» Fri Jan 28, 2011 12:27 am
Fallout New Vegas: This is a pretty amazing spin-off. It's an Oblivion / FO3 style game, but with interesting, believable characters and fun, non-linear quests (things that both Oblivion and FO3 fail at IMHO). I haven't played it that far but so far have enjoyed it a lot.
Morrowind: my all-time favourite game, so obviously worthy of a recommendation. The combat seems awful at first (and in many ways is, there are a lot of missed oppurtunities to make it feel more real - having 'miss', 'fumble' and 'block' animations for both the player and the enemy would give important visual feedback so that it didn't seem so arbitrary), but is based mostly on character skills, which actually turns out to be quite interesting... if you make a character that has low blade skill, forget about using a sword. Play it if you want to experience an alien but at the same time consistent and believable world with a mysterious and yet vivid history. The main quest is linear (which I usually hate), but at least it's interesting and has a lot of background and intrigue to it (not just "OMG! Demons everywhere!").
Dragon Age Origins + Awakening (probably available in some bundle now): I was really pleasantly surprised by this game. It's an old-school party RPG (as in, you control a party of 4, not that it's a good drinking game). Put the difficulty on max and enjoy lots of interesting tactical battles. The story is pretty generic on paper, but they manage to twist every single one of the many cliches involved to something different enough to feel fresh. Best of all, there are lots of interesting choices with far-reaching consequences to be made along the way. It's nowhere near as 'free-roaming' as Bethesda games, but the questing is much less linear, which is nice. This is probably the best Bioware-style game I have played, YMMV.
