What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Yes, all of them. Just keep in mind that Alpha is an older hack so it doesn't do anything too mind blowing, and that your buster is slightly weaker (a big pet peeve of mine) but it's solid. Ever has a lot of pixel perfect jumps that usually involves a low ceiling whereas Return seems to be more gimmick based: NeedleMan stage has a special block which puts you into a stun state without damage so you can cross unavoidable spike pits and MagnetMan starts off with a magnet ride over a long bottomless pit with other magnet enemies and dragonflies swarming you.

3 Doc stages down 1 to go. MM8's Jump, jump, slide, slide gimmick is back, NOW WITH GLORIOUS NES SLOWDOWN!!!

[Phellan Wolf]

Right now I'm playing through Mirror of Fate, the new entry in the Lord of Shadows saga for the 3DS.
It is not a true Castlevania, a lot of people in the forums despise it but I am having a good time with it so far. Gameplay is faster than the one shown in the demo, and the bosses are really cool. I enjoyed Lord of Shadows on 360 and Mirror of Fate is IMO very entertaining. I wish it had a better voice cast. Damn it, actors sound so dull and cheesy.....
Anyway I encourage you to give it a chance. You wont be disapointed.

[null1024]

Sonic Generations: Unleashed Project [PC].

Sadly, I only have a netbook to run this. Thus, 3fps, and three seconds real time pass each second in game. Until Jungle Joyride, then it was more like six seconds realtime passed each second in game, apparently that stage has 2x the CPU requirements for some reason that I can't remember right now.
Neat effort though, crashes a bunch, and you get all the good parts of Unleashed with absolutely none of the bad.


Sonic Colors [Wii].

Starlight Carnival is a terrible zone. That is all. The rest of the game is great, but this one level has some of the most appallingly bad level design I've seen in a 3D Sonic game [also, it plays itself half the time]. It has one of the better bosses in Colors though.
Very pretty stage, but lots of it involves no player input or revolves around terribly stupid gimmicks [the springboard in particular is unforgivably bad, it's deathly slow in a Sonic game and it reminds me of a popular gimmick in Kaizo-style SMW hacks].

[AweOfShe]

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Wii U version) -
Finished a Langombi set, and the Lagiacrus Urgent Quest with a couple of my friends. Will probably work on a Gigginox set next.

Fire Emblem Awakening -
Trying to finish the most recent SpotPass paralogue release, but man, it's murdering me.

[null1024]

Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 [Neo Geo CD].

Well, emulated. The NGCD version has a proper home version 2 player mode, unlike the cart. And emulation means nearly no loadtimes.
holy fuck, why don't people play this game

I think I like it better than Garou. My biggest issue with it is that the inputs seem to be a fair bit stricter than KOF2002, Garou, KOF98, etc. Also, the game is full of odd inputs anyway, what the fuck is with Terry's Power Dunk?!

Had a couple dozen fights against friends, good times were had. Enough good times that another friend had KOF13, and it sat unplayed!

[powersoul]

Paperboy. I don't know why I would suddenly boot this game up on an emulator.

[ryu]

i just beat final fantasy xiii, and i have to say: i feel violated.

the last few scenes in the ending are pretty much like what you'd expect to see in a shitty hollywood film. bad pop music inclusive.

anways... my verdict is that the game is somewhat alright. the battle system is not that bad, although it takes about 10 hours into the game to properly develop. the same goes for the character customization via the crystarium - it's completely pointless and straightforward until about 15 hours into the game (iirc, might be even longer actually). other than the battle system there is of course not much to the gameplay since you really just walk through straight tunnels almost the entire time. the characters are fine, although there's lots of drama that i think is for the most part unnecessary and doesn't fit into a game. might be that the writing just sucks though.
the general plot has lots of nice and interesting ideas, but fails to explore them properly. the game's main villain is literally nothing but a talking deus-ex-machina.

whether i will be playing through any of the post-game content is something i still have to decide on. but i'll most likely pass on that unless i get told that there are some nice areas only accessable in the post-game.

the same goes for final fantasy xiii-2. i was originally planning on playing that soon, but after having seen the ending of ff xiii i'm really sick of the hollywood drama nonsense, which i'm afraid ff xiii-2 might be just as rich with.

[Moniker]

whether i will be playing through any of the post-game content is something i still have to decide on. but i'll most likely pass on that unless i get told that there are some nice areas only accessable in the post-game.

The post-game is pretty much the only good part of FF13: developing stratagems and loadouts for difficult unique enemy encounters; no drama, except when you fuck up a battle you've been fighting for 30 mins. Basically, what the entire game should've been, had Squeenix any balls left when it comes to FF.

The areas themselves aren't particularly noteworthy (and a good deal of it is retreading), but it's quite good from a pure gameplay standpoint. Caveat emptor: FF13's battle system is my personal favorite in the series.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I'd suggest skipping FF XIII postgame. Too much boring Adamantoise grinding for stuff.

FF XIII-2 had better postgame.


Still playing Disgaea 4. I got up to Pringer X Roar in the postgame, but I started a second cycle to get the Androids for their evilities, so it'll be a while before I'm back there since I'm going to want to get the ship parts over with. I was nowhere near being able to beat that fight though, and it's the one that only had 1 Pringer X: Poison.

Also, Puppy Paw Stick dupe just hates me. Gotten so few of them. I can't do the Rosenqueen dupe glitch, so I have to use the intended dupe method.

[KAI]

Playing the Book 2 of Ys Book I & II [PC Engine CD]
Badass game. I'm planning to play Wanderers from Ys and The Dawn of Ys after this.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Metroid Prime (Wii) - the more I wonder why I have such a hard time finishing this and Wind Waker, the more it seems to me that the exploration's where it's at. The pacing and excitement of rushing forward must have been what made me play through Ōkami and Blood Will Tell that much faster.

[KitesAreFun]

Usually playing all kinds of games. Today:

F1 2012
Terraria (Xbox - a bit clunky compared to the PC version but I bought it anyway)
Dota 2
Quake Live
Quakeworld
Challenge Pro Mode
Fez

(And I tried about ten XBLIGs as well... including Vorpal)

I'm usually playing Quake a little every day, and F1 2012 is my new full-game purchase. So...

[Lord Satori]

I've been playing Luigis Mansion: Dark Moon. It's pretty good.

However, I've also been playing Yume Nikki. It's... an experience to say the least. I'm probably gonna avoid playing it at night. I'll definitely take inspiration from this game for my own material. Something I'd really love to see is a shmup game based on it. (or any other genre in fact) Sorry my sentences are fragmented, my mind is elsewhere right now.

[gabe]

Two things I dislike about Saturn Bomberman (J): the protagonist's voice (not even the voice itself as much as the game obnoxiously reminding me he's voiced now) and too "soft" sound of explosions (softer than in Bomerman Tournament).
Shame as I'd like to play Master Game more. Keep researching into single player modes of various Bomberman games and wondering why after the first one, Hudson kind of wandered off. In pre-SMB world, the primordial Bomberman (1983) must have been one of the very best games around (if the GB port is anything to judge by), before multiplayer came into discussion. I'll say it again - probably the first real-time dungeon crawler.
Maybe Hudson can't imagine themselves bettering their own game.

Nevertheless, gotta appreciate the Saturn Bomberman's glamour. Some quality pixel art to be seen right there (that Joumon boss of Master Game). Certainly the most gaudy Bomberman game I've seen.

Saturn Bomberman! I just 1cc'd Normal Mode. I may attempt a Master Mode 1cc, but I dunno if I have the patience. A few thoughts on Normal Mode:

1. It's really nice to look at
2. The length to difficulty ratio seems off to me. It took me about 3 solid play-thrus to learn the boss/enemy patterns. The hardest part after that was finding 2.5 hours to sink into the game... It could be done quicker, but I was pretty meticulous about clearing the boards.
3. I wish the game kept track of high scores.
4. On the topic of scores, I'm pretty sure there's a milking technique for the true last boss that could counter stop the game.

[Ed Oscuro]

lol, a Quake Ogre just told me "get out of my kitchen!" Ahhh, Nehahra...started out very underwhelming but the architecture has picked up nicely. I would say I'm "playing" this in every sense, though - I found the Nightmare warp but I'm not even attempting to run this properly, just running through with God mode. Seems like a wasted chance to do a blind play but the difficulty level and fast monsters are ridiculous. Good luck taking on that cluster of 6-7 scrags now; their nailgun "weakness" is nothing when they can just zoom out of the way of your nails!

Also, the Forum seems way too bright...even with my panel's normal very low brightness setting.

[BIL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AssjQ25kr3g#t=1m20s Ogres can't go no respect, not even from extra chunky polygon man!

[KAI]

The Dawn of Ys [PC Engine CD]
Loving every second of the game so far.

[BIL]

Did you play Ys III? I was going to mention it might severely disappoint compared to Ys I, II and IV, but OTOH it's maybe worth playing just to appreciate the other three PCE games (and it of course has a very nice soundtrack). I found its sidescrolling action really weak compared to the others' fast, strategic "Pacman with a gun and a knife" overhead action, and there are grander sidescrolling ARPGs from the time like Zelda II and The Battle of Olympus on FC.

The Ys III remake The Oath In Felghana is spectacular, definitely try it sometime if you haven't.

[KAI]

I jumped from I-II to IV.
Dropped Oath in Felghana last year. I'll try to finish it after beating IV and The Legend of Xanadu.

[Ed Oscuro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AssjQ25kr3g#t=1m20s Ogres can't go no respect, not even from extra chunky polygon man!

That's Max(well). I just got done freeing all his stolen souls. Died like a punk on the floor in a pile of his own vomit.

The hero of Nehahra (the game)　ｉｓ　ｐｒｅｔｔｙ　ｍｕｃｈ　indescribable. He's supposed to be hispanic but he looks like somebody took the face off the Necronomicon (from Evil Dead, not from this game) and slapped it over some whiny accountant suffering from Cassandra syndrome. Thankfully, after the terribly overlong intro cutscenes, the game gets underway in a few maps. I rather like the mapping style of the last handful of maps, and a few early maps have good points too.

Right now I'm in the Creators' Hall, trying to figure out exactly what Vigilante's personal picture is supposed to be.

[Ed Oscuro]

it's funny - years ago I thought "man this game is just hard, I must not be good enough" and today I can say with certitude that it is shit

I am talking about Dark Castle for the Macintosh, of course. Very sad because I love the grayscale artwork and think it's quite promising for a good game.

The most hilarious thing is that a sequel took from 1996 to 2008 to release (not as long as Did Not Finish, but barely), and the title screen looks like a simple colorized version of the original. No idea if the arm-aiming is as awkward and useless as before.

[Mortificator]

Played Shock Troopers. Remembered that I hate Shock Troopers. 1CCed Mercs. Felt much better.

[Vexorg]

Lego City Undercover (Wii U):

To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this. I went into it knowing it was basically a kids game, but at the same time I've enjoyed some of the other TT Lego games (they're good for the times when you're looking for some lighter gaming fare) and it's chock full of shout-outs and parental bonus (I can't recall the last time I saw a Shawshank Redemption reference in a kids game...) I've only made it about 5-6% into the game (based on the running percentage shown at the base) but I can already tell it's probably the type of game I'd never touch again after getting 100%, and possibly not even getting it there. It still seems like it's worth at least the first playthrough though.

Probably the biggest complaint I'd have about it would be the load screens. There's just way too much loading (mostly for cutscenes and things like that.)

[Ruldra]

Latest achievement (Super Hang-On):



The beginner and junior courses didn't take me long to beat, but the senior course was one hell of a pain. Took me almost a month of constant play...glad I'm done with it.

Onwards to expert course!

[null1024]

OutRun [Genesis].

Going for the E route is a paiiiin. I've made it like, once. I can do the other ends just fine [although I haven't ever tried to go for the D ending], but all the far-right courses are a pain. Sometimes it's the corners, sometimes its traffic tending to bunch up around said corners. My last attempt was within throwing distance of the goal, bleh.

Genesis version because there isn't a port of Cannonball to the PSP [yet?].

[gbaplayer]

I jumped from I-II to IV.
Dropped Oath in Felghana last year. I'll try to finish it after beating IV and The Legend of Xanadu.

i played legend of xanadu about 4 hours and am stuck in chapter 3.
do you know a page where i can find a walkthrough for that game?

in the meantime i finished 24 other great pc engine rpgs over the last 10 months^^

01. Ys IV: Dawn of Ys (14 hours)
02. Startling Odyssey 2 (24 hours)
03. Legend of Xanadu II (10 hours)
04. Emerald Dragon (26 hours)
05. Tengai Makyou I: Ziria (28 hours)
06. Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru (52 hours)
07. Tenshi no Uta 1 (15 hours)
08. Dragon Knight 2 (10 hours)
09. Neo Metal Fantasy (22 hours)
10. Tenshi no Uta 2 (15 hours)
11. Xak I+II (9 hours)
12. Star Breaker (26 hours)
13. Alshark (30 hours)
14. Cosmic Fantasy 1 (16 hours)
15. Cosmic Fantasy 2 (17 hours)
16. Cosmic Fantasy 3 (13 hours)
17. Basted (3 hours)
18. Tengai Makyou: Fuun Kabuki Den (27 hours)
19. Cosmic Fantasy 4 Chapter 1 (15 hours)
20. Cosmic Fantasy 4 Chapter 2 (14 hours)
21. Ruin: Kami no Isan (6 hours)
22. Princess Minerva (22 hours)
23. Dragon Knight III (13 hours)
24. Anearth Fantasy Stories (20 hours)

i recommend every single one of them!
right now iam 15 hours into gulliver boy. also an awesome PCE rpg.

[KennyMan666]

Started playing Odin Sphere and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness yesterday.

Odin Sphere is a fucking gorgeous game that I wish I had played back in the day. Vanillaware games are so beautiful it's unfair to all other games.

[Jonathan Ingram]

in the meantime i finished 24 other great pc engine rpgs over the last 10 months^^

01. Ys IV: Dawn of Ys (14 hours)
02. Startling Odyssey 2 (24 hours)
03. Legend of Xanadu II (10 hours)
04. Emerald Dragon (26 hours)
05. Tengai Makyou I: Ziria (28 hours)
06. Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru (52 hours)
07. Tenshi no Uta 1 (15 hours)
08. Dragon Knight 2 (10 hours)
09. Neo Metal Fantasy (22 hours)
10. Tenshi no Uta 2 (15 hours)
11. Xak I+II (9 hours)
12. Star Breaker (26 hours)
13. Alshark (30 hours)
14. Cosmic Fantasy 1 (16 hours)
15. Cosmic Fantasy 2 (17 hours)
16. Cosmic Fantasy 3 (13 hours)
17. Basted (3 hours)
18. Tengai Makyou: Fuun Kabuki Den (27 hours)
19. Cosmic Fantasy 4 Chapter 1 (15 hours)
20. Cosmic Fantasy 4 Chapter 2 (14 hours)
21. Ruin: Kami no Isan (6 hours)
22. Princess Minerva (22 hours)
23. Dragon Knight III (13 hours)
24. Anearth Fantasy Stories (20 hours)

No Linda Cube?

[KAI]

Maybe this will help:
http://xanaduhelp.blogspot.com.ar/

Gonna check those PCE RPGs, thanks.

[oboewan42]

I've been playing Gears of War 3's campaign. I liked the other two, they were great popcorn games, but I don't really like this one as much.

Personally, I think Gears of War is at its best when it's basically "Gears Of Time Crisis" - pop out from behind cover, take some quick potshots, and repeat.