What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[AweOfShe]

I feel like I finished all that I wanted to do, with the Bravely Default demo, and it was fantastic. Taking all of my will power to not grab the Japanese version, so I can play it in English. One more month, just one more month.

In the meantime, I'll finish of Sora no Kiseki The 3rd (PC version). I'm nearing the end of it. Will play the M2 3DS ports in between.

[BrianC]

I played some SNES and Genesis games at a friend's house yesterday. One of them was Knights of the Round SNES. I like the port quite a bit. Much better than their Final Fight 1 port and has some sweet music too. Other games I played were Alien Storm Genesis, King of Dragons SNES, Sunset Riders Genesis, Golden Axe 2 Genesis, and Mystical Ninja SNES.

[Drachenherz]

Half life 2, Live for speed and a couple of demos on the oculus rift.

I'm blown away! Guys, VR is the true "next gen"! Even if the dev kit with it's low resolution and screen door effect is far from perfect, it REALLY puts you IN the game.

Playing live for speed in cockpit view, with driver models enabled, makes me truly believe I'm right there, racing a car.

Can't wait for the consumer version of the rift.

2014 truly is the year when VR finally makes the breakthrough!

[CMoon]

Half life 2, Live for speed and a couple of demos on the oculus rift.

I'm blown away! Guys, VR is the true "next gen"! Even if the dev kit with it's low resolution and screen door effect is far from perfect, it REALLY puts you IN the game.

Playing live for speed in cockpit view, with driver models enabled, makes me truly believe I'm right there, racing a car.

Can't wait for the consumer version of the rift.

2014 truly is the year when VR finally makes the breakthrough!

It is great to hear this! Although I've never tried OR, everything I've heard has given me this impression. This is part of the reason I think PS4/XBONE are too soon, as they needed to take the time to incorporate this hardware.

[Acid King]

Gears of War 3

Cleared Hardcore fairly quickly and have moved on to Insane. I like the campaign a bit more than Gears 2, though a few bosses would have been nice, I'm glad they ditched all the vehicle/rail bits for the most part. Gonna make an run on Arcade mode after my second Campaign run. Updated Horde mode is disappointing though because playing well on your own nigh on impossible. I guess I'll have to stick to Gears 2 for my Horde fix.

[hecheff]

Zelda: Link between Worlds (3DS)

Fucking awesome game. Way better than I had hoped.

Just finished my first run over the weekend. Awesome game it is.
The buildup of the orchestrated music in the last dungeon made it one hell of an experience.


Steam discounts again; I just started Rogue Legacy after having my satisfying fill of Roguelike-ish FTL. Fun game.

[broken harbour]

Super Mario Galaxy just got irritating again. Motion controls should be banned, I can never gel with hem, and why is the game obsessed with hanging me upside down? People say the controls in this game are 'perfect' but that's just nostalgia goggles or something, they can be pretty imprecise sometimes, and changing a camera angle mid-jump? Man that makes my blood boil.

Got to Bowsers Dark Matter Generator and had to put it down before I raged.

Am I the only one that gets annoyed with almost any first party Nintendo title? They always seem to have massive difficulty spikes in the middle, and present more of a frustration than anything else. There's a fine line between frustration and challenge that nintendo often gets wrong. But the game is so good otherwise that you want to see it through. When I played Ocarina of Time a few weeks back I felt the same way... enjoyed it until the water temple and then it was just tedious and irritating after that.

[null1024]

I haven't really had issues with SMG [2 at least, since I haven't played the first]. It's been forever since I've had a go at it though.


Tales of Destiny [PS1].

Fuck it, restarted completely instead of looking for my old save. I forgot about that really stupid bit in the first town where you have to get a passport, spent 20 minutes looking for the right guy to talk to... blah.
The game has a few moments like that, where it just drops you somewhere and says fuck all on what to do to advance [and then there's that one puzzle that you quite literally need to go on GameFAQs for because the hints in game are outright wrong, and then that other one which you'd blow an asston of Gald trying to get the guy to tell you the order for the doors, blah -- and you'd need to realize he was giving you the order instead of just spouting random nonsense, since he says them as single words, unadorned [and you pay for each section in the sequence]...].

Although, I still love how the game looks and feels like a SNES game but on steroids. Lots of neat little details that remind you that you're playing a PS1 game, even though it runs at SNES resolution and uses SNES style pixel art.

man, I should just stop playing RPGs, I'm bitching too much

[CMoon]

Actually didn't know whether or not to post this here or in the 3DS thread, but yeah, I'm playing animal crossing. Why is this worth mentioning? Well, because it is a casual hand held game, I'm finding I can play it while on the exercise bike.

This is pretty cool for me since I find it hard to get motivated or even find the time to exercise. And yeah, sitting on your exercise bike for any sustained period of time is probably the most goddamn boring thing invented, but doing so while playing a casual game like animal crossing is suddenly pretty motivating.

Better yet, AC is an 'endless' game, which also means it is to some extent 'brainless' (sorry AC fans), but there's some really joy running around catching fish, bugs, doing errands, etc. that makes mindless exercise fly by (did an hour this morning without much thought.) I realize other people would just watch TV (I don't enjoy it much), and I've tried lots of other games (even console games) while on the bike, but mostly anything except the most casual games just don't work. AC and bike though seems to be the perfect solution so far!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Super Mario Galaxy just got irritating again. Motion controls should be banned, I can never gel with hem, and why is the game obsessed with hanging me upside down? People say the controls in this game are 'perfect' but that's just nostalgia goggles or something, they can be pretty imprecise sometimes, and changing a camera angle mid-jump? Man that makes my blood boil.

One Wii game that makes PERFECT use of motion controls is Kororinpa. The ball rolling stage of SMG is abomination. Excite Truck, if not as elegant as Kororinpa, can be crazy fun too. I wonder how Sega Bass Fishing fares on the Wii.

[CMoon]

I wonder how Sega Bass Fishing fares on the Wii.

Before I sold my wii I was really interested in it, but heard it was an inferior port to of the DC version. I really dug both of the DC sega fishing games.

[railslave]

I WANT to be playing this, cant get it to run anymore , any ideas?



BAD MOJO

[broken harbour]

I sounded a bit harsh in my assessment of SMG so far, to be fair, there's alot to like about it. Inspired level design, great presentation, the score is fantastic! I love the remixed versions of old tunes from the original games, like the airship theme from Mario 3, etc... and the new music is just great. I just wish that traditional twin-stick style controls were an option... I understand why they aren't though, as you couldn't implement many of the mechanics.... But I wish I had more control over the camera, that's my main gripe.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Normally I wouldn't be interested in a fishing game, but with Monkey Golf Sega of that time scored massive credit with me. (Used to be not interested in golf games either.)

Wouldn't call SMG's presentation "great", though. Good music, framerate and character animations, but it's the wrong kind of ugly otherwise.

[broken harbour]

Wouldn't call SMG's presentation "great", though. Good music, framerate and character animations, but it's the wrong kind of ugly otherwise.

Lol depends on your expectations I guess... I play alot of games from the early 90's so this looks GREAT in comparison.

At least it's colorful...

[Obiwanshinobi]

I play alot of games from the early 90's so this looks GREAT in comparison.

At least it's colorful...

You should play Rayman 2 on PC or DC. I don't know of any game from early nineteen-nineties that would look anything like 3D platform games, thus I'm not sure what comparison there is to be made.

[KAI]

Monter Hunter 3rd HD
That blue bear is kicking my ass really hard.

[replayme]

I play alot of games from the early 90's so this looks GREAT in comparison.

At least it's colorful...

You should play Rayman 2 on PC or DC. I don't know of any game from early nineteen-nineties that would look anything like 3D platform games, thus I'm not sure what comparison there is to be made.

Rayman 2 is/was amazing. DC version is the best version though...

[Ed Oscuro]

Not playing Dwarf Fortress, but I'll leave this here:
http://mccaine.org/2013/10/09/dwarf-for ... -analysis/

Tenchu: Shadow Assassins PSP continues to be satisfying for unraveling the little puzzles in each area. I realized that what I don't like, but which is probably unavoidable to keep a game going reasonably well on a platform like the PSP, is that it is a pretty flat, close-to-the-ground game.

When I first played it, I thought "hey, they've QTE'd it up a bunch," but this isn't actually true overall. Most of what they've done is clarified and extrended the ranges and time periods where you can execute stealth kills. The only real QTEish elements are boss battles and the rare multi-enemy kill strike, but the boss battles aren't properly considered normal gameplay (I only ever get into them at bosses; people who fight scrub enemies this way should not be playing games, let alone reviewing them for a salary) and the multi-kill strikes still have to be set up correctly. If you consider the button prompt to execute a stealth kill as a QTE, then I guess the Tenchu series is the granddaddy of QTE games, because really the stealth kills are identical to how they played out in the 1998 original (with the exception of the multi-kill strike, again). And that really isn't a great difference from how many other games play; Tenchu just adds a bit of variety to the kill animations. It is interesting to note that originally Tenchu was supposed to have a more rigorous combo timing system, but the timing was relaxed for the retail release. It would theoretically be nice to have a game which combines the good of Tenchu with the sophistication of Ninja Gaiden (on Xbox) but in practice it would probably be quite messy and schizophrenic. I do miss the complete removal of free hand-to-hand combat though.

On the DOOM front, Stronghold DOOM is pretty interesting, but seems lacking to play. Definitely recommend it to people to take a look as an example of the cutting edge in DOOM mapping though. There is a lot to recommend it.

[null1024]

Tales of the Abyss [3DS].

Wow, I'm stupid.
I'm on the final boss [maybe]. He uses one of his Mystic Artes that pretty much kills whoever it hits [since no one has 9999 health on my team] and drops everyone else to 1HP. Should have used a Treat [or is it a Specific? one of them heals the whole team, fuck those names, blah]. Did something else, went to protect my casters so they could finish whatever they were doing, we all got hit out of nowhere. Fuck.


Super Mario 3D Land [3DS].

Loaned the game to a buddy over the holiday, got it back. I forgot how nice the game looked, haha.


Cool Riders [Arcade/MAME].

I was excited to see this get emulated, since it was Sega's last Super Scaler game. After this, Sega made only polygonal hardware and never looked back.

Sadly, it's not that great. It's pretty much Outrunners [which I knew beforehand], but with worse tracks [the stage design just doesn't feel as well done as in Outrunners] and visuals [they're more technically impressive thanks to the strange hardware used only in this game, but they still look like ass because they are everything wrong with the whole 90s digitized image fad]. Pretty much, if you're playing this, you might as well go play Outrunners instead -- better sense of style, better track design, and lastly, Outrunners runs at 60fps. Cool Riders runs at 30.

The choice is clear.

[louisg]

I've been playing Metal Slug 2nd Mission and Match of the Millenium when I commute, and at home still playing The Great American Cross-Country Road Race when I have a chance.

Metal Slug 2nd Mission is fantastic. I got it recently, and it's one of the most killer 8-bitty platform/shooter games I've tried. I like how it's different enough from the arcade Slugs, too. Actually, same with MotM. They both complement their arcade counterparts well, which is great because if they were straight ports there'd be little reason to play them in 2014.

[louisg]

I WANT to be playing this, cant get it to run anymore , any ideas?



BAD MOJO

Ooh a friend of mine did sound design for that one!

[Mortificator]

2nd Mission has a couple of mine cart rides that, maybe I was just bad at, but they aggravated me enough to lower my opinion of the game a little. I also think 1st Mission has a stronger finale.

I shouldn't spend too much time on the negatives, though, because the 8-bit Metal Slugs and The Match of the Millennium are still my Neo-Geo Pocket favorites.

[lilmanjs]

L.A. Noire complete edition. Loving it and finally on vice. I wonder if by disc 3 that dlc missions have been played.

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh shit, Scuba Steve released Dead Of Winter, a kind of (free) DLC for Action DOOM 2: Urban Brawl!

Fantastic stuff here, although I still don't care for the brawling gameplay it's definitely worth a run-through.

[Obiwanshinobi]

What is supposed to be wrong with the Sega Bass Fishing Wii port? Ghost Squad's bad rep seemed to be spread mostly by those who have not played it (so little is wrong with that port I consider it one of the very most instantly gratifying Wii games).

[CMoon]

What is supposed to be wrong with the Sega Bass Fishing Wii port? Ghost Squad's bad rep seemed to be spread mostly by those who have not played it (so little is wrong with that port I consider it one of the very most instantly gratifying Wii games).

Never actually played it...just remember hearing talk at the time. In general I've found most of the 'bad port' talk to be inflated, except perhaps on that Silent Hill HD set. The game is probably fine.

[railslave]

I WANT to be playing this, cant get it to run anymore , any ideas?



BAD MOJO

Ooh a friend of mine did sound design for that one!

One of the best things about it, i know people are trying to get it on gog and rightly so, what a classic

L.A. Noire complete edition. Loving it and finally on vice. I wonder if by disc 3 that dlc missions have been played.

One of the most memorable games ive played captivating. I really love the music as well.
I usually find the talking sections in games excruciatingly dull and i was very disappointed with what Bethesda THOUGHT they had pulled off with their games. (a big thing they tried to sell with with oblivion)

I honestly didn't miss one of those encounters in LA..

[Obiwanshinobi]

My Metropolis Street Racer copy is busted (despite looking barely scathed). I consider myself lucky it's not Power Stone 2. Didn't really like what little MSR I played. Seems to be made for people who really are into cars, like Gran Turismo or the first NFS. I knew such a motorhead, but have never been one myself. Here's hoping the seller's gonna trade it for Jet Set Radio.
I feel relieved of temptation to ever play Project Gotham Racing, too.
All those warnings I heard/read lately in street racing games (the first NFS: Most Wanted, MSR) make me appreciate how bluntly devoid of these the original Burnout is. Burnout's car crashes themselves are warning enough, 12 years down the line and counting.

[CMoon]

Another (and probably last) run through dark souls. Pure mage build, nothing fancy. If I were to do one last run it would be to attempt a pure faith build which I've always found the least viable.