What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[dan76]

Totally supporting the S&ASR Transformed love here. Better time than never to play it now waiting for its sequel this tuesday.

I did not play the first game Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (jeez, are those names confusing ?!), would you rate it above or beyond the second marc ?

Honestly, back at the time, I found it competent enough, if slightly uninspired.
Given that I was so wrong about Transformer first time around though, I'll no doubt be picking up another cheap copy in order to re-asses.
Also, I just read Kotaku's review of Transformed... definitely belongs in the 'worst professional reviews ever' thread. Basically, a full page of 'Waaah, game is too hard for me, therefore its existence is pointless'.

If you pick up the first game and you're on PS3 drop me a pm if you want to race online. I think both games are fantastic, but the first gets it for me for the simple reason that the flying and boat sections aren't as tight as the carts. Also, because of the tracks transforming you can't have races of more than 3 laps. Every month or two I try to find a game but no luck this past year.

[guigui]

Currently playing Sonic Team Racing. I'm not so sure I like it as much as Transformed yet. The whole team racing system is quite obscur, and was it really necessary ? Up to now, the only thing that seems to decide which team wins the race is the number of time one team can trigger the "Ultimate" bonus ; no real skills involved.
Driving and drifting is pretty hard at the beginning because the car is quite bad, and a tremendous amount of thing is going on on screen. It gets better with some knowledge, and better mods for the cars.
Anyone also playing this ?

[guigui]

something like 6 hours into subnautica ...
so this has been really refreshing. very pretty-looking, lots to do, good at urging you into pleasantly simple routines with just enough risk to keep you from losing yourself in the doldrums ..

Subnautica has been a real cornerstone of gaming for me those last years too. Apart from the Souls series, no modern games hooked me that much.
Now wait until you get your Seamoth, do not spoil yourself on the internet, and dive in for some real good moments under there.

my main complaint so far is that storage solutions are maybe too restrictive, and it takes way too long for you to discover how to build interior lockers (or even a place to HAVE an interior). i was shuffling between like ten or so different submersible mini-lockers before finally able to import my stash to a more reasonable storage solution. kind of hoping there's an option for teleporters between bases, later on, as transporting the contents of the storage of your first base to another would otherwise be jarringly tedious.

On a first blind run, it is true that being able to build the godlike "Locker" may take some time. Though if you know exactly what you need, it may take less than 10 minutes.
As for teleporters :

Spoiler

I fear this is not possible between bases, unless you bluid yur bases at some very specific points.

About transporting storage stuff :

Spoiler

you will be able to use the "one-eyed-40m-sub-for-one", though I'm not even sure you need to move things from bases to bases when you reach that point in the game

By the way, are you playing Survival ? I went pussy and played Freedom, the same as Survival but without Food and Drink meters.

[BurlyHeart]

Played Fight'N Rage over the weekend and got an 'S' rank in score mode with Ricardo. Having some difficulty getting another 1cc on Hard again though (different route). I'll probably do the Time Attack and Survival modes with Ricardo, along with a few more Arcade runs, before changing characters.

Ranked down 4 times in one day on Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2. Not a game to play online when you're tired :/

Continuing on with the Messenger, but the

Spoiler

new metroidvania style

has left me more reluctant to pick it up and I'm beginning to lose interest. Shame really, as the start was immense. Once it's done, I'll begin Shovel Knight after picking it up in a recent sale on gog. Looking forward to seeing what all the fuss is about.

Played like 30 minutes of Bucky O'Hare arcade while drunk. It looks amazing. Got to find time to play through this.

Also, Final Fight continues to kick my ass. I can get to the 3rd stage on 1 credit but not consistently so. Frustrating game, yet oddly enjoyable.

[Stevens]

Where are you at in it?

[BurlyHeart]

Just arrived at...

Spoiler

a new stage after passing the dark cave level. Happy to see a new stage but didn't play through it yet .

[mycophobia]

persona 5 ng+. about to start third palace and im tearing through enemies like wet tissue

[Stevens]

WipeOut Omega Collection.

Had the original and 3 on the PS. Loved them and then didn't play a new WO until a few days ago.

This (if you're not familiar) is an HD remake of WO 2048 (released for the Vita I believe) and WO HD (and its dlc for the PS 3.) After I wrapped my head around the sheer amount of content I felt better about picking a place to start.

First off the game is gorgeous. One of the best showcases of graphical horsepower I have ever seen and that includes RDR 2.

Music is a mixed bag depending on tastes. The drum and bass tracks are pretty good (you can pick tunes by category) but the club stuff is not my bag at all. YMMV.

Sound effects are solid and the announcer is great as he/she/it has always been.

The game feels like race day at an F1 circuit. There are different shots of the tracks along with the PA announcer welcoming you to where ever it is you are.

Controls great. I prefer the d pad to analog stick but I suppose that could change with more play time. There are a few new moves I am still coming to grips with.

Barrel rolls gain you speed upon landing at the cost of 15% of your shield. Pitching the craft up or down as you get air has some uses - to either get to the ground quickly or if you go over a small jump pitching up can give you the height to complete the aforementioned barrel roll.

The new mechanic I'm not quite up to speed yet is side shifting. Hit your air brake twice quickly and your craft will move to the left or right. Mind you it is easy to do but I'm still having to remind myself it is an option during the race.

Currently working my way through WO 2048. Not too far in just yet, but the game does a good job of easing you into things. Feels a bit like a shmup in the respect that if you don't know a level your probably finishing last. With repeat plays though you start creeping up the pack. When you finally do get the checkered flag it feels like no missing that stage/boss that has been handing your ass to you. Coming in first at this point isn't required to move on, but everyone here knows how it is when you have an arcade mind set:D

Can't report on HD/Fury yet.

[Marc]

I loved HD on PS3 but game up when the machine wiped my 3/4 complete campaign, all with whatever the highest ranked medal is. Was gutted.
I've put a bit of time into it on PS4, but I really need to spend more time with the Fury campaign as I didn't play any of that last time. Wasn't a fan on 2048 on Vita, so that will probably be left to last. It's also awe-inspiring / vomit-inducing in VR.

You never played Deadly Premonition? It's amazing, one of the best experiences of its generation - I wish I could experience it for the first time again.
Enjoy! And don't forget to delve into all the little things the town has to offer. Last time I played it with a bunch of friends we cycled through every single coffee message, which took forever, but it was worth it. I love that you can explore the entirety of the giant hotel you're staying at (as, apparently, the only person), but nothing ever happens there. And feel free to take a few aimless drives just to hear the main character rant about movies and 80s bands.

I'm also surprised you tried to describe the game without even namedropping Twin Peaks once.

I'm not sure that enjoy would be the right word yet. I mean the moment-to-moment gameplay is.... pretty bad, really. The aiming is awful (I'm on vanilla X360 - not Director's Cut, where I believe it was tightened up. Slightly.), the movement and animation are terrible, some of the dialogue is amongst the most ridiculous I've ever heard, and yet....

It's dreary small-town setting actually feels dreary and small, the characters are actually likeable, and it has atmosphere in absolute spades. It's compelling me to keep playing, and I feel absolutely ridiculous for continuing to do so as there's literally nothing I can compliment it for mechanically. I think it will come down to length ultimately, if it can be played through in a Silent Hill amount of time I'll probably see the distance. Anything into double digits hours-wise and I just can't see me managing to put up with its jankiness.

[Weak Boson]

I also love Deadly Premonition. Played through it with a friend on the 360 and it was great fun (then I was made to watch Twin Peaks) and then replayed it for my own amusement on PC. The characters and general vibe are great and the copious jank somewhat adds to the charm. In fact, the PC version is so unstable it almost adds to the challenge of the game

[Blinge]

Had a hunger for casual rubbish lately so I replayed Ass Creed 1 and 2, started 3.
1 is more horrible the more time goes on but the pseudo philosophical ramblings were alright. That was lost.

The recipe for AC after that was find a conflict in history, pick the winning side, say the assassins were on that side! lol.

in AC2 the database points out that Lorenzo Medici's dynasty left the people with next-to-no real power. Great, the Assassins prop him up because why not. Although that was mostly just a pre-brotherhood Ezio to be fair.

AC Revelations is set in Ottoman Istanbul. So obviously the remnants of the Byzantine empire must be the bad guys, zomg they're templars! So the Ottoman empire must be the good guys too rite?

AC3... Of course the Templars would take the loyalist side against American independence.. Despite it being contrary to their long term goal of seizing control of the new world.
I'm currently running around Boston slaughtering anyone in red because parts of the town are 'templar' held. Gosh this is lazy.

I am enjoying the story to be fair, I am partial to a bit of historical fiction.. even if it does try to spice up relatively tame historical moments by simply adding more violence. Boston Tea Party, now with gunpowder,explosions and copious stabbings!
Fyi I played this section feeling like a traitor to my nation while sipping finest Yorkshire Tea IRL.
Still it's nice to get an image or virtual feel for the colonies; previously an imaginative blank spot for me.

Some of the scenarios are laughable; a central complaint I have with the series is exemplified here:
Angry Frenchman Stephan chapeau leaves a tavern to go on a brutal murdering spree w/ butcher's knife or axe, not sure.
He walks around merrily hacking redcoats into bloody pieces. Your mission is to try to calm him down and stop him being hurt. Why?
Connor barely knows him, and is trying to talk him down. Surely the better and morally correct move is to either stop him by restraining, knocking him out or even just kill him. The net loss of life is far lower. Connor is from a native American village anyway and doesn't have any personal beef with British troops or sympathy for the cause (at least, it's not established in the game yet).

AssCreed as a series is full of this nonsense. It would make far more sense to have non-lethal means for the brotherhood to go after its supposed target of the *real* bad guys. But nope, each character is an indiscriminate homicidal maniac in his own right. If you're in a uniform, you're fucked sunshine.

Don't get me started on the bloody accents.
It is fun to see all the Irish, different shades of English, Scottish accents & more, you can see how they'd all mesh into new accents. Especially the rhotic ones.
Then some twat walks up who sounds like he's been plucked out of modern day California.
You could just say 'muh animus tho'

One more unpopular opinion: I actually like Desmond.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I liked the first game because you actually had proper lead up to the assassinations. In most of the Ezio games you can just run up to your target and hidden blade him!

AC3 is a complete mess, the setting is all it has going for it. Look forward to Slow Walking in the Snow Simulator a few times later on. 5 hours in you get to play the main character... as a child in a boring tutorial segment. Then you grow up and get to chuck some tea into the water. Takes an absolute age to get going and massively improves when it finally puts you into battles. And of course "Connor skinned every animal he killed" whenever you encounter wolves - do you run and desynch or get mauled by more of them as you skin the fuckers you've taken down?

The accents get worse in Unity. All the background civilians sporting assorted bad British stereotype accents (not even 'Allo 'Allo-style Fronch) despite the French setting and proper NPCs having French accents.

I found myself enjoying the modern day stuff a lot. But then I also liked Unity a lot more than II and Black Flag, so.....

[soprano1]

Dragon Quest VIII (3DS)
Well, the graphics and music took a hit, obviously, but the quality of life improvements are there. On the other hand, they changed many abilities, so you really have to use different skill sets from the PS2 original (Twin Dragon Slash isn't OP anymore, making Jessica a support character now, and Spears are a better weapon for the Hero now). I'm also interested in the new party members, one of them can use Clubs better than Yangus, from what I read.

[Stevens]

Katana Zero's free DLC is up.

Hard mode, speed run, skip all non action scenes and a host of other options.

[Marc]

Feeling lazy last night, so among the vast pile of unstarted games, I elected to try out Forma 8. Lazy or not, this was still too slow-paced for me. Looks and sounds lovely, but not an awful lot going on.

Then I ended up wasting time on LocoRoco. That's a game I always find more entertaining to watch and listen to than actually play. I don't like a game adding up what I've managed to collect throughout the course of a level, if some of those things are a one-chance only collectible. Same thing occasionally irked me about Yoshi's Island, but it's worse here as it will actively stop you backtracking through previous parts of a level on occasion. It's charming enough that I always end up spending more time on it than I intend though.

And I REALLY won't bring it up again, but the OutRun track on All-Star Trasformed... just brilliant.

[BulletMagnet]

Getting near the end of Tokyo Mirage Sessions:

- While plenty of SMT spells and such are present, at least so far the usual insta-death Hama/Mudo stuff hasn't shown up. There are still "Light" and "Dark" type techs, but none of them can trigger team-up attacks, which greatly limits their general usefulness (the same tends to go for Almighty stuff, incidentally), but they do frequently cause status ailments, which can be the linchpin against certain nastier enemies, especially if they're vulnerable, so in practice they're actually kinda the same thing as Hama/Mudo, namely a seldom-seen "hail Mary" when the opposition is too overpowered for the usual song and dance to be feasible.

- Speaking of nastier enemies, while they (unlike most baddies) level alongside you, to some extent they get a bit easier to handle once you're further in and have more variety and potency in your arsenal, so you're freer to unload on them and get enough of an advantage to scrape by. They can still lay a whoopin' on you if you don't get a decent jump on them (or otherwise luck out) though.

- Another odd twist is that healing spells are considerably less valuable than usual, since most healing items, including full-heal stuff, is a lot easier to obtain than in other SMT games I've played (unless my memory's playing tricks), so much (though not all) of the time there's little reason to waste anyone's limited skill space on cure spells, since any member can just use items instead.

- A handful of late-game boss battles have been real marathons; while they usually don't do overwhelming damage, which leads me to believe I'm not underleveled, they take a long time to whittle down, which I suppose can make for a sort of "satisfying" victory when you manage your resources enough to outlast them, but it's also something of a slog. Hopefully not too many more of those...

[Stevens]

Getting near the end of Tokyo Mirage Sessions

Thought that said Tokyo Massage Sessions when I scrolled by.

[BulletMagnet]

Thought that said Tokyo Massage Sessions when I scrolled by.

Thanks to Rule 34 I'm sure it exists.

[Sumez]

Loving Hollow Knight after playing it for only two nights.

One one hand it's not quite the original epiphany I'd expected, based on what I've heard. Both in design and gameplay, it is extremely reminiscent of 100 other indie metroidvanias so far, to the point where it almost feels like I've explored the very same areas many times before.

But on the other hand, the presentation of the game is what lifts it above everything else. The world is absolutely endearing. I was expecting a Souls-like dreary, gloomy atmosphere, but even though it definitely takes strong cues from From Software, the world of Hollow Knight is its own, and most of the time it is much more cute and charming than it is creepy, and the amazing soundtrack just nails down the mood.

[Blinge]

Thought that said Tokyo Massage Sessions when I scrolled by.

Thanks to Rule 34 I'm sure it exists.

Massagi?

MASSAGI ?

source: i went to japan. this is what i was asked.
honestly regret saying no.

[Marc]

I picked up Silent Hill Downpour. Strangely enough, I think I'd like it more I it wasn't called Silent Hill.

[Blinge]

that shitty monster design tho

[Mero]

Was playing Rabi Ribi but had to throw in the towel at the Library, that was some IWBTG level shit. Liked it up until that point though.

[Sumez]

RE: Rabi Ribi
I didn't reach any IWBTG kinda stuff in the game at all. However, I found it immensely boring and never made it more than a few hours into it.

[Mero]

^^ the part I'm talking about is postgame, tbf.

[Marc]

that shitty monster design tho

The combat itself it making me sad at the moment. I'm hoping I find more bullets soon, because the melee really isn't fun at all. It's a parody of a poor 3D fighter.

Also, what the actual f**k is the Final Fantasy XIII-2 soundtrack all about?

[EmperorIng]

that shitty monster design tho

Nah man, what Silent Hill needs more of is Disturbed groupies and the Insane Clown Posse. What's more psychologically terrifying than a juggalo?

I feel like I need to rev myself up for an RPG again. Deus Ex Human Resources has been sitting in my library unplayed for over a year. Same with Dishonored 2/DOTO (not quite RPGs but hey I 'role-play'). It's been a while and maybe I need a time-sink - or I can continue to practice Psikyo everyday.

[Marc]

Don't know how it holds up now, but Human Revolution was absolutely brilliant on release. Was less enamoured of Mankind Divided, wasn't a fan of the open world thing.

[EmperorIng]

Frankly, I'm more interested in the open world (or, rather, 'open city blocks') of Mankind Divided, but I feel I gotta do HR first before I jump in the next one.

[vol.2]

Crystalis

It's my first play-through, and I'm running it on my NESGRB which I just finished installing a couple months ago. It really looks fantastic on a 20" PVM in RGB. (though the music is too catchy for it's own good)