HotChops

Far Cry 2 -- so much potential, but ruined by tediously annoying things like not being able to drive a hundred feet without encountering an armed patrol. Ghostbusters -- the still images looked great, but when the game is in motion it doesn't look nearly so good. The basic ghost-busting gameplay is excellent, but the rest is just a half-ass shooter. The potential for tons of special features and extras was totally wasted. Star Wars: TFU -- Most of the game was okay, but the control stick-based boss battles were soooo broken; most notably the end boss battle against the star destroyer. Don't get me started on the sequel, that game disappointed EVERYONE. CoD: Modern Warfare 2 -- After more than a year of playing CoD4's multiplayer, I finally became sick of non-stop noob tubing. I pick up MoW2 and not only are the tubes back, but they added another tube plus the ability to pick up more ammo, thus creating a non-stop clusterfuck of noobtubage. I fucking hate it. Medal of Honor -- they caved to public outcry and delivered an unfinished product that can't decide if it's trying to be Call of Duty or not. The entire Nintendo Wii system -- So much blown potential, so many broken promises, so much shovelware... ugh, to think I froze my ass off at 5 AM to hunt one down during it's launch.

I too am mostly a single player gamer. There are many reasons, starting with my gaming roots. -The first game system I bought with my own money was the SNES and I loved it. At the same time, I didn't have too many friends. Usually gaming was something I did in place of playing with friends outside. - I love strong characters and stories. For me, gaming is an escape from reality and I don't like things interfering with the experience (ie: other people.) - I like to dictate the pace of my game experience. If I want to look around or skip past something, I can do that. - Most multiplayer games are competitive, and it's damn difficult to be good with so many different games out there. Most competitive games are basically virtual sports, and I hate sports. I hate a lot of those things too, but I left a lot of it behind when I joined Xbox Live. Right off the bat, I set my privacy settings so that I don't have to hear anyone besides those on my friends list, and sometimes I'll mute certain people if they're annoying me. I also rarely experience lag, and when I do it's usually a problem with the server. I also hate games that lack structure, which is why I really like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and it's Rush mode. It's not perfect, but it directs the flow of players well, and the point system encourages cooperation and teamwork. In regular mode (as opposed to hardcore) there's no griefing or teamkilling which is the bane of my existence. So sometimes I enjoy multiplayer gaming. Bad Company 2 is a great bonding experience for me and my real-life friends. We've spent so much time together that we can predict each others actions and compliment each others tactics.

I haven't played mass effect but you can certainly jump in Assassins Creed. I think also in batman AA, btw.. yes, but it's not traditional jumping. In AC you hold RT and without moving anywhere press A, and you NEVER do that. And in Batman he only jumps off ledges. This is not traditional jumping. I'm talking about jumping like Mario or Master Chief.

I think that was supposed to be Zantar the Gelatinous Cube from Noah's Arcade. We don't need to dig too much to find the most absurd licensed games. What about Lego Rock Band?

I never had many complaints with Oblivion. It's age has really started to show, but nothing that's kept me from playing the hell out of it. I hope they leave multiplayer out of Skyrim. Multiplayer in a large RPG could easily lead to a MMORPG and I don't want that. I'm anti-social though. I want to experience my RPG by myself and I want my friends to stay the hell out of my fantasy world!

I also want the ability to toggle the helmet back. I always would wear the helmet in harsh conditions and remove it if I was indoors or somewhere pleasant. On a similar note, get rid of the lame oxygen masks and crap from ME2. I wish there were gay romances in ME too. But look at how Fox News handled the romances in the first ME and those relationships weren't actually gay. Could you imagine the shitstorm that would come from an authentic man-on-manass relationship?

That actually sounds pretty different from Sim City, which isn't contingent upon the aid of other people at all. LOL, after hearing your description of Cityville I'm no longer interested in it. Plus I hate addictive games that are addictive for the wrong reasons, and it sounds like Cityville (like most free-to-play games) is digital dope. Just as Master P said: The first hit is for free, but next time you better bring a twenty.

I'm saying squad orders are nice but sometimes it's more frustrating when they don't follow you, so they're pointless, so you're back to square one. Basically of hierarchy of things I'd rather have: >Squad orders that work >No squad orders >Squad orders that fail miserably Did any of you guys ever play the first Brothers in Arms? I thought the squad AI was pretty decent for the time. Likewise, it was awesome to command more than three people, which seems impossible given technical limitations these days.

Hi, I'm Austin and I'm FB Game-curious. I haven't actually played any of them, but being a big Sim City fan I can't help but be interested in Cityville.

I think it would be cool if -- like Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood -- you collected items from your triumphs and tribulations throughout the franchise such as the pistol Saren used to kill Nihilus, a piece of the , a pair of underwear from your sexual conquests

I guess... but I'm like Ken Levine, and still think that there's too much damn multiplayer going around these days.

The demo wasn't bad imo, but it really didn't show much new content. I think the demo was really just a medium for EA to bring new players up to speed on the story of Dead Space. On that note, I really hope the opening narrative is left out of DS2. One of the things I loved about the first Dead Space is that they don't beat you over the head with the story. Like Bioshock, the story is picked up peripherally from the surroundings. And a side note: They only mention it in the demo, but DS2 has multiplayer. I'm sorry, but yet again I feel like this is a stupid example of just tacking on multiplayer. You want to talk about gaming tropes that have to go? How about the assumption that every damn game has to have a competitive multiplayer mode? Discuss

It's highly unlikely that Activision would file a suit against EA if they didn't have some sort of evidence. The bigger question is was that the source of the conflict between Activision and West/Zampella? My guess is no. I'm sure that EA was talking to Infinity Ward developers; trying to butter them up and lure them away, but that doesn't change the very suspicious timing of West and Zampella's termination.

As someone who lives in Nebraska, I don't know whether I should be offended or insulted. The Elcor are awesome, so does that mean you think Nebraska is awesome? Elcor: "Annoyed. The women doth protest too much?" That is totes going to be my sig. "As the homeworld of the elcor, Dekuuna is also known to have very few mountains; the high gravity inhibits the formation of mountains." I imagine Dekuuna as a large flat land, like farm land.

I imagine the Elcor world looking something like Nebraska. btw, I just killed Commander Shepard

It's kind of difficult to be "selective" with the end. It's so complex I'll just post some of the walkthrough info below. I kept all my crewmates alive during my Renegade ME playthrough because I'm a renegade completionist B)

I love how "Edit" is basically a holographic, talking vagina.

You know what's fucked up? I think you're right. I feel crazy saying that I couldn't make MGS3 work for me. Everyone else loves it, and it's not like I don't have the skills. I kicked the shit out of every other MG game prior to MGS 3, so why was MGS3 such a problem for me? Ugh... I still have the damn game. I'm about to pop it in and try again just to test my own sanity. Perhaps I had an ache in my balls the first time I played through MGS3 and that's why I couldn't make it work

The Vorcha aren't as bad as the collectors, but I would prefer an enemy that's less... *sigh* how do I put this? Rabidly villainous? I would totally be in favor of piloting the Normandy in a space battle or just in general. And I don't think you could land on Jupiter or Saturn. Some of their moons would be another story. I loved being able to land on Earth's moon in ME1.

The way those two flirted at the end of ME2... both hawt and creepy at the same time. I LOVE IT!

- female aliens. Aside from the all-female Asari, does anyone know what a Turian or Salarian female looks like? In ME2 we see the covered corpse of what's supposed to be a Krogen female, but we don't actually see her. - likewise, I'd love to visit the homeworlds of the council races. I love the secondary codex's description of Turian society. - a space battle -- not simply a cutscene like what's seen in ME1, but a relatively short segment where you actually pilot a space fighter. What I don't want to see? Earth. The teaser trailer for ME3 was awesome, but ironically I'm really not interested in going to Earth. Since it appears we're going there, I hope they make it more interesting than Halo 2/ODST.

OMG, I can't believe I didn't think of this one sooner: Mounted gun segments! You know, when you're on a mounted minigun or grenade launcher and you're tasked with mowing down an endless stream of enemies. They're everywhere nowadays, even in Red Dead Redemption.

No love for MGS3 then? Shame. Well, I liked MGS2, but like most people I was disappointed to play as Raiden. I eventually swapped it for MGS2 Substance, which brought back one of my favorite features of MGS, the VR missions. I didn't get around to trying MGS3 until a few years ago. At first I liked it, but very quickly I found the game's controls incredibly frustrating. The camera kept screwing me, and I couldn't sneak up on anyone for crap. I soon gave up on the control stick and started tapping the directional pad to get close to enemies. Despite these adjustments, I finally got so damn pissed off that I gave up on the damn thing. when I complained on the forums, everyone said the problem was that I should have played MGS 3 Subsistence, which fixed many of those problems. While I certainly don't doubt that, I can't help but feel like that's total bullshit. If the game is unplayable unless you play the updated version, then I don't really think its fair for people to say MGS3 is a good game. They should say that MGS3: Subsistence is a good game.

You know, I've been thinking about this thread for a week now and I've reached some interesting conclusions. The following is not necessarily a list of my favorite games, but rather the most influential. In most cases, I found these games to be very enjoyable-- even addictive -- but in some cases the games listed were heavily flawed. 1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion My love for this game was heavily influenced by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Even at the tender age of 10, I dreamed of a version of LttP on steroids; a Zelda game of the future where Hyrule was a massive, living breathing world conveyed with realistic graphics. When I bought Oblivion on sale, I had no idea that it was in fact the game of my dreams. Oblivion made me fall in love with Bethesda's tangible system of items and locations. I loved the size of the world and the freedom it offered to its players. Oblivion was also very influential in that it essentially destroyed what little love I had left for Nintendo. Two days into Oblivion, I realized I would probably never buy another Zelda game again. 2. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past I really loved LttP because of the world it created. The trees, flowers, and creatures still capture my imagination to this day. Also see #1. 3. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I love Mass Effect more than KOTOR, but KOTOR makes this list because without it, I might never have tried Mass Effect. I loved the size, freedom, story and dialogue system of KOTOR. When ME was first announced, I knew that I would love it. 4. Metal Gear Solid By the time I finished MGS, I couldn't help but notice that the first two hours of the game were dramatically different from the latter portions. I loved the beginning of MGS -- the real world locations, politics, weapons and military jargon got my blood pumping, but I thought the over-the-top characters like Revolver Ocelot and Psycho Mantis to be really stupid. MGS was very influential in my gaming tastes because it showed me that I loved gritty, realistic military games, and that I really disliked some of the preachy and weird stuff in Japanese-developed games. 5. Contra Contra influenced me in many ways as a young gamer. It made me realize that I found guns and muscular warriors cooler than fatass plumbers. It challenged me to hone my skills until I didn't need that wussy Konami code. The game's ending also had a cinematic flair that was groundbreaking for its time. 6. Grand Theft Auto III I had played the original GTA on PC years earlier and thoroughly enjoyed it. When GTA III came out, it dominated my free time for the following two years. I loved the sandbox freedom, the violence, and the way that stunning action movie moments could occur at any time based on the immediate circumstances. To this day, I prefer an incredible action sequence that occurs randomly as opposed to the scripted action of a game like Call of Duty. 7. Super Metroid This game introduced me and millions of other gamers to a concept that would be critical in modern-era games: atmosphere. Super Metroid was masterful in its ability to set tone. I'll never forget the moment I first returned to planet Zebes. Unlike every other side scrolling game to date, I didn't rush through the beginning. The creepy fog and music made me proceed slowly and carefully. It perfectly conveyed the phrase, "it's quiet... too quiet." Also, much like Contra, Super Metroid had some very cinematic moments. 8. Half Life Even though I had played and loved Goldeneye just weeks prior to playing Half Life, I consider the latter to be my first real first person shooter. Half Life kicked my ass and I loved it. Half Life was in many ways a nightmare. Scientists died gruesome deaths before your very eyes. Headcrabs lept from every darkened corner. Armed commandos and helicopters taught me time and again how to think on my feet, aim carefully, conserve ammo and walk into every room expecting the fight of my life. I still think HL2 doesn't come close to capturing the intensity of its predecessor. 9. Battlefield 1942 BF 1942 was my first online game. From the moment I leapt into the backseat of a fighter plane in the demo I was hooked. The fact that I was relying completely on the skills and whims of a human being I'd never met blew my mind. I came to love the large maps, vehicle variety and intense conflicts of Battlefield, and I still love it in Bad Company 2 today.