Rate the Last Game You Played

[Riaaz]

Well I just finished Darksiders. I thought it was addictive. Just had to go on and on playing it until I was finished with the game. Well I would give it a rating of 9. it looked good, played good, and felt good.

[tehNihilist]

White Knight Chronicles PS3

Single Player:

Pretty short, about 20 odd hrs roughly which is short for a JRPG. The story and characters are nothing that interesting and the overall game is very very easy. You need to complete it to gain access to all the online quests.

Online:

This is where the game can shine. There is a LOT to accomplish here. From building towns (Georama's) to gain access to new gear and materials. You can also go to others towns to gather / buy materials you do not have access to which is great. Joining up with 3 others for questing can be pretty fun to be sure, but it is easy-mode till further into your Guild Rank progression.

Guild Rank progression is earned by completing quests either solo-offline, or online with others. Needless to say online is faster and the later quests, once your Guild Rank is high enough, can NOT be solo'd at all. The game feels a lot like a MMO-lite which some people will love while others will hate it.

There are so many upgrades to ones gear it can be overwhelming. The materials can either be bought from your or others towns (Georama's) if they have sufficient town stats (which you build up). Or through killing mobs and gathering nodes in the wilderness / town nodes. Some of the rarer materials can only be gotten from high rank quests bosses however.

You can also rebirth, which is basically a re-specialization with added benefits. Doing so allows one to try a new build plus gain access to more skillpoints. How it works is at lvl 50 you can rebirth back down to lvl 35, keeping ALL your skillpoints thus far. Now you can gain even more skillpoints as you level back up to 50. This is only effective up to 4 times, but you can rebirth as many times as you want after if you want to try new builds.

Conclusion:

The game is certainly not for everyone, in fact I would not suggest it to non-JRPG lovers, people who cannot deal with a solid grind, or do not have access to online gaming.

Rating - 6
Personal Rating - 7.5 since I love grinding in these games.

[Pollynator]

Bad Company 2: 80% - down a bit right now because of the server and login issues... but will probably increase soon

[Wlad]

Heavy Rain: 98% Won't go into any details in fear os spoiling something for somebody. This is truly one of the best gaming experiences I have had in my life. Awesome story, great graphics, but most importantly it's something completely fresh in a somewhat stale market. Everybody who own a PS3 should have this in their collection, if you don't have a PS3 now is the perfect time to get one. With this out now and GoW III out next week there has never been a better time to buy a PS3. (Make sure you also pick up Demon's Souls when you get that PS3 )

[Solitude]

Lost: Via Domus

Man they could have done so much with this game. It feels like a wasted opportunity. Wasn't that bad though and I'm glad I finally played it.

5.9

[kilo]

Assasins'S Creed 2 9/10

Really enjoyed playing this game, a huge improvement on the first game.

[Grimspoon]

Uncharted Drakes Fortune

9/10

Simply awesome, finished it 2 days but brilliant. Now for number 2

[phoenix]

Dragon Age:Origins

There are few better ways to spend 70-odd hours.
It has been too long since I enjoyed a game this much or lost track of time while playing one.
While the game may have its flaws, overall, it was quite an experience and I look forward to
playing the other Origin stories as well as DA:Awakening. While I would have preferred it is Bioware/EA
had not tried to wring more money out of the came in the form of DLC [Would it have hurt them that
much to have included it in the game proper?], I shall still give this RPG 9/10 and the Phoenix Seal of Approval.

[tehNihilist]

Final Fantasy XIII

In short I will say this game was a serious disappointment. I do not buy into hype, in fact I avoid it as far as trying not to reading previews or watching pre-release vids. I had very little preconception before playing this game.

Lets see where to start... Well the game looks fantastic. I remember watching CG videos for some JRPG's quite some time back, and wishing ingame could look so good. Well, the time is pretty much here. The characters look largely amazing. From the hair, to some of the finer details on their cloths and their facial animations. It smacks of polish. This quality is however a little let down by the sometimes obvious, 'blocky' limbs, but that was never a real issue. The voice acting is hit and miss, some characters are great while others are utterly terri-bad. Music wise the game is decent with a few memorable songs.

This iteration in the series did not feel like a true Final Fantasy to me personally. So many things felt like they were lacking. First off any open world feel is ditched for a significantly linear one. Most of the game you will be running down almost corridors in one direction - This game is on rails. There was also a severe lack of complexity here. The character stat progression is flat, and the upgrade options for items are the same. Stat-wise there are only 3: Hit Points, Intelligence and Strength.

Now to the combat system. You will be spending most of the game mashing X with the Auto Battle option, changing it up mid-battle using the L1 button to change Paradigms (Combat Roles) as needed. Trust me, once you get over the initial fake speed, the combat becomes shallow pretty fast. Seldom arises the need to input specific commands since the Auto Battle option pretty much does it for you picking the best options. The combat difficulty does not help here either, the game in my opinion is pretty damn easy. Sure you will die, but it is often fairly easily overcome, and most battles come down to time and not skill. Another niggle I had is that the world, which seems amazing, never seems to be dealt with properly. One never gets a true feeling for the world or its inhabitants. This is likely due to the linear nature of the game.

In closing. Being a long running fan of the Final Fantasy series, I am sad to see this steady decline in the franchise. It feels like more and more games are being made for the lowest common denominator, which makes business sense, but it hurts the longterm fans. The game feels like so much has been missed out. There are some side missions available at Chapter 11, but they are tedious and unimaginative. There is no real incentive to do them, such as being able to kill that 'Uber' boss like in the previous games.

I will say I had fun overall, but nothing that will make this a classic in the slightest. The game is fairly long - 40-50hrs for the main story, and maybe another 20 odd hrs for the missions, so it is good value for money.

Perhaps they need to take a hint and finally make it - THE Final Fantasy.

Rating - 7.5
Personal Rating - 7.5

[Raven Gold]

AVP Multiplayer: 75%

Much like in my last rating. Great fun, but I miss crouching for the humans and predators. But I know why the server is almost allways empty, it's not really that captivating at all. Maybe if a bots mod comes out, since the style can easily be emulated by them.