The positive thread

[Marek]

This forum might have gotten (or always been) a bit too cynical and too negative, maybe even stubbornly nostalgic. I thought it would be nice to have a purely positive thread. Seen anything cool? Played any good games? Has anything got you excited right now? Tell us about it. Anything you're enthusiastic about goes.

(I apologize for blatantly nicking this idea from another forum. )

Myself, I just started playing City of Heroes, and I'm pleasantly surprised. Its appearances are pretty bland, and I suspect it gets less exciting in the longer term, but for the moment it's really fun to play. The character creation process is awesome, and I really like the in-game community. Although you can play solo, I've much prefered playing in groups (unlike other MMOs). It's very easy to team up and share missions, and it requires little time commitment, so you can go in and out of teams pretty easily. Most people don't waste time with chat, they just play the game, which I think is really cool.

Also I have a new fridge. Unlike my last one it doesn't have a fake wood finish, so that's a win.

[Erkki]

Nah, everything pretty much sucks.

[miffy495]

I've been enjoying Nintendogs immensely. I don't know why, as I usually can't stand games of this type, but Sam, my miniature doberman, is bringing me all sorts of reactions that I've never had when playing a game before. The incredible sense of accomplishment when she finally had the courage to go over the moving ramp in the agility trial was huge. There's something about actually being able to pet the dog on the screen that triggers some primal response. Everything is just so much more REAL than any other sim I've played before. Highly recommended, and a very positive development.

[Tanukitsune]

-Darwinia was quite enjoyable although short and slightly steep. I might get Uplink one of these days...

-I recently got DK King of Swing and Mario Vs. Donkey Kong, (the later being very similar in gameplay and plot to the first Super Game Boy game), and although I'm sure I won't get 100% with them, I'm having quite a lot of fun with them as well...

-Xplosiv is releasing Taito Legends, which rocks my socks!

-I usually only feel dissapointed when I play a game I wanted to simply have in my collection, the games I buy to play are mostly fun...

[Spaff]

video games!

[baconian]

Ninja Gaiden

oooooo. Aiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!

NINJAGAIDEN.

Ned I a Gajn in

[Jake]

I got a DS and Meteos and it's totally great. I love that it's a puzzle game that basically plays like a huge ballistic assault. Also I played for a while against Chris the other day and it was pretty hardcore (Chris kept blowing it though because after weeks of playing the single player game non-stop he kept concentrating on racking up huge score combos by making his blocks loop up and down, forgetting to send lines over to my side.... anyway that hilarious instinctual response was all that saved me from repeated certain defeat). Yeah, Meteos! Also even though it's not the cool thing to do, I really enjoyed the Myst 5 demo. Yeah, suck it!

[Steve]

I don't usually play anything multiplayer, but lately I have been playing some MP stuff with a few interfriends of mine, and it's been fun and a real change of pace.

• Splinter Cell Chaos Theory: Oh man, the co-op. It's completely different from any co-op experience I've ever had, and totally fucking hilarious. Being able to distract guards so your friend can run up and shiv them, or having your ass saved by your friend running up and taking a guard out at the last moment as you were about to be discovered, etc etc... fun, different, a laugh riot. New co-op maps coming to the PC soon supposedly.
  
• Dawn of War: I don't ever play RTS either, but DoW just looked like too much wacky-style mayhem to pass up. The armies are huge, the battles are chaotic, and being able to summon a giant walking monstrosity to wade through the enemy force, tossing troops and vehicles left and right is intensely satisfying and again, hilarious. Awesome to play against the computer with a friend.
  
• Battlefield 2: It's an EA game, so I feel bad about it already. The interface is terrible and the damn thing overheats my computer half the time for no explicable reason. But when you get on a good squad, everybody's communicating through VOIP, and you perform a precision strike on an enemy stronghold, clearing the place out and capturing the point... excellent.

Also Katamari 2, FEAR, the DoW expansion are all coming out in a month or two, about which I am personally hyped.

[Kolzig]

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I enjoyed EA's latest NHL demo that was just released.

It had the feeling of a good game, lot of unnecessary stuff has been removed, and the game was more like a good hockey game. The puck moved more nicely than ever before and the "the best moments of tonight's game" at the end was a nice new addition. I doubt that I'll ever experience the full game, but this was a nice 5 min demo.

Also yeah, Meteos is damn addicting, I just wish one of my friends would buy a DS so that I could experience that Multiplayer thing in Meteos and many other games...

Is there a release date available for Katamari Damacy DS, I hope it's coming out around christmas? That's one game that I'm eagerly waiting for.

[Roderick]

I'd like to talk about Age of Empires II a little bit, because I've been searching it in over fifteen shops today all over the land and it's NOWHERE to be found. At this point I'm considering just going with an illegal version. I really had thought there'd be a budget version somewhere, but apparantly trying to actually buy games is a futile thing these days (Sanitarium anyone? I believe I'm in my fourth or fifth desperate year of trying to get it legally!).

The good news is that Age of Empires III looks like it's going to be a blast. I can't wait. And it's even coming out this year! (Here's a wild guess: Christmas anyone?). There're good odds there'll be a rerelease of the second one at that time too for promotional purposes. But I don't want to wait that long!

Also, I'm still stuck in Another Code. Have been for a week and a half. Considering a walkthrough, even though I'd hate that. Sorry, no happy gaming experiences today, but I keep hope!

[Karimi]

Recently I've been playing good games and watching good movies .

Played Fallout 2 , and playing Planescape Torment. Im definately trying to play more of the "classics" to get a feel of what gaming truely is. I mean i've played strategy, and fps classics but I find that roleplaying/adventure have them all beat. I realize now how much story means to me and how great it can make a game.

Saw some movies . Ray , Napoleon Dynamite. N.D was pretty funny and an interesting movie though I always had this feeling like I was waiting for the movie to start. Ray was pretty good, the music and acting were nice; the overall message was good too.

[Steve]

I hope you've played the original Fallout as well. Fallout 1 is soooo much better than Fallout 2 (positivity!)

[BigJKO]

Is there a release date available for Katamari Damacy DS, I hope it's coming out around christmas? That's one game that I'm eagerly waiting for.

(Off topic a bit)

Katamary Damacy might not be coming to the DS. Reliable?

(On-topic)

I recently got completely hooked on an indie game by the name Fate. Fairly generic, comical version of Diablo. But it's just so simple and fun. It's the ultimate casual experience. Makes me glad there's a handheld that promotes these kinds of experiences.

Am in awe at how many good DS games are just around the corner (and even already here) that I just can't afford. At least they'll still be there when my paycheck arrives.

[Karimi]

I hope you've played the original Fallout as well. Fallout 1 is soooo much better than Fallout 2 (positivity!)

Naturally, I got the 3 game pack which has Fallout 1 , 2 , and Tactics. Tactics was ok but I feel that Fallout is a great game because of the interaction , story, and gameplay rather than the setting.So having a tactics sort of game in a fallout setting did nothing for me.

Fallout 1 is great but what happened was that I played Fallout 1 , uninstalled it after destroying the Military Base since a bug stopped me from going further (it told me I didn't kill the mutant but I did). I bought Fallout 1 a few years ago. The triple pack I bought last month ; I played and finished Fallout 2 so now im playing fallout 1 over again.

[Roderick]

Are you implying that Fate is a DS game? Or were the two statements not quite as closely linked?

[Knar]

I had an interesting technical conversation about a developer developing the latest graphics code for the next gen PS3. He told me about the differing architecture between the PS3 and Xbox 2 and the strategies employed by both companies.

The biggest problem these days for chip manufacturers is that they can not physically make a single chip go faster these days (they've crammed as much as they can onto a chip). So these days, the only way to increase speed is parallel processing, which means a bunch a chips (CPUs) are interconnected on a bus. But no one has written a really good algorithm along with the architecture design to manage such a complex system.

Both Xbox 2 and PS3 have such an architecture, much to game developer's chagrine. So, my friend described to me the differences in both of the architecture and told me the shortfalls of each.

In the PS3 architecture, there are 7 SPUs (Synergy Processing Units), and 1 managing CPU. Each SPU have their own local 256Kb cache that stores all data (so we have memory problems). All of the units have direct lines connected to each other, which also means latency problems. And that the designers of the board were a bit arbitrary on the calculations on the best path, so we get random bottlenecks. Another problem is memory management, though we have global memory, each SPU has to access data from global and store into local cache and rewrite to back to global memory. And we have to do this with 7 units. To deal with all the random arbitrary rules (because there are many) and management, this has to all be done in assembly- a coding language that everyone thought was going to be phased out of existance. And the managing CPU is not that good of a manager. In fact, in some cases, it's better that the SPUs communicate with each other. I think it has to do with bottlenecks and delays on the bus.

The Xbox architecture however, are 3 CPUs interconnected, but they're stripped down versions of PC CPUs apparently. They all share memory. Unfortunately, they got rid of the ability of preloading the best path taken in code (I might have the term wrong, but code consists of a series of if statements, and PC CPUs calculate what the best path is and preloads the solution into memory, therefore speeding up the loading process). And the Xbox 2 has a really nice graphics card. He works for Sony, so I guess I couldnt' get much about Xbox 2's coding problems.

From what I gauged from the conversation, the Xbox 2 architecture is a lot simpler and easier to develop for. Basically it's a stripped down version of a PC with a really nice graphics card. The PS3 however, has a lot of computing potential, but it's so complex at the moment, that they need to tweak out a few things before going on with the next step.

Anyhow, I thought it was a cool conversation to learn more about the complex machines that run our games and to know some of the shortcomings developers have to deal with even before making the game.

[Marek]

Also, I'm still stuck in Another Code. Have been for a week and a half. Considering a walkthrough, even though I'd hate that. Sorry, no happy gaming experiences today, but I keep hope!

If you need any hints let me know. I had to consult a walkthrough for some puzzles towards the end that were required some major out-of-the-box thinking. You might have stumbled upon the same ones.

[Karimi]

I started playing Fallout a few days ago. I am extremely impressed by how much stuff is in the game. Like Karimi, I'm going to go through Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment afterwards, and if I haven't overdosed on RPG goodness by then, I'll play Arcanum as well.

Good one. I've been meaning to try it out.

My to play list :

Arcanum

Morrowind

Icewind Dale

X-wing pilot (apparently its worth trying)

My to finish list :

Fallout 1

Planescape

Guild Wars/World of warcraft (haven't been playing them these days)

God of War

Far cry

GTA SA

Band of Brothers

Guild Wars hasn't impressed me so far, it seems very average and with very little innovation. Maybe I haven't played enough but after playing fallout and planescape it just feels so cliche. The setting is typical , the style average (pretty but nothing interesting), and gameplay like diablo but with an online market. Like I said its probably because I haven't played much , but so far its not encouraging me. I guess this isn't positive but I had to let it out.

[vimes]

One thing that's uber-cool is the facial expressions of the elder in the Myst V demo... I really had the impression I had a living guy in front of me.

[BigJKO]

Are you implying that Fate is a DS game? Or were the two statements not quite as closely linked?

No, not closely linked other than the fact that the DS has a lot of pick-up-and-play games. And that's just what Fate is... only for the PC.

Oh, man. That was needlessly complex.

[toblix]

Just wanted to express my feelings about the Fallouts (1 and 2, not the rest): They're absolutely supar fun! Arcanum has some of the same feeling, and Planescape is also great, but the Fallouts has the supar trophy in my RPG book.

[vimes]

Icewind Dale

It's not really worth playing... it's an unbalanced mix between Bioware usual gameplay and the 'Hack, Slash & Crave for XP' Diablo style....and the story is dull. It's too bad because the ending has a nice twist and the background art is wonderful.

[Duncan]

I am glad that soon I will be playing a game called Fahrenheit rather than Indigo Prophecy. Looking forward to the game, also.

And it looks like I share Jake's feelings on Myst 5. Whoa, two adventure games in quick succession that I'm actually excited about. What's going on.

[Marek]

Vimes ... saw your sig ... in that San Andreas mission just be sure you turn around back towards San Andreas before the plane passes you. That way you'll be next to or slightly in front of the plane. Now you'll have plenty of time to slow down or accelerate to make it to the ring.

Just ... in case you were stuck there.

[General Fuzzy McBitty]

My ex-roomate sent me a Game Cube for my birthday.