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Post by Chris on Nov 1, 2011 7:58:28 GMT -8
Just finished Driver:San Fransisco. Very good. Truly a love letter to fans of the original. Fun as hell from start to finish. I Recommend it to anybody who loves driving.
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Post by Bob on Nov 2, 2011 23:04:30 GMT -8
Can I run other cars into stuff in that game? If so I'll try it.
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Post by Chris on Nov 3, 2011 13:00:26 GMT -8
Yeah. You can actually possess other cars, and run them into stuff. Cops chasing you? Possess a bus and turn it over in front of them. Fucking awesome.
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Post by Adam on Nov 3, 2011 15:22:05 GMT -8
That sounds right up eric's alley...
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Post by Bob on Nov 4, 2011 0:40:10 GMT -8
I'll try it out some more this weekend, I played only the first mission but seems pretty good. After playing Forza it's fun to be back in unrealistic events again. Such as the beginning where you are chasing a armored bank truck through the streets of San Fran, yet only just able to keep up with it though you are in a '70's Challenger R/T. Somehow he was able to out accelerate me around turns. Reminds me of Need for Speed where I remember cops chasing me down in a Lambo once doing probably 180+mph on the freeway with a cop K9 SUV bumping into the back of my car.
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Post by Chris on Nov 4, 2011 8:42:49 GMT -8
Yeah. If there's one problem I had with it, it's that it's not very covert about helping out your opponents. When you get the ability to boost, don't use it any time you have an opposing car. It will boost the other cars just as much. It's really comical.
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Post by Adam on Nov 7, 2011 12:11:21 GMT -8
Last night I watched Eric play through the last few hours of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. There was a lot of hype for this game, totting it as being genuinely scary, and sort of a throw back to the feel of the first Silent Hill in it's pacing and atmosphere. My experience was a bit different.
For starters, Eric loaded up the game, and started trying to find a way to get a ladder to lower down so he could climb up to a bridge. We eventually found the oil to lubricate the mechanism and pulled the lever and pulled down the pipe and the ladder was down. We went to the next room where there was another series of puzzles, and then some more puzzles, and just when you thought it couldn't get any puzzlier, there where more puzzles.
I was starting to joke about all the hype about the game being scary, since it had been almost an hour and we had not encountered a monster or even seen a particularly spooky room yet. Now granted, I am a bit desensitized to spooky atmosphere in games. "Whats that? the walls are made of sewn together human skins and you can still see the hairs and eye sockets and what not? huh. You know that reminds me of this one area in Prey where the aliens are popping out of the wall vaginas..."
But then, things started to get pretty scary and we started encountering monsters, and I realized how brilliant their pacing was. If from the get go monsters were just constantly attacking from every direction, they would quickly become simply a part of the puzzle, a problem to be solved. The fact that they came out much more rarely made them WAY more scary, and way more effective. Any time we saw one, or heard the monster music spool up, we started tensing up.
There was actually a point where we had gone around a circle and thought we had lost a monster and were leaning around a corner to see if the cost was clear, and it was, and then we turned around, and the monster was RIGHT THERE, and me, Eric, and Kevin screamed like little school girls. Manly, masculine, little school girls.
The game was fun, and scary, and rewarding, but there were times where it got a little frustrating trying to figure out what to do. For example: We were in a room with a body on a table, and off to the sides were two other rooms with piles of bodies. We wandered around in here for a while, trying to figure out what we needed to do, and had no luck. Kevin looked up the gamefaq, and we needed to use the hand drill in our inventory to drill a hole in the head of the body on the table, then combine the piece of broken tubing in our inventory with the hollow needle that we had found HOURS ago, then ram that into the head hole that's squirting blood all over the place, and then attach ourselves to the needle to give our selves a blood injection for THE BRAIN OF A DEAD GUY. I am kind of proud to say that I don't think I would have ever figured that out.
To be honest, there were notes lying around talking about how you needed to use the blood of a dead person to make a kind of vaccine to protect yourself from the poison mushroom gas down in the sewer, yada yada yada, but seriously, that's fucked up.
I do have one genuine complaint though. Each time there is flash back voice over (and this happens ALOT) the screen goes full, blinding white. When the VO is over, it does it again. I understand that it's supposed to be like your guy is having a migrane as bits of memory are coming back to him, but it took me out of the game each time it did it. We were playing in a dark room, like you should for a game like this, and as a result, every time the screen when white it was actively painful. And this happens every few minutes. Sometimes it would do two voice overs back to back, it drove me crazy. Almost as crazy as my constantly complaining about it drove Kevin. hehehe...
All in all a great game. If you are looking to be scared while playing, play by yourself. If you are looking to have fun while playing, play with a few friends and solve the puzzles as a team. But regardless, if you are into horror games, you should give this one a go. ;D
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Post by Bob on Nov 8, 2011 18:30:56 GMT -8
I now see I don't have to do a write up on Amnesia. So I'll just say that it was actually pretty good. Took me a good year or so to actually play it manly because I asked myself "Since I can't fight stuff in this how fun can't it be?" but running and hiding wasn't all that bad, and adds to the overall horror of the game. Though I prefer Silent Hill or Dead Space still, I like the direction this game went. Thumbs up to the designers to take out weapons because honestly that's what a survival horror game needs. I don't care what kind of horrible creatures are moving about or what creepy environment I'm in. If I'm armed, then I'm down to fight anything that looks at me wrong.
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Post by Chris on Nov 8, 2011 18:44:40 GMT -8
I need to play Amnesia at some point, but I agree on the weapon issue. I played the Penumbra trilogy, and the first game had some lame combat in it, and it really hurt the overall feel of the game.
Also, hanging with Ann this past weekend. Got her Dreamcast working again, so started playing through Grandia 2. Loving it. Story is MEH, but the combat. Oh, god, the combat. It's brilliant.
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Post by Adam on Nov 11, 2011 11:25:14 GMT -8
SKYRIM. Wow. just...wow. Amazing.
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Post by Adam on Nov 12, 2011 4:58:24 GMT -8
I've been trying to think of a good way to review skyrim, but it's easier to just point out the fact that i have had the game for 2 days, and steam says that I have already spent more than 14 hours in it. hmmmm.....
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Post by Chris on Nov 14, 2011 10:32:28 GMT -8
So, I'm finally able to tear myself away from Skyrim long enough to type words.
And yet, I can't think of anything meaningful to say right now.
It's good. Why are you still reading this?
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Post by Adam on Nov 15, 2011 0:41:36 GMT -8
Skyrim is now up to 37 hours for me.... But the point of this post is actually for me to complain about Saints Row 3. I thought people were joking when they said that you were going to have to buy cheat codes. Not unlock them by playing, not spend in game money on them, but actually spend real life cash. It's on steam right now, $3 for access to cheat codes. Another $2 for the Shark Attack expansion pack. The game went on sale TODAY and there are already 2 other things to buy for it? That means those things were ready to go, but they decided to keep them out just to sell as dlc. I could understand this if the game was somewhere in the range of $10 or $12, but for $50 I want the whole game! On top of that, for another $20, you can buy the next 3 expansions that are coming out soon. Toss in the guide, and you are looking at spending about $100 on a game that is not getting very good reviews. That's ridiculous. I was looking forward to this game a lot, but now I am going to hold off on getting it. Maybe in a while, when they do a combo pack with the full game and all the dlc for like $20 on steam I'll get it. Until then, I guess I'll just keep my money.
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Post by Chris on Nov 15, 2011 23:51:39 GMT -8
Srsly? That's ridicu-dumb. Goddammit, THQ. I really want to like you.
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Post by J. on Nov 20, 2011 9:55:38 GMT -8
More likely I'm in denial about having paid full price and am looking forward to any mission-based DLC, but I'm greatly enjoying Saints Row 3. It's definitely more streamlined than 2, but I think that makes everything in it a lot more vital. Plus there's plenty of cheating-type stuff that's unlockable in-game.
The new 'respect as XP' system lead to the hilarious comparison of becoming a Level 50 mobster, but it unlocks some useful stuff. As it no longer locks off the story missions, barring some superficial choices the game can be stomped through quickly. My lone problem with SR3 is the Quick Time events for some of the major fights in the game.
At least most of the crazy stuff seems to happen in game at the hands of the player this time rather than cutscenes. After all, what other game would let the player re-enact the free-fall tank scene from the A-Team remake?
So yes -- less crazy side missions like spraying sewage on buildings and less character customization for clothing and hair. The trade off? Steelport now stands alongside Vice City, Bullworth, and Santa Destroy as one of my favorite open-world towns to dick around in.
After my first playthrough I can fly off my penthouse helipad on my hoverbike, skydive into the city while letting my ride crash into a skyscraper, parachute onto a random street and turn a furry into into a cloud of blood with one punch. It's no Skyrim, but I'm satisfied.
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