What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[sjewkestheloon]

Sacred 2 on 360 = crack.

[MadSteelDarkness]

Started a new game of Oblivion, as a Dark Elf stealth guy. Got my character into a fight with some necromancer and she called me a "traitor to my race".

Huh.

[No_not_like_Quake]

Returned to Shining Force 1 on Genesis. Weird how such a simple srpg series can be so compelling.

[FRO]

Spent much of the weekend playing Mario Kart Wii at a friend's house - now I know I must own that game!

[escadrille]

Been messing about with a Doom II MegaWAD called Scythe lately. Gets pretty nasty on UV, a very nice challenge. I made it up to the final map last Christmas, then formatted my PC and promptly lost my save. Reading the readme, the authors suggest playing the first two eps on UV+fast monsters, so I of course must return for more punishment.

It has superb corridor-blasting level designs... Doom II's "epic" maps bore me stiff now, so it's nice to get Doom I maps with Doom II monster insanity. The authors are genius dicks too. Ammo and breathing space is often scarce, making accuracy and agile maneuvering vital. And they actually made Cyberdemons scary again with clever timing and placement.

And holy shit I love ZDoom. The mouselook and controls are absolutely sublime, and goddamn, the insanely detailed surface damage / gore has killed vanilla Doom in my eyes forever. I've been pureeing zombie guts all over the walls for the last hour.

I agree with everything you've said here, and you've got me psyched to play some Doom now! Scythe it is...

[StoofooEsq]

Been messing about with a Doom II MegaWAD called Scythe lately. Gets pretty nasty on UV, a very nice challenge. I made it up to the final map last Christmas, then formatted my PC and promptly lost my save. Reading the readme, the authors suggest playing the first two eps on UV+fast monsters, so I of course must return for more punishment.

It has superb corridor-blasting level designs... Doom II's "epic" maps bore me stiff now, so it's nice to get Doom I maps with Doom II monster insanity. The authors are genius dicks too. Ammo and breathing space is often scarce, making accuracy and agile maneuvering vital. And they actually made Cyberdemons scary again with clever timing and placement.

Tried it today, and I agree that Scythe is good stuff. It's a breath of fresh air playing a handful of shorter blastfests in the vein of Doom I for a half-hour instead of one or two drawn out, armed exploration trips for the same amount of time. I hope Scythe 2 offers more of the same.

If you're looking for mass demon genocide, Hell Revealed is a Megawad I'd like to recommend. Definitely a challenge, and not just because of the Serious Sam-amounts of enemies that the maps tend to throw at you. The authors are also assholes, and it shows with the traps in the level design, too. Also worth noting is that the Rise of the Triad sountrack makes up all of the music in Hell Revealed, which fits the game surprisingly well. It's a bonus, because you can shoot stuff to ROTT's great soundtrack without having to actually play Rise of the Triad!

And holy shit I love ZDoom. The mouselook and controls are absolutely sublime, and goddamn, the insanely detailed surface damage / gore has killed vanilla Doom in my eyes forever. I've been pureeing zombie guts all over the walls for the last hour.

Doomsday is my source port of choice (I guess I'm a sucker for extra bells and whistles), since I'm not quite hard-set on legacy features/original feel of the game. That, and it has support for other games using the same engine (Heretic, Hexen, etc.).

[BIL]

Thanks, I'll have to give Hell Revealed a look! I've heard it mentioned along with Scythe.

Doomsday is definitely the best-looking source port I've tried. I wish ZDoom had comparable lighting and particle effects, although I find the primitive graphics kind of charming. The environmental damage is what really sold me on it though, it perfects Doom's absurdly violent atmosphere. "Monster corpse oceans" always deserved equally messed-up looking levels.

[Kiken]

Continuing with my current Sonic obsession, I've been playing Sonic Unleashed (360). I figured it was about time I cleared out the Eggmanland hotdog missions. So I spent about 4 days practicing the sequence-breaking tactics in the stage... final result was that I managed to cut my clear time for the stage down to 12 and half minutes (not bad considering my first time through the level took 82 minutes).

[null1024]

Sonic 1 [well, a hack, but a rather good hack that adds 2 zones, an options screen, and saving].
Street Fighter Alpha 2 [SNES, because MacMAME hates me, crashing when I try to play DDP...]
Star Fox [and it runs like shit on this machine]
GLTron [just because it's kind of fun]
Marathon [1 and 2, and I suck so badly. I'm going to probably set up Aleph One so I don't have to break out the ancient 1998 iMac next to me...]

EDIT:
And now some F-Zero. I HATE Death Wind.

EDIT 2:
R-Type III's a shmup. Aack!

[sjewkestheloon]

More Sacred 2. 105 hours in and I've got a lvl 78 Shadow Warrior tank that uses one handed swords and a shield. Trying to beef up my direct melee and also boost HP and armor to stupid levels so that I can sit in crowds comfortably. I've now got 3 skills at mastery and I'm pilling skill points into one of my combat art aspect lores to enable me to chomp down on some more runes for my reflection buff and frenzied rampage move.

I've also managed to build up my survival bonus to over 85% and I'm playing on Platinum so I'm generally facing lvl 91 enemies and yet I'm having less difficulty than I imagined. I don't imagine that it will be the same story with some of the less robust characters. I know a few High Elfs that can cause 10,000 on a ring of fire hit but can also get bitch slapped in 2 hits from some standard enemies, never mind the nasty elites.

Surely someone else must be playing this? Sure it's buggy and has flaws but it's lots of fun if you are a loot whore like me

[ZOM]

To counter sjewkestheloon's lenghty RPG nerd-talk , I just reached 700hours of playtime in total in Demon's Souls - beat the game with my level 30-ish mage and got the redeye-stone; so now I have a uber-powerful low level chara with the ability to challenge other players at will(and obliterate them lolz). I did this pain in the ass work just to find out that ATLUS will set-up its own US servers for the game which totally defeats my original diabolic plan to "own teh n00bz" once the US version is released...rats.

[null1024]

Playing some Doom with Doom Legacy. Tried to compile Chocolate Doom, but for some reason, the install script can't reach the server with the source files. It downloads SDL, builds it, tries to download its own source, fails.

[sjewkestheloon]

To counter sjewkestheloon's lenghty RPG nerd-talk , I just reached 700hours of playtime in total in Demon's Souls - beat the game with my level 30-ish mage and got the redeye-stone; so now I have a uber-powerful low level chara with the ability to challenge other players at will(and obliterate them lolz). I did this pain in the ass work just to find out that ATLUS will set-up its own US servers for the game which totally defeats my original diabolic plan to "own teh n00bz" once the US version is released...rats.

I'd love a go on that one but unfortunately can't afford a PS3 and I'm not sure I'd cope from the time away from Sacred 2

I currently plan on taking at least 3 classes, maybe all six, to level 200 and it seems that that may well take up around 4000-6000 hours all together if you factor in character restarts, shopping toons, variations on a class (fire high elf, frost high elf, hybrid, etc), shadow and light campaigns, etc. It makes me laugh that people are going on about DLC forthis game when there is so much content already available. When I last checked there was only one person on the 360 with a lvl 200 character. VFM.

[null1024]

Playing some FreeDOOM, there's this one part that you have to *really* time your jumps that annoys the crap out of me... get 3/4 way done, and then overshoot the last block... landing in acid...
Also, some Doom 2, which I found on one of my brother's old Zip disks, and I think the first level is slightly corrupted/overwritten. I'm getting a Hall of Mirrors-y effect, and I'm using an OpenGL based source port [Doom Legacy]. Other levels [well, at least the second, on I'm Too Young to Die difficulty, I still get killed horribly there...] work fine.

[Mark III]

Radiata Stories because I've packed up all my games getting ready for a move but missed this one.

It sucks.

[SpiffierRabbit]

Been playing a bit of old Fallout Tactics on the PC & Star Wars KOTOR!

[ROBOTRON]

right now i'm blazin' with blue.

[Vexorg]

Lufia & the fortress of doom... and it made me (again)realize how much better Japanese RPGs were back in the day, even something as "mediocre" as Lufia beats the crap out of almost everything released nowadays.

Lufia is one of those games I end up replaying every so often. Sure it's no Final Fantasy, but it's a decent, uncomplicated game, and has some of my favorite SNES music in it.

[MadSteelDarkness]

More Sacred 2... Surely someone else must be playing this? Sure it's buggy and has flaws but it's lots of fun if you are a loot whore like me

I bought this last weekend, mostly on the strength of your recommendation. I dig it.

[Super Laydock]

Must admit that I spent most of the weekend unlocking stuff in the ancient, but still much enjoyable,
Wacky Races on the Dreamcast.

Though track graphx show their age a bit, the animations and presentation here are timeless.
Great franchise to be had!

[professor ganson]

Wild Arms XF
Luminous Arc 2

[Vexorg]

Must admit that I spent most of the weekend unlocking stuff in the ancient, but still much enjoyable,
Wacky Races on the Dreamcast.

Though track graphx show their age a bit, the animations and presentation here are timeless.
Great franchise to be had!

You might also like Looney Tunes Space Race on DC if you like that one. It would probably be a bit hard to find a copy of these days (I believe it came out in a PS2 version as well though) but it has similar gameplay with nice cel-shaded graphics.

[sjewkestheloon]

More Sacred 2... Surely someone else must be playing this? Sure it's buggy and has flaws but it's lots of fun if you are a loot whore like me

I bought this last weekend, mostly on the strength of your recommendation. I dig it.

If you're on the 360 and want some help I know a few untouchable melee builds and can be got as thejewk.

Otherwise I'll write you a quick Temple Guardian build or let you know my Shadow Warrior build (which I've now taken to Niob difficulty).

Cheers

[Super Laydock]

Must admit that I spent most of the weekend unlocking stuff in the ancient, but still much enjoyable,
Wacky Races on the Dreamcast.

Though track graphx show their age a bit, the animations and presentation here are timeless.
Great franchise to be had!

You might also like Looney Tunes Space Race on DC if you like that one. It would probably be a bit hard to find a copy of these days (I believe it came out in a PS2 version as well though) but it has similar gameplay with nice cel-shaded graphics.

Thanks for the tip!
Already have that title, actually multiple times...

But it's been a long time since playing so I might give this a chance after completing WR if I am still in the mood for this type of game.
To be honest: it's mostly the fantastic franchise that draws me to this WR game, and the great adaption of it.

[null1024]

I'm playing a great game called "Installing Linux".

Ok, seriously, I'm playing Street Fighter Alpha 2 [SNES]. Is the music really supposed to be this bad?

Also, I really am installing Linux, and am downloading another ISO to burn, because I feel the machine next to me doesn't have enough RAM to run Ubuntu.

[Aquas]

Been getting into Phantasy Star IV on the Sega Genesis Collection on PSP. Wow, it's pretty cool. It's the first PS game I've played and I thought I'd just jump to IV to get some of the ease of the game mechanics after 3 other games. It has some cool things going for it. The graphics in particular are handled quite well, the detail is pretty amazing. Enemies have battle sprite animations and outside of the buildings instead of black an outside is shown (I'm really not used to this,) The battle backdrops are pretty neat and everything looks crisp and polished. Diggin' the music and the pacing of the game as well, it's really addicting.

I also enjoy the battle macros that let you setup your teams actions with one button. Battle cursor memory also speeds up the battles which I can appreciate, 'cause most of the time I just want to defeat the enemies as fast possible because of the generous amount of TP / MP my party is given, or to just grind.

When I grew up I was on Nintendo's side so it's a pretty interesting feeling to finally get a taste of this Sega RPG franchise.

[FIL]

I'm replaying Yakuza right now because I just bought Yakuza 2 and want to refresh my memory of the awesomeness of the original before starting it.

[null1024]

Craploads of Cave Story, and man, I suck. Been playing it for 3 hours straight.

[Ruldra]

[BIL]

Shock Troopers. Having a grand old time rolling about and boxing fools in the mouth with Southern Cross.

And as I found out yesterday, this is such a great game to play with friends not normally into arcade stuff! Awesome graphics, rad music, buttery controls, comedy violence and just the right default difficulty. Not had this much fun with casual co-op run and gun since good ol' NES Contra.