Topic: What are you playing?

[Pypweltaren]

I play World of Warcraft and I'm not one of those people who like only one expansion and have to criticise all the others. I pay every month and play, if I'm not interested in playing the game, I don't pay for it. It's very simple. So peace be with you.
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Follow up.

[Evan_B]

What games do you recommend for a beginer who has never played anything? 

I recommend playing all the NES games you can then. With the NES, the videogame industry was still in its infancy so a lot of games are quite simple and controllers didn't have the amount of buttons that they do now. Since the games are simple they are quite easy so you should have a great time playing them, Mr. Spambot. A few good choices to start would be Metroid, Zelda II, and Ninja Gaiden. Happy gaming.

Just perusing this thread and had a nice chuckle. Profound perspective here.

Well, I might as well make this a worthwhile post, so… I’ve been playing Spiritfall. Essentially, it’s “what if Hades was Smash Bros. Classic mode?” Above anything, it has great movement, and the inputs are very intuitive. I am very happy with the movesets that you obtain, which essentially changes the entirety of your inputs except for a light ranged attack and air dodge. It really does not feel like anything is directly ripped from Smash, which is admirable given how many characters exist in Ultimate. Lots of escalating difficulty modifiers and quirks that add to the complexity of your run, but the “rooms/floors” are truly just waves of enemies, with a special instance that can be pure 1v1. My main complaint is the aesthetics, actually, as learning how some enemies move and attack was a bit strange, though the playable character is painfully generic. It can be modified with new “masks” and skins, some of which are based off of other more recognizable properties, but the game feels aesthetically more in line with Brawlhalla, or at least, what I can conjure of that game in my mind.

[Khushrenada]

What games do you recommend for a beginer who has never played anything? 

I recommend playing all the NES games you can then. With the NES, the videogame industry was still in its infancy so a lot of games are quite simple and controllers didn't have the amount of buttons that they do now. Since the games are simple they are quite easy so you should have a great time playing them, Mr. Spambot. A few good choices to start would be Metroid, Zelda II, and Ninja Gaiden. Happy gaming.

Just perusing this thread and had a nice chuckle. Profound perspective here.

Appreciate the comment.

[Khushrenada]

As for what I'm playing, January is becoming what should have been my Backlaugust. Wrapping up some games this month already. Just completed Super Mario Bros. Wonder by beating the Final Final test and getting the last badge. Once again, I have completed every game in the Mario platformer series both 2D and 3D. Now the Mario sports series.... that's a different story. However, doing that kind of got me amped up last night and probably stayed up a couple hours later than I should have. Also now feel less enthused about jumping into a couple of the other games I was thinking of going back to wrap up like XCX:DE. So, it's high and low feelings combined! Woo.

[Stratos]

I think its funny one of the last games I mentioned here was Unrailed in 2022 and now it is a regular in our house. My daughter was enamored by it and now we all play it at least a few times a week. Though she will randomly go off and do her own thing like hunt the wildlife leaving me to fend for myself. Having my wife play too makes it all work a bit better. It is funny getting my nieces and nephew in as well because my 4-year-old just steals my role of the "director" and begins barking orders at her older cousins.

Also Unrailed 2 released and looks like an even bigger and better experience than the first.

Also continuing my marathon of older games with my daughter. We beat DCK1 and 2 (still have bonus levels to clear in 2). She adores DK and the Bonanza songs are regulars on the way to school.

I've shown her the trailers to Princess Peach Showtime, Yoshi's Crafted World, and Animal Crossing so those will be played soon as well.

[Khushrenada]

Huh. I don't even know what that game is.

[Evan_B]

I didn’t know what Unrailed was and now I desperately want to play it.

[broodwars]

I've shown her the trailers to Princess Peach Showtime, Yoshi's Crafted World, and Animal Crossing so those will be played soon as well.

Having recently played through Princess Peach Showtime, I can tell you that it's alright, but it really just made me want to hook up my PS3 and finally do that full run of Puppeteer I've been putting off for years. Getting certain collectibles in Showtime is so annoying.

I bailed on Crafted World fairly early on, due to it being so repetitive and the music being so utter ****. Still hoping to see a modern port of Woolly World.

If people are are going to post on the forums again, I might as well post some impressions of my own from recent games I completed or are actively playing:

- Yooka-Replaylee- A much more polished version of the original game, perhaps to a fault. The game has a distinctly Mario Odyssey feel to it now that seems to override the franchise's actual identity. It was a nice, quick play, though.

- Cocoon - very clever Zelda-esque Inception puzzles, though I haven't the slightest clue what the story was trying to be.

- Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter - A much less interesting clone of the first game with difficulty balancing that seems nonexistent. Easy is such a cakewalk it's boring, and Normal is so punishing it's aggravating. Glad I only paid $5 or so for it.

- Ball x Pit - Dangerously addictive. Had to force myself to put it down and not come back to for some time, because I would have just kept playing it. Currently on Level 3.

- Terminator 2D: No Fate - The name on the tin doesn't lie. It's exactly what you think it would be: a SNES-style movie tie-in game that's well-made for what it is. Unfortunately, it has next to no replay value, as well as strangely VERY little actual Terminator content. It's also fairly punishing even on Normal, and don't even bother trying to play above Normal without using the in-game cheats.

- Cronos: The New Dawn - I put this one down about 5-6 hours in because I just lost interest. Horror is all about emotion, and this game is incredibly cold and detached. It's just not clicking with me. Maybe I'll get back to it at some point.

- Metroid Prime 4 - Perhaps this one is a surprise considering all the drama in the official topic, but I had some decent trade credit coming off Showtime, so I thought I'd give the game a shot.

The game's...not great. I'd probably give it a 5/10 overall. Surprisingly, the Federation Troopers were probably among the game's least-damaging sins, as they mostly just fade into the background. They're neither interesting nor overtly offensive. Even Mackenzie basically stops being an annoyance after his tutorial segment, and his occasional hints towards where you should go next are basically mandatory considering how **** the game's level design is.

The game in many ways reminds me of Final Fantasy 13, a game I had a decent time with back in the day but can completely see why people hate it. And like FF 13, this is a game with level design consisting...entirely...of linear hallways. No branching, no interesting choices. There is only...the hallway, and it's such a boring hallway that if the game didn't actively tell you where to go you wouldn't remember where you couldn't go previously due to missing upgrades. And between the hallways, there is the desert, and **** all worth mentioning happens in the desert. But boy does the game love to ping pong the player through that boring desert every 20-30 minutes.

And I sure hope you enjoy the whopping 5 enemy types recycled in such about every hallway: crawling bug; flying bug; griever; robots; and explosive flying things. Even most of the bosses have the same basic attack pattern.

I tried to like this game. Despite how boring the game's design is, it's a pretty good-looking game. It also runs pretty well. It's just a very boring game whose edges have been so thoroughly sanded down and dumbed down to appeal to "everyone" that it appeals to no one.

And whoever designed that final boss fight can **** all the way off. Planning on trading this one in soon to pick up Xenoblade X and complete the set.

- Trails in the Sky: First Chapter - This is a game I wanted to get to last year, but I had Xenoblade games to catch up on, so it's the RPG I'm currently playing. So far, I'm enjoying it a lot more than I did the original PSP game, mainly because the battle system is much more enjoyable. That said, a little of this kinda repetitive and grating music and these pastel visuals goes a long way. I'm taking a bit of a break from the game to reset.

And finally...

- Astral Chain - Part of my attempt to catch up on my Switch backlog, this is my current "lunch time game". I originally put this game down around...I think Mission 7(?) years ago due to how ungodly long the chapters were starting to get.

Restarting the game to refamiliarize myself with it, it's still probably my favorite Platinum game (and it still looks fantastic) but the controls are definitely still extremely wonky and unintuitive. Definitely not going to go for the higher scores.

[broodwars]

Still picking away at Astral Chain, mostly as a lunch break game when I have time. Made it to Chapter 9, where I finally have all the legions. If the chapters weren't so long, I'd feel tempted to go back and replay some just to get some of the collectibles I couldn't obtain before and to better some scores now that I have a stronger kit. Getting rather annoyed at the Premium Gene Code requirements for some of these unlocks. Many of them are locked behind the game's rather tedious and nebulous in-game "order"/achievement system, and you have to spend a LOT to unlock the final tiers of legion upgrades as well as your weapon damage & legion battery.

Went back to Ball x Pit. Cleared my way through the Fungi Forest and secured 10 playable characters & most of the stat upgrades. Pretty much everyone has A-level stat scaling, but the big bonus was the building that allows you to take a 2nd character into the levels, as well as to bump up their special attack strength to Level 3 from the start. Still a dangerously addictive game.

Finally, an old Vita favorite, Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, was on sale on the e-Shop and I had $.60 to burn from picking up Xenoblade X the other day, so picked that up. I remember this game being more laid-back and relaxing than it is, as it's basically a 2D Katamari Damacy game. I don't remember so many timed segments with instant-kill lasers.

[Evan_B]

I’ve been playing Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, which is a spiritual (maybe also actual?) sequel to Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Night. If you couldn’t tell, both games are pretty heavy on the melancholy, but more specifically, are Soulslike Metroidvanias with a distinct visual style and. Combat system that has you summoning assist spirits to perform your attacks, as your player character is a vulnerable child figure in both games.

Ender Lilies was a game that I started, but didn’t get very far into for some reason or another. I do know that the developer Live Wire Inc worked on one of my favorite Switch games in Harvestella, so I wanted to support them by picking up their other titles. Anyway, Ender Magnolia has a bit more of an alchemical/dieselpunk aesthetic in contrast with Ender Lilies, which was a bit more gothic/fantasy. This has resulted in a bit more artistic freedom and some truly gorgeously rendered environments, though the actual level geometry is still pretty standard for a 2D Soulslike. While the lore isn’t terribly compelling, the game is at least trying with its narrative and characters and I can respect that. I’m close to finishing now and feeling the Soulslike fatigue- while I do think generally better-designed games in this genre tend to avoid this, Ender Magnolia has this sprawling world map that also has a big final area with hard hitting enemies. This area also feels a bit less dynamic in design than other areas, which has somewhat tighter layout and decent gimmicks. I’m going to push through because the best part of the game are its boss fights, which are brutal dances that demand precision and tight inputs and also feature their own cute gimmicks. It’s not my favorite 2D Soulslike but it’s doing a fine job.

[broodwars]

I’ve been playing Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, which is a spiritual (maybe also actual?) sequel to Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Night. If you couldn’t tell, both games are pretty heavy on the melancholy, but more specifically, are Soulslike Metroidvanias with a distinct visual style and. Combat system that has you summoning assist spirits to perform your attacks, as your player character is a vulnerable child figure in both games.

Ender Lilies was a game that I started, but didn’t get very far into for some reason or another. I do know that the developer Live Wire Inc worked on one of my favorite Switch games in Harvestella, so I wanted to support them by picking up their other titles. Anyway, Ender Magnolia has a bit more of an alchemical/dieselpunk aesthetic in contrast with Ender Lilies, which was a bit more gothic/fantasy. This has resulted in a bit more artistic freedom and some truly gorgeously rendered environments, though the actual level geometry is still pretty standard for a 2D Soulslike. While the lore isn’t terribly compelling, the game is at least trying with its narrative and characters and I can respect that. I’m close to finishing now and feeling the Soulslike fatigue- while I do think generally better-designed games in this genre tend to avoid this, Ender Magnolia has this sprawling world map that also has a big final area with hard hitting enemies. This area also feels a bit less dynamic in design than other areas, which has somewhat tighter layout and decent gimmicks. I’m going to push through because the best part of the game are its boss fights, which are brutal dances that demand precision and tight inputs and also feature their own cute gimmicks. It’s not my favorite 2D Soulslike but it’s doing a fine job.

Ender Lilies is quite a good game. Definitely one of the better 2D Souls-likes I've played, though I hear Magnolia is more of a Metroid game than Lilies is. Magnolia's on the docket for me this year, but I'm currently waiting on my delayed physical version from..."them."