Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Mizhara on 23 Jun 2010, 22:32
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So, what's everyone doing while the servers are tits up?
Personally, I've written a blogpost, watched Eve vids I for some reason never got around to see and playing a bunch of 'offline' games. List of games I'm having a blast in right now:
1. Alpha Protocol.
Decent enough game. Interesting way of playing it, but personally not too impressed by the gameplay. The story might be decent down the line, but I'm not sinking too much time into it.
2. Space Siege.
Ever played Dungeon Siege? Yeah, this is the sci-fi version. Mindless action 'rpg' with no real roleplaying, just stat increasing. Brainless fun.
3. Magic: The Gathering. Duels of the Planeswalkers.
Okay, this is the game that confirmed just how much of a nerd I am. I am playing a TCG on the internet, and having a blast while doing it. Magic: The Gathering is still the penultimate trading card game, and this game makes it so much less... hassle... to play, while providing all of the awesome. More awesome, in fact, than the real life card game.
And then, the cream of the crop...
4. F.E.A.R (the original)
After I saw it on Steam quite recently, I rebought it and reinstalled it. It's bloody awesome. I'd forgotten just how much win and awesome the action was, and how insanely creepy the horror sequences are. Even though I've played through it twice in the past, I still get those adrenaline filled OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK DEAR SWEET JESUS SAVE ME! moments that just makes life worth living.
Gods I love that game. So awesome.
Anyway whatchoo doin'? What are you playing, if anything?
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Overlord. :yar:
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1. Alpha Protocol.
Decent enough game. Interesting way of playing it, but personally not too impressed by the gameplay. The story might be decent down the line, but I'm not sinking too much time into it.
Playing this right now... Obsidian, same folks who did KOTOR II. Similar gameplay to Mass Effect in a way, and yeah, story's decent enough... but Obsidian is no BioWare. Fun enough while I wait for BioWare to put out another masterpiece for me.
Or maybe I should finish Dragon Age: Origins and get the expansion...
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Transformice. See: Izzy thread.
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(http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3292/1217702462198.gif)
Playing a Japanese Loli Fighting Game most of the day, reading forums, responding to mails, reading Questionable Content (http://questionablecontent.net/index.php). Oh, doing homework a little too, I suppose.
Also drama. Always drama, everywhere I go. I swear I'm going to start clubbing people to death with my Tao Teh Ching.
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Oh yes... oh oh oh yes... that was good... oh yeeeaaaah....
Finishing F.E.A.R (the original) is about the same experience as one long orgasm. Took me a great deal shorter time than I had expected, but then I've done it twice before. That ending in the helicopter always gives me the chills, knowing what's been unleashed. And better yet, who you yourself are in relation to that. It's... it's so fantastic.
Even though I don't acknowledge the expansions as 'real' F.E.A.R canon, since they're not made by the same developers, I guess I'll be playing through those as well. Then F.E.A.R 2, considering that's pretty much F.E.A.R 1 with much shinier graphics and the same win storyline and gameplay...
Well... except they took a page from the console retard book and added quicktime events. Fuckin' consoles and their shit for brain userbase fucking with my gameplay by wanting these retarded things.
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- Wurk
- Monster Herding (he's out of class until next week).
- Boiling the house (got a house guest this weekend).
- Prepping a salad garden.
- Idle EvE-related thoughts
- Editing Book Two of a friend's werewolf duology.
- Whiteboarding a series, once I get around to Step One: find where the DH stashed my big ass whiteboard.
- Sims 3: Ambitions
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Transformice. See: Izzy thread.
I am also hooked.
Although I did play Overlord through a second time. Ending is epicwin \o/
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(http://chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/bundaycat.gif)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfYyBp4Ln2s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfYyBp4Ln2s)
Now, on a more serious note. Mostly waiting on the servers to come up and fiddling with the wacom tablet. Trying to desperately to get some more sleep and stalking the forums. Popping anxiety meds like pez. Fuck yeah.
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a) Photoshop!
My never ending love for creating stuff in photoshop continues during downtime!
b) Sleep!
As I am Australian, i have chosen to spend most of the downtime asleep, however finding that ever during my day its still not up, massive BOO!
c) RL STUFFZ!
Having found and purchased the recent TopGear Australia magazine, I have been devouring that and enjoying the sounds of 500HP Italian Supercars >_>
d) Waiting for EVE to come back up the goddamn fail devs! (Not really, I <3 the Devs, I just miss mah EVE)
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As much as I loathe to admit it...
That.
My god is it addictive. -.-;;
MAD SCIENTIST LIVING IN A BUNKER! BWAHAAHAH!
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Work. Blogging. Wii. Family. Sleep. :)
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I'm playing with real life while Eve is down now I have a hangover! :evil:
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Extraction Point done and done. It was easier than I thought it would be, but by now I have the 'win' tactics fairly well ingrained in my head. However, it's very easy to tell this expansion is not made by the original devs. The storytelling is sub-par compared to the original F.E.A.R and there's an annoying amount of physics bugs. Well, not bugs as such, but they keep placing things so retardedly that no matter how you pass through a room, you'll set off a hundred different 'kerwhumph' noises when things shift and move. Not a problem in the original.
I do like the new weapons and enemies. The Nightmares I really like. Nigh invisible and fast predators, similar to the 'technoninjas' in the original, except these stay on the ground and are much faster. Hate the ending though. While the first left you on a note of 'awesome' as the evil makes one last scare, this one is just a boring cliffhanger.
It's quite interesting to play through these games again, with a far more critical eye than one had back when they were released, and it was all new and shiny. Still, I remember the same disgruntlement back then as well.
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tbh I found the cliffhanger to be pretty lame in the first one, too. :/
F.E.A.R. was pretty good for a creepy environment, but too many of the scares were typical "BWAHHHAAHAOBOOOOO!!!" nonsense that "horror" films have all become these days. The nightmare-world style flashback type jobs were pretty cool, but sadly. . .
EH! Not enough scary in "scary" games. It's like developers and directors (because movies have this problem too) have lost how to leave one feeling a general dread or horror because they've spent so much time startling people that they forgot how to do anything else.
I don't really find being startled "scary". I just find it annoying. Especially when you can see it coming "Oh, here comes the little girl again... yep, there she is in the elevator with the chick. Wheee."
/laments the death of suspense.
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I finished reading The Terror, by Dan Simmons. It's about an ice monster stalking the doomed crew of an actual Royal Navy expedition sent in the 1840's to find the Northwest Passage, and it's nightmare fuel of the highest quality. I'm catching up on Degrassi. I'm culling Federation-related threads from three forums. I forgot to get Ken those links! Guess I'll be doing that too :oops:
Sidenote: The command ship of the expedition? The HMS Erebus.
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Oh, I definitely agree. The scary parts of F.E.A.R is of the 'cheap' kind, but it still scares me. Especially those I didn't see coming. When you went down that latter, only to see Alma stand just where you had been, two seconds ago? Then going down just to find Fettel in your face? Almost crapped myself the first time around. And when she came out of the cubicle? Scared the living bejeebus out of me.
Not to mention that the first time around, there was definitely suspense. A lot of levels where I just kept waiting and waiting for something to happen. Not knowing where or when, but knew something would happen... except it didn't. Not that level.
F.E.A.R 2 absolutely, positively sucked when it came to the horror part. Why? Because they made Alma completely and utterly... mundane. In the first game, there's only two places where she can actually kill you. Both relatively easy to avoid. And yet... she still scares me when I spot her. In the vents. In the offices. Anywhere. In the second game? She can kill you every time she shows her face, pretty much... and she isn't scary at all. Why?
Because you can just cave her face in with the right mousebutton. What the hell? No, seriously... What... The... HELL? Alma went from scary as shit, because she never actually touched you in the first game, but left corpses around like confetti everywhere else... to just yet another mundane enemy you could fight. And WIN against.
Fuck quicktime events. Fuck them right in the eye. The console tards that found those fucking things enjoyable should have been shot in the face before they managed to taint PC games with that bullshit. Sure, the game was released on consoles too, but that doesn't mean you have to ruin the damn game for PC users. We're used to better than that bullshit.
RARGH!
/me goes off to a friend's house to beat him over the head with his own PS3 controller.
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I need to play Gabriel Knight 2 again, now.
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GK2: Now there was a fucking horrifying game. Also SH2.
As to Quicktime events: When properly used they can be absolutely wonderful. Example: The Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit (and also Heavy Rain).
When improperly used they're nothing but a good way to slam the fourth wall to smitherines. Example: Every other fucking game that uses them.
People should take note from Quantic Dream on how to use quicktime events properly, that is that the game is centered around them in action sequences where you are playing a character in an ongoing, choose-your-own-adventure of a movie, so that while doing the event you can continue to watch the story unfold, and in all other cases they are not meant to be used because they break the immersion into the game world.
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I hope it's back up by now... I spent the downtime during Lisa's nap crunching the numbers for teh IRL.
*sighs happily*
Now to find me a roommate; maybe even one that likes gardening.