Games: What games are you currently playing? [OT!]

[phaq]

let's just call the numbering/naming thing a "mistake." now this mistake is already in motion. does it seem more plausible to fix it after so many years of it being called what it was in another region, or to "correct" it, thus making things further confusing, until the few who look shit up on the internet discover what other geeks had already figured out when the series was brand new?

[Cataferal]

Since RPG's tend to be self-contained projects, i actually prefer publishers to advertise them qualitatively (Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Legendia etc...) as opposed to sequentially (Final Fantasy I-XII). I remember a lot of europeans felt hesitant the day Final Fantasy VII was released; the hype was huge, but we'd never had any title in the series released here before. It also avoids confusing situations like Phaq mentioned if we just avoid placing them in numeric order.

Returning to "Sonic and the Secret Rings" for just a moment, below are the scores (as released yesterday):

IGN:...............6.9/10
GameSpot:......7.6/10
Gaming Age:....B+
1UP:..............7.5/10
GameBrink:......81/100

Im not buying it until i play at least a demo; ?35 is a lot to pay for just an above average title.

<font color="#345E81" size="1">[ February 21, 2007 11:56 AM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]</font>

[Templar Zeratul]

Let's see....

Been playing Diddy Kong Racing for the ol' DS. I loved the game on the N64 (probably the hardest damn racing game ever...) and it's pretty good on the DS. I also picked up Super Mario 64 DS, which is pretty nice, and imported Bleach DS, which is a bad ass fighting game that I spend a lot of time playing nowadays.

Last thing I bought for my PS2 was Guitar Hero II, and Final Fantasy 12. I must say that I am very satisfied and impressed with FFXII. It's been a while since I played a Final Fantasy that I was happy with and could say was actually a GOOD one. No more emo main characters, back to the cute girl sidekicks (I love Penelo so much) and the story was much better this time.

[mrwiseman]

Welcome back, Zeratul! It's been a long time. How are you doing?

[Cataferal]

Also bought FFXII, and i agree with Zeratul. There hasnt been a single cringe-worthy cut-scene yet (a la FFX's laughing scene), and all the characters seem very mature and consistent. This is like the compete antithesis to KHII; an effort was made to put substance into the characters and gameplay, rather than style into the visuals this time, and i think the series is all the better for it.

[mrwiseman]

I've got ahold of a PS2 emulator and required dumps that seems to have made an awesome progress. This is great news. My PS2 still works, but it's kind of a hassle to install it every time I want to play, put in the DVD, restart a couple of times because the PS2 DVD drive sucks ass, etc., and this would allow me to play these games in high resolution, bringing them new life. (Admittedly, some PS2 games re-rendered in 1024?768 can look top-notch and rival the early games of the new generation.) Another feature I'm interested in is savestates, which means I can exploit the last minute of my spare time playing any game, as I don't want to wait to end an hour long dungeon to save and such. I hope my DVD drive loads my original games properly, or I can image them somehow and emulate them. Perhaps that'll make me reconsider playing Xenosaga 2, I bought it 2 Christmas ago and still haven't touched it after how disgusted I was with the beginning and PAL conversion fart.

[Cataferal]

Only for people with high spec PC's though. I tried it using my P4 3.2Ghz/1G RAM/ATI X600 and i barely got past the Squaresoft logo in FFX. &gt;.&gt; Was i missing some emulator drivers or something?

Xenosaga II? Yeah, it might be a bit more palatable through an emulator. I recommend cheating somehow, and just playing it through for the story (which is excellent in parts).

Currently 25 hours into FFXII. Im starting to get tired of the dungeon crawling, and the gambit system feels like a very sharp, brittle, double edged sword as far as strategic control goes. This could be the mid-RPG blues kicking in though, and i at least appreciate Square's bravery in offering something completely different this time.

[phaq]

currently, symphony of the night. i'm halfway through, well halfway if you do things right, otherwise i'd have beaten it and got one of the worse endings. playing it on the psp. it's coming to the psp with rondo of blood(the one japan never let go of) and a 2.5d remake of rondo later this year, but i figured i'd give it another go anyway.

[mrwiseman]

My GeForce 6800 GT died, and I got it replaced (it was still under warranty). Now I have a GeForce 7600 GS. It's about as fast (1-5% slower), but it has twice as much video RAM (256 MB). For most games, this means nothing, but Oblivion benefits from 256 MB VRAM.

Currently playing my new Oblivion. I've used higher-resolution textures (less of my texture reducing mod applied, only the ones you don't notice, and higher-res LOD textures, still have 50 MB in cities and 150 MB outdoors free for future texture expansion), as well as new balancing mods, my personal compilation of better bodies with full nudity and smooth models, hotter NPCs, awesome weather and atmosphere (improved weather variety, exuberant foliage (200% big trees and bushes (not the girls')), sound, now including birds, bugs, rainbows), much higher performance grass, better AI (that behaves more as advertised), better magic system, and a few more things. If anyone's interested, I can detail the mods I'm using.

?????

Tried PCSX2 0.9.2 with Final Fantasy 10 on my system. I couldn't get the original game to work directly from the DVD with Pete's plugin; I had to image it first. Tried two graphics plugins:

GSdx9 0.9.0: Works, though only at 40% of the normal speed, therefore it's unplayable. The visuals are pretty and rendered in high-resolution, though I've just realized doing this on the PS2 reveals the PS2's big weakness. Since Sony couldn't get the PS2 working decently on high-res like the Dreamcast or the GameCube (mostly because of the ridiculously low video memory buffer), they do a dirty trick that consists of rendering on a 640?240 buffer (instead of 640?480). On even frames, they render the even lines, and on odd frames, they render the odd lines, offset by a bit. Since TVs suck and are interlaced, this works, though it's subject to visual quality artifacts other consoles aren't (and sucks for some VRAM effects), and it looks like crap with a non-interlaced TV set like an VGA monitor. This plugin emulates the PS2 in high-resolution, but the cost is that because of the odd field offset, the image will constantly tremble vertically, and it's advisable to play the game from a distance.

ZeroGS KOSMOS 0.96.0: Works, at 60% of the normal speed, thus still unplayable. This plugin takes the other possible approach: to render the game in the original resolution (640?240), rescaled to whatever you want. This is faster, and produces no trembling, but it yields a crappy ass low resolution (nothing better than the original PS2), and produces ugly flicker. I hate Sony and their shitty design. I prefer the other approach, but this is faster.

I hope things will get faster and the game will become playable with the second plugin in a year or so. Either that or I'll get a faster processor. Note that dual cores will not benefit much from this (I believe the emulator is able to do something in a separate thread, and the video driver might save up to 1% as well); for emulation you need raw speed in a single thread mostly. This means an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2 cores, 2.2 GHz) will be little faster (5%?) than my Athlon 64 3500+ (1 core, 2.2 GHz). Only an expensive Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (2 cores, 3 GHz) could suffice to play the game at full speed right now.

By the way, they report Grandia 3, Final Fantasy 10, and Xenosaga 2 work (though they do slowly), so we'll be able to play at least these games. For now, Xenosaga 1, Xenosaga 3 or Star Ocean 3 don't, but being popular games, they will probably fix them one day.

<font color="#345E81" size="1">[ March 04, 2007 08:13 AM: Message edited by: -Wiseman- ]</font>

[Xellos]

Yippee. Grandia 3 and Xenosaga 2 &gt;_&gt;

Nah, Grandia 3's fun and worth a playthrough if you manage to get ahold of it.

It'll be damn hot whenever they get that damn thing working. Mainly because I won't have to kill my wallet importing games anymore.