Sorry if this thread exists, searching for a 3-character string is hard. Anyway, I just got a PS3, and other than upgrading all of my DVDs, what should I get? I have an XBOX already, so I'm basically looking for good exclusives I missed over the past 5 years. What are the must-haves? Does PS3 have a Crackdown equivalent?
Huh. That really depends on what sort of games you like and what other consoles you have. For instance, I'm really loving Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, but that's only going to appeal to a certain audience. It's not a PS3 exclusive, but since its other version is on the Wii, that might or might not be an effective exclusive for you. Disgaea 3 is great fun in play if you liked Disgaea and Disgaea 2; I can't really recommend the plot with a straight face. Valkyria Chronicles is a great deal of fun, and has a really interesting interface approach--as well as some cool turn/real-time combinations for how it handles strategic combat--but not everyone wants fantasy WWII with young adult angst. I'm told that Journey is amazing, and it's very pretty, but I couldn't handle the platforming aspects myself. And I picked up the PS3 partly to get Eternal Sonata, but I haven't even started that one yet. I guess I am not being very helpful, here. Sorry. But more parameters would be useful!
Demon's Souls is proto-Dark Souls; you'll love it if you like Dark Souls, and hate it if you hate Dark Souls. Disgaea 4 is the better PS3 Disgaea by far. And while it's silly, the writing tends to be at least competent. Which is more than can be said for its predecessor. (Also, you can fuse two sets of level 9999 tier6 dragons into two lv9999 giant dragons, then equip those to a character as two giant, incredibly overpowered swords!) 3D Dot Game Heroes is From doing a 2D Zelda clone that spoofs 8-bit RPGs, and is great fun. Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS. is my latest fetish, and I have a whole thread where I talk about that.
Good point. I liked Disgaea quite a bit a million years ago, so more of that would be good. With Valkyrie Chronicles, the face that you used the phrase strategic combat already has me interested, so that's probably one I should pick up. I'm not terribly into Final Fantasy-style RPGs, what is the gameplay of Eternal Sonata like? Anything with a strategic/turn-based-tactical bent will appeal to me, but I don't have the patience anymore for pressing X through twenty hour cutscenes. I love open world action too, I've probably put more hours into Just Cause 2 than anything else on the 360 (except maybe Fallout 3). Or wargames, but I don't think they've ported Take Command: 2nd Manassas to consoles, have they?
Oh, if you want SRPGs: it's a multiplatform, but you probably overlooked Resonance of Fate. Fix that, now. 360, PS3, whatever.
Uncharted. Uncharted Uncharted Uncharted. It's Tomb Raider except fun, it's one of the best games on the platform, it's one of the few games that held my horrible attention span long enough to finish. I like Demon's Souls a lot. I thought 3D Dot Game Heroes was godawful boring shit.
I picked up a ps3 recently as well, and the list of exclusives I made for myself is: Infamous 1/2 (sort of like crackdown) starhawk disgaea 3/4 valkyria chronicles ar tonelico qoga tales of graces f journey yakuza 4 uncharted god of war 3 ni no kuni Of those, I've only played starhawk, disgaea 3 and ar tonelico qoga so far. Starhawk is a third person shooter with base building and transforming mechs whose gameplay reminds me of the battlezone remake. Disgaea 3 is...a horrible time sink that i only barely escaped from. Ar tonelico qoga is the ending of the ar tonelico trilogy and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't played both previous games and has a really, really high tolerance for fanservice. Next up for me is valkyria chronicles.
Haven't played Eternal Sonata yet, but as far as I know it's FF-style, so it might not be your thing. Get a second opinion from someone who knows more! (And, man, there's a Disgaea 4 out? Why did no one tell me?) Anyway, Valkyria Chronicles! So long as you're not irked by the premise--World War II with the serial numbers lightly filed off and magic painted over--it should probably be your thing. There are a heck of a lot of cut scenes, but you can skip them if you want. Or replay them at any time. It's actually got a pretty cool interface, where the ongoing story is laid out like a scrapbook/comic, with each cut scene showing up in a little picture box on the page, along with the tactical maps for the combat parts, so that you can go back and rewatch or what not. But you're interested in hearing gameplay, so: You have a squad of soldiers. In fact, you have an entire unit of 30 soldiers (once you get past the tutorial parts), each with their own little personality quirks that give minor bonus/penalties depending on the circumstances. You can ignore the vast majority of NPCs as anything but pawns, but they all have little personality and history writeups, which is a nice touch. On a given map, you deploy about 5-10 of them in one or more places, depending on the scenario. You look down at the whole map from above in a very abstract sense--here are your units, the units of the enemy that you're aware of, a rough guide of buildings and streets or rivers or what not--and pick units to move around. When you choose a unit, you zoom in, and then you're running around in real time. With the enemy firing at you if you get in their line of sight and range, so cover is very, very important. (Hurrah, sandbags!) The unit will have a certain amount of range available to run, based on their class. (You level up entire classes, not individual units, so if you want more movement on a Scout, you get more movement for allll the Scouts.) When you decide to use your weapon (or healing thingy or tank repair or what not), time pauses again, and you can take your time aiming and all that. And you can use up the rest of your move after you shoot, too. You get a certain number of Command Points, each of which can be used to move a unit once; usually fewer than your total units, and you can move the same unit repeatedly, though at a movement penalty each time. When you run out--or choose to stop, since you can carry extras over to the next turn--you end your turn, and the enemy gets to use all its command points. Repeat until the objective is reached or scenario failed. Anyway. I have babbled, but it's because I really love the setup. It's all the best of "I have enough time to think strategically and consider my options" together with the actual adrenaline rush of running around with stuff shooting at you; and I almost never get to play games with the latter, because my twitch reflexes and aim are so very terrible. But I can run from point A to point B, having checked out the overhead map beforehand, while someone is shooting at me. Usually. (Note: do not run your snipers through the line of fire of an enemy shock trooper. That never ends well. Snipers should sit behind sandbags or in bunkers or atop towers and NEVER MOVE until there's a clear path. Poor, squishy snipers.)
I really loved Eternal Sonata, but you need to know what you're getting into if you want to buy it. It's super long, especially cutscene-wise (I think the end is like an hour of just cutscenes), and the plot is often bloated and bizarre and rambly. It also has a lot of characters. The combat is really fun, being turn-based but each turn being real-time attacking and movement around the circular area, and your position in the light or dark affects your skills. A lot of grinding is required, however, and you can only save at specific points so make sure you have hour-long chunks to play in. Also, note that it has stuff after the credits; once you've received a random story and the game has stopped on a logo, you know you're done for reals. Anyway, those are the basics and the things you might not necessarily hear from reviews, but I do recommend looking up some reviews and such if you're interested just to get the full scoop--especially since I haven't played the game in a few years.
Yakuza 3,4. Possibly the spinoff Yakuza if you decide that's your thing. 4 is more mechanically sound and really ups the ante on some of the best parts, but they are both just differently excellent. It looks like an open world game, plays like a JRPG, but when you fight it's a good-natured 3d fighter with absurd environmental damage. If you don't fall in love the first time men brandish their colorful body tattoos at one another before beating each other to a surprisingly non-lethal pulp, then you have no soul. These are must-haves for the platform, if any of these things might be appealing to you. Uncharted 1 is ok. Uncharted 2 is also ok, but differently so. They're not really platformers, more adventure games in terms of finding the right place or activating the right part of the level. The platforming pretty much does itself. The stealth is embarrassing, the shooting mediocre to bad in the first and solid in the second. The first has fairly compelling story and characters, the second less so. Infamous is good. Infamous 2's appeal will rest largely on your opinion of the first, I did not like it as much. Basically, with the first, ignore the plot as much as possible and focus on a good hybrid between Assassin's Creed and Prototype movement in terms of the feel. The ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD remake is fantastic. They are both in their own way a great blend between ambient storytelling and purposeful gameplay. I think Demons' Souls is the best game of the last decade, so I recommend that. But it will not be trivial to go back to it if you've already played Dark Souls. It is, however, brilliantly paced and has some of the best levels in game design history. I agree with Inigima on 3d Dot Heroes. I was really excited to see it come out but was unprepared to see that by "retro" they meant mechanically shallow as well. Also it's worth noting that Noby Noby Boy is not really a game so much as a toy. Maybe watch a video of it before getting it; some people love that sort of free-form JAPAN ZANY stuff, but it was not for me without more of a game attached to it. The Metal Gear Solid series is available remastered from the older games, and MGS4 is on the PS3. I think they are great tactical/fast stealth puzzles wrapped in a truly bizarre and frequently incoherent plot, amid spectacularly uneven production values. If these are things that are interesting to you, be sure and ask, but these games are deeply controversial and very player unfriendly in terms of plot and the initial appearance of the controls (they have a lot of things that are significant departures from other third person games). I put these squarely in "keep them in the back of your mind if you're curious about exclusives, but if you missed them when they were big it's not going to be a huge loss". I will dissent with the Valkyria Chronicles love and say that I think it's a promising set of ideas that is undercut by core design problems, most notably that the way that missions are assessed encourages you to game them with gimmicky exploits rather than fighting them intelligently, and in general I think the "true 3d" nature of the battlefield is beyond their reach in terms of the mechanics and the AI. I much prefer the isometric SRPGs that stick with what works in terms of creating interesting tactical scenarios. Also, the story/plot was not a positive aspect for me, although I would have put up with it no problem if the meat of the game had been appealing. I would put it in the same box as MGS except inverting the relative offensiveness of mechanics to story.
Uncharted 3 came with the system, is it worth it without playing the others? I picked up the God of War Collection and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus tonight. So so far with my brand new system, I've played a bunch of games I already played on the PS2. Woohoo for technology! Yakuza looks pretty sweet, I think I'll go with that and Valkyria Chronicles to finish up my initial round. MGS drove me nuts on the PS2, I've played a bunch of Dark Souls already, and I ran through a bunch of Infamous with my friend's machine already. So I think these four should keep me busy for the next few years. Is there any reason, at all, to pay for the playstation network thing? Thanks for the recommendations everyone!
I like both Uncharted 1 and 2 more than 3. 2 is the only one I finished. Not sure what that means, except that maybe how you feel about 3 won't really tell you that much about the others. I would not pay for the PS network but mainly because the only thing I care about from them network-wise (multiplayer) they give you for free.
...gimmicky exploits? Could you share a few? I love the game, but I'm not very good at it, and it'd be useful to know a few more cheap shortcuts for when I'm flailing at things. (The number of times I've accidentally left a favorite shock trooper standing in the middle of an open field with three enemies facing her... Sigh.)
I think enjoying Valkyria Chronicles mainly depends on whether you can appreciate the animé happy-go-lucky storyline enough to gloss over the exploitable gameplay. If you don't, the beautiful art style probably isn't enough to carry the game. I really liked it, mainly because it was a nice change from the grimdark grownbrey shooters that were in vogue at the time, but it isn't for everyone. The Yakuza games carry the caveat of incredibly ponderous Japanese exposition, so be warned that there will be long cutscenes and you will be pressing X a lot. That being said, they actually take all that exposition to a satisfying conclusion that isn't replete with the usual JRPG navel gazing and the series' love of bizarre minigames and sidequests means you always have a change of pace available when you don't feel like advancing the story. I love these games to bits, just be aware that you need to invest some time into them and they'll repeat plot points at you time after time again just in case you weren't paying attention. PS+ is generally considered a great deal if you're picking up the platform late and don't own all the stuff they offer for cheap or free. You should just be aware that the free games you download from it are locked if you let your subscription lapse; discounted games are not. The main problem with PS+ is probably whether you actually have enough time to check out the free games and get your money's worth.
I can't think of many exclusives, though I did really like Little Big Planet. I've also heard great things about Ni no Kuni, but I haven't received my copy yet so I don't know if it's good (But I am hoping for the best!). Seconding this. I love the Ar Tonelico series, but man they really amped up the fan service to crazy proportions.
I echo the Uncharted, God of War, Journey, and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus love. Flower is a wonderful, restful exploration game where you control a gust of wind that causes flowers to bloom. By the same people who did Journey. If you enjoy platformers, the Sly Cooper collection (1, 2, and 3 in HD) is a bargain. If you enjoy platformers with guns, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is like playing a Pixar movie. The LittleBigPlanet series is flawed but great. Get LittleBigPlanet 2 first; if you find you like it, consider getting LittleBigPlanet 1 as a level expansion pack. (One nice touch: anything you unlock in LBP 1 is also unlocked in LBP 2.) On the avoid list: While I enjoyed the aesthetic of 3D Dot Game Heroes at first, it got tedious and boring fast. Also, when it came out, Noby Noby Boy was cheap-cheap-cheap at $5, and I still felt ripped off.
This is going to come from memory so work with me here. One example early on is the disconnect between the theme of missions and the scoring, which is especially incongruous for capture the objective style missions. Which in my case were all easiest to get good grades on by having no one but the scout sprint with all actions to claim the prize. It's basically a situation where you can play "tactically" and look for "realistic" interplay between the different parts of your team, and get a crappy grade. Or you can play optimally, look at the explicit mission objective, and then puzzle solve to min-max what you most need. I was honestly surprised at how inflexible the scoring system was in terms of discouraging experimentation, given how many tools they offered you. It's probably a half-decent puzzle game in that sense, but I'd much rather play a fire emblem or something along those lines that handles its balance of forces in a manner much more grounded around "realistic" (given the rules of the world) tactics.
Ah, that'd explain it. I always ignored the scoring beyond making sure not to lose, since I can always go replay skirmishes if I really need more XP, so I was more interested in playing out the scenarios in interesting ways than getting high scores on 'em.
Yeah, I can't do that. It's one thing if it's a simple "avoid casualties" type thing, but when the level summary is simply at odds with the theme it's going to be a problem for me, especially once it serves to expose giant holes in the gameplay like the aforementioned scout exploit.
Congrats, salwon! Re: Valkyria Chronicles, I think both fadeaccompli and Lizard_King raise really good points (personally, I'm in Fade's camp - the mismatch didn't bother me), but it's still worth checking out VC anyway to see if it is your cup of tea. :D
It has broken gameplay and a horrifically twee anime storyline. What is it about VC that makes people recommend it?
Gameplay I really enjoy, an art style I love, a cast of interesting minor NPCs, great interface, and a storyline of endearing characters having conversations about plausible sorts of things in a way that makes me like them even more and want to root for their success in this plot? I mean, c'mon. I can see why it wouldn't be to some people's taste, but surely it's not that hard to see that other people might like things that you don't. People like things that I don't all the time; I'm kinda used to it by now.
It was a bit of an inevitability that Valkyria Chronicles would clash with the grognard crowd. It's actually rather interesting how the series' history ended up with it approaching the western wargamer from an unexpected direction. VC's DNA actually stems from a TBS/dating sim series called Sakura Taisen, which was way more focused on the social aspects than the strategy bits. Combat in the ST games was super simple and easy since fighting is something you get over with to see the next talky bit (you basically run all your eligible bachelorette soldiers straight at the bad guys and occasionally heal), but you can see the first traces of VC once ST made the jump to 3D, especially the whole using action points to move around an environment element. VC's director, Shuntaro Tanaka, also worked on ST as well as Skies of Arcadia. You can see his influence in how all three of these games/series have super cheesy stories that (more or less successfully) toe the line between endearingly cheerful and eye-rolling shlock. If you take these elements, you can see how VC came to be. Sakura Taisen was set in steampunk versions of 1920's Tokyo, Paris and New York, so it isn't that far a jump to VC's alternate history not-Europe not-WW2. The gameplay was inherited from ST and improved, though this meant they were working off a dating sim's combat system which was nice to look at and easy to control, but far from an accurate or deep warfare simulation. And basically everybody who knew the developers knew exactly what to expect from the story. So yeah, VC got some buzz in the west as "an alternate history but basically WW2 TBS squad combat game!" which garnered attention from wargamer grognards who picked it up and went "wtf is this shit" at the yaaaaay huggles storyline and combat system that was just not up to the standards of complexity and balance they were used to, which of course meant they immediately broke it in hideous and interesting ways. It was an interesting clash of gaming cultures, a little like the spat we had over the LP forum before things settled into the way they are now.
Just in case, I wasn't trying to say that I didn't understand why you would like it and I know exactly how annoying it is to feel like that part of the argument is getting shoved in your face. I wanted to be clear on where I'm coming from, that's all.
VC has a demo that you can download on PSN, last I checked. Which was like years ago, admittedly. As for the appeal, it really is a fairly novel mechanic, and it's a shame it's balanced so poorly. I'd love to see a more grognardy version, with a more western story.
