What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Mischief Maker]

Brushed the dust off my flight stick and made some progress in the original Crimson Skies (PC). Still one of the best "lighter" flight sims out there. If they really "dumbed it down" for the first Xbox, that... was not necessary at all. The PC game was fairly playable with analogue joypad.

Now with the gizmo all set up, I'm considering trying to play Sonic Wings Assault and Pilotwings 64 with it, emulated.

If you've never played Freespace 2, you owe it to yourself. Installing the Source Code Project has never been easier!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Yeah, I'm well aware of the Source Code thing. Just need to be done with Crimson Skies first (for some reason I can only install the latter on C, where I could use a bit more - nomen omen - free space).

[iconoclast]

The Wonderful 101

Just finished a Pure Platinum score run through 101% Hard. I wanted to get this out of the way before The Evil Within, Korra, and Bayonetta 2 come out, so I've been playing it pretty obsessively over the last week. My opinion of the game hasn't changed much since I posted about it a couple months ago (http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 6#p1043456), but I did forget to mention the scoring system. It's actually very good - a definite improvement over Bayonetta's. Bayonetta's system would have been great if it weren't for the fact that enemy weapons gave you retarded amounts of points and multiplier. You'd always want to pick out the enemy that has the best weapon (usually the staff or bow), torture attack him for the guaranteed drop, then use it to kill the rest of the enemies in the verse. Rinse and repeat forever. Thankfully they fixed that issue in TW101. Some items are still very useful, but for the most part you just rely on your character's moveset to rack up huge combos. The only downside is that it's fairly simple to optimize your score, but at least it's always fun. Especially when something like this happens.

[Ruldra]

Currently trying to beat FTL on hard with the godawful Engi B ship.

On the very first jump, I face an enemy with missiles and a fire drone. Missile hits the shield room and the drone starts to ignite my ship. I send two of my repair drones to put out the fires but the drone system is destroyed as well. Out of desperation I vent the whole ship. The fires are extinguished but not before destroying the door system, so I can't close the airlocks anymore. I rush to repair the doors but my only crewmember suffocates. Game over.

Best part is that the enemy didn't even bother to stick around. After igniting most of the ship he jumps away and leaves me to my misery.

[Bananamatic]

Finished Valkyrie Profile finally

The game's hilariously easy on Hard mode thanks to all the extra items you get, played without using Guts or Auto Item and every boss still dropped in 1 turn with most of them being almost completely harmless

[broken harbour]

Tried FF-X2.... Couldn't get into it... Not into the battle system or the characters... Maybe I'll try it again later...

Gunners Heaven is interesting... Plays like a fast paced Metal Slug, but not as good. Some call it a blatant ripoff of Gunstar Heroes, but not having ever played it, I can't say if it's accurate or not. Some of the weapons seem useless, and the grappling hook mechanic feels a little half baked... Need more time with this one.

Little Big Planet 2... Owned it for years but finally cracked it open, more of the same so far, which isn't a bad thing. The game has oodles of charm, the only issue I have is the same issue I had with the first... The control isn't precise enough, I really wish you could control sackboy with the d-pad, at least then jumping between planes wouldn't be so awkward. It's rarely an issue gameplay wise tho... The game isn't exactly tough... Unless you try to 100% all the stages.
There's some great bonus stages as well. The game had 27 updates tho... Jeebus, is that really necessary? I ended up playing 2 hours of Akai Katana while it updated...

[Obiwanshinobi]

Little Big Planet is a 30 fps game, so there's that. Though - adimttedly - A Shadow's Tale doesn't look any smoother, yet I had no input latency issues with it (on a CRT).

[Immryr]

i just started digital devil saga 1. I didn't feel like I was getting into it too much at first, maybe as it hasn't been too long since I played through persona 4 and the dungeon crawling at least feels pretty much the same, but then the levelling up addiction kicked in. I think the thing I enjoy most about these types of games is levelling up my party, getting the next best skill, choosing how to progress down the skill trees etc. so yeah, I'm about 5 hours in and so far I'm not too bothered about the story but the levelling system is satisfying.

[Mischief Maker]

Merely because I tend to choose playable females in games, I started my affair with the recent King's Bounty reboot from Armored Princess and it would keep crashing on me. So I gave The Legend a chance and it was the right thing to do.

I read the English translation isn't great, but the Polish version is rather witty. Some genuine childish flavour to it, that I haven't found in Armored Princess, reminds me of Lufia: The Legend Returns I'd also enjoyed lately.

Another thing of note is that the "cartoony" graphics don't really follow in 3D WarCraft's footsteps (unlike way too many games ranging from Dawn of War to Torchlight). That is all good for my money as well.

Too soon to judge the gameplay properly, but I already find it quite irresistible.

King's Bounty the Legend is indeed an irresistible game with an irresistible world, but gameplay balance is all over the map and you can get seriously F'ed by the random number generator in any number of ways, including stat increases on levelup that don't complement your build.

Armored Princess trades story for balance. It's the game to play when you want to sink your teeth into the combat system more.

[Ed Oscuro]

Played some Path of Exile a bit - surprised, but it's not really grabbing me at all. I do like some of what's going on here, but ugly + loot runs + mouse fiddling = nonplussed me. Glad I tried it out though. I've ventured a little bit into the jail with a Ranger.

I've been playing the gimped keyboard-only release of Tomb Raider II via Steam (actually have a new copy of this one)...

...but I can't deny that I'm actually having fun with it. So long as I remember to do the stationary jumps (press jump, then the direction to jump in)

They really don't make 'em like this anymore. The entire Great Wall level is a pretty stiff kick in the jimmies to welcome returning players back to the franchise - it's a series of monsters and death traps. You can save at any time, which lessens the impact of the trap gauntlet in this level somewhat, but only to make it somewhat more manageable. You still have to figure out what you're doing and execute, which is nice. There's no extraneous tooltips or popups advising you to do things or eliminating surprise, and I laughed and laughed the first time I tried to take the zipline across the chasm - I had kind of forgotten that you have to hold down keys for a very long period of time to do anything in this game, so Ms. Croft just kind of let go in midair and plummeted to her death. "Look at this" cutscenes still show up, so there was a nice shot of the empty zipline clanking into place at the end of its travel. Similarly, outsmarting the boulders earlier (stand on the texture seam between their paths) will still trigger the "HOLY HELL IT'S BOULDERS COMING FROM YOU" musical sting, but the shot is just of one boulder resting harmlessly in its bed of spikes.

It's also pretty interesting how little they were afraid of hiding large amounts of content from the lazy player. I had to play that first level again because the first time through I took that zipline across - which means you miss out on a secret. And dinos! Big ones! You'd also miss another opportunity to catch a quick nap when Lara descends and climbs a ladder (you can speed ladder descents a bit by repeatedly letting go and quickly catching it again - shame it's not as foolproof as bouncing down a ladder in Half-Life, but I'll take it).

[null1024]

Metal Slug 3 [Arcade/Neo-Geo].
I'm bad at this, but getting better.
why are MS boss fights so damn long though?

Shadow Dancer [Genesis].
Haven't played in a few days.
Made it to 4-1 before I finally started to die. Then made it to stage 5 and ran out of lives in the ninja room. Didn't continue, even though I still had a bunch.

oh, and a bunch of rounds in various KOFs ['97 and 13 mostly, might have fired up 2000 at some point but pulled it down since strikers are fucking silly, and 13 kept crashing after a dozen or so rounds, didn't really understand why]

oh, and almost forgot -- SFII: RAINBOW EDITION -- that shit is hilarious. Honda is probably the cheapest thing in the whole game, at least in the revision I'm playing. His mash attack is even dumber than the fucking teleport-speed tatsu that Ryu and Ken have. Pretty much spent most of my fights against people playing Honda as Guile, using pretty much undodgable Sonic Booms [that is, if I hadn't already died -- one guy would get in quick as fuck, do the mash, you'd try to do something, you'd get hit or grabbed, and pretty much every fight boiled down to "do your dumb shit before your opponent can, and then never let up"]

it makes me want to play a SFII version where the only change is that you can do all specials in the air, but they otherwise keep their properties from CE -- silly fun, but somewhat reasonable
well, maybe add airblocking, but that'd complicate things a bit maybe

I wonder if such a thing exists.

[rapoon]

Played some Path of Exile a bit - surprised, but it's not really grabbing me at all. I do like some of what's going on here, but ugly + loot runs + mouse fiddling = nonplussed me. Glad I tried it out though. I've ventured a little bit into the jail with a Ranger.

you got to about the same place as me. timing of release was perfect, right as a gargantuan # of d3 players were giving blizzard the finger. i tried really hard to like it and i can understand why others would enjoy it. just not me. it always felt unpolished and clunky.

OT: last remnant for PC. supposedly rectifies a lot of the 360 version problems.

[BIL]

Metal Slug 3 [Arcade/Neo-Geo].
I'm bad at this, but getting better.
why are MS boss fights so damn long though?

Most of MS3's prior to the Final Mission can be dramatically shortened once you're able to reach them with lots of grenades + power weapons. Depending on the route you take in st1 you can get to the boss with a brand new walker or Metal Slug waiting, st3 with a Shotgun, etc. The flipside is, of course, peashooter and minimal grenades will take ages.

Been a while but the same goes for most of Final Mission's eight trillion or so boss encounters. The very last no for real this time boss Rootmars has an utterly obscene amount of HP, I've emptied a full Flame Shot and Shotgun into him and still had a ways to go. I'm also pretty sure this boss was designed around the Slug Exit Invincibility Window, I can't imagine fighting him without it. Gotta get a good rhythm going so those bubbles are nullified.

The big exception is that motherfucking SOL DAE ROKKER (st4) who can't be hit with grenades (expend them beforehand) and will randomly do the game's hardest to dodge attack. You've gotta steel your nerves and dodge like a MFR there. Or pray the POWs give you lots of random Lasers / Sol doesn't do Angry Golden Needles, but I find prayer to have very mixed results.

[Blinge]

and the S2 boss? Trap said I should be a zombie and just spam bloodbombzzz at the aliens but they just hit me through my stream.
is there a better technique than damaging them all with bullets then spamming grenades when they start firing fast? It works for me like half the time.

[Squire Grooktook]

and the S2 boss? Trap said I should be a zombie and just spam bloodbombzzz at the aliens but they just hit me through my stream.
is there a better technique than damaging them all with bullets then spamming grenades when they start firing fast? It works for me like half the time.

You blood stream once and only once. Lure one of the doctor zombies to the very edge of the screen before the boss appears, kill him just after he zombifies you (and the boss begins spawning) so that his pills will drop right next to you, the moment they are vulnerable vomit on the monoeyes killing half of them, IMMEDIATELY GRAB THE PILLs, and than use the grenades or machine gun the defeated monoeyes dropped to kill the rest.

[BIL]

^yup - that's exactly what I do/did (been like two years since I played MS3).

ChainsawGuitarSP also posted a method years back for speedkilling both phases (the monoeyes & The Ten Commandments Of Moses) in zombie form, I'll go look for it. I never bothered since the bloodbomb+grenades method suited me fine, but apparently it's needed for an achievement in the XBLA version.

edit: ah, here we go.

Also, a general tip for the monoeyes if you have to fight them more conventionally for whatever reason - make sure you don't trap yourself in a corner while evading their slower shots. Herd them as you would in a typical STG so you don't run out of room, and never jump. That's probably their most dangerous attack.

[soprano1]

Borderlands 2 GOTY. It's a nice fps, i guess. Characters so far are pretty entertaining. Nice way to test my new PC.

[broken harbour]

Finished up LB2, liked it, but unless I delve into the community levels, I have no reason to go back to it. Short game, but honestly, I'm ok with it, it's the perfect length, ends right before it gets tiring. Presentation was awesome in it, loads of charm.

3D Dot Game Heroes: The best Zelda clone I've played. It's great fun, great graphic style, great OST, and, just like a Zelda game... it becomes tedious and frustrating halfway through. I keep dying in the desert temple, its fun, but not sure if I'll stick with it. I love the NPC's breaking the fourth wall, and they are all aware they are in a video game, it's pretty funny in places. It does a great job of scratching that old school itch.

Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed: A great mario kart clone, though the controls took me a while to get used to, having L1 being brake and drift took me a bit to get comfortable with, also, to shoot a weapon backwards you have to hold back on the left stick and press 'X', which is fine unless your flying an airplane, which makes you climb, my PS3 controller has 10 buttons, couldn't they just map it to an unused button? Great track design tho, all taken from previous Sega franchises, the Panzer Dragoon and Skies of Arcadia tracks are particularly inspired, and the dancing buildings in the Samba de Amigo stage is fun. The difficulty is absolute horsesh*t tho, easy is.. well way too easy, I could do it drunk. Medium is waaaaaay too difficult, with foes that are all faster than you, drive perfectly, and they seem to send missiles up your ass every 5 seconds, it feels like an expert mode.

I'm noticing lately a lot of modern games can't get their difficulty right... either a cakewalk, or an F-Zero GX style soul-crushing nightmare, I noticed this in Modnation Racers too (great game but gawd is it hard). One thing I liked about LBP 2 is that it's as hard or as easy as you want it to be, playing through the story mode will take barely an afternoon, and it's rarely difficult, but if you wanted to 100% the game, there's a ton of challenge there for you if you want it. Why can't more games be like that? I love my super hard shmups, but sometimes I just want to brain-out and breeze through something.

Anyways, back to 20 year old hardware....

[Ruldra]

to shoot a weapon backwards you have to hold back on the left stick and press 'X', which is fine unless your flying an airplane, which makes you climb, my PS3 controller has 10 buttons, couldn't they just map it to an unused button?

I believe you can also hold Square + X to shoot backwards.

And too bad you're finding 3D Dot Game Heroes tedious because I loved it from beginning to end. My only complaint is that some of the secrets are pretty obscure and I had to look up a guide to find them.

[broken harbour]

I find the regular Zelda games often tedious as well, and this is a love letter to that series, so I'm not surprised, I probably have to take a break from it for a few days and when I come back it'll be easier.
That desert temple is irritating in it's design.

[Blinge]

3D Dot Game Heroes is awesome, man!

Oddly enough the setting seems to function as an actual believable world more than the disjointedness of most Zelda titles.
Speaking of which: after tedious and unclear beginnings, Minish Cap has proved to be quite the gem. I've been pleasantly surprised throughout the course of the game.

[Mischief Maker]

Now that the sequel's out, I'm knuckling down to finally finish Legend of Grimrock.

[Immryr]

Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed: A great mario kart clone, though the controls took me a while to get used to, having L1 being brake and drift took me a bit to get comfortable with, also, to shoot a weapon backwards you have to hold back on the left stick and press 'X', which is fine unless your flying an airplane, which makes you climb, my PS3 controller has 10 buttons, couldn't they just map it to an unused button? Great track design tho, all taken from previous Sega franchises, the Panzer Dragoon and Skies of Arcadia tracks are particularly inspired, and the dancing buildings in the Samba de Amigo stage is fun. The difficulty is absolute horsesh*t tho, easy is.. well way too easy, I could do it drunk. Medium is waaaaaay too difficult, with foes that are all faster than you, drive perfectly, and they seem to send missiles up your ass every 5 seconds, it feels like an expert mode.

to me transformed doesn't seem like a Mario kart clone at all, it plays like a halfway house between a kart racer and an arcade racer. the first all stars racing game is much more of a traditional Mario kart type game - but it's faster and generally better than any Mario kart I've ever played.

(I haven't played 7 or 8 though)

[Blinge]

Blade Symphony - Free weekend on steam.

Pretty fun, pretty fun. Find myself just swinging like a madman though rather than putting much thought into it.

[cicada88]

Sunsoft Batman & the first G.I. Joe for NES

[Zaarock]

Tried to play Phantasy Star Online 2[PC] for a bit less than two months but gave up on it. MMO's just arent my thing I think, I thought the game has great combat and some good design but I just don't enjoy grinding or the social aspect enough. I really enjoyed my first 'playthrough' going through all the content of Episode I and II though.

I went back playing a lot of Virtual-On OT [XBLA] and Virtual-On Force[360] again recently.

There's a nice western community of Force players forming up, and there are a lot of friendly japanese players online that like to join in.

I finally got a video capture device a couple days ago, really should've bought one years earlier.
Starting to put up some high level play replays (of my own & others), which there are almost none of from western community on Force since the playerbase has always been tiny.

Some initial uploads, I probably won't post about VO related things on this thread again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa4mc_A7FfQ (Virtual-On OT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNu_9q0gPxE (Virtual-On Force)

[Lord Satori]

Wow, that's pretty cool. I'm reminded of Custom Robo for some reason.

[null1024]

Wow, that's pretty cool. I'm reminded of Custom Robo for some reason.

Pretty much everyone says this, heh. VO plays nothing like CR, but it's still loads of fun.

It's closer to the Gundam Vs. series, but still different.
Would be nice if my friends played more, I fucking love VOOT. It's so damn fast and fun.

would be really, really, really nice if my "local" [read: way down in Miami] arcade had a VOOT cab, but it'd almost certainly be on 5.2 instead of 5.4 [at least they have a cab of the first Virtual On, and I've gotten passable with using the sticks instead of a pad]
I want to play OT with a good pair of twinsticks. Trying to use the sticks on a 360 controller or a Dualshock doesn't work that nicely compared to the pad layout.

I think the control is a problem for VO's popularity though. See, it works perfectly in the arcade. You feel like a real fucking mech pilot thrusting along and generating thirty times your weight in missiles, it's smooth and it works. It's fairly easy to get a handle on. Jump-cancelling is a bit of a pain compared to on pad [you barely have to think on pad, rock thumb from Y to A, you just need to be careful not to do it too fast], and you need to make somewhat larger movements, but it's clearly what the game was designed around.

When you bring the games home, it's a bit harder to grasp.

The Saturn game's control scheme makes sense, but it's still a bit weird and you can tell that it's not even close to the control setup the game was designed for. Handles fine enough.
The DC port of VOOT had all these kludgy input modes since with the default setup you can do a lot of things just fine, but curve dashing ever is right out [are you going to move your hand from the d-pad to the control stick?]. If you wanted curve dashing, you had to make other sacrifices.
Having L1/R1/L2/R2 buttons alleviates that, at least, but still: the game doesn't exactly fit on pad.
I will say that you don't NEED twinsticks though [especially since they are a fairly expensive bit of kit for just one game, unless you build your own]. You can play a mean game on pad, and with less motion required.

In contrast, Gundam Vs. happily uses an ordinary arcade stick.

[Squire Grooktook]

Ah, sorry for PSO2 not working out. Actually I don't play the game in an entirely different way: I tend to drop it for long stretches of time when busy with other things, than jump online and hack and slash through all the new bosses and content. Played from that perspective, I think it's about as enjoyable and packed with meaningful content as any ARPG or hack and slash (I also enjoy going for more "arcadey" self imposed challenges, like low level/no healing/kill everything free field or advanced quests). But I can totally understand not feeling the need to go on past a certain point.

I'm looking forward to Ultimate mode though. If you don't get back in when it comes out, I'll be sure to let you know if it fires up the challenge level enough to be a significant new addition.

[Tamagon]

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS. Trying to get all the challenges down. Whoever decided that you could get multiples of custom moves deserves to be fired.