What were the last video games you played?

[Lowlander2]

You don't read memos in ORC.

[topperharley]

P3P is ... worth the extra $10 compared to FES.

But I'd rather play games on the PS3 than on the PSP.

[kiggidykev]

Because of the stupid ME3 patch and the resulting title screen freeze, I went with something different yesterday and played Fruit Ninja Kinect for maybe an hour. It wasn`t that great compared to the iPod version and my arms are sore today from whipping them around.

[topperharley]

Played a bit of Halo:CE this afternoon. I may get the anniversary edition when it comes way down in price, but for now, the Xbox Originals edition will do just fine.

[GreatJedi7]

Played a bit of Halo:CE this afternoon. I may get the anniversary edition when it comes way down in price, but for now, the Xbox Originals edition will do just fine.

Lucky. I'm lacking a hard drive, so if I wanna play Halo:CE I have to get Anniversary. And I almost did get it for Christmas, but my parents got the platinum edition of the original instead of Anniversary, so major fail on their part. That and getting me Assassin's Creed: Revelations rather than the original.

[Gowienczyk]

So I've played some Silent Hill Downpour. Huh.

My first impressions on it aren't very positive, but the game isn't terrible as of yet. Some of the things that have been bothering me are:
1. The main character talks way too much. I'm pretty sure by now he's already had as many lines as Harry did in the whole of Silent Hill. This breaks the tension for me quite a bit, which is disappointing.
2. The amount of interaction with the scenery is at a scary low. The interesting thoughts that the characters come up with when inspecting random rubbish seems to be all gone. This is a MASSIVE waste of potential for characterization, plot development, replayability, exploration, etc. Incredible things have been told through the inspection like Heather's fear of mirrors in SH3. Which leads me to my next point...
3. The game tells too much instead of shows. Things like Murphy's interest in cars, the step by step analysis of his own progress, "oh no, I think that's gas!" should all be inferred based off of interacting with the world instead of pointing it out and explaining to the audience. Which goes pretty well with point 2.
4. The game isn't scary so far. Sure I haven't even encountered my first enemy, not including the mist, (I just got the gun), but I wasn't feeling really threatened or anything at all. There should be more fog, more creepy noises (AT LEAST HAVE FOOTSTEP NOISES IN THE SECOND FLOOR WHILE YOU'RE IN THE FIRST), and less telling. Oh and the shift to the Otherworld was way too fast. The gradual approach is better for pacing, but just throwing it all at once isn't too scary. In Silent Hill 3, the further you progressed through the church the bloodier and more corrupt previous rooms became. Which led to nice pacing and scarier gameplay.

Although those are MASSIVE complaints, I feel that the game is pretty interesting. The world is a lot more fluid and mobile this time around, instead of having the locations all set mostly to reality's standards of gravity. The world feels alive, which is fantastic, but there's very little interacting with it so hopefully that changes soon.

Yeah, Downpour is a pretty weak addition to the franchise; but it's not bad or anything.

[RockAndAHardPlace]

I beat Majora's Mask for the first time last week. Absolutely loved it. It goes as my 2nd favorite Zelda game.

Now I'm trying to 100% LEGO Pirates. I have 2 more films left to get all the minikits and the gold bricks.

[Cipher_Peon]

I beat Limbo today, and to quickly jot down my thoughts:

1. It starts off incredibly amazing. The atmosphere is FANTASTIC and the creepiness envelops you, which is fantastic.

2. At the half way point, it just said "Screw it!" to the incredible atmosphere and became an annoying physics platformer. The atmosphere still oozes despair, but loses all sense of terror and creepiness, which is disappointing.

3. The ending is completely... well barely there. What is there is a pretty damn unsatisfying ending. It's a shame because you get invested in the atmosphere seeking an ending and an explanation for what's going on. And although I like having an ending up for interpretation, they pretty much gave you absolutely nothing when it comes to the whole rest of the game.

4. My final complaint is that the narrative can be worked on a lot. Sure the story is... nonexistent, but there's so many opportunities to explain how surreal the world of Limbo is and why things are not what they're supposed to be like. The fact that there's no dialogue in the whole game is a fantastic step in the right direction, especially in contrast to Silent Hill Downpour, but there's almost no visual hints setting the world around them. If it weren't for the title, I would have no idea what the setting would be.

The game is good. It's not fantastic and it at times it can be borderline great, but there's quite a bit holding it back from blowing minds.

[Der_Lex]

Hey Cipher, I have a question about the SH collection: did they leave in the 'easter egg' where Heather can find a letter from James in her mailbox in SH3 if you have a SH2 save on your hard disk? I thought that was pretty neat back on the PS2.

I liked your SH3 and Downpour impressions, by the way. Some of the most insightful things I've seen you write on here.

[NoMoreVillains]

SimCity 4

I restarted my region again. I do that when I stay away from the game too long. It allows me to try out new ideas. This time it's setting each city to a random height. This resulted in a very mountainous city. So mountainous, in fact, that I can't run a commuter rail line to my residential area. My sims will just have to take the bus.