What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Blinge]

I see. I've had trilinear filtering on the whole time. Call me a peasant but having never played anything that looks or plays quite like this; it doesn't look ugly to me.

Reading that post convinces me it's better to be ignorant so I can y'know, enjoy the video game.
For that matter I wish I could go back to not seeing screen tearing in general.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm, I missed the Humble sale on Legend of Korra. Whups? Maybe?

"For one thing, the adrenaline system manages to make a large number of the battles a bit too easy. [...] allowing a player with an accurate flick of the analog stick to effectively combo his or her slow motion attacks, giving him or her an advantage in battle." Ahh, good old IGN. What could be more suspenseful than yet another pistol battle of attrition and hasty side jumps? Somebody give Lara a red cape to wave around!

I'm almost through Tomb Raider: Underworld; I've thankfully mostly finished an annoying area which, though it isn't difficult, has most all the great hallmarks of this game: Camera bugging out, absurd randomly missed jumps, intentional developer interference with other simple jumps to catch you off guard, ugly dungeon architecture, and to top it off, screeching gears on audio. On the plus side, there's a few more Thralls and white ninja spiders to kick into holes. The IGN reviewer is kind-of right; combat is usually too easy - though sometimes it's surprisingly difficult (the mercenaries at the start of the game put up a better fight than anything else except for giant spiders, and traps and bottomless pits). I haven't been using the Adrenaline system; it's rare to find more than one or two enemies at a time, especially at this late stage of the game, and in any case it's not really needed; so far the bigger enemies still go down too easily to pistol work. So far this seems a little bit like a post brewing on another game, Necrovision...which is, despite its sometimes similar faults, is already shaping up to be a more interesting game in many ways.

I'll be happy to see the back of Underworld's half-baked Viking Illuminati. It's unfortunate that they never got things quite right with this miniseries - the basic engine looks far better than Legend (well, given the right environments, which are scarce) and there are some intriguing puzzle elements, but level design (both progression and visual elements) make everything feel like an afterthought bolted on to a form-cut template. And then there's all the in-game glitches which make the game experience hardly better than Legend, which runs and responds perfectly (according to its design) if it doesn't crash. Oddly enough, I don't have memories of anything like this happening in Anniversary - maybe that will end up being the best choice for being played third.

Been looking into the Lone Wolf / Fighting Fantasy / Trolls and Turnstiles series things because I finally spent a few minutes looking at my copy of book #10 in the Lone Wolf (Magnakai) series, bought some time ago. I discovered that there's an HTML version of most books in that series, Project Aon, which would not quite be my preferred way of going through the series, but it's free. I was not super impressed by the writing style of the book snippets I read (typical "the mages explain incidental things about McGuffins to you, that your character already knows in the core of his being, because the reader is actually 10 years old" stuff) but the spirit for some good silly entertainment is there. I remember Ruldra (I think it was) had fun with the PC port of Fighting Fantasy, and while this is definitely far simpler, I think it's a decent place to start. Probably all the gamebooks are interchangeable (so long as you step up from Kai to Magnakai) but I think it would be best to start at the beginning.

[Ed Oscuro]

Powerslave EX team dolls: DONE. Decent game, endgame wasn't quite what I wanted though, and the team dolls only add a smidgen of replayability. Best means of defeating the last boss without using bombs: Pistol and MG on first form followed by staff, then use whatever else on the second form (Ra ring works well, and I ended up barely using the flamethrower, which was a neat surprise). You absolutely need to beat the final boss without using bombs in order to continue collecting Team Dolls, because there's no chance to restock. Clever design by Lobotomy.

Tomb Raider Underworld: DONE, uninstalled. What an absolutely atrocious sendoff to this miniseries, complete with deceptively complicated-looking end puzzle sporting entirely new physics failures to kill Lara. Then again, it's good they didn't try another boss battle. Sad to say I spent 4 more hours in this game than Legend. Astonishing how the end results of Lara and ISIS occupation of a site end up so similar, though given the crazy world she inhabits for the benefit of braindead game players who supposedly need a Lovecraftian world with things constantly blowing up...

Hell Yeah: Played a little bit more and back to The Island to see the viking helmet slime get a drink at the beach, uninstalled.

[BulletMagnet]

That Khimera game was just updated the other day, and you can now hit enemies that are sitting on top of you, which makes matters a lot less frustrating (punching rapidly also feels a bit better to me, though that could just be me getting more used to it). I do hope the guy keeps updating, as there are still a bunch of unpolished aspects (unforeseeable instant kills, the inability to tell which gaps in the floor lead to other areas and which ones are deathtraps, etc.), but in many ways the game is fun, and it's also nice to see someone take a more cute/silly approach to the whole "monster girl" thing than the typical fetishy one.

I also finished Severed, and while it's rather short (I managed to 100% the thing in around six hours) I'm still glad I snagged it, and cross my fingers that Drinkbox is rewarded, not punished (in the market sense) for sticking to its guns and putting their game on the system that suits it best, even if it's not the one with the highest sales figures (unfortunately, somehow I doubt we'll see a "Super Turbo" upgrade of this one to help refine/flesh it out).

[Tarma]

Street Fighter 2 : Champion Edition - PCE

Ninja Warriors Again - SFC

[Immryr]

I've been playing the ps4 version of Valkyria chronicles to take a break from dark souls, and from soft games in general. I've enjoyed most of the missions so far, currently I'm a bit stuck on chapter 7 where I have to stop the giant tank. This mission feels like a big jump in difficulty, but I also don't really like this kind of scripted mission in tactical games. Or... In most games actually. That's one of the things I like least about super metroid, the last boss.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Still playing The Show 16. Starting to get really obsessed with it. So much that I've actually started following real baseball. I adjusted the slider settings as suggested at a sports game forum and this game is perfect now. That fixed the excessive errors that occur the default setting. Online is a real hoot and is running a lot better now too.

It's nice to have a relaxing game that can still hold my attention. Makes for a change of pace from the more demanding games I usually play.

[Leandro]

Final Fantasy IX on Steam... Bought it since I've never played it back then and only heard good things about it. I'm regretting a little

They just slapped a mobile port on steam. At least the models look good.

The battles are too slow. The music is really disappointing, Uematsu is overrated. I like the light hearted tone of the story though.

[Ed Oscuro]

Didn't want to spam in the DOOM thread any more, but I finally finished up the short Necrovision demo earlier. The Farm 51 sure loves their bad Germans. (For what it's worth, I hadn't read Obscura's last response until after this, as I wanted to see whether the game would reveal any worthwhile points without prompting.)

Normal difficulty, 1100+ shots fired, 600+ kicks, 7/10 secrets and 2/4 vampire artifacts. I didn't see any ingame tally, and many areas will unexpectedly seal off behind you, which combines with the very slow loads - into the ugly, dark levels - to make secret hunting an awful chore. Resuming from alt-tab is also very slow (but at least that works, I guess).

Motion blur is implemented wrongly, and in any case is excessive. With everything else set to max, there's still something odd with the visuals at 1920x1440 (which my monitor reported as 2560x1440, pillarboxed in the right aspect ratio). Distant objects are rendered in lower resolution but even items at closer range seem blurred and indistinct, as if there's some scaling or interpolation when things should be sharp. I also discovered that holding gas lamps can lead to graphical corruption (this happened twice), as the polygons of the held item explode out across the screen. The first time I quit; the second time the problem resolved itself. Hopefully the full version fixes that issue.

Earlier I watched a couple segments of gameplay video to get an idea about how the full campaigns differ - one from the Lost Company standalone expansion, which seems to have more open areas with better visibility, and another from later in the game - and while the bright hell areas don't especially interest me, I see that you get some stuff later on that works better with the gameplay system. But, still, as the kick total shows, there's a lot of repetition here. The blurry graphics, useless ironsights, spongy enemies, and their apparent invincibility in cover make landing headshots from the K98 difficult at best, but I still persevered with it for a while. Hitboxes seem off, also. While the game does tell you (via loading screens) to get close to enemies, the kick does very little damage, but so does shooting an enemy anywhere but in the head unless you have the shotgun. Or dual machine guns, for that matter. Grenades do a fair job, but targeting with them is fairly awkward (so I only used them a couple times). So, it seems like you're supposed to stick to a one-handed weapon, kick for lengthy stunning, and maybe hold a bayonet or shovel in your left hand in order to have some melee options (for the early game). The K98's bayonet seems to be non-functional - many weapons aren't really worthwhile and just seem to be there because of the setting. To really rub the salt in, changing weapons is a slow and awkward affair. Weapon switching is slow, and the HUD elements are small and indistinct - I almost had to squint at times to see what was currently selected. All this despite other text scaling properly to this maximum resolution.

On the plus side, I did realize that it's quite simple to bind Weapon Category 1 to something more convenient so that I could reach it quickly. On the other hand, I'm astonished that they managed to fuck up something so simple as switching weapons, which even games with mix-and-match weapon modes have done more competently for a long time. Then again, switching weapons in Shadow Warrior 2013 is a chore too.

For the remainder, the powers system doesn't really interest me. I watched the opening of Lost Company, where a player fought against zombies from two to three at a time, and by the time he proc'd a special effect, everything was dead. And this was a player who was fairly good, aiming for vulnerable places. You can surf over enemies - getting boxed in isn't really a thing unless you're in a room too small to jump over enemies - and you can get hampered by piles of dead enemies, whose ragdoll corpses stick around a while. I'm not sure if these things count as good or bad, but given that enemies ragdoll when kicked, it can be difficult to tell what's still in the fight.

So, overall, it's an interesting game that tries a few new things, does a lot badly, but I'll still watch out for the two-game pack on sale.

[lilmanjs]

Densha De Go games. I got a bunch of ps1 games and pro 2 for the pc and have had some nice fun. I of course suck big time but I know I will improve! Train games can be fun. That I forgot.

[Obscura]

Didn't want to spam in the DOOM thread any more, but I finally finished up the short Necrovision demo earlier. The Farm 51 sure loves their bad Germans. (For what it's worth, I hadn't read Obscura's last response until after this, as I wanted to see whether the game would reveal any worthwhile points without prompting.)

Normal difficulty, 1100+ shots fired, 600+ kicks, 7/10 secrets and 2/4 vampire artifacts. I didn't see any ingame tally, and many areas will unexpectedly seal off behind you, which combines with the very slow loads - into the ugly, dark levels - to make secret hunting an awful chore. Resuming from alt-tab is also very slow (but at least that works, I guess).

Motion blur is implemented wrongly, and in any case is excessive. With everything else set to max, there's still something odd with the visuals at 1920x1440 (which my monitor reported as 2560x1440, pillarboxed in the right aspect ratio). Distant objects are rendered in lower resolution but even items at closer range seem blurred and indistinct, as if there's some scaling or interpolation when things should be sharp. I also discovered that holding gas lamps can lead to graphical corruption (this happened twice), as the polygons of the held item explode out across the screen. The first time I quit; the second time the problem resolved itself. Hopefully the full version fixes that issue.

Earlier I watched a couple segments of gameplay video to get an idea about how the full campaigns differ - one from the Lost Company standalone expansion, which seems to have more open areas with better visibility, and another from later in the game - and while the bright hell areas don't especially interest me, I see that you get some stuff later on that works better with the gameplay system. But, still, as the kick total shows, there's a lot of repetition here. The blurry graphics, useless ironsights, spongy enemies, and their apparent invincibility in cover make landing headshots from the K98 difficult at best, but I still persevered with it for a while. Hitboxes seem off, also. While the game does tell you (via loading screens) to get close to enemies, the kick does very little damage, but so does shooting an enemy anywhere but in the head unless you have the shotgun. Or dual machine guns, for that matter. Grenades do a fair job, but targeting with them is fairly awkward (so I only used them a couple times). So, it seems like you're supposed to stick to a one-handed weapon, kick for lengthy stunning, and maybe hold a bayonet or shovel in your left hand in order to have some melee options (for the early game). The K98's bayonet seems to be non-functional - many weapons aren't really worthwhile and just seem to be there because of the setting. To really rub the salt in, changing weapons is a slow and awkward affair. Weapon switching is slow, and the HUD elements are small and indistinct - I almost had to squint at times to see what was currently selected. All this despite other text scaling properly to this maximum resolution.

On the plus side, I did realize that it's quite simple to bind Weapon Category 1 to something more convenient so that I could reach it quickly. On the other hand, I'm astonished that they managed to fuck up something so simple as switching weapons, which even games with mix-and-match weapon modes have done more competently for a long time. Then again, switching weapons in Shadow Warrior 2013 is a chore too.

For the remainder, the powers system doesn't really interest me. I watched the opening of Lost Company, where a player fought against zombies from two to three at a time, and by the time he proc'd a special effect, everything was dead. And this was a player who was fairly good, aiming for vulnerable places. You can surf over enemies - getting boxed in isn't really a thing unless you're in a room too small to jump over enemies - and you can get hampered by piles of dead enemies, whose ragdoll corpses stick around a while. I'm not sure if these things count as good or bad, but given that enemies ragdoll when kicked, it can be difficult to tell what's still in the fight.

So, overall, it's an interesting game that tries a few new things, does a lot badly, but I'll still watch out for the two-game pack on sale.

The kick isn't meant to do damage (I wasn't aware that it even did any!); it's meant to stun, and for use in combos. No WW1 guns other than the rocket launcher do any real damage outside of combos; when you do a proper combo, it does a crap-ton of damage (and headshots with most weapons are one-move combos). The idea is to figure out which combos you're comfortable with and use them like crazy. Some of my favorites are the bayonet throw, the bayonet headshot that I can't remember the name of, and the kick + shotgun combo (kick them, then while they're flying back from the kick, shoot them with the shotgun. Most any kick + shoot them while they're airborne technique will be a valid combo, as will shooting them and then quickly kicking them while they flinch).

I'll agree that the visuals are a bit blurry. The game actually looks a lot better if you go into the options and turn most of the fancy effects off. Also, be sure you're playing it in DX10 mode, which can't be set in-game, but requires a launch option (even more important in the full version, since it won't work at all on modern operating systems unless you set the launch option correctly. Yeah, the game isn't quite perfect technically.)

As for why I mentioned it in the new Doom thread, given how grey it is -- it's for being a fairly legit almost-AAA Doom clone, with actual Doom-like level design instead of Serious Sam/Painkiller/Hard Reset style arena fights.

[Shoryukev]

Dragon Warrior - NES
MGS2 - PS Vita
Mega Man: Wily Wars - Genesis (repro cart)
Road Avenger - Sega CD
Shovel Knight - PS4

[Ed Oscuro]

The kick isn't meant to do damage (I wasn't aware that it even did any!); it's meant to stun,

Kicking kills can give the combo title award "Leg Juggler." It is weird, to the point of being ridiculous, how it knocks enemies flat (at least on Normal), and unless you're going for that Bestial Penetration combo (urgh) I don't see the point of semi-ragdolling the enemies, aside as a kind of horde control measure. They could have gone with a more conventional stun and that would help follow-through attacks. Tougher enemies seem more resilient to this at least.

No WW1 guns other than the rocket launcher do any real damage outside of combos;

That's not quite my experience; the shotgun does appreciable damage by itself (it was probably the best option when fighting the phantasm the second time, after the elevator ride in chapter 2), and dual Luger P08 pistols are lethal against regular zombies. Regardless, I get that's what they were aiming for, and I don't care for that design decision. What's left is more interesting than Deadfall Adventures' bland choice of mostly identical weapons.

The idea is to figure out which combos you're comfortable with and use them like crazy.

I think a much better design decision would have been to put more effort into allowing some freedom here. You get 105 rounds in reserve for the K98 and there's tons of stripper clips and enemies carrying the rifle - at least in the demo - so it's natural people will try to use it. (I would have felt more free to use some of the other weapons, like the shotgun, had it been more clear early on what types of boxes are ammo pickups). I've cleared out some tricky rooms with nothing but the K98 and the kick. It should be more fun than it is; after all, the classic Quake II/III model has a high-damage weapon that requires precision, and something like the K98 should fit the bill. Instead I get rewarded with hard-to-understand hitboxes and spongy enemies that take multiple headshots to dropThe difficulty of going free-form is odd - you can kick the ceiling for goodness' sake. Shadow Warrior 2013 always offers a quick slash melee option - and throwing stars when you have the sword out - they didn't make things more complicated than they need have and the game still got lots of praise for its melee combat. Personally I'm a bit upset because I like the idea of free combos in Necrovision better than I like the still rather rigid allotment of attack options in Shadow Warrior.

The game actually looks a lot better if you go into the options and turn most of the fancy effects off.

Aside from the motion blur, nothing I noticed seemed likely to be at issue - most of the video options (across the two pages) are standard filtering modes and shouldn't cause these issues. I didn't test out the HDR option much but that shouldn't be causing problems.

Also, be sure you're playing it in DX10 mode, which can't be set in-game, but requires a launch option

That's an interesting tip, but unfortunately I can't play with this right now - I'm juggling disk space and don't have the demo installed.

A Steam Community post here suggests that DX10 should fix the blur. I guess that's Necrovision in a nutshell for me - both behind the times and ahead of it. Some other developers launching games in 2009 (like Capcom with Resident Evil 5) never got their DX10 renderers to behave.

As for why I mentioned it in the new Doom thread, given how grey it is -- it's for being a fairly legit almost-AAA Doom clone, with actual Doom-like level design instead of Serious Sam/Painkiller/Hard Reset style arena fights.

Well, fair enough. I feel they fell far short of the "AAA" distinction but I'm still excited for their upcoming project Get Even. If they could combine the bland normality of Deadfall Adventures with some of the craziness on display here, and get rid of the bugs, that would be a promising foundation.

[Obscura]

I guess I should clarify on kick damage -- almost everything will one-shot a basic mook when it's the last hit of one of the pre-programmed combos (the pre-programmed combos have different damage values that override the last hit in the combo). However, I don't think that a single kick on its own does any damage (the "Leg Juggler" combo is just one of the pre-programmed combos, so the last-hit does big damage, because of the combo effect). The real reasons for the kick are minor crowd control, but mainly because shooting with almost anything while it's ragdolling is one of those pre-programmed combos, as is kicking anything when it's reeling from a gunshot or melee hit, which means instant-kill + Adrenaline + Fury.

Likewise, with the comments on the shotgun damage -- it's decent enough for bosses (although I'm pretty sure that the machinegun unloads more DPS against them), but it won't generally one-shot even a basic mook at close range (at least not on Hard difficulty) without getting the "Head Shotgun Shot" combo (or some other combo), which makes it pretty weak as oldschool FPS shotguns go.

Fair enough as far as whether it qualifies as "AAA" or not. I had pretty much forgotten about Shadow Warrior 2013 (I had never gotten around to playing it), which probably is more of an example of a "modern AAA Doom clone". The closest thing I was able to think of was Wrack, which is obviously far further from AAA than Necrovision.

(I'm not familiar with Deadfall Adventures, so those references are lost on me.)

[Obiwanshinobi]

Still trying to put my finger on the reason why I like WET despite never quite feeling I play it the right way*. Could be that the playable character happens to be lifelike by video game standards (more tightly-clad than it would be most practical for the job may she be, but the objectification starts and ends at this point).

*) Aim assist disabled because I do not want it.

[gameoverDude]

After enjoying the new Doom to the end on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty, I went back to Wolfenstein: The New Order. Though licensed rather than developed by id, it's still good. For doing certain challenges, you unlock Perks that give Blazkowicz some sort of buff (quicker reloading or drawing, quieter sprinting, reduced damage from explosives, etc).

Maybe we'll get a good Quake title again soon.

The worst Tomb Raider game I've played would be Angel of Darkness. I couldn't be bothered to finish the first level. The earlier TRs are not my cup of tea (I find the control stiff) but this is even worse. This title set Core on the downhill slide to oblivion. Unfortunately, Eidos didn't help matters by rushing Core to get the game out in time for promotional hype surrounding the TR Cradle of Life movie. That led to some serious compromises. Bad camera angles and truly lousy control put the nail in the coffin. Crystal Dynamics saved the TR series, especially with the two most recent entries. If you miss a jump in TR 2013 or RotTR, you can't blame the controls.

[TJB]

Maybe we'll get a good Quake title again soon.

I've waited long enough for my hair to start going grey, anytime now ID.

I'm playing Theme Hospital these days, I haven't played it since ... 1998-ish, but I'm not any better at it that's for sure.

[Ed Oscuro]

Interesting but getting maddeningly difficult:

Master Spy! Was just on sale, pretty good stuff for not much money. I'm actually appreciating the "no combat" angle, though it's making Hong Kong a nightmare.

Also...I finally played a bit more of the Psycho Knuckle release I got earlier this year (it's currently at version 102). Sparse levels and I'm having some issues getting to grips with timing, but very interesting.

I guess I should clarify on kick damage

Clarify away, but I'm positive I killed enemies outside of kick combos and with no "leg juggler" or other combo alerts showing up onscreen. And the amount of damage seems to scale pretty well; seven kicks will take out a workbench-sized wooden table and that's roughly in line with what a zombie takes.

The worst Tomb Raider game I've played would be Angel of Darkness. I couldn't be bothered to finish the first level. [...] Crystal Dynamics saved the TR series, especially with the two most recent entries.

Rant incoming, whoops...

It's been years since I played Angel (in 2008?), but I can't think of anything that would have prompted me to kill it that early! The entire game isn't quite like that opening, even though I happen to like it quite a bit. A lot of people feel that TR is at its worst when it takes on near-contemporary settings, but personally I think that's when it escapes the terrible old Ducktales and Indiana Jones cliches of spike traps, rolling marbles over pressure plates, collapsing temple escapes (move over nubs, Castlevania in the house), and lots and lots of swinging off poles. I enjoyed (and probably still will, on a replay) Angel's "open world" segments, even though the grand fetch quest opener was barely there. The slower / quieter start was fine too, but the game does move on. It never turns into a 360 conflagration spectacular, but the classic games rarely ventured that way, either. Of course the shortened development hurt the game; reportedly some of the developers would still like to finish it up properly (but there's surely no chance of this happening).

I'll just repeat myself - there's been some fan restoration patches for Angel of Darkness (by "Sasho") that probably won't change the pacing and action much, but should up the difficulty in a few areas, plus mostly restoring another area that was mostly gone from the full release.

I don't have much good to say about the Crystal Dynamics games. Legend started promisingly enough, and I felt Anniversary was quite good, but Underworld's bright spots are more than balanced out by terrible issues, so the game itself is terrible on balance. I can understand why Crystal Dynamics dropped most of the Core storyline (apart from the "no magic" view, maybe they'd just had enough of that kind of setting with Nosgoth for a while, and Blood Omen 2 is faintly similar to parts of Angel of Darkness), but Angel certainly had interesting things in reserve for sequels. Blame for Angel's shortcomings doubtlessly falls in part on obscure but well-paid Eidos executives taking their eyes off the prize, as you say; the Anniversary/Legend/Underworld trilogy also was rushed to its lamentable end - but I think the kind of story it's trying to tell wasn't well designed. Classic TRs are usually about following one artifact, and one gang of characters; I didn't mind that Legend and Underworld each have casts of characters and go many places (that is the old games' formula after all!), but characters aren't very well realized (except for the winged one!) just to exist for the sake of getting killed off. Too many mysteries are dissolved with too much ease; Viking Illuminati, I say.

TR 2013, well, that's "Exploding Geisha Eyeballs" to me and always will be. It's got some moments, but Rise sounds like it's a good step up.

But, honestly, if somebody had asked me 15 years ago "will we still be dancing awkwardly around the depiction of women in vidyas," I would have hoped the answer could have been "no, video game writing can be as good as the average for cancelled cop shows." Hopefully the next round of Tomb Raiders won't be about trying to collapse that strange disconnect between Lara's character as presented in 2013, and the fact that most gameplay involves shooting things to death. Like I put in a rant earlier, there are so many interesting things to do with the franchise and with the concepts of ancient history or archaeology, but the designers spent so much time trying to reconcile the character. (Incidentally, Lara's depiction in Angel of Darkness was one of the more even-handed - more interesting than Sexy Murder Girl from TR2-3 - but it led to one of the worst gameplay conceits in TR history, the move upgrade system, i.e. "can Lara make this jump yet?") Even, for that matter, the hints of corruption and police procedural that Angel pokes at could work better than "hey look, mercenaries got here before us" again.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Getting surprisingly powerful kick out of my Dragon's Dogma character here. Video game parenting doesn't get much better, does it?
Didn't expect liking DD's archery this much, either. The arrows can't seem to be depleted, but knowing Capcom, there's a reason for that.
...
That's it, I'm off to do more of that archery now.

[Immryr]

I got point blank 2 in the post today, a game I absolutely loved as a teenager. Just had a go on endurance mode and it's just as great as I remember. I hadn't twigged before how much triangle service's shooting game skill test was riffing on the point blank games but it's very clear to me now.

Can't wait till my gf gets home from work so we can play the 2 player mode for a good 10 minutes before she gets annoyed and won't play any more.

[Shoryukev]

I got point blank 2 in the post today, a game I absolutely loved as a teenager. Just had a go on endurance mode and it's just as great as I remember. I hadn't twigged before how much triangle service's shooting game skill test was riffing on the point blank games but it's very clear to me now.

Can't wait till my gf gets home from work so we can play the 2 player mode for a good 10 minutes before she gets annoyed and won't play any more.

Awesome! I'm a big fan of light-gun games, and also try my best to get my old lady to play house of the dead or time crisis games with me LOL

[broken harbour]

Uncharted 4 - Fun game with a great story until the end (ending was very disappointing for me.) There's a new focus on stealth that's thankfully changed up some of the gameplay, and the environments are much more open than before. The game has some pacing issues, it drags a bit at the end. There's a couple fun Easter eggs for long time Naughty Dog fans in there too. Overall, I'd buy this at a used game price. Unless your an Uncharted super fan or something.

Ratchet and Clank - R&C has been a longtime favorite series of mine ever since Tools of Destruction. This is a great reboot of the original (which frankly was the worst of the series due to control issues), it's one of the prettiest games I've ever seen and legitimately feels like you are playing a Pixar movie. Fun weapons like the Pixelizer, great voice acting and things blow up real good.

Destiny - I feel like I'm finally wrapping this game up about 90 hours in, I've pretty much maxed one character and I've started a second one with a different class.... and I'm not quite feeling it, I might have binged on this game a bit too much, still fun with friends tho. I still haven't had a chance to do the Raids since I don't have 5 other friends that are ready for that yet, so that might inject a little bit more life into the game for me.

Next Up: Sunset Overdrive, Life is Strange, Metal Gear Solid V.

[Ed Oscuro]

The arrows can't seem to be depleted, but knowing Capcom, there's a reason for that.

That suspicion would be correct. There's enough micro involved with the Pawns, or with selecting and setting up appropriate attacks yourself, that infesting the game with more inventory micromanagement was a good omission by Capcom.

BTW, there is some min-maxing shenanigans possible in the console versions, and I assume on the PC as well, depending on what you're interested in doing. But I feel you can get a fairly well balanced character just by doing what you like (though trying more classes can let you get more balanced stats, since each class has its own stat progression, and it depends on level also).

[BulletMagnet]

Ratchet and Clank - R&C has been a longtime favorite series of mine ever since Tools of Destruction. This is a great reboot of the original (which frankly was the worst of the series due to control issues), it's one of the prettiest games I've ever seen and legitimately feels like you are playing a Pixar movie. Fun weapons like the Pixelizer, great voice acting and things blow up real good.

Currently looking to finish Challenge mode on this myself, and while I agree with most everything above, I do have one major gripe: while the game does look great (even at 30 FPS), and does come quite close to the "cinematic" ideal Insomniac has always said it's aiming for, I'd say it comes at a notable cost to playability. Specifically, I find enemy shots significantly harder to see than in previous entries, especially when you've got the Proton Drum or some other SFX-heavy weapon deployed; sure, all the little needly lasers flying about make for some nice ambience, but they are also very easy to lose track of amidst the chaos. This is especially frustrating in Challenge mode, where you need to put together strings of kills without taking damage to earn enough bolts to upgrade your weapons; losing a x15 or x20 multiplier to a distant grunt you couldn't even see through all the explosions can be infuriating.

I have still enjoyed the game for the most part, especially at the 40-buck price point, but if the developer gets another shot at the series (hopefully the movie's box office belly-flop won't hamstring those prospects too much) that's one newborn issue that needs fixing PDQ.

[Tarma]

I got point blank 2 in the post today, a game I absolutely loved as a teenager. Just had a go on endurance mode and it's just as great as I remember. I hadn't twigged before how much triangle service's shooting game skill test was riffing on the point blank games but it's very clear to me now.

Can't wait till my gf gets home from work so we can play the 2 player mode for a good 10 minutes before she gets annoyed and won't play any more.

The Point Blank games are brilliant, good choice Sir

I'd love Namco to do an updated Gunvari collection for the PS4... along with Time Crisis 5

Also... been playing Demon Front on PGM, Uncharted 4 on PS4 and Twin Cobra on the PCE GT (couple of long car journeys this week).

[broken harbour]

I do have one major gripe: while the game does look great (even at 30 FPS), and does come quite close to the "cinematic" ideal Insomniac has always said it's aiming for, I'd say it comes at a notable cost to playability. Specifically, I find enemy shots significantly harder to see than in previous entries,

I agree, I've taken a few dumb hits for the same reason, that's why I almost always have a Mr.Zurkon deployed nearly all the time. It hasn't been game breaking for me, but I also haven't tried challenge mode yet. Still, I love the on screen chaos.

[BulletMagnet]

Yeah, it isn't bad enough to ruin the game, even on Challenge mode (finished it yesterday, managed to earn enough to buy everything despite many expletive-inducing stealth hits), but it is incredibly frustrating at times...especially when, as you say, you've unleashed a glorious cavalcade of destruction and can hear your enemies yowling as they spiral towards an untimely demise...and then all of a sudden Ratchet goes "oof!" and loses a quarter of his life, and you have no idea why. Takes you out of the moment like little else can.

[Ed Oscuro]

Played through a few more areas of Master Spy's Hong Kong section. If you can excuse the lack of offense, it really is almost without equal to my knowledge (but I'm far from an expert in non-violent sidescrollers). I wish there were more per-screen checkpoints as going through two screens can get old, but sense of accomplishment at having mastered a well-designed, tricky section is a good reward. Of course, it's also very tough to play and I'm sure I'll be embarrassed to see the failure count again

Been looking for my Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation save files, no luck yet.

I rediscovered some saved patches and that suggested to me I maybe look at Mortyr: 2093-1944 again. I see BuckoA51 was going to try out a speed patch here; I never got that far before, but I might have to ask about that later.

[Leandro]

Final Fantasy IX, the game took it's time to get good, but now I'm enjoying it a lot

[Obiwanshinobi]

Dragon's Dogma is quite a thing to sink one's teeth into. Just picked up one female bombshell of a pawn on the street in the evening...
And I have a strong feeling its ubiquity of things to carry, put down, throw... or mount here is a homage to The Legend of Zelda series. NPCs, corpses - you name it. Not like in FFCCh: The Crystal Bearers, where all of the gameplay is basically just that (although DD resembles The Crystal Bearers i many a way).

I also suspect the Dark Arisen expansion content is in a similar way homage to From Software games. Rather than wanting to be Souls, DD is giving it a cuddle. Such a generous, welcoming one she is.