What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[mesh control]

Ocarina of Time 3D - I was beginning to contemplate what I was going to do with the game after I completed the story. Now that I know what the hell the Master Quest is, I'm looking forward to completing that as well.

SMT: Strange Journey - Into this.

[spadgy]

It's only a board/card gaming port, but I can't get enough of Ascension iOS right now.

And I'm still dipping back in to LittleBigPlanet Vita. I still love that series.

[trap15]

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown [X360]

Just bought it on XBL for 600 MSP last night (hurry now! Offer only valid for this week to XBL Gold members). Holy shit I've really been missing out on this for this long!? Really enjoying it! Time to learn myself a new fight-mans

[Davey]

Yay, Magical Drop III is back in GGPO after temporarily being displaced by some SFIII hack. Still needs moar players, though.

I thought I would quickly get bored with Scramble with Friends, but I didn't. I kind of hate myself for loving a Zynga game.

It's only a board/card gaming port, but I can't get enough of Ascension iOS right now.

How long have you been playing that? It seemed pretty popular at my local MtG shop a few months ago, but after a month or so (probably less) I never saw people play it anymore.

[Moniker]

Don't play F-Zero GX while drunk. Just don't. Ever. I need some pepto stat.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Excite Truck is enjoyable on booze. I've never got the "gaming sickness" thing, though, so maybe for somebody else crazy speed combined with sub-arcade framerates will be a problem.

[spadgy]

Excite Truck is enjoyable on booze. I've never got the "gaming sickness" thing, though, so maybe for somebody else crazy speed combined with sub-arcade framerates will be a problem.

I do adore Excite Truck. I see why some loath it, but I swear there's a brilliantly balanced racing game in there.

[Moniker]

I've never got the "gaming sickness" thing, though, so maybe for somebody else crazy speed combined with sub-arcade framerates will be a problem.

It doesn't usually bother me; I'm fine with Burnout, eg. I can't think offhand of any other games that give me a problem, to be honest, but the constant jerking and swirling of the camera in GX's "tunnel" tracks were just too much.

Since you recommend, I'm kind of amped to play some drunken Excite Truck tonight.

[Ed Oscuro]

Finished up the first release of Black Mesa (who knows, they might have a new version out already). Took a while to get used to some things (especially the new grunt voices) but overall a high quality mod. However, there are tons of bugs, some really obvious - I found my first game-interrupting bug within minutes simply by jumping out of an elevator, and a level transition that was supposed to follow would not trigger. A fair amount of dumb stuff too, like ammo stockpiles in useless places, lots of the wrong kinds of ammo in places, no real incentive to switch from playing almost exclusively with the pistol / alien grunt weapon ("Hivehand"). But there's more than enough good stuff here to recommend this to almost anyone. Some areas are a bit less interesting or more confusing than the originals, many are about the same, and a fair number are arguably better. There are also a few places that deviate enough from the original game to be interesting (or annoying - one place has you doing Half-Life 2's "put the plastic barrels under the mesh to lift the platform out of the water" puzzle when you don't really expect it).

I have a list of bugs as long as my arm so I'll have to remember my moddb account and report 'em...

[AweOfShe]

Sank a little over 8 hours in Ys Celceta no Jukai. All I did was explore as much as I could. Man, compared to the other Ys games, Celceta is a pretty huge place. Just got to the part when Karna finally joins me. I love her new design. <3

[Obiwanshinobi]

Is it possible for just two people (no more, no less) to play Super Monkey Ball (1 or 2) on split screen? I see some split screen settings in the options, but Normal Game for two players is just taking turns. I'm confused.

[BIL]

Wicked game, some of the more intense 16-bit (or whatever 32X is) gaming I've enjoyed lately. I wish it required a trophy per car to clear a difficulty level, though, just to demand proficiency with each handling model. They really do drive nothing alike. Of course there's nothing stopping you from doing this yourself. I stuck to the Formula since I found it the most fun and challenging, but will definitely go back and get golds with the Stock and Proto.

Special mention goes to the AI, which puts up an intense fight with the bare minimum of CPU cheating, if any, and also makes the occasional error very convincingly. Had a hard-fought race in the bag until the leader I was about to overtake wiped out on a corner and took me with him, giving the race to the guy in third. Never let my guard down around other cars after that.

[Zaarock]

NiGHTS into Dreams... [XBLA] and Guardian Heroes [XBLA]

NiGHTS is awesome, had no idea what it would be like. music and themes are cool and the way it controls is great. runs at 30fps or something though? (gets disorientating at high speeds) the way the game is layed out probably puts a lot of people into the mood for score attacking which is interesting.

Decided to randomly play guardian heroes again, excellent port still. almost got hard 1cc if it weren't for the route me and another had online (zenovia to sky knight instead of zenovia to earth spirit). Nicole is cheap as hell lol, I'll stop using her once I have the 1cc.

[spadgy]

The iOS version of card/deck-building game Ascenscion. I need help so I can stop! It's insanely compelling.

[EmperorIng]

I still have my saturn port of Virtua Racing, but the controls to me just seem so horrible that I can't get into it.

Daytona USA is far more fun for me. And doesn't have those awkward stretches of silence between checkpoints (which are admittedly hilarious).

[BIL]

TWI's Saturn version has such a horrendous reputation I've never gotten around to trying it (didn't have an SS when it was new). I'm thinking of giving D3's PS2 version a go, but its handling seems to really incense some arcade fans (definitely looks off from vids). Yay, outsourcing!

If I ever go crazy on a cab project it'll be a Sega racer without a close home port, VR chief candidate. The AC ver still looks, sounds and plays brilliantly today. Would've been nice to get arcade performance with 32X extras...

Always loved both Saturn Daytonas. Not pretty but they play great, I prefer them to the DC version. FML @ no PS2 perfect port like Sega Rally's. Guess there's the XBLA one for now.

It's a shame VRDX didn't get a Saturn redux like Stellar Assault. Not much of a shame since the original is pretty nice anyway, but analogue steering + pedals and a bit more polycount + FPS couldn't have hurt. And I could punt my 32X over the backyard fence.

TIME BONER!

[Ed Oscuro]

If I got a Sega drivin' game...man, I liked that A.B. Cop I saw a few years ago. STUN Runner (Atari of course) has a pretty sexy cab. I saw a couple Scud Race cabs the other day, and they were surprisingly small and unimpressive looking, though.

Deus Ex: Man, this game is broken in some rather obvious and hilarious ways. It's like any aspects of game design involving balance went right out the fuckin' window. Most useful weapon through the entirety of the game isn't a rifle, it's a pistol. Not just any pistol, though - the more powerful silenced pistol (?!) which shoots faster and does far more DPS than even the assault rifle. Speaking of which, somebody at Ion Storm was having a great joke - the notoriously wimpy (and wimpy-looking, even down to the snail magazines) assault rifle supposedly uses 7.62x51mm cartridges. Unless most of that space is dedicated to pre-silencing the bullets (the assault rifle is another of the silencer-friendly weapons), it should be very powerful. To compare, the Soviet AK round is 7.62x39mm; NATO 5.56 is 45mm long. But it's more likely they didn't know what the fuck they were doing, with the sniper rifle having an obsolete round (but silencer-friendly nevertheless) and the silenced pistol having a muzzle flash.

None of that really matters though; it's the routine gameplay niggles that bother me. Why is stealth gameplay so awkward? Why can't I bind any macros (or, a Steam-specific problem, rebind the light key - well, maybe I need to rebind the Steam screenshot key anyway)? Why do you have to trade off augmentations and why are they clumsy (IMO) to implement? Why are people fine floating face-down unconscious in water for hours at a time? How does JC moonwalk so well? Why did they decide to make it impossible to carry more than one useful big weapon at a time with the super-limited inventory, what possible purpose could that achieve? (I kinda understand why there's a 15 medkit limit, but not why there's only 20 lockpicks and multitools that can be carried.) So many questions. Of course, it's the content and the moments when you're not just mindlessly item-hunting that make the game for me. Definitely a solid take on the System Shock / Thief genre, but arguably gets a number of basic things wrong. Definitely looking forward to finding out (someday, maybe on another playthrough) what the deal is with Gunther's lemon-lime soda (I'm in the Paris nightclub right now).

The music in the game is - well, uneven, but once you get a ways into the game there are some real standouts. The "Conspiravision" track is definitely based on Unreal / Unreal Tournament music, but many other tracks stand out in their own right. Even the odd Battery Park music has its moments (but unfortunately I think that is what I associate most with DX - well, that, and the title theme and some other early music that isn't too interesting).

[Obiwanshinobi]

Working on "Prisons of the Maw" mission in Rogue Squadron II. The beginning is slow for no good reason, then the radar seems to be of not much use. I do not comprehend the signposting and once I'm out of bombs, suiciding appears to be the only way of getting more. Weird.
Mind you, the game isn't telling me that I lost the way it does whenever I don't have torpedoes left in the 1st mission, no sir, it's up to me to suicide before it's too late (otherwise I'd need to "play" through the pointlessly slow beginning yet again). I should probably read the manual as I'm still not quite down with the radar.
How odd. After three enjoyable missions that I feel like replaying for medals, there's this. What the...? Bombing is silly fun (this game's explosions and heatwaves just don't get old), but it's a race against time and not much of a "sandobox" mission.

[beatsgo]

Getting back into League of Legends since beta days (three years ago!?!?!).

[Acid_Rain]

Playing some Sleeping Dogs. Great fun.

a couple of thoughts:
_gameplay arcadier than GTA4 (races/fistfights/gunfights)
_story more realistic, less humor (for the most part top notch voices)
_really good radiostations (mainly music)
_shooting a bit dull, but beating the crap out of mobsters never gets old

[Ed Oscuro]

Sleeping Dogs is a sleeping hit. Lots of interesting games out recently, no money (I would probably look at RE6 first, at least out of curiosity, and for Mercenaries), of course! Much better to wait for price drops, though.

Deus Ex spoilers: So Lucius DeBeers got sad, and I ignored him. I had to think about the choice you get to make and I decided that, for a number of reasons, leaving him in the tank but aware was the best idea. And (I found a spoiler from Human Revolution) maybe it's a bit of payback for JFK?

Wow, that choice they give you at the end of the game. My heart is kind-of with the choice that probably should get eliminated first as unsustainable. The "third choice" kind of blindsided me, even though there was no reason it should have! For a game built so heavily upon conspiracy silliness, the endgame seems rather thoughtful actually. I am sad to think that Chapter 34 of The Book is repeated in the last level; I guess that's really it. The other book (The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterson) with snippets throughout the levels...I actually read that a year or two back, and the quotes seem much stronger out of context actually. When I was reading it, it was really hard to make sense of, especially the nonsensical ending chapters. Maybe I'll try again sometime.

[null1024]

Red Earth [Arcade/MAME].

Visually, it's amazing. Lots of color, scaling, and big nicely animated sprites. Very, very pretty.
Buuuut, I'm not entirely sure I like it gameplay-wise: being entirely composed of what are effectively beat-em-up boss fights, it feels more than a bit cheap. It's pretty fun still, but eh.

[Moniker]

Holy dog shit. X-COM: Enemy Unknown is out tomorrow. For some reason I thought it was an XMAS release. Fuckin-A!

[Ed Oscuro]

Yeah, they've been flogging XCOM EU on the Steam Updates recently. The FPS game, which I was interested to see some more info on, has fallen off the map (uh, no pun intended).

Deus Ex wrapup: Bob Page Screamtacular edition!

Illuminati/Helios (LOL)/Tong endings. Very good order, arrived at by accident. Man, I'd be PISSED if I held out for the Helios ending last. So cheesy. The others are kinda neat though.

Too bad there wasn't any further story of note for the other characters, like Jock or Jaime and everybody else. You get to see them doing stuff in just one of the endings, which is strange because it's not the ending where you'd most expect it, I think. It also isn't the canon ending, I believe. The worst ending should be at least as good as the others, but it's just "listen to my crazy voice, lol" After credits, it briefly shows the cutscene room (the red room with the MJ12 hand and globe) but I don't think there's any additional scenes to be viewed; just a bug in the scripting.

A few interesting finds from the credits: Use the up/down arrow keys (maybe W and S if you have that for movement) to speed up or slow down the credits crawl, one step at a time. Michiel van den Bos is mentioned, so that explains why there's a Unreal Tournament remix in here. Finally, Gabe Newell was mentioned for "additional testing."

Yet nobody fixed the switch-to-menu lockpick and multitool bug through all the patches the game got. Haha, suckers! OK, done

I've played a little bit of the sequel, Invisible War, back around the time it was released, but didn't go far into it. I'll give it another shot. I don't think it may reach the highs of this game, but I'm not expecting the lows, either. HR I have good hopes for, however.

[iconoclast]

Finished my Pure Platinum (no damage) run through Non-Stop Infinite Climax in Bayonetta. I never unequipped the Gaze of Despair (which makes enemies more aggressive & harder to combo due to the lack of hitstun), and I didn't use the Kilgore glitch or Pulley's Butterfly (both make the game a joke). Wound up with 58 million points total, which I assume is one of the highest legit scores in the game. It's impossible to tell who cheated though, so the leaderboards are kinda worthless.

Bayonetta 2 should be great if they fix all of the first game's problems. Most of the Alfheims are terrible, so if they're going to keep them, they should at least make them one-off challenge rooms that don't affect your score (like Secret Missions in DMC). I'd also make Torture Attacks give a fixed amount of points - currently, all of them require button mashing, and the faster you mash, the more points you get. Having to constantly hammer a button gets tiresome. All of the vehicle segments and QTEs are terrible as well, so hopefully they scrap both of those ideas. But flaws aside, it's still a great game and I'll be looking forward to the sequel.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Having to constantly hammer a button gets tiresome.

Sounds like Z.O.E.2 (I hope Bayonetta is a better game). In DMC games button mashing somehow doesn't get tiresome when you play properly.

Still not done with that Rogue Squadron II bombing mission, but I was forced to like it (otherwise I won't unlock the following missions). I wonder if anything can be done during that initial, weird part to increase the final score.

[null1024]

Capcom vs SNK 2 [DC]. Had a cool few rounds with some friends. Constantly reminded that the Dreamcast controller is complete shit for fighting games. I wish I had a pair of PS2->DC controller converters, that would make everything 9001x better.

[AweOfShe]

Ys Celceta no Jukai. Just got Kanlilika.
Sank about 20 hours into the game now, but only cleared 52% of Celceta's map. Man, this is definitely the biggest Ys game.

[iconoclast]

Sounds like Z.O.E.2 (I hope Bayonetta is a better game). In DMC games button mashing somehow doesn't get tiresome when you play properly.

I've never played ZoE2, but Bayonetta's Torture Attacks are basically finishing moves. I suppose it's kinda like grabbing injured enemies in God of War, except you have to mash B or X instead of hitting QTEs. DMC's button mashing is only for executing combos, which doesn't bother me at all. Bayonetta also has a few moves like that, and they're actually the best attacks in the game for scoring.

[null1024]

Outrunners [Arcade/MAME] -- so damn awesome. Was racing with some friends, although because I only had my netbook on me at the time, the framerate was pretty shit [and it ran at 90% fullspeed on frameskip 8, had to disable autoframeskip because it became unplayably choppy].

Also, is there a way to have cabinet network support in MAME? It'd be nice to try on my bigger laptop and have some 4 player action.
[to clarify, I mean like the fiber-optic/whatever network the cabinets themselves used, all running on one machine, so you would have 2 separate boards emulated on one machine in MAME, which would then draw the 4 displays and take 4 sets of inputs].