Posted 06 October 2008 - 12:41 PM
The games I have are below, and I haven't bought anything new in awhile so these should all be available in NZ or at least 2nd hand off ebay or something:
COD4 - You already played it so no suggestion needed here. Looks VERY good on the PS3. Doesn't play anywhere near as nice as the PC version but still very fun.
Motorstorm - Mud-plugging race game where you drive everything from a dirt bike to a transport truck through desert-like tracks. Very entertaining, challenging enough once you get up a couple levels in difficulty. It came with my PS3 and I wrote it off as being a stupid cheap game full of sponsor plugs, but after having a major racing game craving one night I revived it and had a lot of fun. There is a lot of jostling and jockeying for position and the other drivers get entertainingly aggressive with each other and you as the levels progress. No head-to-head MP split screen mode unfortunately. This game has unbelievably pretty graphics. It truly looks like you're driving in a movie. I read on a review someplace that this is the reason there's no MP split screen...too much for the PS3 to handle running 2 players head to head at that resolution.
FEAR - FPS with really genuinely intelligent AI to play against. Not sure if there is much MP community for this one. It's just got a great atmosphere, fun combat, interesting story and hard enough to make you do-over some of the fights. Single Player only. Not quite the calibre graphics-wise as newer PS3 games but still very good - 720p quality I think. The lower gfx level is because it is a slightly older game that was released on PC before PS3 even came out. Still looks and plays great though. Nice control layout.
Warhawk - Multiplayer only team combat game. I started a thread about this game in here though I'm not sure if it survived the forum move. Anyways, I go through phases of picking this one up and shelving it in about 1 month rotations because it's extremely gratifying and unbelievably frustrating in equal amounts. Same with any MP FPS...there's guys that can just twitch-kill the shit out of anybody and there's no touching them. If you get in a round with 2 or 3 of them you have zero fun and spend all your time respawning. That said there's a lot of complete retards on there so if you build up even meagre skills you can really lay the hurt down.
Opportunities (with all expansions bought and installed, roughly $20 for all 3) to fly a warhawk fighter plane, a flying gunship fortress transport thingy, a jetpack, jeeps, armored personnel carriers, tanks, anti-air and flak turrets, .50cal machine gun turrets or just play as a footsoldier. The game is very "unrealistic" as in your guy can get rained on with bullets, pick up a health pack and still survive so deaths aren't as instantaneous as they usually are in COD4 or other "realistic" shooters. This is one of the few games I truly get a thrill from playing, especially when you're playing capture the flag and having this epic running battle with other planes, tanks, jeeps and soldiers all trying to kill your ass while you tear across a giant map in a jeep with their flag. I described this one in detail because I have the most fun with it of any PS3 game. Unbelievably smooth MP gameplay, zero lag, great graphics. MP up to a 4 way split is available on a local MP game or online MP games. The splitscreen games are only available on non-official player-created games. If you want to gain ranks then you have to play fullscreen 1 player on official or ranked MP servers.
Dark Kingdom Stupid oversimplified RPG...essentially a repackaged version of Xmen Legends 2. Shitty graphics, boring story, abusively repetitive gameplay. Don't bother....even if it's free. Don't bother.
Oblivion - Game of the Year edition Oblivion is something only a diehard RPGer could truly love. There is a lot of walking/horseback riding/inventory organizing/outfitting/listening for rumors/blah blah standard boring rpg stuff, so if you don't like that style you'll probably hate the game. I personally love it. It's everything that's great about RPGs but mixed with some of the most stunning graphics and character creation/customization elements in any game I've played.
As I said, while you're doing the boring bits though, you're looking at strikingly beautiful graphics. The first time you come down out of the mountains and look at the imperial city rising out of the mist leagues away and below you will literally shit. It's just that good. All the characters have voices and every shred of conversation has a soundbyte attached to it. None of the interminable lines of silent dialogue we all remember from Baldur's gate and the like. There is some really nice rendering done on the NPC faces during speech too so you don't feel like everything is a cardboard cutout that opens and closes its unrealistic awkward mouth to unheard words. Even the weather changes. It can be a bright sunny day, a snowstorm, a thunderstorm, misty foggy morning....and the likelihood of certain weather changes depending on your location, ie snow in the mountains, rain/fog by the coast. Just cool. Can't say enough about the audio/visual elements of the game
Gameplay is pretty straightforward for the most part Run, jump, talk, inventory/map navigation, sneak, draw sword...but the most fun in the game is the combat for me. You receive quests, mainly in the cities and you go perform the quest requirements someplace outside the city, either in the world at large or in a dungeon/cave. There are literally hundreds of quests and if you actually wish to complete them all then the game is estimated in the 150+ hours range for gameplay...for a power-gamer. For a casual gamer like me I'm sure it would run double that. The point of view in the game is first-person, looking out from behind a shield/sword (or whatever you're holding...I'm a battlemage). The combat is totally hectic...none of the meet enemy, hack enemy, enemy die brainless combat from morrowind. This is like a FPS but you only get to use the crowbar. You have to run at them, block, hit, dodge...except you control it all real-time rather than through some kind of scripted combat sequence. Hits and damage are scored through some manner of black-box number system...but basically you need to actually hit the guy to hit him. It's not like "oh I'm standing right in front of him but I rolled under my 40% chance to hit so I missed" If you're in front and you hack with your sword, and you're in range, and he doesn't block then you hit. You aren't at any point some kind of godly superhuman either. Get in combat with more than 2 enemies at a time and you're pretty much toast no matter what or who they are.
The best part is that the quests are 100% nonlinear. You can join and leave the main questline (on it's own 40ish hours of gameplay) at any point without consequence, so if you're getting tired of saving the continent from the beasts of Oblivion, then you go join the mage's guild and start doing quests for them...or you can join a fighter's guild, the Knights of the Nine (paladin holy warrior club thingy), the thieves' guild or the assasin guild. You advance through ranks by questing to achieve leadership of any one...or all of them. If you're into random adventuring you can stop at any cave, fort, ruins, oblivion gate or raider camp literally anywhere in the game world...and the random caves/ruins/whatever are DEEP...like you go in and clear a level of it and find a door that goes deeper...then repeat that, then repeat it again. You can go back anytime, but usually when you get to the bottom you find a side exit that spits you back to the surface...and of course the good stuff is always at the bottom of the dungeon. They are dotted throughout the landscape and you rarely walk for 5 minutes without discovering something. If you like to take your time and admire the scenery, plus fight a few banditos, then exit a city, jump on your horse and ride to the next one. Interested in questing quickly? there is a quick transport button to take you just outside of any point-of-interest you've previously explored. Difficulty scales with your level, which is the only way to really do it without having WoW-like zoning. This basically means if you hit a ruins at level 1, you encounter the same difficulty in the monsters if you return there at level 30. Banditos on the road are the same challenge at level 40 as they are the very first time you encounter one.
Leveling is accomplished by doing things. To improve your armor skill, get hit with stuff. To improve your marksmanship, shoot and hit stuff. To improve swordmanship, hit stuff with your sword....you get the picture. Leveling is based on advancement of those skills rather than experience points. If you're a warrior, your primary skills would be (for example) swords, maces, heavy armor and blocking. When you level up enough of the skills that are significant for your character, you gain a level.
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Anyways, I'll stop blabbing...
Will definitely be getting Fallout 3 since the worst criticism I've hear is "well it's just oblivion with guns". This to me is a compliment, and since Bethesda did such a superb job with Oblivion, I can't see them fucking up Fallout 3. Naive maybe, but I'm confident that it will rule.
I have heard really good things about The Orange Box too. It got great reviews and contains Half-Life2 and portal for the price of 1 game. A good buy all around.
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Help
as i feel like a tool for not doing it before, after such mammoth a effort by cerveza_fiesta 
, no other word for it than epic gamer enthusiasm.
