What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Side Pocket (GB port on GBA SP) - I had precious little interest in pocket billards, but a cheap Data East game for Game Boy is not something I can easily turn down.
The physics feel pretty sweet and I wonder if low resolution was any hindrance to the game design. The music!

[BrianC]

Side Pocket (GB port on GBA SP) - I had precious little interest in pocket billards, but a cheap Data East game for Game Boy is not something I can easily turn down.
The physics feel pretty sweet and I wonder if low resolution was any hindrance to the game design. The music!

Side Pocket is good stuff. Burgertime Deluxe and Lock 'n Chase for GB have similar music and are also worth playing.

I have been playing Mario Tennis GBC. I like the game quite a bit, but I'm not a fan of how leveling works. Choosing stats feels almost pointless since some stats go down when another levels up. I'm liking the difficulty of the Island Open. I beat the story mode of Mario Tennis GBA recently and found it to be easier, though I haven't beat technical mode yet. I'm not sure which game I like better, though I like the leveling system in the GBA game more. I was surprised to find out that the GBC game actually has more Mario Characters, though the N64 game is needed to unlock them.

[soprano1]

My old PC died out, so i got a new one and it happens to play ps2 games nicely on pcsx2. I started playing Okami and Tales of the Abyss (I also need to try Gradius V and R-Type Final. Maybe Contra Shattered Soldier too).
Okami looks pretty and the brush mechanic plays really nice. Tales of the Abyss is Tales, i guess.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If you can emulate PS2 games, Tales of Rebirth, Destiny 2 and Destiny Remake:Director's Cut are even better than Rebirth. Tales of Destiny Remake:DC has arguably the best combat in any Tales game ever made.

[soprano1]

If you can emulate PS2 games, Tales of Rebirth, Destiny 2 and Destiny Remake:Director's Cut are even better than Rebirth. Tales of Destiny Remake:DC has arguably the best combat in any Tales game ever made.

Thank you, i'll check them out. To this day i'm still amazed by Tales of Phantasia. Wish the PSP version had a translation, but the PSX remake does the job. Looks amazing on SFC to this day.

[Obiwanshinobi]

My old PC died out, so i got a new one and it happens to play ps2 games nicely on pcsx2. I started playing Okami and Tales of the Abyss (I also need to try Gradius V and R-Type Final. Maybe Contra Shattered Soldier too).
Okami looks pretty and the brush mechanic plays really nice. Tales of the Abyss is Tales, i guess.

Make sure you play Sky Odyssey (complete the tutorial first if you're not familiar with flight sims and use the "advanced" controls).
The Adventures of Cookie & Cream (Kuri Kuri Mix) is another must-play title (at least co-op is; I'm not gonna pretend I've ever gotten serious about singleplayer).

[lilmanjs]

Black
Interesting FPS and beat it the other night. I might go back and play through it with the actual soundtrack from the game, but I don't really know. The seemed to set up the game for a sequel at the end though.

[Ruldra]

Black
Interesting FPS and beat it the other night. I might go back and play through it with the actual soundtrack from the game, but I don't really know. The seemed to set up the game for a sequel at the end though.

Try beating the game on Hard, it's a good challenge. On the hardest setting you start with silver weapons (unlimited ammo) so it's not as difficult.

[Lord Satori]

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

I haven't played it in a few days, and I'll probably get back to it in a few more when I'm sure staying up all night won't cause me to nap during the day when I should be working.

[Xan]

Finished Mega Man 7 recently. Does anyone else think the game is a bit underrated? I think the music stands out the most, almost every tune is quite memorable. Don't really have a problem with the "huge" graphics either.

Wily's infamous second form is definitely hard though. I beat it the cheap way with taking hits from the yellow spheres and using E tanks. It's certainly possible to learn all the patterns for evading his shots, I just wasn't really in the mood to do so.

[BulletMagnet]

Currently tooling around with Tornado Outbreak, a not-bad-at-all Katamari riff on the PS3 (also on 360 IIRC) - basically, you control a small tornado which gets bigger as it vacuums up more stuff, and can from there uproot even bigger stuff. Where it diverges is that to complete an area you don't have to simply get to a certain size but look for particular targets hiding the bad guys; once you've sucked up enough of them you can head for the exit. Moreover, you're encouraged to "chain" together bad-guy targets and absorb a bunch of them at once, which in some areas is crucial, since it extends the timer; in the end it's not too different than scoping out an area and planning the appropriate route in Katamari, but the controls are simpler, and while the presentation is somewhat last-gen the sense of destruction is well-realized. Not exactly a super-hardcore experience, but it can be had for a song these days, and so far is rather fun.

[CStarFlare]

Finished Mega Man 7 recently. Does anyone else think the game is a bit underrated? I think the music stands out the most, almost every tune is quite memorable. Don't really have a problem with the "huge" graphics either.

Wily's infamous second form is definitely hard though. I beat it the cheap way with taking hits from the yellow spheres and using E tanks. It's certainly possible to learn all the patterns for evading his shots, I just wasn't really in the mood to do so.

I really like MM7. It might be my favorite original-series RM game aesthetically; I love how colorful it is. Shame Rockman and Forte went with The Rockman 8 look (and music style) - R&F might be the better game in some respects, but I enjoy my time with 7 more.

[Mischief Maker]

Freedom Planet [PC]

Sonic-style platformer with characters that have a lot of movement and attack abilities. I thought the level design is was great for the most part. The combat and bosses feel similar to platformers by Treasure. Nice difficulty curve too, the game gets quite challenging by the end even on normal difficulty. I don't think I enjoyed the classic sonic sonic games as much.. I'm guessing that's mostly because of the added attack mechanics and more complex boss fights.

I'm surprised how little attention this has gotten compared to Shovel Knight, I think the difficulty curve on Freedom Planet is tighter and it's more arcade-style. I need to put more time into both games though.

Thanks for telling me about this game. I'm having an absolute blast playing it.

To answer my own question: the DRM-free humble bundle version no longer demands administrator rights, just the demo.

[BrianC]

I really like MM7. It might be my favorite original-series RM game aesthetically; I love how colorful it is. Shame Rockman and Forte went with The Rockman 8 look (and music style) - R&F might be the better game in some respects, but I enjoy my time with 7 more.

I like MM7 too, especially Shade Man's stage. I was used to the spacing in the GB games (IV and V are especially good), so the bigger spites, less space thing didn't put me off too much.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

I've been playing the Walking Dead pinball table on Pinball FX 2. Really enjoying the table so far. Probably one of the best dlc tables I think. So glad that it doesn't have crappy artwork like most of the Pinball FX tables.

[Immryr]

i've been playing fire emblem radiant dawn recently. it's the first fire emblem game i've played and i'm absolutely loving it. finding it pretty brutal though, in the first 4 hours of play i think i only progressed around 50 mins IGT due to having to constantly redo missions. this might be the kind of game i should have played on easy first!

[Vexorg]

A couple of pickups from PAX this weekend:

-Shovel Knight: Enjoying this, but I'm shockingly terrible at these types of games. Currently stuck on King Knight (the second boss.)

- Assault Android Cactus: A decent little twin-stick shooter on Steam with 4-player support badly hampered by a "battery" mechanic that's basically a cheap way of hiding a checkpoint system. That type of thing works in arcade racers, in shooters it's just pointless. Basically a cop-out for when you don't know how to balance difficulty properly.

[broken harbour]

Played some Soul Blade tonight.. I suck, but wow, what a great fighting game, I feel like it got forgotten after Soulcalibur came out, and while I haven't played the sequels a lot... I think I like this one best. Art direction and graphics totally hold up after almost 29 years. OST is fantastic as well, the only thing that let's it down is the Playstations garbage d-pad.

[Lord Satori]

-Shovel Knight: Enjoying this, but I'm shockingly terrible at these types of games. Currently stuck on King Knight (the second boss.)

I've played this. I got past him and skull knight (or grim knight or death knight or whatever the hell) but got immediately stuck on the second batch of levels and eventually gave up. I might get back to it eventually, though.

[spadgy]

Pako. It's an isometric arena survival getaway driving car chase game that mixes up bits of Super Skidmarks, Neo Drift Out, Super Hexagon and some awesome car movie inspired style. And yes, it's on mobile (iOS). And it's fucking brilliant.




Oh - and pigeon dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend. Amidst all the silliness and self-aware absurdity there's actually some pretty captivating narratives.

[null1024]

A bunch of Neo Geo games with some friends [various non-KOF fighters mostly], but one thing that really stood out today was Magical Drop 3.

I managed to get a 6 reaction entirely through manual piece removal. It was the most glorious feeling, was gripping my controller with white knuckles the whole time, since the window for adding to your reaction [when a chain isn't in the process of cascading, at least] is so short.

my opponent lost several seconds later

Really, that shit made me feel like I almost came. I kept trying to match that achievement the rest of the time we played it, and I kept mis-inputting, even when there was a very clear chance to do it.

Oh, and lots of Karnov's Revenge. Mostly so I could try to do Ryoko's flame wheel grab on people. It just feels so good to land it.
Ray's Wheel Kick is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in a fighting game. Really, if it didn't have all of those invincibility frames, it'd still be a pretty decent move.

with the invincibility frames, it ensures Ray can ruin your hopes and dreams
Seriously, you can't hit the opponent out of it, and it's got nearly no recovery [on whiff, you can just do it again when your opponent hopes to punish, or switch into Ray's dash].

[Obiwanshinobi]

Good news - with DualSHock2 and Warez USB adapter, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg PC version has analogue movement now (no such luck with the USB pad I used before). Not so good news - the framerate is still nowhere near steady 60 fps but at least it seems to run at full speed.
I've kept replaying the first stage for testing purposes and I like how it's made for speedrunning. Still undecided to play it seriously on PC, but it's not a completely useless version. Billy's moveset is one of the sweetest I've found in 3D platform games. Challenges you to clear stages in the most showy style.

The other night me and my pal played Ghost Squad 2 player (continuing like mad and ending up with three missions aborted). It'd almost pained me to play Ghost Squad in such asinine way (HotD: Overkill is less embarrassing in times like these) and our bullshit "high scores" (continuing doesn't reset the counter) had left pretty bad taste... and it was one hell of a guilty pleasure.
Turns out gun games are the most reliable crowd-pleasers on the Wii indeed. The guy I played Overkill and Ghost Squad with is pretty jaded and depressed nowadays, but those two made us both grin like one.

[Stevens]

3rd Strike
Super Turbo
Fur Fighters

[broken harbour]

Fired up the FF-X/X2 remaster this week.

I never played the original, so this is my first experience with FFX.

It's paced a little weird, at least in the first 5 hours, which is as far as I've gotten... with odd timing during the storyline segments... hard to describe.

The game, despite the HD upres, still looks pretty aged, with the stilted dialogue exchanges and funny animations. And NPC characters look horrid. So far the story is kind of interesting, and the battle system seems solid. Great OST, no surprise there. Granted, it's 13 years old so you can't expect a modern AAA experience.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The game, despite the HD upres, still looks pretty aged, with the stilted dialogue exchanges

It's not too bad, though there are certainly some poorly delivered lines. The infamous 'forced laughing' scene is actually authentic to the original Japanese version though, that one is supposed to sound exactly like that.

and funny animations. And NPC characters look horrid

Tidus's running animation always bothered me. Some of the NPCs are alright, but agreed, many are unappealing or simply not memorable from an aesthetic standpoint.

The battle system is at its most fun for challenge runs, IMO. No Sphere Grid allowed is always a fun one (protip: Rikku is the best character in the game, no contest).

[broken harbour]

it's more the weird pauses between characters, and oddly timed 'huh?'s if that makes any sense.

[Ruldra]

In pretty much every FF you end up with 3 overpowered characters and everyone else is too underleveled to be of any help. FFX solves that by letting you switch characters on the fly during battles. I thought that was a pretty cool gimmick to keep everyone around the same level.

I see a lot of people shitting on FFX but I liked it very much. Too bad I didn't have the International version so I couldn't go after the optional bosses.

[BulletMagnet]

I see a lot of people shitting on FFX but I liked it very much. Too bad I didn't have the International version so I couldn't go after the optional bosses.

Can you get the HD remakes where you are? I think they've got pretty much all the extra/added stuff for both X and X-2 on them.

[null1024]

Trying out some vs puzzle stuff to play with some friends later.

Puchi Carat [Arcade/MAME].
Man, I wish I had a paddle controller for this shit, trying to be accurate with pad+buttons is awful.

also, I'm honestly confused at what this game is doing that it's so much more CPU intensive on MAME than other F3 board based games [seriously, it's not even doing ANY of the sort of fancy graphical effects that I adore Taito's F3 board so much for]

Puzzle Bobble 4 [Arcade/MAME].
The chaining system in this bothers the hell out of me. It honestly doesn't feel right.
also, the aiming seems off, but that could just be me

[Ruldra]

I see a lot of people shitting on FFX but I liked it very much. Too bad I didn't have the International version so I couldn't go after the optional bosses.

Can you get the HD remakes where you are? I think they've got pretty much all the extra/added stuff for both X and X-2 on them.

I suppose I could, but at the moment I don't really have an interest to re-play FFX. My priority now is to focus on my backlog - it says something when Dark Souls is still sitting unplayed in my shelf.