What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[BrianC]

Still playing PAD iOS and MH4U 3DS and started playing Puzzle and Dragons Z. Just beat Teostra online and currently at HR7. I'm liking Puzzle and Dragons Z, but finding it much easier than the moblie game. I like that you don't have to sacriface monsters to level up and don't need stamina to play, though. Currently at one of the 9 Stamina dungeons in the mobile version. Need to level my monsters a bit more.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Spent some evenings and a morning playing Demon's Souls. A bit surprised to find how Monster Hunter-like it effectively is. So is this mainstream now, on consoles?
Being separated from my computer for over a week, I've been longing for the original Unreal Tournament on a widescreen telly. First game where I thought it added to the experience. Boy, is a reunion with LCD one odd sensation.

[ryu]

Spent some evenings and a morning playing Demon's Souls. A bit surprised to find how Monster Hunter-like it effectively is. So is this mainstream now, on consoles?

Not really. The Souls series sells very well, but it's no COD or sports game I'm sure.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Still playing PAD iOS and MH4U 3DS and started playing Puzzle and Dragons Z. Just beat Teostra online and currently at HR7. I'm liking Puzzle and Dragons Z, but finding it much easier than the moblie game. I like that you don't have to sacriface monsters to level up and don't need stamina to play, though. Currently at one of the 9 Stamina dungeons in the mobile version. Need to level my monsters a bit more.

I was thinking about getting Puzzle and Dragons 3ds. I have windows phone and it's not available on it. Is the 3ds version still worth getting?

[BrianC]

I was thinking about getting Puzzle and Dragons 3ds. I have windows phone and it's not available on it. Is the 3ds version still worth getting?

I haven't played through the whole game yet, but I'm leaning towards yes, if you don't mind slogging through dialog and the game being easy. I'm still playing through it and like it quite a bit, but Z is very easy compared to the mobile game and I heard it doesn't get hard until post game, though it does have some optional dungeons. I only played a slight bit of Mario, but it dumps the RPG stuff and I heard it's actually the harder of the two games (I heard it gets harder later one and much harder post game). Both have less monsters than the mobile games, with around 250 for Z and 120 or so for Mario. So far, while I like the mobile game better, I found it to keep the addictive gameplay of the original without some of the freeinum crap of the mobile game.

[opt2not]

Been on a Final Fantasy III (DS) kick lately. I actually really like this remake, and I noticed they ported it over to IOS and increased the resolution fidelity. Since I already own it for the DS and prefer the 2-screen layout, I didn't bother paying the $14 for the IOS version. Though something about JRPG's with a large touch surface appeals to me...

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Still on Dark Souls. Last boss I've beaten is Ornstein and Smough, though I've also beaten Great Gray Wolf Sif and Pinwheel before that as well when I was trying to find the Sen's Fortress. Trying to find where to go now since I'm not using guides on this run, at least until I make it to the final boss to clean things up. I do know not to place the Lordvessal yet so that I can unlock Darkwraiths, so I'm just going to be searching for items and areas that I missed while trying to find where I need to go.


Ornstein and Smough were pretty much a pain to get right since I'm mostly melee at the moment(been using Black Knight Sword that I found early in the game and have been upgrading a bit). The few times I managed to take Smough out first, I would lose to the powered up Ornstein. The one time I took Ornstein out, I beat the powered up Smough first try, either because it's easy or he just picked his easier to dodge stuff. Of course, that means I'll need to do it the other way around in NG+, but I'll have a lot of Pyromancy or other spells at that point probably, so it should be a lot easier(I did have some Pyromancy from getting Chaos Servants, so I did have a way to speed up the last of Ornstein's health)


I'll also probably buy the DLC soon since I know it's available soon now that I have the Lordvessal.

[Blinge]

blinge's JRP binge continues. Been playing Dragon Quest SNES remake in a zombielike state before bed the past two weeks. Short game, i've already beaten it. I've read DQ1 is a total grind and quite challenging so they must've nerfed the difficulty in this version somewhat; it was a cakewalk compared to Phantasy Star I & II. Still, I see how this started the craze in Japan, it may be simple but it has a certain unique charm.

This finishes the last of the OG trinity of JRPGs for me, having played FF and PS1 prior.
Next up, Earthbound!

[broken harbour]

Started FF4 this week. I enjoyed FF1 a while back, despite its flaws, skipped FF2 because I hear its a grindfest, and skipped FF3 because I can't get a nice home console port.

Kinda boring so far... hope it picks up. (Only at the 4 hour mark).

[Stevens]

I finally downloaded Pinball Fx 2 again a year after replacing my old 360. I needed something lighthearted to play while stoned.

I'm trash at pinball in general, but I love it. I don't have a ton of tables for it, but I dig what I have even if I suck at all of them:

Earth Defense and Excalibur are excellent, but they both have ONE FUCKING RAMP that is near impossible to hit.

Paranormal I haven't played a ton. I like it, but I'm also the least familiar with it.

Epic Quest, and Mars I love, both of them are really well designed.

Lastly there is the Street Fighter table. I hate it. It just isn't any fun.

Does anyone else have PBFX2?

[Ruldra]

Does anyone else have PBFX2?

I own Zen Pinball 2 on the PS3, which is essentially the same game. I have 20+ tables in there. It's hard to pick a favorite but I love the Marvel tables. Fear Itself is one I really enjoy.

[BrianC]

Does anyone else have PBFX2?

I have it on both WiiU (Zen Pinball 2) and 360, as well as Zen Pinball, Star Wars Pinball, and Marvel Pinball for 3DS. While not as good as the console versions, I found the 3DS ones to be good ports for the hardware (and more stable than the iOS version on older hardware). Too bad Zen gave up on 3DS. Annoys me how western developers gave up on 3DS after it does well. Last pack I got was the one with the old west table and Castlestorm for 360, mainly because I had some credit I earned with Bing Rewards.

[DestroyTheCore]

I started playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. I quite enjoy the game so far despite its flaws. Does DD get any better as you progress? I have seen some deep gameplay videos with grappling big enemies, and I hope the game gets this intense.

[Iron Peach]

I started playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. I quite enjoy the game so far despite its flaws. Does DD get any better as you progress? I have seen some deep gameplay videos with grappling big enemies, and I hope the game gets this intense.

Crap dude, I have been obsessed with this lately too! Each vocation has special abilities once you rank enough; dagger users can unlock an evasive roll- really useful. Keep playing the main missions and the game gets really twisted good. Some plot things I did not expect. Now on playthrough two- no pawn run. First order was to throw my main pawn off a cliff and never revive him.

[dink]

Toki, arcade version. Love that train-cart stage

[pawwa]

Gunstar Heroes.

[dink]

Mega Turrican on Megadrive, what a kick-ass game!! I wish I had tried this one sooner.

[broken harbour]

Gave up on Final Fantasy 4, tedious, boring, irritating random encounters.... I guess I just like more modern (FF7-onwards) FF games.... will still try FF6 at some point since it's supposed to be so great.

I'm going on vacation in 2 weeks so I wanted to try a bunch of shorter games that are in my backlog, first up last night was Burning Rangers. I bought this game a month or so ago from a local shop that was getting out of Saturn games, so I paid way under going rate for it.

First of all, yes this game us UGLY. Short draw distance, combined with weird textures, shaky polygons, low resolution, and a frame rate that dips below 10fps with regularity... its a mess to look at. I found enabling scanlines helped with clarity a ton, but there's no getting around it, the game looks like diseased genitalia. Control is also pretty ropey, there's a certain amount of inertia to movement, which during the 2nd half of the final mission, makes the game challenging in the worst kind of way. Also... there's almost no music to speak of, although what is there is delightfully cheesy. The story is also presented poorly, and honestly I didn't understand why I was fighting a monster at the end, and I had to read a synopsis after the fact to totally understand what was going on.

However, the concept is pretty cool, the anime cutscenes are pretty good, and the voice acting is shockingly great, especially considering this game came out in 1998. Overall, the game is kinda terrible, yet is really fun, if you played games back then, you'll be able to play this now and remember how all the flaws were acceptable at the time. But if your earliest game memories are PS2-era... skip it, you'll probably hate it.

[soprano1]

Gave up on Final Fantasy 4, tedious, boring, irritating random encounters.... I guess I just like more modern (FF7-onwards) FF games.... will still try FF6 at some point since it's supposed to be so great.

Shame you feel that way, it's got my favourite story and characters from the classic games.

[MSd7342]

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks...stupid and sensual Shao Khan with his sensual hammer...

[broken harbour]

Gave up on Final Fantasy 4, tedious, boring, irritating random encounters.... I guess I just like more modern (FF7-onwards) FF games.... will still try FF6 at some point since it's supposed to be so great.

Shame you feel that way, it's got my favourite story and characters from the classic games.

Granted I only got about 5 hours into it, to the point where you re-meet Kain. I dunno, I can't get into it. I got into FF1 just fine, despite its faults but FF4... I dunno, it just hasn't grabbed me, maybe I'll try again another time. Random encounter rate seemed a little too high, grates after a while.

[Blinge]

I think that's a fair complaint. Oldschool JRPG'ers may hang me for saying so, however =]

I finished IV several years ago but it's probably one of my least favourites. Tower of Zot was where it became tiresome, felt like I hadn't been given enough narrative or character development to chew on between dungeons.
I suppose if a game is paced like that the story and characters have to be engaging enough for the player to care, and keep caring.

[soprano1]

I think that's a fair complaint. Oldschool JRPG'ers may hang me for saying so, however =]

Won't hang you, it is a fair complaint
Still like the game nevertheless.

[broken harbour]

I suppose if a game is paced like that the story and characters have to be engaging enough for the player to care, and keep caring.

That's exactly it.

[Necronopticous]

Decided to give the Witcher 3 a try even though I'm not at all familiar with any of the previous games or source texts. It's been awhile since I played a big open-world RPG (I think Skyrim in 2011 was the last) so it has been pretty easy for me to get absorbed into, despite its faults (or maybe inherent faults with the genre itself). The combat is atrocious after coming from Bloodborne, but it's pretty well written for such a massive game. I'm trying to finish it up before Mother 4 drops (hopefully) this month.

[EmperorIng]

re:Final Fantasy

I think FFVA is the best of the 2D games - enough of a challenge and random battles get a bit more fun/exciting with the job system allowing you to mess around and optimize. Plus, the GBA translation injects some much-needed humor and personality into the usually drier earlier installments.

I think I ultimately prefer the PS1 FFs, but FFVA is near the top of the quality list.

Though in general I hate random battles. Games like Grandia, Lunar, or even Super Mario RPG do things far more sensibly. Then again I sort of like RPGs more on the easy side (no SMTs for me).

===

Shadow of the Colossus. I play this in starts and stops that can last months. However I am getting close to the end now. Atmosphere is about as good as PS2 games get.

Tenchu Stealth Assassins: first time playing it. Beautiful in every way that isn't the graphics

Tower of Druaga (arcade): trying to not get screwed by the game's RNG wizards, aka the masters of trolling. No success; I can rarely make it past floor 5 or 6 where there are four of the warping bastards zipping around the map.

Valkryie no Densetsu: I think I love just about everything in this game. Fantastic, short, focused levels with branching paths, occasional fun gimmicks (spoon launching), and just tough enough to keep my progress at a slow and steady crawl. I wish it wasn't only one life but I guess I better get better.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I decided I'd put a few more attempts at finishing Demon's Souls NG on my SL1 character. Sniped the 5-2 BP to finish getting to Pure White Character tendency since I didn't want to get close to try meleeing it, though maybe I'd need to in later NG+ cycles. I would need to check about whether you can parry her Blind weapon(I know it's unblockable, not sure about parrying though). 1-4 boss took a few tries since I wasn't sure if even body form would let me survive a hit(female character, so I can't use Dark Silver set for the magic resist), so I just fought it in soul form and hyper mode where I had to do the fight without being hit but did decent damage, so it was a fast fight regardless.


Then beat the easy final boss, warped out to make Northern Regalia, some fully upgraded Moon + 5 weapons(IIRC this does more damage than crescent?), Dragon Shortsword +5 in case I want a Dragon weapon where I actually have the stats to use 1 handed, a +10 weapon in case I want to use an item to buff attack power a bit.


I did want to see how far I could get into the NG+ runs at level 1, so I continued on into NG+ a little bit. Finished NG+ 1-1 after way too many deaths(overconfidence and some dumb mistakes). Didn't even get to the final shortcut but the way to the boss gate opens before that, so I still was able to clear the stage. Also went through 3-1 as well and had 1 stupid death there(the one trap where you're supposed to get a key to go around to disable as a shortcut but can just speedrun through by rolling through the attacks) but managed to get through it the fast way the second time then had a near death on the boss because Dragon Long Sword 2 handed isn't quick enough to kill the boss before it teleports in hyper mode, so I may need to mess with other weapons in a later run. The real one ended up appearing by me though, so I didn't need to worry about dying while trying to get it.


Also if I keep going through NG+ cycles with this character, I'll eventually have to get no damage runs of every boss fight just to clear the game probably. I already got 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1, and 5-3(unless we count the stupid plague swamp against it, but that's unavoidable) from NG and have managed 1-1 and 3-1 in my NG+. Still avoiding PBWT for the stage runs and only did it for the BP events in NG, but I may try it if I make it to NG+7.

Also playing some Dragonball: Xenoverse, and haven't finished the story stuff on it yet. Up to the Cell saga stuff, but I can already tell there's going to be a lot of grinding for stuff in this game.

[DestroyTheCore]

I started playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. I quite enjoy the game so far despite its flaws. Does DD get any better as you progress? I have seen some deep gameplay videos with grappling big enemies, and I hope the game gets this intense.

Crap dude, I have been obsessed with this lately too! Each vocation has special abilities once you rank enough; dagger users can unlock an evasive roll- really useful. Keep playing the main missions and the game gets really twisted good. Some plot things I did not expect. Now on playthrough two- no pawn run. First order was to throw my main pawn off a cliff and never revive him.

I must have spent nearly 10 hours into this game so far. I changed my vocation to assassin and I really enjoy playing with a bow and a sword. Fights are really dynamic/intuitive and slaying giant foes (like cyclops) are satisfying to defeat.

[Ebbo]

I really didn't expect liking Dragon's Dogma that much but considering I shortly began my next playthrough after the first one it's safe to say it's now up there as one of my favorite games in the recent years. There are lots of clunky stuff but all is forgiven thanks to surprisingly solid atmosphere and I think combat mechanics play a big part in it. Seriously, encountering some of the giant beasts in the midst of the darkest night and fighting for your life is just great. And I really like the music as well.

My first playthrough lasted about 60 hours and there were lots of areas and sidequests I simply missed (I hardly tried exploring Blackbitter Island and I just recently found about Witchwood...) and I only used Strider vocation. With right skills that class turns into meat mincing whirlwind of blades - So much fun! Now during my second playthrough I've been playing Warrior class, adorning ever so fitting Berserk-equipment.

[lilmanjs]

Klax
Before going to bed each night this week I've fired up mame to play me some Klax. Only to find out last night after completing wave 61, and seeing the hit on wave 62 being, there are 100 waves in klax. I don't think I'll ever have the strength to clear this game. It is quite fun to me though to try. I wonder if anyone has done all 100 waves before.