What have you played recently? What are you playing now?

[David]

started and finished playing game called 'the dig' took me all bloody day to complete and multiple peaks into the walktjrough anyway its one of the most awesome adventure games i ever played. and the game is 11 years old

[Ante]

PS2

Glass Rose (Capcom) - Quite an interesting and visually pleasing (although 3D characters are rather messy with saw edges) adventure game, yes, and ADVENTURE GAME from Capcom (famous from Resident Evil series). The events take place in abandoned mansion where you and your GF are suddenly taken back in time and soon you find yourself solving the sinister history of the place and trying to find your way back to your own time (present day Japan). The game got something like 60% from both Gamerankings and Metacritic and there are obvious reasons for that. For example - the main character meets a detective. Every time you start the conversation with him the main character is asking "Are you the detective?" - I found this quite amusing though. Second example - in conversations you need to select a word you would like to get more information. You need to pick the first letter in the keyword or keywords and paint the word or words till the last letter and then press X (in PlayStaion 2 controller). If you paint the space after the word you get no response, or if you paint too many words you get no response. This is really frustrating. Still - I've liked this game so far - the mood is rather relaxed, settings are beautiful and in game videos are stunning. The plus sides are for example - when you find something interesting you'll be picking that up automatically, and for another exaple, your journal gathers all the information you encounter.

Rez - on rail shooter. You are a system admin and try to restore computer system that has gone bad. Basically you need to shoot everything on screen and in right order. The probably most clever idea in this game is to mix music with shooting so that each time you hit an enemy the game triggs a short music sequence in a word as you play you'll be creating music. Look at the graphics as well http://www.sonicteam.com/rez/e/visuals/index.html.

GC

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life - you are a farmer, plant seeds, take care of kettle and stuff. The game has four seasons, changing weather, sun rises and sets, birds are singing and other villagers are visiting your farm. The game is actually not a game at all. More like a highly interactive simulator (if that's the right word). It's really relaxing just play the game, enjoy the colours and music, watch plants to grow and so on. All of you who like non violent, slow paced game - this is the one you'll need! Friends of Sims should feel at home too.

Baten Kaitos - another JRPG but the battle system is different. You'll be playing with cards. Each card has either an offensive / defensive values (swords / helmets) or healing / supporting values (bananas, honey, wine, crackers (bring dead back to life)). You have a deck in your hand that contains limited number of cards. Before entering into battle you deck is shuffled. In actual battle you have n number of cards (from 3 to 8) in your hand. You can play cards from your hand during the battle and once the card played it will be replaced by anohter card from your deck. In each round there's a time limit so you need to be quick and choose the right cards fast. The cards itself have numbers and for example playing rows and pairs gets you more bonuses. For exaple playing cards that have numbers 2, 4, 3 gives you total bonus of +28% or -28% depending are you playing offensive or defensive turn. The rest of the game is typical JRPG shit - pre rendered backgrounds, zero dialogue options, millions of battles, simple puzzels and "we gonna save the words this time" plot. So nothing new in that sense but the battle mechanics.

XBox

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - I finished this game on PS2 but wanted to experience it on Xbox. A wice desicion I'll say. The game is a) a hell of a lot better looking than on PS2, b) contains a lot more details that the PS2 version and c) most importantly, has several alternative routes than in PS2 version. Sam Fisher is rather cool character and I really enjoy the some of the levels in this game too. So far I've tried to play so that I won't be killing anyone. Either sneak past the guards or knock them out after the interrigating them. Firefight and casualities are usually the result of my mistake so I try to keep it down and avoid alerts. I agree that this game doesn't have the "epicness" of Metal Gear Solid 3 but in other levels this is the best that can be in stealth / sneaking games.

[Senta]

Glass Rose sounds interesting
Thank you Ante.
I'll put here the link you sent to me

http://www.tears-of-betrayal.com/index.htm
I'll try demo first and lets see what kind this game is like

[Ante]

Attn David

I'm playing Star Wars:Knighs Of The Old Republic: The Sith Lords on Xbox. I enjoy this game despite of few annoyances. So far I've managed to escape from the Peragus II fuel mining station (or actually it was an asteroid, not a planet), then I solved the mystery of my lost ship at Telos. After Telos I headed to Dantooine (http://www.phoenixdown.it/other_horizons/images/kotor/Dantooine.jpg). There I noticed that the Jedi Enclave has been destroyed and all what was left has been robbed. This part of the game made me excited "oooh, yesss, here again" since I got to return to the same surroundings that I visited in the first game too. Back at my ship I found that something was wrong and I had to battle against Visas Marr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_Sith_characters#Marr.2C_Visas). When she was defeated begging me to kill her - I decided not to. This was so far very touching moment. I really felt sorry for her. After that incident I headed to Nar Shaddaa (very similar to Taris from the first KOTOR) and helped people here and there. After discovering I have some unfinished business in Dantooine I left Nar Shaddaa. Back on Dantooine I resqued (presumably) my former Jedi master and helped locals to prevent the invasion of a mercenary army.

So yes, this is a very entertaining adventure game and got me hooked for this entire weekend. The only things that make me rant are 1) The Force. So far I've killed tons of foes and still I'm at extremely light side of the force. It's beyond my capabilities to undestand such logic. Usually dark side or light side points are gained by simply choosing the answer. For example - "You see an ant crossing the path, what do you do?" "Leave it be" or "Kill it immediately". I don't find this very clever since the game doesn't (or hasn't offered) replies from the "gray area". Simple YES and NO questions are probably good for a five year old kids (No, you can't stay awake, yes, you need to eat you vegetables) but thinking that this kind of childish mumbo jumbo is being fed to millions of SW fans makes me shiver. Deciding what's "dark" or "light" is or shouldn't be that easy. 2) The world of SW is simply outdated and very dull. The game doesn't offer anything new or inspiring. Poor graphics (I know, the line should be drawn somewhere when trying to find the balance with the gameplay and performance) doesn't help at all (and yes, the game looks sometimes gorgeous, but only sometimes...). Droids will get extra points of being really annoying - allway! 3) All transportation is either on space ship or by foot. Where are the usable speeder bikes? Havn't found any of them yet. Somehow I miss the flexibility of GTA and JAK 2 & 3 :)

Yeah, that's about it. David, any comments?

[NiniendoLeibowitz]

I have seen a lot of Kotor 2 from my brother who played it. It starts out pretty good. When it goes somewhere like 3/4 you start feeling how the game was hurriedly packed up and finished. Characters stop responding.

[spoiler]Atton stops responding and only talks about Pazaak cards, for instance.[/spoiler]

Anyway, it's a good game for Kotor die-hards. Just thought I'd drop my 2 cents.

[Ante]

I have seen a lot of Kotor 2 from my brother who played it. It starts out pretty good. When it goes somewhere like 3/4 you start feeling how the game was hurriedly packed up and finished.

Yeah, I knew that before buying the game (ie. I'm prepared) :) Another part that was left out form the original game is related to HK-47 killer droid. It comes up when speaking with it that there are new models on the market - HK-50 droids (and you have destroyed several of them so far). HK-47 suggests that the new models are made using it's original blueprints and somewhere must be a factory where the new models are being produced. Eventually the visit at the droid factory was cut out from the game. Normally you'll be visiting the home planets/locations of each member of your party but discovering the roots of HK-47 was left out from the original (KOTOR1) game.

The PC version of the game contains as well a lot of dialogue that was supposed to be in the game but which never comes up in any conversations. I try to find the link to the discussion on the other forum where was discussed about this.

[NiniendoLeibowitz]

Yes. Actually, people do theorize it's also in the Xbox version and that there's a restoration project on the missing things, although I think it can endanger the whole Kotor 2 game in the sense that what they add maybe subjective and not inline with the actual interpretation of the developers. However, it's there for people who want it.

[Ante]

a restoration project

Restoring the game doesn't sound a good idea. However I would like to read the whole script and use my imagination to tie the loose ends.

This is the restoration project web page:
http://www.team-gizka.org/

I remember that the Obsidian forums had too an enormous amount of script copy pasted from the game http://forums.obsidianent.com/.

[jessyroxyoursox]

the game i've been playin ALOT lately is ut2k (unreal tournament 2004) me and my bf play against eachother for hours and hours....... and i also like trophy hunter...its pretty sweet

[Silver Cougar]

I recently bought Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion and it's really good. BUT the game is slow and looks crappy a little bit because of my video card or whatever or the lower settings to preserve FPS. Other than that it's a really great game.

[David]

i am getting this game now will see if its any good. never played elder scrolls universe before.
latly i tried battle for middle earth 2 which was ok game for few days, but now i am too bored to play. Also godfather the game..which is terrible. its like mix between gta and mafia..but very poorly done. maybe story is cool but its not enough. And shooting random people isnt that fun anymore thgouh i still did it

now another game which i waited for 2 years was Commandos Strike force, and it was rather good, but unfortunately very short. Only laster 3-4 days

ante, i am glad you liked kotor 2. you should have played it on pc

[Krysie]

My brother is obsessed with Elder Scrolls. He bought the new one the other day for the 360. The graphics are pretty cool.

[NiniendoLeibowitz]

Well, TES is always a big thing for those who loved what Morrowind was. Honestly, I'll wait till what becomes of Oblivion. People are bound to give it critical acclaim over improvements that cater to them.

I've seen the E3 2005 video, and that's made me stay away for now.

Davie, so, Gawdfather was terrible, eh? I saw that miles away.

What am I playing now? Fahrenheit.

[David]

i wanted to say you this Niniedo...e3 was almost a year ago. ther eis a whole lot of thing which you can do for a game since then. i will let you know how is it once i 'get' it in few days

i must have a very bad eyesight

are you playing fahrenheit once again?

[NiniendoLeibowitz]

Actually, there's little you can do from May, because Oblivion was slated for launch on the PC by late 2005. The delay was for the Xbox 360 version, I believe.

The game code has to be quite done by May 2005 and only requires some polishing and balance adjustments. The game cannot drastically improve over the E3 demo. What it can be is a bit more repaired.