Well, I did go on a bit of an "old computer" kick. More or less beat the first deck of System Shock and haven't gone back to it because I'm not really sure what to do next. I don't even remember where the elevator was, and I forgot to add a message saying. I think I'm something just short of halfway through Strife, but it's hard to say for sure. I play in bursts. Sooner or later the winding, mazelike, barely distinguishable corridors that tend to constitute the main mission areas wear on me. Mind you,unlike some predecessors (Doom, for example) they're clearly meant to represent an actual building. The Castle of the Order is a castle with sub-buildings. The sewers are, well, sewers. The Warehouse is a warehouse. The power station...well, you get the idea. I suppose I'd be having more fun if I took off god mode, but..eh. I paid very little for it, and I don't really feel like investing the effort it would take to master the game. It'll always be there if I do, anyway. Definitely one of the better Doom-style shooters, though.
Also played through another couple of segments of Broken Sword 1. It's a really, really good adventure game. Puzzles have generally been solvable with a bit of lateral thinking or maybe not even that. Plenty of humor, but a basically serious plot. I just wish there were some way to remember what you were trying to do last time you played. I picked it back up after several months away and had no idea what to do next. I did eventually pick up the thread, but it'd be nice to have some sort of prompt. Oh well.
Mostly, though, I've been playing Path of Neo, the new Matrix game. Maybe I'm a sucker for punishment (I played Enter the Matrix, which concealed the underpinnings of a good game mixed with a heavy layer of wretched, wretched design and scripting.)......this one, though, while hardly perfect, is at least quite solid. Occasional moments (getting to punch in Morpheus' face in the training construct, for example) are little short of brilliant. Unfortunately, they're complemented by some levels that are little short of sadistic. A prime example of the latter: there's a scene involving an agent, Neo learning to bullet dodge, a rooftop, and a helicopter. At this point you can't go toe-to-toe with an agent. What do you have to do? Distract the agent with bullet dodge so Trinity can shoot it for you. Oh, but it comes back...over and over and over. Meanwhile you're duking it out with SWAT, and you need to shoot down the helicopter...and it's just brutal. Not brutal in a challenging way, brutal in that the basic agent-killing method involved works maybe 10% of the time. You'll bullet dodge...and the agent will shoot at Trinity. Or he'll shoot at you, but recover in time to dodge her shots. Or she'll miss. Or she'll hit, but not hard enough to kill, and it'll instantly regen. And if it fails at the wrong time, you're pretty much screwed. Blah.
The other big problem I have is that the story is delivered really poorly. Big chunks are glossed over, and the stuff that *is* told never joins the levels together in any meaningful way. Oh, and there are a lot of movie clips, but most of them are rapid-fire bits of scenes stitched together completely out of order, sometimes not even from the same movie as each other, and conveying virtually no info. ...oh, and the guns kind of suck, too. I mean, they sound good, they're satisfying, the bullet trails and such are all very Matrixy...but you have hardly any ammo for them, don't really have very good aim...and worse, the auto-targeting sticks to the target even if it's dead, and is very tough to re-target. The martial arts are quite sufficiently entertaining, however, so I generally just don't pull out my guns and evade until I get into melee range. So...in summary: not a game to play to learn the Matrix storyline (or for story in general, really.). Not for the easily frustrated...and probably not worth buying, either. But it's enough fun when it's good to be worth a rental. That's how I'm getting it.
Also played through another couple of segments of Broken Sword 1. It's a really, really good adventure game. Puzzles have generally been solvable with a bit of lateral thinking or maybe not even that. Plenty of humor, but a basically serious plot. I just wish there were some way to remember what you were trying to do last time you played. I picked it back up after several months away and had no idea what to do next. I did eventually pick up the thread, but it'd be nice to have some sort of prompt. Oh well.
Mostly, though, I've been playing Path of Neo, the new Matrix game. Maybe I'm a sucker for punishment (I played Enter the Matrix, which concealed the underpinnings of a good game mixed with a heavy layer of wretched, wretched design and scripting.)......this one, though, while hardly perfect, is at least quite solid. Occasional moments (getting to punch in Morpheus' face in the training construct, for example) are little short of brilliant. Unfortunately, they're complemented by some levels that are little short of sadistic. A prime example of the latter: there's a scene involving an agent, Neo learning to bullet dodge, a rooftop, and a helicopter. At this point you can't go toe-to-toe with an agent. What do you have to do? Distract the agent with bullet dodge so Trinity can shoot it for you. Oh, but it comes back...over and over and over. Meanwhile you're duking it out with SWAT, and you need to shoot down the helicopter...and it's just brutal. Not brutal in a challenging way, brutal in that the basic agent-killing method involved works maybe 10% of the time. You'll bullet dodge...and the agent will shoot at Trinity. Or he'll shoot at you, but recover in time to dodge her shots. Or she'll miss. Or she'll hit, but not hard enough to kill, and it'll instantly regen. And if it fails at the wrong time, you're pretty much screwed. Blah.
The other big problem I have is that the story is delivered really poorly. Big chunks are glossed over, and the stuff that *is* told never joins the levels together in any meaningful way. Oh, and there are a lot of movie clips, but most of them are rapid-fire bits of scenes stitched together completely out of order, sometimes not even from the same movie as each other, and conveying virtually no info. ...oh, and the guns kind of suck, too. I mean, they sound good, they're satisfying, the bullet trails and such are all very Matrixy...but you have hardly any ammo for them, don't really have very good aim...and worse, the auto-targeting sticks to the target even if it's dead, and is very tough to re-target. The martial arts are quite sufficiently entertaining, however, so I generally just don't pull out my guns and evade until I get into melee range. So...in summary: not a game to play to learn the Matrix storyline (or for story in general, really.). Not for the easily frustrated...and probably not worth buying, either. But it's enough fun when it's good to be worth a rental. That's how I'm getting it.