What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Xyga]

I think it's actually more an effect that the quality of your average game today is so much better than 20 years ago. A rising tide lifts all boats after all....

Depends on what you call quality. Today it's mostly the technique, which is only one field of expression for talent and creativity.
There's so much memory space available and graphics power that it's a given that you can polish and add whatever you want to a game if you have time and money.

My feeling is that it's more of a frozen tide now. Kind of stating the obvious, but the stuff that makes elastics snap today is played online, the 'classic genres' are stuck.
You mention Eternal Sonata, nice, but that was over 7 years ago already !

Oops, I was supposed to be done with the negative posts for today. ^^"

[Mischief Maker]

Invisible Inc. with the new contingency plan expansion.

I'd say this expansion is a must-buy if you like the game. It extends the length of a campaign by a few missions, netting you the extra money to really max out your agents, and new mark IV gear for the agents to sport once they reach those max stats. To compensate, the campaign gets much trickier after passing into the extra missions and the agents and drones get much nastier to deal with.

[Squire Grooktook]

I think it's actually more an effect that the quality of your average game today is so much better than 20 years ago. A rising tide lifts all boats after all....

My feeling is that it's more of a frozen tide now. Kind of stating the obvious, but the stuff that makes elastics snap today is played online, the 'classic genres' are stuck.

I kind of disagree with both statements.

I think it's the "classic" genres that have stayed fresh, whilst the games based on cutting edge technology have become dull as all hell.

For example, I think it's far better to be a shmup fan in 2015 then it would to be one in 1995. Even putting aside all the old games you can play, there's new stuff like Ether Vapor, Crimzon Clover, Eschatos, Sora/Suguri, Hellsinker, Strania, The Tales of Alltynex Trilogy, Darius Burst AC, Akashicverse, Mecha Ritz, Satazius, Astebreed, etc. with just as much quality (if not more) then the old line-ups and just as much variety (if not more) then the old line-ups. There's aeons of innovation left in the genre, as many of the games I mentioned don't have any kind of analogue in the oldguard of shmups. Alltynex wears some Taito influence on its sleeve, but it's still a beast of its own both in terms of aesthetics and gameplay.

Similarly, Platinum Games continues the best of brawling/hack and slash while putting their own inimitable style and spin on it. Stuff like Trails In The Sky*, Xenoblade, Etrian Odyssey, Fire Emblem, etc. show that jrpg's still have a lot of life in them for every style. Fighting Games...well they're still pretty profitable, but I think Capcom and Arcsys have kind of become hacks. Skullgirls and KOF13 are great though, and Under Night In Birth feels unique and has the seeds of something great despite its obvious "first game in franchise" balance issues. And then there's From Soft's games like Dark Souls....


Where modern gaming has gotten dull is the mainstream sides of things IMO. The 10 mllion dollar walking simulator rpg's, the ten million dollar qte driven movie simulator action games, the trashy mobile stuff that somehow makes billions of dollars, etc. If you accept these things as a representation of modern gaming (and in many ways, they are, given that they're the most profitable), then I'd say that gaming has gotten less imaginative and lower quality these days. Super Mario World and Sonic The Hedgehog might not be the most hardcore shit, but as representations of the mainstream side of yesteryear, they had far more creativity, whimsy, and nuance then Uncharted/Destiny/Call of Duty/Skyrim/GTA/Halo/etc IMO.




*

Spoiler

While we're on the subject, Trails is probably better then any 90's rpg in terms of both writing and gameplay, and I grew up on those games. So honestly I think this "we've used up all the creaitivty" argument is complete nonsense. Playing a game where almost every dialogue sequence makes me laugh or smile feels so novel. As much as I love the oldguard role playing games, none of them ever did that for me. And like I said, I grew up on them.

[Icarus]

Star Wars: Battlefront (PS4).
I haven't had this much fun with my clothes on in quite some time.

(Also still irretrievably hooked on iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage (iOS).)

[Obiwanshinobi]

Super Mario World and Sonic The Hedgehog might not be the most hardcore shit, but as representations of the mainstream side of yesteryear, they had far more creativity, whimsy, and nuance then Uncharted/Destiny/Call of Duty/Skyrim/GTA/Halo/etc IMO.

What was the latest Halo you've played?
I don't buy consoles for first person shooters, but some news of Halo 5 make it sound like something of a Republic Comando's spiritual successor, that hasn't been done yet even as a mod (that I'd heard of).
Is even the "old" Halo that tired a franchise anyway? Has it spawned a single genuine clone (like GTA and Battlefield have)?

[soprano1]

Why do i always cause a shitstorm when posting...
Got tired of playing MH4U, so i'm replaying Tactics Ogre LUCT on PSP. Maybe will start a NG+ on my old copy of Vagrant Story. Problem is, it's the PAL version.

[qmish]

From Soft's games like Dark Souls....

Where is Armored Core 6, From...

[broken harbour]

Well, talking about Yoshi's Island yesterday over in the "Best game ever" thread motivated me to start Yoshi's Wooly World last night. Haven't gotten too far, only completed world 1 so far, but it's the cutest game I've ever played, it's completely adorable in a way that LBP and Kirby's Epic Yarn never were.

The game takes a lot of inspiration and mechanics from Yoshi's Island, but there's no baby Mario, and as a whole, the game moves slower and slightly imprecise, due to the fact that it's a 3D polygon game on a 2D plane, all games like this have those issues. So far I feel like the game places a bit too much emphasis on item collection, even moreso than Yoshi's Island, but the music is great, and the overall presentation is fantastic. The overworld map runs at like 20fps for some reason tho...

Too early on to come out with a verdict, but I'm enjoying it so far, it's pretty easy, but I expect the difficulty to ramp up in later worlds like most Mario games.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The game takes a lot of inspiration and mechanics from Yoshi's Island, but there's no baby Mario, and as a whole, the game moves slower and slightly imprecise, due to the fact that it's a 3D polygon game on a 2D plane, all games like this have those issues.

Contra: Shattered Soldier felt pretty Contra-sharp to me.

[Doctor Butler]

Dead or Alive 5 - Last Round. After avoiding this series like the plague because of it's sexual, pandering nature, I tired Core Fighters, and realised it's a pretty decent (if not somewhat shallow) game. Plus, my new PS4 was hungry.

[null1024]

Pac-Land [Arcade].
Pretty damned fun. Enemy placement gets really aggressive and tricky.
I really, really, REALLY wish the springboard jumps weren't so stupid though, they're totally obnoxious.
The first one is pretty easy. The next couple are mildly tricky. Eventually, almost every single springboard jump becomes a pixel-perfect affair and you need to mash right perfectly to make it [ow, my hand]. Massive damper on an otherwise neat game.

[BrianC]

Pac-Land [Arcade].
Pretty damned fun. Enemy placement gets really aggressive and tricky.
I really, really, REALLY wish the springboard jumps weren't so stupid though, they're totally obnoxious.
The first one is pretty easy. The next couple are mildly tricky. Eventually, almost every single springboard jump becomes a pixel-perfect affair and you need to mash right perfectly to make it [ow, my hand]. Massive damper on an otherwise neat game.

I still need to get the TG-16 version of this. I loved playing it at Aladdin's Castle back in the day.

[Ed Oscuro]

I didn't play any Sand Scorpion, but about a day's worth of work got my all clear time for RE5 to just over 2 hours, and #140 on the Steam global leaderboards. Not bad considering level bugs and the damn AI aren't much help, also the damned randomness / inadequate signposting of most anything involving Wesker. I still think I can shave off the 9 or so minutes here and there to achieve under 2 hours (my rankings for the last three chapters aren't terribly great).

Also, cheesed my way through that Survivalist title (and the no reloading medal that goes along with it) in RE6. Easy to do even on Normal in Leon's chapter 1-4, just remember chopper pilot guy's advice: "Take cover!"

[LordHypnos]

Was playing Lumines Live again, specifically the heavenly star... course...? IDK what to call these. But yeah, I ended up keeping it going for a pretty long time and getting a lot of nice combos. I got 14,000 odd points and I was really excited, but then I saw how high some people have scored on the online leaderboards (even the weely leaderboard O_o). Some people must be playing it for upwards of an hour, holy shit.

Anyway, still a very fun game. I like the way that you can get combos because of the rhythmic clearing of blocks. That adds a lot of depth that I haven't really gotten into too much, but when I do it's pretty satisfying (actually takes some decent reflexes, I think, or at least a better understanding of how different block patterns fit together, since there is a preview of a couple of blocks ahead)

[Stevens]

I finally received my copy of Pier Solar for the Dreamcast:D Somehow I still manage to know nothing about it.

If it is half as good as Skies I'll be pleased.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Tokyo Road Race shapes up to be my new breakfast game for a couple of days (while the PS2's hooked up TV, that is). Rage for Order by Queensrÿche I'll be likely listening to while out sounds like somethig out of this game.
What I've cherished about Battle Gear since my first contact with 3 is how (using AT) it's playable with twin sticks alone, like OutRun 2006. Main reason why I don't play car games on Dreamcast nearly as much as they (supposedly) deserve my time might be the controller. Does the job, but I don't really wanna hold it.

[Ed Oscuro]

Resident Evil 5 all clear time now down to a fresh 1:54:18! That puts me in the Steam rankings at #80. I think that's about as far as I'll likely be able to go with the AI partner - some of the faster times look legitimate, but I have to wonder about those that are much faster than 1:30. I'm pretty pleased with some of the optimizations I figured out here; the lightning hawk / infinite rocket launcher combo is great.

RIP Alpha Team, they didn't have a single flash grenade
...watching that gives me some ideas. Burst pistol seems to have a much faster draw speed, which could definitely be useful.

[Hagane]

La Mulana remake. A near perfect masterpiece. It's by a looong margin the best of its kind; it takes metroidvanias to the next level. Even though the genre is supposed to be about exploration, the reality is that nearly all metroidvanias are designed to inflate playtime through pointless backtracking to levels populated by irrelevant enemies, and exploration is mostly limited to breaking walls or using a key ability to get somewhere you couldn't get before.

La Mulana makes revisiting rooms interesting since its superb level design links puzzles that span several different rooms, and the world is littered with traps that you must always have to be wary of to avoid sometimes instant death. Puzzles are excellently designed and go well beyond "get double jump skill, search places to use double jump" and "get key to door". Even when keys are needed there's usually a logical reasoning needed to use them (sometimes activating traps when the wrong item is used).

A big problem with these games is that they made platforming much less relevant due to the lack of bottomless pits, something La Mulana solves with its traps. Leveling up (almost always a bad mechanic, but particularly with re-spawning enemies in a nonlinear environment) is thankfully ditched, something that ruined every single new-school Castlevania I played.

Platforming and enemies pose a decent challenge, though the stars are definitely the puzzles. Some of them are genuinely tough, and no matter how obscure they might seem at first the game always gives some sort of hint to solve them. The variety and inventiveness on this field is unprecedented on any game I played.

And the genius isn't just limited to game design, as visuals, music and the game world are also of excellent quality. Bosses are imposing and visually striking (Tiamat being my favorite, her face getting angrier and angrier as her life goes down), music makes epic moments stand out even more, and the underlying story is quite interesting and masterfully integrated in the puzzles, so it never feels intrusive as most games with supposedly deep plots do. The traps and puzzles make perfect sense in its Indiana Jones-esque setting, too.

The game does have a few flaws, such as limiting the amount of text you can save (inexplicable, since almost every bit of text is relevant to the puzzles), the protagonist would look better if he looked more like a Castlevania character instead of a cute SD midget (doesn't mesh well with the backgrounds and even his in-game portrait) and having to buy weights is rather annoying... but these are small downsides to an otherwise great game.

Easily one of my all time non-arcade favorites.

[Blinge]

^ahh I seriously need to go back to this, start again and beat it with no guides or hints.

I think i'd beaten one boss on my old hard drive, and yeah weights are annoying.

[Shepardus]

I have the La-Mulana remake but haven't gotten around to playing it yet. The original version's one of my favorite games of all time (not counting shmups it's second only to Dark Souls) and one of my greatest regrets in gaming is the extent to which I used spoilers and let's plays to get through the game. Thankfully the remake seems to change enough that it'll be at least a partially fresh experience when I finally do play it. From what I hear the remake also tones down some of the most unfairly obscure parts of the original, which also makes it more doable without guides. The original's always amazed me with how effectively it uses just 16 colors to give every zone a unique personality, and with its absolutely godly soundtrack, something that the remake doesn't quite capture, but it makes up for this with less obtuse and awkward gameplay (that UI...) while still preserving that "archaeological" feeling driving the game.

[Ruldra]

La-Mulana is great and all, and the puzzles are indeed the highlight of the game, but some of them can be way too obscure. Even with hints, you might not realize what they mean at all until after you solve them by accident. And there are some parts where no hints will help you. Here's a couple that left me stuck for weeks:

Spoiler

- The skeleton that's actually a weight pedestal in the Gate of Illusion
- The secret passage at the bottom of the Spring in the Sky

I really can't blame people for using spoilers because you get stuck pretty often. I managed to get pretty far on my own, but I've done zero progress in the last month and I'm seriously pissed off right now. I thought that having both map apps and the key fairy would help me progress to the end, but nope.

[Marc]

Was playing Lumines Live again, specifically the heavenly star... course...? IDK what to call these. But yeah, I ended up keeping it going for a pretty long time and getting a lot of nice combos. I got 14,000 odd points and I was really excited, but then I saw how high some people have scored on the online leaderboards (even the weely leaderboard O_o). Some people must be playing it for upwards of an hour, holy shit.

Anyway, still a very fun game. I like the way that you can get combos because of the rhythmic clearing of blocks. That adds a lot of depth that I haven't really gotten into too much, but when I do it's pretty satisfying (actually takes some decent reflexes, I think, or at least a better understanding of how different block patterns fit together, since there is a preview of a couple of blocks ahead)

Put this on again myself last night and remembered why I stopped playing it, games on the endless mode take three hours +. Still one of my favourites ever though, alongside Meteos, which I really need to buy another DS for - it's not a patch on 360.

Been playing the Transformers game on PS4, even the nostalgia value and amazing graphics can't paper over the fact that this is just one style of game I've never been able to get into.

[Immryr]

I bought VVVVVV today in the steam sale, what a great game! I'm not super into precision platformers, but this has instantly grabbed me. with this and downwell I feel like I've got a lot of game for like £3.

also, bloodborne.

[Hagane]

Spoiler

- The skeleton that's actually a weight pedestal in the Gate of Illusion
- The secret passage at the bottom of the Spring in the Sky

Sometimes you don't get a direct hint from skeletons or tablets, but you can infer a solution by looking at your surroundings.

Spoiler

You can guess the first since there's not much you can do except falling from the opening floor. The other is the one to the right of the room that connects to the Temple of the Sun, right? I found it by guessing too, since I deducted that there should be a secret passage to the room with the drains, and that you should find it by going to the right.

Also, don't do what I did at first and write down every bit of text you find on stone tablets. Even something that might seem trivial or just story related can have a clue for something that happens much later. A big puzzle on the Tower of the Goddess has hints scattered at places far away from it, and what you need to do is impossible to figure out otherwise.

[lilmanjs]

Spear Reloaded
A Wolf3d mod I've been going through again. Helps after all this time to realize grenades don't damage the bosses. This is done by KFH Games. They have taken Spear of Destiny and turned it upside down and shaken out everything to create a really good Total Conversion. The level music is the only thing unchanged aside from the story, and overall feel of the mod. Love standing back and picking off guards in quick fashion for quick kill bonuses. Also featured are mine cart rides and a slew of new weapons. Worth checking out. Used to go by the name of Spear of Destiny Reloaded.

[broken harbour]

Bought a PS4 and a few games on a Black Friday deal....played a few games for about 30 minutes each tonight...

Uncharted 1-3 is weird in 60 fps, while it help during gun battles, during cutscenes it's very, very weird, like watching 80s british tv....

Transformers Devastation seems super cool, but I only spent 15 minutes with it... definitely going back to this one.

The Order: 1886 seems very shallow and I so don't care, it's so.... pretty.... my god, I don't know if I can go back to last gen to finish up my queue after this...

I have a few other games ordered for PS4 that will arrive in a few days... Tomb Raider, FF-X/X-2 Remaster (I have this on PS3 but the PS4 version is supposed to be even better) and Tearaway.


I'm almost finished Yoshi's Wooly World, on world 6, which I assume is the final world, overall, I like it, but it borrows a little too much from Yoshi's Island, some of the bosses are nearly identical, and the game is a bit too easy. Overall it's worth your time, but buy it when it's on sale.

[Immryr]

why would you get a ps4 and not get the number one reason to own a ps4, bloodborne?!?!

[Khan]

Level 45 on fallout 4 and im bored of the game so didnt play at all last 2 days....i think ill stop doing those boring repeatable quests now and just go finish the story as the game has been out for a little over 2 weeks and already some retailers were doing the game for £30 (£10 less than what I paid :/ )

Just a quick heads up Ultra Street Fighter 4 is 40% off on psn for ps4 atm I bought it last night and it totally kicks ass!

[BulletMagnet]

why would you get a ps4 and not get the number one reason to own a ps4, bloodborne?!?!

I actually bought a PS4 the other day myself, and am currently waiting on Bloodborne; I do want to play it eventually, but if it's anything like the recent Souls games there will eventually be a re-release with the DLC included, and I have a backlog a mile long so I don't have to be in any rush, heh.

FF-X/X-2 Remaster (I have this on PS3 but the PS4 version is supposed to be even better)

I hadn't heard this, how is it improved for PS4?

[Immryr]

the version with the dlc included is out now!