What Are You Currently Playing? 5.05: You Are (Not) A Gamer

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Aliens: Colonial Marines makes Duke Nukem Forever look like Borderlands 2.

Remember that I actually liked DNF. It's not a very good game, but it's at least competent throughout and has a couple of awesome levels thrown in there occasionally. After playing about an hour of Colonial Marines, I immediately uninstalled the game and will never let that shit touch my hard drive again.

This is not the same game Gearbox showed off at E3 or Community Day. The graphics, even maxed out, are far below what we saw in that gameplay (and yes, it actually was gameplay, not pre-rendered footage... I watched someone play it), the environments are barren in comparison, and everything about that sequence is different. There is no tension or suspenseful build up, and the ending battle is completely different; instead of a few marines with power loaders, flame throwers, and sentry guns going up against a gigantic army of multiple types of xenomorphs including a queen, you get a few marines with only pulse rifles fighting no more than 5 basic xenomorphs at a time.

Hell, I don't even think this was made by Gearbox. The game begins with a pre-rendered cutscene which sports humongous letterboxing, awful textures, and insane aliasing that was obviously recorded from the console version instead of the PC version for some reason. It lists four studios as having worked on the game, with Gearbox's name appearing last.

The guns are terrible, with the shotgun being infinitely more useful than the iconic pulse rifle. They don't feel satisfying to shoot, and the enemies don't react much (if at all) to being shot. You don't actually find weapons through gameplay either, you unlock them by ranking up like in Call of Duty, immersion-breaking popups and all.

The AI is godawful. Waddling around like penguins, the only reason xenomorphs pose any threat at all is because the hit detection in this game is so bad that sometimes they will actually hit you from yards away. Their animations also frequently break, making them teleport right up to you. The human enemies have terrible AI as well, but they're more likely to kill you than the aliens because the gameplay is broken. If you try to use actual tactics like cover or flanking against the Weyland-Yutani mercs, they will dispose of you quickly and easily due to the fact that they can shoot you through solid objects. Run around blind-firing like a chicken with its head cut off, however, and they won't stand a chance.

The little bit of story I saw was poorly written and only decently acted, leading me to believe that this is an even worse sequel than Alien 3 in that regard. Which reminds me, I somehow managed to break one of the scripted events early on, forcing a checkpoint restart.

This is by far the worst FPS I've played this gen, other than maybe ShellShock 2: Blood Trails. Though to be honest, I think that was actually better, because I was able to finish it. There is not a single ounce of fun to be had in Colonial Marines, and - I never thought I'd say this, but - I will think twice before I give Gearbox or Sega my money next time.

If you want an awesome colonial marines game, buy Aliens Versus Predator 2 for PC and play the marine campaign. Now that's Aliens done right! Thank you, Monolith.

[talonmalon333]

Fallout 3 was fucking broken for me, though. Couldn't even play that shit until 2 years after I bought it, and only because of fan patches.

It's been fixed up since then, mostly. Though you still have to fix the freezing problem.

[gunswordfist]

I looked online to see how to beat the skedar boss in Perfect Dark. So apparently there's only a second where you canshoot those damn pillars. How irritating. Anyway the Mauler did the trick and it didn't take too long. I didn't know that was actually the last boss. I'm glad to get the game's campaign over with after losing to the boss dozens of times.

The multiplayer on the other hand is pretty good. Shooters today could learn from all these options. I love customizing and saving modes and bots are great. I've been playing this a lot with my baby brother.

I finally got around to playing The Darkness 2 demo this weekend. (yeah, I'm late) Man was I impressed. I thought the game would have some bright, crappy looked based off of an old video I saw awhile ago but it had the look and feel I remember the original having. It felt like Starbreeze actually made the game. Plus the controls and powers usage was even better. And I love the idea of a skill try. All hated was how scarce the ammo seemed, never liked being forced to only be able to hold a few guns and I hear you can only summon one Darkling at a time.

I'm really loving the Garou MOTW demo. I still have the character select music and the announcer saying Rock Howard twice stuck in my head. I plan on getting the whole game one day so me and my baby brother will have more than two characters to pick.

[Foggle]

I finally got around to playing The Darkness 2 demo this weekend. (yeah, I'm late) Man was I impressed. I thought the game would have some bright, crappy looked based off of an old video I saw awhile ago but it had the look and feel I remember the original having. It felt like Starbreeze actually made the game. Plus the controls and powers usage was even better. And I love the idea of a skill try. All hated was how scarce the ammo seemed, never liked being forced to only be able to hold a few guns and I hear you can only summon one Darkling at a time.

Most underrated game of last year IMO! Wish more people knew about it.

Also, let us rejoice, for System Shock 2 is FINALLY coming to GOG tomorrow! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/13/many-questions-system-shock-2-comes-to-gog/

[talonmalon333]

What do you guys think of the Mass Effect storyline?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've only played the first game, and IMO it didn't get interesting until around the last quarter of the game, and then it ended. To be honest, though, I can believe that the story gets a lot better in the 2nd game, but my story was never even the problem with the first game to begin with. While I did find the main plot to be pretty stale and uneventful for most of the first game, I did still really enjoy the characters, which is what kept me interested long enough to keep playing the game all of the way through. My main problem with that game was that I just couldn't stand the gameplay. It just came off as dull and monotonous. Sure, you had a lot of abilities at your disposal, but it was pretty useless anyways when you consider how laughably stupid the AI was (including your own partners), and how it was just as easy to take out most enemies through regular duck and cover tactics. Granted, I'm sure someone will say that you're forced to be more strategic on the harder difficulty settings, but I did try experimenting with the abilities, anyways (as I got bored with regular combat), and they just didn't feel that satisfying to pull off for me. I don't know how to describe it, but certain attacks that I expected to have more power behind them felt weak and barely useful, even when I leveled them up, whereas other abilities just made no sense to me at all.

The gameplay is basically what turned me off from the series, which is weird because I like the combat in the KOTOR games (made by the same development team) just fine, but I usually hate turn-based combat (making those games a bit of an exception). On the flip-side, I love real-time shooting combat, and adding in special abilities should feel like a recipe for success, but the end product in Mass Effect came off as dull to me, honestly. Keep in mind, I was a HUGE fan of BioWare's RPGs at the time (or at least a huge KOTOR fan, I should clarify), so I was highly anticipating Mass Effect more than even Halo 3, at the time. So, maybe I just had my expectations set too unrealistically high for the first game, which made it a bit of a disappointment for me, personally.

[gunswordfist]

Mass Effect 1's gameplay sucks. Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, has some of the best TPS gameplay.

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Mass Effect - Decent story, boring dialogue
Mass Effect 2 - Barely existent story, great dialogue
Mass Effect 3 - Story and dialogue both fluctuate constantly between awesome and terrible

The lore and universe are excellent, and the characters are extremely likable, but the trilogy itself never had a particularly good story IMO.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I enjoyed Mass Effect the first time I played through it. The dialogue and gameplay aged really badly, though.

[Nel_Annette]

Finally got the Temple shortcut complete in Spelunky. One of the most tense runs I've ever had. I finished with one health and no items. Luckily, had no darkness floors. Now it's time for Olmec. But I think actually standing a chance there will require a build-up of items from a full run.

[Foggle]

Here's some advice for anyone who buys Borderlands 2: don't try to play single-player as Zer0. It's basically Masochist difficulty.

I know this because I picked him as my first (and so far only) solo character. Once you hit Opportunity, there's a pretty huge difficulty spike in general, but for Zer0 it's unbelievably high, with certain quests (such as Statuesque) being nearly impossible. Now I'm playing the DLC packs on True Vault Hunter Mode for proper level scaling, and it is making me shed girly child tears. Also, despite being 5 levels overpowered and using PT2 gear, I still can't beat the final round of the Hyperion Slaughter Dome. Zer0's action skill is terrible against the robot enemies, and while it's very cool looking and helpful at many points, it's easily the least useful overall. So yeah, play as Zer0 in co-op if you'd like, but maybe try someone else for solo. Don't make the same mistake I did.

I'm going to beat every quest as solo Zer0 though. I must finish what I started, no matter how painful.

[gunswordfist]

Mass Effect - Decent story, boring dialogue
Mass Effect 2 - Barely existent story, great dialogue
Mass Effect 3 - Story and dialogue both fluctuate constantly between awesome and terrible

The lore and universe are excellent, and the characters are extremely likable, but the trilogy itself never had a particularly good story IMO.

Yeah, I thought ME2's story would have little to bring over to ME3 (haven't played it yet) Sounds like I'm right. That game was mostly about character recruitment...and you can have most of the characters die.

Anyway, dusted off Rayman Origins and played some more of it with my baby brother. We had a blast getting Electoons until we finally unlocked another Tricky Treasure level. He of course ended up doing most of the work since he's better at the game and got the treasure.

[Foggle]

So, a few things about Metal Gear Rising:

1) My thoughts during the Metal Gear Ray fight: HOLY SHIT THIS GAME IS FUCKING AWESOME!
2) It's properly difficult. Blade Wolf was a great wake up call boss for me, like Murai and Cerberus before him.
3) Unless the Siliconera article was referring to something else, the VR Missions are unlockables, not DLC. There are 20 to find scattered throughout the levels, plus 5 tutorial stages.
4) The story is pretty interesting so far, and thankfully none of the cutscenes run longer than 5 minutes. Gameplay/cinematic ratio is much more biased towards gameplay than I expected.
5) Stealth is a key component of the gameplay, but only if you want it to be. It's fairly simple, and lots of fun; however, it hasn't been necessary for success at all so far.

All in all, the two levels I've played make it out to be one of Platinum's finest releases so far, and in the top 3 Metal Gear games overall.

[Rynnec]

Just finished the Mistral boss fight. Good stuff, combat's as great as ever, and I'm actually able to follow the story despite never having played a Metal Gear game before this one. Can't wait to try out the Gray Fox skin and VR missions.

I'm actually finding it a bit easier than the demo so far though, despite not having as many moves in my arsenal, Bladewolf didn't even give me any trouble at all. Then again I played the demo like 2 dozen times, so I'm most likely used to the games mechanics by now.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I got F-Zero on the Wii-U VC. I haven't played this game in soooo long.

It's very hard.