The only consoles I have are a PS2 and PS3. I will never buy an XBox, regardless of how good they get. What especially pisses me off, tho, is how some games are PS or XBox only. You'd think I wouldn't care that a game is PS only since that's what I own but I feel it should be more democratic. The other issue is that I can't play online against someone I know if they haven't got the same console. I understand the issue that Sony & Micro$oft are the server owners, but that's not an issue with PC online games. Those servers are owned by the software publishers. OTOH, there aren't that many PC online games so that's a consideration. The other thing that annoys me is that playing online requires a subscription if you have an XBox (the other reason I won't get one). Sony didn't have that requirement prior to PS4 but they do now (altho, it's still free for PS2 & PS3). WTH? I just spent $40-60 for your game and now you're going to charge me to play online? Fuuuck youuu.
Anywhoo... my other favorite series is Hitman in which you play as the character "Agent 47" (there's a whole back story to this). Like Splinter Cell, stealth is the modus operandi... sorta. You don't have to play it that way but you get more points (or money, depending on the version) if the only person you kill is who you're contracted to kill. In that case, you attain the "Silent Assassin" rating and if you do, a better and/or suppressed gun will be unlocked after each mission. And, like Splinter Cell (which I neglected to mention), if you kill or knock someone out, it's in your best interests to hide the body. If not, your enemies go on alert if they find the body. If it's a civilian that finds the body, they'll go find an enemy and tell them about it which then puts your enemies on alert.
Some of the cool things about Hitman:
- 1st or 3rd person view. 3rd works better in this game usually. [incidentally, Splinter Cell is 3rd person only]
- the ability to pick up an enemy's weapon and/or take their ammo (after you've knocked them out or killed them)
- the ability to take an enemy's clothes to use as a disguise which is a necessity since you usually operate out in the open
- the ability to use any number of things as a weapon, such as a butcher's knife, fire poker, pool cue, shovel, etc (depending on the version).
- core weapons that are undetected by metal detectors: a fiber wire (garrote) and a hypodermic needle
- the ability to hide many weapons in your clothing, such as a handgun or an Uzi
- you get better and better weapons the farther you go along in the game, which almost always culminates in suppressed guns
- the way the vibration function is used in your controller: if an enemy begins to suspect you're not who you appear to be, your "heart rate" increases and begins to pound (felt in the controller) in which case you better either kill the dude(s) watching you or get the hell out of Dodge
The one thing some people have criticized the game for is the AI of the enemy in the earliest installments. They're dumb as rocks on the easier settings or sometimes go on alert at the drop of a hat on the hardest setting. It gets much better with later games.
BTW, Hitman has been made into two movies. The first starred Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47 and was released in 2007. It was panned by most critics but I liked it well enough; it's a guilty pleasure. Besides, Olyphant was perfect in it. Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars if that means anything. The second one was released last year and was considered even worse than the first one. I have no intention of seeing it.
Some other great games I've played:
Portal series. It's kinda, sorta an FPS but you don't actually shoot at anyone. You solve a series of ever increasingly difficult puzzles as you make your way through a test facility. Requiring good problem solving skills it also includes some humorous – and, at times, hilarious – commentary from an AI named GLaDOS. The sequel is even better, if not quite as funny.
Far Cry 3. I've only played FC3 but of the series, it has the highest rating. I noticed a couple of bugs in this game but it's really fun and often challenging. It's an open world FPS that also has missions. My favorite weapon: the bow & arrow. There is nothing so satisfying in a video game as killing someone with a B&A. What is especially great about that is that the arrows are retrievable so it's hard to run out of ammo with it... if you're careful.
The Last of Us. I bought a PS3 just to get this game and I wasn't disappointed. I think it was considered the best game of 2013 and is the fifth-highest rated PS3 game on Metacritic, beaten out only by Grand Theft Auto 4, GTA5, Uncharted 2, Batman: Arkham City, and tied with Portal 2, Red Dead Redemption (which I didn't like that much), and LittleBigPlanet. Of those 7, The Last of Us actually had the highest user rating at 9.1. Here's the synopsis from Metacritic:
Twenty years after a pandemic radically transformed known civilization, infected humans run amuck and survivors kill one another for sustenance and weapons - literally whatever they can get their hands on. Joel, a salty survivor, is hired to smuggle a fourteen-year-old girl, Ellie, out of a rough military quarantine, but what begins as a simple job quickly turns into a brutal journey across the country.
My feeling of The Last of Us is that it was a little too much plot driven and with too many cut scenes. Had I been in charge, it would have been more open world. Still, it's hard to disagree with the 9.1 user rating. A big plus is that one of your weapons can be a bow & arrow.
Sniper Elite series. You're a sniper working for the OSS (precursor to the CIA) in 1945 Berlin just after Berlin has been sacked by the Soviet Union. Your enemies: the Germans and the Soviets! The most challenging thing about the game is the ballistics in realistic mode. In other words, the farther away you are and the more wind there is, the more you have to adjust your aim. The coolest thing about the game is the "Bullet Cam" view where, if you fire a kill shot, you follow the trajectory of the bullet in slow motion and get to watch it blow through an enemy's body (usually the head) and see the blood/bone/tissue fly out the other side of his body (this sounds really gruesome – and it is – but it's also cool as shit!). I've only played the first two games and the main differences are that in the first, it seemed to me you're almost required to crawl everywhere to avoid being detected, which can be tedious; this was greatly improved in the second game. In the second game, the "Bullet Cam" view isn't as cool but the game play is improved.
The Call of Duty series. I've only played the WWII games which are vastly superior to the Medal of Honor series.
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Originally Posted by oilersfan
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