Topic: What are you playing?

[ejamer]

So yeah... Pikmin 3 is quite awesome.

[Pixelated Pixies]

Zack and Wiki is great...that is all.

[azeke]

Mega Man 1 (3DS):
Ooooooh, i get it now.

Flinging concrete blocks against Cutman works because "rock beats scissors".
Throwing boomerang against Elecman works because "cutting the wire".

Neat.

Another neat thing is that you can beat all bosses with just regular peashooter. Well maybe except for Fire Man. I might have to learn how to do that soon, because i remember from my previous playthroughs there will be a boss rush near the end of the game, and Fire Man will be one of the lasts and i usually lose too much of energy  fighting bosses before him. I distincltly remember having Ice beam almost at zero for some reason...

Ninja Gaiden 1 (3DS):
They finally activated access for 3DS owners for entire NES trilogy (after some whining on my part). For some stupid reason, you could only post screenshots of Wii U ports before.

Played it a bit just to test it out:



Metroid (3DS):
After almost 1 year of not wanting to play this game, i realised i'm not gonna progress at all unless i cave in and start using map with everything mapped out.

I could have persevered, if not for the copy-paste nature level design where entire parts of the levels are cloned hundreds times. And parts that aren't copied are not designed well to begin with. Who thought climbing that huge vertical pillar with disappearing blocks is gonna be fun?

So yeah, whatevs. Got pink suit, lots of rockets, sonic spin attack.



Having to switch out between wave beam and freeze beam by going back to statues is stupid.

Got to Kraid and kill him. I used original and sophisticated strategy of going right towards him and spamming wave beams and rockets at his face. From what i can see (i watched Metroid episode of GameCenter CX [ugh that horrible TV Nihon "translation"]) all bosses in this game can be beaten that way. And it's not like bosses themselves do any smarter -- they also just spam **** at you with no rhyme or reason.

Metroid 2 (3DS):
Checked out second game. I think i like controls in this game more. Your character is bigger and jump is shorter -- which is good in my book because i don't like emphasis on air control. Also you shoot things under you by jumping and shooting down like in Contra.

Not looking forward to getting lost again, because this game also doesn't have built-in map.

Also playing (all on 360):
Rayman Origins -- challenges and finishing "Back to Origins" levels.
Bayonetta -- getting platinum ranks on Hard -- got it all up to level 7, thinking of doing "complete the game in 3 hours" challenge on easy
DMC HD Collection -- doing recon runs, i play the game using continues and without saving between missions and progressing as far as i can. After dying on my last continue i restart from the last save for real without using continues and knowing what i have to do. Got to hall with a poodle and four shields. I spent half an hour there hitting shields and thinking this is a puzzle of some kind. Apparently, all i had to do is to walk up to poodle and press Inspect button. Yeah.

[azeke]

Wash_Doge (PC):
Let's say i had an opportunity to play the beginning of a game for a few hours.

It's ogre. Boring and kinda pointless.

If i wanted to play GTA, i would actually played GTA. But i don't want to play GTA. So why should buy this, obviously inferior GTA?

Graphics is underwhelming and even on ultra setting on PC don't look even remotely new or anything i haven't been already seeing on PC for many, many, many years now. ACII, III or IV look about the same and have bonus points for having setting much more interesting than generic concrete block-fest city.

I actually liked cover and takedown mechanic, it's much more intuitive and fluid compared to say Uncharted. Hacking is okay but incredibly shallow -- it all defaults to pressing X button from time to time. AR mini-games are kinda funny but also incredibly shallow and unsubstantial.

Random generator that makes biographies for people on the streets is kinda funny in a random way, like i met a rapper on the corner who is apparently software developer AND a little league coach. Or a chinese nation of islam member.

Driving controls suck at first, but it gets a bit more manageable after half an hour. Hacking during driving is kinda bad, because if you use it to lose chase (setting trafic lights to cause jams or activating road blockers) you need to look back to time it right and that will often lead to you crashing into something because you weren't looking where you're going.

Even just moving around feels wrong. Finding stuff and people in the environment is especially tedious. Profiler should help you with that but if anything it only gets in a way -- you constantly scan the same people and can walk right past the person you were looking for many times and profiler won't lock on him.

Assassin's Creed IV (Wii U):
Got awakened in the middle of the night by a neighbour watching a rather loud talk show, so i spent rest of it playing AC with headphones on.

As per my routine, i try to delay doing story missions as much as possible while doing extra missions all around the sea. ACIV has a lot of stuff to collect and it distributes them on hundreds of different small islands. Navigating to these islands and then coming back to my ship is kinda tedious. I try to save time by using fast travel but then i end up just spending almost the same amount of time in loading screen.

Story stuff is okay. Even out of Animus part got kinda interesting, i received ability to hack into other people's computers and those weird puzzle mini-games are back. I actually liked them a lot in II and Brotherhood especially that creepy background music.

Don't like RPG progression, in ACIII once you're fully equipped you could actually take down any ship you want, but not anymore no, now you have to level up and have no chance against level 574 frigate. There is no skill involved and it all just depends on how many hours you put into the game.

Game looks great in comparison to Watch Doge, even on inferior console hardware:



So lush and colourful.

Mega Man 1 (3DS):
Started dr. Wily's levels.

The part where i wait for green guys to come down is still annoying.


Got to Yellow Devil and started training on him using save-state (because eventually i want to do that in one go, starting from picking Wily in the menu and up to the ending without continues):

I even tried to do my own made up challenges like killing him without taking damage or killing him with a regular peashooter gun. If NES Remix had these kinda of challenges i would have bought it right away, but alas...

[shingi_70]

Watch_Dogs:


Then game looks pretty great, but i'll admit it doesn't look like it did in the orginal reveal (but to be fair anyone who is surprised, or expected it to look like the reveal is dumbass.) Game is fun and stealthing around is pretty rewarding. I had to put it down after getting to greedy after blacking out and running into some guys who killed me. I concur that moving feel off but only when your in a fire fight and trying to move in and out of cover.

[/size]
Knack- I needed a pallte clenser after watch_dogs and I fotgot i'm playing on hard. I just hit a check point getting to the third section of chapter 4.[/size][size=78%] [/size]

[azeke]

Batman Arkham Origins (Wii U):
Cutscenes are amazing, action, lightning, camera angles are just unbelievably good:






Map on gamepad is really good, it's probably the only open-world title on Wii U that actually uses touch on gamepad -- you can set targets and fast travel just by touching the destination. That's cool.

Looks a bit better than Arkham City and framerate is definitely higher. It still starts to lag during battles with big crowds though.

Challenges are very cool. I never bothered to do those in Arkham City because they were just a bunch of rooms and a bunch of dudes you need to beat up. Now there is some linear progression to them and actual targets you need to hit so you feel you achieved something each time.

I kinda miss riddles that asked you to scan specific unique parts of environment be it special poster or statue or whatever. Those were kinda cool because they required designers to keep putting unique stuff in each place. Now all posters are mostly the same. The places are still packed with lots of stuff to look at though if that your thing, it's just that there are no point to it.

ACIV (Wii U):
Naval missions just get in a way of my enjoyment at this point, i see a fort and it's crazily defended: lots of cannon batteries, mortars, and even a navy of gunboats of it's own. I try to attack it and fight for five minutes and die because my cannons and hull armour doesn't have enough levels. I do that three times and just switch to something else...

Skulls of Shogun (Steam):
Pretty good turn based strategy game. Lots of angry birds-like crap which is offputting. Three star achievement system on each level, also pushing you for spamming stuff on facebook or something.
Another problem is that these three stars are kinda forcing you to replay the level but tutorial parts in the first levels won't turn off and there is no fast skip cutscene button combination from what i see.
Really like controls, it works pretty good both on mouse and controller.

Metal Slug 3 (Steam): emulation controller buttons are set weird by default, but workable
Smash Bros Melee: getting the hang of this. Even the jumping with stick almost stopped being a problem.
Mega man (3DS): still fighting yellow devil. Killed him with mega buster but took damage so i guess i'll keep at it until i do perfectly. Because why not.

[Ymeegod]

In the beginning of ACIV the navel battles were pretty much one sided but once you do more of the main campaign, more weapons upgrades become available and you can easily knock out all those bases.  For now you should just focus on the smaller islands for quick cash and animal skins.

Finished up a couple of games this week:

Bravely Default (3DS)--man I was so loving this game up until chapter 5 when the story just takes a nose drive.  Hell not only did the story staled but there wasn't any new areas to even explore.  So for 2nd half of the game you just played repeated dungeons and boss battles (some of them you fight 5 freaking times). 

Super Mario 3D Land (WII U)--loved it.  Only gripe was the game was a tad bit easy with only one or two stages that even slowed me down.  Wished it had online so I could try the MP, couldn't get any of my friends to even look at it (COD whores the lot of them).

Thief (PS4)--sadly disappointed with this title as well.  The map system is a joke with a lot of places end in an deadend, forcing you to find hidden way around which was fine at first but there's no way to mark those "exits" so you'll end up having to hunt them down again and again while you do send missions.  Really wished for quick travel.  The story was forgettable, the characters undeveloped, and the gameplay was more or less the same ole stuff. 

[ShyGuy]

I sampled a little of Wolfenstein: the New Order and Watchdogs last night. both on someone else's PS3

Wolfenstein - A little glitchy, a little obtuse. Some really annoying AAA-isms like quicktime-ish events, and 'quicktime events that have no meaning because they just activate a cut scene' Shooting itself was decent, Rage style level design with every room being unique.

Watch_Dogs - Like the concept, but the open world gameplay may not have been the best fit. Stealth control is a little awkward, but that may be because I'm currently playing a much better stealth game (Deus Ex) Graphics are decent but obviously pared down from previous reveals.

[azeke]

Aside from staying up all night to watch Treehouse Live (AMAZING coverage, hours upon hours upon hours of new gameplay vids, LOVED Kirby, Yoshi, Bayo 1 and 2 footage yesterday) i also played some actual videogames:

Mario Kart Wii:
Played a few races with my nephew. Motion controls are totally workable, even learned how to drift with them properly. We got so carried away, i missed first 20 minutes of MS yesterday.

Batman Arkham Origins (Wii U):
One particular story segment made me very happy, it pulled from many comics stories at the same time and interweaves them all in a very smart way.

Combat system is getting troublesome enough to a point where i just want to avoid battles entirely. Main gripe is when you try to do ground takedown someone will always try to hit you and even if you press counter button you won't block because takedown animation is still going

Bosses are usual western developer style bosses -- as in brain dead awful. Just keep railing on them until they die, no imagination used whatsoever. I can only guess that weird people who liked Mr. Freeze boss in City have never played Platinum game (or just any japanese game in general) in their life.

I was stuck on Deadshot "boss" encounter which takes a lot of time and was very annoying because it was heavily based on "stealth" -- i.e. mindless repetition of the same actions and lots and lots of waiting.

Super Mario World (GBA):
Love cartoony look, lots of very cool animations. Music is also great.

Weird that i played through three worlds and don't remember going into a single pipe. Don't understand the purpose of spin jump, aside from destroying blocks under me, isn't it otherwise the same as short hop?

Cape is okay for slowing down my fall, but i don't like that it sends me too high bumping into the ceiling if i go too fast, i lose nearly all control over Mario and can't see where i am going to land especially when i'm on new level and don't know what's below me.

Levels feels about right in length, compared to 10 seconds levels of SMB3. Control at first feels just as fidgety and loose as SMB3 and at first i was constantly overshooting jumps but eventually i got a hang of it.

This game is definitely made with "run and stop, run and stop" design in mind. And even if you still run SMW won't punish you for that.

Had a trouble with third castle, the last stretch up to Lemmy's castle and castle itself. Good that GBA version never sends you back after running out of lives, it even resumes from checkpoint inside the level.

[MagicCow64]

Batman Arkham Origins (Wii U):
One particular story segment made me very happy, it pulled from many comics stories at the same time and interweaves them all in a very smart way.

Combat system is getting troublesome enough to a point where i just want to avoid battles entirely. Main gripe is when you try to do ground takedown someone will always try to hit you and even if you press counter button you won't block because takedown animation is still going

Bosses are usual western developer style bosses -- as in brain dead awful. Just keep railing on them until they die, no imagination used whatsoever. I can only guess that weird people who liked Mr. Freeze boss in City have never played Platinum game (or just any japanese game in general) in their life.

I was stuck on Deadshot "boss" encounter which takes a lot of time and was very annoying because it was heavily based on "stealth" -- i.e. mindless repetition of the same actions and lots and lots of waiting.

See I agree with your general assessment of stealth gameplay, but I really liked that Mr. Freeze fight. It was cool that you had a challenger who was just too strong to face head-on, and it dovetailed with the stealth orientation of the gargoyle room stuff. There's nothing in Origins that even compares in my book. There isn't a single decent boss fight in Origins, and that much heralded Deathstroke fight is just a fucking pain in the ass. And sure, that Joker fight at the end of Asylum was pretty dumb, but sheesh, compared to the end of Origins...

[azeke]

Deathstroke fight was basically a glorified QTE sequence.
And you know what? It was the most fun i had with the boss in entire Arkham series.  Production values with crazy good graphics in cutscenes elevated that otherwise tepid Dragon Lair style encounter.
I accept that Arkham games are very, very low brow kind of deal, but once in a while i can't help to supress comparisons to other much, much, much better designed games.

[Khushrenada]

Super Mario World (GBA):
Love cartoony look, lots of very cool animations. Music is also great.

Weird that i played through three worlds and don't remember going into a single pipe. Don't understand the purpose of spin jump, aside from destroying blocks under me, isn't it otherwise the same as short hop?

I would advise you to keep checking pipes. I think every level can probably be completed  without entering a pipe if my memory serves me correct but if you keep checking them, you'll find some that contain bonuses or alternate exits to new areas.

As for the spin hop, it doesn't have a lot of use but it's main function is that it allows you to jump on spiked enemies without getting injured and on a spiny, you can keep hopping on it infinitely as long as you keep moving along with it. Otherwise, the spin jump just blows things up. For instance, on the purple dragon enemies, instead of taking two jumps to kill, a spin hop blows them up in one jump. Likewise, if you jump on a Banzai Bill, it just falls off screen but spin hopping on it will blow it up.

However, maybe this is spoiler-y for you and you weren't actually looking for this info right now when posting those thoughts. In which case, sorry.

[azeke]

Yeah that spin jump doesn't sound like super useful. I do use it sometimes for short long jumps though.

However, maybe this is spoiler-y for you and you weren't actually looking for this info right now when posting those thoughts. In which case, sorry.

No, i'm not crazy enough to scream "life destroying spoilerz!" when someone shares useful Mario information with me.

[Khushrenada]

Yeah that spin jump doesn't sound like super useful. I do use it sometimes for short long jumps though.

However, maybe this is spoiler-y for you and you weren't actually looking for this info right now when posting those thoughts. In which case, sorry.

No, i'm not crazy enough to scream "life destroying spoilerz!" when someone shares useful Mario information with me.

Well, it was more about the pipes and alternate exits. If you aren't too worried about it, I'll mention this is the game that started the trend of ghost houses having alternate exits which the NSMB series has carried on with.

Super Mario World was the first true gaming experience I had. I'd played other NES games before of course like the Super Mario Bros. 1 and other things but that was always when visiting with someone and so in short periods. I wasn't able to really sink my teeth in and see a game to completion. With Super Mario World, I finally had that opportunity and it took a few months as I learned to develop the hand-eye coordination and controller memorization that you need to succeed. So, one time, when I messing around in a level with the cape, I was stunned to find a key and keyhole. Of course, such a thing would be obvious for me to find now. There were signs that a secret must be nearby like the outline of invisible blocks which for whatever reason, I'd never thought much about before. And when that key led to a brand new area on the map, it blew my mind. I'd just discovered this amazing secret!! And it led to another level and then another level. It took a long time to end up finding all the levels and secrets but every discovery of a new level was always a thrill as a new portion of the map was now used and more and more alternate routes opened up.

However, since you are quite familiar with video games, and even though this is your first playthrough of SMW, it probably won't feel as revolutionary as that and you'll probably clue in on some of the hints available. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if you have to do more exploring than most other Mario games require. When you mentioned going through the game without really going through many pipes, it just took me back to that time when I thought I'd beat the game and followed the path to Bowser through only to discover much later all that I had missed and all there was yet to see.

Enjoy.

[azeke]

Crimsonland (Steam):
Bought immediately as it hit steam. I owe developer many, many hours back from decade ago so i was glad to give him some money back.

First levels are carbon copies of the levels from old game. I smiled as i kept recognizing them: "oh yeah, that was cool".

Of course main event isn't even singleplayer levels, because after you beat them you start going for score in survival mode -- i remember hitting a million and witnessed my friend doing 2 million run. Game really becomes all dependent on bonus power-ups at that level and you start to kill more monsters with nukes, ion chains and other power-up that pop-up on the map rather than with your weapon.

Batman Arkham Origins (Wii U):
Finished story. Of course, there is a ton of stuff left to collect and i will do that.

Firefly boss battle was pathetic how scripted it was.

Finally figured out timing on critical hits.

Many people praise batman combat system for how "fluid" it feels but after Bayonetta it feels almost as stilted as Monster Hunter because counter button DOESN'T cancel from any action like dodge in Bayonetta.

Did some combat challenges but no way i am doing the rest of those 100+ missions with this broken ass combat.

[Ceric]

Played the Destiny Alpha this weekend.

I enjoyed it as a Titan.  It felt a little slower pace then some of your other FPS's but that was good for me.  The environments look good and once your on the ground there isn't any loading.  Anything periphery to the main gameplay needs fleshed out more.  Especially your team communication options.  There is a lot of depth that at the moment is a little more hidden than it should be but I expect that to be fixed by beta.  In general it was stable.

The PvP is well PvP.  Control is Capture points but they really only add bonuses to your kills.

In general though I felt the Alpha really didn't have enough content in it to make a truly informed judgement on it.

[azeke]

Crimsonland (Steam):
Good ol' Crimsonland. I am still getting through main campaign. Also doing "not a scratch" challenges for previous levels, because because.

Considering this reboot is almost a verbatim copy of the old game the same problem remains true for the remake as well. Game is too dependent or random drops -- getting bad weapon (like flamethrower or a blow torch which is even worse) will mean you'll die in 50% of times. Sometimes it takes around 5 retries until you get a good weapon for this level.

Conversion to game controller went smoothly, though a few mouse dependent power-ups were redesigned.

Because aiming reticle is so close to you when you play with a controller and both are circular sprites i often found myself confused between them when there was too much going on.

[azeke]

Crimsonland (Steam):
Finished quest on normal. Now i can start the real game -- survival mode. And doing some "not a scratch" runs on previous levels.

Desktop Dungeons (Unity web game):
I just want to have a casual 15 minute battle like i did with freeware version. I want to pick my class and go. But no-o-o-o, now you need to log in and there are so much stuff in the menus i am lost before i even start.

I did a few of the class challenges, but seem to stuck on Fighter Gold. That kind of RPG min-maxing is completely beyond me it seems.

Really don't want to buy any preparation items for class challenges (because they cost gold and i don't want to spend any) but it seems impossible without them. This is personal annoyance of mine because i don't like to use items in games.

At least i managed to have a a good run in regular quest on normal difficulty and opened a new dungeon.

MGS: Revengeance demo (Xbox360):
I was trying this demo many times over the last year, because i know i will play the full game eventually as a fan of Platinum games. Yesterday, on seventh (?) try, i think i finally got the most basic understanding of how it plays and feel confident enough to make some comments.

Camera AI is absent completely, which is disappointing after Bayonetta where you could complete the game without touching right stick once. People compare camera in this game to Ninja Gaiden Black which isn't right, because NGB actually had rather "smart" camera -- as in it actually moved on it's own accord sometimes to give you a better view instead of you having to babysit it at all times like in Revengeance.

Parrying is weird. Combos are super weird, i've found stinger move and found cyclone sweep move, but couldn't find launcher combo that i've seen in the videos. Dodge by pressing A+X is also weird.

Overall combat system just doesn't make an entire solid picture for me yet, so far it's just separate puzzle pieces.

Cornerstone of all combat systems is defense, and so far i see three (four?) defensive moves 1) ninja run which is baffling so far, i mean it works but why is it here to begin with? 2) 3) blocking and parrying 4) dodging by A+X. So far they just haven't fell into place.

Why do i have to kill rocket launcher guys first before i engage cow robots -- i don't want this "stealth" BS in muh action game. Why can't i go in guns blazing and simply block rockets that these guys shoot from afar?

Blade mode kinda bothers because how it dominates the game at the expense of hack'n'slash in this supposedly hack'n'slash game. It bothers me even more when i watch videos from top players and find that most of the time of the video was spent in blade mode and in other similar QTEs.

And this blade is just a very counter intuitive control scheme -- you're controlling two analog sticks at the same time and it's kinda awkward on both settings: i do seem to be doing better with left stick on blade and right stick on camera though.

[Eiksirf]

On Xbox 360, I'm currently playing through Dead Island. Playing with my wife, who's hooked even more than I am. It's a lot like Far Cry 3, which we loved, but with more uneven difficulty, and less developed storyline/characters.



On Nintendo 3DS, I'm roughly less than half way through Zelda: Link Between Worlds which is a much more open world environment than I expected, so I'm really enjoying it. I also never finished Link to the Past (tried twice!) so I don't even notice much of the lifted environments.

[azeke]

Mii Force (Streetpass Squad) (3DS):
I really like replaying rollercoaster level. Entire game is very reminiscent of 16-bit shmups (Gradius, R-Type) which is good and this level is my favourite one so far.

Cool music, great colourful, neon-y environments and level's gimmick when you're tethered to rollercoaster line is very neat. There are a few alternative routes that you activate by blowing up arrows. It's very cool when you make loop-de-loops on a rail and entire level rotates around you.

Basically each level has gimmicks like that aside from general gimmick for entire game that you have many slots for many different weapons that shoot in many directions and you can rotate changing directions of your shots.


Viewtiful Joe:
Unfair off-screen attacks!.. Enemies that swarm on you with no chance to retaliate!.. Overwhelming visuals leaving with no idea what's going on!.. Enemies and bosses with obtuse attacks that require very distinct techniques that you're forced to look up in the internet to beat!.. Game that leaves you completely in the dark about 90% of it's systems and how you're supposed to play!.. Annoying environmental puzzles!.. Bosses that take WAY too long to beat!..

Sounds familiar? That's not what you think it is. These are my general complaints on Viewtiful Joe. The difference between basically identical popular complaints on Wonderful 101 is that one can totally overcome them with a bit of effort, while all these still remain relevant for VJ even after i put many, many hours into it.

Along with environmental puzzles (which are traditionally the most off putting element for me in action games), Cromarties are where the game becomes way too annoying for me.

After trashed by swarms of them, i gave up and looked up their attack pattern in the wiki (first two hits are random, one hit after that is reverse of second hit and the last hit is the same as second hit). How am i supposed to figure out THAT in the middle of a battle? Cromarties LOVE to surround me, and i am completely at loss there, jumping out of the way works but i just feel very stupid and not viewtiful at all doing so.

Train level: after dying due to timer a few times, i started ignoring everyone and just ran past most of the guys. Beat Alastor at the end of train level on my first try though i did use "take two".

Aside from complete obtuseness of the game the other thing i don't like is the sound: music is too loud and i can't hear any of the voices. And even beside that there is an overall "off", echo-chamber feeling with all sound effects. At least the music isn't as aggressively terrible as in DMC1.

While i got the combat system enough to comprehend what's going on in videos like this i still can't exactly pull combos like that. So far my general strategy start and ends with "put one guy into stunned SLOW! mode and then just go zoom and hit em with million punches. Then repeat with all other guys, one by one".

Now doing boss rush. At first i completely forgot how to beat even the first boss, it was a full year by now. After spending most of my Sunday playing it, i managed to get until fourth boss, Another Joe. Because i remember him being completely impenetrable for me due to baffling attacks that make zero sense, i looked up walkthrough which of course contained ways to beat bosses five times faster than how i did it.

Looking back i realize it was a mistake to start on adult mode.

[azeke]

Mii Force (3DS streetpass game):
Weird. I beat the last level in Oceania but new level hasn't unlocked. Do i have to collect all diamonds on all levels to progress or something?

Viewtiful Joe:
Spend most of my weekend finishing up the game.
Beat Fire Leo. It was enraging and then enraging twice as hard when i knew how to beat him because i completely forgot about red hot mode and never used it until this boss fight.
Now doing the final boss. He's also annoying like pretty much everything else in this game.

God Hand:
As i finish one Clover game, i checked out another. What can i say?

It's a hard game. It's a hard game. Ball-bustingly hard game. Ball-bustingly hard game. But fair. But fair.

Love the music and little dancing animation main character does. Gameplay feels great from what little i played. Can't wait to start this proper.

[Adrock]

God of War Ascension
Nothing especially new here. I haven't played a God of War game in a while so I kept instinctively using the right analog stick to adjust the camera. There are too many instances where the camera will pan out really far just to show you Sony Santa Monica's huge set pieces. Nice graphics; it just sucks for gameplay. Speaking of, very few meaningful additions, just a lot of mashing the Square button until the enemies are gone and whatever is sealing me in that room goes away. The Amulet of Uroboros adds some nice puzzles so far. It reminds me of The Amulet of the Fates from God of War II, just fancier.

They're trying to give Kratos more depth which is appreciated if ultimately useless. After five games, he's mostly just "that angry guy." His motivations have been known since the original, but I don't think it's enough to carry six games without a true character arc. Ascension suffers the same problem as Ghost of Sparta. Once they showed how it all ends in God of War III, I'm finding it hard to care about the story. The tricky part about writing prequels is that they're tasked with keeping the audience interested without contradicting known future events. While there have been no contradictions so far, the game is barely keeping me interested. It doesn't use Greek Mythology as well as God of War II and III. At this point, I'm not sure there's anything that could really blow the whole series open besides Athena being the mastermind behind everything which would cause all kinds of problems with the rest of the series.

Ultimately, Ascension isn't terrible; there's just nothing new here even by God of War standards. I may even be too lenient on this because I'm borrowing this from a friend. I'm extremely glad I not only didn't buy this game but didn't buy it at full price.

[Eiksirf]

I'm taking my time with Shovel Knight for 3DS. I thought it might be too challenging, but infinite lives and a fair number of continue points keep things balanced. The platforming is reminiscent of Castlevania, but toned down a bit on the action and stepped up a bit more with the jumping. The levels are laid out on an overworld and some village areas are a lot like Zelda II. Another fun thing is when random battles appear on the overworld map, the icon for that character slides around between the levels a bit before settling on a space, just like the enemy overworld encounters from Super Mario Bros. 3.



I spent the rest of my eShop money on Monster Manor for the StreetPass plaza. It's hard to explain, but it's more involved than Find Mii. It works fair just using play coins, so you don't really need a lot of StreetPass activity to try it. Each character you meet gives you a colored shape that you plug into the floorplan of the manor. This lets you explore that space, and you're looking to find stairs to the top floors, build rooms to get treasures, battle ghosts and upgrade your character with the rewards you find. Pretty involved for StreetPass.

[RarityGamer]

Mario Kart 8

Meh, already traded it in. Lacks sense of speed, unimaginative and creative tracks, the same unbalanced weapons and dodgy AI at 150cc. I'm sticking with Sega All-stars Racing Transformed.

Sonic Lost Worlds

Apart from the odd parts here and there, I've really enjoyed this. The controls work well and the switch between the precise platforming and running mechanic was done well. I'm not a fan of the whole Mario Galaxy style of levels, but the games still fun

[azeke]

Devil May Cry (Xbox360):

Beat Nightmare, then Nelo Angelo, then Nightmare again. Now i am at what feels like the final level.

Currently there are 3:30 hours on my save and but you can safely make it 30 hours because me being me, i playing it without spending continues. That results with me retrying some of the missions at least five-ten times until i can do them in one go, without dying.

Another stupid thing i did was ignoring items in shops, because while one should definitely ignore health items and such, i shouldn't have ignored blue orbs and purple orbs. These upgrade my healthbar and devil trigger bar, so i was stupid not to get them earlier.

Trying to beat final Nelo Angelo with just three devil trigger letters is pretty painful.

With finale of Viewtiful Joe still fresh in my mind and with endings of Bayonetta and W101 that are burned inside my brain forever, i am playing last level of Devil May Cry and it's pretty amazing how strict Kamiya adheres to his own formula all throughout his games:

• obligatory space harrier or shmup section
• obligatory epic grand finale in space
• obligatory badass tranformation

When i will get to play Resident Evil 2, i will be disappointed if there will be no finale in space with characters shooting flying space zombies.

Also when playing last battle i had a thought that God of War creator took epic, somewhat greek feel of it, threw out everything else (including combat complexity) and spread it out for four games.

Constantly doing pinching motion where you press right bumper and press another button to roll, shoot your gun or do any other sword move is messing up with my fingers. When "pinching" i press buttons too hard and now my fingers hurt a lot after playing the game entire weekend.

I also briefly tried out DMC3. Oh my god, that intro! Absolutely amazing. I can't wait to plough through DMC2 (ugh) and finally get to 3.