Video Games

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Surprised there isn't a running thread on this topic already. I'm sure I'm not the only one who enjoys death simulators.

When I get a few bills paid off I plan on picking up Uncharted 3 and Assassin's Creed: Revelations from this year's holiday crop. Maybe Battlefield 3. I'm protesting the Call of Duty because Activision is the worst franchise milker in the industry.

[AnCap Dave]

I've been playing the hell out of Skyrim ever since I got it. I'm really enjoying it so far. Bought Sonic Generations recently as well and greatly enjoyed that game. Gonna pick up WWE '12 on the 22nd and that will do it for my game shopping this year.

[VectorM]

I kinda have to slow down on the video games, so I can deal with social anxiety, however, been enjoying Skyrim a lot. Kinda annoyed at the typical "THIS IS NOT AND RPG CUZ IT DOESN'T HAVE 30000 STATS TO MANIPULATE" crowd , but I try to ignore those these days

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Never got into any RPG Bethesda has made. I picked up Fallout 3 for $20 awhile ago and barely got past the first few missions and I didn't like Oblivion much either.

[Gumba Masta]

Never got into any RPG Bethesda has made. I picked up Fallout 3 for $20 awhile ago and barely got past the first few missions and I didn't like Oblivion much either.

Philistine!

[Virgil0211]

I kinda have to slow down on the video games, so I can deal with social anxiety, however, been enjoying Skyrim a lot. Kinda annoyed at the typical "THIS IS NOT AND RPG CUZ IT DOESN'T HAVE 30000 STATS TO MANIPULATE" crowd , but I try to ignore those these days

I honestly prefer that crowd to the "This RPG wasn't made in Japan and/or a PS3 exclusive. Therefore, it sux and anyone who thinks otherwise is an uncultured boor who only plays FPS games which require no skill or intellect to play." crowd. And yes, this crowd exists.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Hah! I remember when SE announced Final Fantasy 13 would also be on Xbox 360 and how all the fanboys went ape shit over it. To this day people blame Final Fantasy 13's shortcomings on being ported to the 360.

[Virgil0211]

Hah! I remember when SE announced Final Fantasy 13 would also be on Xbox 360 and how all the fanboys went ape shit over it. To this day people blame Final Fantasy 13's shortcomings on being ported to the 360.

This is just another sign that console fanboys and weaboos, by and large, know shit about programming. To make a game on the PS3 and use it to its full potential, you have to program it quite a bit differently from the games you would make on a more conventional PC platform (a platform which most consoles tend to emulate, sans the PS3). One example of a game that does this properly is the Uncharted series, which is why the graphics look so good. However, this also means that you run into trouble if you want to make a cross-platform launch. Wanna know where that trouble comes from? The fact that you're coding a game on a traditional PC machine to work on a game that emulates the PC machine's architecture as well as one that deliberately eschews it. At one point, the PS3 wasn't even going to have a dedicated graphics card, but Sony included one later in order to make it easier to port games to it. The PS3 is the one that you have to do backflips to program for, not the 360. There's also the fact that Microsoft scores better than Sony in the openness to modification department (which is why wireless joysticks work fine for the 360 but suck for the PS3).

Sorry for ranting. I had a friend who was among that crowd for a while until he wised up. :-P

[FSBlueApocalypse]

It is obvious the PS3's development was a massive cluster. The RSX chip was just bolted on at the last minute and is nothing more than a slightly modified Nvidia 7800 chip. Never mind the RAM bottlenecks or the coding for the Cell.

Still, it ultimately comes down to games (and exclusives) for me and there Sony has been second to none. I'll give Sony credit there for finally investing big time in their internal studios and not simply relying on outside developers making things exclusive simply because it says "Playstation" on the box.

This generation has been a huge learning experience for Sony. PSN alone went from a giant pile of fail to being a pretty slick product. Is it better than Xbox Live? No. But is Xbox Live still $50 a year better than PSN? No

[FSBlueApocalypse]

As far as coding goes, I agree. Almost all of the best looking games on the PS3 are PS3 exclusives. They can afford to be since developers can spend the time that would otherwise being used to develop the 360 version to perfecting the PS3 code.

Which I think is a further testament to how the skills of Crytek* and DICE for getting cross platform games to come up to the standards set by Killzone and Uncharted.

*Crysis 2 looks great if you're just looking at stills, but the frame rate was still choppy as hell on both consoles

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Hah! I remember when SE announced Final Fantasy 13 would also be on Xbox 360 and how all the fanboys went ape shit over it. To this day people blame Final Fantasy 13's shortcomings on being ported to the 360.

Ha!  That ship sailed years ago.

FF7: Nice story ruined by piss poor translation.  Seriously? All that money and they couldn't afford a proofreader?

FF8: First one in the series I never completed.  Played a third through and turned it off.  Unlikable characters, nonsensical battle system, plot wanders around aimlessly.

FF9: A sign of hope sadly dashed by later installments.

FF10: Nice story but being completely on rails makes you think it would have made a better movie.

FF11: An MMO with some very nice ideas ruined by a lot of very bad ideas.  Can't level through questing?  Who dropped acid and thought that was a good idea?

FF12: Quit this one even sooner in.  Try as I might, the story and characters did not grip me at all and the battle system once again ticks me off.

Didn't even play 13.  The series died for me a long time ago.


I've been playing Skyrim too and I'm not playing World of Warcraft much until the new patch comes out.  The current patch is a complete snore but there are good things on the horizon.

[VectorM]

I honestly prefer that crowd to the "This RPG wasn't made in Japan and/or a PS3 exclusive. Therefore, it sux and anyone who thinks otherwise is an uncultured boor who only plays FPS games which require no skill or intellect to play." crowd. And yes, this crowd exists.

Oh, I am familiar with that crowd, it even has it's own VenomfangX, Jfreedan, who got banned from YouTube recently, after months of false flagging people who disagreed with him

[Virgil0211]

Oh, I am familiar with that crowd, it even has it's own VenomfangX, Jfreedan, who got banned from YouTube recently, after months of false flagging people who disagreed with him

I remember one guy I knew who blamed all of his life's problems on American culture, dropped any American friends he had after he visited Japan, refused to speak English unless it was absolutely necessary (sometimes not even then) and would insult anyone who was an American behind their back. Strangely enough, he was too stupid to figure out facebook's privacy settings, so it led to some interesting exchanges on his wall. :-P

(I say 'knew' because he was one of several christfags I kicked around on a couple of anime forums back in my younger years. He knew someone who knew my girlfriend, so I found out about this a few years after I stopped hanging around those places.)

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Japanese developers as a whole have been lackluster this generation. Besides Metal Gear Solid 4, I don't think there has been a Japanese developed game I was excited for and met my expectations.

Resident Evil 5 felt dated compared to Gears of War or Uncharted. The mechanics would've been acceptable if RE5 was a horror game, but it was definitely developed with Western Action games in mind.

For all its time in development, Gran Turismo 5 still used upscaled PS2 models for some of its cars, not to mention lacking in modes compared to the Forza series.

Devil May Cry 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2 felt like they were just redone HD versions of their PS2/Xbox outings.

[VectorM]

I don't think I've ever been in to any Japanese games, to be honest. Some old school console titles, still keep those old emulator games on my comp when I am really bored, but that's kind of it.

OK, I lied, I did like Resident Evil 4 a lot and really enjoyed Metal Gear solid, but they never really got a hold on me, like even more generic western titles, like F.E.A.R., for example. The first game in that series is, perhaps, one of the most under appreciated shooters of the last generation and it's sequels were pure examples of simply "not gettin it", when it came to emulating the quality of the original.