Recently played games (not reviews)

[TooNice]

I've played quite a few games in the past 2 months and I just thought I'd write some short comments.

Batman: Arkham Asylum. I had a moan here http://forums.hexus.net/2098725-post81.html though it turned out that you didn't need an online profile to play after all. I can live with an offline profile. I liked it a lot. It's not a long game, but it's a quality well-paced game and I actually like the fact that you can finish it in a week-end. Even completing all the challenges do not take that long, though some of them did take a few attempts and a lot of swearing I will look forward to the sequel.

Shogun Total War 2. First game I installed on my new laptop, I haven't played a Total War game for a long time since Medieval 1. Well, technically I did play Rome for a few hours but I don't count that. As I have quite a bit of interest in Japanese culture/history I've been looking forward to this. It didn't disappoint though I find that the AI is not all that honest (as too often is the case in strategy games). One major difference I found in this game to earlier games is that cavalry has been seriously nerfed. In the first game, the Takeda's heavy cavalry were arguably overpowered. In Medieval, they were slightly more vulnerable, but still mighty. In Shogun 2, amounted general units can easily get pwned by basic peasant spear units. Foreign trades seems overcritical in having a solid economy, and diplomacy only works until that moment in the game when all hell break loose. Still, overall, a good game and the assassination videos are pretty fun to watch.

Picked up GTA 4 Complete during the Steam Sale. I actually bought GTA 4 a long time ago but never played it and it's a shame that I am unable to gift it away but oh well. It's not bad but I think that I enjoyed San Andreas a lot more. Is it just me or are the vehicle more "slippery" and hard to handle than SA? I don't like driving games in general because "realistic" car handling just doesn't appeal to me. Well, I may finish the game, but I don't think this game isn't going to turn me into a hermit for the next week or so (as SA did).

I've bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl a long time ago on Steam but only had a go at it yesterday after applying the full mod that's supposed to make it a lot better. The settings along with the bartering reminds me a bit of Fallout. But I just can't seem to get into the story. Night time is too dark and long, I find anomalies annoying, and most importantly, I can't get into the story and gameplay

Unsatisfied with S.T.A.L.K.E.R, I picked up F.E.A.R Complete last night hoping for an atmospheric FPS that's a bit faster paced and more "traditional" in gameplay (I didn't mind "different" in Deus Ex and System Shock 2 but anyway). The graphics reminds me of Shogo, not too surprising given that they were both developed by Monolith. Well, I've not even played an hour so far, but I like it. I'll definitely play more of it when it's dark. I should point out that the hardware auto-detect does not seem to play nice with newer nVidia card (or at least the mobility version) and while the game plays fine on the nVidia card, it will crash if try to change the settings. So to change the resolution and other settings, you'd need to force the game to start using the onboard card (the auto-detect works fine with the Sandy Bridge GFX card), change the settings, then restart with the nVidia card. Ironic. given this game shows the "nVidia, the way it's meant to be played" logo on startup.

This probably won't mean anything to most people as it is a Japanese game, but I've also finally completed a Touhou bullet hell shooter on "normal" difficulty. For experts of those kind of games, it's not much of achievements, but for beginners, it's probably the second milestone (the first usually being finishing a game on "Easy"!). The amount of concentration needed (keeping in mind that I do not watch / copy from replays) is insane.

Next game I'll get is probably Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition. Just need for the price to drop closer to £15 (not paying more given that I already bought SFIV).

[MadduckUK]

Unsatisfied with S.T.A.L.K.E.R, I picked up F.E.A.R

I see what you are doing

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I see what you are doing

Groan!!