WRUP - What are you playing?

[Jimmy]

I have paid more than that when I was a kid for some Atari game
Keystone Kapers cost me 65$ (that was a lot of hour of babysitting) and it was in 1983 money.
God that game was fun, best one ever released for this system

[Dragonfire]

I just prefer to wait for the price to drop when I get games.  Probably because I usually get stuck.   

[Achim]

Well .. Game complete. Don't really know what to think.

[spoiler]
I hate that they pretty much all go scotts free. Especially the Police Chief and that Vice partner (Earle?).

Phelps dead. Makes sense for his "attonement".

I pretty much felt like Else at the funeral actually. It's all bullshit and bad guys won again.

What is it with Rockstar and killing off the main protagonists at the end of their games? Red Dead Redemption, now this? Are they just making sure they won't have to bring back the actors? Sheesh!

And I must say .. I hated playing as Kelso. What's the point? The star of the show is Phelps .. At least give us the choice .. or something! Or split the time better between the two .. or .. I don't know ..
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Well, I guess only in the movies the good guys win I didn't mind so much that the bad guys got away with it, it comes with the Noir territory, I guess. Only listening to Earle's speech drove me mad, just like Elsa.

The thing I always hinted at that I didn't like, and I still thknk they failed at this point, was Phelps' downfall. Not the fact itself, but how poorly it was handled. He meets Elka, we see him listening to her once and suddenly he has an affair Sloppy writing. I still squirm thinking about it.

I actually enjoyed playing as Kelso more than Phelps, almost to the popint that I wished he had been the main character all along; which would have been a very different story, obviously. But his no-BS style was much more to my liking than Phelps snob antics.[/spoiler]

It's a pretty good game. I quite liked the change of pace from "standard" gaming - having to think and take your time instead of rushing through it killing everything.

Don't know if I feel like going back and getting all the collectibles (cars, film reel, landsmark, street crimes - already have all newspapers) .. maybe later, but not at this time.

I think gameplay here succeeded where Heavy Rain was only trying (although Heavy Rain's ambitions went beyond that, with all the story branching going on).

I do want to finish up the collectables and getting 5 stars on all cases, but I am in no rush to do so. Maybe after all the additional cases have been released.

Jon - I think you mentioned liking film noire before? - If so, get this. It's worth it. Especially since you've already bought a PS3.

I can only second this.

[RossRoy]

[spoiler]
The thing I always hinted at that I didn't like, and I still thknk they failed at this point, was Phelps' downfall. Not the fact itself, but how poorly it was handled. He meets Elka, we see him listening to her once and suddenly he has an affair Sloppy writing. I still squirm thinking about it.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
I kept hoping they would come up with something to explain it. I don't know, Elsa going to him to ask about Lou and seducing him .. or even more twisted .. being as the end of WWII basically meant the rise of the Cold War, maybe have Phelps seduce Elsa as an undercover for the army.

Or something.

At least give some semblance of an explanation.

It's like there's so much time that passes in between cases, that we are missing half the story! Even though I found all the newspaper and viewed most of the army segments (I did miss one of the army segments early on - and I couldn't get it to play again)
[/spoiler]

[Achim]

[spoiler]I kept hoping they would come up with something to explain it. I don't know, Elsa going to him to ask about Lou and seducing him .. or even more twisted .. being as the end of WWII basically meant the rise of the Cold War, maybe have Phelps seduce Elsa as an undercover for the army.

Or something.

At least give some semblance of an explanation.

It's like there's so much time that passes in between cases, that we are missing half the story! Even though I found all the newspaper and viewed most of the army segments (I did miss one of the army segments early on - and I couldn't get it to play again)[/spoiler]

[spoiler]For a while I was hoping that Roy and Cole were working together and Cole took the fall on purpose to get ahead in the overall case. That didn't work out... But I thought it had to be something like this because there just wasn't enough background to look behind Cole's motivation. For all we knew he was a happy husband and father and his affair came entirely out of left field. I guess just showing their relationship develop more would have gone far.

You know, it was at that moment that I suddenly understood what GTA IV had done with this. Sure, going bowling, dinner and all that jazz was annoying after a while, but during the first playthrough you generally go along with it. It then helps you so much more to understand Nico's feeling at then end (trying not to spoil another game...). At least in the end all that stupid mini games had a purpose and helped understand the character. Yet here we got nothing.

I missed one army segment by accidentally hitting a button while it was playing I watched all the newspapers clips.[/spoiler]

Jon, if you are planning on playing this you better not read any of these spoilers in this section of the thread!

[RossRoy]

Agree with you on all points Achim.

---

On another note, nice article this morning about "the state of gaming"

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-most-ominous-trends-in-video-games/

[Achim]

On another note, nice article this morning about "the state of gaming"

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-most-ominous-trends-in-video-games/

Unfortunately all too true


I recently discovered Cracked myself and had some great LOL moments there.

[Dragonfire]

I played my Lego Batman game for a bit last night.  I got through one level...least I think it is considered a level.  I know I missed finding some of the canister thingys I was supposed to find.  But once you get through the level once, you can go back in free play and try to find the stuff you missed.  So I  may do that sometime.

[Najemikon]

On another note, nice article this morning about "the state of gaming"

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-most-ominous-trends-in-video-games/

Unfortunately all too true


I recently discovered Cracked myself and had some great LOL moments there.

Excellent! It's funny actually. I'm replaying Half Life 2 on the PC and it's still magnificent. Meanwhile I loaded a demo for Call of Duty Black Ops on the PS3. I often slag off consoles for FPS and felt I needed to give it a good go. In summary, I'll say this: Black Ops PS3 is so bad it's insulting.

I find the controller near impossible to use for aiming, but that's ok, because I can register a kill just by firing somewhere in their general direction.  On the PC, if you don't use enough lead or only shoot them in the leg, the enemy has a cute habit of getting up again or firing from the floor. Not so here. They go down, they're dead, regardless of where I hit them, including their general... aura. Which I can't even see! It's like the sound of the bullet passing their ear was enough for them to have a heart attack.

Then insult is added to injury with scripted moments that require no skill, whatsoever. Just walk up to something and press a button. Pathetic. Really shameful.

The Combine in HL2 would hand me my arse every two minutes if I tried any of that crap!

[Achim]

Excellent! It's funny actually. I'm replaying Half Life 2 on the PC and it's still magnificent. Meanwhile I loaded a demo for Call of Duty Black Ops on the PS3. I often slag off consoles for FPS and felt I needed to give it a good go. In summary, I'll say this: Black Ops PS3 is so bad it's insulting.

This comparison is not entirely fair. Comparing the, almost universally accepted, "best game ever" with part 7 or 8 of an FPS shooter series... Otherwise, it's a shame, I agree.

On the PC, if you don't use enough lead or only shoot them in the leg, the enemy has a cute habit of getting up again or firing from the floor. Not so here.

This is not a PC vs. console thing! It solely depends on the game you are playing and who did the AI programming. I am certain Black Ops on the PC is just as shoddy...

If you have trouble aiming, that is normal. It too me about 6 months to train my hands to use the controller. In the first month I tried an FPS and the camera/aiming/movement coordination seemed impossible I started out with a racing game, since there you only needed to steer, but the camera control was secondary.

[Jimmy]

On another note, nice article this morning about "the state of gaming"
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-most-ominous-trends-in-video-games/

Almost posted it this morning
This isn't for nothing if I get rid of my PS2 really fast. I wanted to play game not watch movie (I think I have more than enough film for that...) and I want a challenge (not a go there do that type of RPG involving no thinking), but I did have some fun with Grand Theft Auto for a while before getting bored to death...

I don't know if that show the bad states of the actual games or the greatness of the old console game, but I've more fun playing game on the SNES, NES, Genesis and Arcade System that I had on my PS2... I don't even play new computer games except for the Baseball game (OOTP Baseball) I buy every years (BTW the new one will be release next week ).

Currently I play Lufia & The Fortress of Doom on my SNES (emulator of course, since my real console died years ago) and this game is sure challenging and hard

[RossRoy]

Truth? Doubt? Lie? Or just plain crazy?
http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2011/06/15/the-hardest-la-noire-case-ever/

[Najemikon]

Excellent! It's funny actually. I'm replaying Half Life 2 on the PC and it's still magnificent. Meanwhile I loaded a demo for Call of Duty Black Ops on the PS3. I often slag off consoles for FPS and felt I needed to give it a good go. In summary, I'll say this: Black Ops PS3 is so bad it's insulting.

This comparison is not entirely fair. Comparing the, almost universally accepted, "best game ever" with part 7 or 8 of an FPS shooter series... Otherwise, it's a shame, I agree.

It's fair in that Half-Life 2 is showing it's age, yet is still the high point for FPS seven years on. That's a poor record for gaming in general, for this genre at least. Call of Duty smacks of "that'll do", which brings me too...

On the PC, if you don't use enough lead or only shoot them in the leg, the enemy has a cute habit of getting up again or firing from the floor. Not so here.

This is not a PC vs. console thing! It solely depends on the game you are playing and who did the AI programming. I am certain Black Ops on the PC is just as shoddy...
[/quote]

Modern Warfare 2 on the PC was impressive, but empty and demonstrated many of the same problems, so yes, it is shoddy all over. From what I've seen of the previous CoDs on consoles they were consistently worse than the PC counterparts, so Black Ops does feel like more of the same.

[Achim]

Well, yeah, of course it's unfortuantely a bit of "that'll do", which is obviously not a good thing. One has to say say, similar to Duke Nukem, if Valve can live up to the expectations if they ever make Episode 3 or even Half-Life 3. At least they never even announced the game to be in development so far...

Modern Warfare 2 on the PC was impressive, but empty and demonstrated many of the same problems, so yes, it is shoddy all over. From what I've seen of the previous CoDs on consoles they were consistently worse than the PC counterparts, so Black Ops does feel like more of the same.

I didn't know gameplay wikll also be different between the PC and console version... Learn something new every day.

[Najemikon]

It seems much easier than it should be, accounting for the ridiculous controls, resulting in an experience that's equally difficult but a heck if a lot more frustrating on the playstation!