Topic: What are you playing?

[broodwars]

I'm a couple of missions into Thief on PS4 as well, and...sadly...it's not really clicking with me. I'm not exactly sure what it is about the game that's not working, but there's just a certain...lack of forward momentum and somewhat poor level design that keeps me from getting sucked in.

Incidentally, I finished Lords of Shadow 2 the other day. It ends on a total anticlimax, but I still really enjoyed the game. I'm replaying it now on the hardest difficulty.

[Shaymin]

Still playing through Danganronpa on the Vita, wrapped Chapter 3 last night... and all tasks at hand appear to have been completed. I know who I *want* to get bumped off next, but it's probably not going to happen because this game loves kicking you in the nuts with steel-toed boots.

I've also been doing mono-type runs of Pokemon X and I'm not sure what type I want to do next. Prove democracy works, will you?

[MagicCow64]

South Park: The Stick of Truth (PC):

Finished the game this morning, and as reported it is pretty short for an RPG. I wouldn't have a problem with this, except that the gameplay somehow manages to feel padded over a 12-hour experience. The core Paper Mario combat is okay, but the default difficulty is laughable, and the game douses you in equipment, patches, perks, strap-ons, etc., that let you completely steamroll enemies at every stage of the game. I think I died maybe twice the whole game, both times out of impatience.

The script for the game was hyped, and though visually the game is extraordinarily close to playing the show, I found the writing to be a real let-down overall. The plot is cobbled together out of recycled narrative components from the show, and never establishes a unique identity. A lot of the dialogue is fairly perfunctory, and given how long this game was in development there's surprisingly little interaction with NPCs outside of a handful of very barebones sidequests.

The game is at its best when it's giving the South Park treatment to video game tropes (audio logs on the spaceship, Planned Parenthood, Canada), but these moments are unfortunately rare.

[magicpixie]

I also got to play the first little bit of South Park.  So far, I'm liking its humour.  It really is mostly fanservice so far, but I like the series(mostly) so that isn't a bad thing.  The combat system is a bit "simple", but that isn't a bit issue for me, tbh.  Honestly, all the complaints about the game being a bit short, right now, feel a little bit unjustified.  I can already see a game like this being shoved full of filler to pad out a 30+ hour experience really wearing out its welcome.  I'm looking forward to a game that I'll be able to pick up here and there and get a few laughs.

In anticipation of Dark Souls 2, I just started up a run of Dark Souls.  Been a while since I played last, and it took a while to get used to the controls and interface again.  I really hope they do a good job of communicating some of that vital information in the sequel, as I think it should be possible to do so without dumbing down the game.  I think some of the game's "intentional" obscurity falls into the trendy "hipster"mindset of being a part of some secret society that few others "get".  I'll have a bit over a month before the sequel's release, though, since I'm holding out for the PC version.  Hopefully, they've learned their lesson and the PC "port" isn't complete ass.

I picked up Thief on launch day, and tried to get into it.  The game featured a sound bug right out of the gate, and I had no dialog.  It was incredibly annoying, so I haven't played it since.  There's been a patch since, but I haven't tested it to see if my problem was resolved.  Many people are bemoaning the fact that this game is not a "Thief" game.  I was hoping to approach the game with an open mind, but that day one bug is hurting the game's chances in my books.

[Oblivion]

In anticipation of Dark Souls 2, I just started up a run of Dark Souls.  Been a while since I played last, and it took a while to get used to the controls and interface again.  I really hope they do a good job of communicating some of that vital information in the sequel, as I think it should be possible to do so without dumbing down the game.  I think some of the game's "intentional" obscurity falls into the trendy "hipster"mindset of being a part of some secret society that few others "get".  I'll have a bit over a month before the sequel's release, though, since I'm holding out for the PC version.  Hopefully, they've learned their lesson and the PC "port" isn't complete ass. one bug is hurting the game's chances in my books.

lawl. What vital information did you feel that they didn't explain to you?

[magicpixie]

Just a lot of stuff regarding the interface, menus, and even lore that didn't seem like they were properly explained, but then again, that was part of the game's charm.

Jumped into Titanfall's "campaign", and it's even worse than what CoD and Battlefield usually have to offer.  The multiplayer stuff is fine, but I still think Respawn would have been better off keeping the crap AI out.  They clutter the games too much, and that's coming from someone who sucks online who supposedly gets the most out of the bots being there.  The game is ugly as sin, and the fact that there are reports of uneven framerates on the Xbone really says a lot.  I haven't had many issues with framerate, aside from some random stuttering.  I've heard that can be fixed by forcing some graphics options outside of the game.

I have had a few connection issues.  I wanted to play the game at midnight launch(had it preloaded) but I couldn't connect to the servers.  When you select "Play" the game brings up a dialog that says "Attempting connection 1/10" or something, all the way up to 10.  The game had to probably go through that process 5 times before succeeding, where a screen would pop up saying "Initializing" and then nothing.  I tried that 3 times before going to bed last night.  My first attempt to connect to a game after work today resulted in me getting dropped just as the game began.  Since then, though, it's been smooth sailing, which, with EA's record lately, is remarkable.  I guess MS's Azure servers are a success.

[azeke]

Catherine Demo (Xbox 360):
Hey, it's Pushmo with some dating sim and some anime stuff!

Constantly doing quarter rotation with a stick in puzzle parts gets old after some time, i guess this is why they recommend d-pad in controls screen.

Mass Effect 1 (PC):
Even after i stopped bothering trying to make gamepad controls work on PC, i still can't play it.

I get to first fight in the super long corridor and i just give up. Here:

Nothing feels right at all. I tried to get through it like five times and lose any drive to play any longer within a minute.

Devil May Cry 1 (PCSX2):
After trying to play a few missions, i changed default PS2 controls (jump button on triangle [Y on xbox]? really? and sword button on circle [A on xbox]? seriously?) to something closer to standard modern layout.

But even after that it all feels so archaic. I played NES games that feel more modern than that.

Options for crowd control are very limited, it's closer to say Battletoads rather than Bayonetta in terms of combat options.

I loved to abuse combo with leg sweep in Bayo to incapacitate multiple enemies around me, freeing myself to deal with other guys. DMC1 has nothing of the sort. From what i see, there is just one combo of dubious usefulness (?).

And are there really no distinction between hard and light attacks?

Even movement doesn't feel right, Dante moves too slow. And camera jumps between perspectives and confuses your movement constantly.

Beaten Phantom after dozen or so tries. My problem was that i was trying to roll too much instead of regular jumps. You only need to roll sideways when it spits fire at you or does that fire column attack. Also started using Devil Trigger to heal myself.

Trees in in that boss arena coupled with dodgy camera also got me in trouble a few times. Another problem i had with this boss is that he doesn't have unique sound cues for each of his attacks.

Ninja Gaiden (3DS):
Final boss' first form where it slides left and right on the ceiling spewing fireballs was very hard.  You need to figure the right movement pattern to dodge fireballs AND to find an opening to damage it.

But i did and got to final boss' final form. The way alien's head detaches and just scurries away after you hit it enough times is pretty funny.

When you die on this boss and get sent all the way to the beginning of level 6, isn't actually much of a punishment once you realize this is an opportunity to stock up on magic for boss fight.

Ninja Gaiden (Retro Achievements!):
I really liked the idea behind Retro Achievements. So i tried it on Ninja Gaiden.

Unfortunately it doesn't work from my work network (proxy stuff), so i had to wait until i get home. Even then it took me a while to set up their modded NES emulator, default settings are a mess: video isn't showing, sound is garbled and you need to set up gamepad controls manually. So nothing really works out of the box.

Whatever, i finally booted NG and played it for 15 minutes and got dozen or so cheevios. Cool stuff.

I kinda want to create and upload achievements for some other games now, namely Rhythm Heaven for GBA...

[ymeegod]

Started Ratchet and Clank Into the Nexus and was surprised to find out how short this game is.  Nearly done and I only have 5 or 6 hours into it.  R&C 1-3 were something like 15-20hr long for me so this is only 1/3 that?  Not sure what's going on but it seem like platformers are getting shorter.  SM3D World and Land were both 10-12 hours to completely unlock everything yet SMG or even Sunshine were 20+ hours easily.

Anyhow, other than it being extremely short--it's also a bit dull.  There's only a couple of funny moments which is kinda at odds with the whole series.  Why does this game take it so seriously.  Can't recommend this one.

[Adrock]

Cave Story 3D
Instead of playing through my backlog, I borrowed another game from my friend. Anyway, the game hasn't hooked me yet. I don't get the hype, but I'm willing to give it a chance.

[Ceric]

...

Mass Effect 1 (PC):
Even after i stopped bothering trying to make gamepad controls work on PC, i still can't play it.

I get to first fight in the super long corridor and i just give up. Here:

Nothing feels right at all. I tried to get through it like five times and lose any drive to play any longer within a minute.

...

Really,  I liked the controls in the first one.  To the point that I take out large creatures I was suppose to use my Tank on with my on foot weapons for extra XP.  I didn't play them all on PC and I do hate Dual Analog gun controls so I'm not that great of a measuring stick.

[MagicCow64]

Cave Story 3D
Instead of playing through my backlog, I borrowed another game from my friend. Anyway, the game hasn't hooked me yet. I don't get the hype, but I'm willing to give it a chance.

I didn't really get the hype either. I went in expecting a Metroidvania game, and it . . . isn't that. It's closer to something like Master Blaster or Rambo NES.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

the most current game I play semi-regularly is AVGN Adventures. I am sort of in between homes right now so my PS2/PS3 are not accessible so I am left with my very non-gaming laptop and a Game Boy Color I picked up last week used. I guess you could count Tetris, I play that nightly on the GBC.

[azeke]

Caesar III (PC):
Love, love, love this game.

Background: i started playing this game when i was still in school. In fact, i played it in school. I've probably replayed the game ten or so times in 15+ years since. Never managed to go further than fifth or fourth level, but it was more than enough.

This is a big reason why i love ancient roman historical stuff. Rome: Total War,  Rome TV series and all other documentaries, some odd books here and there.

The voice acting gave this game a great atmosphere with each person walking your streets expressing his own opinion on your city in somewhat cartoonish voices.

I knew of other games in the series: Zeus, Poseidon, Pharaoh and Cleopatra but didn't play them. However i did buy Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. One of the first games i bought in fact. Mind you, this is big because it was piracy ridden post Soviet country in the early 00s.

So i played that. It was also cool, but trading roman setting for chinese didn't do much for me even if i admit the Emperor has a lot of improvements over Caesar.

I gave the disc to my brother and i remember how he was obsessed with it, he said it literally blew his mind when the game showed him "how society works" with all these chains of production (wheat is gathered in the fields and goes to mill, resulting flour goes to bakery, bakery makes bread that then goes to market and is then getting distributed among locals).

Sometime around that time when i was playing Caesar again, i realized how actually mathematical and geometrical it is. The game is built on "agents" distributing different kinds of resources across your city so planning the most efficient routes in advance for your agents is crucial. You also need to plan the layout of the city, like this will be an industrial area and this will be your prestige district with villas or regular condos where the bulk or your workers will live.

Despite very mathematical engine behind the game, the game is kinda broken. In later missions you will find yourself fighting the engine quite a lot, trying to make your agents go the way you want them and finding out that you have nearly no means to control their movement at all (this is one of the improvements Emperor does).

The game turns into playing with an extremely tall tower of Jenga where you can place one innocent looking road and it will ruin your entire city because agents will start going there instead of distributing resources where they're needed and then your apartment complexes will start to crumble because they lack pottery and other BS like that and you will lose 200 of your working force just like that.

And you might never recover from this because if you lose that many workers and your entire infrastructure falls apart you have little to no wiggle room to dig yourself out of it.

Stability becomes very crucial later in the game, and achieving that kinda requires you to break the engine apart and find ways to abuse the way it works, almost puzzle like.

Like take this design:

Living complex in the centre is provided water by a single fountain. It houses thousands of workers and has access to everything roman citizen needs. It's quite brilliant.

And that's not even touching the employment system and how sometimes you need to place one scrappy tent near new workshop or something to make it work because otherwise no one comes near it.

And yeah -- military system! There's something like an RTS in there. It sucks, honestly. Good thing you can mostly avoid it.

So now i want to actually finish it. And then play Zeus, Pharaoh and whatever other similar games i can find.

Super Mario 3d World (Wii U):
Finished last Marathon level. For some reason i finally managed to do it after i came back after partying with friends slightly drunk. Maybe i should drink it more often?.. Nah. More likely i reached critical mass after playing this level for that many months.

I'm also making progress on Champion's Road. I got to the first green star. That's my method to pass through ladder of disappearing blocks. I've also seen runs when people use spin jump or crouch pound to get through the very last step.

Oh and of course, i'm not using power-ups.

[Pixelated Pixies]

M&L: Dream Team - I seriously need to put a bullet in this game tonight. Will it ever f***ing end?!

It's certainly not a bad game, but MAN does it wear out it's welcome. I was ready to slap a bow on this thing 30 hours ago!

[Pixelated Pixies]

Dream Team Live Update

Boss Battles which involve motion controls, quick time events, and failure states which result in the same animations looping over and over again...not fun.

REPEAT! NOT FUN!

[ymeegod]

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Loved the ship battles, diving, and spear fishing but there's always a downside to assassin's creed--the story.  The "future" missions always sucked but now they made it into a mockery with a bunch of minigames like Frogger for one.  Wish I could have skipped them altogether.

[lolmonade]

South Park: The Stick of Truth.


It's essentially a Paper Mario game in disguise as a long episode of South Park.  I mean that in the best way possible.  Although the gameplay is simple, if you're a fan of South Park episodes where they go off the deep end a little, you'll enjoy this game.

[azeke]

Assassin's Creed: Liberation (PC):
I'm at 50% and still the game is tutorialising me... Though truth to be told it is supposed to be short and with so many gameplay mechanics it's understandable that tutorials, when paced out, will span for a good chunk of all playthrough time, compared to a more full fledged game where it will only take you about 20% of the playthrough in the beginning.

There are very few moments when i am left alone and free to do what i actually enjoy in the AC games -- randomly wandering the city collecting stuff. In Liberation you're mostly walking between one bubble floating in the air to the other.

^ that's what you'll be doing for the majority of the game. Walking towards the bubble.

Graphics is pretty good and i really like the lightning and brighter colouring compared to somewhat dour and grey III.

Chain kill mechanic is kinda stupid and i still don't understand when exactly it activates. Persona system is okay but nothing special. Full sync requirements are much more lax than in II or III. And even with that there were two or three full syncs that were pretty hard to achieve.

When Gerald character who is a David Bowie lookalike spoke i got all confused, because i was kinda expecting to hear goblin king Jareth's voice but instead he is your soft-spoken regular "french coward" type of guy. Ugh.

Super Mario 3d world (Wii U):
After doing no power ups run on final final final level of Super Mario 3d Land, i felt like i could write an essay on it: how one should tackle each of the sections, why and how particular tricks one needs to do with which character -- this level was so demanding, one needed to know all the tricks and get to know the game physics inside out to beat it without using power-ups.

Champion's run in 3d World turned out to be much, much, much harder. I am pretty sure i spent more time playing this level alone than all other levels in the game combined. After finally beating this level with regular Mario i feel i can write not just an essay, but a novel on it.

The interesting thing about it is that around halfway in Champion's run it's better to change your grip from stick to d-pad because the challenges kill you instantly if you do the slightest analog movement in the wrong direction and you only need to move in cardinal directions anyway.

Now to do Champion's road with all other characters...

Ninja Gaiden Black (played on Xbox 360):
Such a smooth, smooth game.

Interesting how NG treats it's camera. God of War and Wonderful 101 place camera way up removing all camera control whatsoever, Bayo/DMC and other clones place it behind the character and a bit higher, but Ninja Gaiden places camera very low for character action game -- around chest or even waist level.  It sounds like it's not going to work especially with how much time you spend indoors inside cramped rooms, but it works fine.

Game is pretty lax in terms of difficulty and rankings: i am playing it for the time so i kinda noobing around and of course i have a very limited arsenal but even then i got "Master Ninja" and "Greater Ninja" rankings, which are the best and the second best ranks.

Compared to say Platinum games NGB is very smooth, not just with difficulty, but also in terms of pacing: lots of save points and always a save point right before the boss, lots of items, everything feels very streamlined.

Use of items is a big "no-no" in Platinum games, but NG doesn't care that i used life potion to restore my life and stil gives me "Master Ninja".

It's also very light on tutorialising (again compared to Platinum games), you have a lot more abilities unlocked right away and noone is teaching you how to move with left stick and such.

After finally playing it i see it as a bigger precursor to Bayo than DMC1, DMC1 despite starting the series and the entire genre feels positively ancient, while NGB and Bayo are very alike with combo systems and it feels Bayo took a lot more from it than from other games.

Even their stories so far are kinda similar: Bayo and Ryu both come to some mysterious closed off country. Bayo arrives by (awesome looking) train, Ryu comes by awesome Hindenburg clone that in the end (of course) blows up in a spectacular fashion.

So far i am having some trouble on chapter 4 with three ninjas who throw sticky grenades at me...

[Fatty The Hutt]

Pokeymans Y
I have never played a pokeymans game before. Got this one for free through a Club Nintendo offer. So far, I am enchanted. Really enjoying it. My frog friend Froakie is already a badass and I caught and am leveling up that adorable Pikachu (peek-at-you). Everyone is so nice in the game. It is adorable in the same Japanese-y way as Attack of the Friday Monsters.

[azeke]

Ninja Gaiden Black (played on Xbox 360):
Still wandering at Treion city. After dying a LOT to black ninjas with sticky grenades i more or less learned how to deal with them.

Game is kinda random. Sometimes things works, sometimes they don't. While combat system is definitely polished, it doesn't have the feel of the clockwork mechanism of Platinum games combat systems, where every single little part clicks with all others.

Sometimes i have the easiest time just spamming X with nunchucks at black ninjas, sometimes same black ninjas kill me in less of a second.

Whatever, after spending a few hours at chapter 5 i had enough and decided to start skipping fights that i am not sure i can win and just run past enemies i can skip. In that sense it got kinda similar to NES game.

After that there are three raptor thingies who are also pretty tough (though abusing flying swallow helps a lot), and when you defeat them and think that this is all, you get chapter's real real boss appear.

That thing has absolutely ridiculous amount of health and my hits can barely take away 2% of it at a time. Maybe it's Dark Souls type of deal and i should just run away from it?

Shinobi (arcade, III and Revenge):
While i am in the mood for ninja games, i checked out NG's main competitor. As it turns out, it's also pretty cool series.

Arcade game, while understandably barebones, is very cool, rather difficult (not as hard as NG games though) and lots of dirty level design tricks to make you lose.
Revenge on Genesis is kinda eh.
III though i loved from the first level. Great music, great controls, smart level design. I should buy 3DS Classics port sometime.

[terribledeli]

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls at the moment. The 2.0 patch really made the game.(Though, I always felt it was a worthwhile play. Not nearly as bad as folks complained it to be)

I booted up Dr. Mario on the Wii U VC yesterday as well. Played around for about 5 minutes then turned it off. It's the still the same I remember it. Still don't care for it.

[Phil]

I'm currently enjoying my new PS Vita.

I have nine games for it already, and I keep skipping around to each one. Some time into this one, some time into that one, etc. I'm currently devoting the most time to LittleBigPlanet PS Vita and ModNation Racers: Road Trip.

[MagicCow64]

Rayman Legends (PC)

First off, I didn't love Origins. The basic gameplay felt pretty samey to me, and the controls seemed slightly off. I'm about halfway through Legends and it's a measurable improvement in some ways. Controls feel better, and I like that they modified the lum/teensy gathering stuff to get rid of floating bubbles and other time-limited lum chains. That **** annoyed the hell out of me in the first game.

I'm playing exclusively as the viking girl (and mods), as I find Rayman and his buddies to be ugly mofos, so that's an improvement (though extremely cosmetic). The music is great, better than the first game, though I find the actual music levels quite underwhelming, especially compared to the treasure chases from Origins. Also, the bosses so far flat out suck. I'm glad they replaced the mosquito schmup crap with a fist gun with regular platforming, but I really don't like that all the bosses are designed around this power-up. Overall level design is better than Origins, with more focus on dynamic levels rather than the lame powers of the first game (the quicksand level is a particular highlight in this regard).

The floating frog fairy levels, however, are kind of terrible. I could see how they could be fun in coop with touch controls, but single-player on a gamepad is miserable, outside of the race levels, where it becomes more like Bit Trip Runner.

Finally, it's frankly bizarre that over 1/3 of Legends' content is composed of levels from Origins. I can see having one full-length bonus world made of Origins best-ofs, but as is it practically feels like an in-game port of the original. Great for people who didn't play Origins, but a real slog for vets. Plus these levels bring back the mosquitos and timed lums and whatnot, which I wanted to forget. I guess this is what happens when a completed game gets delayed by 8 months and the team has to keep busy with something.

[Halbred]

Yeah, they basically crammed all of Origins into that game, even the mosquito shooter levels. It's kinda strange.

Tonight I'm going to put a bow on Burial At Sea (episode 2). I like it much more than the first episode or even Bioshock Infinite generally. The stealth stuff really works, the story hooks into that of Bioshock 1 very well, and it's actually pretty lengthy.

[magicpixie]

Yeah, I skipped the first Bioshock Infinite DLC, since most people were saying it wasn't that great.  I've heard that the second DLC is actually pretty good, so I picked up the season pass and started on the first DLC last night.  Combat is still meh, but the environment is, as always, phenomenal.  I really like the style in the game, and Elizabeth's new design rocks.  After playing so many modern shooters recently, I find myself continuing to use right-click to ADS, only to toss out a vigor.  That's a bit annoying, but I'll eventually adjust.

FFX Vita - Taking this one pretty slow right now.  Just made it to Luca, and the game holds up pretty well to me.  The FMV cutscenes are gorgeous, though I don't really know if they've been tweaked other than to make them widescreen.  The work done to the main characters' faces is very much appreciated, though there are times when they look a bit odd.  Most NPC characters look downright ugly in comparison.  There are some spots where the framerate seems to take a hit, but it really isn't much of an issue.