Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm not sure why, but of late, I've really struggled to enjoy playing my XBox, or even PC games.

I've tried to get some new games to play, but they seem like a chore to get through, and more often than not I can't be bothered with them.

I began Bioshock 2, and even though it's an awesomely pretty game, it doesn't have the "WOW! Awesome gameplay!" factor that makes me enjoy playing it. Neither does EDF 2017, it's fun for about 4 minutes, then it dulls on me. Madden 09, I'll play for about an hour, but little I do seems to bear any relation to what happens on the screen, and FIFA 09 is complicated, it seems (Although I haven't played that too much). Gears of War I thought I'd enjoy, but it seems to be trudging through brown fields, and I really, really wanted to like it. Assassin's Creed I am in a huff with as I can't climb a cliff (right near the beginning) as the stupid twat keeps jumping off into the ravine. BurnyP I'm a bit bored of, as I keep getting lost in races, although it is fun to cruise around and drive through stuff. and Guitar Hero/RockBand (Whichever I own) isn't fun with just me.

Has the novelty worn off, am I just jaded and needing a proper "Fuck me, this is awesome!" type game to sit down and enjoy (last one was MW2) and should I get back on Live! for Bezzieness?

Help me, BeeX, you're my only hope!

Minecraft.

This happens to me occasionally as well. I'm normally pulled out of it by some completely average lemon of a game that holds my interest for no discernable reason.

The main reason for it is that 2009 and 2010 have been mostly shit for games, mostly.

I'm just waiting for The Last Guardian, which will be the most expensive game I ever buy (when you include the price of a PS3). Apart from that I seem to be mainly playing XBLA games and emulators. Also, DOSBox.

Since Christmas I have found it hard to have the concentration or interest for many things and Xbox has been one of the things. I have even all but stopped playing MW2. The only two games I can think of right now that have held my interest when I've started them have been Mass Effect 2 and Assassins Creed 2, neither of which need you to have played the first in the series. They both sucked me right in and didn't let go until they were finished. They are without a doubt the games I would recommend to distract from anything that's going on.
For general fun times, online games are awesome. I'd recommend a live sub plus MW2, UT3 and burnout for most fun.
Also, even though it has been mentioned before and will be again, Minecraft!

The problem is many of you seem to buy the latest and greatest games on just the hype factor. Sit back and wait for the recommendations. Do these games still stand up after the initial thrill as worn off.

Live is fun but we don't seem to have done much recently. Then again I have a smaller range of games to choose from.

You only have to walk into a shop to see just how much shite is on the shelves. Probably only 5% of the games are worth playing.

I was considering activating my 30 day Live card that Microsoft sent me on return of my XBox last night, but then it seemed to be :effort: so I didn't.

On the other hand, I think in general most people here like modern games more than you do.

It has become increasingly hard to organise games (that aren't MW2) - games get overplayed when new and then people burnout of them much more quickly. Halo 3/Forza nights back in the day were awesome, and lasted for months.


Stop looking at the wii section then
I have several games on my 'want' list.

I've got few games that I want, to be honest. I don't really read the gaming press, and tend to try and remember if people here liked it when it first came out, or if it is much cheapness now. I think Fallout3 was the last "AWESOME!" long game I played, I've become a bit bored of Oblivion, but might try and get back into it.

Another factor, I think, is the amount of time I have to play these games, and, bizarrely, it seems i don't have enough.

I'm certainly no use to you then - I've been feeling much the same about gaming of late. The last game I really enjoyed was Batman:Arkham Asylum and then Fallout 3 before that, but other than those, there's not too much I sink a lot of time into these days. It seems harder for a game to grab and keep hold of my attention, so I'm playing quick-fix stuff like Bejeweled Blitz instead.

There's only one game due out that I'm looking forward to and that's Rock Band 3. Other that I'm dabbling back into Diablo II occasionally but when you've played it a few times through already, it only gets interesting once you hit Nightmare level.

It's about quality of design and staying power though. The latest GTA game is a good example of something that has had much of the fun sucked out of it. Forza was great on single player up until the point you have to start doing a larger number of laps without the difficulty of the CPU opponents increasing. Like GTA you just end up slogging through the game.

It sounds to me like people need to step up a gear and start playing WoW with their chums. Can't beat a few beers, all on Teamspeak together, a good laugh and a stiff challenge too.

I find 'normal' games almost unbearably dull these days, it takes something as good as Starcraft2 to deflect my interest.

A quiet moment from last night's raid on the 'trash' in ICC10 (which are the 'easy' in-between boss fights).

I've been mostly off games for a few years now - I mainly put it down to age and various stresses and strains in everyday life. I do still occasionally dabble, but it's been a long time since I've played a game that I've really loved.

Generally speaking, 3D games bore me senseless (except for Super Mario Galaxy) - I much prefer 2D games, preferably 'old school' platformers that have a real sense of adventure and exploration with loads going on on-screen.

I also used to loved 3rd person point and click adventure games, but none of those released of late have got me interested.

BANNED!

I might consider playing EvE again, but don't have the time. In the small window of gamesplaying opportunity, I'd probably not find anyone to pirate on MaliA. Tsara needs to be trained up to fly ships properly (she can only really sit in the ships MaliA can, and not even all the haulers), so running missions would mean either doing them in Low-Sec (a pain, as I'd have to be on my guard a lot of the time) with MaliA or high sec with Tsara (a grind). mining isn't really an option and trading is only really fun if you've got the time to put in. And then what would I do with the money, as there's no time to go pirating? I could I suppose, try and get the other character into a corporation of mission runners and rob it, but then it takes time.

EDIT: I don't think my computer could run WoW, and, in any event, I don't think there's sufficient opportunities for me to be evil in it. PVP seems to me that "older player with better stuff wins, everytime" and the chess like combat of EvE doesn't exist, although I am happy to stand corrected.

No, that's pretty much true. There's no PvP in WoW like there is in Eve, and gear has such a huge impact on your chances, as well as level. If you're after being a pirate, WoW is not your game.

WoW is surprisingly resource friendly, you'll get a playable experience out of a single core PC (2GHz+) with 1GB of RAM and any half-decent graphics card with 256MB RAM or higher.

Free trial here, doesn't hurt to give it a go https://eu.battle.net/account/creation/wow/signup/

We're currently on a PvP server although we don't really do any of the proper PvP stuff (arenas, battlegrounds and suchlike), but you are automatically flagged for PvP when you're anywhere in the open world and/or if you choose to do so in friendly territory (when the stinky Horde are attacking one of your cities for example).

I can't comment on how the combat works in WoW relative to the combat in EvE, but I can say that the combat in WoW is very tactical and varied, particularly against other human beings or in instances/raids - normal 'questing combat' isn't too gruelling but does have a lot of tactical elements to it, the better you are, the more you can take on.

We took 6/12 bosses down in Icecrown Citadel last night, this is the current endgame content in WoW, and they're hard fights, you need 10 people, all co-ordinated, all doing their role properly, all knowing what they need to do and when they need to do it. (It helps if you can talk to each other which is why we make at least being able to listen to Teamspeak mandatory for raids in our guild, you don't have to talk if you don't want to.)

We tried 7/12 but this guy wiped us a couple of times and it was getting too late so we had to call it - http://www.learn2playwow.com/ICC/How_to ... icide.html (Narrated by Ivan Drago )

I think you are doing what I often do, endless search for a game that does two, almost mutually exclusive, things at the same time. You want a big polished setting to explore and you want a strong game mechanics to go with it. And thats rarer than insert something very rare and AC have the world but at the cost of padding and weak mechanics.

Thats why you liked MW2 - because for all the slagging off it gets, it has created a solid world, and has solid game mechanics.

What you want to do is separate the two. A proper world to play in and some raw arcade experiences with strong defined game mechanics to sink your teeth into.

So take one course of Minecraft which has worlds greater than oblivion or fallout or anything [see thread] and one course of some game mechanic rich arcade wonderfulness (e.g. Mirror's Edge, Outrun 2, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Omega 5, Split/Second, ESP (iphone) etc.

Well, thats my stupid view at least.

it's the fault of the iphone!

(in my case anyway, only play iphone games, switching a console on seems to much trouble)

I think you are quite right. I really, really enjoyed Half Life 2, for example, despite its linear game maps. It was fun, and the weapons felt right, the monsters and puzzles were fun to try and defeat. I got tired of Mirror's Edge after a while, haven't finished it. The initial fun wore off on me after I kept having to try and do the same bit over and over.

As I'm not stellar at XBox games, this frustration leads me to never touching it again (I think I said somewhere on here that Mirror's Edge was like thinking about an old girlfriend. You remember the sense of awe and wonderment, how they looked and how fun it was, but then you remember the irrititating things which is why you are not together anymore).

Re: EvE combat. It's very hard to describe. As an example: I've jumped into a system, I check local to see if anyone else is there and hit the directional scanner as I'm moving my ship in warp to a spot deep in space. If there is a ship on scan, I'm narrowing the angle down (from 360 degrees, to 180, to 90, to 30) to find out where it is. I'm looking a the type of ship and working out who in local might be flying it (look at player age, as some ships take longer to learn to fly than others). If i decide it's a "go! go! go!" moment (often depends, mining ships are generally easy to crack open, combat ships less so, but it depends on they type), I warp to where that ship is, whilst scanning again 360 degrees and checking local to see if anyone in system might be allied with them. As I land, I target the ship and fly towards it, activate the warp scrambler, so it cannot warp out if it is within 20km of me, activate guns and tell my ship to orbit it at my optimal range for the guns I have. At the same time, I'm watching how much power my ship has left (to heal, fire guns, keep the scrambler on, and the webifier, to slow the enemy ship to 10% of its normal speed), watching how fast I am flying around the enemy, watching how far I am from the enemy, watching damage both incoming and outgoing and scanning to see if reinforcements are on the way. I'm also monitoring local chat, to see if they are calling for help, any attempts to contact me privately, ammo left in guns, status of drones, my health, enemy health. IF it gets to the point he is about to explode and I think I've got 15 seconds to spare, I'll contact them and ask for money to spare their ship. Sometimes they pay, sometimes they don't but they get blown up anyway, and then I'll try and target teh escape capsule before it runs away and rinse, repeat. That might take, all in all anywhere between 30 and 90 seconds, but the fight would have been decided, really before the enemy knew I was there, or as soon as I'd jumped into the system. Add more people either on your side, or the other, and it becomes more intense. Different ships require different tactics, smaller ships can kill bigger ships whether flying or attacking, and getting it wrong is painful.

But that's a discussion for the EvE thread. In short: it's all about the first 10 seconds and positioning. If the transversal velocity is high, then the guns on a ship cannot track a target, so you won't get hit, and if the target isn't in the optimal range, damage is lessened. So, a small ship can fly around a huge ship at 500m distance, and never get hit. So optimal range, transversal velocity are good thigns.

Are the in-game voice comms still shit, then?

This happened to me a few years ago, about the time the 360 was released, which is why it took me until 2007 to finally get one - something I regret because it's the best console ever as we all know. I think it was probably because I was reviewing games at the time - probably around five a month - and it just made me really cynical and quick to dislike them. Also, I didn't really get a chance to play anything I wanted to play, because I was forced to play the five I'd been sent that month. Another weird thing was if I'd get sent a game I actually really looked forward to a lot (like, a AAA title rather than the latest attempt to bring the Worms series into 3D), I still wouldn't be able to enjoy it properly because I had to review it. Urgh. So, I got sick of games altogether and couldn't bring myself to play any. Then I finally got the itch back, probably by reading you lot talking about them on WoS or whatever.

It might sound obvious, but I think approximately 51% of any game's fun comes in talking about it. I always used to talk about games with my friends at school as a kid, and now I get to talk about them on here. There are fewer things more suited to getting you worked up about games than being stuck at work or wherever and having a good old chat and a daydream about game X that you were playing the night before and knowing you'll be playing again as soon as you get home. I dunno how that will help particularly if you haven't got a game to talk about at the moment, though.

Yeah, but I've said nearly from the time I bought it that GTA4 was crap, as have many others. It's hardly indicative of what's out there.

Forza is much more of a multiplayer game than single.

And WoW is a bloody job that you have to pay to do. Joys.

Minecraft is more grindy than WoW

But, on the other hand, I'm not paying £money per month to play it.

And it is, naturally, less structured than most other games.

Oh, absolutely, and I'm having great fun. But WoW is hardly a job, nor is it even remotely expensive. I'd even stretch to say it was actually good value for money, if you play enough of it.

But anyway, we're probably best not turning Mali's thread into another about Warcraft.

Doesn't bother me, I'm interested, and want advice on how i can enjoy games again.

The most fun games I've played recently have been board and card games, but I think it's more f the social interaction than anything else.

Halo Reach is looking really good. Get it (comes out in about a month) and do the campaign on co-op with me and other bezzies. That'll be fun I reckon.

If you want a fantastic cheap(ish) single player game and something entirely different to the banality that's out there at the moment, try LIMBO. 1200 points and downloads in about 10 minutes. Well worth a go. It's the only game I've ever felt like raving about on here.

Social interaction is overrated; this is one of the best single player game experiences out there.

Play on live with bezzies.

That's the most enjoyment I get out of games, but better when you can have terrible jokes and stuff whilst you're playing.

Helped by a surge of mediocre games, I've made a conscious effort to play less recently. I'm certainly not stopping my gaming, just choosing to only play Bezzie titles and the odd thing on my own (currently Star Craft 2 and Fallout 3 DLC). At the moment I'd rather spend my freetime more creatively and my pocketmoney on photography.

Only looking forward to The Last Guardian really, and I'll need a PS3 for that.

Not tonight love, I'm doing my hair.

Never tried the in-game comms, although I believe they are, ahem, 'unimpressive'.

Teamspeak servers are ridiculously cheap, we pay just over £3 per month for a 10-slot server, and of course with our own server we can define our own usergroups and permissions and channels and so on.

Plus it's not tied to WoW (or any other game/service) either, sometimes we just use it to chat to each other as it's more comfortable than using a mobile phone.

Whaa? £3 a month just for a voice chat? That's more than the entire xbox gold sub!

He's right you know!

Are you going to be doing cheap ones again at some point? When Im back online I'll more than likely need one

Screenshots like that are more likely to put me off than venture into WoW.

Yeah, basically. If you want to convince someone to give WoW a shot, never show them a customised raid interface.

We're talking about £3 man, per month. For a fully featured Teamspeak server that we have total admin control over to configure and use as we wish.

Sandwiches from M&S cost more than £3. (Well, the nice ones do.)

(Also, if you've never used a proper voice server, with a decent headset, it might not make sense. The APPALLING sound quality and diabolical headsets the 360 inflicts on its users really are horrendous.)

Funnily enough, I have. The difference is not as great as you say. (And indeed, The Gaywood sounds a damn sight better over live)

When it comes to Gaywood, compression is your friend.

Well it was aimed at MaliA, who has mastered EvE, which is pretty much the most unforgiving and complex game in the world, I don't think he'll be fazed by a reasonably busy WoW interface.

WoW looks far more like this from 1 to 80, it's only in the endgame that you really need to start fucking around with add-ons and the UI.

When it comes to Gaywood, volume controls are your friend.

It's more the crackling and the sounds of dogs humping in the background. (I asked, the dogs were being quiet)

Stop trying to convince people to play WoW. It's shit and played by total spods.

Mali: I get gaming ennui every now and again. Just put the Xbox away for a bit and do other things for a while. You'll pick it up again when you feel like it.

Then I respectfully suggest you either:

1) Were on an overly compressed voice channel.
2) Had a crap headset (I'd say the half-decent ones kick in at the £50+ mark, with a good mic and proper fully enclosed cans).
3) Had a crap soundcard.
4) Have defective hearing.

This is one of the good things about having your own TS server, you can ramp up the bandwidth to get a really crystal clear sound, especially when everyone else has got a decent headset too.

I've played games on Live on my 360 extensively, and the one constant factor was my hatred of the offensively shite sound quality and unbelievably naff headsets.

I don't want to waste my bandwidth and money on a CD quality rendition of Mr Dave breathing.

£50 for a headset FFS!? You can get an entire 360 for that.

50K/s
£50 quid for a headset for voice? You're having a bloody laugh.
One designed for recording music... slightly better than something designed for gaming. Or the one in my laptop.
Fuck off.

1) Fair enough.

2) Nope, if you want decent sound quality, you pay decent money. My headset isn't just a voice headset, it works well as a proper set of gaming headphones or for listening to music, with an external breakout box so I can switch from headset to speakers without fannying about with wiring. Pic attached. IIRC it was about £60, but that's a one time hit for something that lasts for years. You simply will not get respectable sound quality out of some piece of shit that costs £20.

(Also in relation to the various comments about breathing noises and racket in the background and all that sort of thing, that's exactly what a good headset with a decent mic and a properly configurable voice client will eliminate.)

3) Fair enough.

4) There's no need to be rude. I simply find it an unarguable position that the compressed-to-fuck 360 voice through the world's cheapest headset can be effectively described as 'about the same' as voice through a proper voice server and decent hardware.

(My headset is one of those 5:1 jobbies, which aren't really 5:1 of course, but they do a very respectable job of positional audio with multiple drivers in each can. You can configure your Teamspeak client so that different people in your channel sound like they're in front, or behind, or off to the sides of you, which works really well but it's also intensely creepy so after the initial 'Woooo that's really impressive' comments we all turned it off )

In lieu of a voice server, a chum and I used Skype to coordinate murder in space. Worked OK. Alliance vent was used for when I was in them, no one ever asked me for cash.