What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[JBC]

I remember I felt it was mildly Shinobi-esque at it's time of release. I started with part 2 however, & I remember thinking my man Tsuna put off a very classic Sega vibe. Nowadays playing it I know more about From, & can even spot some early elements of the Souls games in there. The visuals & destruction suprisingly hold up pretty well by today's standards, but I always felt it was the the series overall aesthetic that made it so special. It was a very original title in all departments, especially the more complex sequel. You won't find a stranger world to visit on the original X-Box.

Speaking of Shinobi, I coincidentally happened to be playing it & Nightshade over the last week using HDLoader. The games weren't bad on load times before but now they run smooth as butter. It didn't take me long to get back in the groove & dash to my favorite part of Shinobi - when those dogs with swords in their mouths show up. Cracks me up everytime

[spadgy]

Sunset Overdrive. Not my type of game, and it's not perfect (bit of a list of points to visit on a map) but very much enjoying it's 'good era Tony Hawk Pro Skater meets a much more interesting Assassin's Creed vibe'.

[Xan]

Wolfenstein: The New Order - I hated this at first, but I thought it was alright by the time I completed it. It's a pretty standard modern FPS, so if you're not a fan of cover-shooting, ADS, unlockable perks, and lots of scripted events, I'd avoid it. Aside from all of that, one of my biggest problems with the game is poor visibility. Most of the time the enemies don't stand out against the environment and using ADS basically blocks the bottom half of your screen, so sometimes it can be hard to see where the hell anything is. The story and boss fights were pretty bad too, although I did like a few of the characters and the cutscenes were pretty well made. On the plus side, the shooting feels pretty good, there's decent enemy variety, and it runs at a solid 60 fps on console. But it's still a pretty mediocre game. I don't understand why there's any hype behind it.

Yeah, the game is overall boring and the whole dramatic soliloquy thing gets old so quickly. Maybe some people just want Doom 4 already and hype up whatever they think comes closest to it? On PC there were issues with their megatexture tech as well, textures would have to reload all the time when looking around.

[CMoon]

Etrian Odyssey 4. According to my DS I've put in like 62 hours, but part of that is an abortive play through (SMT4 came out and when I finally came back I wanted to start over.) Immediately liked EO3 More than this, but it is growing on me. Ultimately it is more balanced and there are more viable party options. I remember 1 & 2 really feeling like there were one or two viable parties tops, and everything else was like a challenge run. Things seem far better explained here as well and just a more polished product. Gone are 'farming parties', and the overworld is actually integrated well into the game instead of being a weird add on like it was in 3.

The game is doing a great job pacing how new abilities are rolled out, although I started unlocking veteran skills just about the same time as subclassing became available, so suddenly I have too many choices to make. Along with pacing has been the way the game ramps up in challenge. When I first unlocked the third area it seemed like a massive ramp up in challenge and I was only able to nibble away at its edges (the overworld itself is challenging and difficult to explore.) As I approach the boss of the third world, it is with a huge sense of accomplishment.

[Ruldra]

Yesterday night I was finally able to beat FTL with every ship on Hard. Like LtC said, once you win a few times on Hard it gets a lot easier afterwards. You just get used to the reduced rewards and learn to be efficient with the scrap at your disposal. Also, Stealth C is my new favorite ship.

Now with that out of the way, I want to try a high score run of One Way Heroics. You can easily beat this one on the easiest setting, but going for the highest score possible is a pretty tough task that will take many hours. Like, a 5+ hour marathon. My current record is 1800 but I believe I can break 5000 if everything goes right. All I need is a lot of free time to attempt that.

[soprano1]

Maldita Castilla, a freeware Ghouls and Ghosts tribute that takes place in 11th century Spain. It's made by locomalito, of Hydorah fame. Really nice gameplay with awesome MD style soundtrack.

[null1024]

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars [PSP].

It's Crazy Taxi! On the go! It's framecapped at fucking 20fps or something [could be 30, but it just feels slow as fuck]. My PSP is running at 333MHz [when running on default, the thing dips hard, really hard].
Handling seems alright, accurate as far as I can tell. The textures are all stupidly low quality, and they were never high quality to begin with.
It has custom music support, which means it will play every song in the root of your ms0:/MUSIC/ directory, no way to specify which ones, and no way to use songs located in sub-folders. Wow.

The sound effects are all awful. Not just different, but actively bad.

and seriously, the PSP is a lot more powerful than this game wants to admit -- it's a really lackluster port with really stupid graphical glitches everywhere

I thought the low reviews were the usual "Crazy Taxi has aged like milk" bullshit that makes me want to crucify those who are dumb enough to say it, so I didn't bother reading them. I'm taking a gander now [and they were] but more than a handful do mention the massive visual and aural downgrade this port has.
Pop-in is less noticeable though, since things fade in now. That's nice. That's the only nice thing I have to say about the graphics here.

if I could find a way to uncap the framerate, that'd take away like, 60% of the problem I have with it, though

[edit]
the worst thing is that the credits where you see replays of your stops do run at a nice 60fps

[Obiwanshinobi]

Do Advance Wars and King's Bounty: The Legend EVER say "stop"? To say that these two bring me back to my days of grinding away at HoM&M3 and Disciples II is not enough.

A question - would people who played Majesty back in the day, then Majesty Gold HD Edition, consider the latter a worthwhile purchase (when both can be buyed very cheap)?
(Everything I read about most recent Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale reissues convinced me that no, I don't want either; even high resolutions were there out of the box when I bought my copies without any "HD" abbreviation in titles.)

[Ed Oscuro]

"As good of a game Otogi 2 is, we still have to acknowledge that relatively few people want to read about it."
Dan Hsu's quote from EGM was ringing in my ears as I checked some user review scores:

IGN userbase sez:
Otogi 8.3
Otogi 2 8.6
Beyond Good & Evil 9.0

I still haven't touched the original yet - I'm working some series in reverse. I don't think it really matters with this series, however; it'll be fun to go back and see where some of the characters are coming from. Speaking of replay value, I like the balance for destruction and spirit uncovering - I feel it's somewhat rewarding to try to clear the stage with an A in destruction as the intended character, even though sometimes you can go back and blaze through as a better-suited character (i.e., putting Suetake in Raikoh's place for the river of souls type mission). However sometimes things are a bit too steep - I had pounded the entire Capital In Flames level flat with Sadamitsu before I had to acknowledge that it was taking a bit too long to arrange attacks on the floating pillars. There's no penalty for going back and selecting the appropriate character, so I'm not sure this is something I could complain mightily about. Most players will want to rein in their stubborn habits when playing this game.

I realized I had a copy of the original Mechassault, so I've put aside Lone Wolf for a bit to play the campaign against Word of Blake first. Pretty fun, though - speaking of stubbornness - taking town buildings by running into them repeatedly does get a bit tiresome! Why did developers give up on the Xbox-era destruction? I've got so many games that have it - both Otogi and Mechassault titles, Phantom Dust, and possibly more. It is wonderfully realized in these titles, too. I've also got a copy of the original Mercenaries but I think these other titles are more my style.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The Mercenaries' biggest problem was the no-fun driving from A to B for the sake of immersion (while I liked it in Jak II and even The Getaway). Nevertheless, yeah, why has "toy warfare" doable in that game yet to be a huge success with the kids?

I think Battallion Wars series tried to do something in this vein, but if 1 isn't any better than 2, Nintendo can keep both. (2 is a game of taking orders rather than taking a toy and running with it.)

[Immryr]

I've just got finished playing the diablo 3 reaper of souls demo on 360.... I've never played a diablo game before for whatever reason, but I absolutely loved it. gonna buy the ps4 version right now. it's pretty much everything I was looking for in a game right now. good exploration, simple but fairly deep combat, addictive levelling and customisation. I can see myself putting a lot of hours into this game once it arrives.

another game I recently discovered that most people will have played long ago is half life 2. I've been looking for a fps which I would enjoy for a while now - I tried bioshock, borderlands 2, halo....4 I think and the destiny demo. but couldn't really get into any of them. I'm really bad at these kinds of games and don't often play any kind of first person games, but half life 2 sucked me in right away. I'm not too far in yet, just got the gun on my airboat, but I'm definitely into it.

[CStarFlare]

I drop Diablo III for months then fall head first into an eight-hour-a-day obsession with it. It's kind of crazy. It's all about finding new goals - once you finish that set you wanted or get that perfect roll, it's very easy to view everything you do after as pointless. Eventually you want to try a new build or want to go for that Hellfire Amulet and you're back in.

I've always been curious about the Assassin's Creed games, so I grabbed AC2 after noticing it was $7 at GameStop. The future story is absolutely painful, but once you get into the game and start running and jumping on buildings it's so, so good. As much as I want to chase down all the collectibles I can't shake the memory of getting 99 pigeons in GTA IV and giving up at the prospect of searching all of Liberty City for the one I'd missed. I can easily see something similar happening with feathers in AC2 and it makes me hesitant to allow myself to go for full completion. We'll see if I still feel like parkouring around Italy once the main game is done, I guess.

[JBC]

"As good of a game Otogi 2 is, we still have to acknowledge that relatively few people want to read about it."
Dan Hsu's quote from EGM was ringing in my ears as I checked some user review scores:

IGN userbase sez:
Otogi 8.3
Otogi 2 8.6
Beyond Good & Evil 9.0

I remember that article. What a terrible assumption to make. It's too bad we'll likely never see another entry in the Otogi series & statements such as that help nothing. I can only imagine the destruction From could pull off on the modern consoles. Maybe one day we'll get a spiritual successor like the Souls games are to King's Field.

Another hidden gem on X-Box is the Japan only Magatama. I only got a chance to play it once but I remember it being a blast & having incredibly good looking dragons. I'll have to look into modding mine so I can play the import some day.

[Vexorg]

Picked up Shadow of Mordor today. Enjoying it so far (I'm only an hour or two in) but I do have to say that the controls feel a bit clunky, and it is definitely not keyboard/mouse friendly. I bought it on PC, but have ended up needing to use a 360 controller to play effectively.

[Ed Oscuro]

Another hidden gem on X-Box is the Japan only Magatama. I only got a chance to play it once but I remember it being a blast & having incredibly good looking dragons. I'll have to look into modding mine so I can play the import some day.

Looks pretty good, though obviously not as effects-heavy as Otogi. This one might be available locally as an Xbox Original, as it was one of the games semi-ported over to the 360.

Found some footage - "played by" seems overly generous, skip past the first six and a half minutes after the intro. LOL @ the generic twenty cent "huih" and "huagh" sound effects for enemy damage! Also, that yell...and to top it off, the player's controller is obviously broken, now that I see he spent probably 6 minutes in areas he should have cleared in 2 or less, constantly running into walls and hitting the air

[Leandro]

Dreamfall - The Longest Journey.

Just finished it. The first one is a much better game, as expected. But I don't regret playing this one to the end.

[mastermx]

Brought shovel Knight after my friends praised the living hell out of it. 2 hours in and I'm loving it. The music is absolutely godly, it's playing in my head as I type this. The game as a whole has so much going for it. It's one of those games that I wish I could share with a younger version of myself.

[null1024]

Just got Freedom Wars [Vita]. It seems pretty neat. Just got Code 2 clearance.
it's making me wish for God Eater 2 to come out though, FW might be a hunting game, but not the one I really want

The music is pretty cool, too.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I've been playing Kingdom Hearts 2.5. Beat 2FM on Critical and am now doing optional stuff to try to get the platinum trophy. KH2 Gummi Ship sections are such a pain compared to the KH1 sections, and I've been trying to setup the doughnut ship, but while I get something with nothing in the middle and trying to use only the outside of the gummi ship creator, I just end up putting the blocks in the wrong spot that I still am getting hit often. For the trophy requirements, you need to S-rank all normal level 1 and 2 missions for all routes, S-rank at least 1 Ex Mission per route, and S-rank Assault of the Dreadnaught 3 for blueprints. Maybe I'll try S-ranking the others if I feel like it since it is something I've never bothered to do before in KH2.


I still have puzzle pieces, Mushroom XIII, Lingering Will, Data Org(4/13 currently defeated) , Hades Paradox Cup , maxing level, synth, and some other stuff to go. Currently a little under level 70.

The data org fights I've managed are

Spoiler

Saix

with the Peter Pan loop,

Spoiler

Lexaeus

with Stitch + spamming Reflega,

Spoiler

Marluxia

because most of his attacks target a doom counter that starts at what your level is and not your HP, and

Spoiler

Luxord

by avoiding the minigames then pause buffering that extremely fast DM minigame.


I'm not looking forward to some of this at level 1 when I get around to trying to do a level 1 run, but I figured my first playthrough of Critical should be a normal playthrough.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Candy Crush Saga on windows phone. What a cruel game.

[Mischief Maker]

A question - would people who played Majesty back in the day, then Majesty Gold HD Edition, consider the latter a worthwhile purchase (when both can be buyed very cheap)?
(Everything I read about most recent Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale reissues convinced me that no, I don't want either; even high resolutions were there out of the box when I bought my copies without any "HD" abbreviation in titles.)

It feels more like an RTS-lite than a fantasy version of Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Your heroes do NOTHING but defend the keep unless you drop a flag for them, not even rangers. Building placement isn't that important any more, just put a tower in front of the marketplace and you'll never lose a tax collector carrying a substantial sum. A lot of the strategy has been removed from the game. No more deciding between the short term rush of Krolm vs. crowd control of Fervus & Krypta vs. Elite superheroes of Agrela/Dauros. You can recruit dwarves AND elves at the same time with no penalties that I could notice. No more than 2 peasants will work on the construction of any one building at a time. Trading posts and temples can only be built on specific spots on the map. Castle upgrades are unconnected to hero population so there's no more building a rogues guild to rush to tier 2 and face the consequences of thieving rogues stealing money and treasure that should have gone to stronger heroes. The main strategy seems to be picking out the correct hero type to counter the species of monster in the initial rush, then proceed as normal every single level. The graphics engine makes my Nvidia card breathe fire, even with vsync on. You can poison skeletons.

Then again, while not as good as the first, it was more fun than I had with any tower defense game. There are some welcome changes to the original formula, with graveyards now having the mausoleum's resurrection ability built-in. It's nice to see the visible changes in the character models when they buy new equipment or level up. Related to that, most of the combat animations are great, especially how the buildings crumble like broken toys when taking damage. The music is a zillion times better than the original. Monster lairs level up over time so there's less of a "tipping point" where the game abruptly changes from self-defense to mopping up. Some details of the monster kingdom expansion made me giggle.

If you can get the complete collection for $5 or less, I'd maybe say go for it if you're really curious. Otherwise give it a pass.

Edit: If you were also asking about the HD version of Majesty Gold I'd say it's a no-brainer to grab it. The expansion missions are so much more interesting than vanilla Majesty 1, and the AI improvements go without saying. Runs like a dream on Windows 7 64 bit. It still supports original resolution, if that's a thing.

[Stevens]

Probably some Gunlord on tap on this dreary Sunday.

[spadgy]

Whipped through Broken Age Ep1. Lovely stuff, and whiffs just enough of Monkey Island. Same vibe, I guess. While the voice acting is of good quality, I find the delivery not to my tastes, but other than that it's a great little adventure game.

[Vurpa]

Lots and lots of GBA:

Recently went through Mario golf advance tour. Well...it's a golf game (guilty pleasure). It's fun though with the rpg elements. Sadly maxing wrong = now entire character is ruined...but whatever got a hole in one and finished the game so happy with that. Screw the doubles tourneys though just max yourself and do it all afterwards if it doesn't seem too dull.

Ran through RCR. Bastardized the NES version. Just get acro circus and jump on every screen, do something else, repeat until beaten. Not worth the time imho.

Tried THPS 3 and 4 but gave it up immediately. 2 is still pretty awesome for an advance game just couldn't get into the sequels at all. More of the same thing with quite a few steps back (more cluttered up, uglier levels with worse design etc etc).

Just got into Zooo and Mother 1. Used to be addicted to Zookeeper the flash game and have never played anything from the Earthbound series so expectations are high for both.

May not count as a game really but finally trying to jump over 101.5 in QWOP now and then. Absolute suckage controls combined with 100m on buggy physics just to maybe end 1mm too far and destroy your entire attempt...

[system11]

Completed Bound By Flame today, the final boss is a HUGE difficulty spike.

[null1024]

Still playing Freedom Wars [Vita].
Reached Code 4. I'm liking the varied missions and whatnot. I should probably see how the online is in this game at some point.

May not count as a game really but finally trying to jump over 101.5 in QWOP now and then. Absolute suckage controls combined with 100m on buggy physics just to maybe end 1mm too far and destroy your entire attempt...

Eeps.

only made it to the end in QWOP once, and I shuffled the entire way

[Ed Oscuro]

I've noticed that both Mechassault and Otogi 2 have a kind of gameplay we don't see anymore in the era of free and easy checkpoints - you don't get as many difficulty spikes in a short period of time and long term enjoyment is predicated on there being more content to go through later, but the approach pays off in building tension. My typical progress for the last few Mechassault missions has been: Rush or crawl through, hit a big obstacle, die hilariously, then try again and win.

What better to pilot your Mad Cat in than a nice Mad Catz stick? Right now I'm cleaning out the translucent green one that I've been using - thrift store find and it's definitely overdue for getting that strange cheese-colored rub out of the casing joints. It looks fairly nice now; close to a Controller S but with big black ribbed grips and some weird angular shapes along the front. It's still pretty comfortable. Hopefully I can get the left stick to behave after cleaning out the fuzz - I'm not having any luck on a certain Forest of Havoc mission because characters tend to run the wrong way when I tap the stick left. If I had some potentiometers and equipment, I'd think about replacing them, but as it is this stick isn't worth that kind of investment.

Another odd thing - the Mechassault music is nostalgic. I just cleared a batch of missions that strikes some notes slightly (probably this is a huge stretch) reminiscent of the influential Goldeneye soundtrack, though more along the lines of the facility theme than "Whispering Statues" or "A Pleasant Drive in St. Petersburg," which would be a great soundtrack replacement for a city tank battle theme, of course!

A more nailed-down sonic conspiracy is found in the calm music for the snow themes - I am positive they are using the same choir samples heard in the "inside the babel" area for the Parasite Eve third person shooter "The 3rd Birthday." It's very subtle and sounds quite nice, but it makes me respect the ingenuity of good composers at using stock samples in their own compositions in a way that makes people think they were made just for the soundtrack.

btw, I want to punch whoever came up with the "give up" option in Otogi 2. There is no good reason that option should be there, and it's just one confirmation away from losing all your session progress.

[JBC]

As much as I love Silent Hill, I've realized that my entire fandom stems from part 3. All of the others are good or great in ways, & part 2 is widely considered to be the best thanks to it's original story, but 2 disturbs me too much to be consistently enjoyable. 1 plays like a concept demo & 4 has the progression of a made for TV movie with commercial interruption.

3 is the most straightforward horror with the most relatable protagonist. She's a normal youth who doesn't want to be bothered with anything antagonistic towards her. Through the whole game she reacts just like I would & makes comments about how absurd everything in the game is. She's also not a total pussy & doesn't hesitate to take action so that makes Heather the strongest & most likable protagonist out of all the games.

Giant deathworm? I don't like it but I'm not gonna sit around pissing my pants in a closet about it. Shoot the damn thing. Evil twin made of scabs on a rusty carnival ride? Hit it with a pipe a lot, tell a joke to lighten the mood.

I've tried Homecoming & Downpour but they couldn't hold me past the halfway mark. That leaves Shattered Memories & Origins. I just started S.M. & am liking it's original take way more than reviews led me to believe I would. It may just be the Silent Hill I've been waiting for since 3. No combat in a video game? Absurd

Here's hoping Silent Hills is a worthy successor.

[ryu]

I like all of the "classic" Silent Hill games, disregarding the story and characters, just for their atmosphere. Not too long ago I played through a bunch of Resident Evil games, most of them for the first time in my life, and hardly felt scared or tense by any of them. REmake was the best one in terms of atmosphere, but in that regard it's still outplayed by the first SH game for the Playstation.
At this point I don't believe anyone will ever make another proper Silent Hill game witht he right feel to it, so for Silent Hills I'm just hoping it will be a good and fun game.

Anyways, I finally got around to starting SMT Strange Journey. Having played for two hours, until just after the first boss, I can only say that I'm more than pleased although I had very high expectations to begin with. I just wish the auto-map would draw a few more tiles around the player's position - it's annoying having to step onto every tile to properly map out an area.

[M.Knight]

I finished Strange Journey a few months ago and I really liked it too. What was very interesting to me was the mix between the classic SMT gameplay and themes with a sci-fi story. Oddly enough, I felt that moving away from Tokyo and having an international military and scientific team as the protagonists was a breath of fresh air. I kinda miss the usual rocking tunes though, even if the soundtrack fits the game like a glove.
The dungeons had interesting designs and for the most part were challenging to navigate through but not to the point it becomes a chore. However, the regular enemy encounters were not really difficult, especially compared to the fun bosses who will destroy if you are not prepared. I guess the lack of the Press Turn system explains the relative easiness of the regular battles.

I am afraid completing the auto-map will become even more annoying later on where you will have to step on trap tiles on purpose to get them on your map.