What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[tinotormed]

Finished a no miss hard mode run of Zombie Shooter!

Wow, just got a close call on Stage 6!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... e=view_all

[Zaarock]

I hope that they sort out the upgrade grind for the next Souls game. It is the only aspect that I actively dislike due to the really stingy drop rates and the annoying Crystal Lizards.

Upgrade grinding is almost nonexistant in Dark Souls after some of the patches, because twinkling titanite and other materials are buyable all that needs to be farmed is titanite slabs but even those arent usually worth it for a couple more points of damage unless it's your favorite weapon or such

[sjewkestheloon]

I hope that they sort out the upgrade grind for the next Souls game. It is the only aspect that I actively dislike due to the really stingy drop rates and the annoying Crystal Lizards.

Upgrade grinding is almost nonexistant in Dark Souls after some of the patches, because twinkling titanite and other materials are buyable all that needs to be farmed is titanite slabs but even those arent usually worth it for a couple more points of damage unless it's your favorite weapon or such

Yes indeed, I played Dark Souls a lot before they added in the ore availability at the Londo blacksmith and was very grateful when they appeared. As is often the case when you play games out of order, I am missing some of the refinements that Dark Souls offered.

Still a superb game though. I have finished up world 2, cleared out all of the goodies that I missed in my initial run and rekilled all the lizards that I could catch and then ended up making progress through 1-3. The boss is a bit of a swine though. His damage output is very high.

[KAI]

VF2 on SEGAAGES (PS2)

Jyuunen hayain dayo!!

[Drachenherz]

Metal Slugspoken in the MS announcer voice

[Ed Oscuro]

Metal Slugspoken in the MS announcer voice

I think the MS announcer's voice should be accompanied by explosions, not invisible text. Good choice of game though.

Fucked around a little more with Muffin (FUCKER) Knight - there are extra 'loops' (at higher difficulty, i.e. beating knight unlocks prince, which unlocks king in turn) and it's now even more clear the developers didn't know what the hell they were doing at all. The second difficulty level didn't seem more difficult than the first when I first played it (which is why I wrote "do it all over again with no changes"), but the third difficulty level is obviously harder than the previous one, even at the very first toy level. The game designers hamstrung any pretense of the game being about scoring, instead of trying to push players towards buying points: Going for stage highscores or even the beanstalk level (requires 100% completion, ugh) is severely disincentivized by the higher difficulties, where you should probably be putting all points collected in the lower tiers first. And with room on the main screen for at least two more difficulty levels, it looks like there's either a LOT of grinding or a LOT of sales to be had to get fully powered up. Or, to put that in reverse, you will need to spend too long leveling in previous levels, or spending your precious quick level points from higher difficulty levels to complete your lower difficulty levels, which will leave you scrambling to make any progress at all in the higher difficulty levels. What a wonderful choice!

I noticed something about else the character leveling screen - you can unlock 'perks' (cost appears to be 2 points each) or a life (free hit) for a cost of 10 points. You are awarded one point per level, so it's completely ridiculous to have to level 20 or 30 times to get two or three extra lives (which appears required for 100% completion and the bonus level), especially if that comes at the cost of being so underpowered you can't avoid enemies rolling over you. On the first difficulty level, it's a better idea to max out character abilities before wasting time - but now you have the prospect of happy fun grinding for ever and ever. In any case, points collected there should, again, go towards the higher difficulty levels first.

Lousy perk system: The first perk is a Mario-style head stomp. (The second perk is "a double jump always comes in handy" - er, no, wrong; being airborne leaves you very vulnerable in this game.) The description says it won't harm enemies and will just make them angry - that's not right. A few stomps and you can kill most things - but the enemies offer no worthwhile XP and it takes far too long compared to direct damage. The (only) real purpose of this is to hopefully escape over enemies. With an extra health point bought, you notice enemies get to juggle you a bit (yay). And the very useful bull powerup (invincibility, kill enemies to charge) is also crippled in two ways - one, enemies can bump you in this form (although you can bump them too); two, if you rush enemies near a wall, you'll stun yourself if you don't stop in time. Just like the pumpkin or the fucking monkey. LOVELY

Anyway, none of that really matters because the game will happily put your muffins right under an enemy spawn point, and enemies can spawn and drop on you literally before you can react. LOL!

Really...are Angry Birds and Mini Ninjas really the best the Chrome App Store have to offer? (Monster Dash too, maybe.) I am very sad at this thought.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Data East-wise, played some BurgerTime Deluxe today. If the coin-op version plays the same, colour me impressed. Nothing about the execution seems tricky, it feels not as oppressive as Pac-Man and just might be slower-paced, but I can imagine it earning its numbers in the arcades.

[Ed Oscuro]

I never really could get into Burger Time, but I'll give it another shot on that recommendation Hard to hate the gameplay.
On a related note, I've always been a sucker for the rather clumsy but charming Leland coin-op "Pig Out." Might be worth looking up. It's no Snax 'n' Jaxon but it's a bit fun. The levels look like they needed some work though - the third one (or was it the fourth?) always was too awkward to play well in, and the previous ones were often too simple.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution's pressing question: "How can I spend these Praxis Points without further cluttering my view?" I'm right at that point and beyond. I've had all the upgrades I'll ever need for a long while. I don't even like the CASIE (aka sniff 'n' scratch, rope-a-dope conversation with perfumes and shit) augmentation because it fills the screen with garbage and means you have to replay sections to see some line of dialogue or two. I put it off until I needed it for a specific achievement (and that took a strangely long time to figure out, even with guides). I didn't need it because I'd been winning every argument on my first try. Not real impressed with where the game's going at the moment (the Ranch lab shit, and having snippets from the Half-Life tram speech in a few emails on computers in this area is an insult to everybody). I have almost reached enlightenment re: useless loot, pretty soon I'll not care about anything. Still compulsively hacking everything I see, though. (WHY? The virus and trojan disks are only worth 25 credits each or so!)

Played a bit more of DOOM III yesterday - a bit better than I was feeling about it, although the guns are still terrible and clumsy to use. For the most part, I'm liking the situations the game throws at me a bit more. Passed that EMP blacked-out area with the scientist carrying a lantern as my light, which turned out to be far less interesting than I had remembered. Ended up going back and searching the whole maze for goodies later. Trites (upside-down-head spider nasties) are a real change of pace.

[BIL]

Tried getting a bit of Eurotrash in my life tonight with THE KILLING GAME SHOW (Mega Drive). Always on the lookout for more mecha-themed games, and I've also taken quite a shine to JP releases of western-developed Mega Drive games. Everbody's got their vice, kanji-emblazoned snapcases be mine. When I look at my matching Ecco I & II cases I think "WHITE POWER" (because the spines are white with blue text, much more aesthetically pleasing than fugly Genesis chequerboard / red candystripe).

TKGS has a nicely taut sidescroller premise - lava rising, search for keys and keep moving up - and some very smooth wall-climbing controls. Unfortunately it also has that distinctively hollow, unsatisfying collision detection which makes shooting things about as gratifying and effective as rubbing mouldy peas on the armour plating of an advancing Panzerkampfwagen and hoping they'll oxidise though, and also makes enemy sprites' ability to just kind of waft all over you while draining health much more worrying than the enemies themselves. So yeah, not too keen on this one.

Considering picking up Desert Strike, but wouldn't you know it - the controls are bugged. Try playing with the "From Overhead" control scheme for awesome arcadey maneuvering! But don't adjust the buttons so that you can comfortably strafe with C while rapidly tapping B - every time you jink the scheme will revert to that shitty "From Cockpit" setting. FML. Might stick with it since playing with my index finger on A and tapping with insult finger and ring finger isn't too bad.

[Daigohji]

I've started playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines yet again. I've had this PC game since 2004, started it several times, but never got very far. It's atmospheric and inventive, but shipped with unbalanced combat and countless bugs. The publisher eviscerated the developer shortly after this game came out, resulting in bug fixes drying up long before the problems were ironed out. However, Bloodlines is an example of the amazing support fans can give when developers fail. The final official patch in 2004 was v1.2. The latest (and most extensive) fan made patch is 8.4.1, and came out today. Today! For a game from 8 years ago!

[SuperGrafx]

I've been playing some of the free apps on the Windows 8 Marketplace this week.
Between the Mars table on Pinball FX2 and the various Microsoft Solitaire/Mahjong/Minesweeper apps (trust me they're addictive...complete with achievements and daily challenges), I've been on a casual game kick thanks to Win 8

[trap15]

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie [SNES]

Holy shit nostalgia. Played this game all the time as a kid. It was also one of the few games I sold to get enough money for my N64 back in the day. How I regret selling this gem. Bought it back on Amazon earlier today so that I can play it on my actual SNES, but playing in an emulator has made me sure that it was a good purchase.

Absolutely rockin' music, nice graphics, solid beat-em-up gameplay.

It's not 2.5D, but has a plane switch mechanic instead. There's only two planes (though oftentimes, there is only one), so the switching doesn't feel awkward at all.

Not really too sure about the characters though. Some seem completely bad, and others have some minor faults. Still trying to figure out the "best", but I get the feeling that Kimberly is probably the best. Has a quick double-slap that'll deal two hits in a much quicker span than most characters, has a decently fast uppercut. But her weapon when full-power in the Ranger suit is kinda crap unless you're dealing with swarms of enemies, which isn't really that common.

Can't wait for my cart to arrive!

[Ed Oscuro]

Considering picking up Desert Strike, but wouldn't you know it - the controls are bugged.

Copies of this and MicroProse games seem to multiply in my house. I have two copies of Desert Strike sitting on my desk here, with a SMS After Burner and a F-15 Strike Eagle II above those. Quackshot at the bottom of the pile. So far, so good - the Desert Strikes haven't bred yet. I wouldn't mind if a port of Battle of the Solar System showed up sometime, though - although it'd need to be for PC.

Anyway, the Strike games...yeah, I dunno why I bought 'em. They're not the worst thing ever - action games! - but they seemed a bit stale

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie [SNES]

That looks far better than the shit on Genesis I've got

The latest (and most extensive) fan made patch is 8.4.1, and came out today. Today! For a game from 8 years ago!

Thanks for the heads-up; I was thinking about this game and its fan patch (back when I was looking, there wasn't much more than some old weapons like the "police rifle" being added back to arms dealers) come Halloween.

[BIL]

Natsume handled the SFC Power Rangers games, iirc. They were really on fire with that console. Wild Guns, Ninja Warriors Again and both SFC Kiki Kaikais are masterpieces of consolised arcade gaming.

It's hard to say "I wish" when the real Wild Guns is so goddamn good, but I wonder how much more its devs could've cranked out of the MD. I'd take a hit in palette and audio channels for Hard Corps-style explosion pornography.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Data East-wise, played some BurgerTime Deluxe today. If the coin-op version plays the same, colour me impressed. Nothing about the execution seems tricky, it feels not as oppressive as Pac-Man and just might be slower-paced, but I can imagine it earning its numbers in the arcades.

Give the Lady Bug rom a spin in Mame and see if it's a slick variant of the classic Pac-Man game.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[null1024]

Sonic Battle [GBA].

Had some 4 player fun with my friends. One of them kept spamming with Sonic's infinite instant-kill glitch, but I ended up winning most of the time [lost because I decided to be Cream once, and thus not have the walking speed to go and kill people enough, got second place that time].

Bit bothersome that spamming shot works so well, especially since it's probably the most useful out of all the special attacks, unless you're Knuckles or something. I picked shot/power every time, and another of my friends kept picking shot/trap, so I kept running into his traps to build meter, and often if he was Shadow, he'd be attacking me and get interrupted by my character autoguarding the trap that follows him around.

Used no$gba, would have been nice to play on GBAs, but 1: we got to play on a big TV [set the resolution to 800x600 to make the tiny [and unstretchable when there is more than one screen [like during DS emulation, or multiplayer GBA]] nocash window bigger, would have done 640x480 if Win7 would let me], and 2: none of us have GBA cables -- most of us do own the game. Used Xpadder for controls, didn't know how to do joystick mapping in nocash for anyone other than player one.

Was pretty enjoyable, and I'll probably see what other 4 player GBA games we can try. The most annoying part was that each controller was tied to a GBA, and you had to have players linked in order -- GBAs 1 and 3 can't communicate without GBA 2 connecting as well, blah. And since controller numbers on the PC aren't exactly sanely done, we had to make sure each player had the right controller to play [this was before we brought another friend over, because when there are 4 people, it doesn't matter who has what, because all the GBAs on the bus connect to each other].

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Another cool 4-player GBA game to play is the cool light cycle game that's found within the GBA Tron: Killer App game itself. Is much better than playing against three other CPU oppenents any ol' day. Is never the same game twice if a different light cycle grid enviroment is utilized for a match. Each light cycle player's screen follows his or her light cycle respectively, regardless of where the other three players are on the grid at any given time. It's possible to speed up and/or slow down to try to trick your rival or opponent in to crashing against your light wall traces at the very last second making for some very heated matches indeed. Even the classic light cycles from the 1982 Tron film can be raced/used if desired.

FYI: requires that each player has a copy of GBA Tron: Killer App in order to implement such 4-player mode successfully + the necessary 4-player GBA link up cables.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Marble]

Played through Fallout 3 (and one of the expansions, Broken Steel) after hearing a friend's description; "Pretty much like the Elder Scrolls but in a post-apocalyptic setting." I hadn't had any previous experiences with the series besides an hour or so of the first game (didn't really like it). It's really got me thinking about one major problem.

In a (great) leveling system like the one in Oblivion (and TES games before that) each skill is dependent on a particular stat and you choose two main stats to be higher than the others. I.e, to be a strong warrior character requires both strength and endurance (not only because your combat related skills will require them, but because endurance has a direct relation to how much stamina you have and how much you can carry, if I recall correctly). However, your total magicka is dependent on your intelligence stat so you can't possibly create a character that is a skilled warrior AND is adept in magic (even if one of the types of magic is one of your main skills). Therefore if you want to make a spellsword character, your fighting abilities are going to be taking a hit. You take stats out of the picture and only level up your skills and you can make a character that is pretty much good at everything. I.e in Skyrim you could have a character whose main skills were one-handed, sneak and restoration magic if you really wanted to. Kind of defeats the purpose, if your character is good at sneaking they should be frail so that having to stealth around is a requirement in order to survive, not something you can just do for the fuck of it. This probably sounds kind of convoluted but I hope people who've played all these games know what I'm on about.

Anyway, my point is that Fallout 3's system is like the latter example and therefore it's unlikely that I'll play through it again because any character I could make up wouldn't provide a considerably different experience unless I went out of my way to create someone really gimped. Kind of a shame, because the actual 'role-playing' aspects of the game are much stronger than in the more recent Elder Scrolls games I listed, it'd be cool to find out what happens if I made different decisions in some of the key moments of the story. But I'm probably not going to play through the whole thing again just for that. I don't really have any issues besides this, though.

Thumbs up to Natsume's SNES games. There's a few of them I still haven't played (Power Rangers: The Movie being one of them, though the first Power Rangers game is pretty good) but all the ones I have played are quite awesome and they all have amazing music. Their two SNES fighters are quite a lot of fun too and probably some of the best FGs developed ground-up for a console as well (along with SNES TMNT: Tournament Fighters).

[Obiwanshinobi]

I'll probably see what other 4 player GBA games we can try.

Bomberman Tournament takes just one cart.

[Mero]

Just finished Atelier Iris 3 after playing it for the past few weeks. Definitely a major step down from AI2 but still passable. Very easy game though, I only had one game over the whole time I was playing and that was on an early boss.

It's the Burst Mode mechanic of the battles that makes it easy, once you're in Burst mode you can inflict insane amounts of damage. And equipping Iris with a Healing Bracelet makes healing items redundant too (in Burst mode, the spell Heal All will replenish about 900 HP to each of your characters, and about 200 HP normally). I only used a few Cure Jars for status effects and a few Nectars for the few knockouts I had. Even with one of my characters knocked out I never really felt in danger. Final boss is easy too, just takes a long time to kill because of his resistances to to physical and magic attacks (i.e. he's resistant to everything).

Also resistant to everything are the Final Puni Brothers, which is an optional fight after you've reached top rank with the Guild (near the end of the game). High resistance, high defence, high HP, and there's 3 of them. The longest boss fight I've ever experienced in an RPG, I swear it took nearly an hour to take them down. 6000 EXP at the end though.

Might get Mana Khemia next, and play it in about 12-18 months time (I only play about 1 RPG a year, if not longer).

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Makaimura. For some reason I'm not able to continue in this version, even though the title screen shows a boatload of credits after the countdown runs out. Oh well, managed to get to 3-2 so far regardless!

[mesh control]

Link to the Past
Starting to feel that Zelda meh, again.

[Daigohji]

Loaded VtM: Bloodlines for a second time, and all my save files have vanished. Not sure whether to blame this on the game or Vista. Pre-Vista games like this like to install into Program Files, but I forgot that Vista is a draconian twat when it comes to what files can do in that folder. So I've reinstalled the game in a different folder, patched it again, switched off my anti-virus just in case, run the game as an administrator, and played through the first few hours...again. I'm also backing up the save files in a different folder. Shit like this is why I hardly ever bother with PC games any more.

[shmuppyLove]

Loaded VtM: Bloodlines for a second time, and all my save files have vanished. Not sure whether to blame this on the game or Vista. Pre-Vista games like this like to install into Program Files, but I forgot that Vista is a draconian twat when it comes to what files can do in that folder. So I've reinstalled the game in a different folder, patched it again, switched off my anti-virus just in case, run the game as an administrator, and played through the first few hours...again. I'm also backing up the save files in a different folder. Shit like this is why I hardly ever bother with PC games any more.

If it's any consolation, 7 is the same way and it's really for the best, security-wise.

The save files may be going to some other path on the drive though. A lot of times they end up buried somewhere in AppData or even Documents. I wish there was more consistency with this, as I hate when I uninstall a game and it leaves config files or saves in random places everywhere. Makes backups more tedious.

[Ed Oscuro]

Loaded VtM: Bloodlines for a second time, and all my save files have vanished. Not sure whether to blame this on the game or Vista. Pre-Vista games like this like to install into Program Files, but I forgot that Vista is a draconian twat when it comes to what files can do in that folder. So I've reinstalled the game in a different folder, patched it again, switched off my anti-virus just in case, run the game as an administrator, and played through the first few hours...again. I'm also backing up the save files in a different folder. Shit like this is why I hardly ever bother with PC games any more.

Can't you find the saves and check their permissions?

Haven't had any problems with stuff like this on Windows 7, but I haven't tried the game on it. I didn't have any problems like that on Vista 32-bit, either, but then I didn't use the fan patch.

[trap15]

Got bored, and I felt in the RPG mood (and one that I can understand the story for, so no Maka Maka), so...

Earthbound [SNES]

What a trippy game

[null1024]

I'll probably see what other 4 player GBA games we can try.

Bomberman Tournament takes just one cart.

Like I said, we were using no$gba, so it automatically puts a cart in each emulated GBA, so that doesn't matter. Good suggestion though, Bomberman is always one of those great multiplayer games.

Also, none of us have link cables [or hell, GBAs, most of my friends traded in theirs to get a DS years ago, I have a wide GBA that I bought months ago, but that's it, got rid of my SP ages ago], even though we all did have copies of Sonic Battle.


Been playing Ridge Racer 2 [PSP], working on getting some good times in time trial.

[FIL]

Got sick of repeatedly pressing X in Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 so I've decided to get beaten by all the remaining VF5 FS players on Xbox live. I haven't played much online since launch so I'm a 3rd kyu and everyone else is beyond 10th Dan.

[system11]

NFS Most Wanted

It's not bad, many flaws though.

[Marc]

NFS Most Wanted

It's not bad, many flaws though.

id be grateful if you would elaborate. I didn't like the open world of Paradise, and found Hot Pursuit slightly dull, I had high hopes for this. Looks like another blast through Burnout 2.