The past few months in gaming
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceter(Starting to xpost to LJ again)
I have read approximately 1.8 books in the past five months or so. Okay, probably more, but that's how it feels. I mostly blame CB, particularly for siccing Sims Social on me, but here's a gaming report if anyone is interested.
Please note that I am extremely idiosyncratic re: what I can play. Ex. I dislike first-person 3D perspectives, 3D navigating in general, fighting, stress, anything that depends on too much physical coordination/real world physics, and I get fixated and bored by odd things. So I am not sure how useful any of these will be...
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS) - I am very fond of this series in general, since it's one of the very first narrative games I've played personally (as opposed to watching). As usual per the series, some of the puzzles are entirely too easy, some involve "how carefully did you read the question," and some are just a lot of trial and error for me (usually anything involving moving shapes). I would be more annoyed by how marginalized Flora is if I were more emotionally invested, as well as Spoilery Aspect, but I admit, I'm mostly in it for the puzzles. That said, the parrot minigame is incredibly annoying for me, since I am apparently terrible at anything that even remotely simulates physics. I think I had to look up almost all the answers online.
Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) - I found this story much less interesting and twisty than the previous game's, and although I enjoyed getting Professor Layton and Luke's origin story, it annoys me that Emmy is yet another female character who gets sidelined by the Layton-Luke partnership. The train and fish minigames are fun, and the included London Life sim game is amusing, but the "direct a play" minigame is not nearly as interesting as the "fill out the story" from Unwound Future.
Glitch (Flash) - I feel sad that I have largely been neglecting this. I like that I can practice platform jumping without time constraints or worrying about dying, and I like the overall aesthetic of the game. But after getting the house I wanted, planting trees, planting crops, and raising piggies, I'm a little bored. I'm currently learning more of the engineering-type skills, but really, all I want are more recipes and ingredients. I liked the Zilloween update, but I think I want more new content.
Murder in Venice (DS) - I think this is what people call an interactive story? It has a lot of "find hidden objects," which I greatly enjoyed, but the story itself was so-so and the controls were extremely frustrating.
Chronicles of Mystery: The Secret Tree of Life (DS) - Same genre and publisher as Murder in Venice, but as they attempted to add more than "find hidden objects" to the game, they actually made it worse. I had a near-impossible time figuring out what to do, and I hate the interface. Didn't finish.
Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS) - The camera perspective on this frustrated me so much that I gave up. It's a 3D world, and you can see your character, though the camera kind of hangs above your head and tilts at a bit of an angle so you aren't looking straight at the horizon. I constantly felt like the top view was being cut off, and I cannot figure out directions that way.
MySims (DS) - Apparently I am not interested in Sims games that don't come with decorating! I had the same perspective issues as I did with Animal Crossing, and I would much rather decorate my room and get new clothes than simulate getting a job and talking with neighbors.
Ilo Milo (Xbox Live) - Incredibly cute puzzly game! I love the world and the graphics. Unfortunately, the 3D-ness of walking around the cubes makes the puzzles almost impossible for me to solve in a non-random fashion, and there is the added downside that it makes me faintly nauseous. So cute though!
Dr. Mario (WiiWare) - OMG IT IS ON WII LOVE!!!!! The Virus Buster bit is new, and it's difficult to maneuver pills around with the Wii remote, but it has led to some very hilarious scenes. I.e. my sister and I sort pills in a very similar way, whereas CB wants to put them in what I consider very unintuitive places. My sister also yelled a ton at her fiance, who was laughing so hard he couldn't put pills in good places, and because he stacks them in (what I think are) weird places.
Super Puzzle Fighter II (Xbox Live) - Still the BEST. GAME. EVAR. You have no idea how excited my sister and I were when CB told us it was available again online; I think my entire high school played it during break time for a year or so.
Sims Social (Facebook) - Damn you Sims Social! I am mostly bored of it now that I have maxed out almost all the skills and levels, but they keep adding new stuff that I want in my house. Clearly house decorating is one of those things I can endlessly do, and I am embarrassingly excited to put up Christmas stuff.
Gardens of Time (Facebook) - I played for a bit, but while I like the hidden object finding, the social aspects annoy me. Creating a Time Garden is not nearly as motivating as decorating as house, and after I spent some time playing certain scenes over and over looking for different things, I mostly got bored.
And I realized this is actually getting kind of long (! now I feel guilty spending so much time on non-reading things!), so interactive fiction gets its own post.
Stuff CB plays that I watch
Bayonetta (Xbox 360) - Or: In Which CB Discovers I Was Not Exaggerating about My Bad Video Game Skills. I.e. he set this in the easiest mode possible and I got stuck around level 2 because I couldn't master the timing to do a double jump out of a pit. This has a lot of cheesecake and gratuitous boobage and cleavage and whatnot for the title character. On the other hand, she's very much the heroine, the love interest does nothing useful, and the other best character is a frenemy rival witch. I don't quite think it's feminist, but I very much like how it dismisses some annoying story tropes. Apparently it is also incredibly fun if you used to be a Sega gamer because it has all these play references, but I didn't catch any of those.
Super Paper Mario (Wii) - CB hasn't finished this yet, but we're nearing the end. I like the fun of flipping dimensions, and the writing is pretty hilarious. I think I nearly fell off the sofa during a self-referential Geek Boss battle, and I love the graphics for the negative world bits. I totally guessed the reveals way ahead of time though. Also, it still bugs me that the Pixls look like bad 90s clip art.
Portal 2 (PC) - CB hasn't finished this either. I mostly don't watch, because the first-person perspective + 3D makes me dizzy, but the dialogue is hilarious and snarky. I also love all the random bits of corporate culture and the evil, evil sense of humor + infographic design.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword CB has just started this, and so far, the art style and the story aren't as interesting as Wind Waker (My First Zelda). Still! New Zelda game! (Zelda at least seems to get to do things off-screen. I now understand much more why just having a female protagonist in a game is such a big deal OMG.)
I have read approximately 1.8 books in the past five months or so. Okay, probably more, but that's how it feels. I mostly blame CB, particularly for siccing Sims Social on me, but here's a gaming report if anyone is interested.
Please note that I am extremely idiosyncratic re: what I can play. Ex. I dislike first-person 3D perspectives, 3D navigating in general, fighting, stress, anything that depends on too much physical coordination/real world physics, and I get fixated and bored by odd things. So I am not sure how useful any of these will be...
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS) - I am very fond of this series in general, since it's one of the very first narrative games I've played personally (as opposed to watching). As usual per the series, some of the puzzles are entirely too easy, some involve "how carefully did you read the question," and some are just a lot of trial and error for me (usually anything involving moving shapes). I would be more annoyed by how marginalized Flora is if I were more emotionally invested, as well as Spoilery Aspect, but I admit, I'm mostly in it for the puzzles. That said, the parrot minigame is incredibly annoying for me, since I am apparently terrible at anything that even remotely simulates physics. I think I had to look up almost all the answers online.
Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) - I found this story much less interesting and twisty than the previous game's, and although I enjoyed getting Professor Layton and Luke's origin story, it annoys me that Emmy is yet another female character who gets sidelined by the Layton-Luke partnership. The train and fish minigames are fun, and the included London Life sim game is amusing, but the "direct a play" minigame is not nearly as interesting as the "fill out the story" from Unwound Future.
Glitch (Flash) - I feel sad that I have largely been neglecting this. I like that I can practice platform jumping without time constraints or worrying about dying, and I like the overall aesthetic of the game. But after getting the house I wanted, planting trees, planting crops, and raising piggies, I'm a little bored. I'm currently learning more of the engineering-type skills, but really, all I want are more recipes and ingredients. I liked the Zilloween update, but I think I want more new content.
Murder in Venice (DS) - I think this is what people call an interactive story? It has a lot of "find hidden objects," which I greatly enjoyed, but the story itself was so-so and the controls were extremely frustrating.
Chronicles of Mystery: The Secret Tree of Life (DS) - Same genre and publisher as Murder in Venice, but as they attempted to add more than "find hidden objects" to the game, they actually made it worse. I had a near-impossible time figuring out what to do, and I hate the interface. Didn't finish.
Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS) - The camera perspective on this frustrated me so much that I gave up. It's a 3D world, and you can see your character, though the camera kind of hangs above your head and tilts at a bit of an angle so you aren't looking straight at the horizon. I constantly felt like the top view was being cut off, and I cannot figure out directions that way.
MySims (DS) - Apparently I am not interested in Sims games that don't come with decorating! I had the same perspective issues as I did with Animal Crossing, and I would much rather decorate my room and get new clothes than simulate getting a job and talking with neighbors.
Ilo Milo (Xbox Live) - Incredibly cute puzzly game! I love the world and the graphics. Unfortunately, the 3D-ness of walking around the cubes makes the puzzles almost impossible for me to solve in a non-random fashion, and there is the added downside that it makes me faintly nauseous. So cute though!
Dr. Mario (WiiWare) - OMG IT IS ON WII LOVE!!!!! The Virus Buster bit is new, and it's difficult to maneuver pills around with the Wii remote, but it has led to some very hilarious scenes. I.e. my sister and I sort pills in a very similar way, whereas CB wants to put them in what I consider very unintuitive places. My sister also yelled a ton at her fiance, who was laughing so hard he couldn't put pills in good places, and because he stacks them in (what I think are) weird places.
Super Puzzle Fighter II (Xbox Live) - Still the BEST. GAME. EVAR. You have no idea how excited my sister and I were when CB told us it was available again online; I think my entire high school played it during break time for a year or so.
Sims Social (Facebook) - Damn you Sims Social! I am mostly bored of it now that I have maxed out almost all the skills and levels, but they keep adding new stuff that I want in my house. Clearly house decorating is one of those things I can endlessly do, and I am embarrassingly excited to put up Christmas stuff.
Gardens of Time (Facebook) - I played for a bit, but while I like the hidden object finding, the social aspects annoy me. Creating a Time Garden is not nearly as motivating as decorating as house, and after I spent some time playing certain scenes over and over looking for different things, I mostly got bored.
And I realized this is actually getting kind of long (! now I feel guilty spending so much time on non-reading things!), so interactive fiction gets its own post.
Stuff CB plays that I watch
Bayonetta (Xbox 360) - Or: In Which CB Discovers I Was Not Exaggerating about My Bad Video Game Skills. I.e. he set this in the easiest mode possible and I got stuck around level 2 because I couldn't master the timing to do a double jump out of a pit. This has a lot of cheesecake and gratuitous boobage and cleavage and whatnot for the title character. On the other hand, she's very much the heroine, the love interest does nothing useful, and the other best character is a frenemy rival witch. I don't quite think it's feminist, but I very much like how it dismisses some annoying story tropes. Apparently it is also incredibly fun if you used to be a Sega gamer because it has all these play references, but I didn't catch any of those.
Super Paper Mario (Wii) - CB hasn't finished this yet, but we're nearing the end. I like the fun of flipping dimensions, and the writing is pretty hilarious. I think I nearly fell off the sofa during a self-referential Geek Boss battle, and I love the graphics for the negative world bits. I totally guessed the reveals way ahead of time though. Also, it still bugs me that the Pixls look like bad 90s clip art.
Portal 2 (PC) - CB hasn't finished this either. I mostly don't watch, because the first-person perspective + 3D makes me dizzy, but the dialogue is hilarious and snarky. I also love all the random bits of corporate culture and the evil, evil sense of humor + infographic design.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword CB has just started this, and so far, the art style and the story aren't as interesting as Wind Waker (My First Zelda). Still! New Zelda game! (Zelda at least seems to get to do things off-screen. I now understand much more why just having a female protagonist in a game is such a big deal OMG.)
(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 09:06 pm (UTC)Ilo Milo's story is the most touching thing ever.
Portal 2 was really short for me. I felt like it was easier than Portal 1 in a lot of ways.
We should still do a geek night sometime!
(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 09:52 pm (UTC)Ilo Milo is so cute! I am sad I didn't get to see the end. And we definitely should still do a geek night!
(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 09:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 09:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 09:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 09:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 10:09 pm (UTC)And I am super excited about going back to beta and being able to DECORATE MY HOUSE. /one-track-minded person is one-track-minded
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 02:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Tue, Dec. 6th, 2011 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 11:02 pm (UTC)And, Skyward Sword! I can't play it because a. I don't have a copy and b. our Wii is broken (woes!) but I am SO EXCITED that there is a new Zelda game. As soon as ZeldaDungeon has its video playthroughs available I know how I'll be spending my post-kid-bedtimes ahaha.
(no subject)
Thu, Dec. 1st, 2011 11:39 pm (UTC)(apparently one can do Wii emulations on computers now.... though figuring out the remote control stuff sounds annoying when CB was doing it)
But yes, yay! I am excited when CB is done with Work Project and has more time to play!
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 02:33 am (UTC)Re: Glitch, the best thing about returning to beta, for me, is the return of street projects. I guess my repeat-volunteerism is showing? but I like that it's easy to drop in and contribute a little, then go away again. (Contrast WoW, which I've deliberately never tried, though I've tried similar things a bit--where people organize sixty-person outings and schedule them on a calendar, which feels to me like a job, though I can see the appeal.)
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 08:29 pm (UTC)I've always seen talk about the street projects, but never quite knew what to do about them... can you still contribute even if you don't have engineering skills?
(no subject)
Sun, Dec. 4th, 2011 05:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 02:51 am (UTC)But yay for someone else who knows/loves Super Puzzle Fighter II! I had that for the original Playstation and also used to play it at the arcade a lot when I was in college. It's such a fun game! Alas, I don't have an X-Box, nor any plans to get one, since overall it doesn't really have the sort of games I enjoy.
I played Super Paper Mario most of the way through but just never really got into it. It was okay, but not what I was looking for in a Mario game. I much prefer New Super Mario Bros for the Wii. Also Wario Land Shake It is pretty awesome.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 08:31 pm (UTC)We had an original PS set up in school, and during break, people would line up and basically play the winner. And I remember me and my friend sneaking off to play during longer break times so you could actually practice more instead of losing and then having to get back in line.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 06:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 2nd, 2011 09:03 pm (UTC)