What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[BulletMagnet]

Just making sure: You do know that the enemy bullets can be canceled by shooting at them?

So that wasn't my imagination. I'd assume there are certain ones you can't cancel though...in any event, from what you say the game seems to encourage just sitting in one place and shooting without moving for as long as you can, which I imagine is the "thing I was missing" (some sorta tutorial/instruction sheet would have helped in the post-manual era, though I guess they figured most of the people buying this would be existing fans); in any event, guess I'll have to give it another shot with that in mind.

[Ebbo]

All the yellow pellet shaped bullets can be canceled by either shooting or using your lasso attack. Missiles and enemy lasso attacks can't be canceled but dynamites can be thrown back at them. Also good to know that once your vulcan gun activates you become completely impervious to attacks until the gauge has run out.

[Shoryukev]

Doom (2016) - PS4

Right out of the gate this game is pretty cool. I'm not much of an FPS guy but I'm having fun with it. Really enjoying the gameplay style of having to constantly be in motion, kinda reminds me of strafing around demons in the 90s. When I saw previews of the game I assumed the "glory kills" would get very annoying, but so far they haven't bothered me yet. A bit over the top with the gore, but I understand what they were going for and it indeed works. I understand the campaign is relatively short, but it has been great so far. My only real complaint is the amount of screen tearing on the PS4....my god it is horrendous at times.

Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland - NES

I have to preface this by saying that I have my nostalgia glasses on with this title, many hours were spent as a child with my cousins playing this one to death. Some of the levels are better than others, my favorite is probably the rollercoaster with Babs....it almost feels out of place with it's difficulty being well above anything else in the game but it's fun. The worst has to be the bumper cars......snore! Overall this may not be one everyone will enjoy (almost feels more like an exercise in memory rather than a test of reflex and execution), but it's a welcome addition to my ever growing collection.

Chrono Trigger - SNES

Dusted this one off this weekend as well in an attempt to finally finish it off. Between working 45+ hours a week and the holidays I just haven't had time for the RPG genre as a whole. Almost 20 hours in, things seem to be peaking and getting ready for a climactic finish. I haven't beaten it before (I had only an NES and Genesis until about 1998, don't judge me LOL) but it's shaping up to possibly be my favorite JRPG.

Rocket Knight Adventures - Sega Genesis

There's not much I can say about this one that hasn't already been said. It is an absolute powerhouse of blast processing, firing on all cylinders with it's fantastic music, great graphics, and overall it is just a damn good time. I dare anyone to pop in this game and not have a smile on your face. Still haven't quite reached a 1cc yet, but I'm getting closer.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I had similar concerns about glory kills and while many are pretty dumb and over the top (rip out demon's heart, shove it down its throat), you stop noticing because you need the health drops! They're also a godsend for stopping larger enemies later on.

[atheistgod1999]

I hear the new DOOM is locked at 60FPS. If so, I'll pass.

I still have to play the original 3, anyway.

[BulletMagnet]

A couple followup thoughts on Wild Arms Reloaded:

- Knowing that you can cancel a good amount of enemy bullets does grant some additional breathing room, but even at that I find myself on the defensive more often than I'd like, since unless the crosshairs is close the the character you'll almost certainly get plugged if you don't jump/dodge, and the second or two it takes to do either allows for other enemies to get their own shots off, so the process repeats. Moreover, though your fire rate is fast, enemy bullets can still regularly sneak past your own line of fire, especially when you're trying to quickly "sweep" the screen, i.e. pretty much every time you're trying to cancel enemy shots.

- The more I play the more I really wish they'd included optional one-button prompts for both the dodge and lasso, I find their default commands difficult to rely on once things get hairy.

- While Clint and Annie seem to abide by the "shoot without moving to increase the multiplier" rule, Doris appears to rely on how long you charge up each grenade toss (functionally similar, I suppose); no idea what's going on with Bullet since you're basically forced to constantly move with him, I'd have to look up an FAQ or something.

I can definitely understand why the game is so well-regarded by a devoted player niche, but as it stands it's probably a bit too demanding for the likes of me; anyone who's mastered this one, you have my respect.

[soprano1]

I'm going to try to get that True Ending in Steins Gate (PC). Wonder if the recent 0 sequel is good...

[Ed Oscuro]

A couple followup thoughts on Wild Arms Reloaded:

Hm, I thought I was going to read about some RPG stuff. Didn't know they remade Wild Guns! Dorris' face portrait is <3 Glad they went a bit in the Hard Corps direction by making the new characters different. And the pooch has one good eye and a shoulder holster...inspired!

I've been screwing around with stuff & things on uPlay (haven't spent a pfennig on it):

Assassin's Creed Chronicles China Spicy Curries: Press A To Jump

Far Cry 3: A dose of collectables and it's over. I didn't see any leaderboards for the quite promising Rakyat Trials, which makes me sad like Sam's death. Too bad they didn't offer FC4 for free instead; that one looks more interesting.
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon: Humor is "Press A To Jump" and otherwise it's FC3 all over, apparently. Yech.

Back on Steam, I finished up Batman: Asylum finally - egh, wildly overrated game.
The sequel has much more going for it. I'm glad I played it on Hard; I got my ass kicked repeatedly while starting out but now it's normal. Still haven't gotten the hang of inserting extra moves so the second Perfect Freeflow achievement isn't done yet. Much better paced than FC3 as far as the collectables go (plus you can't simply glitch jump up cliffs to them all), but it's very easy to overdo Riddler trophy collection at the very start and then find yourself in a slog through chapters after that; some more segmentation in Arkham City itself might have been good. Would be interested to try Bats: Knight sometime, unfortunately the sale I snagged a while back just stops at Origins, which I'm not expecting that much from.

[atheistgod1999]

After playing on-and-off for the past couple of months, I finally beat the original Half-Life on hard mode without using the internet or other info whatsoever. It was pretty good.

Spoiler

Those endings were fucking sub-Newgrounds-quality

[BulletMagnet]

Hm, I thought I was going to read about some RPG stuff.

D'oh!

On a slightly less embarrassing note, gave Risky's Revenge another shot and managed to finish it this time; Pirate's Curse is next up to finish the series.

[Sumez]

I'm going to try to get that True Ending in Steins Gate (PC). Wonder if the recent 0 sequel is good...

Zero is getting a really good reception.

True Ending in the original VN completely turned the "game" upside down for me. Not so much the time travel aspect, but the more character driven part of the story. It literally had me in tears.

Don't bother trying to get it without using a guide/flowchart though.

[soprano1]

Don't bother trying to get it without using a guide/flowchart though.

Yep, first thing i got.

[kaicooper]

FreeSpace 2

[Mischief Maker]

FreeSpace 2

Respect.

You are using the Freespace Open upgrade, right?

If not, you may want to give it a look.

[Jonathan Ingram]

My only real complaint is the amount of screen tearing on the PS4....my god it is horrendous at times.

PS4 Doom is 60fps with v-sync as long as you update the game at least once. IIRC the screen tearing was fixed with the day one patch.

[Shoryukev]

My only real complaint is the amount of screen tearing on the PS4....my god it is horrendous at times.

PS4 Doom is 60fps with v-sync as long as you update the game at least once. IIRC the screen tearing was fixed with the day one patch.

Thank god! The patch it wanted to download was about 30gb and I couldn't wait that long to play it LOL. I'll try it again tonight, it surely should have finished downloading it by now in sleep mode.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Does PS4 roll up multiple patches too? I tanked my parents' data cap with a 20 GB update for Gears 4 which took literally all day because they have shitty copper broadband. I don't have Gold so 99% of that patch will be of no benefit to me!

Now playing: Gears of War 4. If it ain't broke, don't fix it I guess. Robots at the beginning were a bit naff and were just Locust reskins really, Binary Domain did it way better.

[Shoryukev]

I don't use my PS4 much (the wife is the main one who uses it honestly lol), but it seems like it rolls everything into one download. I'm in the same boat as you, I don't have PS+ service so I can't play online multiplayer either. Would be nice to have a patch for offline use only....my guess is it would be 2-3gb instead of 20 too. I bought a month of PS+ to play Street Fighter 5 with some friends when I got it about 2 months ago, and it had to download overnight ruining my weekend plans....I'm sick of it.

My mind instantly goes to some poor kid talking his parents into finally getting him the latest Call of Duty all his friends are playing, then he gets home and hits the data transfer cap downloading updates. Sorry kid, you can't play the game with your buddies until next month.

I have unlimited data transfer with my internet provider, but that seems to be fairly uncommon these days.

[WelshMegalodon]

My mind instantly goes to some poor kid talking his parents into finally getting him the latest Call of Duty all his friends are playing, then he gets home and hits the data transfer cap downloading updates. Sorry kid, you can't play the game with your buddies until next month.

This entertains me more than it should.

[TransatlanticFoe]

A work colleague bought his son an xbone for xmas and I gave him a heads up about updates so he knew to set it up in advance. I dread to think of the xmas mornings spent raging at huge downloads over slow internet... worst I had to deal with as a kid was tuning to the right channel for video games (analogue tuning so couldn't even go straight to channel 36)!

[wgogh]

Killer 7
Must be unusual comparison, but it reminds me of the time of RPG Maker games, that werent rpgs, and I would play one of those and be expecting all sorts of crazy game mechanisms. Also, the story is great, as the overall style and characters (My favorites so far being Travis Bell and MASK de Smith).

[professor ganson]

Half-way through Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. One of the most interesting srpgs I've played. I should say I'm half-way through the main game on "hard" setting. The after-game levels seem to be where the action is. The main challenge so far has just been getting a feel for how the game works. Apparently the after-game levels are a whole different beast.

[mamboFoxtrot]

Finally getting to play Odin Sphere: Lieterhosen. I'm a few chapters into Cornelius' book now.
So, I'm noticing that using Fire/Ice Spirits magic in conjunction with multi-hit skills can stun-lock bosses fairly effectively, and if they summon adds, just pop a Whirwind. I... think I'm going to stop doing this, because it's literally rendering the game moot , especially when combined with Cornelius' thunder orbs and storm cloud magics.
So far I'm very happy with this, even if it is a lot of mindless button mashing. Maybe I should kick it up to Hard mode. Do the difficulty modes do anything besides change enemy stats?

PS: I'm going to have that fucking restaurant music stuck in my head for eternity. SO MUCH EATING. And I haven't gotten to the point where I feel like skipping the eating animations. It's like when I played Okami and would let the animal feeding cutscenes play out for, like, 85% of the game lol.
PPS: I find it weird that you don't get ranked on Boss fights.

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah hard does make things a bit more aggressive IIRC, it's noticeable

[atheistgod1999]

Playing some cool game called TIS-100.

[ED-057]

Pillars of Eternity. Looks interesting so far. Needs a shipload of disk space and RAM though, damn

[atheistgod1999]

Pillars of Eternity. Looks interesting so far. Needs a shipload of disk space and RAM though, damn

Check your URL before posting; this isn't TV Tropes.

[Squire Grooktook]

I do not comprehend

[WelshMegalodon]

Final Fantasy V. This makes my... seventh playthrough, I think. For those that have tired of the usual Dual Wield-Magic Sword-X-Fight combo, a dual-wielding Dancer equipped with the Chicken Knife makes a surprisingly effective powerhouse when paired with one of the three items that increase the likelihood of Sword Dance.

[Blinge]

You ever do that four job fiesta? apologies if we've already spoken about it.

I managed to beat Omega with a two berserkers, thief and bard. I used a weird stunlock loop and beat it that way.
The kind of shit i'd never figure out without the internet. Shinryu was way too hard though, i gave up there.

Also man the game is cool but seven playthroughs? jesus..
what other j/RPGs do you consider worthwhile? Things similar to ff5.