Same here. You get a much better view of your surroundings- especially in Skyrim.

I've yet to beat Skyrim because I have the PS3 version, which is essentially broken. The longer you play, the bigger and bigger the save file gets. After ten to fifteen hours, every loading screen takes about a full minute to load (even when just walking into houses), weird lag problems start popping up, and the game just randomly crashes. This happens to every single PS3 copy apparently. It gets to the point where I don't want to do anything because I'd rather not sit through another loading screen.

And BAH, I'll talk about Final Fantasy til the end of days, darn it!

The both of us can! I just need to catch up since I haven't played anything before V and I don't own a PS3!

Uh, hasn't that been patched months ago?

HAVE MY BABIES. Some amazing tracks in that game. I always loved the miniboss music with the speed metal riffage ('You will know our names'). Music to kick ass to. Plus the cutscene music that syncs up with every dramatic Shulk 'motivational battle speech'.

I got about 3 or 4 hours into The Last Story before quitting on it. I liked the British dubs, but the framerate was distracting. The game barely ran at 20fps half the time, and it's not like the game was especially pretty, the area were bland and featureless. I just didn't care for any of the characters except the drunk chick. Really disappointing compared to Xenoblade. I haven't tried Pandora's Tower yet.

This one?

Yeah, I'm pressing on with The Last Story... but eh. The COMEDY is so freaking awkward dude, it's insane. I just got that one silver haired chick in the town, had to run away, etc (still not very far), and yeah the dialogue was so terribly bad. The drunk chick sounds Irish or something to me haha. Seems to be the only one with character, lol. I hear it's only 20 hours long too. I don't know about Mistwalker. Blue Dragon didn't look appealing at all, and I liked what I played of Lost Odyssey (got to the third disc), but it was nothing out of the ordinary. And The Last Story feels the same. Perhaps Hironobu Sakaguchi has lost his touch, or is missing some good staff behind him that went elsewhere.

Monolith-Soft on the other hand, the "dream team", I seriously wanna believe a lot of those guys all the way back to Chrono Trigger are probably still there. The Chrono games and all the Xeno's up to Xenoblade all definitely have tons of similarities, and recurring themes for sure. Love how they always have pretty big sci-fi elements too. And, they've all been amazing games. I love Xenosaga, haters gonna hate! But yeah, sometimes I wonder if Tetsuya Takahashi did anime instead... "what if", probably would've been insane stuff.

I'm pretty upset we probably won't be getting Pandora's Tower. Might just mod a Wii for it someday, it looks really awesome from the videos I've seen. Definitely looks like a weird Zelda / Ico kind of thing.

If it has, I haven't gotten it. I haven't played it in a while but last time I did I was still waiting in upwards of a minute and a half for the interior of a house to load.

Uh yeah, it was, I got the update and it works fine now...

Artifact from a time when there were a lot of games that gave negligible attention to plot. Or maybe you're just dense. In case anyone else has difficulties making basic inferences, I want games that have good stories, something to keep me engaged besides the actual gameplay. The only FPS games I ever really liked were Half-Life 1 and Halo 1. They both had really good plots supporting the action. I'm also a big fan of the rebooted Ninja Gaiden franchise, but I played a demo for Ninja Gaiden 3 and it was totally different--and much worse.

I take that back. Serious Sam and Painkiller were fun.

I haven't played Halo, but Half-Life had a good plot now?

Half-Life didn't even really have a plot. Basically it's "explosion, aliens invade and try to kill you, government is trying to kill you too, you kill the big bad alien, g-man is involved somehow, the end."

It did have atmosphere/setting though!

Skyrim has some of the worst writing in any triple-A game ever. I mean, ever. Including Doom. Including Duck Hunt. Including Pong.

Whoever recommended that for a great "single player story based game" is an idiot, especially since the game doesn't really even have a story (a central one anyway).

I certainly couldn't give a shit about Skyrim's writing, but that's Bethesda for you.

Morrowind had a good story. The writing was good, too.

re: xbox 360 game recommendations

So far, I've enjoyed the demos I've played for The Darkness II and Sleeping Dogs. Ninja Gaiden II fucking kicks ass, and Lost Odyssey is great in many ways--so great that I am willing to overlook the times when it is a bit boring.

I like action/adventure ("hacknslash";"beatemup"), RPGs (they usually have the best plots but that's not as true anymore) and platformers (no story required there).

I never played the main quest in Morrowind. Great game though, had it on the original Xbox.

Heh, that's what proves Morrowind did the whole sandbox RPG thing right. You can never touch the main quest and still come away saying the game was great.

Dark Souls. NAO. Well, actually, maybe wait til the version including the DLC comes out... >_>

And Dragon's Dogma is cool too but very flawed.

The whole point of the game isn't a story, dialog, or character development. It has the same appeal as The Sims but you don't feel like a 6 year old girl playing it.

I read that the game can be speed ran in like 2 hours, but anyone who beats Skyrim in 2 hours and calls it quits is missing the whole point of the game.

I have 3 characters. 1 poor guy, became a thief, and is now a rich entrepreneur. A girl who collected berries and bugs, dabbled in alchemy, and is a mage. And another guy that purely lives off the land and shows up in town like once a week to sell animal pelts. Never beat it. They're all in the middle of some quest I don't care about. And that's perfectly fine with me.

Anyone who recommends Skyrim should probably do so with the stipulation that "if you like exploring and role playing you'll like this" much like I say "if you aren't spoiled by easy games you'll love Dark Souls"

But yeah Fallout is definitely superior to Skyrim for having an actual story and style and letting you do all the things that make Skyrim fun.

Yeah man, Dark Souls will change everything. Also, try Limbo, it's crazy good and a lot of fun.

Yeah, Bethesda must hit too many casual fans to count. Everyone eats it up, but those games have by far some of the most sleep inducing dialogue I've ever witnessed. I don't get it, it's painful and obviously bad. It was hard to stomach Fallout 3 for most of the ride too, love or hate NV but when it comes to the writing they are worlds apart. They could talk about turds in NV and it'd hold my interest.

I still liked Skyrim a lot all around for the gameplay, but yeah wow that dialogue. I'M SWORN TO CARRY YOUR BURDENS!

The dialogue is annoying at times. I do like that I can move my head around during dialogue this time, it gives me something to do when you can't skip it.

I don't understand anyone who prefers Fallout 3 to Skyrim or Oblivion though, unless it's just because of atmosphere. At times it felt like there was fuck-all to do in that game. Skyrim really just has more things to do. I can farm, mine, smith, enchant, battle, trade, explore, hunt, harvest, and create potions without getting involved in a single plotline. Also, it has mountain climbing (aka horse physics). Fallout 3 has wandering around getting raped by radiation poisoning, and then buying things. Does have aliens though.

You should play Minecraft instead then.
Also Fallout 3 had tons of stuff to do (interesting stuff, aka not farming) and I don't remember buying any of the equipment I used.

Maybe so, I only played it really briefly. The world and NPCs seemed static, though.

Ya you click the joysticks and move one of them backwards. Something of that sort, it's been a couple weeks since I had a session.

I had a list of Action Adventure games but I'm having a hard time defining what that is these days. So I'm leaving it out.

Platformers, on the other hand.

Rayman Origins
Super Meat Boy
Limbo
Splosion Man and Ms Splosion man
The two Trials games (I class these as a platformer because I feel they have some of the elements of the genre, same with below)
Joe Danger SE
Sonic Generations (never thought I'd say this)
RAYMAN ORIGINS

And yes Xeogred, that is the track. It's in every awesome cutscene in the game!

Actually it does have a central story, along with dozens of smaller plot lines. Along with guild plot lines and a civil war...

The whole game is based on experiencing different story lines. Main one being the dragonborn/alduin plot line.


Not saying the writing is the best, but it has hundreds of hours of story(and thousands of lines of dialogue so good luck keeping every single one interesting), so really you must be the idiot. Have you even played the game? Or you just enjoy talking out your ass?

Jersey Shore has a story too. And lots of subplots and thousands of lines of dialogue!

Oh come on. I don't like Skyrim, but that was a comment.


Yesterday Kahalachan and I had an interesting discussion about female video game characters, and we both observed how stupendously rare the truly cool and interesting female characters are in video gaming. I tried to come up with a list of those I liked, and just for the lol (as I am not some hardcore feminist screaming at the patriarchy or anything), I tried to come up with a list with a narrow set of criteria: the female must be a major character (either lead, main villain, or very important side-character), must not be a love interest, must not be passive/weak/helpless (strong), and must not be sexualized in any way (no cleavage, skimpy/super-tight outfits, giant boobs etc.). And, of course, she should be cool and/or interesting, not boring. Trust me, it's harder than you'd think. I realized that even those I liked usually fell into one of those categories, though sometimes only mildly (i.e. Jade from Beyond Good and Evil does have cleavage and exposed midriff, but I wouldn't really say she's sexualized from what I've seen of the game), such as Sniper Wolf, Elena and Chloe, Celes, etc.

I came up with:
- Alis Landale (Phantasy Star I)
- Alys Brangwin (Phantasy Star IV)
- Odessa (Suikoden)
- Nanami (Suikoden II)
- Chris Lightfellow (Suikoden III) -- I don't remember much of personality though >_>
- The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3)
- Lady Harken (Wild ARMs) -- stretch, she's one of the main villains but not that "major"
- Cybil Bennett and Dahlia Gillespie and even Lisa the nurse to a certain extent (Silent Hill)
- Heather (Silent Hill 3 - the "strong" or "cool" part is debatable I guess )
- Ariel (Legacy of Kain) -- again kinda minor

and that's pretty much all I can think of. HellBlazer named one from Half-Life 2, but even he had trouble coming up with others. Ouch. Fanservice is king, and will be for a long time I guess.

Well the most obvious answer would be Samus I figure, but from what I've heard Team Ninja really did a number on her in Other M...

EDIT: I could also say Ayame from Tenchu, but you could say her outfit is sexualized if you wanted to (I believe she has an exposed midriff) and if you play as Rikimaru she does get captured (though to be fair, the roles are reversed if you're playing as Ayame).

You see Samus in a bikini as a "reward" for beating the game quickly, if that's not fan-service I don't know what is. Samus is disqualified, plus as you said she was basically ruined in Other M.

If you want a REAL challenge, try finding a male character nowadays that isn't a bald angry marine. You just can't!

Now seriously, it seems to me that the strong female characters are always sexualised. If she not sexualised, she is also going to be useless. You can't have a warrior girl unless she is wearing a chainmail bikini.

Shows what I know, can you tell I've never played a Metroid game?

I hear the Valkyrie Profile chick is awesome.

I like Ada Wong. Confident and sexy. Too bad RE6 will ruin her.

I'm thinking of all my examples slowly. Soul Calibur is pretty notorious for the obnoxious fanservice, but Xianghua escapes unscathed from that department I'd say. Plus her model of the titular sword is the only one that doesn't look different from the one in the cutscenes, so you could say she's the true owner. The only thing holding her back is that she's one of the least interesting characters to me, I guess it all depends on your interpretation.

Hilde from SC4 wears full plate armor, which pretty much makes her an anomaly in the series. She is not very interesting though.

Fighting game characters... interesting?

Hey now, I said that's where she failed!

I'm really seriously wracking my brain on this now, it shouldn't be this complicated to find plenty of strong female roles. You don't realize how messed up it all is until you really sit and think about it...

I like Ada too but she doesn't meet the criteria. How will RE6 ruin her exactly though?

Regarding fighting game characters, obviously they aren't going to be "interesting" so all they have going for them are coolness/style points. But that's probably the worst genre of game to pick up non-sexualized characters, male or female, hah.


I don't remember much of Soul Calibur (only played SC2 a bit and the SC1 demo on Dreamcast... yeah), but are you talking about, uh... this? Pray tell how that's not "obnoxious fanservice"?


Yeah, that's basically my problem.
Out of all those I listed, Alys Brangwin and The Boss are probably the best example of how to do a female warrior right. They're strong-willed, brave, witty (Alys), cunning, takes no crap, not a love interest whatsoever, and she's fully-clothed. Yay!* The others all have something, even if very minor, going against them. Alis's story is bareboned but that's because it's from an 1987 game so it's forgiveable. Odessa is not that major in terms of screen time (but she has a huge impact on the story and she's strong and cool so I gave her a spot). Nanami has the cutesy Anime-girl thing going, but it's not too obnoxious and she's overall likeable (she also has a very sad scene later in the game). Chris is in full plate armor yay, but she's kinda the generic hero from what I recall. Lady Harken is one of the villains posse but not that major, and she's a former love interest (though I don't think that counts xD). Cybil can be "rescued" and doesn't really do that much, and Dahlia is kinda the evil old witch stock, Heather is a normal teen girl (not a bad thing but not a good thing either, I guess, lol), Ariel is kinda minor and becomes just a bit whiny in later games.

Come on, I want a badass female who isn't a token, fanservice/sexualized, and a love interest. Is that so hard?

* Phantasy Star 4 AND MGS3 spoiler

OhhHhHhhHHH The Boss is one of the best characters ever, let alone one of the best female characters. What a great game....must replay.