[MdaG]

Originally Posted by Terramax

Thats a very bold statement, and I doubt it's true, but I'll check this game out if it's at least nearly as good as the Silent Hills.

It's not as much a psychological horror like Silent Hill and has more in common with Aliens or Event Horizon. Still it scared the crap out of me while being a fun game at the same time. Controls are good, sound is extraordinary (if your home system supports 5.1) and the graphics are beautiful.

I find Silent Hill 2 to be among the best horror games I've ever played, but it did have lousy controls and combat mechanics. Dead Space has neither.

In the end how you perceive it depends on how you want to be scared and in what setting. Anyway, I almost envy you who gets to play this game from scratch.

*edit*
Judging by today's standards Dead Space is definitely the better game.

[Lucien21]

Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers

Hadn't played the GK games in years so thought i'd give them another go.

Still as well written as I remember. Great fun and an excellent start to a great series.

[AndreaDraco83]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers

Hadn't played the GK games in years so thought i'd give them another go.

Still as well written as I remember. Great fun and an excellent start to a great series.

Are you going the replay 2 and 3 as well? We were talking of doing a community playthrough of Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, if you may be interested

[Lucien21]

Originally Posted by AndreaDraco83

Are you going the replay 2 and 3 as well? We were talking of doing a community playthrough of Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, if you may be interested

Already started on Number 2.

[AndreaDraco83]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

Already started on Number 2.

Ah, my favorite!

If I hadn't replayed it no more than a month ago, I'll replay it right away!

[kuze]

Seems like I have to hurry with the first.

[Tiocfaidh]

Originally Posted by AndreaDraco83

We were talking of doing a community playthrough of Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, if you may be interested

Awesome

I´d join in ...
It´s been a couple of years since the last time.

[AndreaDraco83]

Originally Posted by Tiocfaidh

Awesome

I´d join in ...
It´s been a couple of years since the last time.

It should start right after we have finished playing Zork Grand Inquisitor, and we're currently on the last segment, so it should take too long

[DustyShinigami]

Eeeep! Just finished GK3 today. Sorry... just couldn't wait for the community playthrough.

I think i might make a start on GK2 soon. That's also my favourite one.

[Fantasysci5]

You played them out of order? I can't stand to play games, even replay games, out of order. I am a big Myst fan yet have never played, arguably the best game, the 4th game because I'm bogged down with Uru.

[DustyShinigami]

Usually i don't like playing/replaying games out of order, but, well... i had a craving to replay GK3 a few weeks ago. I'd only played it once and, heh, used a walkthrough all the way through. I also judged it a bit harshly the first time so i decided to give it another chance.

Sadly, my negative opinions haven't changed much i'm afraid. I still consider it the weakest in the series. But, i did enjoy it and i'd happily replay it again in the future. I only used a couple of hints from the UHS and pretty-much solved all the puzzles by myself, which i'm quite happy about.

Overall i'd give it 3/5.

[Foozwah]

Final Fantasy I (GBA "Dawn of Souls" version)
This has been sitting uncompleted in my collection for far too long, but as with many FF games, the relentless random-encounter factor was such a fun-killer for me that I'd get about halfway through and then quit, delete the save game and vow to sell it on eBay and never play it again...

But for some reason, every couple of years I'd find the still-unsold cart, boot it up and start all over again, get charmed by its simple, old-school RPG magic, only to later tire (usually at the nine to ten hours of play mark) of seemingly dozens of random fights just to cross a room, discover it was a dead-end/wrong path, and then take part in another rassenfrassen dozen or so random fights just to walk back to where I freakin' started... Way to kill any desire for exploration, guys...

So I'm not quite sure why this time - the third attempt on the GBA version, and the fourth overall, having first played the NES version many moons ago - I persevered, but indeed I did, and a few days ago finally knocked it off. Woot, yay, etc.

I don't have the game here with me to check, but I vaguely recall it took just over 18 hours from start to finish, which was mostly done whilst commuting via train to work, plus a couple of late-night sessions, over the space of about a week and a half.

So was it worth it...? I guess so, though I'm still not entirely sure. I don't know that I felt any particular elation at having done so; more a sense of relief than anything else.

Having said that, the game definitely has its good points. While compared to... well, to any other game in the series, the plot is minimal to the point of non-existent, but for all of its generic "You are the Warriors of Light! What? Why?!? Don't ask why! You just are! Now tromp through a bunch of dungeons killing everything in sight, knock off the Big Bad at the end of four particular ones, and make those crystals you're carrying light up, then kill the Big Big Bad!", I found myself enjoying the relatively blank slate of both plot and user-definable party, probably because to some extent it reminded me of the more generic RPG games of my youth, of the Bard's Tale I & II, Phantasie, Might & Magic and Questron variety.

One other thing I did like about it was the lack of necessity for level-grinding. While I believe the NES original may have needed some, I have to say that despite the ^&%$#@! random encounter frequency, it was kind of pleasant to discover that when I got to any kind of pivotal encounter with a Big Bad Guy, I was pretty much powerful enough and tooled up enough to deal with it.

Sure, that made it less challenging, and to be honest if anything I'd say it was a little too easy on that front, since all four of the Fiends were beaten in a maximum of just four rounds of combat each, so I never really felt like I was in trouble during any of them, and it might have been nice to have at least a little more suspense. (But again, with all that random encounter action, I felt like I'd pretty much "earned" the right to kick arse and keep the minimal plot moving, without having to go off and fight yet more random monsters just to be strong enough to do so.)

In any case, the final boss kind of made up for all that, since the difficulty for him spiked right off the scale, at least compared to everything I'd encountered in the entire game up to that point. Okay, it wasn't that difficult really, but compared to the three or four-round walkovers of all the other bosses, this actually took two full attempts, since he wiped out my previously invincible party completely on the first, killing them all mainly through some heavy spell action, but on the second pass he seemed to go a bit lighter on the spells, whereas I put a lot more protective ones in place to kick off, and so after at least a dozen rounds, he finally succumbed...

So of course, having finished I then immediately loaded up Final Fantasy II, since it's on the same cartridge, but resisted the urge to start playing it properly yet, as I feel like I still need a break from random encounterage. By most accounts, II is a superior experience to I, but think I might play at least one more adventure-ish game first, to break things up a bit.

All up, I guess I'm glad I finally did finish it, and I think if I'd done it years ago when I first got it I'd rate it higher, but right now I'd give it 5/10 overall. Not brilliant, not terrible - just a bit average and vanilla, at the end of the day.

[Lucien21]

Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures: Episode 2 - The Last Resort

Can't say I enjoyed this as much as the first episode, but I can't really put my finger on why. The graphics and voice work are great as usual. It seems well written and I even smiled at least once.

Maybe it 's the stereotypical Scottish guy

Maybe it's the short length of the episode ( I breezed through it without much hassle)

Maybe i'm getting tired of having to settle for Telltale snacks when I really want a whole meal. Especially as they do seem to be a repetitive structure to each game. The whole 3 puzzles at the same time trick is getting predictable)

I'm not sure.

6/10

[Jonah]

I finished the main story of Fallout 3 a few weeks ago and loved it. I am looking forward to picking up the Broken Steel expansion when I get paid on Friday so I can continue the game.

[heribertovalle]

Valkyria Chronicles

One of the Best games I've ever played. And the fact there's nothing quite like it is refreshing to say the least. Amazing really!

And I actually got to finish it! Nowadays I don't finish games (hecK I rarely play them) so it was nice that it was a very well rounded game from start to finish.

[L-Jazz]

Time Hollow, 8/10.

Great game but very short. Really interesting story and nice characters. Really a must have for DS owners.

[D.C.]

I've just replayed Jade Empire on the PC. Man, what an incredible game. It's probably not as deep as KotOR, but the world was so fun to explore. Awesome party members too, not to mention the incredible music. I'm hoping BioWare make a sequel, and soon... Good times!

[Jehane]

Finished Shivers recently. Great graphics (for such an old game), wonderful atmosphere due to graphics and sound; I also enjoyed the story and the puzzles even though I'm not really into hard puzzles. But with Shivers, everything worked out fine; halfway through, however, I got a little bored because it was a bit much of running backwards and forwards. And I hated the maze - ok, to be fair, I hate all mazes What I also liked about this game: Some puzzles were random so you really had to figure them out yourselves because a walkthrough just wouldn't help you there. With the pots and lids scattered all over the place and being put in a different place every time you start a new game, there's definitely some replay in there. And: The game runs smoothly on an XP machine without having to use compatibility mode or anything like it. Just install, run, play, catch the demons
9/10

[Lucien21]

Killzone 2

Bought this ages ago and never touched it until Monday and then rushed through the game in 4 days.

No like that is an amazing feat or anything as the game like most shooters these days is pretty short (8-9 hours) padded with multiplayer aspects to make it feel longer and better value for money.

Anyway the Single player game:

Pros

* Graphically superb ingame and in cut scene with lots of cool little touches
* Great pacing makes you constantly push on to the next battle. Never really getting you bogged down until nearer the end.
* Ai of the enemy seems pretty cool with them flanking you, tossing grenades at you etc
* Varied weapons from machine guns to flame throwers to bolt guns etc
* For variety there are a couple of big gun sections (piloting a mech and a gun turret)
* Some of the levels are great. The train one and the bridge stand out for me.

Cons

* Story is a bit shit.
* Can only carry 2 weapons and one of them is the crap pistol. Weirdly inbetween levels you lose guns and aquire new ones at odd times. I.E. in one level you are trying to get on a train. So machine gun through the station and drop onto train. Next level sees you start on train seconds later with nothing but pistol. WTF?? Another level sees you get an electricity gun with unlimited ammo (but slow reload) that devestated the enemy a bit too easily, but you lose it without explanation and never see it again. WTF??
* It's a bit derivitive. It's a bit Resistance 2, it's a bit Gears of War. It doens't try anything new.

Overall it's a decent-ish shooter that looks great but doesn't try anything new. Probably on par with Resistance 2, but it ain't no Gears of War.

8/10

[Wimli]

CSI: Dark Motives has been on my computer for awhile. I kept losing interest in it, but yesterday I finally finished it and gladly uninstalled it afterwards. The first two cases in the game are actually rather good, much better than what was seen in the original game. But from the third case onwards, the designers seemed to forget about decent gameplay again. For most of the last three cases, you're not working on solving the mysteries, but trying to figure out what the game wants you to do to make progress (including numerous tedious pixel hunts and doing something completely unrelated to progress in another area). One of the best features of the first game was that in the final case it turned out that all the other cases were actually tied together in some way. The designers tried something similar in this one, but clearly only as an afterthought, and it just falls flat on its face.

All in all, a promising start deteriorates into gameplaying hell.

4/10