Games of any sort

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Grand Theft Auto Vice City

Great game

Never played Vice City, played san andreas though. Gave up pretty early on, it seemed impossible to complete- I'm gangster like that. Played Beatles: Rockband with friends last night, amazing game, and great fun! Much more social game to play than FIFA11- which my brother wants us to all play...!

I've loved every GTA since the original top down ones.
Not sure how I'd list them as favourites- out of the modern versions (modernish) it would prob be San Andreas for sheer scope and the rpg elements, vice city for setting, music, nostalgia and humour, and GTA4 for pure in world submersion. But I'd happily play any of them.

Never played San Andreas for some reason, but absolutely loved Vice City for the same reasons (without the nostalgia, obviously). Currently playing through GTA 4 for the first time (I'm a bit late to the party, I know ), and loving that as well. The humour is even better in GTA 4 I think, the Republican Space Rangers are priceless

Don't get me wrong- the humour in GTA4 isn't bad. Just in Vice City its more in the game, whereas in GTA4 its more on tv, on the radio and in cutscenes. The missions in Vice City were a lot funnier.

The Love Fist missions were awesome

A Game Story

Once upon a time, in a Britain long, long ago there was a poor, sad computer. It had only 8-bits, crude wire frame graphics and even worse it had been deemed an education computer. Its name was BBC Micro B and there was one put into every school where everyone hated it and its rubbish educational counting games.
But then one day two young men named Braben and Bell did something quite extrodinary, they crammed an entire universe into it and populated their universe with planets, space stations and space ships. They put in a stock market, actual planetary orbits so you could sit on a planet and watch the moon come up, then take off and fly to it. Really. And all in wireframe with beeby sounds. It was a miracle and the Gods of Gaming looked down and were pleased. And those of us forced to play 'count the ducks as they fall' on the poor old BBC Micro suddenly were Captains of the their own spaceship in an impossible vast game world. In short- they had invented the sandbox game in spectacular style.

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However all was not well between Braben and Bell and the lessons of youth greed and ego were never learned and there was much wrangling until finally, one day, in the days of the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST, Elite:Frontier and shortly afterwards Elite:Frontier First Encounters were released and they were astounding (if sadly a bit too ambitious and broken in a few places)









Since then a long, sullen silence has sat over the Elite universe. And Elite 4, the first next gen bversion is still awaited, without much hope of it ever happening. But such was the scope and the effect of these games, unmatched before or sonce, that a dedicated fan base still exists. And deep in the cold heart of Russia a team has been reworking First Encounters. Using nothing but the original game code, changing nothing but the graphics they have produced something quite special.

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You'll need a half decent graphics card to run it, but boy is it worth it. Long live Captain Jameson! Death to the Thargoids!

Thought I should give a hint to the awesome sense of scale in Elite: First Encounters. If you thought San Andreas was a big sandbox you ain't seen nothing yet!

First the 'top level' map, well a portion of it anyway.

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Yup, you are seeing it right- the gameplay area is the size of the Milky Way Galaxy!

The next level down map shows all the systems in your immediate area, you navigate from here on your nav com. You can check out sytems you are going to, see what sort of planets are there, spaceports, even get a copy of the prices in their stockmarket.

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And lastly the solar sytem map, showing the system you are currently in, and depending on what sort of gadetry youve got onboard you can scan it for ships, track incoming and outgoing warp jumps and see where people are going, set course for a port or planet, or plan a strategy for attck if your doing a bit of piracy.

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Big, isn't it?! And remember every one of these systems is on the move. Planets orbit the sun, moons orbit planets and you can go to any of it you like, whenever you like (well assuming youve got the fuel and and a decent gun and maybe some shields!). Join the evil Empire or the Feds or be freelance. Do taxi jobs for money, enter an interplanetary space race, deliver packages or cash, make a fortune trading goods between worlds or become a pirate and steal other peoples goods, make a buck selling illegal arms in war zones, take on corporate assination missions or photgraph top secret installations for the military or even drop a nuke into a space station- then read about your exploits in the Galaxies various newspapers. So much for modern gaming!
(apoligizes for the quality of
these pics- best I could find on a google hunt).

A familiar face at 0:26

I've yet to be convinced of this- don't get me wrong- its on my gaming wishlist for this year (and out soon I think)- but I will wait for reviews to see if there is any real game under all the -admitedally- brilliant technology.
Main concerns are that it will be linear, the control mechanics will be poor and that the converaation mechanism will not be up to it given the hype and the only example I've seen of it seemed less comprehensive than say the conv technique in Mass Effect.
But its Rockstar and if anyone can pull it iff it will be them.

I feel the same way - my worst fear is that once all the excitement over the new technology is gone, the game will become repetitive. Still, I'm very optimistic about this game I think it's coming this month, so we will soon know!

Well, hopefully you two will like the game! I was a little disappointed by the last game that I bought, Sims Medieval, it has made me very disillusioned about video games in general!

Thats not the fault of video games Ally but of you playing the Sims. You need better games!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Thats not the fault of video games Ally but of you playing the Sims. You need better games!

Sims is a great series, just this last one that let me down! Apart from Harry Potter Lego and Beatles Rockband for xbox, Sims is the only game I actually own!

I don't know about the lego games except my mates kids love them. Rock Band is great- does anyone else get that weird thing where if youve been playing it too long, starting at the scrolling screen and you stop it seems like the whole world is still scrolling? Trippy man!

Silent Hill 8 is on the way. 8!! Its a shame really that only the first two are brilliant. 4-The Room had some nice touches but the game map was awful, lot sof tedious retracing of routes back and forth.
But I am such a huge fan of 1 and 2 (especially 2) that I still retain some hope they will get back to the splendour of the originals.
For those who don't know (and if youve seen the film then it looks spot on but thats about it) Silent Hill is a town somwhere in the NW of the US. A holiday town beside a Lake complete with fun fair, but it was built on sacred ground and weirdness and mystery tied to the spot and the Old Gods have always been linked to the town, which is run by a sort of secret cult, but it all went pearshaped, the town was abandoned and became a ghost town. And thats about it for setting. What makes the games brilliant (2 in particular) is the disturbing nature of them. Silent Hill in the game is a state of mind.
Are the other characters you meet in the town trapped there like you are? Or they just manifestations of your own characters suppressed emotions? Are you dead? Is this purgatory or hell? The visuals, full of body horror- twisted figures of flesh with arms welded to their torsos, or distorted knife weilding nurses, delibretly sexy in attire and movement but twisted and repulsive at the same time. The dinginess of everything in the game world, the permanent sense of decay it gives off.
The stories are about loss, love, guilt, repressed sexual urges, the nature of reality and the mind, and of consequneces to actions.
Does that seem a lot for a computer game? Its why Silent Hill2 is a game I often devote a bit of thought to, years after I last played it, and no other game has ever been deep enough in content to do that for me.
So in hope SH8 is any good, here's the trailer for SH on the ps1, SH2 (ps2/xbox), and SH8(probably on everything including your phone).
Ooh one last thing I should mention- they also have one of the most original soundtracks in gaming- or they did have, worrying nothing note worthy about the soundtrack in the trailer for 8.

Inspired by Ringdrottens mention of LA NOir elsewhere heres my review having finally got a loan of a copy from a friend.
You know the premise and as far as stroy thats all I'm saying as the stroy is the star really and I dont want to spoil a thing.
So this is a how does it play review. And the answer is brilliantly- a mission at a time. Try to do a few in a row and you may get pretty bored with the repititition. Becasue which the cases you workon are intriguing and all different the how you solve them is nearly always the same.
You start with a cutscene setting the crime, then you get a briefing and it sout onto the streets. From there you can either get your partner (you always have one) to drive for you to the destinations you have in your notebook (at the start of a mission this is usually only the crime scene) or you can drive yourself (I'll come back to this).
When you arrive at a scene you get some info about whats going on from the police/forensics or whoever is already there, usually there is a body too and some possible evidence tagged. You then examine the crime scene looking for clues. Clues elad to new notebook entries and olocations which you can then follow up. Again you can drive to these places or get your partner to do it for you.
Once youve followed ll your clues, you will need to talkk to people and this is where the new face animation thing really shines- and its astounding, you find yourself studying faces very closly as people speak rather than, as with most cutscenes in games, reaching for a buckie and going for a pee. You really don't want to miss a single potential twitch that might give them away. Although in the earlier stages its pretty obvious when someone is lying.
Once you get to detective level you also have to make the final call and interrogate suspects and pick who you think is the guilty one. But to do this you have to have the evidence, if you missed clues and evidence then you may well end up putting the wrong person on trial just becasue you lack the evidence to put the one you really think is guilty on trial.
And this basic structure, search scenes for clues, talk to suspects, interrogate arrest is the same in every mission. Its occasionally broken up with gun fights and the odd car chase through the streets but its essentially the same. Only the cases themselves keep you intrested enough. And do a case at a time, switch off go way and come back and it works fine.
And one last thing about the driving (see said I'd come back to it) if you opt to let your partner drive it acts as a quick travel, you can play the entire game just going from location to location and only driving the few times the game demand sit off you for plot reasons.
However if you do opt to drive you will get random crimes called in on the radio which you can respond to, these usually invovle chasing suspects up ladders and over roofs, car chases and shoot outs.
So you can play the game with a lot of gun fights and the like if you want to or you can concentrate purely on the story.

Sounds good How's the "feel" or mood in the game (not sure how to put it)? One thing I loved about RDR was free roaming. The world was alive, the music was perfect - how is all that in L.A. Noire?

As good as you would expect! LA is lovingly recreated (from the time period of course) Hollywood with its film lots, stages etc is particularly well realized and there is a ton of period detail all over the pplace, posters on walls, stuff in rooms, everything is immaculate. And the believability of the characters is superb. And it being Rockstar it doesn;t shy from the fact that sthe sort of people you investigate are often the worst sort.
My only real critiscms is that you essentially go through the same motions on every case. Drive there, wander round looking for clues, talk to people. Repeat. But as I say if you treat each crime individually like an episode of a tv show and have a break inbetween its not a problem. Each case is interestng enough in itself.

Repetitive gameplay was expected, so that's ok. I like what I'm hearing, so I'll stop by a store tomorrow and get it

Did you get yourself a copy Ringdrotten?

Sadly no, the store closed before I got there. I've got an appointment with my optometrist tomorrow at 12:00, so I'll pick one up then

Good luck woth both things!
My copy of fifa died tonight! Or possibly the save file not sure- seizes up and just freezes whenever try to go to the team management screen (which you have to do before a match). So tonights games had to be called off sadly. I blame EA, microsoft and the god of computer failures. Certainly wasn't my fault!

Not played fifa since the 98 or 99 game, so I'm not familiar with the problem. Be careful, though, you don't want to wreck another crabbit meter over a game!

Crabbit meter explosion was recorded approximately 35 minutes ago resulting in a fifa disc being launched into a low orbit upon a fireball to the accompaniment of a lot of cursing.