Farren
01-11-2005, 08:47 PM
I'm a sucker for them. What I mean is games that give the same kind of satisfaction as reading a great novel or watching a great movie. Some of them you can finish in a day. But then I finish some books in a day (meaning a 15-hour marathon session) and I still feel like I got my money's worth. I've just started playing Vampire: Bloodlines which is based on the Vampire: The Masquerade paper RPG and it looks like its gonna end up in my personal Hall of Fame.
I just thought I'd share my personal favourites for any other gamers out there and hopefully find out about one's I'm not aware of (the big retail chains here are pathetic and mostly by from the same supplier, who only ships absolute top-rankers sales-wise, which are often mind-numbingly dumb games):
Vampire: Bloodlines
Even though its dated (looks like the Unreal 2 engine) I new I was gonna enjoy this from the first cut scene. It has top-flight scripting, professional voice acting, an immersive and a well realised world. The politics of the various (extremely diverse) clans of vampiredom and the sassy dialogue immediately immerse you in the game without any of the cringe factor I've come to expect from even big-budget RPGs (which inexplicably, given the genre seem to often hire crappy writers). Vampires feels like the kind of game a movie should be made out of, instead of stupid-assed Indiana Jones ripoffs like Tomb Raider.
The world is also hugely interactive, which I really dig. Radios and TVs can be switched on and off, fridges opened, computers accessed to read your email or hack security systems. I haven't had this much fun since Deus Ex 1. Sometimes the interaction is unexpected. In the opening scene you can switch a TV on and watch the news. If you play a particular clan of vampire (the Malkavians, a slightly loony bunch that see into other planes and speak in riddles), the guy in the TV starts speaking directly to you and you can have a conversation with him.
Speaking of Deus Ex...
Deus Ex 1
NOT Deus Ex 2. Deus Ex 2 was the most disappointing sequel I've ever had the misfortune to play, on account of the fact that they dumbed it down for X-Box users and actually removed half of the features that made the original so cool.
DX1 (or just DX) was the ultimate conspiracy game. Your nanotechnologically enhanced character oooozed cool in his shades and leathers. The plot had more twists than a Gordian knot and the game was deliberately designed to allow the player a multitude of ways to solve every puzzle. A perfect game for lateral thinkers. Apparently you could get through the entire game only killing one person in the process, despite the plethora of weaponry.
The scripting was awsome. I remember a scene in a Hong Kong bar, having a long dialogue with a Chinese barman about differing Western and Oriental perceptions of the Triads in the post-plague world of the game. At the end of a fascinating discussion I realised it advanced the game not one jot. It was simply there to fill out the world and make it feel less like the paper-thin illusion all games really are, to give it hidden depth and substance.
Like Masquerades it was massively and intelligently interactive. It avoided all the usual RPG pitfalls of pure randomness determining your fate with cunning devices. Like your aim naturally "wobbled", making it hard to get headshots (but nonetheless possible with lightning reflexes), et al, then the wobble decreased as you grew in skill. I've never played another game where I had to worry about disturbing a flock of pigeons and making them take off en masse, alerting a guard, either.
Blade Runner
One of the few games to use voxel technology for its 3D and to good effect. This was a more conventional adventure game, but to add replayability they made the plot change direction at key points if you said or did certain things, with multiple different outcomes.
The locations were all the old Sierra format 3D-mapped 2D artwork, thus benefiting from the georgous detail that allows, while the characters were 3D. To make it more atmospheric, the engine had smoke and lighting effects (shafts of light through steam and so on) and used them to similar effect to the movie. The whole affair was positively drenched in the same kind of atmosphere as the movie.
Other highlights include the actual use of an image enhancement machine to carefully analyze movies by zooming and panning, a working Voight-Kampf test you had to use to test certain people and, in a slight departure from classic adventure games, a small amount of reaction-based shooting.
Final Fantasy 7
With its crude 3D manga style characters this is a little out of place but this game just charmed my pants off. I tried FF8 which had vastly superior graphics but it somehow didn't set the scene right at the start. FF7 just had this wonderful feel, starting you off in a band of rebels in a huge city, then slowly, via flashbacks and meetings with old friends and lover's, exposing your past. The scope was epic, extending from one end of the world to the other and the settings were varied and original, from grimy cities to sea-side towns to ice caverns.
It felt like the game just went on and on and on, bringing new twists all the time. If you got involved in all the side quests and minigames it apparently could go on nearly for ever. A friend told me he spent close to a month just breeding and racing Chocobo's, the ridiculous ostrich like creatures found in the game.
The minigames were a treat. Instead of sticking to a single format, Square just wrote a whole new minigame for each scene that merited it. From escorting a truck on a motorbike with a katana, fending off fiends chasing it, to racing Chocobos or playing arcade games in the Amusement Park, there were a dazzling array of minigames.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
This one is from way, way back, before I lost most of my respect for LucasArts. It was the finest Indy adventure to date. It was a classic 2D arcade adventure without any technological wonders but the story and the dialogue just made it work a treat.
I remember one night at the commune I was staying, someone was playing it and we were gonna watch videos. There was a technophobic goth girl who used to hang around our place and she was watching over his shoulder. Eventually she asked if she could play. We showed her how to operate the beast and couldn't get her off the computer the rest of the night while we watched vids, then later smoked dope and went outside to sit around a bonfire, play guitar badly and so on. It was the first - and in the subsequent years I knew her the only - computer game she ever played.
I'm getting tired of typing now so I'll leave it there for now. Anyone else got some goodies to share?
I just thought I'd share my personal favourites for any other gamers out there and hopefully find out about one's I'm not aware of (the big retail chains here are pathetic and mostly by from the same supplier, who only ships absolute top-rankers sales-wise, which are often mind-numbingly dumb games):
Vampire: Bloodlines
Even though its dated (looks like the Unreal 2 engine) I new I was gonna enjoy this from the first cut scene. It has top-flight scripting, professional voice acting, an immersive and a well realised world. The politics of the various (extremely diverse) clans of vampiredom and the sassy dialogue immediately immerse you in the game without any of the cringe factor I've come to expect from even big-budget RPGs (which inexplicably, given the genre seem to often hire crappy writers). Vampires feels like the kind of game a movie should be made out of, instead of stupid-assed Indiana Jones ripoffs like Tomb Raider.
The world is also hugely interactive, which I really dig. Radios and TVs can be switched on and off, fridges opened, computers accessed to read your email or hack security systems. I haven't had this much fun since Deus Ex 1. Sometimes the interaction is unexpected. In the opening scene you can switch a TV on and watch the news. If you play a particular clan of vampire (the Malkavians, a slightly loony bunch that see into other planes and speak in riddles), the guy in the TV starts speaking directly to you and you can have a conversation with him.
Speaking of Deus Ex...
Deus Ex 1
NOT Deus Ex 2. Deus Ex 2 was the most disappointing sequel I've ever had the misfortune to play, on account of the fact that they dumbed it down for X-Box users and actually removed half of the features that made the original so cool.
DX1 (or just DX) was the ultimate conspiracy game. Your nanotechnologically enhanced character oooozed cool in his shades and leathers. The plot had more twists than a Gordian knot and the game was deliberately designed to allow the player a multitude of ways to solve every puzzle. A perfect game for lateral thinkers. Apparently you could get through the entire game only killing one person in the process, despite the plethora of weaponry.
The scripting was awsome. I remember a scene in a Hong Kong bar, having a long dialogue with a Chinese barman about differing Western and Oriental perceptions of the Triads in the post-plague world of the game. At the end of a fascinating discussion I realised it advanced the game not one jot. It was simply there to fill out the world and make it feel less like the paper-thin illusion all games really are, to give it hidden depth and substance.
Like Masquerades it was massively and intelligently interactive. It avoided all the usual RPG pitfalls of pure randomness determining your fate with cunning devices. Like your aim naturally "wobbled", making it hard to get headshots (but nonetheless possible with lightning reflexes), et al, then the wobble decreased as you grew in skill. I've never played another game where I had to worry about disturbing a flock of pigeons and making them take off en masse, alerting a guard, either.
Blade Runner
One of the few games to use voxel technology for its 3D and to good effect. This was a more conventional adventure game, but to add replayability they made the plot change direction at key points if you said or did certain things, with multiple different outcomes.
The locations were all the old Sierra format 3D-mapped 2D artwork, thus benefiting from the georgous detail that allows, while the characters were 3D. To make it more atmospheric, the engine had smoke and lighting effects (shafts of light through steam and so on) and used them to similar effect to the movie. The whole affair was positively drenched in the same kind of atmosphere as the movie.
Other highlights include the actual use of an image enhancement machine to carefully analyze movies by zooming and panning, a working Voight-Kampf test you had to use to test certain people and, in a slight departure from classic adventure games, a small amount of reaction-based shooting.
Final Fantasy 7
With its crude 3D manga style characters this is a little out of place but this game just charmed my pants off. I tried FF8 which had vastly superior graphics but it somehow didn't set the scene right at the start. FF7 just had this wonderful feel, starting you off in a band of rebels in a huge city, then slowly, via flashbacks and meetings with old friends and lover's, exposing your past. The scope was epic, extending from one end of the world to the other and the settings were varied and original, from grimy cities to sea-side towns to ice caverns.
It felt like the game just went on and on and on, bringing new twists all the time. If you got involved in all the side quests and minigames it apparently could go on nearly for ever. A friend told me he spent close to a month just breeding and racing Chocobo's, the ridiculous ostrich like creatures found in the game.
The minigames were a treat. Instead of sticking to a single format, Square just wrote a whole new minigame for each scene that merited it. From escorting a truck on a motorbike with a katana, fending off fiends chasing it, to racing Chocobos or playing arcade games in the Amusement Park, there were a dazzling array of minigames.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
This one is from way, way back, before I lost most of my respect for LucasArts. It was the finest Indy adventure to date. It was a classic 2D arcade adventure without any technological wonders but the story and the dialogue just made it work a treat.
I remember one night at the commune I was staying, someone was playing it and we were gonna watch videos. There was a technophobic goth girl who used to hang around our place and she was watching over his shoulder. Eventually she asked if she could play. We showed her how to operate the beast and couldn't get her off the computer the rest of the night while we watched vids, then later smoked dope and went outside to sit around a bonfire, play guitar badly and so on. It was the first - and in the subsequent years I knew her the only - computer game she ever played.
I'm getting tired of typing now so I'll leave it there for now. Anyone else got some goodies to share?