What Game/Games are you playing now?

[Enrico Marini]

Just nuked Tomb Raider Anniversary in 2 evenings on hard getting all Relics/Artifacts. Man were the controls buggy as hell on the 360.

Now to find something else to play.

[ajrich17901]

Currently I am borrowing the God Of War collection, giving it a try and if I like them and beat em I'm gonna move onto Part 3.

[Sephiroth]

Bought GTA Episodes from Liberty City today just been on the Lost and Damned it's pritty good so fair not bad for a side story to GTA4 I'll try out The Ballad of Gay Tony soon.

[I_Am_Nemesis]

Been tearing up FFXIII for the past few days. Took me like 3 days just to get to disc three haha. Im liking the sstory so far, its not amazingly original or clever but its just unbearably enjoyable for some reason.

[Member_of_STARS]

Im currently playing through a couple of old Splinter Cell titles to get an accurate feel on just how bad the SC fans were raped by Conviction.

Ive finished Chaos Theory yesterday, and the whole PR talk the Ubisuck guys had about how the game needed a change, how Fisher was "like a grandma", and how "hes a predator now" is utter garbage. Complete and utter shit. And the series took a turn for the worse in Double Agent, as I started playing it and it has been made considerably easier aswell as simplifed for the "casual gamer". Its also a terrible port on the PC. Just shocking.

I wouldnt say Conviction is RE to RE4, but it definitely looks like R6 to R6V, and this means a big "fuck you" to the last Tom Clancy-s realistic franchise with an established fanbase.

[Guest]

Bioshock 2!!! at last!! I'm loving it!!

[kevstah2004]

Various F1 Arcade games on mame.

[nemesiswontdie]

UC2 online and RE3.

[Vector]

MW2 and MLB10...fighting the urge to start Fallout 3 before the semester ends.

Spoiler:

show spoiler

This is the first post I've ever made from my PS3 web browser. My laptop is currently out of commission. Fuck Windows.

[aris13]

RE 5 mercs and Uncharted 1.

[Humor Tumor]

I'm currently playing Bioshock 2 and the Saboteur. I also recently finished Mass Effect 2. I wasn't a fan of the first game, and ME2 did not change my mind at all, worst purchase of the year so far.

[Member_of_STARS]

Two weeks ago I started my experiment run, playing through the Splinter Cell games to get a better feel on just how terribly the old fans got screwed by Conviction. And they got fvcked pretty bad.

I played two games, Chaos Theory and Double Agent. Im currently considering Pandora Tomorrow and the original Splinter Cell, but I fear they are technically so outdated that it would be difficult to enjoy them.

Splinter Cell is THE stealth game. Its a game where you have an option to kill, but choosing not to saves you a lot of frustration. Ive always considered MGS to be a purely action game, because its stealth elements are too "casual" and completely secondary, an unattractive option. Especially when you get a ton of weapons which are much more fun to use.

I absolutely loved Chaos Theories "non-nonsense" approach in every bit of its aspects. If you get killed, 99% of the time you admit that its your own fault and the game didnt cheat you out of a win. Every solution in the game except for the plot vehicle (a fictional information warfare bit of tech) is plausible, make-sense and doesnt break your immersion.

The whole game was Tom Clancy goodness. From characters up to every bit of detailing. It didnt insult your intelligence. My only problem with the game was that I didnt feel immersed. No clue why.

Double Agent greatly improves the narrative, and the missions. It is a much more immersing game. Yet it the "streamlining" process (read: lets make game easier for casual idiots who hold a controller upside down) it cut a lot of corners. For example, the horribad streetlight light meter. No sound/ambient sound meter. The horrendous "explanations" to some technical gadgets. These take chips out of the immersion. But the game stayed true to Splinter Cell goodness. I enjoyed Double Agent a lot more, but I was extremely sensitive to the small details which had been cut by the team because Chaos Theory did them so well.

But what really made me go back and play them was Ubisofts attempts at discrediting the previous games by making them look slow, cumbersome, stupid, to sell the pure-action and casual garbage that Conviction is. I wanted to see for myself if "Sam is slow like a grandma, and the gameplay is stale".

When you sneak into a room with an armed guard in it, and you know you have a choice to kill him, or leave him be, the immersion is amazing. And I laughed my ass off at the rudimentary firefight dynamics Conviction has, while I had a 3 minute showdown with a Congo soldier in Double Agent, who kept dodging my shot while hiding behind a wall. When I ducked, he supressed me to keep me down. If I had a clear line of sight, he would peek for a splitsecond and not engage. If they made other AI-s flank you, it would have been an absolutely fantastic moment of me being gunned down for being stupid enough to engage more than 1 soldier at once. Exactly what a stealth game should do.

Another franchise down the drain to please the casual gamer who would rather chess to turn into checkers, rather than just play checkers instead.

On Metacritics, theres a huge gap between Splinter Cell games user scores and scores given for XBOX versions. And Conviction is the second lowest SC game based on user reviews while its 3rd from the top (I think) based on "professional reviews". Splinter Cell forums are also populated with an audience which appreciates the old formula more than the new one, and thats despite their platform preferences, which is damn nice.

Overall.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory 8/10 (-1 for immersion problems, -1 for level linearity)
Splinter Cell Double Agent 9/10 (-1 for a few critical broken details)

[BadWolfX]

I am just about to start playing Bioshock 2.

I'm very excited.

Also really late purchasing this game.

[Guest]

I am just about to start playing Bioshock 2.

I'm very excited.

Also really late purchasing this game.

Oh, u'll really enjoy it, I bought mine last week and already finished it, and I must admit: it is great, not as GREAT as the first one, but still, it's a great experience

[aris13]

Heavy Rain and Uncharted 2