What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

I completed the Campaign on Advance Wars DS.

I’m also trying to unlock Fire Attack on Game & Watch Gallery 4. It’s pretty ridiculous that I’ve developed nostalgia for LCD games. I actually kind of like Donkey Kong Jr., Octopus, and Chef.

Probably start in on Advance Wars 2 with some Street Fighter IV and Blazblue on the side later.

[null1024]

Cave story, and the machine gun on level 3 is the best weapon *ever*.
Seriously, a gun with enough recoil to make you fly?

[escadrille]

Good choice. Reminds me of Oblivion minus all the walking around and talking to people with the same 5 voices.

[null1024]

Remembered I had Spelunky. I suck at it, and I think it hates me.

[Ed Oscuro]

zomg pictar

Good choice. Reminds me of Oblivion minus all the walking around and talking to people with the same 5 voices.

Less fetching those damned orbs too.

Reminds me of...Pool of Radiance without the pool. Or the battles. Better graphics for sure.

ME: I got ahold of FAKK 2, by Ritual. Damnit Ritual. When I loaded this one up and saw "Ritual" on it, my first words were "damnit, another dumb-as-hell Ritual game." There's an Old Man Murray article ripping on the KISS: Psycho Circus for disrespecting its license, but it seems like a model game in comparison to this. Ritual couldn't tell what the hell they wanted to do (they sexed up the menu, but ingame it's almost K-A rated, aside from various crudely drawn alien boobs; lots of slapstick and animal abuse), and their poor artist couldn't come close to matching the Heavy Metal style. Just a boring, stupid game. IGN compared it to the "old" (heh) Tomb Raiders (I guess that means pre-Chronicles, like TR2) but the game just doesn't have the style, oddly enough. It flogs much more than TR1 did, for lack of a better phrase.

I decided then to finally get American McGee's Alice, whose box requirement of 128 MB of RAM wowed me back in 2000. Ironically, they licensed technology from Ritual, so it'll be interesting to see how they use the same engine.

Somewhere in here I gotta set up a Win98 machine and run Dragon Spirit on it, won't be too hard to do though. I'll be able to hook it up to my current monitor.

[null1024]

Some Cave Story. Dropped it on my Windows box finally. It's amazing how much faster you can go through it if you know what's ahead...

[Ed Oscuro]

So, done with FAKK 2 (maybe two days ago) and now American McGee's Alice, which I didn't realize was based on the FAKK 2 engine.

Quick 'n Dirty:

FAKK 2:
Got better later on, and in the endgame (which seemed more like a mid-game) a lot of the art reminded me very strongly of Raven's. Fitting for an iD Software license game. Not amazing though: hampered by weapons with not enough ammunition and some very iffy 3d controls (spinning your view around near a ledge often sends Julie off it). Good music in some places (Zak Belica is one of my favorite underrated composers; I want to hear some of his work post-Condition Zero), pretty decent level design. Really, after I passed the incredibly stupid first 30 minutes, it was...pretty average bordering on excellent for the time, with the occasional indestructible enemy thrown in. Lots of animal abuse - the poor Shglieks (squirrel-looking things) are a running joke in this game and get offed every way you can imagine (ironically they were the first things I tried killing in the game, by picking one up and tossing it into the canyon - of course they survived and just ran around far below); you even stab a surprisingly lifelike golden statue of one in a puzzle. Popped on God mode for the last boss fight and just as well because of the ammo issues; you have to use a jumping (spinning) sword attack to take him down. One of those "whoops I used up all my ammo and health but didn't have to" fights. Also, some of the characters in this game are hilarious - there's one that looks and sounds exactly like a giant Muppet. Strange non-ending though - I think somebody was hoping to tie it into later FAKK 2 related media, which I don't see working - not only was the story pretty silly, and the main character supposedly godlike at the end, but the game just isn't Heavy Metal. I knew what the first cover of Heavy Metal looked like back in 1995; four years later, Ritual made just the sort of game they always did. Have fun at the main menu repeatedly hovering over various menu options to hear "sexy" alternate spoken captions (although one seems to trigger oddly, like by hovering over a specific other menu entry and then going back).
B- (I'd put the range somewhere around C+ to B+).

Am. McGee's Alice:
A LOT of folks worked on this one if the credits are any indication; Levelord is credited for some level creation, for instance, and a bunch of people for additional programming, etc. Ironically I don't see McGee's name in the level credits, or programming, and there's a producer, so I'm not sure what he did. In any case, a lot of the issues with movement in FAKK 2 were fixed up (partly through simplification - there's no more crouch which means no more crouch strafe roll, and no wall hugging - good thing both are gone); the menus are much more detailed, sound options are better, there's detail textures, and so on. FAKK 2 had a lot of mid-level scene transitions (sudden warping to another map segment) but this game takes it a step further, either hiding it with fog or (much later on) using it as an art asset.

The geometry and the fully 3D skyboxes are usually great; combined with some pretty crazy open level designs this certainly competes with the Oneiros levels of Undying (though I'd put that full game a small notch above this one). Music ranges from competent to mildly grating. The Wonderland Woods sort of suck, and running around caverns beneath them is worse. Unfortunately a lot of the game feels like this. The main problem most people are going to have with Alce is that it's pretty brutal; you have a shared ammo gauge for all weapons, and once that's used up you're left with a knife that can be thrown only once every few seconds. Ammo doesn't regenerate past the very bottom portion of the gauge (shorter than the bulb of a mercury thermometer). I never did figure out if re-collecting primary weapons gave additional damage, but certainly there were just a few weapons that were effective most of the time (I was only playing on the second difficulty of four; there's a Nightmare level that I didn't try but assume is pure madness). I got a good rhythm set up later on for dealing with enemies and keeping the ammo gauge full, though by the last few levels I just snapped on God mode so I could blow everything away with the game's BFG - combat was definitely starting to annoy me. It's unfortunate that the jacks - what I found to be usually the best weapon - did so poorly on ledges or anywhere where they can fall below the level of the enemy you're targeting.

I like what they did with all the characters - a lot of thought and work obviously went into fleshing out altered versions of familiar characters from the books (and there were a few I didn't know about too). At the beginning of the game you might feel that you really care about Alice's trouble after an awesome introduction cutscene, but later on the "attitude" part wears off and it's basically funny lines played straight. Unfortunately something about this is off later on, so it becomes rather predictable and boring. Also, who thought it was a good idea to have her sobbing AND yelling "Nooooooooooooo!" at the same time? That doesn't work. Of course, the weakest part of the game is the ending; it's basically a "look at Wonderland turning happy again (via the power of grainy / low FPS ingame rendering...rendered out to a movie), and let's put all the characters around for a group shot...hooray." Then it turns to some real artwork and CG, which doesn't really tie things up in the real world either. Sigh.

Alice has been done in around 47 minutes total; FAKK 2 is probably even quicker to finish. I can see why people would pay some money on the secondhand market for this one, but neither game is playable in the long term. Multi options would've seemed natural given the engine and would have extended these games considerably.
B+ bordering on A-

[null1024]

Cave Story and Super Street Fighter II.

[Icarus]

Just installed SCUMMVM on my Nokia N97, with Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Broken Sword and Secret of Monkey Island on it.
Now I have something to do during the long commutes and occasional day trips.

[Dragoforce]

Nitro ball.

Awesome game. I usally don't like top-downs action games, but this is brilliant. Fast-paced action and simplistic.

[null1024]

Guilty Gear XX.
Just got the PC version. Playing as Bridget hurts my ears [he has the most annoying voice EVER. It's like playing as Athena in KOF, but worse, because Athena doesn't say stuff EVERY MOVE. Granted, it's staring to get filtered out as background noise by my head, but I've only had the game for a day.]

Man, I want BlazBlue. Of course, I'd need a 360 for that.

[sjewkestheloon]

Erm....

Sacred 2

[Arasoi]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade pcb (2p ROMs).

This game will never get old.

[jonny5]

mr driller g.....damn 500m master driller keeps slipping through my fingers

[null1024]

Some more GGX2 [Milla is the best character ever still, excellent range], and some Mega Man 2. I hate you Quickman and your beams of EVIL! And it took me bloody AGES to beat Crashman. I hate all of you. Except Flashman, you're a pushover.

[gameoverDude]

Razing Storm: Right now I'm at 2.73 million on one credit, with all 10 of the dogtags found.

Blowing the shit out of everything with the rocket launcher is almost "therapeutic", as Morales from F.E.A.R. 2 would put it. First you're hammering a Kraken with it in the stage 1 boss battle, then you go downstairs and get to try this out on a few soldiers. Havok ragdoll physics time.

That Stage 4 grocery/fish freezer scene with the cluster shot is a potential combo haven. I've gotten a 724 Hit combo/210K checkpoint score in this part. Rip up some HACS suits with the CS, do a little trashing of some displays, kill more HACS, then pick off a few soldiers, and head into the fish freezer. If you always wanted a thing called tuna sashimi, go for it. Shoot the fish as well as the soldiers.

Hopefully the cliff-hanger ending leads to a 2nd scenario to be found in the PS3 port.

KOF XII: 5'12"69 Time attack (Ralf, Goro, Raiden) Rank #1080 (Johnnie Martini) at time of this post.
I got the "One Man Army" achievement by KO'ing every character using Ralf. Not a bad KOF, just different. This one is likely just the groundbreaker of the new KOF series.
edit- added KOF XII

[null1024]

Tasty Static, Groove On Fight, and Super Street Fighter II. And some Cave Story.

[Marble]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade pcb (2p ROMs).

I was actually playing a different TMNT game this morning - Hyperstone Heist on Mega Drive - and 1CC'd it. The system is pretty much the same as the other TMNT beat 'em ups except this game is dumb coz there's infinite boss milking = free lives.

Also been playing a bit of Streets of Rage 2. I think I might either beat the game with other characters, or go for a clear on the hardest difficulty.

[null1024]

Marathon 2, Kirby's Adventure, and some DoomRL.

[gameoverDude]

I played some more Razing Storm tonight and sent my score up quite a bit- to about 2.92M with a clear time around 16'28", done as a 1CC. The big 3 has to be right around the corner.

The stage 3-1 sniper scene is easy up until that last enemy behind the scaffolding. You have to get a head shot on this guy while being careful not to hit the scaffold. Also, a body shot on this one is no good- do that, and he'll come out and trigger an alert. That said, this part went without any miss shots or other fuckups this time. +50000 points bonus for not being spotted.

Stage 4-3's cluster shot part is one of the more fun sections of the game. 704 hits full combo this time.

Now there's a truly amazing 4M 1CC replay vid on YouTube by MAT@DGZ. He does lose a few lives during the game, but it doesn't get any better than this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCcb8BQYwt0 (stage 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM3zYlY0PT0 (stage 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZRVfkanmrw (stage 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwZrMUhR4E8 (stage 4)

[Arasoi]

I've been enjoying my GROWL pcb on the supergun, since removing the JROK stopped its video syncing issues. (pure RGB now, woo)

Also been playing Battletoads, and King of Fighters Neowave PCBs.

[null1024]

Setting up and playing MUGEN, on Linux. It seems to not like Ubuntu very much, or maybe it's just buggy, sometimes stays open and needs to be kill -9ed, and some other things.

[D3m0nZ]

Half Life 2

[BIL]

Playing lots of Contra Hard Corps lately. Fang is the only character I can stand to use now, since his charge shot can cut boss times in half (or less). Lots of simplistic patterns skipped over. As with Shattered Soldier, it's addicting to see just how quickly I can trash bosses without getting killed.

I wish this game sustained, or at least revisited the ludicrous free-running destruction of its first thirty seconds. It's a joy to play every time (and I've restarted *a lot* recently). APC barrels on-screen killing everything in sight in a hail of proto-Garegga fury -> player goes through windshield and continues doing much the same -> smashed miniboss takes down a building with its death throes. Magic. The vertical climb during the Alien stage comes pretty close to that perfection, though.

[KMM]

Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Marvel vs. Capcom...basically any Capcom fighter that'll run on my netbook under MAME and that allows me to use Ryu, because he and his clones are the only characters I can use in these games.

I've also been playing a lot of Final Fantasy IV Advance, the first two GBA Castlevania games, and Retro Game Challenge (which I know is 1/4 shmups, but I was playing through the challenges for the last two games, which are definitely not shmups).

[sjewkestheloon]

Erm....

Sacred 2

Also had a few hours on Puzzle Quest and E4, both of which are enjoyable. E4 lasts too long though. I actually had to turn it off last time as I'd been playing for about an hour and a half and something came up. Maybe I'll just play time limited from now on.

[ZOM]

Hotel Dusk
(while I wait to get summoned in Demon's Souls)

[romscout]

I just got around to finishing 2nd loop of Plants vs. Zombies recently. Kinda bummed that there's nothing left to do except improve the high scores in the extra modes, but I guess I can buy the 10th plant slot and do that when I'm bored enough.

Also been trying Romancing Saga a bit. Pretty weird game with like, no direction whatsoever, but the ridiculous voice acting that is applied to literally every character in the game makes up for it.

[getbonus]

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Wii Sports Resort

I <3 TAY

[MadSteelDarkness]

I snagged a cheap, scratched, disc-only copy of Star Wars: KOTOR II a week or so ago, and despite the game being pretty flawed, I've been enjoying it.