What games can't you stop playing?

Mine would have to be Jade Empire on the PC. Great graphics and storyline. Though the the foghting mechanics could've been improved

The Team Fortress 2 beta. It is just unholy fun.

The Sims 2
Final Fantasy XII
.Hack//SIGN-Infection
Star Ocean 3
Suikoden(all of them)
Gaia Online
Oblivion

The Sims 2
Nancy Drew (Danger by Design)
Guitar Hero 2

My current obsession is mystery games. Whodoneits? I've play several of the Nancy Drew games; true they only took one night to finish, but they were fun. I also really enjoyed playing Return to Mysterious Island. Needed to get away from shooter games for a while.

The Sims 2
Hexic
Civilization IV

Well, other than sims 2, I recently went through a phase where I was obsessed with Rise of Nations, and I have ongoing cravings to play Morrowind and Oblivion, though they tend to come in phases. I also love all the Nancy Drew mystery games to the point where I am a moderator on the official message boards. :p

* Harvest Moon - Rune Factory
* Taiko no Tatsujin DS
* Drawn to Life
* Mario Kart DS
* WiiSports
* WarioWares - Smoove Moves

-Arabian Lord
-Emperor Middle Kingdom
-Rise of Nations (and EP)
-The Sims2
-City Life

Mine would be TSO.. The Sims Online.. before you say anything, there are new changes going on with the game.. tons of changes Will even have Cash in Cash out , haha..which means you can make rl money on the game.. what ya gotta say about that..lmao here ya go, you can read all about it here http://tso-e.com/blog/ BTW.. I am Costa in BFand Av, also Costa King in Tc3 and in Bv.. Hope to see ya there ! Look me up !

World of Warcraft...

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Kinda getting addicted to...Halo 3. 8D

Sims 2
Saints Row

Hehe, some people really hate Saints row, but i quite like it!

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

"Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines".
Best. Game. Ever.

Too bad there probably won't be any more. :weep: :weep: :weep:

Well certainly not any made by Troika the developers of Bloodlines. They sadly shut their doors not long after finishing up with Bloodlines. A real shame, Troika are one of the few developers who truly understand what an RPG is.

DS-
MySims
Cooking Mama

PC-
The Sims 2 and Ep's

Online-
Moove Online

PS2-
Canis Canem Edit
Lego Star Wars II

Cravings-
Runescape, The Getaway Black Monday, GTA: San Andreas, Myst (PC and PS2)!

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI - Persona 3



Bought this on import from PlayAsia as a big fan of the Shin Megami Tensei games and I just can't stop playing.

If you've not played a MegaTen (the abbreviated form for Shin Megami Tensei) title or a MegaTen spin off game think of them as occult versions of Final Fantasy.

They are almost always set in a modern day Japan (or the very near future) and involve random individuals caught up in dark worlds. Usually the occult influences manifest through computers and technology but in the Persona spin offs demonic forces are mystic, not technological.

Another element of the MegaTen games is that they all have this concept of fusion. Which is where you take one demon (or Persona if you prefer) and fuse it with another to create a third kind with different abilities. It adds a bit of a pokemon flavour to the game with its gotta catch em all mentality.

Anyway Persona 3 has been on US shores (thank god for companies like Atlas US and Nippon Ichi USA) for a few months now and if you appreciate well constructed and unique games then you must pick up Persona 3.

You start the game as a typical transfer student to a Japanese high school. When you step off the train at the station a strange thing happens. At midnight the world changes. People become coffins, the city becomes warped and beings called shadows begin attacking our reality. And at the centre of it all is Tartarus, an impossibly high tower radiating evil that sits on the site of what is normally the high school. This is the Dark Hour. A hidden hour that exists between 12:00 and 12:01.

Most people don't see or experience this hour. They transmography (Persona 3's word, not mine :P) into bloody coffins and during such time they are completely oblivious to the world around them. Once the Dark Hour is over they revert to their normal selves none the wiser.

But there are those who can remain conscious during this time. Some of them are nothing more than prey for the shadows who consume their will and turn them into little more than hollow shells of people (the real world calls this Apathy Syndrom but they are obviously unaware of the reason behind it). Others stand and fight against the shadows, these people are gifted and as luck would have it happen to go to school with you.

What gives them the ability to fight where others would fall is through the use of their Personas. Elements of their psyche that come forth and do battle on behalf of the Persona user. Your dorm mates have that ability and invite you to join the Special Extracurricular Execute Sector, officially an afterschool club but really a band of people fighting the shadows.

You too have a persona but for reasons unclear at the beginning of the game, you have the unique ability to absorb multiple personas and call them all forth in battle, even calling on two Persona's at once for special attacks. The disturbing thing about Personas though is how they are summoned. As they are elements of the psyche there needs to be a symbolic murder of the self for the Persona to take hold. To achieve this all SEES members have access to a special gun called an Evoker. When they summon their Personas the SEES team place a gun to their head and pull the trigger. BLAM! It is quite disturbing to watch; particularly one character, Yukari, who places the barrell between her eyes and scrunches her face up with the effort.



Make no mistake, Shin Megami Tensei is a game for adults, not children. Sorry guys.

The game is effectively two games in one. On one hand each night you have the ability to go to the randomly generated Tartarus and explore the tower to learn its secrets. In this form the game is a very compelling dungeon crawler with great combat and some wonderful mechanics. It is here you can die (and it will happen because while Persona 3 is no Shin Megaim Tensei - Lucifer's Call/Nocturne in terms of difficulty it is still significantly harder than Shin Megami Tensei - Digital Devil Saga) and it is here that you take the fight to the shadows.



Of course no Japanese teenager spends all their time fighting and in Persona 3 you do take part in other activities that appear unrelated to your night time work. School is a big part of this and the game is split over a typical Japanese school year. You will have to study, boost your popularity, gain confidence and more. When not at school there is plenty else for you to do including karoeke, watching movies or going out to dinner.

The purpose of the time spent in school is to build your relationships with people or your S. Rank. As your Personae as part of your personality the more you build relationships with people the stronger related Personae become.



For instance, early on in the game you can befriend an old couple who run a book store. As you follow their story any Personae you create of the Heirophant class will be significantly more powerful.

Persona 3 operates on a semi-real-time scale. Each day is broken up into different periods such as after school, evening, morning, etc. The vast majority of the activities you do during the day take up time. If you go to the Karaoke bar after school then don't expect to be home until evening.



This means that you have to always weigh up how you schedule your time. Sure going to the ramen shop with Kenji will boost your relationship with him and make your Magician Personae more powerful but you do have your mid-terms next week and if you go and hang out with Kenji you won't be able to do any study until night time, assuming you don't have to go to Tartarus.

To further complicate matters, because time is compressed during the Dark Hour, any time spent in Tartarus will cause your characters to become fatigued which makes them less effective in combat. Let them get too fatigued and they'll get sick making them even worse. So you not only have to manage what you do in your spare time from a stats and persona viewpoint but you also have to make sure you give yourself enough time off to rest so you can effectively fight in Tartarus.



The whole school day plays out a bit like a high school dating sim (and yes, you can get lucky and score a girlfriend or two in Persona 3) and makes for a compelling break from the excellent combat segments. Also the characters are quite well written and you find yourself giving a damn about their personal lives.

Unlike other MegaTen games the feel of Persona is more upbeat and J-pop than the traditional dark and gothic flavour of something like Shin Megami Tensei - Nocturne/Lucifer's Call. That doesn't mean it isn't dark in intent though. The Persona 3 storyline - while one about hope and fraternity - can be brutal and creepy in equal measures. This is really helped by the anime influences throughout the game. In fact major cut-scenes are entirely rendered as an anime just as good as a major TV series like a Boogiepop Phantom. In addition most of the voice actors are from established anime series like Bleach so the overall effect is very good.



Persona 3 is a special game in so many ways. If you have never played a MegaTen game then Persona 3 is an excellent start. It is an entirely new story so you don't need to have played the original three Persona titles (Persona 2 was actually two seperate games - part 1 and part 2) to get by and the more familiar J-pop style of the game makes it significantly more accessible than the techno-gothic feel of Lucifer's Call/Nocturne (the lack of the balls to the wall difficulty of that game also helps :D).

This is an absolutely amazing game, I can't stop thinking about the story, the characters, the Personas... I just love it.

Go get it now if you haven't already. PAL folks should note that it is only available on NTSC or NTSC-J at the moment.

Carrie the Caregiver 2 - you play a preschool teacher. It's a girly game.
Gazillionaire - you play a company in a created galaxy called Kukubia. You buy and sell commodities, carry passengers, and run into obstacles. Your goal? Be the first company to make a million. Keep in mind that you borrowed over 100,000 kubars (the currency in Kukubia) to get started.

We need to get you on to some legitimately good games Chelley. :D

I don't have time for much. Games that require a lot of time on the PC aren't really an option. And first person shooters make me sick - between the motion and the blood, I can't play them. I also play some of the girly/tame games on Gamecube - Animal Crossing, Mario Golf and MarioKart Double Dash.

Like some other people up there, I still play oldies but goodies like Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines and Morrowind. Those are my 2 favorite games of all time, you guys have good taste!

As of right now I just finished the old Kingdom Hearts and starting on my second round of KH2. I also play a lot of WoW, where I play in a raiding guild on an RP server. :}

Still plenty of very good casual games out there. Look at titles made by companies like PopCapGames such as Peggle.

Currently playing World in Conflict Single Player. Loving it :D

It is brilliant is it not?

Amazing visuals too.