What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Neathyr]

I think it's because it's a nice change of pace to most fighting games with anime(ish) look. For me, at least. That, and I'm a sucker for dark fantasy oriented themes with a focus on the supernatural.
Sometime this year, I'm planning to get more serious at fighting games, but I don't think I can dish MK quite yet. It's that guilty pleasure feel.
...However, I'd say the only 3D MK worth playing these days is Armageddon. Traditional Fatalities are gone, yes, but those little extra modes they added are really fun to mess around with. Motor Kombat deserves a golden medal for lol material, and it's not that bad. Konquest is great when you want to completely turn your brain off and get some mindless entertainment. Hell, I'm even considering unlocking that huge Krypt. Combat-wise... yeah, the less said the better. Slightly better than Deception, though.

I actually felt like Armageddon was the weakest of the 3D MK's. The air combo system in particular felt bad to me, and the lack of character specific fatalities really sucks out a lot of its personality. I fire it up occasionally but not as often as the other two. I agree about the extra stuff though, it was definitely a win content wise.

MK9 was kind of a dream game for me. It turned out a million times better than anyone could have reasonably expected it too. If it had had a better reversal system to balance out the cheesy guard stun lock down (which I am not above abusing the hell out of) it could stand proud among this generation's top competitive fighters imo.

I only play the 3D MK's for the non-fighting modes, really (doesn't make sense, I know). I couldn't care less for Kreate a Fighter: the reasons I hate it are twofold. Not only I hate the idea where the player is forced to create some content but I'm a lazy bastard as well. Deadly Alliance's Konquest mode is pretty much a glorified tutorial, and I despise tutorials with a burning passion. Deception's was Midway's take on Aonuma Zelda, with Shujinko pulling off a Link by doing some stupid errands (alas, with tutorials every now and then too!) almost non-stop. I don't like puzzle games, so Puzzle Kombat did nothing for me. As for Chess Kombat... I can't point my finger on it, but playing chess on digital form just feels wrong somehow.
And then there's the Krypt. Getting coins in DA/Deception is a bit of a chore since the currency is all over the place with those stupid colored coins, so you find yourself forced to grind to get a specific set of coins. Armageddon streamlined this feature by using a single standard currency, thus making the entire process less painful. Wow, it's been a long time since I talked to someone about the 3D MK titles. lol

For my MK needs, there's little point going back to the dial-a-combo system when you have MK9. There's a lot of room for improvement in the gameplay department, no doubt. I don't think Ed Boon and cia. will reach Super Turbo/Virtua Fighter/Capcom vs. SNK 2/KoF98 level of gameplay, but as long as they can come up with a decent combat engine, I'm fine. They're learning some stuff here and there, so that's already a plus. I agree with the reversal, and I'd add that the combo breaker should be used only once per round. The X-Ray would be better implemented if you are allowed to use it only once per match.

EDIT: typos

[ACSeraph]

Wow, it's been a long time since I talked to someone about the 3D MK titles. lol

Without a doubt

I agree with most of your criticisms of the non fighting aspects of DA and DC, but for me the arcade mode fighting was the main draw, so they were superior in that aspect. The campaign modes were definitely garbage, DC's in particular was majorly wasted potential, but I felt like they realized the concept pretty well in Armageddon. MK9's campy movie with playable fight scenes was the best example of a fighting game story mode I've ever seen though. Also agreed on create a fighter for pretty much the same reasons, especially the lazy part.

As for changes to MK9, I actually think it really could be on par with SF4 and such with relatively small changes. Obviously it isn't going to be CVS2 caliber, but that's rare even among good fighting games. As far as combo breakers go, I think just having a separate meter entirely for it ala Arc Sys games would be better coupled with a slow recovery. X-rays I have no problem with actually, if anything you don't have enough opportunities to use them at high level because EX and break is such a much better use of meter.

[BIL]

BDOOMIN' all morning, this last week of summer holidays. "GET OUT AND ENJOY TEH SUN" I hear you say. No! Fuck you! Only at mid-day in an empty house can I blast the speakers appropriately.



Can't. stop. this. FEELIN'! E3M6 "Mt Erebus"

After a lifetime of wandering and tragedy, I have found my desert island game. Teh ULTIMATE BDOOM. This is the most satisfyingly violent game I've ever played. That's not "violence" as in some pussy-ass "Hostel XVII: The Final Chapter - Jumper Cables To The Weinerhole" sense. I mean the most literal, kinetic, visceral sense. Gallagher and a jackhammer versus a whooole lotta heavily-armed carnivorous watermelons. Destruction. Brings to mind Vinogradov's window-shattering sendoff in Ketsui, or Mike Haggar smashing skulls on pavement in the original Final Fight, or devouring screenloads of enemies in a torrent of gore and fire in Metal Slug X's first stage. This wouldn't matter if the game underneath didn't perform so well, but it's fucking DOOM. Same butter-smooth controls and physics, except now the monsters really, really, really want to kill you and can dish out as much carnage as you throw at them. "lololol its just not the same :[ " ohoho yes it totally is, only now as vicious and loud as it should've always been. Taunts are pretty stupid, but that's what key bindings are for - rip 'em out. E4+BD is an endlessly replayable single-sitting nightmare on par with a quality arcade game. Good mod.

[ACSeraph]

^

I just watched a video of this on Youtube for the first time and was totally blown away. I needs this!

[BIL]

It's awesome, fully recommended. Apparently it takes flak from the hardcore modding community for the amount of mainstream publicity it's gotten despite being "only a gore mod." Frankly though, besides its game enhancements like more interesting weapons and much more capable enemies, as a longtime DOOM fan all I wanted was a bit of tweaking. It's the same game, just as smooth and cathartic, only a little bit smarter and a hell of a lot louder. It adds the *BOOM* sense of impact you get from CAVE shooters and Capcom beltscrollers, a huge draw for me. Been playing for well over a year, it remains nirvana and the highest difficulty always puts up a fight. I still find myself laughing at how out of hand the action gets. Every run completely batshit things are guaranteed to happen, BD's a powderkeg of lethal weaponry and very, very angry monsters.

If it's any help, from the BDOOM Topic:

Mod download: http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom
GZDOOM wiki link: http://zdoom.org/wiki/GZDoom
Not linked but required: WADfiles for the game you want to play (DOOM, DOOM II or Final DOOM)

[iconoclast]

Rayman Legends - I got the diamond medal on all of the new stages, so I think I'm done with this. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed because the game feels low on content, even though it really isn't. The problem is that there are only five new worlds; there are more than 80 stages between them, but five worlds still seems a little low for a platformer (maybe because of the repetitive scenery/gimmicks?). And to make matters worse, there are actually five more worlds, but they were all recycled from Rayman Origins. It makes me think that they started throwing old stages in there to pad the game out because it was low on content... But I dunno, maybe that's just me. I still really enjoyed the game, and it has a great soundtrack and some of the best graphics I've ever seen, so I'd still recommend it -- especially to somebody who has never played Origins and never intends to.

[BulletMagnet]

I enjoyed Origins quite a bit, one of the few games I've almost gotten all the cheevos on (and the one I missed is some stupid feat where I can't figure out what the wording means and refuse to look it up). I tried the demo of Legends and it looks phenominal on the visual front: Origins looked good, but you could tell where they took some shortcuts, while in Legends it seems pretty much every such issue has been addressed. Will be picking my copy up tomorrow; in the meantime I'm tooling around with Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F (fairly demanding as rhythm games go, at least for me, but I'm gradually getting used to it) and Sweet Fuse: At Your Side (my first honest-to-goodness VN, and it's an otome game, heh. Had to get it just for how kooky the premise is and how nuts Aksys must have been to localize it in physical form).

[Kiken]

Been playing a good deal of Hyperdimension Neptunia, Hatsune Miku Project Diva F and the odd level or two of Page Chronica recently on PS3.

[BulletMagnet]

Page Chronica

I tried the demo of this one some time back, and was unable to get into it despite the fact that I enjoy both platformers and word games...everything just felt a bit "off" to me. Is there something I'm missing about it?

[shmuppyLove]

PS3: Tales of Xillia yeeeeeeeaaaaahhhh 20 hours in and difficulty is ramping nicely. I love that they switch your party up frequently so you have to learn the other characters' abilities as well. Beating the pulp out of random mobs is fun, and bosses will kick your ass if you don't smarten up. Can't wait to finish the first playthrough as Jude so I can play again as Milla, really curious how differently it will play out, if at all.

PC: 40 hours+ in Oblivion, I'm now a good chunk through the Shivering Isles expansion, but after finishing that and tidying up a few things back in Cyrodiil (gotta remember to get that Dragon Armor) I think I'm pretty much done with it. I believe the Mass Effect triology is on deck after that.

360: I haven't touched it much since I finished Infinite Undiscovery -- really wanted to focus my JRPG attention onto ToX. But I do have a couple of "lighter" titles I'll pop in occasionally - Gears of War is still mindless fun, I played Project Sylpheed briefly when I first picked it up and really want to dive into it. Of course there is always Futari, Akai Katana, DFK and MMP for some quick distraction.

Also just recently started up Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky on PSP, and so far I'm very impressed by it. Of course it reminds me that there are a stack of great PS1 JRPGs that I never played, but that's what emulators are for

[KAI]

Legend of Heroes: Sora no Kiseki FC [PSP]
Love the mechanics, the characters, the music, everything.
To bad Xseed is not planning to release the sequels any time soon.

[Hagane]

Got the Shadow Over Mystara 1CC yesterday. I was really nervous against Synn since I had little practice and made lots of mistakes, but magic spam prevailed.

Ugly replay for shmupmame64 4.2 (sometimes desyncs, I'll try to do a vid once I suck less): http://www.mediafire.com/?gcjqgk8fokmeac5

Now I'll go for a Dwarf clear, which I'm sure would be a character BIL would use. With the Sword of Legend particularly, he's a walking death machine. His quarter circle forward + attack HURTS, and you can easily chain two of them together at least. With good equipment energy bars go down down down very very fast. He can also do a qcf after a counter attack (block, then press forward), which does a ton of damage against most enemies. And even though he has no invincible backdash (his jump x2 move is rather useless), he has a lot of mobility to compensate. Jumps, hops, super jumps, dives... he's nowhere near as weak as I initially thought, and rather simple to use with little need for item exploits, even.

My strategy for Synn is rather hilarious: down, up + attack all the time.

[Ed Oscuro]

Quake II N64 done - all enemies, all secrets, almost a full inventory after the final area.

The game unlocks a tough deathmatch level - not tough on account of what's in it (slow railgun + flying rocket / laser spam enemies that have lots of health) but on account of the insta-kill if you're still fighting after 1:40. Don't see myself really bruising myself to finish it faster but we'll see. Maybe sometime.

More fun: Rush and Rush 2 keys all the time. Good fun. Rush 1 has an annoyance where you can't pick up keys in Practice mode - but there aren't so many so it seems okay.

[null1024]

PS3: Tales of Xillia yeeeeeeeaaaaahhhh 20 hours in and difficulty is ramping nicely. I love that they switch your party up frequently so you have to learn the other characters' abilities as well. Beating the pulp out of random mobs is fun, and bosses will kick your ass if you don't smarten up. Can't wait to finish the first playthrough as Jude so I can play again as Milla, really curious how differently it will play out, if at all.

Oh, sexy. Came into a little bit of money, so I'm planning on getting this soon.
And damnit, I need to finish Tales of the Abyss before I go buy this, haha -- I have no reason to have stopped, it's just that I haven't bothered to play my 3DS for ages. I've even been leaving it home, just bringing my PSP and phone when I go places now...


Was playing Tekken Revolution [PS3] because it's free [I have no intention of spending any money on it, I'd rather just go buy Tag Tournament 2]. I want to unlock effing Xiaoyu so I can actually really enjoy myself, the only character that's unlocked from the start that I play is Law...
It is pretty silly how much people like to spam the same thing repeatedly online [one guy won a round against me by doing nothing but Jack-6's fist thing with the long hitbox, another guy nearly won a round on me by doing nothing but left punch, all I had to do was crouch]. Real scrubs. I still beat them, considering it's much easier to see how to avoid something if they keep trying it.
Oh, and apparently I got good at throw teching at some point. I still get thrown, but I've been reacting to them quite well.

The coin thing is slightly annoying -- got disconnected from PSN while playing arcade mode, thus the game boots me out. Blah.

Being 1: not that good at Tekken, and 2: low-rank, I'm either brutally murdering people who've never played Tekken in their lives or getting touch-of-death'd by people who would be much higher rank if they hadn't just installed the game.

I'm not a fan of the F2P idea, but at the same time, I like fighting games quite a bit, and free fighting games with netplay sounds like the best thing ever to me. The character stats thing seems to have fuck-all effect [so far], which is good. Probably shouldn't even exist, really, but it's something more to entice people to play and hopefully spend money on.

And man, I wish more games had the sexy motion blur that Tekken has. That's managed to make it look far more impressive than anything else. Every other 3D fighter looks a bit shit in comparison.
As unrealistic as the moves can be, the movement just looks right with it.

Also, Project Diva Extend [PSP], trying to do all the songs on Extreme still. Getting there, slowly. I've done 2/5ths of the songs on Extreme. It's amazing how easy all the Hard songs are once you start playing Extreme, heh. Probably should look into getting Great rankings for everything on Hard instead, I'm a bit sloppy [often dropping notes that I have no reason to drop or deciding that X is where square is and whatnot for a few seconds].

I'd like to go get Project Diva F for the PS3. I'd really wish I had a Vita if we got Project Diva f for it over here.

Still need to get a new PS3, shit's loud as fuck. Replaced the thermal paste, cleaned out the fan. Never slows the fan down, even if I leave it at XMB for a while [the air coming out becomes quite cool when it's just at XMB]. Goes to max setting after 5 minutes of playing anything after power-on. Probably just going to sell it for cheap [it works just fine right now, it's just stupid loud] and buy a new one, which would be less hassle than trying to fix this one.

[Kiken]

Page Chronica

I tried the demo of this one some time back, and was unable to get into it despite the fact that I enjoy both platformers and word games...everything just felt a bit "off" to me. Is there something I'm missing about it?

No... I think you're pretty spot on. The game has a lot of good ideas but I don't think the design team fit them together in a particularly effective manner. However, I purchased it so I'm playing through it little by little. Other games are my focus though.

Decided on a whim to try out an old Saturn/PS1/DC controller to USB (PC) convertor, and lo and behold, it worked on the PS3. So for the time being, I at least have a working joystick option... even with the display and conversion lag (on my 22inch LCD), playing UD HD with my 4 button Saturn stick felt much better than struggling with the DS3.

[Ed Oscuro]

The game unlocks a tough deathmatch level - not tough on account of what's in it (slow railgun + flying rocket / laser spam enemies that have lots of health) but on account of the insta-kill if you're still fighting after 1:40. Don't see myself really bruising myself to finish it faster but we'll see. Maybe sometime.

That was easier than I thought, just using a few savestates to get myself oriented and to compensate for the imprecise nature of analog aiming in this game.

"Mission Completed: That was pretty good. But can you do it with just the blaster?"
What the fuck is wrong with you, Raster/Rogue Entertainment? (Yes, looking at the credits, Rogue Entertainment is credited with the mapping, which explains the clever stuff in here.) Unless there's some way to get the same type of enemy (Gladiators and the big flying guys) to infight or even to damage them with their weapons (extremely risky; I'm not even going to bother seeing if it's possible), I doubt this is possible. The time limit on killing the bads with rockets is very strict - with the blaster you can forget it, due to the time limit. Unless they secretly added a version without a par time, or with a longer one, but they didn't tell me about that. Playing with the blaster would be annoying. Talk about going out with a fizzle. *pew pew*

Speaking of WTF: Mega Man 64. Interesting premise...godawful story announcer (GREED), horrible looking game, wonky controls. Barf! I know people said that Retro Studios' take on Mega Man wouldn't have been good, but if we could do a trade, I'd rather have gotten their take on the concept if this one hadn't been made. What a disaster.

[Marc]

Due to a sale on XBL, I picked up Rocket Knight and Hard Corps for £2.49 each thinking I couldn't loose.

Rocket Knight... by the time I'd played the shit tutorial level and shit side scroller, I had no urge to continue any further. I will go back, but for tonight, disappointed is not the word.

Hard Crops... my god, how can a game be so utterly, shittly, imbalanced? It falls into the same trap as the latter Metal Slugs with sections that slow shit right down instead of letting you shoot shit up, it's slow, it's needlessly complicated, it feels like a clunky sack of shit next to the sublime SNES game, and it feels like someone took a dump all over a game I hold dear.

My opinion is always subject to change because I am passionate about what I play, but tonight has actually made me switch off the 360.

[Ed Oscuro]

Are these remakes, not the Genesis games?

[Ruldra]

I played the demo of the new Rocket Knight game, having never played the original, and seriously wondered why people liked the series so much. I thought it was complete crap.

Then I played the original on the Genesis and was completely blown away. There's absolutely no comparison between the two.

On topic: beat campaign mode of Robotek (around 230 stages!) and now I'm on my 5th playthrough of Drag Racing (Android). I can't get enough of that game.

[Marc]

Never played the MD game, but it's a bore compared to the SNES one. In both the new Hard Corps and Rocket, why, the hell are the stages so long?

[BrianC]

I played the demo of the new Rocket Knight game, having never played the original, and seriously wondered why people liked the series so much. I thought it was complete crap.

Climax UK, the developers of the New Rocket Knight, have a fairly poor track record. I'm glad you still played the Genesis version. It's sad how Konami barely makes anything on their own now and has questionable developers outsourcing games for them.

[No_not_like_Quake]

Downloaded the demo of the Castle of Illusion remake (more of a new game based loosely on the old Genesis game than remake) on PS3 after hearing some mildly good buzz on the game. It's atrocious. I don't know what some people are smoking to praise this game. 2.5D that occasionally decides to go full 3D, so you better like either switching from digital to anolog stick when this happens, or play the whole thing with anolog to get some sense of fluidity, weird collision detection, sub-par frame rate with slowdown (on the apple rolling section in the demo), despite not being incredibly graphically demanding, and annoying narration (what game started this lovely trend?). Music is ok though.

I suspect the team that made this, Sega Australia, is made up of ex Krome staff, the guys that made Gameroom for Microsoft (which had frame rate problems in 30 year old games) and Blade Kitten (which this reminds me of).

[Ed Oscuro]

That'll be an interesting hint to try to track down sometime....well, interesting to a connoisseur of awful games. All this talk of old games done bad makes me feel the acid in my stomach.

@ Marc: Do yourself a favor and try out the MD Rocket Knight Adventures. It's probably even better than Sparkster. The sequel, though I took an immediate dislike to it, is probably a good game too and I know it has its proponents. It's almost surely still much better than the new stuff.

You know, is there just not any money in doing 2D style games, or are people that scared of trying to do them with touchscreen controls (since mobile is supposedly where all the money is)? They should be getting better, not worse! With few exceptions (indies making good stuff like Maldita Castila) the big developers are cocking it up, almost universally. Only the DS and Vita are bright spots but I think the pressure is on those systems; it remains to be seen if those will really retain the force of development. Even on those systems, you don't see full-fledged updates of classic concepts anyway, even though the budgets should be quite reasonable (assuming 3D art anyway, or maybe just some hastily drawn 2D stuff which probably wouldn't be worse than the classic stuff or terribly expensive if drawn at low res).

[Kiken]

I suspect the team that made this, Sega Australia, is made up of ex Krome staff, the guys that made Gameroom for Microsoft (which had frame rate problems in 30 year old games) and Blade Kitten (which this reminds me of).

I played through Blade Kitten on the 360 and that game had awful frame-rate issues. I'd say that it averaged around 20 fps with constant tearing. Had Krome been able to at least lock down 30 fps, it wouldn't have been so bad (the graphics engine they created looked fairly good). The gameplay, while tolerable, was hellishly slow for something heavily inspired by Strider Hiryuu.

[Ruldra]

Messing around with Sengoku 2 lately. This game is incredibly badass.

[apatheticTurd]

Agree! Despite some balancing issues (lol spamming energy balls) and the general uselessness of the transformations outside of a few specific encounters, it's one hell of a romp and the most mechanically competent of SNK's beat-em up (though I do have a thing for Robo Army and Mutation Nation). I dislike the (probably HG101-born) notion that it's barely an improvement over the first game and not worth bothering it.

[EmperorIng]

You know, is there just not any money in doing 2D style games

Considering the successes of NSMB and Donkey Kong Country Returns, I would say there is. There probably isn't any money in mediocre 2D-style games though, which was less of a case back when it was the norm.

In a flurry of confusion* I purchased Taito Legends 1 today. I bought it specifically for New Zealand Story, Rainbow Islands, Operation Wolf, and *mostly* Rastan, but imagine my surprise when there were other good games there too! Ninja Kids (the most jive-ass muppet army ever) and Thunder Fox turned out to be a pleasant surprise of fun games.

*"Why would someone pay money for 4 different versions of Space Invaders?"

[beatsgo]

A lot of GTA IV since I figured might as well finish this game. Had my fun, but I feel this game tries too hard to be real, really! In my back of my mind the only thing I hear is Saints repeatedly.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Used my $30 dollar e-shop voucher to get Shantae Risky's Revenge. I really dug it. A little light on the boss fights. But overall a really cool game. It's like some long lost snes game that I never played. It has a huge Zelda 2 vibe.

Then I finished up Resident Evil 6. Now I'm starting back in on GTA IV.

[Leandro]

Final Fight AC. Again.

Losing at Belger is so frustrating. You play this brutal game and manages to survive with your credit for long 40 minutes, gets to the jumping cripple in your last life, hands shaking, only to lose.