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twmac

The 12 games before Christmas

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A lot of my time last year was spent despairing over the crap that people were playing. I would say that I spent waaay too much time going in the opposite direction trying to play the 'B' games rather than the 'AAA' games.

I am also extremely prejudiced and refuse(d) to play games on Sony consoles (the SEGA fan inside me never wants to forget the Dreamcast) and avoided all PC gaming.

After a rather hefty argument with a guy at work I conceded to playing Modern Warfare 2 and I will admit that although not a perfect 10 there are many things that game does well.

This brought me to an epiphany of sorts, the only person who is missing out as a result of my strong opinions is me.

So at that point I decided to set myself a challenge, I would play 12 games before this Christmas that would be recommended to me by 12 of my friends. The rules were as followed:

- I couldn't have played the game before (there was a little bit of cheating here)

- My friends had to actually believe that there was merit to the game, that I would get something out of it (I requested written proof for a few of them)

- I wouldn't have to spend 100s of dollars to play the thing

So now I have the following games on my list:

- Half Life 2

- Fatal Inertia

- Ico

- StarSiege

- Shadow of the Collossus

- Tales of Vesperia

- Kingdom of Loathing

- Yakuza

- Ion assault

- Star Wars: Obi Wan

- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

- Crysis

And before you say anything about Obi Wan, I know, I'm still going to try and play it and enjoy it.

Anyways, I just recently finished Half Life 2 and Fatal Inertia and I am about half way through Ico. I'm planning to blog about it or something in that vein in the coming weeks.

Edited by twmac

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Sounds like a damn good idea to me, i'm trying to widen my gaming horizons and i'm thoroughly enjoying the change.

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Thanks, so far it has been pretty eye opening.

I mean, to finally understand what people were going on about when they talked about the hallowed Half Life 2.

Edited by twmac

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Thanks, so far it has been pretty eye opening.

I mean, to finally understand what people were going on about when they talked about the hallowed Half Life 2.

Such a great game, the episodes are also really good.

Speaking of which, episode 3. :getmecoat

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Are all of these games on your list things you specifically avoided because of prejudice (or whatever the right word is)? Because if that's the case, you must have has quite a lot of inhibiting preconceptions. There aren't a lot in common with most of those games.

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This list was out of my control, hence the disparity between the titles.

But, yeah, 6 of them are on PC or PS2, which was directly affected by my hatred of Sony and my reluctance to game on PC.

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A pretty cool list! A few on there I haven't played either.

Good luck and godspeed- Goodness knows we need more thumbs that are good at working through "the pile".

I'm seriously failing on that point... "Finish Bioshock 1?... Right after my millionth game of Spelunky, promise!"

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Well I finished Ico. Short game, pretty interesting.

My girlfriend watched me play about 15 minutes of it and made me laugh when she said:

'So, basically, you have to drag that girl around all the time?'

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Now that school is done and homework no longer a concern, I'm going to start working on my own pile in my free time. Beat Sam and Max 301 tonight, which isn't very long but is certainly my most pressing game to play. Then got back into Just Cause 2 for an hour, which made the in-game timer pop up with "time played: 23 hours." That was a little scary to me, but I'm still having fun so something must be right about it. After that, back to Dragon Age, Bioshock 2, Brutal Legend, and by then Red Dead Redemption and 3D Dot Game Heroes should both be in my house as well. Looking like it'll be a busy summer of games, but I'm more than happy to oblige. 12 before Christmas? You're on.

Come to think of it, I've played the first few hours of Ico many times, but I don't think I've ever finished it. Maybe I should dig up my copy and get back into it...

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Do it! Apart from the art-wank ending the game has stood the test of time surprisingly well, in fact, the art-wank ending would have been arty and wanky even at the time.

It is only about 5 hours long but I have to say that the atmosphere combined with intuitive controls were seriously engrossing.

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Right I have now finished the following:

Fatal Inertia

Ico

Yakuza

Half Life 2

Ion Assault

Crysis (turned out to be Warhead rather than the original)

I am starting Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64 next and a bit worried how that one is going to hold up.

Edited by twmac

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Right I have now finished the following:

Fatal Inertia

Ico

Yakuza

Half Life 2

Ion Assault

Crysis (turned out to be Warhead rather than the original)

I am starting Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64 next and a bit worried how that one is going to hold up.

I played it on the GC a few years back,it held up pretty well.

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You may chalk it up to nostalgia, but I end up playing through Ocarina of Time at least every year or two, when I'm home for summer or Christmas. I have yet to see any indication of it being less great in retrospect.

(The Lost Woods path is east, north, east, north, north, west, north. Just follow the music.)

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I used to have the water temple memorized. One of the most iconic video game levels to me.

It still holds up great for me too.

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I've been warned of this water temple, apparently it is notoriously difficult.

Incidentally my attempts to get ahold of StarSiege is a story in itself. It is not available on any of the digital download sites and is not considered 'vapourware'. In the end the guy who recommended it for me managed to track down a decently priced copy on amazon and is shipping it to me. To get it to work properly on modern windows there are a bunch of downloads that are available on its fansite but I will have to see if I can get it to work on windows 7, it may be all for nought.

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Ugh, Legend of Zelda was terrible. I got as far as meeting Zelda and got bored with the whole thing. Seriously, not my kind of game in any way.

Playing Kingdom of Loathing now and it is pretty interesting as in it is a witty time waster. There is no skill to it nor real reason to continue playing it but if you want to waste 15 minutes a day there are worse things to do. Like play Ocarina of Time... Awful, dated game.

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Ugh, Legend of Zelda was terrible. I got as far as meeting Zelda and got bored with the whole thing. Seriously, not my kind of game in any way.

That's weird. For some reason this entire bit just appears as a scramble of letters and numbers for me? What does it say?

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That's weird. For some reason this entire bit just appears as a scramble of letters and numbers for me? What does it say?
I think it says, "What is game?"

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Hahaha.

The thing is, pretty much everyone I spoke to who also interpreted my words as a bunch of garbled noise all admitted that it had been at least 5 years since they had played the game. Those 5 years have clearly not been kind.

I tried to play the game on its own merits but so much of its level design is now obtuse. The talks in the adventure game thread and also on Rock Paper Shotgun mirror my own feelings about this game. When I was younger and had more time, I quite enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of a game and invariably wandering the same area for ages not really knowing where to go until it just clicked. But now I have so many other games to play that doing this for more than an hour resulted in gamefaqs browsing.

I also hated the music and turned that down after a couple of hours the lost woods was particularly grating.

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Majora's Mask is much better in my opinion and I think might be better for first timers at this point in time.

Not only does it start much more quickly and in a much more gripping way (OoT's massive village starting routine hasn't aged well), it has some really interesting systems that have never been ripped off and iterated on a million times since it was released (the greatest being the parallel scripted events/quests), and a much more interesting aesthetics.

Such an interesting, original game and nobody talks about it anymore.

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Such an interesting, original game and nobody talks about it anymore.

In any thread discussing Orcarina of Time someone will eventually bring up Majoras Mask, it's Ganons law (or something).

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In any thread discussing Orcarina of Time someone will eventually bring up Majoras Mask, it's Ganons law (or something).

yer bsclly bcos mm ttly pwns oot.

I actually thoroughly enjoy both games, but MM is certainly very unique.

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(OoT's massive village starting routine hasn't aged well).

I don't think that crap was EVER fun.

MM was a great game and does seem to be completely forgotten about except by rare pockets on the internet. One of my favorite things about it was the ability to go back and replay bosses.

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yer bsclly bcos mm ttly pwns oot.

That's the thing. Outside Nintendo fandom hardly anyone seemed to play it.

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I played Kameo, does that count?

Have finished with Zelda (got horribly stuck and bored and wrote a childish review of it which I won't link here) and spent two and a half weeks with Kingdom of Loathing the most charming and casually MMO there is ever likely to be. Wrote a review about that too, it is much nicer.

I am on Tales of Vesperia now, having played an hour of it so far I have some serious fear on how this game is going to pan out. I actually like it visually and it isn't bothering me (too much) how all the guys look like girls. But the story is so painful along with the unskippable cutscenes...

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