What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Mischief Maker]

I am bound and determined to beat King's Bounty: The Legend once and for all.

Unfortunately the game isn't being cooperative as I've created a mage specializing in destructive spells but the random number generator steadfastly refuses to spit out Fire Rain or Lightning, so I'm under-performing with Ice Snakes for the time being.

[Blinge]

speaking of mitey...a day or so ago I metamorphed mitey into his new form, but I've been holding off on doing my entire party at once just to make sure I don't get steamrolled in different encounters. no idea who's good yet

I wouldn't worry about which familiars are good or not unless you're doing the postgame stuff. That also applies to metamorphing familiars; holding off until they reach the max level (varies per species) before metamorphing ensures they'll get higher stats in the long run.
It's debatable whether or not the harder post-game stuff actually requires such minmaxing, however.

[Some-Mist]

speaking of mitey...a day or so ago I metamorphed mitey into his new form, but I've been holding off on doing my entire party at once just to make sure I don't get steamrolled in different encounters. no idea who's good yet

I wouldn't worry about which familiars are good or not unless you're doing the postgame stuff. That also applies to metamorphing familiars; holding off until they reach the max level (varies per species) before metamorphing ensures they'll get higher stats in the long run.
It's debatable whether or not the harder post-game stuff actually requires such minmaxing, however.

thanks for the advice! I try not to look too far into it - at least during an initial playthrough - to not spoil anything story-wise that I might accidentally come across. I sort of did that with the "water battle" that I saw a picture for. It's good to know that I can still play through it casually without being punished severely for not getting the right team/metamorphing too early or not at all.

I'm assuming I don't need to spend as much time as I am getting all these stamp page filled too... though the completionist side in me can't skip a side quest.

[Blinge]

Ah some of the errand rewards are really good though so I wouldn't consider it wasting time.

The game is about coffee. my missus was constantly using the coffee items cause she relied too heavily on magic.
You go to towns and get stamps on your... cafe reward card.
The reward is sometimes coffee.
Ni No Koffee.

Heh, the only other game i can think of that equates coffee to MP is Bioshock.

[Some-Mist]

I think I like the name ni no koffee more than the actual name

makes sense tho. the battle at old smokey is when we first had to use coffee. esther blows through magic like it's nothing. even when you set the battle tactic to just "heal me" she some how runs into the path of the boss and gets herself killed. had to expend two coffee there to keep ourselves alive and then to run around throwing magic from ollie-boy.
I personally like getting up close and personal with mite but that wasn't working too well...other than the few times we tripped the weak point and could go wild with the monkey.

I think deadly premonition uses coffee to an extent but it's not so much for healing as it is for energy or something along those lines.

[Blinge]

And divination of course!

esther blows through magic like it's nothing.

lol yep. Oh, you've been hit for 1 damage? let me spunk some MP and heal you...

[Obiwanshinobi]

So many things WET (PS3) does wrong on a number of levels (or it's that I've been too sober for too few days), yet I keep feeling far from angry with it (merely pissed off sometimes). To name just one curio, look at the lighting inside wine cellar - the light outside is daylight, but light beams falling inside are coloured like moonlight. There are artificial light sources (fueled lanterns) and character's real time shadow is cast relatively to those, but then there's plenty of brightness without any visible light source whatsoever... It is a CELLAR, mind you - Vagrant Story rendered those more convincingly. As a matter of fact, I can't think of another game rendering this very "video game" scenery such awkwardly at the moment.
At the same time the environment is so derivative of quite a few PS2 games I treasure (seaside, lighthouse - you get the picture) I started to suspect some of the particularly ropey game design to be meant as pastiche (Nier did something like that more than once). Makes for a sentimental journey from MDK's descent to Prince of Persia antics...

[atheistgod1999]

Double Dragon NES

[BIL]

If you end up playing the sequels, give the Famicom version of DDII a go on Hard. Much tougher and more interesting than the NES's "Supreme Master" difficulty. Bionic knee is no longer an instant win, and enemy aggression is relentless. It's also more user-friendly, allowing continues by default, and letting you play the entire game on any difficulty. NES forces you to play on Supreme Master, which only equals FC "Normal" anyway.

FC DDIII is somewhat easier than the NES version, though the gap's nowhere as profound as that between NES and FC DDII. Enemy kill quotas are a bit lower, player HP is slightly higher, game otherwise plays identically.

/technos evangelism ;3

[Ed Oscuro]

Got the Pro achievement for RE4 HD PC, without using the Special rocket launcher. Played through three chapters with just the handcannon after, because I had tons of money - knowing where every collectible in the game is, plus 36K+ of gold eggs that the game gave me at the first trip through the farm for some reason, will do that. Guess it's time to put this one to bed for a while; I've always been disappointed that Separate Ways is such poor fan fiction to the main game (though I've beat all the bonus content already, again) and that the bonuses do nothing to improve the longevity of the game. Interesting how stuff that usually causes me trouble now doesn't (Chief Mendez went down on the second try, Krauser got a few lucky kills in at the boss point because of the QTE shit, but I managed to completely stunlock him to death with the knife), but some things that used to cause no problems now cause trouble. One Pro mode oddity: Mike (in the chopper) is now useless. I think all he does is blow up the first gunner (I probably didn't even need that help; you have to aim well over their heads with the rifle to hit, for some reason, at least the later ones in the room with two switches). That first chaingun guy caused me quite a bit of agony with the forced cutscenes putting you in harm's way, though of course it's still possible to get back under cover before he starts firing it is annoying to have to wait it out. Trying to run straight around to the right and under that position leads to another forced cutscene, skippable, thankfully, but the PC version isn't set up well to do that.

Capcom are lazy asses so the infamous x + c QTE combo probably won't ever get fixed. This means that you basically must plug in a controller at some points, mainly Verdugo's harrassment of Leon before he appears on the ground. Beyond that the mouse + keyboard control is a dream and feels much better than any controller did. I've gotten all four levels of bottle caps in just one or at most two plays of each shooting gallery stage, for example.

Other stuff:
Alan Wake is not too bad now that I've got the hang of it (and, of course, got rid of the awful motion blur). Nightmare doesn't really live up to the name but some of the group hugs are tough to get through. I wish it had done a number of things better, but as a breath of fresh air I can't complain too much. Also, Alan is a huge dick.

Lost Planet: Liking it more than I thought I might, but the cutscenes make me shiver every time.

Spec Ops: The Line: Not really feeling this one, but I don't have much time in it. Does a lot of interesting things, but the setting still isn't grabbing me.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - this one seesaws between being frustrating and boring, which undermines a lot of the goodwill it manages to generate. Not sure I'll bother toughing it out, to be honest, with more important things to do than sit through this. The game is often obtuse; it sets up all kinds of systems and then sometimes doesn't implement them, for no apparent reason. It seemed to me that you couldn't often do the dodge move on the Ice Titan, but you can on the Stone Idol Titan; just as annoyingly, you can't dodge the Stone Idol Titan's hands when it goes to swat you, and I noticed this caught up some people even doing some "gameplay demos." The stupid walkthrough writers seemed to all fail to mention that all you are supposed to do is climb to predesignated safe spots after breaking the Stone Idol's medallions. In any case it's annoying shit that really doesn't belong in a game like this.

Wolfenstein: The New Order - I played The Old Blood first, as it's a prequel, and had a fun enough time with it. The New Order never clicked with me in the same way; it's got a lot of problems and doesn't really go anywhere or do anything interesting. Sure, you go to a concentration camp, but it's sanitized and the 'human interest' stuff is through a series of unconvincingly acted characters offering useless fetch quests. The moon is basically an excuse to put BJ into a series of metal corridors. The endgame is a series of awful semi-puzzle nonsense that I don't want to touch again anytime soon. Even the philosophical messages the game tries to ram home seem off-point - not just for the mistreated character of BJ but for people in general. Machine Games managed to piss off a number of Beatles fans with this one, but even if I could defend the premise of "what would it really be like if you had to knuckle under just to survive," there's not a lot that is useful or even thoughtful here; "parody" is not necessarily commentary. In many ways it feels like Iron Storm with improved (?) graphics and a less thoughtfully done narrative, which is alarming as Iron Storm's narrative was a relatively simplistic attack on commercial culture and war.

[Some-Mist]

up to hamelin in ni no kuni. the fairyland is by far the best area of the game so far although the "mother stomach" segment was pretty disappointing after they set the entire area up so well. I was really hoping you'd start out on the tongue and be able to turn around and overlook the mountains, but then it was a lazy 2D section with a bunch of 1-room doors.

did a bunch of farming for familiars and now have a pretty decent setup
oliver - lemahl, bighorn, naja
esther - gogo, wishing whambat, yellow buncher
swaine - hurly, purrloiner, tu-whit

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - this one seesaws between being frustrating and boring, which undermines a lot of the goodwill it manages to generate. Not sure I'll bother toughing it out, to be honest, with more important things to do than sit through this. The game is often obtuse; it sets up all kinds of systems and then sometimes doesn't implement them, for no apparent reason. It seemed to me that you couldn't often do the dodge move on the Ice Titan, but you can on the Stone Idol Titan; just as annoyingly, you can't dodge the Stone Idol Titan's hands when it goes to swat you, and I noticed this caught up some people even doing some "gameplay demos." The stupid walkthrough writers seemed to all fail to mention that all you are supposed to do is climb to predesignated safe spots after breaking the Stone Idol's medallions. In any case it's annoying shit that really doesn't belong in a game like this.

I don't really remember my playthrough (probably because it isn't a memorable experience), and it was a one and done for me. I didn't even bother with the sequel. when it released it did look very pretty though.

[Bonus!]

I've been on a bit of a platformer binge. After reaching 100% in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (on top, I miss only about a handful of puzzle pieces), I put it aside for a while, but I intend to tackle hard mode in the future. I went through New Super Mario Bros. U, which goes from being good about 90% of the time to being great at the very end, with some pretty tough bonus levels. 100%'ed that one too. Currently, I'm playing New Super Luigi U. I'm not very far yet, but the format "very short levels" + "high difficulty" is very appealing. I like it a lot; my initial impression is better than NSMB U.

[soprano1]

Stardew Valley, the Harvest Moon killer.

[Ed Oscuro]

Not that anybody's keeping score, but after Normal mode, RE4 Pro isn't a big jump in difficulty. I guess a lot of it comes down to using your melee and quick door checkpoints judiciously, and knowing how to deal with various things. I was stunned to read an old post from somebody who had trouble with Salazar - he's one of the easiest bosses I've seen in a long time, but you have to save rifle ammo and pay attention to some very unsubtle clues. That's the thing about RE4: It isn't a very timing-precise game on the whole, so it does need its length to some degree to keep encounters fresh. On the other hand, this characteristic probably allowed it to have more mainstream appeal than a Devil May Cry title might, and probably also allowed more people to complete the campaign. Same for the dual Garradors - these haven't been a challenge for a long time. Just use the same strategy as the first garrador, and they'll be easy pickings. They even obligingly get stuck on walls occasionally. There certainly are a lot of ways to screw yourself over in this game - a good one would be getting to the Island's research facility without any rifle ammunition, or not thinking about the infrared scope, and letting Regeneradors chew up all your healing stock. It's been so long since I really tried to just hose down a Regenerador that I've forgotten what it would be like to play without enough ammo, though - as it is I end up selling packs of the stuff. Perhaps sometime I should play through in a more "serious" way; there's still a lot of challenge, but it's so easy just to use the handcannon or abuse doors.

Still trudging through Alan Wake's Nightmare mode; being methodical helps with the collectibles, but it is still annoying not to know what chapter the two stray supply chests or the few thermoses are. I am interested to try out the semi-sequel American Nightmare, but I don't want to just rush through the experience and leave a bunch of mediocre shit in my backlog to look forward to, heh.

Some platformers sound good right now, maybe an RPG even.

[BulletMagnet]

Pharaoh Rebirth, a platformer that's not technically a "Metroidvania" since its levels aren't connected into a single map, but it borrows several elements from that sub-genre. Nice visuals and pretty good mechanics; there's a demo here (in Japanese) if you want to get an idea of what you're in for. The Steam version has a "+" after it to suggest it's been enhanced and/or expanded in some way, though I wouldn't know exactly how.

[Leandro]

Still on Resident Evil 6. Finished Ada's quest first, then Helena's, and now I'm at Chris' episodes.
I'm enjoying his levels the most... Really satisfied with this game, lots of content while still throwing new things at me.

[Blinge]

I started Skyrim, then thought "..ehhh" and downloaded Elder Scrolls I: Arena so I'm playing that too. The nightlife is pretty rough.

It's a bit silly really, I'm juggling too many things.

[Ghegs]

Pharaoh Rebirth, a platformer that's not technically a "Metroidvania" since its levels aren't connected into a single map, but it borrows several elements from that sub-genre. Nice visuals and pretty good mechanics; there's a demo here (in Japanese) if you want to get an idea of what you're in for. The Steam version has a "+" after it to suggest it's been enhanced and/or expanded in some way, though I wouldn't know exactly how.

I played through Pharaoh Rebirth+ a week or two ago, I liked it for the most part. There were a few sections that I thought were really dumb (turret section in a 2D sidescroller? Really?) but overalll I enjoyed it. Didn't 100% it, though.

[Some-Mist]

haven't been home this week to play more ni no kuni, so yesterday I played some ori and the blind forest and some day of the tentacle remastered. pretty far in tentacle

Spoiler

just got the tentacle costume over to my 3rd character

and only 2 abilities so far in ori

Spoiler

currently chasing down the creature that stole the water orb

day of the tentacle is a replay for me but it's still as great as I remember, and ori is a first-time run through.

tonight's taco night, which means I'll be in the kitchen playing games and giving a hand when needed, so I nabbed rollercoaster tycoon 2 for some nostalgia throwback.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Project CARS. Or as it seems to be in my hands, Pastor Maldonado Simulator 2016. Basically been driving round Spa getting used to the handling and throttle without any aids turned on, will try out some races at the weekend but first impressions are pleasingly realistic F1 physics and damage.

[pokemon123]

street fighter 3 3rd strike, trying to 1cc arcade mode. It's easy up until guile who just feels stupid. I've been trying for three months now and can't do it. I've tried the shoryuken strategy but it's not working.

[Blinge]

haha^ what's wrong with this picture.

Good lord the dungeons in Arena are long, I spent an in-game month down there, and enemies have a habit of spawning right next to you, slightly off screen.
With my limited cRPG experience I'm starting to view this game as "like King's Field, but shit."

[Mischief Maker]

The Elder Scrolls games have always sucked. They're more tech demos than enjoyable cRPGs.

[EmperorIng]

I am playing Code Veronica on the DC for the first time. The aiming, especially with dual pistols, seems a bit off, and it feels like enemies are really bullet-sponges this time. I am only a few hours in (after Steve's "emotional" killing of Zombie-Steve's-Dad), but the maps feel a little sprawling, and I am finding myself avoiding enemies rather than going through the effort of killing them. It feels like a few places respawn zombies (not sure though). If that's the case, that's a very non-kosher RE. I am constantly impressed both by the lack of healing items, and the lack of inventory space to carry all the useless puzzle junk around - though that might change, as most REs become a free-wheeling ammo-dump shooting gallery by the end.

Also trying Chulip based on Jonathan Ingram's recommendation. It's uh, definitely out there. Funnily enough, it feels difficult finding out what to do from day to day as you have so many people in town with different kissing rituals to keep track of.

There certainly are a lot of ways to screw yourself over in this game - a good one would be getting to the Island's research facility without any rifle ammunition, or not thinking about the infrared scope, and letting Regeneradors chew up all your healing stock. It's been so long since I really tried to just hose down a Regenerador that I've forgotten what it would be like to play without enough ammo, though - as it is I end up selling packs of the stuff.

I can't even imagine what that's like anymore. I think it was only my first playthrough that I was ever conscious about ammo. Even when it seems like I'm wasteful I got through the game with more than enough to spare.

I've done so many runs of RE4 in my teen years...

Found Weapons Only (only weapons found naturally in-game) - always my favorite
Handcannon Only
Shotgun Only
Red9 Run
and so on and so on

I think the only thing I didn't do was a base pistol/knife only run. I never wanted to handicap myself that much; the game would be too slow!

Speedrunning RE1: Director's Cut (the one with the not-ass music) is also a good time; I find it the only RE that's fun to speed-run on account of its non-linear progression. I used to be able to beat RE1 in about an hour's time, not counting load times.

The Elder Scrolls games have always sucked. They're more tech demos than enjoyable cRPGs.

Ultima Underworld though. That is an adventure.

[Blinge]

The Elder Scrolls games have always sucked. They're more tech demos than enjoyable cRPGs.

You're 2hardcore4me. I enjoyed the hell out of Oblivion for hundreds of hours..
The immersion did lessen however; as time went on and I came to understand more of how it worked.

[ColonelFatso]

Played through Hyper Light Drifter (just to the credits, not done looking around) today. For a while I'd thought it was in limbo or had shuffled off to that great dev house in the sky, since the development was kept a lot quieter than your typical Kickstarter project, but I'm happy to report the game easily met expectations.

HLD is gorgeous in basically every respect. The setting feels fully realized, with a lovely Tron-meets-Zelda aesthetic and hints everywhere of the cataclysmic past. The character and enemy designs seem maybe a little too consciously "retro", but they all look amazing in motion, especially the player character and certain bosses. Delightful strains of very tasteful ambient music accompany the game, although the soundtrack could use more tension and urgency in high-stress situations like boss battles.

I don't feel like I can properly comment on the world itself yet from a gameplay perspective, since I know there are tons of secrets left to find; the play itself is very satisfying, though. Combat has a nice sense of weight and will punish you for overcommitting, although the standard enemies are pretty easy to figure out and practically trivial thereafter. Boss battles in this game will be pretty easy for most members of this forum, I think -- simple pattern recognition and reasonably forgiving execution for each. One of the guns I got in the course of my playthrough was so much better than the others that I didn't even bother with the rest except in niche situations; if the game has one biggest weakness, that would be it, I think, but perhaps some areas past the standard endgame have layouts designed to mitigate that and I just haven't seen them yet.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable adventure well worth the $15 I gambled three years ago, and I'm not even done yet!

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah, I was about to post about how much I enjoy the game as well.

Nice exploration, great animations, solid atmosphere, good traps and level design, and very fun combat. You covered the weight and sense of impact, but I also like the fast pace, freedom to improvise, and the surprisingly clever combos. Wall bouncing enemies with the dash attack, and then shooting them full screen with the laser rifle is endlessly satisfying. Especially the meaty squish when they hit the wall lol.

I'd say the challenge level is moderate. Not too easy, not too hard. I might consider boosting it with a nice no death run sometime or other, depending on how long it ultimately turns out to be.

[qmish]

SMT III: Nocturne, finally. Enjoying so far, especially on atmosphere/mood/art direction level. Though, as some other players, had trouble with Matador. But i'm glad i didnt need grinding (though i needed demons be on same level as protagonist so they dont die within 2 turns) to banish him.

The Elder Scrolls games have always sucked. They're more tech demos than enjoyable cRPGs.

I'd say Skyrim works well as "simulator of finding adventures on your trouble head". And i heard good things about early TES games (before Morrowind). Me personally wanna play Battlespire, gotta be nice dungeon crawler from what i've heard.

[Illyrian]

Oblivion was a great game, apart from the annoying psychic guards. Thankfully there was a mod for that of course.

[Ed Oscuro]

I ended up liking Alan Wake a lot more near the end, and American Nightmare more than that; unfortunately American Nightmare's Arcade mode is bogus due to the dodge cooldown, AND the necessity of getting the multiplier up to 9x on the first two enemies THROUGH DODGING. Totally horrible. I kept losing my multiplier due to the cooldown; knowing to respect it just makes the setup more tedious. Unfortunately, the flashlight mechanic and firing is still tedious, and the lack of ammo and light items makes things even more tedious.

Beyond that, American Nightmare did pretty well in only three maps, though it was much more by-the-numbers than I would have liked.

The expansion episodes of the base game weren't very good overall, though they did some interesting things. Getting through the second bonus episode without dying was a massive pain due to that damn cyclone - ironically it only took me a few attempts to get through the cyclone quickly, but when I went to run the whole episode without dying I kept getting stuffed there. Past that point it's all smooth sailing, though. (Damn that hamster wheel.)

Alan Wake was pretty decent overall, but running through forests didn't quite feel like the developers probably intended it to, and there was just a lot less of the stuff I liked than I expected. Even indie games like Cry Of Fear hold up really well compared to this, doing many of the same things with almost as much style. Still, there's something about Alan and the rest of the cast that I like, and Bright Falls was neat too.

There certainly are a lot of ways to screw yourself over in this game - a good one would be getting to the Island's research facility without any rifle ammunition, or not thinking about the infrared scope, and letting Regeneradors chew up all your healing stock. It's been so long since I really tried to just hose down a Regenerador that I've forgotten what it would be like to play without enough ammo, though - as it is I end up selling packs of the stuff.

I can't even imagine what that's like anymore. I think it was only my first playthrough that I was ever conscious about ammo. Even when it seems like I'm wasteful I got through the game with more than enough to spare.

Yeah, unlike Google on April 1st, Capcom was really thoughtful of players in this one. Both falling ceiling spike traps come with their own pack of pistol ammo, for instance, to help players just on the off chance they needed it.

I said I was done with it but I've played a few sessions now from the chapter ending just after you get Ashley, as far as I can get into the castle, on one life. Today I didn't bother with checkpoint abuse, that just feels like a cop-out. Newest thoughts:

- The camera angle is weird (see also: Alan Wake, but to a lesser extent, especially when shooting) and I *still* can't rapidly aim at far or near enemies. Choke points therefore often work against you, especially on the right side (doors open out that way, and the camera often doesn't show what's around there). Very noticeable when Leon gets ambushed by sickle zealots after the portrait gallery (with the gatling gun, if you let the leader get that far).
- There's a lot of lag built-in to this game. Ashley doesn't register a command while on a ladder, aiming takes time, most moves take time, and again aiming takes time.
- Worst enemy? I'd say dogs but they do attack slowly, however they can be hard to target in that maze (especially if the camera isn't cooperating). I just got juggled to death by the Ashley kidnapping / novistador ambush.

So yeah, I kind of wish the handcannon was better balanced for gameplay (it instantly destroys those armored knights, lol) but it actually does lead to some fairly exciting combat sometimes.