 2 right now. Well, I was playing it, until I got killed in one hit from behind several hours after my last save. Now I don't want to play it for another week. I'm trying to complete it on Hard Core so that I can get all of the achievements. It isn't all that difficult, but you only get 3 saves throughout the entire game, checkpoints are disabled, and there are several ways to die instantly, as I just did.

 

The game is pretty much the exact same game as Dead Space 1, game play wise, and the story is underwhelming. Not that the first one had a compelling narrative, but when it was fresh, it kept you entertained. The sequel just tries to get you with cheap scares and genuinely not creepy cut scenes. The only time I felt any tension playing it was actually today, knowing that if I died, I had to go back and do all of it again. I jumped a couple times when a necromorph surprised me, yelled "F*** YOU!" at them both, maimed them with the force gun, and proceeded to stomp on their corpses 47-50 times for good measure.

 

Still, a good game if you like the first one. I always loved the plasma cutter, and the (extremely) light RPG/Survival elements. There really just isn't much new to it. I have no intention of ever playing the multiplayer, so I can't tell you about that. The Severed DLC is 560 MSP. You might be thinking that is cheap, but it is over very quickly. Hell, the main game only took me 8 hours on my first playthrough.