What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[BIL]

The Japanese version was actually the debut of long-serving Technos protagonist Kunio-kun (Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun, as it's called). The company's overseas releases on both AC and console edited him into an array of different, ostensibly more Western-oriented personas.

Learning "Alex," "Steve," "Crash," "Mr. K" etc were all the same guy was a memorable plot twist! As if I'd discovered all those BERUMONDOS were actually Simmons In Disguise.

Agreed on the rough-edged appeal of Renegade/Nekketsu KKK (oh wao). No mucking about, just drops you straight into a series of vicious brawls against daunting numbers, with the occasional deathfall boundary to beware of. I like that distilled, episodic "arena brawler" approach... big scrolling worlds have their appeal for sure, but it's ultimately about kicking some fuckers' teefs in and minding your back.

[Satan]

Back when it came out, a local shop had Renegade and a high score competition with a £5 top prize. You weren't allowed to enter two weeks in a row, so I'd play it for a friend who would register my score and we'd split the proceeds. I'd get an extra £15 a month on top of my pocket money, it were a great little earner it were It was the 80's so my mum and dad would spend upwards of £6 a week on hairspray and since I was the eldest, I was the gofer - I'd steal the hairspray and keep the money, I also had a string of Rhodesian prostitutes living in a cupboard. I 'ad more cash then than I do now!

[Acid King]

i'm not sure I understand how it took you so long? unless they have drastically changed it from when I played the game you only need to kill two of them.

I dunno, but that's what I've had to do each time I got to that point. I also had to clear out the one room with the golem 3 or 4 times before it activated the elevator so I could get the key to the Looking Glass Knight.

[Immryr]

You don't seem to have worked it out. The Giants which open those doors work with souls. You just need to kill something right next to one of the Giants and the soul from whatever you killed will activate it. The royal swordsman are infinitely re spawning so that you can't get locked out of the castle.

[Acid King]

You don't seem to have worked it out. The Giants which open those doors work with souls. You just need to kill something right next to one of the Giants and the soul from whatever you killed will activate it. The royal swordsman are infinitely re spawning so that you can't get locked out of the castle.

I realize that's how they work. I killed a bunch standing right next to the statue and they didn't trigger it. After awhile I just kept plowing through them and it unlocked from one I killed on the stairs.

[Immryr]

that's weird.

[Never_Scurred]

Elevator Action Returns on the Saturn.
Great game, excellent presentation. Love those tasty 2D graphics and arcade gameplay.

[Marc]

You don't seem to have worked it out. The Giants which open those doors work with souls. You just need to kill something right next to one of the Giants and the soul from whatever you killed will activate it. The royal swordsman are infinitely re spawning so that you can't get locked out of the castle.

I realize that's how they work. I killed a bunch standing right next to the statue and they didn't trigger it. After awhile I just kept plowing through them and it unlocked from one I killed on the stairs.

I've had this happen to me as welll on the 360 version.

Incidentally, I can't recommend Scholar of the First Sin enough. It was sold as Dark Souls II OMG ULTRA HARD version and it's bullshit. In fact, it removes a lot of the tedious shit from vanilla, and the enemy placements make far more sense within the various areas, it feels much more cohesive. Just entered Undead Crypt, but not seen the DLC as yet. Think I have the item I need though.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Elevator Action Returns on the Saturn.
Great game, excellent presentation. Love those tasty 2D graphics and arcade gameplay.

Co-op is where it's at.

[Marc]

Regularly making ST3 boss on Renegade, but she's beating the shit out of me.

[Shepardus]

100% Orange Juice [PC].
I have played this game for 48 hours, the most in my Steam library by a long shot.
help

Great game for relaxing when I'm too tired to go full shmup. The people playing it tend to be quite friendly, too, which I find unusual for an online game. Probably because it's so RNG-heavy it's impossible to take wins or losses seriously. There's never a time when you're too far ahead or behind to catch up or be caught up to, since the more you have the bigger the swings are.

[Stevens]

Regularly making ST3 boss on Renegade, but she's beating the shit out of me.

Givin' up already?

Seriously though...her grab and slap the shit out of you is almost OP.

[Marc]

Seriously man, I can barely hit the swine. Can't find any sort of weakness, muscle memory kicked in pretty quickly up to here but stuck fast at the min.

[copy-paster]

Alien vs Predator [ARC]

One of the best beat em ups, and the ending seems bit weird. Is the Predator going back to Earth to hunt the Aliens again or war against mankind ?

[Satan]

Regularly making ST3 boss on Renegade, but she's beating the shit out of me.

Run and back kick her. When she's on her last bar of energy, knock her down, climb on her tits and beat the fuck out of her.
The bald guys on the next level are a one hit kill so let them clump together and run at them while punching, rinse and repeat.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Full Auto 2: Battlelines. If there's any other person playing it, I suggest to disable resolutions higher than 720p in the PS3's display settings (wish I could disable anti-aliasing, too). Particulary in the early "Pit Fighter" mission, the framerate goes pretty Blast Corps in 1080p (not so much in 720p).
I'm not getting why it was likened to Burnout by about every one of all two or three folks who I remember mentioning it. "Poor man's Twisted Metal" is more like it, and ostensibly so. What it set out to do it does decently and it's almost fascinating to play a game this unbashfully unambitious. The epitome of a console's first-year, third-party title.
Most interesting of all, I can't honestly fault it for much. Sub-optimal tech does the job and so does its video game violence. Ignoring the "rewind time" feature, it's not even too easy (additional objectives take some retries to fulfil). The film-like je-ne-sais-quoi is very direct-to-VHS here, which has to count for something.
The bottomline is, I don't feel like buying any more PS3 games for a little while, which was well worth the price of admission.

[Satan]

I had God Hand on PS2 and didn't complete it, so I've bought it from PSN and I'm giving it another go. This game is just fucking brilliant and I'm actually quite surprised by how well its looking on my 5y/o 50" Plasma.

[broken harbour]

Been playing 2 games of late:

Cities: Skylines - Pretty nifty city builder, much better than the abomination that was the last SimCity. The UI could be better and there's a few bugs, but it's fun to use and very pretty to look at. Simulation seems decent, though you are never going to make a 10 million citizen megalopolis or anything, word on the street is that a million people is the max. Also makes my 1 year old, ultra powerful iMac cough up blood when the screen gets busy. I hope the developer continues to support it and work out bugs and other small niggles.

Zelda: Wind Waker HD - I missed the original release of this game and the HD version on the WiiU seemed like a worthwhile way to experience it, only a couple hours in so far. I love the art style and the generally cheerier atmosphere than OoT had. This also seems to have aged much better than OoT, although the HD update probably helps immensely. Hopefully WW doesn't have any ultra frustrating areas like OoT did as well (Water temple!). This will only be my 3rd Zelda experience, with the original game and OoT being the only other 2 I've tried. Oh... game has pretty decent surround sound considering its age and the fact that my receiver can only recognize PL2 from it...

[Obiwanshinobi]

The original Wind Waker has that infamously bloated endgame. I've felt put off by it for years now.
That being said, rarely do I finish such games anymore these days (Demon's Souls might as well take years to complete as far as I'm concerned).

[Immryr]

I bought ten original Xbox games off someone on gumtree for ten quid yesterday and today I've been having a play around with a few of them.

Metal Slug 3 was the first thing I put in. I've always sucked at run n gun games but I have fond memories of playing the first metal slug game in arcades in Corfu when I was younger... I basically got brutalised right from the start of this one. On the nine credits the game gives you by default I only made it to level three! Oddly I found the second level to be a lot easier than the first despite the annoying zombie mechanic. I'll put some more time into this, but I doubt I'll ever complete it.

Next up Halo. I don't really play fps games and the only halo I've played is halo reach - I did how ever enjoy playing the destiny demo earlier this year so I was looking forward to trying this one out. My first impressions were pretty good, it didn't feel too different from older games like quake or w/e to me. Blasting aliens is fun. This changed quite a bit when I got to the section where you have to drive the buggy.... Which sucked. It felt like I was driving on ice, I had no idea where I was going, it just felt very unnecessary getting away from the core, fun, gameplay.

I also played some project Gotham 2, which I have very little to say about. It was pretty fun.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Driving the Warthog is fun in the PC port of Halo, using mouse and keyboard. Pretty unusual controls, but Hostile Waters did something akin to it before and it was amazing.

Depth-of-field effect in Demon's Souls is ridiculous. Not when using lunette (that's OK), but when looking at distant objects. I am short-sighted and it makes me feel my glasses went missing. All the more grating since a little bit of fog is usually enough to convince me things are far away from the camera. Countless games did it perfectly well before. There was no reason whatsoever to change it. In fact, I think ever since Voodoo2/Dreamcast or so, the fog it brought to the table has been one of the best-looking effects in 3D games.

[Squire Grooktook]

The original Wind Waker has that infamously bloated endgame. I've felt put off by it for years now.

IIRC, the final tri-force piece hunt is not that bad if you just say "screw it" and use a guide. I had to cave and do so because it was just too boring and time consuming otherwise, but it went by fairly quickly once I knew where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do.

Cheating, I know, but it's the best way to avoid ruining an otherwise good game.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Bigger problem I have with WW is: the Medli's dungeon was too much fun to play through. Nothing so far quite matched its brilliance and now, knowing I'm near the end, my hopes for any pleasant surprise are no more.
So unlike Ōkami, where good stuff had never seemed to run dry 'till the very end.

I use guides when good games get ridiculous (Super Metroid), or when I consider deeply flawed games worth playing for whatever reason (Another World). In case of Wind Waker, though, I don't wanna finish it badly enough to cheat anymore.

[CStarFlare]

I used a guide, so the Triforce hunt never wore on me much. When it came out I tired of the sailing immediately, but coming back to it ten years later I'd put it in my top-3 Zelda list. Caving and using a guide is well worth marveling at the rest of the game.

EDIT: I've been playing a LOT of Prison Architect these last few days. Damn convicts and their riots.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Reminiscing about Wind Waker now, I don't feel like doing any more of its combat either. I understand the series has never been combat-centric, but with the majority of encounters being SO easy, couldn't they at least have been faster-paced? One more reason why Oracle of Ages felt so refreshing after WW.
There's no shaking off the fact that in the year 2003, when WW came out, TPP action genre was evolving rapidly. Was the OoT combat engine cranked from 20 fps up to 30 supposed to be their answer? What's the excuse here? When was the last time Nintendo showed they'd learnt anything from the others?

To re-state the obvious, Demon's Souls owes Monster Hunter a lot. Isn't it all for the better? They didn't need to hire Capcom for the job, or pay any licence fees. If it wasn't for the rampant cloning, where would the industry be right now?

Heck, I can remember only one bossfight from the majority of WW (where I had to use the bow), and another bosse's likeness (something of a vulture, but the fight itself's waned into oblivion).

[Ed Oscuro]

Working through Demon's Dogma a bit, interesting game.

How is Devil May Cry HD collection on the 360? It seems okay from what I've discovered, but I'd like a second opinion.

[BrianC]

I not sure to exactly what extent, but I heard the Triforce search was toned down in the WiiU Wind Waker.

[Squire Grooktook]

Reminiscing about Wind Waker now, I don't feel like doing any more of its combat either. I understand the series has never been combat-centric, but with the majority of encounters being SO easy, couldn't they at least have been faster-paced? One more reason why Oracle of Ages felt so refreshing after WW.
There's no shaking off the fact that in the year 2003, when WW came out, TPP action genre was evolving rapidly. Was the OoT combat engine cranked from 20 fps up to 30 supposed to be their answer? What's the excuse here? When was the last time Nintendo showed they'd learnt anything from the others?

Sadly, this is how I've come to feel about the Zelda franchise lately.

I love Nintendo's various aesthetic choices for the franchise, but that's all I really get out of them. Gameplay hasn't advanced much beyond OOT, which hasn't stood the test of time too well in my opinion. Story is light too, and while I'm sure some of it is quite nice, I can't see it as worth the 60 hour time investment.

[broken harbour]

That's the problem with the Zelda franchise overall... OoT was so popular and revered, that they are afraid to do something different with the main series. I'd love for them to change it up a bit, add some different elements/mechanics but if they change anything, the fanboys will cry foul and renounce nintendo forever. Maybe that's why they keep changing up the art style.

That's why I only play a Zelda game ever couple years, if I were to try playing through all the 3D Zelda's one after the other I imagine it would get monotonous.

[Squire Grooktook]

Majora's Mask was a masterpiece imo. But there's nothing else quite as interesting in the franchise afterward.