What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[BrianC]

Nice! It would have been especially funny if you found Link's Awakening in a crane game given the crane hijinx that can happen in it.

[Squire Grooktook]

I think I appreciate it a lot more now, this game is a real work of art and much more creative and unique than OoT.

*high five*

[Blinge]

But I saw a copy randomly in a crane game of all places and decided to play just for the hell of it. Won the game on the first try, brand new copy for a dollar

whaa, it's possible to win those things? I'm like this: https://youtu.be/ZdBHxxxRjZk?t=5m27s

Congrats tho, that's one of my favourite games evar.

[Immryr]

I played through xeodrifter on ps4 over the past two days. Quite a fun little metroid-like. The boss recycling is lazy but the fights themselves evolve just enough to keep you interested. The going into the background gimmick is nice. Funnily enough the feel of the game reminded me of ufouria on the nes more than metroid, even though the weapons and upgrades are pure metroid

[Strider77]

MGS5, Battle Mania and Devil Crash MD.

[Blinge]

Just began Romancing SaGa, a fan translated SNES rom.

Man.. the non linearity feels pretty fresh I must say. No idea what I'm doing though! There was a town overrun by zombies, so I left to clear out some sewer in the capitol, came back and the town was fine. Guess I missed the boat on that quest.

[MR_Soren]

Just began Romancing SaGa, a fan translated SNES rom.

Man.. the non linearity feels pretty fresh I must say. No idea what I'm doing though! There was a town overrun by zombies, so I left to clear out some sewer in the capitol, came back and the town was fine. Guess I missed the boat on that quest.

I remember reading about that in Nintendo Power or EGM in the early 90s. I always wondered why Square thought Americans wouldn't enjoy an RPG with branching story paths. Sounded like a lot of fun to me at the time. I believe there were at least two sequels on the SFC as well.

[Immryr]

Played through xeodrifter again today. There is one health upgrade I just cannot find and its really annoying me. I'm not really a completion its type of guy normally so I don't know why it's bugging me. This last upgrade is either really well hidden or I'm over looking something really obvious, not sure which.


-edit- found it!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Just began Romancing SaGa, a fan translated SNES rom.

Man.. the non linearity feels pretty fresh I must say. No idea what I'm doing though! There was a town overrun by zombies, so I left to clear out some sewer in the capitol, came back and the town was fine. Guess I missed the boat on that quest.

I remember reading about that in Nintendo Power or EGM in the early 90s. I always wondered why Square thought Americans wouldn't enjoy an RPG with branching story paths. Sounded like a lot of fun to me at the time. I believe there were at least two sequels on the SFC as well.

Once Enix devoured Square, releasing PS2 remake in the US wasn't a problem anymore.

[lilmanjs]

Klax (Prototype)
So been firing up mame and checking out random things I've not heard of that I've grabbed. Well Klax I have played to death a lot, but the prototype version never. I'm addicted to it, mainly for the cheesy Hooray! each time you clear a wave. They really toned down the difficulty when they made the actual release version. This one has different backgrounds, but still the same game we all know and want to kill after 20 waves.

[Obiwanshinobi]

So I seem to be near the final boss in the desert temple of whatever in Nier (PS3). I must say the micro-tapping/bullet hell chamber drove me up the wall...

[Blinge]

Just began Romancing SaGa, a fan translated SNES rom.

Man.. the non linearity feels pretty fresh I must say. No idea what I'm doing though! There was a town overrun by zombies, so I left to clear out some sewer in the capitol, came back and the town was fine. Guess I missed the boat on that quest.

I remember reading about that in Nintendo Power or EGM in the early 90s. I always wondered why Square thought Americans wouldn't enjoy an RPG with branching story paths. Sounded like a lot of fun to me at the time. I believe there were at least two sequels on the SFC as well.

Well according to HG101, Romancing SaGa was slammed by western reviewers at the time for not being linear enough, complaining that plot is sparse and they didn't know what to do/weren't directed enough. Oh the irony.

[Mischief Maker]

I just picked up Satellite Reign.

First of all, the art direction in this game is superb. This is bar-none the most beautiful cyberpunk vision I've ever seen in a video game. I'd put it alongside Trine as examples of great artistic vision squeezing the absolute best out of so-so graphics engines.

The gameplay itself is like an expanded version of the original Syndicate, but the open world reminds me of the Sega Genesis version of Shadowrun.

Still a little buggy, but isn't that par for the course in an open world game?

Positive!

[JBC]

I've been in abit of a House Of The Dead mood lately so today I gave IV another go using the regular PS3 controller instead of the Move. It's still soul crushingly hard to me as compared to the others. I-III are a cakewalk compared. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

After that I dusted off the Dreamcast for another look at Zombie Revenge which for all of it's faults is still a pretty fun game. Then again, I'm the kinda guy that gets a thrill out of overcoming bad game design.

It's too bad we'll probably never see a true continuation of the series. I'd love a fifth entry by members of previous dev teams still left at Sega, if there are any.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I've been in abit of a House Of The Dead mood lately so today I gave IV another go using the regular PS3 controller instead of the Move. It's still soul crushingly hard to me as compared to the others. I-III are a cakewalk compared. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Didn't you play 1-3 with a lightgun, mouse or Wiimote by any chance? That would explain a lot.
I think Ninja Assault PS2 port played with a gamepad adds the just right level of aim assist to remain enjoyable in its own right.

Cool story about Halo: Combat Evolved PC port - the devs originally planned to rebalance difficulty so it wouldn't be too easy played with mouse and keyboard, but it turned out taking away aim assist was enough to make for a decent challenge, thus eventually nothing but controls got changed.

[JBC]

I have 2 & III for Wii & prefer them on there, but typically play III & IV on PS3 with Move using the Sharpshooter peripheral. III is still easy for me this way, but maybe it's because of the automatic reloading & experience. IV is not so forgiving.

I'm pretty good at finessing the Move with it's picky detection & mediocre engineering, but IV still gives me fits. I feel like the window of opportunity to hit a boss closes much sooner than in previous HotD games. I think maybe next go I'll try not to use the machine gun like a machinegun.

[Some-Mist]

Mgs v on ps3. Didn't realize they released it on old gen til this weekend, and finally got to play it today. Chp 6 so far and it's not too bad. My only complaint is that the mission structure is really similar to peace walker which I didn't like.. but still having fun. I was gonna be playing armikrog for the next week but it got delayed again until Sept 30th... so this should keep me busy.

Had a handful of buddies come over yesterday and we played 2v2 and 3v3 rocket league. Level 24 right now and surprised I'm not burned out yet.

[ACSeraph]

I Am Bread

I was hungry when I bought this.

It's amusing, and when things go as planned it feels incredibly fun, but I can't say it's a good game exactly. The camera is terrible and mostly the challenge is overcoming the horrendous controls, but I think that's kinda the point. In any case I'm enjoying it, even if it's more of a strange virtual toy than an actual game.

Kung Fury: Street Rage

I cannot express my love for this game enough. It's incredibly simplistic yet I can play it for hours and never get bored. The trailer makes it look like a beat em up, but it isn't. There is only one endless stage and enemies coming from the left and right. You press left and right to attack them, and each enemy type requires a different sequence of attacks to dispatch. It's kind of like the old Hokuto no Ken side scrollers boiled down to their base elements.

The scoring is where it really shines. basically the point is to never get hit, and never miss your attacks. So you have to instantly judge the necessary attack patterns and distances and your multiplier goes up for each kill. The enemy formations are also random so no credit is ever the same. If you whiff an attack the multiplier drops by 25% and you are left open to attack, and if you get hit by something the multiplier drops by 50. The higher the multiplier goes the faster and more numerous the enemies, until things get excessively intense. It's like if the face punching part of old beat 'em ups just never ended; one endless perfectly timed blood spattered combo. It's really mesmerizing. Only thing that could make this game better would be online leaderboards.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Playing Witcher 3. I like it pretty well. Other than it being very buggy. The game just crashed on me twice in a row. Then another time I was swimming and not anywhere near water. Could see myself sinking a lot of time into it anyway. One thing that is annoying me is how I can't pick up herbs on horseback. Why can't he just lean over and grab them? I don't want to get off the horse just to do that.

Onechanbara Z II is quite fun. Switching between four character on the fly is pretty neat. All the chaos going on the screen and snappy controls help to make me ignore it's many shortcomings. The level design is really awful for sure. Still, it's fun anyway. Much better than the one on 360. I couldn't stand that one. Huge kitsch factor.

[BulletMagnet]

Kung Fury: Street Rage

The way you describe it sounds rather similar to One Finger Death Punch, which I (and others on here) enjoyed...not sure if the comparison is entirely accurate though.

[Ruldra]

Kung Fury: Street Rage

The way you describe it sounds rather similar to One Finger Death Punch, which I (and others on here) enjoyed...not sure if the comparison is entirely accurate though.

Just watched a playthrough of Kung Fury and it plays exactly like OFDP. But the latter has more stuff going for it - unlockable abilities, boss fights, weapons, the lightsaber/nunchaku fights...I'd recommend getting it instead of Kung Fury.

[Ed Oscuro]

Finished up Dragon's Dogma, at least through the "endgame" part - the game never lets you know what's coming next, though I should have guessed that the "can't come back" bit from the 20 riftstones wouldn't be like the message before Grigori. The ending is...well, what, a defense of suicide? - doesn't really bother me because that's expected at that point, and feels like it's not a part of the game I've been playing for a long while now. Basically, I got all the shit outta the way, and I guess I'll go on to New Game+ sometime, unless I can figure something out here. Will be a pain getting the unlocked Everfall again, if I do have to start over, as I'm still stuck with pretty bad choices on daggers (the Dragon dagger isn't that good, but the bow seems okay). On the plus side, most everything is getting to be trivial now.

This is one of those games where I feel better for having played through much of the expansion content first, since the harder enemies and Everfall room designs get semi-recycled in Bitterblack Isle. A couple days ago I finished up my run through the second ground-level door there - the Bishop had me quite frustrated because the goddamn pawns refused to use Silence. I also cheesed out a number of big enemies - before switching back to Assassin in a hurry to get the Assassin STR level bonuses before level 100, I found that the Mystic Archer's multi-targeting Hunter Bolt was actually quite useful for doing more damage to enemies like the Prisoner Gorecyclops (who turned out to be trivial after all, due to his lack of any vertical reach) and even undead drakes (though those require a much better weapon than a rarefied Herald's Helix, it seems).

But now I've found Wind / Gale Harness. Actually, the game doesn't seem well designed in some regards - many skills / augments are totally useless, and damage potential isn't the same across classes. I didn't get even the day 1 patch for Dark Arisen, so some things like rift crystal costs are insane, but I know that the patches don't make mage or fighter useful again. Strider is nice to have, though, for Leaping Stone at the entrance to Bitterblack Isle. For the main pawn, Ranger now seems quite interesting, as I've realized they are very accurate. I just need better equipment (again). Having to play through with equipment, to get it dragonforged, for your pawns to use is definitely an interesting mechanic.

I also finished up Hexen II with the Paladin on the second highest difficulty, just skipping the last two bosses - now there's a game with balance issues. Aside from a lot of other problems with movement (getting hung up on the edges of floors, for instance) and engine bugs (the latest Ultimate Quake Engine version of the game, uqe_hexen2_117, still has a bug in the core game related to the expansion and the -standardprogs switch, and the game does like its totally black flame sconces, too) I found one major problem with the game is the heavy, heavy reliance on items and how the level design can really boost or hinder your effectiveness, even though one would think that ranged weapons mitigate these problems. The game has never totally clicked with me, outside of maybe the zen moments of combat against some of the boosted cannon fodder (were-things in the Mayan levels; Mummies in Egypt) - I'm adept enough to do the melee forward-backwards step dance against Archers when I can only see some surrounding walls and blood splattters when there's room to execute properly. Bounce weapons can also be fun, although the pally's bouncy axe is only slightly effective as the major ranged weapon with a dedicated ammo pool and the bounce effect is usually wasted. Some of the unique class variants on the Glyph of the Ancients powers are neat too; the Paladin's is a sticky bomb that only the Fallen Angels can shield.

After thinking about how items are supposed to work, the game design makes more sense. Unfortunately, breaking down the items, I see:

-totally useless items (the Torch, and the Chaos Device aka panic reset)
-items I deign not to use (invisibility, summoning stone)
-items that are only useful in special situations (the torch and invisibility, and the last Ring of Flight in the game isn't even needed to snag the item in its room - 3D movement is particularly troublesome in Hexen II)
-items that serve no real gameplay purpose other than freebies that take up a slot (the sheepifying spell crook, the force cube), and finally
-items that are more trouble than they're worth (the disc of repulsion only is valuable if you can't tank the game's few homing blasts, and straferunning negates the need for the boots of speed)

...and the typically random designs of the Glyph's class variants means that there's a lot of items to scroll through, only some of which are useful. Raven's solution was to offer hotkeys, but many players won't set them up and it feels like a bad solution to the horrible item inventory. The default method is to slowly scroll through a menu from left to right, one button tap at a time, with no wrap-around feature. I don't think item hotkeys are bound by default in the regular game, nor are they mentioned the manual (only the slow method). The slowness of this method is actually a major problem during boss fights in arenas without health or mana, as precious time from your item boosts (invincibility and the weapon powerup, in particular) gets eaten away as you slowly scroll through the menu looking for the health and mana refills (what's more, using the Krater can waste half your potential mana pool, if you're using only one mana type; the split ammo system here incentivizes using weapons which don't efficiently use damage).

Speaking of mana, again, the game is really quite free with discs of repulsion, and a methodical player will max their count of Kraters of Might and Mystic Urns by the Egyptian levels. Unfortunately, things which would be nice to have in larger amounts - like Glyphs and just basic health / mana refills - aren't there. Due to the often cramped quarters and the split mana pools, dealing with ammo management is more troublesome than even Hexen.

Finally, the Paladin is a laugh due to his special power Divine Intervention, which encourages you to quicksave at low health so you can try to proc Divine Intervention - it's a semi-rare effect on taking normally fatal damage that fills your life and gives temporary invincibility, power amp, and returns you to the level start. That's an even worse mechanic than Gale Harness! The boosts Intervention gives are nice to play with, a bit like receiving quad damage in Quake and running through the levels blasting - except for the Chaos Device panic button activation, so you'll have to sprint to get back to where you started. It's also usually wasteful of mana, which is not plentiful in this game.

That's not the end of interface problems - the stupid designers at Raven decided that both of the Paladin's blade weapons need a flourish animation that can't be cancelled before doing anything else, to be played through every time you bring up the weapon. This lowers the Pally's effective DPS and limits him from executing some weapon combinations efficiently, and possibly even means that scrolling through the vorpal sword (ironically, the "fall-back" weapon for much of the game, it seems - I'm not sure but the regular gauntlets seem obsolete against even a sword with no blue mana reserve) is slower than switching through other weapons - though the Gauntlet also has a useless flourish and the staff's draw animation is also slow. Once again, this hinders people who don't like reaching all over their keyboards to do simple things. Thank goodness for Valve software and the sensible quick selection menu of Half-Life.

I find the most difficult parts after the last two bosses are actually starting a new hub, unless you decide to swallow a Krater of Might and Mystic Urn for refills.

The Fallen Angel Lords are a kind of epitome of the game's problems - if you can get close (dependent on level design) or have a strong weapon that can do a huge burst of damage without alerting them, they're trivial to assassinate. But if they see you coming, or they can fly up and away, they'll use their shielding and instant death rays to grind you into slurry in a hurry.

In short, the game has a lot of interesting ideas - but they've built up in the drain and now we have a clog which the antiquated UI designs can't effectively manage, and many other design decisions and level designs only serve to hamper the player's ability to execute.

Once again, it sounds like Assassin, she of amazingly gimped INT stat, wins the day for tomed grenades. I think these do enough damage to kill unaware Fallen Angel lords outright, and are efficient against bosses as well.

Random interesting point: The Crusader hails from the Roman hub ("Septimus"), and worships some randomly named fake deity. But inside the Roman hub worlds, there's a Temple of Mars and I think even references to him as the war god. In-game, Septimus is referred to as the most militaristic society, but in the manual, it's called a land of decadence, full of unprepared slobs. It's interesting that the ingame assets don't jive with the flavor text which attempt to create the more typical generic fantasy lore of the previous games.

Finally, I Killing Floor 2 at the discounted price, and while it looks nice it feels entirely too floaty for my liking. I like a more stable aim point, rather than feeling I'm just throwing water balloons at a wall. It is nice to get lots of headshots, but I still don't really feel in control, but instead like I'm skating through piles of heads and the like.

[soprano1]

Got back to Borderlands 2 after stopping for a while. Had my save in the boat after killing Captain Flynt, right now i'm doing sidequests after saving Roland. The mutant in the sewers sidequest was my favourite
"Hey! Your not June!"

[Icarus]

Add iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls - Starlight Stage (iOS) to Tokyo 7th Sisters and Love Live: School Idol Festival (both iOS) in my daily rhythm mobage rotation. (Along with iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls and iDOLM@STER: Million Live…)
RIP all of my free time.

[Immryr]

Completed metal gear solid 2 this morning. Despite what sky kid says I enjoyed the stupid story. The only things I didn't really like were the jack/rose crap and the lack of good boss fights.

I also got the speed runner trophy for completing xeodrifter in under an hour. I'm not normally someone who specifically tries to get trophies or achievements but as I enjoyed this game and didn't think it would be hard to do I thought it might be fun. I got it on my first try, but I had already completed the game three times at that point, so my route was already set. Fun game but I'm done with it now.

[Gespenst]

Recently got addicted with Megamek thanks to the news of impending Battletech TBS kickstarter by Shadowrun dev (Harebrained Schemes).

[Mischief Maker]

Recently got addicted with Megamek thanks to the news of impending Battletech TBS kickstarter by Shadowrun dev (Harebrained Schemes).

Have you tried Titans of Steel: Warring Suns? It's another battletech game that used to be commercial but went freeware.

[Gespenst]

Actually I've played ToS (although briefly) years before the first time I heard of Megamek. Maybe I'll consider coming back when I have some free time.

[ACSeraph]

Kung Fury: Street Rage

The way you describe it sounds rather similar to One Finger Death Punch, which I (and others on here) enjoyed...not sure if the comparison is entirely accurate though.

Just watched a playthrough of Kung Fury and it plays exactly like OFDP. But the latter has more stuff going for it - unlockable abilities, boss fights, weapons, the lightsaber/nunchaku fights...I'd recommend getting it instead of Kung Fury.

I'll definitely need to check this out then as I wasn't aware of it. I can tell you though that Kung Fury is great for what it is, and the ultra-simplicity and total lack of features is actually one of its good points in a strange sort of way. Taken for what it is it's a great game.

[BulletMagnet]

If you have an X360 One Finger Death Punch actually released there first, and like all XBLA games there's a demo of it if you want to give it a try before throwing down a buck or two.