Games! (cont.)

[WonderDrow]

Just finished playing The Walking Dead.

The game feels like you're playing through 5 episodes of a TV serie.
It's very story driven.

And one could say also moraly driven.
Your choices (what you say and do) affect the reaction of the other characters, and what happens.
although they don't affect the major story line.

What I found interesting is that after each episode there are scores about how much percentage of other players made the same choices.  

Most of the time my choices had above 50%, but some low % scores surprised me.

[Whd]

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[WonderDrow]

If it's that farm with the grey haired elder, then you haven't finished episode one yet.

Well I like this adventure type with action.  So at least I find this a fun game.

Of course there are moments when it's not easy trying to puzzle out what to do.  
But unlike other games I was never tempted to look for a walkthrough on the web.
And once those are done the story continues at a steady space.

Actually the game is not as scary as I feared it would be.  

[Whd]

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[WonderDrow]

Yesterday had an amusing moment in the MMO I'm playing (GuildWars 2).

They added a PvP minigame to it where you have to run and jump to get first at the finish line.
With powerups that make you run faster, jump higher, etc.
And powerups to hinder the other players, make them fall in the abyss etc.
Some high altitude obstacle course.

Now the thing was. You can get achievements with it.  
And one of the achievements is when you get 1st.

So I was with a group of other players and they started complaining that some always took first place.
And we agreed to let the slow players win in turn.

I didn't think other players would listen to it.  You don't get better rewards by getting first, but it's a game after all.

But they actually did!

It was kinda fun waiting with the faster players in front of the finish line till the slower players caught up with us. :p

[WonderDrow]

There are times when it's fun to loose.  

I was winning the race 5 times in a row, and the other players all united against me.

As a result I didn't get first place the next 3 runs, but darn that was fun.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

So I started playing Dead Island.....its terrifying. Most zombies games are fun. Get some guns, shoot hordes of undead to re-death and just be a general badass.

Not this game.

Just a handful of Zombies is enough to make me scared out of my mind. And they;re everywhere. I've dropped the F bomb so many times as just a coping mechanism to deal with the high amount of tension and fear of player death.

[spydyr]

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[Celadon's Penultimate]

 The graphics/sfx are that good?

Or am I missing something as to the fear factor?

[Marvelous Miscreant]

Its the anticipation and sudden attacks that get me. The fear that at any moment one of them will come screaming out of the bushes and jump on me. As well as the occasional roars that echo from the distance. plus they aren't as easy to kill as most zombies in other games are. these ones are more hardy.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Never play System Shock. If Dead Island scares you, System Shock would make your heart explode.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Those sound like incredible fun. I love horror movies. They're something like that, but more immersive, right?

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

I love horror games. I go out of my way to play anything even remotely horror, even if it's terrible.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 *sigh* When I get a job, I intend to do basically that. I love horror.

Ever played Slender?

I mean, it's not exactly the 'Great American Novel' of horror games, I imagine, but it was pretty fun, for what decent horror elements it displayed.

(Or am I just naive, due to lack of funds for proper gaming? )

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Slender I found boring. There's just nothing to it. I guess it was pretty atmospheric in a Dear Ester sort of way right up until I actually saw him.

It's like they didn't understand that the thing that makes monsters like him scary in the first place is that you never get a good look at them. Look at Penumbra or Amnesia for an example of doing it right; the game actively encourages you to not look at its monster because the developers understand that, the less you see of it, the more your imagination fills in the blanks.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Hm, I figured I might have put too much stock in it.

Not that I found it scary, but I did enjoy it. Perhaps too much, though.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

House of Fear. A text-based game on Deviantart, recommended to me by its creator, Colleen Boye.

In the light gray box, you just need to click the button that says 'Play On-Line', to give it a go.

If anybody ever gets around to playing it, let me know what you think.

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

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[Gentleman Vaultboy]

What, you mean like Visual Novels? Well, anything written by Nasu is usefully at least entertainingly bad. There are sex scenes but there are mods that remove them because the literally add nothing to the plot and can be removed without incident. And these are pretty classic "chose your own adventure" games, in that making one wrong choice will result in horrible, grisly death.

The Pheonix Wright series is a much more mainstream way to scratch that itch, as are the games Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk. You might also want to look into 999 and it's sequel, Virtues Last Reward. All these you can find on the Nintendo DS. For the PSP there are Dangan Ronpa and it's sequel, but those are only in Japanese. There's a patch out for both games, and you could probably emulate them pretty easily. Also there's a series of SNES games called Famicom Tantei Club or Famicom Detective Club. I'm not sure how many of those have fan patch translations, but I remember emulating at least one of them.

If you're interested in reading a C.Y.O.A. that was run on the internet and is over now, I'd suggest Ruby Quest. In fact, I'd suggest Ruby Quest for reading regardless, because it's great. There's another called Nan Quest that is still ongoing.

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

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