What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[M.Knight]

3D Super Hang-On

I picked this up as it looked fast and fun, and it does not disappoint. This arcade racer has multiple courses and I managed to clear the shortest one, but the others require even more practice and stamina as a single mistake can cost you a lot. Plus, as the race ends immediatly if the timer reaches 0, sometimes you'll be stopped right in front of a checkpoint and it can be frustrating. But the music is good and the turbo feels great, it was a good 3D remake choice from M2. I recommend it for those who are in two minds about it.

Super Mario Star Road

A fan-made Mario 64 hack with a different castle and new levels, as well as different music tracks that mostly come from other Nintendo games. It is refreshing and has a few interesting ideas and puzzles, but you can see that it is not an official game. Some levels are great and look good, others feel a bit more unnatural, without a strong identity. The difficulty is clearly higher than the original with a lot of precise platforming (sometimes over bottomless pits) but some platforms are a bit glitchy due to their complex shapes and the camera issues are more frequent than in SM64. With the Mario camera, it becomes a bit more bearable, but there are still a few troublesome spots. It might just be me, but I have a few issues with understanding the positioning of the platforms in the 3D space that make me miss my jumps and I never had those issues with the original on a N64. That said, Mario 64 rarely requred very accurate jumps.
All in all, it is a good-but-not-mindblowing game, those who liked Mario 64 should try it out.

I am nitpicking but I also saw a "should of" somewhere in the NPC dialogue and it irked me. Yeah, this one can annoy even non native speakers.

[Moniker]

Super Mario 3D World (WiiU)

Don't love it as much as I did Galaxy 2, but still freaking solid. Every course is fine-tuned and original. Nintendo brings its A-Game once again, with predictably great results. Not sure I'd buy the system just to play it, but it really is amazing. Read somewhere that it's an appeasement for Japanese players who like 2D platformers, and Gringo players who like 3D exploration. Fits the bill.

XCOM: Enemy Within (PC)

Getting close to the endgame. Have been absolutely rockin' it for, gee, almost 6 missions now. No fatalities, and flush with money. It helped that I delayed *PRIORITY* research and such until I was ready to go. Been playing on Normal. May or may not play on Classic once I'm done. I originally had X:EU on the X360, but got demoralized when I lost the UK (c'mon, special relationship, what the fuck). Unlike the Civ games, there's definitely a tiring point after you've played x hours.

[Formless God]

Star Ocean 4 (X360). Currently at Nox Octopus after 30 hours (got the game on Christmas, so 10 hours a day average. I regret nothing.)

The good:
- The combat isn't half bad. Takes a huge dump on the Tales series for sure. I also felt I had way more control than in Valkyrie Profile.
- The game gives you a summary every time you skip a cutscene. Why doesn't every game do this? That way I can skip all your dumb talktalktalks while still having an idea of what to do afterwards.
- There is a voice option for every character.

The bad:
- Late game is mostly about Synthesis (lots and lots of interacting with the menu) and HUEG NUMBERS.
- Changing targets is stupidly hard.
- Hitboxes aren't accurate.
- The Blindside mechanism is kind of ... dumb. Instead of having to hold the dodge button, just make it so dodging right as the enemy's attack's about to hit you (flashing reticle) sends you into a Blindside instead. The risk is still there, and it feels much more natural.
- 10 fps outside of battles.
- The camera stinks.
- Invisible/unavoidable enemies due to bad textures, claustrophobic corridor design or the two points above. I'm sure I've fought more battles in this game than in both Nocturne and Strange Journey combined.
- Item creation is really clunky and makes you interact with the menu for too long.
- Item cap. It doesn't affect the combat at all, but boy does it make the quests several times more retarded.
- Open, empty fields of fucking nothing. I appreciate the effort put into the textures, meshes, and all dem bump maps and patterns, but do I really have to spend 20 minutes to go from one town to another? And to top it all off, at the end of the game you are given the option to teleport right the fuck smack in the middle of any town in the game. Spent 4 hours dealing with the desert pilgrimages, item caps and sick item management? Too bad, should've waited until Disc 3 where you can do all of that in fifteen minutes!
- The worst cutscenes are unskippable.

[Ed Oscuro]

Tenchu Shadow Assassins on PSP is more fun than it has any right to be.

I don't think they quite hit an A+ with this one - but I understand why they made some choices. Three items at a time feels dumb if you go back and juggle them within an area; oftentimes (at least in the first batch of areas) you can just run through enemies; swordplay is obviously meant to be avoided at all costs (though I did beat the swordplay Assignment already); lots of level segment reuse. Beyond all these, though, the game hits many good notes. You just gotta be prepared to put up with the same old assassination moves over and over, but that shouldn't be news to series veterans.

At first glance, it feels like an incredibly slimmed-down, QTE'd take on the formula - but after spending more time with it, it's obvious there's actually a fair deal of player control that's more meaningful than combat and sneaking often was in the original games. That being said, I did miss the comparatively open levels of the original game and many of its sequels - which it seems were carried through by the first PSP Tenchu title.

Time of the Assassins feels pretty garbage by comparison, even though it hews much more closely to the old series standard; mainly it seems to get destroyed by a truly awful camera and draw distance (and occasional framerate issues).

- The game gives you a summary every time you skip a cutscene. Why doesn't every game do this? That way I can skip all your dumb talktalktalks while still having an idea of what to do afterwards.

I almost feel bad for feeling gleeful at this. It would just be perfect if the "skip cutscene" commenced with a stiff backhand for good measure. Optional, of course.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Holy crap! I got to play Wizard of OZ Pinball! The crystal ball looks really cool and is very distracting. The machine has a really great feel. Felt just like playing a classic Williams machine. Great flippers compared to the Stern machines. Not saying Stern is bad, it's just different. It's just not like a Williams machine. Got to play on clean and well maintained Stern machines for the first time too. Avengers and Pirates of the Caribbean. Wasn't too crazy about Avengers. It seemed pretty barren to me anyway. Pirates was alright. They had Sopranos and Metallica too but they were being hogged at the time or I would have checked those out. Man, I haven't got to play real pinball in probably six years and my games didn't last very long at all. I could definitely see myself getting hooked on OZ. I was shocked to even find the machines much less that all the machines were very clean and well maintained. Good times.

[null1024]

3D Super Hang-On
I picked this up as it looked fast and fun, and it does not disappoint. This arcade racer has multiple courses and I managed to clear the shortest one, but the others require even more practice and stamina as a single mistake can cost you a lot. Plus, as the race ends immediatly if the timer reaches 0, sometimes you'll be stopped right in front of a checkpoint and it can be frustrating. But the music is good and the turbo feels great, it was a good 3D remake choice from M2. I recommend it for those who are in two minds about it.

Yeah, Super Hang-On is fantastic. If I could have only one of the 3D remakes, it'd be this.

The immediate stop kind of bothers me -- I'm used to arcade racers letting you roll through as you slow to a stop at 0.

Oh, and the Sit-Down version of the courses are even harder, with tighter turns.

[Bananamatic]

Star Ocean 4 (X360). Currently at Nox Octopus after 30 hours (got the game on Christmas, so 10 hours a day average. I regret nothing.)

Go play SO3, it's 10x better than 4. The strong/weak attack system and the anti attack aura is infinitely better and more tactical than blindsides.

Honestly my biggest problem with 4 was how badly the bosses were designed - first of all there was a very low amount of them and all the story ones were just gimmicks and exploiting the weak spots. You can blow up Sahariel in 10 seconds flat on Chaos without any leveling. SO3 has no blindsides or gimmicks, just straight up beatdowns.

Even on Chaos, you don't really have to fight anything, just run from boss to boss and hit their weak spots a few times and they drop like nothing.
Also the final optional dungeon is downright retarded. And the cutscene attack spam mechanic(forgot the name) has no real place in an action rpg.
The character balance is also awful, especially in the postgame - Meracle, Reimi and Arumat blow everything up like nothing, Edge is useless, Bacchus becomes weak in the postgame and spellcasters are reduced to healbots.

The only better thing compared to SO3 is the item creation system which makes more sense than 3's RNGfest.

Tri-Ace rpgs just jumped the shark after ps2 tbh. Infinite Undiscovery is even worse, at least SO4 made me finish it 3 times.

[Formless God]

Welp, I'm glad I didn't pick up Infinite Undiscovery then.

Yeah the game felt a bit easy. I'm locked out of Universe and Chaos but even fresh VP2 kicked my ass harder than this. I will look into SO3 once I'm done with this.

Oh, and I forgot to mention Critical Hit. Late game I either do 10 damage or crit for 1,000. Meracle's Comet Dunk is somewhere around 25,000. What

[Bananamatic]

Crits ignore defense IIRC

You might enjoy Infinite Undiscovery, but you can only ever control 1 character and the combat is a bit restricted.

[M.Knight]

Yeah, Super Hang-On is fantastic. If I could have only one of the 3D remakes, it'd be this.

The immediate stop kind of bothers me -- I'm used to arcade racers letting you roll through as you slow to a stop at 0.

Oh, and the Sit-Down version of the courses are even harder, with tighter turns.

I am also used to slowing down when the timer reaches 0 and be able to keep playing if I cross a checkpoint in the meanwhile. But Super Hang-On is quite old, maybe this "trend" came with later arcade racers?
And I thought the Sit-Down option only had cosmetic changes, so thanks for the info.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I've even gotten the PS3 version of it now, so I'll be playing it again eventually. I do like the game a lot, but it's definitely not as good as the others in the series. PS3 version even fixes a lot of what annoys me about the 360 version of SO4.


But I'm currently playing

KH Final Mix HD- beat Proud mode, 3 of the optional bosses, working on synthesis and leveling. I'm not using the 0 experience ability so the experience is like what it originally was since 0 experience does some rebalincing as well. I do plan to try the level 1 Proud run sometime. The game is definitely a lot harder than Vanilla KH on Expert. And it makes me wonder how I could even stand to do some of these battles originally since I couldn't just spam heals with Leaf Bracer to stop me from getting interrupted. Though a lot of the final mix exclusive heartless are annoying.

Tales of Xillia- not very far in.

Ni no Kuni- only beaten the first boss.

[Bananamatic]

Is the PS3 version actually harder? It looked the same to me

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Is the PS3 version actually harder? It looked the same to me

I have not actually played it yet. I'm planning to 100% completing KH1 Proud and at least beating Xillia and Ni no Kuni first.

[dunpeal2064]

Playing a ton of DJ Max Technika Tune. Such a fine game. Playing Son of Sun with headphones at full blast is surreal.

[Vexorg]

In my experience, the Stern tables tend to be hit-or-miss. Some work really well (The Pat Lawlor designed tables are probably their best ones, with Monopoly being my favorite) but some of their designers just tend to overcomplicate the heck out of everything and leave a mess, with The Simpsons Pinball Party probably being the worst offender. It's a reasonably enjoyable game, but at the same time there's so much stuff going on that it's impossible to figure it all out without a cheat sheet. Mechanically I think they've improved somewhat over time (Data East stuff was generally pretty terrible mechanically, and the Sega era stuff wasn't much better,) but their flippers still aren't up to par with the Williams/Bally machines.

[replayme]

'Shelter' for the PC.

Takes about 1.5 hours to "complete" in what is essentially a metaphor for the great circle of life. Has a really beautiful soundtrack, which doesn't become apparent until the "end".

Glad I picked it up in the Steam sale.

[blackoak]

I'm not a huge Stern fan myself either, though in alternation I enjoy them somewhat. I wonder how I'd feel about their tables if they didn't use shitty "faces out of the darkness" dvd cover art... blegh

Girlfriend has flamenco dance classes in Alameda over the next couple months, so I'm going to be spending a lot of time at the Alameda pinball museum here in the bay, if anyone wants to talk shmup/pin... I hope they haven't replaced Pinbot.

[null1024]

Ys Origin [PC].
Playing as the axe-girl.

Good fun so far, not far in at all though. I did just get locked in a room with enemies and then one of them hit for half my health [and another hit for the other half immediately after], though.

Silly me passed the treasure chests that I needed to open to advance. Probably passed them like, 5 times.

and the best thing is playing this with a Saturn pad, hnnng

Oh, and since I haven't beaten Ys I or II [haven't started II because I haven't finished I], it was a bit of a surprise to hear Reah and Feena's names mentioned as them being the Goddesses, not sure if that's a spoiler since it's mentioned really, really, really early in...

[Skykid]

^ That's definitely a BIG spoiler!

[null1024]

^ That's definitely a BIG spoiler!

Well, shit.
Thanks, game!

[KAI]

Skull Girls [PC]. Melty Blood it's much better than this.

[Neathyr]

For this past month, I've been playing only one game, and that is F-Zero GX. Do you know those moments where words fail to describe something in specific? Yeah.

I love this game so much. No matter how much you get better at it, there's always room of improvement in every situation. So you can finally pull off shift boosts on a regular basis? How about on every single "rail-less" corner? Or perhaps try to best your PB on, say... Cosmo Terminal with every machine available, bringing a whole other way of playing (for the most part, that is).
The skill cap truly is endless. Not to mention how content-packed the game is.
It's one of those strong contenders for my desert island game, and I think I wouldn't mind one bit if I were to play this bastard for years on end.
Too bad modern Nintendo don't have the balls to develop a legitimate successor to GX.

Can't wait to see mr. Naegleria destroying it on AGDQ 2014. His Story Mode speedrun was already fantastic, but then this happens. It would be legendary if he manages to pull it off on a marathon.

[broken harbour]

Well I'm done with Katamari Damacy. I have a hard time with the time limits, very challenging, and the controls are hard to get used to, too bad because I really wanted to love this game, I love how weird it is.

I picked up Super Mario Galaxy, I played through about half of it about 5 years ago. So I started from the beginning again. I have a hard time with 3D platformers that deny you control of the camera, and there's times I wish I could control it, but I haven't had too many places where I died because of a bad camera angle. I recall a few years back I got frustrated with the controls and camera in a few areas, but we'll see how it is this go around.

[BIL]

BDOOMv019



RAWWWR

[Marc]

Bought my son a 3DS XL for Christmas, and to say I'm impressed would be an understatement. THIS is portable gaming, not the overblown crap of the PS3-lite I got rid of. The Space Harrier and Super Hang-On conversions are simply the best I've ever played of either game, but it's Mario 3D World that's truly sold me. The 3D effect is eye poppingly gorgeous after a short period of adjustment and the game itself... two worlds in and I can honestly say I haven't been this impressed since Mario World. It's a joyful riot of colour and imagination, and every level seems to contain something new to smile about. Its making me want to pick up a Wii U just for the one game.

lots of Spelunky, made it to the temple and seem to have the Ice Caves down, but those dark levels can seriously fuck right off the horrible robbing bastards.

Bit of Fight Night Champions,which is good fun and also surprisingly nuanced with two players.

Picked of the Castle Of Illusion and Duck Tales remakes, not impressed with CoI (were the controls really this slippy originally?) and although Duck Tales plays well, they both look hideous. More so DTin some ways, as those lovely sprites look out of place on such bland backdrops.

[null1024]

Tales of Xillia [PS3].

On the way to meet with the king of... erm, Auj Oule? Can't remember, always been bad with RPG location names.
Spent a distressing amount of time looking for a guy the game asked me to find even though he's not there [the game really just wanted me to go to the inn and then back to the town square before letting me progress, but I forgot that Millia mentioned visiting the inn and I was at full health, so I saw no point ].

damnit Bamco, release ToX2 over here fffff

And I really should finish Tales of the Abyss on my 3DS [maybe 2/3rds or 3/5ths in? I'd be bothered if it was much longer...], I just need to look up where the hell to go, because I have no effing idea. Haven't started the game up in weeks because of that. I usually don't like looking things up, but fuck it.

[oh and hell, I should finish ToI on the DS, but fuck that one boss after you're exiled to that one island and there's a billion cutscenes and stuff before you fight it and then it kills you, and I've kind of forgotten how fighting in that game works and it's also kind of average as a game anyway, so fuck]

Hm. Maybe I'm just too lazy to finish RPGs, even action ones. I stilllllllll need to finish Tales of Destiny [need to recover my save off of my other laptop, shit -- probably means I sure as hell won't finish it] and FF7 [asdf] and FF9 and Xenogears [maybe] and every Ys game I've played and...
Pokemon games don't exactly count, they're all piss-easy and pretty short and you can't get lost ever [except in maybe R/S/E, where you have to find Steven in that cave and you never think that he's ass deep into it]. Pokemon Gold is probably the only RPG I've ever finished more than twice.

[Wyrmnus]

Recently started playing PSO2. Its a fun game. Feels like 'Vindictus: Black label' or something to that effect. Now that I think upon this subject, I also need to finish the single player campaign for BF4.

[Dragoforce]

Playing Red Alert 3 on new years eve.

[replayme]

According to IGN walkthrough, I'm on Part 9 (of 10) in Final Fantasy Crisis Core (PSP). Feeling a little sad that everything will soon be over.

[railslave]

BDOOMv019



RAWWWR

Played doom rpg 2 ?

underrated