Annoyingly brilliant, addictive games of 2007

[richasr]

Well there was bound to be a few of these. Games that are very good in their own right, but suffer such large technical problems that they infuriate you, yet you keep playing.

Mine is FIFA 08, a brilliant installment of the series and the best to date I think. I enjoy playing it and it's my most commonly played game. However, it has such irritating problems that I find myself screaming at the television in frustration and confusement.

It's usually a fact for any game that any 'Ally' AI that you team up with has the intelligence of a small pig compared to the 'Enemy' or computer AI, but this is ridiculous, my team-mates in a game of football stand and stare when you pass to them, watch as the other team's striker glides past them to score an incredibly easy to save goal and make no effort to aid you in any other aspect of the game. It's impossible for someone to control all 10 outfield players at once so the computer should make up the difference.

Also the EA servers are diabolical at best. I like to think I have a good Internet connection and that is true most of the time as I rarely have problems, but I want to play FIFA 08 on XBOX Live and I can't, it just disconnects constantly.

Despite these LARGE problems(i've only mentioned a couple there) I absolutely love this game, one of the best releases i've bought this year (clearly behind the best games; BioShock and Assassins Creed anyone?), and I can't stop playing it.

Does anyone else have a game that's given them a mass amount of stress, yet they keep playing?

 

[Melaisis]

Peggle.

Thread closed.

 

[ChrisP.Lettuce]

Well, since you didn't put recently in the last sentence of your post I have got to say:

Gothic 3. Nothing has crashed my computer more than this Peice of Junk. Frequent game/system freezups, little to no story, annoying stunlocking with attacking.

Yet I was completely compelled to continue playing it all the way to the end, all 44 hours and 50 game crashes later.

 

[sathie]

heh I got Peggle Extreme by pre-ordering the Orange Box on steam. It was fun while it lasted.

FIFA 08 I have to disagree with about being (that) addictive though. It's just frustrating compared to previous installments. It's like it's missing a difficulty between the first two. Amatuer you can run rings around them, but then the next one up (semi-pro i think) and you have to pass for 20 minutes trying to find a hole.

I found playing the Be A Pro mode on my own was actually a lot more fun. Suddenly my own teams A.I was decent and they'd make good runs and whatnot, and I don't have to worry about them.

In a way it is addictive in its frustrating difficult jumps.

Other than those... 2007 has been pretty bland for me. Nothing really caught my attention. I've been far more interested in previously released adventure (point and click) games than anything else.

Portal, of course, had me absolutely gripped all the way. Could not put it down. I look forward to them doing things in the future with what they established in Portal.

 

[zardosbacon66]

Halo 3.

 

[Duck Sandwich]

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I know it was made in October 2006, but I ended up not getting it until the following March. I had played and enjoyed X-Men Legends 1 and 2, but after a while, the flaws in the games became more and more frustrating. It got to the point where I got sick of all the cheap hits I'd take from an enemy who could ALWAYS easily start an attack and finish it no matter what, not being interrupted despite his chest being occupied by a set of adamantium claws. There was also the issue of horrible hit detection. Ground shockwaves would still hit you if you jumped over them.

I read a few reviews of the game before buying it. None of them mentioned the aforementioned flaws, and it seemed that the game had obtained a deeper focus on action (being able to actually block attacks and roll out of the way), as opposed to the stupid random chance to hit garbage the first 2 games were plagued with. But then again, the people whose reviews I read were probably the kind of people who don't hate mindless hack and slashers (therefore, they probably wouldn't notice the flaws, or care).

Anywho, I had bought it, beat it a few times, and actually managed to have some fun with it. Then around the 4th or 5th time, I finally got sick of it. I tried so hard to ignore/get around those flaws, probably because that was the only Wii game I had (besides Sports/Play) until I got The Umbrella Chronicles, probably because I really wanted to like it (I was so interested in the game before its release that I actually joined a forum revolving around it). but eventually I endured one too many cheap deaths.

 

[10 Dollar Bagel]

Halo 3.

can't agree more,i'm already a brigidier!(second highest rank in h3)

 

[jaisimar_chelsea]

GH3 for pc
Y ? becoz its the first time ive played that damn thing

 

[J-Val]

Assassin's Creed, even if it's idea of increasing the difficulty is to make the Guards super-blockers, and shoving drunks and lepers all over the place.

 

[Kohlrabi]

FIFA 08

richasr, you should try Pro Evolution Soccer 6 or the latest installment 2008. If you don't mind the missing licenses for some leagues you will neve rplay FIFA again.

My choice would be "Bioshock". I only borrowed it, but constant crahsing on my Vista laptop (because my main PC doesn't have a DX10 graphics card, duh) and problems with widescreen prevented me to play past the first section (which was included in the demo). Every section after that randomly crashed when I was looting or hacking. It's supposedly fixed now, but I reckon I won't go back to Rapture for the next year, I'll wait for this game to become a budget title on Steam.

 

[werepossum]

None. I'm still going back to Counterstrike: Source.

 

[richasr]

FIFA 08

richasr, you should try Pro Evolution Soccer 6 or the latest installment 2008. If you don't mind the missing licenses for some leagues you will neve rplay FIFA again.

Unfortunately I have played that latest installment and I thought it was dire, at least compared to FIFA. I'm not a FIFA fanboy, as I used to play some of the older PES games all the time, I just think Konami have more dicked about than improved it over the past 2 or 3 years, and it's still the same old game but with a shiny new menu it seems, I can't seem to spot the difference too well except for the fact it feels like more of an arcade game than in the past.

 

[Nikonov]

Personaly I think sports games make better frisbees than they do video games. At least that way you actually have to go outside. Having alienated myself towards everyone else I'll now make a fool of myself by telling you what my choice is.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.

Being a long time fan of the series, I was glad to find out they did the whole rail-shooter thing RIGHT. (Angry glare at Dead Aim.)

The Annoying: Hitting the god damn weak points. Seeing your crosshair go tiny (indicating you're aiming at said weak spot) often causes me to mash the button and twitch, throwing off my aim by about 4 pixels which is enough to miss that spot.

The Addictive: Must... Obtain... Every... File... It fills in all of the blanks before and after RE 0, 1 and 3, as well as tell you what happened to the main characters of the series after them. Being the twitchy fanboy I am I can't help but play through each level and chapter as many times as it takes to destroy every hard to see bits of the environment and grab all of the floaty umbrella symbols before the camera drags me away from it. That and the game is just damn fun. (I say, staring angrily at the calendar, waiting for the House of the Dead 2 & 3 collection in March.)

 

[JakubK666]

TF2. I only got this game some time before Christmas and I've been playing it ever since. Every class offers a different experience so it's pretty much 9 different games put together into one.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Star Wars Battlefront.
Compared to nowandays, the graphics suck, multiplayer is full of holes, the AIs are about as smart as a blind ostrich and the game is just
Absolutly Charming!
Its infuriatingly wonderful!
The game is just-
just-
I like it and I hate it as well because I have so many nicer, 'better' games on my computer.






My precious...

 

[end_boss]

Okay, so it's a 2006 game, but I only started really getting into it in 2007, but Okami is brilliant on just about every level. I hope that its Wii port will receive the sales figures that the PS2 version deserved, but didn't get.

 

[PurpleRain]

Addictive games? Well, when was Geometric Wars brought out?

Otherwise, Mass Effect had me hooked for a good long time, Stranglehold has proven to be the Burnout of the shooting world and Virtua Fighter 5 has got me in it's cold sweet embrace and isn't letting up anytime soon.

 

[Scammy]

Animal Crossing: Wild World. It starts off like weed: You don't think it will be at all addicting, and that you can just stop any time and hang out with friends.

Then you get your second house, you can't put it down, and you start to generally all-around hate ****ing Coons.

 

[Minic]

I heard comments along the lines of "addictive" and "can't put down" about Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. Maybe someone here has played it? I'm considering picking it up on DS.