magic > firaga > cast > the video game thread

[fernandito]

Not yet. I just found out yesterday that it was being released in episodes in the vein of The Walking Dead.

Apparently the entire game will be available by April. Debating whether I should start it now, or wait until all the episodes have been released.

[Tatts4Life]

So what seems like almost a year ago PSN released tomb raider and bio shock infinite as free games. As everybody who has a play station knows you need to have a plus account in order to keep playing them. Well I noticed yesterday that Xbox games with gold is releasing both of those games this month. What's nice is since I don't play on live that much and my account lapses all the time I can still play them when I don't belong to gold. Would be nice to be able to get a bunch of 24 hour trials so I can join just to get the games when ever they are ones I want.

[Mattrick]

EDIT: First impressions . . .
Game feels like a terrible Alan Wake ripoff, with an absolutely abysmal plot.

I've played Alan Wake like 8 timed One of the best survival horror games ever.


Xbox Games With Gold is on fire...within two months we're getting: Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Gears of War Judgement, Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag. I was going to buy some games this month...no need to now.

[fernandito]

Any PS4'ers picking up Bloodborne?

[Still Servant]

Any PS4'ers picking up Bloodborne?

I've been thinking about it. I want to buy a new game, but I want to hear more reviews from people. I may wait for a price drop.

There are so many games out I want.

[fernandito]

Any PS4'ers picking up Bloodborne?

I've been thinking about it. I want to buy a new game, but I want to hear more reviews from people. I may wait for a price drop.

If you played Dark/Demon's Souls and you were a fan, get it. If not, don't. That's probably the only caveat you need before deciding if you're going to purchase.

[Still Servant]

Horrible night last night. My PS3 died. Blinking red light of death.

I'm going to try to open her up and see if I can fix her. I'm not giving up on her this easy. Do me a favor and hug your consoles extra tight for me tonight.

[fernandito]

Sorry man.
Give her a viking's funeral.

[Mattrick]

Sorry to hear that Michael. My Xbox disc tray broke....Christmas Eve one year. My friend has his old Xbox Arcade model he didn't use and was nice enough to let me come get it that night lol


For all you Playstationers...if you can get this game on Steam since it's not on playstation, GET IT

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...wo-sons-review

A great little game. Beautiful to look at, touching, and challenging. You control two people at the same time with both analog sticks (kind of confusing), and it's a puzzle game along the lines of Limbo (another fantastic little game). With no dialogue you really have to figure it all our for yourself. Too bad y'all didn't have Xboxes...they gave it away for free last month Love their free games program. Assassin's Creed Black Flag in 8 days

[Still Servant]

Sorry man.
Give her a viking's funeral.

Fuck that. I wasn't going to give up on my baby that easy.

I opened her up and cleaned her off. Soooo dusty. I took a heat gun to the CPU and GPU in order to reflow things a bit. I then reapplied some thermal paste, a better brand than what Sony used originally, put her back together and she booted up without a hitch. She seems to be working fine right now. We will see how long it lasts. I'm just happy I got it to work.

Matt, Playstation does give games for free with a Playstation Plus subscription. I just downloaded Valiant Hearts a few weeks ago from a recommendation from Feev. It's an amazing game. Such a unique experience. I've played a bunch of really good games for free on from PS Plus.

EDT: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is indeed on PS3. It was free in March, but is now 14.99. Too bad I missed it. Hopefully it gets a price drop and I can check it out.

[Mattrick]

Do you get to keep the games? I thought I read the Games with Gold program was different from PSN because PSN's the games were only free for that month, like a rental, whereas with GWG we outright own the game. That was back with GWG started up a year and a half ago, though.

[Still Servant]

Do you get to keep the games? I thought I read the Games with Gold program was different from PSN because PSN's the games were only free for that month, like a rental, whereas with GWG we outright own the game. That was back with GWG started up a year and a half ago, though.

You get to keep the games as long as you have a PS Plus subscription. I think if you let it lapse, you lose the games util you buy another subscription.

You might be thinking of Playstation Now. It's something new they are trying where you can rent games for a limited time. I just downloaded a game called Never Alone last night. I'm really loving the PSN games. They are the kinds of games I love playing that you can't find anywhere else. Mainly puzzle and side scrollers. I'm really looking forward to BroForce being released on the PS4.

[Tatts4Life]

I always thought that it looked like it was from the lord of the rings movies.

[fernandito]

Speaking of which... did anyone play Shadow of Mordor? I hear it's GOTY worthy. I was going to pick it up during my last Gamestop visit but I ended up picking up Watch Dogs instead since it was much cheaper.

WD is pretty much GTA IV but with a heavy focus on hacking, which isn't a bad thing! It's very polished and very entertaining. Hacking traffic lights and bridges and shit while cops are chasing you is fun as hell.

[Mattrick]

Loving the new Tomb Raider so far. Couldn't get into the old ones but it's such a gritty game, I love that aspect. She takes a shit kicking. I use the bow and arrow 90% of the time, don't care how many enemies there are. One of the rushing guys snuck up on me as I was in a corner and before I knew he was there he was starting his swing: arrow to the mouth from four inches away. It was bad ass. Headshotting guys with a bow from hundreds of yards away is amazing. Never has a bow been this satisfying in a game before. Can't get enough of it. Xbox is on a roll with their free downloads the past couple months.

[Still Servant]

Loving the new Tomb Raider so far. Couldn't get into the old ones but it's such a gritty game, I love that aspect. She takes a shit kicking. I use the bow and arrow 90% of the time, don't care how many enemies there are. One of the rushing guys snuck up on me as I was in a corner and before I knew he was there he was starting his swing: arrow to the mouth from four inches away. It was bad ass. Headshotting guys with a bow from hundreds of yards away is amazing. Never has a bow been this satisfying in a game before. Can't get enough of it. Xbox is on a roll with their free downloads the past couple months.

That's probably the next game I will play. I've owned it for a while, just haven't played it yet.

I've always liked the Tomb Raider series. Tomb Raider 2 was the first game I owned for the PS1.

[fernandito]

Watch_Dogs I literally just started playing today. So far I'm put off by the absolutely horrendous driving mechanics...

This is one of the game's few shortcomings. If they were going to replicate GTA's template they might as well have gone all the way; too often I manage to herd a police car into incoming traffic only to have it bounce back at full speed as if it was only a patch of grass it drove over instead of an incoming hulk of metal traveling 70 mph. It's infuriating and makes several of the chase missions feel cheap and frustrating.

[Mattrick]

I could not enjoy Tomb Raider as much as I tried to. The combat is okay, the map design was very linear with illusions of openness, the titular tomb-raiding and exploration elements felt forced and token, and I absolutely could not enjoy the story or Lara Croft's character. I really do dwell on it, actually, because there's so little gameplay to be had that having boring gameplay and a shit story seems almost insulting. Because I'm a story hound, and I feel a good story can forgive dull gameplay if it hooks me in.

Mattrick said, "She takes a shit kicking", which is true, but it's not adversity, it's just her being a punching bag through happenstance, because they wanted a way to make her develop into a strong lead character from a scared child (or in this case a bland whiny child to a bland psychopath). But that transition happens over the course of five minutes in the first half hour of the game, and the rest is just Lara getting hurt because reasons. It feels to me like a woman that threw herself into a door to give herself a black eye so everybody would feel sorry for her. Then she walks around grinning and shouting "Look at me, I underwent character development! I have a character art, I've fought through adversity and transitioned into something I could only at before! I'm gritty and interesting!"

Personally, I find it refreshing to see a hero in a video game not be invincible and take a conceivable beating along the way. Isn't that what makes Die Hard such a great action film? I agree about the lack of openness, but then again, my major gripe with games these days is so many are so open. I can only explore so many open worlds before open worlds begin to feel cumbersome and a major time drain. I was actually pleased to discover the game is more linear than it seemed at the beginning. Open worlds can offer a lot, but if they don't offer a lot then they're a gigantic waste of time. I don't find the gameplay boring at all, and the aiming/movement system feels very fluid, as some of the platforming situations in 3-D worlds can be very clunky and frustrating. Sure, it doesn't offer a whole lot of innovation in the gameplay, but it plays extremely well and is very polished. There is so little innovation to be had with gaming these days, anyways. It's becoming a much rarer find for a game to offer a truly unique experience.

[fernandito]

lol @ character development in video games.

[Still Servant]

lol @ character development in video games.

There are a lot of games that have great character development. They are usually few and far between, but they're out there. Obviously, Last of Us comes to mind for me first.

[fernandito]

Yeah, but they're so far and few in between it's hardly worth arguing over. Mechanically speaking gaming doesn't lend itself to proper character development, minor exceptions aside. We're still a long way from a time where fully fleshed characters are the norm and not an exception. What backstory there is just exists as a reason for our main character to empty his bullets into hundreds of not so bright baddies.

It's the most limited medium for viable story telling.

[fernandito]

Thread unlocked.

[Still Servant]

lol @ character development in video games.

There are a lot of games that have great character development. They are usually few and far between, but they're out there. Obviously, Last of Us comes to mind for me first.

Aye, Last of Us, Spec Ops: The Line, (arguably) Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed (Mostly 2 and 4), Indigo Prophecy, Metal Gear solid, Bioshock Infinite. Just because the player is in control doesn't mean that gaming is or should be bereft of proper narrative or characters.

It's funny you should mention Indigo Prophecy. All of Quantic Dreams' games have great character development (Heavy Rain). I actually just finished Beyond: Two Souls. I know a lot of people didn't like it, but I found it to be really entertaining. It really does play like a movie. It probably has the least of amount of gameplay mechanics when compared to Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain though.

Quick side note, it's really funny that while playing Beyond: Two Souls, I couldn't stop thinking about Elle from Last of Us. As we know, Ellen Page voiced the character and her likeness was also used for Beyond: Two Souls. It really is crazy how alike Elle and Ellen Page look.

[fernandito]

I've been on an 8-bit / 32-bit rampage lately.

in the past month I've played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - I went for the Super Sonic trophy, those bonus stages are a B*TCH - Mega Man 9 & 10, Shovel Knight (excellent platforming PSN game), and have Final Fantasy VI next.

[Tatts4Life]

Not sure if I've said it here yet but screw my original PS3. Now here me out and it will make sense why I hate it. I originally got it for the ability to play ps1 and 2 games. But just about all the games to have for ps1 have been re released and most of the ps2 games I love have been re released too. Now to my complaint. I've been buying the assassins creed games on the PS3 because they had a feature for one game that carried over the money you earned and weapons from a psp game to the next game in the series. From then on I just bought the games on that system. Well starting with I think the second game I would start to randomly see graphic tears in the game that were still around even after patches. Even the most recent game assassins creed rouge had tons of tears. I started to think it was an issue with the system. Well Xbox gold released assassins creed black flag for free. When I started playing first I noticed that it recognized all my PS3 versions and gave me the bonuses from past games. And second I'm almost done with the game and have yet to see a graphics tear. I wish I wasn't so stubborn and bought the games for the 360. After some searching I found out that ubisoft wasn't really supporting the original PS3 or it was missing something in its hardware that was causing an issue.