Gaming stuff
Mar. 22nd, 2009 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73• After a couple of years of off-and-on playing, we completed Myst V: End of Ages earlier this week. My earlier impressions were essentially correct. For the most part, it combines the best of Myst Revelations (great story, abysmal puzzles for half the game) and Myst Exile (no story to speak of, excellent gameplay). The story was extremely well done and very interesting; surprisingly, I didn't hate that the human actors used in the earlier games in the series were replaced by computer models. (The CGI actors were better at, well, acting rather than overacting, for starters!) And the gameplay was also - mostly - very well done; as I noted some time ago, there were a few Stupid Exceptions. The various endings to the game were also good, particularly the "This is the right choice!" ending, which neatly closed most of the threads that have been woven through the series. Yay Myst! Now we have to figure out what to play together next.
• One more puzzle to go in Zack and Wiki. There's a (1) time limit, a (2) abysmally implemented puzzle which fails to accurately sense part of the required motion, and (3) a puzzle that is solved only if you manage to (a) determine approximately where you should be shooting, and (b) manage to actually *hit* an effectively invisible target. Did I mention the time limit? Overall, really really mixed bag of a game: fair number of good puzzles, but a handful of badly designed and/or stupidly unfair ones. (If anyone on this list would like to have it when we're done, you're welcome to it.)
• In Xenogears (yes, that one, for the original PS), I only have to do the last dungeon, and I will finally (something like 5 years after starting it!) finish the game. But I'd better do it soon: we've ordered a new Macintosh, as my poor 6-year-old iMac is too slow to run graphics-heavy websites with any kind of speed, and huz liked the idea of having a computer with a really spiffy graphics chip in it. Xenogears will not run on the more recently developed PSOne emulators, only on Connectix VGS, which in turn will only run on Mac OS 9... and only little Fred (my current box) is capable of running that. Thing is, it's just not as much fun as the action-adventures I've grown to love on the Wii. The mechanic of a random battle appropximately once every five seconds becomes real old real fast. I'd like to be able to skip over the animations that accompany the highly-effective magic and fight moves because I've seen them all a zillion times. But I also know myself well enough to know that if I don't finish it now, ninety-some hours of play into it with only one dungeon left, a (small) part of me will forever regret it.
• In Okami, I finished the ice dungeon yesterday. The fight with Lechku and Nechku was actually one of the easiest bits of the dungeon - there was a fair amount of platforming that took rather a lot of patience to get through. I'm going to wander around Nippon for a while (maybe find those other two stray beads hidden somewhere in the village where I started the game!), then embark on the last dungeon. Wonder what I'll play next on Wii? Likely one of the two GameCube games we've purchased: Paper Mario:Thousand-Year Door or Zelda: Wind Waker. Since I haven't yet finished Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on DS yet, I'll probably pick up Mario.
• DS: still working on Phoenix Wright 2, in the last of the four cases of the game. Interesting overarching plot-line stuff is happening right about now, so even though I don't yet have much interest in the specifics of the case at hand (Goodbye, My Turnabout - after I finish the case, I'll go look up a plot summary for Goodbye, My Concubine), there are definitely reasons for Phoenix to want to do well. Phantom Hourglass goes along; I'm working on the Ancient Ruins dungeon (the one for which the toy is a giant hammer, though I haven't got my hands on that yet). I *think* this is the last dungeon before going to meet the final boss, though there's plenty of treasure-trawling, fishing, and other sidequests that can be done. It's a well-structured game, and good for casuals. There was only one fight where the physical mechanics were difficult enough that I had to do it twice, and another boss fight where I was so pathetically stupid that I had to ask someone how to beat the thing. Other than that, I've enjoyed it a lot.
For those who want better writing about games than I have time or ability to do, I recommend Gamers With Jobs. The writers are all very intellingent and very good at writing fun, interesting, thoughtful articles, sometimes on specific games and sometimes on much larget issues. For example, Rabbit's put up an excellent article about his experience the first time a game's strobe effect set off his epilepsy. Good folks, these.
• One more puzzle to go in Zack and Wiki. There's a (1) time limit, a (2) abysmally implemented puzzle which fails to accurately sense part of the required motion, and (3) a puzzle that is solved only if you manage to (a) determine approximately where you should be shooting, and (b) manage to actually *hit* an effectively invisible target. Did I mention the time limit? Overall, really really mixed bag of a game: fair number of good puzzles, but a handful of badly designed and/or stupidly unfair ones. (If anyone on this list would like to have it when we're done, you're welcome to it.)
• In Xenogears (yes, that one, for the original PS), I only have to do the last dungeon, and I will finally (something like 5 years after starting it!) finish the game. But I'd better do it soon: we've ordered a new Macintosh, as my poor 6-year-old iMac is too slow to run graphics-heavy websites with any kind of speed, and huz liked the idea of having a computer with a really spiffy graphics chip in it. Xenogears will not run on the more recently developed PSOne emulators, only on Connectix VGS, which in turn will only run on Mac OS 9... and only little Fred (my current box) is capable of running that. Thing is, it's just not as much fun as the action-adventures I've grown to love on the Wii. The mechanic of a random battle appropximately once every five seconds becomes real old real fast. I'd like to be able to skip over the animations that accompany the highly-effective magic and fight moves because I've seen them all a zillion times. But I also know myself well enough to know that if I don't finish it now, ninety-some hours of play into it with only one dungeon left, a (small) part of me will forever regret it.
• In Okami, I finished the ice dungeon yesterday. The fight with Lechku and Nechku was actually one of the easiest bits of the dungeon - there was a fair amount of platforming that took rather a lot of patience to get through. I'm going to wander around Nippon for a while (maybe find those other two stray beads hidden somewhere in the village where I started the game!), then embark on the last dungeon. Wonder what I'll play next on Wii? Likely one of the two GameCube games we've purchased: Paper Mario:Thousand-Year Door or Zelda: Wind Waker. Since I haven't yet finished Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on DS yet, I'll probably pick up Mario.
• DS: still working on Phoenix Wright 2, in the last of the four cases of the game. Interesting overarching plot-line stuff is happening right about now, so even though I don't yet have much interest in the specifics of the case at hand (Goodbye, My Turnabout - after I finish the case, I'll go look up a plot summary for Goodbye, My Concubine), there are definitely reasons for Phoenix to want to do well. Phantom Hourglass goes along; I'm working on the Ancient Ruins dungeon (the one for which the toy is a giant hammer, though I haven't got my hands on that yet). I *think* this is the last dungeon before going to meet the final boss, though there's plenty of treasure-trawling, fishing, and other sidequests that can be done. It's a well-structured game, and good for casuals. There was only one fight where the physical mechanics were difficult enough that I had to do it twice, and another boss fight where I was so pathetically stupid that I had to ask someone how to beat the thing. Other than that, I've enjoyed it a lot.
For those who want better writing about games than I have time or ability to do, I recommend Gamers With Jobs. The writers are all very intellingent and very good at writing fun, interesting, thoughtful articles, sometimes on specific games and sometimes on much larget issues. For example, Rabbit's put up an excellent article about his experience the first time a game's strobe effect set off his epilepsy. Good folks, these.
