Saturday!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_sMZR2hJ9A&w=560&h=315]
We’re in a weird place where, over the last few weeks and into the next few weeks, the following games are coming out:
Batman: Return to Arkham (a remastered Batman: Arkham Asylum bundled with Batman: Arkham City)
Skyrim: The Elder Scrolls V
Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection (Assassin’s Creed 2, Brotherhood, and Revelations bundled together)
And that’s not even touching on Nintendo’s online store for the 3DS (Castlevania 4 was recently released! The awesome one! And Breath of Fire?!? The SNES one?!?!?)
I have mixed feelings about this. I mean, on one level, these games are awesome. I mean, every single one mentioned above was beaten (and a couple of them were 100%ed). I seriously enjoyed playing them and enjoyed playing a number of them a second time.
That said, there are a couple of things that bug me a little bit. One is a “that’s how they get ya!” complaint and the other is somewhat silly but I feel it anyway:
1) They didn’t make the consoles backwards compatible, but they’re “remastering” old games for the new consoles so you have to buy them a second time? That’s how they get ya!
2) They’re just trying to rest on their laurels and give us great games they already made instead of making new games that make us hope that the PlayStation V will be backwards compatible.
And then I look at the other games scheduled to be coming out and notice how many of them have 2s after their titles or numbers even bigger than that or otherwise communicating that they are the next game in the (annual) series.
And that led me to a mini-rant that alternated between complaining about sequels and then praising them and then complaining about them again. Probably write that one next week.
So… what are you playing?
(Picture is HG Wells playing a war game from Illustrated London News (25 January 1913[/efn_note]
I’m an amateur and in no way a computer game fresser (and this may be off-topic from the post), but one game I miss is the old Axis & Allies that I used to be able to play on my windows 98 computer. I wish they had one for the windows Vista computer I use now. I don’t mean the “epic tank battles” tactical versions we see now, but the one where you actually manage countries and buy things.
I did buy a few strategy games a couple months ago. One was a Civil War thing and the other an American Independence War thing. But they’re too complicated (for me).Report
Use an emulator. That’s the type of game that will play just as well.Report
So speaking of really good games with a bunch of sequels and updates, who’s playing Civ VI? I haven’t got it yet although it’s inevitable that I’m going to at some point. Not that I’m soliciting a review or anything… Oh who am I kidding? Please consider that a solicitation of a review of Civ VI.
I’m goofing off in Fallout 4 (another sequel!) with a character that has now grown powerful enough to handle anything, but playing around with mods now that the Xbox version lets you mod the console game. But not a lot of that today, as today is the day I have set aside to brew Christmas beer.Report
@burt-likko
I’m really enjoying Civ VI – the new civics tree and districts system really add tot he depth of the game.
I have some issues with the AI though – its aggressive in a not-very-smart way. Its very difficult to get the AI civs to cooperate with you at all, and they declare war at the drop of a hat – even if they have no realistic chance of winning.
If those issues sound like dealbreakers to you (the the higher the difficulty you play on, the worse they will be for you), then maybe wait for the first expansion, or at least some patching. But the AI aside, I’m really enjoying it.Report
I bought Skyrim on Steam, so the new version just showed up in my account for free.
#MasterRacePrivilegeReport
I’ve been playing through a JRPG called Trails in the Sky. In addition to having a name that turns into a phenomenal acronym, it also looks like it features a fishing mini game.
Six months of reading comments around here make me unable to read the word “fishing” as anything but obscene.Report
I played this back in 2005 or so, a bit after it originally came out. It was a great game, especially near the end, but the sheer volume of text and college-level vocabulary made it a real slog for me at my level of Japanese proficiency. I never did finish the sequel, though I keep meaning to go back to it.
The real gem of the series, IMO, was the 2000 Windows remake of Legend of Heroes IV (Trails in the Sky being VI). But the only English version got pretty bad reviews, so I guess it lost something either in translation or in the port to PSP.Report
All Japanese games have a fishing minigame, it sometimes seems…
(Well, except for School Days)Report
So does World of Warcraft. 🙂
I know my wife spent quite a bit of time fishing in Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2. I never really got the appeal myself.Report
I think a good idea for a game is one where you have to play a psychiatrist at Arkham and treat super villains through a variety of methods.Report
That’s a great idea, but not for a video game. Either make it a visual novel, or run it as a tabletop game. (Imagine: your other party members are supervillains).Report
I bought Fallout 4 when it was on sale, but have been playing Skyrim Enhanced. Graphics seem a bit better. I’ll probably since a few hundred hours into it. I think I had over 1k hours, with all the various mods I downloaded, the last time I played it.Report