What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Icarus]

GoatUp! (iOS) < old target: 9mil+ | current: 10.6mil, descent section, first level (20/03/12) | new target: 12mil+, full descent >
Rebuild (iOS)
Chrono Trigger (iOS)

[Acid King]

Just got Ninja Gaiden 3. My expectations could not possibly be any lower, but I'm hoping I'll still have fun with it since NGB and NG2 are two of my favorite games of all time. Even a dumbed down Ninja Gaiden should still be fun, right?

How is this? I am a huge fan of the first 2 but everything I've seen of this game makes it looked dumbed down and filled with QTEs.

[spoot]

Been playing Dungeon Defenders on the pc past week or so. Kinda nice that you can sit down for a quick 5 minute run or 5 hours depending on what you wanna do.

[iconoclast]

How is this? I am a huge fan of the first 2 but everything I've seen of this game makes it looked dumbed down and filled with QTEs.

I finished my playthrough on Hard. It is dumbed down and filled with QTEs,, but what really hurts the game is the complete lack of variety. On paper, there are lots of different enemies, but damn near all of them are humanoids, so most of the battles play out the same with some minor variations. There are a few fiend-type enemies, but you're fighting humans probably 90% of the time so they don't make much of a difference. And even that wouldn't be so bad if you had more than one god damn weapon. I'm already starting to get tired of the repetition, which is pretty ridiculous because the previous games can stay fun for hundreds of hours.

I also uploaded the first chapter on Master Ninja mode, if anyone wants to check it out (I'll be uploading the entire game): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qJ1NQUi ... plpp_video

The difficulty seems really similar to Sigma 2, meaning that most of your deaths come from getting grabbed for massive damage. But I still think it's fun enough. I just wish I had the claws and scythe right now, for variety's sake.

[Acid King]

I finished my playthrough on Hard. It is dumbed down and filled with QTEs,, but what really hurts the game is the complete lack of variety. On paper, there are lots of different enemies, but damn near all of them are humanoids, so most of the battles play out the same with some minor variations. There are a few fiend-type enemies, but you're fighting humans probably 90% of the time so they don't make much of a difference. And even that wouldn't be so bad if you had more than one god damn weapon. I'm already starting to get tired of the repetition, which is pretty ridiculous because the previous games can stay fun for hundreds of hours.

I also uploaded the first chapter on Master Ninja mode, if anyone wants to check it out (I'll be uploading the entire game): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qJ1NQUi ... plpp_video

The difficulty seems really similar to Sigma 2, meaning that most of your deaths come from getting grabbed for massive damage. But I still think it's fun enough. I just wish I had the claws and scythe right now, for variety's sake.

Only one weapon? Yikes. I kinda had a feeling it was going to turn out not so good after Itagaki left, but this sounds like a definite step backwards. I just checked gamespot and 1up and they scored it a 5.5 and a C respectively. Ouch....

[steveovig]

Playing Ridge Racer Vita and Ridge Racer 3D and I'm really enjoying both. Can't wait for more DLC for RRVita!

[Marc]

I can't wait for Unbounded, but more because it's BugBear than because it's RR. Just tried the demo for I Am Alive. Quite intriguing.

[null1024]

Street Fighter x Tekken [PS3 and 360].

Gaaaah, I am terrible on an Xbox controller, but do pretty well on a PS1 DualShock pad [yay PS->USB converter].
Decided my team would be Ken and Juri, was doing reasonably well. Started to learn Xiaoyu, but I really need more practice with the Tekken characters. Not my copy of the game though, I practiced during the downtime.

[TenshiP]

Counter Strike: Source and TF2

[Shelcoof]

I'm cycling through a variety of multiplayer games right now. Trying to get at least 3 different titles going every night.

Blazblue Continuum Shift EX
Ultimate Marvel Vs capcom 3
Mortal Kombat 9
Soul Calibur V

Modern Warfare 3

Armored Core V
Gundam Extreme Vs

a lot on the list I know...

[Moniker]

Playing through Actraiser again. For some reason the boss rush is beating the hell from me. I've played through it at least twice before, although it's been awhile. Hell, last time I played it my girlfriend beat the boss rush. My mojo is mysteriously absent for some reason...

[JBC]

Got Resident Evil 4 HD for PS3 but haven't played past the village sequence yet. Kinda waiting for the right moment to get into it again.

I'm also interested in getting Hard Corps Uprising, despite it's lame anime style.

[null1024]

Garou: Mark of the Wolves [NeoGeo].

Fought some friends, etc. Great stuff, and I have to say, I like this more than SFIII: 3rd Strike.
Also, Kain is so effing cooooooool. Unlike say, Rock. Still wish both would come back again in an SNK fighter though.

[Shelcoof]

Garou: Mark of the Wolves [NeoGeo].

Fought some friends, etc. Great stuff, and I have to say, I like this more than SFIII: 3rd Strike.
Also, Kain is so effing cooooooool. Unlike say, Rock. Still wish both would come back again in an SNK fighter though.

You are extremely lucky to have friends who play this!!!!

[null1024]

Garou: Mark of the Wolves [NeoGeo].

Fought some friends, etc. Great stuff, and I have to say, I like this more than SFIII: 3rd Strike.
Also, Kain is so effing cooooooool. Unlike say, Rock. Still wish both would come back again in an SNK fighter though.

You are extremely lucky to have friends who play this!!!!

I know 4 of my friends have this as their favorite fighting game.

[Marble]

Got a USB pad now so I've been getting on the NES/SNES emulation, and it's good to get back into NES NG2. However I can't help but wish it was a bit more like the first. I feel in the first game that because of the level designs, jump-slash and the way sub-weapon stock works (Items give you 5 or 10 stock, there's no items that completely replenish it, and you lose half of your stock upon death), for survival reasons it's best to memorize a strict route through the levels and rush through it. It gets frustrating because falling down one pit can leave you in a bad section without the jump-slash and you might as well start over, but it's this very risk that makes the game so intense when combined with the fast pace. I haven't played NG2 as much but it seems that 5-2 is the only level where playing more like the first game works. Some of the level designs really shit me off - for example 2-2 with the wind, not because it's hard but just because it's kind of painful waiting for the wind to allow you to proceed when you're in control of such an agile character, you know? That's not to say it doesn't have some good qualities, but I can't think of anything that hasn't already been said.

[BIL]

I've found the only way to get an NG1-style survival challenge out of NG2 is to go for a no-miss (or a speed run). The last couple of stages become deadly intense that way, as sloppiness will almost certainly result in death by attrition or pitfall, and the endgame boss trio doesn't give you free life refills like NG1's (nor is one of the bosses a total pushover). Otherwise the extends (moreso than the powerups) make it an unfortunate cinch to bumble through even with several misses. No surprise that score extends were removed from NGIII / NRIII.

I don't find 2-2's wind hazard that annoying unless I miss that very first jump, which will leave you clinging to a wall waiting for it to change direction. Otherwise it's just the huge jump near the end of the second floor requiring a following wind that sometimes holds me up.

In my own exploits as of late, I've hit the Awkward 3D Castlevanias in my recent Dracula marathon inspired by NTSC-J.

"Three cheers for Devil May Cry!" cried Koji Igarashi circa 2003, nuzzling Hideki Kamiya's hindquarters. It's too bad he didn't pay attention to either that game or the N64 Castlevanias' level designs, because Lament of Innocence is a first-rate combat engine trapped in a Wolfenstein 3D level editor. I've 100% cleared this game on @crazy with no healing items in the past, and may again, but god damn - the boxy level designs grow more odious with time. What were they designed with, a broken Etch-a-Sketch? It's a damn shame the towering vertical scale and perilous, athletic platforming of the N64 games went spectacularly AWOL for the PS2 games.

[oldjanxspirit]

Well, I've been playing Resident Evil: Revelation on my 3DS and it quite fucking rad thank you very much. Haven't dug too much into raid mode though. It's actually the first game I've reordered in my life. I will always remember preordering it and picking it up and the bonus thing.

[Vexorg]

(Crossposted from something I wrote in a Talk Among Yourselves thread over on Kotaku)

Lately I've been playing a fair bit of Bit.Trip Runner (read: replaying the same level about half a zillion times trying to beat it, currently on 1-Boss) and quite frankly, I can't decide if it's the most brilliant thing I've played in ages or just the most infuriating. I'm sure much has been made of the unforgiving "Make one mistake and you've got to start over" gameplay, which in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it didn't seem like every level starts with 45 seconds of boring stuff that most players could clear blindfolded. It looks like Runner 2 is going to address this somewhat by adding in checkpoints, but it really seems like the game is designed to punish you severely for making mistakes, which is basically inevitable given the trial-and-error gameplay.

On the other hand, while in the course of trying to complete a particularly difficult level recently, I had a bit of a revelation about just how sneaky the difficulty on this particular game is. For those of you may not be familiar with it, the only difference between normal and easy difficulty is that the collectible gold bars you find on normal mode are not present in easy mode (there's also a "perfect" mode where you fail the level if you miss a gold bar, but that's well outside of my ability at this point.) In theory, you could just play identically in either mode and complete the level the same way (albeit with a higher score for the gold bars that would happen to be in the player's path in normal mode.) Where this goes from being a simple matter of just adding extra stuff to being an actual significant increase in difficulty is that all those gold bars tend to distract the player, causing them to make unforced errors all over the place and get themselves dumped back at the start of the level repeatedly in the process. Ultimately, I've found that I had to turn down the difficulty just to stop myself from constantly making stupid mistakes while trying to collect the gold bars.

It's an incredibly sneaky trick on the part of the developers, and is easily one of the more devious ways I've seen to turn the player into their own worst enemy in a video game that I've seen.

[Ed Oscuro]

"Three cheers for Devil May Cry!" cried Koji Igarashi circa 2003, nuzzling Hideki Kamiya's hindquarters. It's too bad he didn't pay attention to either that game or the N64 Castlevanias' level designs, because Lament of Innocence is a first-rate combat engine trapped in a Wolfenstein 3D level editor.

That bad, huh?

I've been playing Gunbarich in MAME. So far my best clear is over 3 million, stage 3-2 (have gotten a little into Stage 4, but with a far lower score). This game's scores are really schizophrenic - some levels, if you hit them just right (and get the M powerup at a good time), can easily net you a million points. It's rare though; usually I clear the first three stages with somewhere around 400-600K points. I got a 2.6M run early on, and then didn't touch it for a long, long while (days) after - and then I get 2M points before I clear Stage 1-2, crazy. So, unfortunately, there seems to be less skill involved in good scoring than in chance (especially since some of the high scoring can be triggered by smashing your flipper up against one of the walls at stage start in a few maps, and you're about guaranteed to get a chain of hits out of it).

[JBC]

Just played through Growl for the first time in MAME. What a fun little brawler! There's a lot to love about it, from it's beautifully animated title screen to Zuntata soundtrack. The game displays a ridiculous amount of sprites on screen at once with little to no slow-down. Being an animal lover means I have a real soft spot for the crazy story where you are fighting poachers and freeing thier captives... violently

The animals always come back to help you. My favorite is a stampeding elephant that tramples the poachers until they frickin explode into fleshy chunks. Nice!

[BIL]

That bad, huh?

Oh yes - it would've seriously been better off as a pseudo belt-scroller ala Dynamite Deka 2. The controls are airlock-tight and the attack, guard, counterattack and evasion mechanics work beautifully. But the levels are comically barren-feeling, and the lame-ass Mega Man stage select just insults the injury. I liked IGA better when he was representing my local greengrocers.

edit: holy shit, don't google image IGA if you don't want to see some fine-ass naked wimminz! I approve IGA-san, all is forgiven!

There's a lot to love about it, from it's beautifully animated title screen to Zuntata soundtrack.

Yasuhisa Watanabe's golden era imo, along with Metal Black and Elevator Action Returns. Wonderfully evocative VGM.

[Moniker]

Got drunk and bought Mortal Kombat 9 GoD for $50. Fuuuuckk...

Other than that, playing Yoshi's Island for the first time. Quite enjoyable.

[shmuppyLove]

Skyrim all day and all night, with breaks for Xenosaga.

[Illyrian]

Finished Mass Effect 3, it was mostly total arse

Now I'm waiting for HOTD4, and keeping an eye out for other good bargains on Steam!

[Marc]

Not quite, but I will be playing Ridge Racer Unbounded on Friday. Fuck Ridge Racer, it's a new racer by the FlatOut guys. I honestly haven't been this excited for a disc-based release since Human Revolution, which is the only other game I've bothered to buy on release date this gen.

I was going to but The Darkness 2, but the other half rented it and saved me the expense because it looks fucking shit. Way to miss the point.

[Moniker]

I was going to but The Darkness 2, but the other half rented it and saved me the expense because it looks fucking shit. Way to miss the point.

I bought and promptly returned the first game, mainly because the framerate dropped heavily and often, to the clear detriment of gameplay. Does the sequel deliver at least on that point?

[iconoclast]

Still playing Ninja Gaiden 3. I finished Master Ninja mode (still ranked #1 on the leaderboards ), which wasn't very good. I'd say 95% of your deaths come from getting grabbed, because that's all every enemy does in this game. Grab grab grab grab. And not only do they not explain how the new Steel on Bone mechanic works, they actively try to make you use it improperly. If you end a SoB attack with the X button, it allows you to keep chaining and insta-kill any nearby enemy. But sometimes the Y button will pop up on screen during a SoB, so naturally, you hit the Y button because the game is telling you to. But all that does is END your SoB chain, it's far more beneficial to mash X instead so you can continue killing enemies. That's just completely retarded design, even for someone as incompetent as Hayashi.

I've been working on Mission Mode as well, which is about as bad as Sigma 2's. The Acolyte, Mentor, and Leader missions are all solo-able, as are at least a few of the Master Ninja trials, but everything else is pretty much impossible unless you're playing co-op. And the competitive multiplayer is comically bad.

So yeah, the game kinda sucks. Dunno if I'll bother trying to find a partner who wants to grind through those awful missions.

[Marc]

I was going to but The Darkness 2, but the other half rented it and saved me the expense because it looks fucking shit. Way to miss the point.

I bought and promptly returned the first game, mainly because the framerate dropped heavily and often, to the clear detriment of gameplay. Does the sequel deliver at least on that point?

What were you playing it on? I played it through on 360 (installed) and while it wasn't buttery smooth, it wasn't so bad as to be game-breaking, though I am more tolerant that a lot of folk I mnow with frame rate etc. Shame, as it's an under-appreciated gem of this gen.

Sequel seems steady enough, but it's a confused mess of a game. It's dropped the open ended approach, and feels more like Bulletstorm than The Darkness. Oh well.

[BIL]

Got the no-miss in Hard Corps' (MD) "stop the rocket biohazard apocalypse" route using Sheena, aka The Character That Actually Has To Fight Bosses Unlike Fang and Brownie, But Isn't Boring To Use Like Ray. Bunnyhopping Bahamut is one terrifyingly random boss, you can blow the run with a split-second's misjudgement there. I don't have the time or energy for arcade-level challenges right now, so revisiting old console favourites and going for personal best runs has been a great alternative.

fun fact: other than the hitpoints, kanji and superior boxart, the JP and US versions are identical (unlike Vampire Killer, which has a couple of level design changes as well as a harsher damage penalty in the US localisation, Castlevania Bloodlines). So a no-miss is the same difficulty across both formats, despite JP being way easier if taking hits is allowed.

Oh yeah, and the JP version has cheats. Man, they really wanted to give NTSCU players a rough time. I tasted despair trying to use the level select cheat in primary school. :[

even funner fact: there is at least one instant-kill in the JP version nevertheless; running into the stem of stage 4's giant flowers will wipe out even a 3HP character.