One possible character design of Commander Shepard from Mass Effect 3.
This week has been a busy one at Border House! Let’s keep it up with our usual round of questions:
- What games have you been playing lately?
- Are there any you would recommend to other Border House readers?
- Are there games that have you ranting or raving?
- Are there any games that you played and want to see covered on the site?
I finally got my copy of Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland and it was my main gaming diversion this week. A character in the game discusses the idea of two of the female characters having a relationship with each other but I want to play some more of the story before I discuss that aspect too much.
I also went back to Mass Effect 3 for some multiplayer with friends. I am hoping to unlock a few of the other playable class and character combinations. I wish that was not just luck of the draw because I don’t play multiplayer very often.
So, what have you been playing?
I finished Max Payne 3 yesterday. It was the first game in ages that i have to set back to easy difficulty level because some of the combats where utterly frustrating with really unfair level-design. In the easy mode its a lot of fun
Its a great anti hero story, sadly there is no place for any female character who is not a victim. I really liked the atmosphere of Sao Paulo, but i don’t know enough about Brazil to say if all the characters are plain caricatures or a decent homage to one of the biggest cities in the world.
What surprised me was the gangster versus cops multi-player mode. It is in my opinion in the “Female characters done right” category. For every faction there is the same amount of female avatars to chose from, they look interesting, dress practical and fit into the setting perfectly.
Normally i don’t have time to play a lot of multiplayer but maybe i will try this one a bit longer.
I’m so busy with life & watching E3, I haven’t had much of a chance to play! I think I’ll be finishing Dragon Age II this weekend. We’ll see how it goes!
I finished Final Fantasy 9 last night. Mostly adorable (the art design! aaaah!) and great fun (except for the tedious battle system…), but completely abandoning the central plot during the end-game was … ….. awfully WTF.
One of these days I’d like to play a big, modern JRPG with a great, solid plot.* Does such a thing exist? (Like: Dragon Quest series: mostly solid, but meh. Final Fantasy series: nonsensical and overblown. Tales series: “plot, what plot? look at our awesome characters and battle system
D” [okay, I may just be eternally bitter about Vesperia's plot here.])
(I suppose The Wold Ends With You was pretty okay plot-wise? I don’t remember much though. )
(* okay, to be fair, video game with a great, solid plot = rare in general. I just find JRPGs particularly prone to becoming completely nonsensical.)
I still have Persona 3 lying round, but I’m hesitant because I fear the prerequisite grinding. (so time-consuming.) Then there’s Odin Sphere. Not sure which I should start next (opinions?)
…but in actuality I just want to play Mass Effect 3 for the first time. After my game got lost in the mail, I’m now waiting form my sister to finish hers. *sobs*
Persona 3 is a great game! It is time consuming, though, not just because of grinding, but so many relationships to develop! I’d recommend it.
I didn’t enjoy Odin Sphere’s battle system & very limited inventory – that game felt like a huge grind to me. I quit it & traded it off with no regrets. Hope you enjoy it more.
I heeded everyone’s rec and am playing Persona 3 next
Have a great time with the game! Keep us posted on your opinion of it!
Persona 3 was amazing; I’m currently playing it for the fourth time. If you can get someone to give you their New Game Plus save, you can skip an awful lot of the grinding and still experience all the plot.
I really enjoyed Lost Odyssey, which is by a lot of the old FF team (the studio is headed up by Hironobu Sakaguchi) but the plot generally makes a lot more sense than many FF games, having significantly less bait-and-switch shenanigans than FF4, FF8 and FF9. The characters delight me, though the one Obligatory Heteronormative Played-Out Romance makes me want to shred things. It’s very true to standard tropes, but usually in a way that reminds you why they are tropes in the first place. I loved it.
Hey, would that someone be you? XD Tho I actually started it last night. Slick! The only thing I didn’t like is that the first hour is basically a collection of “press x” cutscenes.
If I could figure out how to get it from the PS2 to the computer, I totally would! I have a god-level save with literally everything except the final persona (which I’m getting on this playthrough) but it means I never grind for anything. XD
Oy, right, PS2 doesn’t have a USB port, does it? (I have a PS3, so data transfer is relatively easy there.) Thanks for offering though
I’ll play it the properly grindy way, then!
Regarding “Lost Odyssey”, I’ve been meaning to play it pretty much since it came out, but, well, expensive. And opinion about the plot was v. mixed, IIRC. But following your rec, I’ve now found it for ~7€, so even if my system can’t play it, that won’t kill me. (NTSC XBox in Euroland = need region free games, regionlock unclear on LO)
You’re on my DW friendslist, so you’ll probably hear about it
TWEWY is awesome but convoluted, plotwise–a bit too much of the latter, sort of forcing you to consume the bonus content in order to understand the former, but still strong overall.
Persona 3 has been sold to you already, but: thirded. I enjoy grinding and so that was’t an issue for me; regardless, playtime will still be pretty long–but it’s a fantastic game.
I’ve yet to play it, but my impression is that Xenoblade Chronicles fulfills all your requirements for big, modern JRPG with great, solid plot. The caveat may be that it’s a Wii game, and so if you don’t have the system… But it’s on my to-play list, at least.
Aw, that’s too bad, of all the systems Wii is the one I don’t have! But thanks for the rec anyway
I greatly enjoyed the plot of Radiant Historia, and I felt like they used the time traveling and alternate timelines to good effect in telling it. Not sure if it’s as “big” as you want, but it’s very well done.
Seconding the rec for Radiant Historia; that was an awesome game, with lots of good attention to the effects of time travel. Also: it allowed you to skip scenes you’d already seen, which is fantastic when you have to repeat areas multiple times.
I just noticed it’s for Nintendo DS, which: AWESOME! After Dragon Quest 8 I haven’t really played anything on that lovely little machine, so this comes in very conveniently
Cool, I’ll put that on my “to acquire” list then!
I too have been playing Final Fantasy IX over the past week (emulated on PC – speeding up tedious battles ftw), my first time in almost a decade since originally playing it on the PS1. It’s the only FF/JRPG game i’ve played so I can’t critically compare it with any authority, but replaying it now has confirmed that it’s not just the nostalgia talking when I say FFIX is one of my favourite games.
I haven’t yet reached the end-game, but from ‘memory’ the wtf-ness of it was somehow fitting? Maybe I was too quick to dismiss being biased by nostalgia
I’d say the WTF.ness is not as awful as…. …. idk, FF12, but for example, it really irked my that the entire ending sequence was like “oh, whatever, Terra & Gaia merging, no big deal, no consequences at all. As long as Zidane’s back everything’s fine!” and I was just like o_O; oooookay then. Way to completely abandon that 60h+ buildup!
Well, I already appeared as a late entry on last week’s one, and I’m not sure much has changed. Let me think….
After a very unfortunate personal incident last week, I engaged in a lot of video game displacement, including playing about 2/3 of Escape from Rosecliff Island on the Mac. I have gotten to the point where I’ve found all the hidden extras and I really would just like to finish the game now please and thank you since I’ve gotten my money’s worth (defined by me as “spending not more than $1 per hour of gameplay”). I enjoy hidden object games and this one is clever and well-done.
Still slowly inching through the last day in my first playthrough of Devil Survivor, and replaying Persona 3 for a friend to watch. I haven’t touched FFXIII-2 this week, but I sure did play a lot of Glitch, and watched my partner play a lot of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
I expect I’ll carry on playing all the Diablo 3. Swapping between a demon hunter and a wonderfully buff female barb.
Still working on Golden Sun: Dark Dawn – I’ve mostly been playing it half an hour at a time during train rides, so I’m moving through it pretty slowly. I’m enjoying it, though I feel like I’m having too easy of a time with the battles – I think I managed to accidentally be kinda overleveled? I’m not grinding or anything, so idek. I’m thinking maybe I should start running from some of the random battles if I want more of a challenge in the boss fights.
Also, I recently updated Dungeon Crawl to a newer version (I was playing an out-of-date version for some time, it appears), and am greatly enjoying playing Felids, especially Felid Summoners. Not sure why I like playing this game so much when it’s clear that I will never, ever even come close to winning. But I do.
Finished Resistance 3. The ending was lacking, but it is sad the trilogy is over. I finally feel comfortable using the Move Sharpshooter.
Started up inFamous 2. Huge fan of this franchise.
Still rolling along in Darwinia, which continues to be fun and is scratching the puzzle/god-game itch nicely.
To while away the time between GW2 beta weekends, I’ve started messing around with Aion. Mostly I’m just gathering and working on crafting in anticipation of getting a house. I’m not in any rush with the campaign; the story is pretty weak and forgettable, unfortunately, and doesn’t make me want to seek out quests like Lord of the Rings Online did. I’m having a decent amount of fun with it, anyway.
Something that irritates me about the art direction, which otherwise looks polished and nice: if you play an Asmodian woman, her heel-spur goes down to make a permanent high heel. A high-heeled foot. The Asmodian men get to have their claws on display through their boots, and the women get high-heeled goddamn feet. Yeah, that looks really fierce, guys, good job. >:\
I’ve been playing a lot of Dead Island. Oh, the satisfaction of chopping of zombies’ heads. Plus, if it weren’t infested with zombies, I’d totally stay at that island resort in a second.
Dead Island Riptide (the sequel) was announced in press release yesterday, for those that like Dead Island zombietimes.
I saw that and was pretty darn excited. Too bad they said barely anything about it, including where it’s set.
I love seeing you comment here.
Aww, thanks, Tami.
BTW, awesome site!
Still on my replay button, replaying games that I own and already finished despite having a number of unfinished games as well. After beating Prince of Persia (2008) I went and I replayed PoP:Two Thrones, the story is weaker that I have actually remembered but I still like the idea of “dark prince” as part of enhancing narrative. This kind of internal dialogues or monologues are very rarely employed in video games as far as I can tell. Now I finished my replay of Mirror’s Edge, game’s pretty short; I found it somehow much easier and less frustrating then the first time (still a number of frustrating deaths though). I like Faith and plot is all right but it could have been much more. There is too much combat or too many police/guards to motivate player to keep the pace, pursuits fare much better in this department but it was hard to employ from plot perspective. Diminishing health bar in Two Thrones served far better reason to keep player running. Now I have really good time with Time Trials, actually this is where Mirror’s Edge as a parkour simulator really shines, it’s edgy and satisfying.
What did you think of PoP 2008? (Or did you write about it last week and I missed it?)
Think I wrote about it maybe two or three weeks ago
. What I always like the most in games are: open-worldness and sandboxy type of non –linearity, so obviously PoP (2008) is my favorite part of the series. It is so enjoyable to collect light seeds after Elika heals the land, at your own pace, without pressure or frustration caused by failure. Game was criticized that it was too easy, just pressing buttons at right intervals and it was basically playing itself. What can I say? I love this. It also helps that graphics is stunningly beautiful, after three or fours years it still looks magnificent. It’s really true that cell-shaded graphics ages damn well, especially bright and colorful one while all this grim-dark 3D will sooner or later withers. There are also thing I really dislike in this game, especially Prince, he is so much of a jerk, I get that it was suppose to be this way to contrast him with Elika and show some kind of evolution in him during this adventure and her influence on him but still player is stuck with this unlikeable chap for entire game. Elika is of course what is saving this situation. It’s the shame that she is not playable character, when I first played it I hoped that she will playable in some sections of the game, as I love moments when games switches protagonists. Especially since she can do all Prince can, plus magic, except some weird grapevines when he has to carry her on his back :S .
Goodness, yes. Elika is one of my Top 5 favorite ladies (and ladies done well) in video games. She was an awesome character that drove the story and she was so saturated in every aspect of the game that I never felt like she was just this hapless/helpless lady that the main character had to escort around. *She* was the one escorting him, keeping him from dying when he falls, actively helping in combat with combo-assaults (they both were fighting melee and hand-to-hand), and gah, just everything about it. All set within this incredibly beautiful and stylish world. I would love so much for a sequel… alas…
Since last week I’ve finished Hotel Dusk: Room 215. I liked this game a lot. The protagonist grew on me, and the mystery got me hooked quickly. Apparently it’s possible to get a little bonus in the ending (and maybe also some details during the game) by playing the game a second and third time, but that will have to wait. Last Window: The Secret Of Cape West, a sequel of sorts, is certainly on my to-buy list now.
I’m now playing Legend Of Heroes: Trails In The Sky. This game must be among a Bartle Explorer type’s favorite games. There is just so much detail and background information to find everywhere! I’m constantly talking to everyone to learn how their lives are affected by the events. I really hope that there will be massive post-game content so that I can keep exploring. That said though, there are some flaws. A bigger one is how everyone keeps acting like the heroine doing anything right is surprising. Especially in the first chapter I found it very irritating how Joshua (MC’s adopted brother) and Cassius (MC’s father) talked about her like she were a pet they were raising instead of a confident and competent young woman. Urgh.
You know, I think that’s what bothered me the most about Estelle: she’s competent (if flawed) and I really appreciated that the lead character who was a powerful fighter but not so much with the subtle analysis was female, but everybody else’s reactions to Estelle were very much like she was a pet. Thank you for putting into words my biggest complaint about this game.
(Apparently the reason the Legends games take so long to come to the US is that the sheer quantity of text–and the required familiarity with dozens of obscure dialects–is just daunting.)
Resort World. I quite like these kinds of games, but most are by Zynga. After hearing enough crap about Zynga I decided not to play their games anymore. Luckily Resort World is not by them.
Playing it through Gaia Online instead of Facebook, so finding loads of neighbours is much easier. My neighbours’ islands irritate me because apparently no one but my roommate and I organize their island with any kind of aesthetics in mind. They’re all ugly jumbled messes that make my OCD brain itch.
How much do others pay attention to the aesthetics of their cities in these games? I’m always fussing over making the place both functional and beautiful.
I’ve been playing Ys:Origins and enjoying it quite a bit apart from the way it keep locking up during cutscenes. I’ve always wanted a game along the lines of Alundra/Landstalker/SNES-era Zelda games with a female playable character, and I especially like that the one in Ys:Origins isn’t the caster; she’s unable to use any magic at all, and became a melee powerhouse to compensate. I’m also downloading my freshly-purchased Magical Diary as I type, because that game looks awesome.
…and, as always, waiting for more GW2!
Just wanted to remind everyone that if you’re playing in the GW2 beta this weekend, Praxis is playing on Eredon Terrace!
Just started playing 1893: A World’s Fair Mystery, which I got from a recent adventure game bundle. It’s a highly detailed recreation in text adventure form of the World’s Columbian Exposition that was held in Chicago in 1893, with accompanying photos. So far I’ve been briefed on the mystery (some stolen diamonds), taken a guided tour of the Court of Honor area, and failed to bribe the staff at the chocolate pavilion to give me some of their “free” chocolates.
I’ll probably be starting another (few) new characters in Dungeons of Dredmor with the free expansion pack they’ve just released. They worked with the creators of the best community mods to polish up their mods for the expansion. They’ve also added Steam Workshop support for mods to the Steam version, and put all of it on sale for 70% off.
Aw, I need to find my copy of 1893! I never got very far in it, but it was great to wander around and take in all the detail.
Let’s see. I played through Bastion, which was amazing, the storytelling, the art, the music, the gameplay, just… Man. The game was so good, in fact, that I’m finding myself dissatisfied with everything else on my Steam list at the moment. It even got me thinking about how much JRPGs could be improved if they tried other methods of advancement than blindly grinding for EXP.
I’ve also been playing TES3: Morrowind for… Ages now. I got so into the lore, and I’ve had an amazing time, the world feels so real for me. But now I’m getting near the end and it’s starting to drag a little, I might just finish up the main quest and save the expansions for later. It’s a bit disappointing that I played it so much I got burnt out. If anyone feels like playing it, make sure to get the Morrowind Graphics & Sound Overhaul mod, and read up on the gameplay limitations before starting. It’s not a terribly accessible game.
Besides that, I’m searching for something new, but nothing satisfies. I tried playing Chantelise, but it didn’t have the endearing characters of Recettear, and the combat kind of dragged on. Dungeons of Dredmor is interesting but takes a bit too long for my tastes. I’ll update you on my search for a new game.
Huh, thanks for reminding me to get the current Humble Indie Bundle with your mention of Bastion!
I’ve been starting to poke around the Secret World beta. So far, I haven’t played a lot of it, and I’m not sure how I feel about it just yet.
I also played/read through the interactive story thing, “Bee” several times, and highly recommend it. It’s about a homeschooled kid practising for the national spelling bee. I quite enjoyed it. http://varytale.com/books/book/short-bee/info/
A bit of Mass Effect multiplayer, plus I’ve just finished the second act of Dragon Age 2 (and I’m quite offended by the storyline, but that’s a long rant and I’d better finish the game first, though I’m not particularly enthused by the prospect X[ ).
I’d be interested in hearing those thoughts after you are finished. It is problematic in places.
I am playing Dragon’s Dogma currently. It is a heavily flawed game, but extremely fun. Most of the fun is making up your own story and characters as the story is very basic. It is fun to invent my own back stories for otherwise doll like characters. Boss battles are amazing too.
http://www.videodetective.com/games/dragons-dogma/28006#.T9E_v9WWeJQ
Lots of Monster Hunter Tri co-op, and a little bit of Diablo III co-op. The challenge and gear progression of MH3 so far has been rather refreshing… hopefully that feeling will last a while.
Also, I finally got around to finishing Storm in a Teacup, and have been playing a fair amount of Cover Orange. Both are terribly cute games!
Reinstalled Starfleet Command III, and spent rather too much time with it recently. Just nice to have a fairly accessible Star Trek TNG quasi-RPG.
(FWIW the Federation character illustration is a white human female. I take it as more representative than a designated character, but it’s good to have women-as-default.)