How can someone be so wrong?
DX:HR was long by today’s standards, and it has lots of replay value, given that you can do things in different ways in each playthrough.
Also, it’s a prequel, the number 3 doesn’t really apply.
nofriends^
Actually, I do regret getting skyrim full price.
Before anyone says anything, I got it full price on the 360. I didn’t want to do that, but when my folks cought wind and gained interest in the game, I had to get it for the console. They never played it and I really would have preferred the pc version. Ah well. I guess maybe I can return it (for an eighth of the fucking price) and extract the savegame data to my PC.
How far did you end up getting into the game? Because as you get further into it, Phantom Hourglass more than justifies the revisitation of the Ocean Temple. Starting out, you can only go so far, but as you acquire items, it opens up quite a bit. In fact each item you acquire allows you to skip entire portions of the temple, thereby reducing the amount of time retreading the same ground. Plus the items you acquire allow you to go into entirely new stages of the temple. Each stage differs from its predecessor, all with their own set of challenges. All things considered, the amount of backtracking is rather minimal, so I honestly don’t see a problem with the temple.
I purchased both Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks at full price, and I found both to be rather excellent titles. Though the controls weren’t exactly as tight as I would have preferred, I don’t feel they detracted from the experience in any way. To each his own, I suppose, but those games were built around the touchscreen design. Any less, and they wouldn’t have worked as well as they did.
Don’t get me wrong, Ocarina of Time 3D worked fine without a whole lot of touchscreen input, but to take that out of PH or ST, would simply have broken the experience entirely.
Course you could argue that they shouldn’t have even thought of incorporating an entirely touchbased control scheme. But then more people would just complain that Nintendo doesn’t do enough to innovate their own franchises.
I had uncovered the third section of the world map IIRC. And I know you could skip to where you left off in the temple, but I didn’t exactly do stellar runs to get that far when I first played the game, so I had run through a few times just to get a couple minutes back. Also,
I wouldn’t have cared if they had used old gameplay, it would have been loads better than what they gave us IMO. I may have actually finished the game if they had. Probably only once, but still. The only place where I thought the touch controls worked well was on the boat.
Sell it on craigslist or use a service like goozex to trade it, if you can. If you use craigslist, you can just price it less than Gamestop prices a used copy, so you get more than Gamestop pays, and there’s almost guaranteed a buyer since you’re pricing it less than they could get it anywhere else.
Didn’t think I had to elaborate on this, but.
If you are given different choices where one is clearly superior to all the others, it’s not really a choice anymore. That’s how DX’s replayability works. You can argue that you can go in guns blazing, explore or stealth your way in, but there’s no point if the devs penalize you for 2 of the 3 ways in by giving a huge reward to only one of them.
Even the difficulty is pretty weak since every encounter is trivialized by the takedowns, of which - again - there is no real choice if non-lethality yields better rewards than lethal takedowns.
Mind you, I did enjoy it the first and to some extent the second playthrough (being my first on highest difficulty), and it is a decent game, it still wasn’t worth $50 just to get it on release day (which the thread is about). I’ve also read that the DLC - which I haven’t yet played - fixes some of its shortcomings.
Not sure what you meant by the DX3 vs DX:HR. The game taking place 25 years prior the original is kinda a giveaway of it being a prequel. 
It’s still 3rd in a series.
What is this blasphamy?!?! I pre-ordered Battlefield 3 at full price for the Limited Edition and have not lost satisfaction yet. I think that there is something for everyone in that game, have you tried piloting a jet or a helicopter, or hardcore modes? What did you “try out” on the game game mode and vehicle-wise?
Starcraft 2
Portal 2
Battlefield 3.
It’s not that it’s a bad game, I actually enjoyed the single player, but I haven’t been in a multiplayer mood lately which is probably the biggest part of the game to justify full price. I wasn’t planning on buying it, but I was with friends purchasing Skyrim and I got pressured into purchasing it by one of them.
Origin doesn’t help. Why does Battlelog tell me that I can come directly to the site without launching through Origin if the game is just going to launch Origin to play the game anyway?
does not compute
Star Wars Force Unleashed II Collector’s Edition
It’s not GOTY by any means, but it filled my “mindless violence” quota for the year.
Serious sam is a much better game to get that job done… Mostly because it’s actually violent.
I’m glad I payed full price for Deus EX just on principle, sure it’s got a lot of shortcomings, but how many story-based RPG/Shooters even get made anymore? let alone good ones?
Honestly, I didn’t understand what the fuck was going on in that game. As a writer, I can promise you that compelling stories and plot twists interest me to no end, but hell, I didn’t give one fuck about any character in that game.
The story -to my mind- must have been heavily based around the original. (Didn’t finish the original.)
I remember the story coming toward me like this;
- Find people who attacked Sarif Industries: Main Objective/Conflict.[/SIZE]
- Girlfriend is dead; [COLOR=‘Red’]Character’s internal development and drive – his reasons for caring about the Main Objective/Conflict.[/SIZE]
- Couple of leads to some mercs from different company maybe; [COLOR=‘Red’]slowly advancing Main Objective/Conflict.[/SIZE]
- Illuminati?! – [COLOR=‘Red’]couldn’t tell you where this fits in…[/SIZE]
- My girlfriend isn’t dead? No time to explain? Wait, what; [COLOR=‘Red’]Character’s drive is gone – he shouldn’t care any longer about his mission. Never was it stated that Jenson was some hero who actually gave a shit about anything. He was portrayed as a pessimistic fatalist, not a hero. [/SIZE]
- Everyone’s implants are being controlled and everyone is turned into a mindless fuck-head; [COLOR=‘Red’]Environmental (Secondary) plot becomes current due to falling actions (Good Idea.) But foolishly, the plot never shifts back to the original Main Objective/Conflict[COLOR=‘Red’], leaving me feeling empty at the climax. (Bad Idea.)[/SIZE]
- Girls tied to a big ass machine and that Asian bitch is running around in circles; [COLOR=‘Red’]nearly no explanation of what the fuck was going on. [/SIZE]
- I get some apparently epic and random choice of which I know none of the options; [COLOR=‘Red’]Once again, what the hell is going on?[/SIZE]
- I save the world… or something? – [COLOR=‘Red’]Jenson was only interested in this case for his girlfriend’s revenge. But she lived - why did he suddenly change character and give a fuck about “the world” to even get this far? In fact, the only reason he took his job as Sariff was to be closer to Rachel… or whatever…[/SIZE]
- Deus Ex theme – yay!
Maybe I just wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have, but the game was half of what I thought it would be. The trailer got me excited for some epic story of major plot twists, yet all I got was random twists that didn’t necessarily have to do with the game’s objective. The story around the character -the environmental evolution- seemed to be unfolding and expanding as if it were the main plot. It eventually became the main plot and everything else was just… for nothing, I guess. I understand how the game was trying to make it seem like you stumbled upon it because of your investigation, but it came off as forced to me.
This is one of those times in which I actually wanted the game to be cinematic and epic like Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit). Regardless, the gameplay was still fun as hell and felt like the original.
Edit: I’m sure some die hard fan out there will explain this to me, which I’d be happy to read, but please refrain from telling me that I’m an idiot for not understanding it. The story, no matter how much I may have incorrectly perceived it, was poorly executed – that’s for sure. (Mainly because of the secondary plot and the main plot getting confused and switching priorities around 360 degrees. Also, bad character development for Jenson. Sariff had good development - which is confusing, because he is barely in it during the second half of the game…)
Yeah, HR’s story goes to hell towards the end, but honestly the rest of the game was worth it.
Oh, for sure – the gameplay was a fucking miracle from heaven. I haven’t had that much fun passing a control around among friends with a single player game since Bioshock or the Resident Evil Remake. Popping people’s heads with a silenced pistol and watching them collapse never gets old… Ever…
yeah, it was a little random, wandering, and ultimately kinda fizzled. but what other games have done better, what other games are even trying to focus on a story?
all I can think of is Mass Effect, and even that’s more just about the universe at war
Sad words, but true, nonetheless.
I fear that not even fancy-pants Valve is focusing on story anymore.
Elaboration: Portal 2 -along with Team Fortress 2- has shown drastic signs of mature-story decline. You see, Portal was a game with dark-humor on top of an evil and cunning undertone. Whereas, Portal 2 was a game with forced-humor on top of a comedic undertone.
That, combine with the disastrous direction Team Fortress 2 has taken, is revealing bad things about Valve that I thought they as a company were immune to; selling out. Portal 2 was like a game designed to be meme-bait. It’s as if they made Portal 2 with the ultimate intention of whoring themselves to comedic websites like 4-Chan and Funnyjunk, etc. Because some people found fun humor in Portal, it became a community phenomenon (Signs of a great game!), but somewhere along the line, Valve read too much into this and made it a humor-based game in reaction to the community’s fun.
*Writing Tip: Mature and well-written things are often parodied (Matrix, Silent Hill, Portal, etc), but they all, with the exception of Portal 2, continue the story’s left direction. How would the community of Matrix react if the 2nd Matrix was a comedy entirely about slow-mo bullet scenes mocking the first? (Matrix 2 sucked, admittedly - subjective opinion; relax.) *
While I might be being too hard on Portal 2, it still ruined the feel of the first game in my mind.
I mean, just take a look at the plot comparisons;
Portal: Final Test Subject in a science facility where the entire staff has been slaughtered by an A.I. super computer, GlaDoS – she toys with you and tries to kill you. You are forced to kill a your best friend which is an inanimate object (psychological warfare - genius plot device); you are also promised reward over and over, but are lied to every time (Trust issues - more pyschological warfare; really mature writing).
Conclusion: Blowing up the entire facility and being sucked to the surface. Possible plot tie-in with Half Life; a mature game. Seems like a merge of the games would taste quite well in one’s mouth…
Portal 2: Somehow you get back into some bedroom and perform tests for a resembled GlaDoS (How?). She gets turned into a potato; a British-comedic character takes the antagonist lead; smooth jazz; Cave Johnson making jokes about lemons; you shoot a portal on the moon…
Conclusion: You get your companion cube back… Now, imagine if potato GlaDoS met Gordon Freeman – just doesn’t fucking feel right. Yet, the first Portal felt like it would tie in with Half Life just fine.
Normally, I would just live with the fact that Portal took that direction, but combined with Team Fortress 2’s painful direction, I get the overwhelming feeling that Half Life 3 isn’t going to be in able hands any longer.
Pessimistic thoughts, admittedly.
I don’t see anything wrong with Portal 2 but I see a hell of a lot of people saying it sucked for some reason.