What are you playing?

[al kusanagi]

Being snowed in gave me plenty of time to finish up Mass Effect 2. Epic ending, but even at just under 40 hours it felt too short since I did all the available side quests. Now for the painful 2+ year wait for the finale of the trilogy...



Don't know what's next. I loved Bioshock, but have been extremely unimpressed by everything I've seen from 2. I guess it'll be Heavy Rain, although what I'm really looking forward to is Lunar: Silver Star Harmony. I wish someone would get off their asses and make a Lunar 3 rather than continually remaking the first two like they've done for the last 15 years.

[Ap2000]

[quote name='Al Kusanagi' post='74881' date='Feb 1 2010, 01:19 AM']Being snowed in gave me plenty of time to finish up Mass Effect 2. Epic ending, but even at just under 40 hours it felt too short since I did all the available side quests. Now for the painful 2+ year wait for the finale of the trilogy...



Don't know what's next. I loved Bioshock, but have been extremely unimpressed by everything I've seen from 2. I guess it'll be Heavy Rain, although what I'm really looking forward to is Lunar: Silver Star Harmony. I wish someone would get off their asses and make a Lunar 3 rather than continually remaking the first two like they've done for the last 15 years.[/quote]



We probably won't have to wait more than 2 years, more like 1,5 years.

Apparently they are planning to release it at the end of 2011:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=233118

[neshcom]

Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop: Basically CM2, but with an optional shopping game type. Features two (2) recipes on preparing instant noodle dishes.



Avalon Code: A hack-and-slash RPG with a neat "code" system where you can swap an object or enemies properties (for example, stone golems turn into regular golems when you take off their stone property. It's a nice game with a hmm story and it doesn't let you get lost, but switching between touch and d-pad is a little slow. Also, you can only hold four object properties outside of objects. Also, the book menu system is un-intuitive, confusing, and a tad slow.



Glory of Heracles: A Greek-themed, turn-based RPG for people who have no idea what an RPG is. The game will stop and explain everything to you. Mid-battle, you will be stopped and asked to look at a glossary definition of poison or defense or attacking. You will be walked through the entire battle system (which is nothing special). The game controls almost completely by touch screen and the UI is colorful and inviting, but rather unfitting. The story is your standard amnesia hero-legend of the planet with a spunky female totally male, manly man's man with a penis who is not a women. I'd feel bad about spoiling that for you if it wasn't explained in the first lines of dialog. Battle-wise, you end up controlling a lot of different characters at one time in battle and, while executing you attacks, you get NO OVERLAY gagues about your character's stats (all statistics are located in the handy scrolling log).



Sands of Destruction: An action-turn-based RPG which, despite the actual setting, brings back fond memories of FF7. FYI, the first 20-30 minutes of the game bring up two interesting tangents: 1) essentially The Giver's "woah, this world didn't have any color twist," but compressed into 10 minutes and instead of no color, humans are subservient to furries and half-breeds 2) I could not stop considering al-Qaeda throwbacks. Destruction of a spoiled society structure, sand, references to terrorism, sand. Think about it. There's an interesting "quip" system where characters can say things they've said in cutscenes in battle for special abilities sometimes maybe. The voice-overs are sub-decent, the dialog in cutscenes are not line-skippable and the pacing is duuuuuuuuull. If it didn't crash after every time I saved, I would be in love with this game.



Assassin's Creed: I very, very fun action-adventure game. Haters to to the left because, despite the games flaws, there is still a great game left. Yeah, travelling is unnecessary and some of the mini-missions don't always make sense, but it's still a great concept with awesome platforming elements. Interesting plot and I'm looking forward to AC2, and personally, I want AC3 to be contemporary with Desmond as the playable character. I don't know enough of the plot to know how that would pan out, but it would be really interesting.



Ben There, Dan That: A free point-n-click game with a nice sense of humor (English as it may be). Rather short, but the puzzles are legitimately difficult. The graphics and animations are...low-tech and the music/SFX are...hmm, but the story is interesting and the banter is rather cute. A non-free sequel Time Gentlemen, Please, is available on Steam but I just beat BTDT.

[vanillacat]

Thanks for the breakdown, Nesh. I was thinking about buying Avalon Code, but now I'm not so sure... maybe I'll just ROM it. :whistle:





Pokemon Platinum., like a fiend. I've blazed through 35+ hours of game play already, and my team hasn't even broken level 35. I forgot how goddamn time-consuming Pokemon is... but I don't regret it for a second. Someone wanna figure out this Global Wi-Fi business with me? We could battle (however, I suck, and see aforementioned team levels) or we could... do whatever it is that people do when they "link up". I literally haven't "linked up" with someone since the days that it took PHYSICAL LINKING CABLES (i.e. Game Boy Color), so... <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... /ph34r.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':danceman:' />

[Sabaku Ika]

I remember saying here a while ago that I wasn't masochistic enough to want to play Demon's Souls. I guess I was wrong because I got it and I've been enjoying it a lot despite or maybe because of the difficulty. It has an interesting online functionality where you see other players in the same area as you as ghosts that you (normally) can't interact with. You can leave simple messages on the ground for others, and whenever someone dies, they leave a blood stain, which lets you learn from other players' mistakes and hopefully die slightly less than you would otherwise. Enemies are still absurdly strong most of the time, but it helps you avoid ambushes and traps and such.

[Melon]

I'm playing My World, My Way right now, about a half hour before I go to bed. It's cute, but rather bland. The greatest things are the "Pout Points" that will let you pout your way to more experience, money, items, locale, quests, status effects on monsters, ect ect. The confused spoiled princess plot is pretty cute, but very thin. The quests aren't too exciting either - kill x amount of monster, gather x amount of items, kill boss, ect ect. Playing it in small doses like I am makes it not bad, but if I played for extended periods of time I'd get bored quickly. I like how eating at inns gains you stat points, but I dislike how the game is reliant on you doing so. I'm looking forward to Edgey's game in a couple of weeks, hopefully I can beat it before then...!

[Sabaku Ika]

[quote name='neshcom' post='75131' date='Feb 5 2010, 01:30 AM']Sands of Destruction: An action-turn-based RPG which, despite the actual setting, brings back fond memories of FF7. FYI, the first 20-30 minutes of the game bring up two interesting tangents: 1) essentially The Giver's "woah, this world didn't have any color twist," but compressed into 10 minutes and instead of no color, humans are subservient to furries and half-breeds 2) I could not stop considering al-Qaeda throwbacks. Destruction of a spoiled society structure, sand, references to terrorism, sand. Think about it. There's an interesting "quip" system where characters can say things they've said in cutscenes in battle for special abilities sometimes maybe. The voice-overs are sub-decent, the dialog in cutscenes are not line-skippable and the pacing is duuuuuuuuull. If it didn't crash after every time I saved, I would be in love with this game.[/quote]

I watched the first few episodes of the anime that aired at the same time as this came out in Japan. It seemed kind of average other than the unusual "heros trying to destroy the world" premise, but as a game it might be fun. Is it?

[neshcom]

[quote name='Sabaku Ika' post='75204' date='Feb 5 2010, 10:19 PM'][quote name='neshcom' post='75131' date='Feb 5 2010, 01:30 AM']Sands of Destruction: An action-turn-based RPG which, despite the actual setting, brings back fond memories of FF7. FYI, the first 20-30 minutes of the game bring up two interesting tangents: 1) essentially The Giver's "woah, this world didn't have any color twist," but compressed into 10 minutes and instead of no color, humans are subservient to furries and half-breeds 2) I could not stop considering al-Qaeda throwbacks. Destruction of a spoiled society structure, sand, references to terrorism, sand. Think about it. There's an interesting "quip" system where characters can say things they've said in cutscenes in battle for special abilities sometimes maybe. The voice-overs are sub-decent, the dialog in cutscenes are not line-skippable and the pacing is duuuuuuuuull. If it didn't crash after every time I saved, I would be in love with this game.[/quote]

I watched the first few episodes of the anime that aired at the same time as this came out in Japan. It seemed kind of average other than the unusual "heros trying to destroy the world" premise, but as a game it might be fun. Is it?

[/quote]

It is. The combat system is that you have battle points that you use to execute attacks (1 BP->1 move) and you get more by doing criticals and increasing your morale. You have two types of attacks, blows (usually single, strong attacks) and flurries (usually multiple, weaker attacks) and each type has like a chain of actions it can do in sequences (so, Flurry#1, #2, so on...). Each attack can be "customized" by assigning it customization points and upgrading attacks (strength of effect and accuracy or MP cost) gets you more in the sequence. When you get to the end of a sequence or through a specific path, you can use special attacks, with their big finish attack after going through 6 BP in a turn. There's a combo system, but it's not much of an effect on battle.



The gameplay is rather linear, but there's an aspect of exploration and basic problem solving to be had. Luckily, despite the linear setting, the game does a lot of mercy-fast forwards (i.e, go and get the item, fade to black, back where you need to turn it in at).



Still, the spoken word cutscenes are just too slow to the point where it's frustrating. The individual lines are not timed in any way meaning sitting through a couple of seconds before they keep speaking. Isn't the reason there's spoken dialog such that you don't need to read?! Of course, when there's no rush to read, I start to watch TV or something and them I miss a line. :\\\

[surasshu]

[quote name='Ap2000' post='74540' date='Jan 24 2010, 02:47 AM']Mass Effect 2[/quote]

I'm pretty much with you on the complaints you already mentioned. It's weird isn't it, they sort of changed a lot of things, made a lot of things a lot better and then also made a lot of things worse and introduced new issues and problems. Bioware is a pretty amateurish company in many ways. This game includes lines that weren't dubbed because they ran out of time, just to give an indication of what kind of business they're running.



The most annoying thing to me has to be that the PC version is basically fucked. No double-clicking (except in space travel for some reason), no scroll-wheel support for any of the windows, shitty mouse support in general, no ability to turn v-sync on or off (I want it on, but still), no anti-aliasing without a stupid hack (renaming the binary to UT3.exe if you have ATI Radeon, how ghetto is that), and I'm probably forgetting a good few things. I was able to correct some of these things by hacking into the .ini files and turning off stuff like mouse smoothing (and it even allows you to set mouse speed properly for each game element, making scanning much less of a pain), but it's pretty pathetic.



On the other hand, they made the actual gameplay fun, unlike the first game where the gameplay was either boring or frustrating, and incredibly easy. Your teammate AI is still pretty shitty, but they're not quite as useless as in the previous game.



Of course, the real reason to play the game is for the story, and on that front they really delivered. I really liked the changes they made to the world, and the fact that the game was very different from the first one, but still captured the universe in a good way. I especially like what they did with the Asari (I won't go into it more than that for spoiler reasons), but overall the universe is much better this time around, less "generic scifi-verse".



Overall, I love the game, despite its many flaws. Wish there were more side-quests, but I guess Bioware ran out of time for that as well.

[al kusanagi]

I broke down and picked up Bioshock 2. Then I started it and immediately remembered how much I hated going through the first one. Now, I'm not saying that I dislike the game. I love it. What I mean is that the atmosphere is just so damn tense that it can be physically and mentally taxing to play through rather than fun and relaxing.



Also since I finally got a US region 360 I played my first games of 1 vs 100 last night. Absolutely love it!

[Ap2000]

[quote name='Al Kusanagi' post='75519' date='Feb 10 2010, 08:56 PM']I broke down and picked up Bioshock 2. Then I started it and immediately remembered how much I hated going through the first one. Now, I'm not saying that I dislike the game. I love it. What I mean is that the atmosphere is just so damn tense that it can be physically and mentally taxing to play through rather than fun and relaxing.



Also since I finally got a US region 360 I played my first games of 1 vs 100 last night. Absolutely love it![/quote]



Hah, I loved the first one and like this one a lot. I can fully understand the tension, that's why I like these kind of games so much.

At first I was a little bit disappointed, because some reviews stated this game was linear. While it is true that the overall story arc is linear, the levels you are in are very free to explore and there's a huge load of stuff to discover. Just like the first game this, this one again has many very memorable moments from an astehtical and from a story standpoint.



This is how you make a sequel, BioWare, not the dumbed down version of mass effect 2 you made.



EDIT:

I just finished it and it has a beautiful ending. At least the ending I got. I am so happy and satisfied right now, I haven't felt like this because of a game in a long time.

[ShinUkyo]

Been playing my 360. I've just finally been able to play it again, for the first time in over eight months. In fact, I need to go and play it right now. So badly, in fact, that I won't waste time writing a long post that explains why I couldn't play it for the past eight months. Not that anyone would care to read it, anyhow, but still. *zoom*

[Ap2000]

I finally started to play some Torchlight.

It's obviously a Diablo clone, a 90% Diablo clone in fact.

It's doing a lot things right gameplay-wise and it's not bad to play, I just wish there were more areas than just dungeons, eventhough the areas do differentiate eachother. Constantly see similar surroundings is what made me hate the first Diablo, I really can't stand that. I absolutely love 2 + LoD though.

The Level-Design is the worst (and only REALLY bad) thing about it. The levels are so linear, it feels like playing Call of Duty with a different camera angle and failcraft graphics.



I'm not sure how long I will play it, I'm now at about 8 hours and lvl16, but I guess it will be around 15 hours when I will start to lose interest. That's about how long it took me to lose interest in Titan Quest, which was a far better looking Diablo clone.



Mods are a must though, especially the ones that alter the huge-ass font/windows and alters the icons of gems.

[michikodesu]

^



I don't think that Torchlight was made to be an "OMG Spectacular!!!" game.........I think it was just thrown out there for fun for those who like

those kinds of games; a mindless click-fest, if you will. For those who want to play a game like that; but not have the intensity and commitment

like most games.



As for what I'm playing: I've gone old school and decided to stroll down memory lane and play the original Legend of Zelda. GOSH, I feel old!!

[neshcom]

I finally finished Time Gentlemen, Please, sequel to Ben There, Dan That. I've got to say, both games were funny while not being sarcastic, clever without being too difficult, and stylish without being obvious. TGP has a musical score, UI improvements, and frankly, a just-right sized story which is well worth the $5. Regarding the ending, fighting super-power Hitler is totally satisfying and possibly one of the coolest scenes in gaming history. GO AND BUY THIS GAME IT IS $5 AND TOTALLY WORTH IT FAGS. The two games come in a pack on Steam.



Also, I finished mission mode on Nation Red, a zombie version of Geometry Wars. The plot? Has none. Mission types? 17 "kill 'em all," 1 "save this guy but I'm not gonna tell you biiitch." Also, a no-power up survival mode and a regular free-play mode. The game is fun, but the UI could use some tweaks and more enemy types, but, for the $10 pricetag, it's definitely worth it.



Alsoalso, do not fall into the description; Raycather is a terrible game and I feel gyped out of my $3. Yeah, I paid $3 for this pile of a tech demo and I overpaid about $5. Your music, should you figure out how to add it to the game, has NO bearing on the gameplay. None. Absolute shite.



[quote name='michikodesu' post='75620' date='Feb 12 2010, 09:04 PM']old school...original Legend of Zelda. GOSH, I feel old!![/quote]

<img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... /frown.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':cryalot:' />

[Ap2000]

[quote name='michikodesu' post='75620' date='Feb 13 2010, 03:04 AM']^



I don't think that Torchlight was made to be an "OMG Spectacular!!!" game.........I think it was just thrown out there for fun for those who like

those kinds of games; a mindless click-fest, if you will. For those who want to play a game like that; but not have the intensity and commitment

like most games.



As for what I'm playing: I've gone old school and decided to stroll down memory lane and play the original Legend of Zelda. GOSH, I feel old!![/quote]



But most games are boring.

[Sabaku Ika]

The PS3 version of flOw is free today. I've heard it might be only today.

I am playing it now and trying to figure out what/if the controls are. It's definitely interesting artistically.



Also, Demon's Souls is having a White World Tendency event for the next few days. This means that enemies are no longer able to kill you by sneezing and you sometimes have a chance of winning. If anyone wants to start this game (which they should), now is a good time.

[Geof]

Picked up Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Williams Edition & while it's a good collection of classic pinball boards & they all play very authentically, I WAS disappointed to see Black Knight included instead of Black Knight 2000. But hey, $10 for a disc with a dozen or so boards.



And since DC's Blackest Night currently has me by the curlies, I decided to track down Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe. Yeah I know, MORTAL FUCKING KOMBAT blah blah blah, but I've always been a huge fan of the 2nd & 4th games, and the story mode's pretty fun. Control & play mechanics are pretty good for MK, though I'd have preferred the more traditional movelists where you had 3 or 4 special moves instead of this game's Tekken/VF-style button+stick direction moves.





I also went looking in the Playstation Store for that free version of flOw & was too late, but I DID find Flower in the same section for $5 (today only, Feb 14th.) It's a pretty little game where you start as a single flower petal & use the Sixaxis to control your direction while you hold a wind button to travel through the air over a grass field, picking up additional petals from the flowers you find & eventually springing up new flowers which revitalize the browned sections. It's a really nice diversion from blowing stuff up all the time.

[Zounder]

Finally got Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, but have yet to play it. I thought Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was good but not great, so hopefully the sequel blows it out of the water as people say it does.

[fpd]

Finally got around to unlocking all the characters on Street Fighter 4 this weekend. :/ Now that I have Seth I never have to play any other characters but the like... 3 I like playing! Not that I'll probably ever play the game again anyway.

[thamychan]

I'm playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Red Rescue Team. It's really cute being a Pokémon instead of some random human although it is still quite similar to the original game except for the gyms. Anyway, I'm addicted to Pokémon games. <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... tongue.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':cryalot:' />

[Ap2000]

This is the longest name for a weapon I've ever seen in a game, it even surpasses those Diablo II created ones:

http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/2926/30204265fw.jpg

[neshcom]

I got my emulator up and running again and I'm starting through Final Fantasy VII. When I was younger and the game was more contemporary, I pretty much got as far as when Cloud goes total retardlol and then friend's-save-skipped to the crater before going and fighting Sephiroth. The emu slows down when the screen fades (which is ALL THE FRIGGIN TIME) and it never clicked with me that FF7 had a PC release. Whatevs. Currenty: I just finished the [notreallyaspoilerbecauseEVERYONEknowsthisscene]crossdressing scenario.[/iftatspoileditforyou,i'dliketovisityourrock] I don't want to start a whole shitstorm of arguments and trolling to the twelfth degree...but here we go. I still love the story and, now that I'm playing this outside of elementary school, the story has a nice, simple, if not cliched, story. A lot of the animations and actions me and my friends thought were cool were things that I'm now realizing were technical imperfections and, frankly, rather lazy animating. The 2.5D art style really allows the game to be visually entertaining beyond the contemporary graphics we had in that time. Granted, that really just bumps up the graphics to PS1-pre-rendered-cutscene levels, but it's probably better than the alternative that either wouldn't have been nice-looking or would've been pretty for all 14 discs.



I'm in the boat that FF7 should have a re-make (though I do NOT sign online petitions or any of that, y'know, pointless stuff) and a recent excuse that was given was that, to make the graphics now would be...well, here: "It is very hard to make games on PlayStation 3 in the same style as the games in that era had. Making graphics will take enormous time." With a new Parasite Eve coming down the pipe, I'm taking this line as total bullshit. My real rebuttal: Final Fantasy X on the PS2 did have a number of 2.5D scenes. Just do that. I don't really want or expect Advent Children-level graphics. Just slap on some fresh paint. Go back to 2.5D. Freshen it up. Hell, just keep printing the original game, but put parsley in the CD case. Maybe some balsamic reduction on the back cover. It's a nice flavor profile.





Of course, that whole spiel is just an argument to see some high-def, crossdressing Cloud. <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... #>/wub.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' />

[Ap2000]

I'd highly suggest you play the superior PC Version with better graphics and there even are some mods for having the fighting-models in the normal areas.

Here's a link to a compilation:

http://fem1.uniag.sk/Miroslav.Jezik/ff7ncopam.html



Also, you can easily exchange sounds, so you can even put the orchestrated versions of the songs into the game, if you don't like the MIDI stuff. (I love MIDI though, so I didn't do that)

[Tsuki]

I actually own the PC version of FFVII, and it has crashed on me so many times, I just gave up. My save file was lost about three times, and after the third time of FINALLY getting to disc 2, I just gave up. There are so many issues with compatibility, especially the fucking snowboarding area, with Windows XP, it just wasn't worth it to me to keep trying.



tl;dr, the game's still overrated, and I will probably never ever beat it.

[neshcom]

I actually own the PC version of FFVII, and it has crashed on me so many times, I just gave up.

I've had this happen on a relative's computer SO MANY TIMES. And this was when he was running 95 or 98 or whatever OS you needed.

I'd highly suggest you play the superior PC Version with better graphics and there even are some mods for having the fighting-models in the normal areas.

Here's a link to a compilation:

http://fem1.uniag.sk/Miroslav.Jezik/ff7ncopam.html



Also, you can easily exchange sounds, so you can even put the orchestrated versions of the songs into the game, if you don't like the MIDI stuff. (I love MIDI though, so I didn't do that)

This is really cool, though I probably wouldn't change too much. I like my jar-handed legomen <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... >/rofl.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';/' /> I like the MIDI soundtrack, but maybe if I could change some of the sound effects (though my emu may not be correctly configured...). Those higher-res models outside of the battle are freaky looking. Plus, some of the NPCs are still lego! surreeeeeaaaaal~~ And something about all those highfalutin anti-aliased textures looks kinda...bad. Maybe I'll just keep my emu...

[Ap2000]

[quote name='Tsuki' post='75821' date='Feb 17 2010, 04:15 PM']I actually own the PC version of FFVII, and it has crashed on me so many times, I just gave up. My save file was lost about three times, and after the third time of FINALLY getting to disc 2, I just gave up. There are so many issues with compatibility, especially the fucking snowboarding area, with Windows XP, it just wasn't worth it to me to keep trying.



tl;dr, the game's still overrated, and I will probably never ever beat it.[/quote]



I re-installed FF7 & 8 ~3 years ago on my HTPC that runs WinXP and didn't have any problems. It probably had some compatibility issues with some of your hardware.

However, I played it with the mods I linked, which fix a lot of Problems 7 apparently has under XP.

[Ap2000]

OH SHIT GUYS ! OH SHIT !!



http://www.civilization5.com/

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/107/1070111p1.html



Finally announced. Hopefully they won't make it casual.

According to their Twitter (civgame) "Civilization V is PC only!" - HNGGGGGGG YES, this is a good thing for a game like this.

[Melon]

[quote name='Ap2000' post='75898' date='Feb 18 2010, 12:02 PM']OH SHIT GUYS ! OH SHIT !![/quote]

[AEUGNewtype]

That's about enough of that. I'm not even going to talk about what I've been playing because no one reads this thread!