The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

I recently completed the COD:Modern Warfare 3 campaign, and I was tickled to see how it extended the storyline from the first MW through MW2. I tried Black Ops II, but it crashed out on my system - so far, only Bastion and BO2 have done so. I tried to start up a Borderlands game, but the save files were getting corrupted. Bleh.

I'll start up Fallout: New Vegas. I think that'll be a good investment of my time. Otherwise, I continue to play Midway Pinball Classics (Medieval Madness!), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, and Nethack.

Fallout New Vegas is one of my five favorite games of the last ten years.

Just finished Uncharted 3.

While all those corrupted games were failing me, I tried out Final Fantasy XIII-2 (13-2). Holy crap, that game is beautiful. Holy crap, that game sucks. It's like a really bad mashup of Dragon's Lair and really-confusing-Anime (all Anime?).

I was happy to delete it, though I kept the install files around in case I change my mind.

XCOM.
Must... Save... Mankind...

It's still as unforgiving as the original if you are not careful. Holy fuck on a stick.

I think I'll restart, took me two months of game time to figure out how to get more engineers. Stupid tutorial. Y u no build satellite centre???

Oh sweetheart, I'll never quit you. Weeks of long gaming nights... good times.

In spite of the odds I actually managed to finish Fallout: New Vegas. The final insult was that it wouldn't give me the end game quest after finishing the previous one. Ended up having to fix that with the console.

About a month ago a friend got sick of my excuses about not having gotten Skyrim yet, so gifted me a Steam copy himself. This coincidentally happened a day before my internet got busted, and halfway through an XCOM download. I don't have proof he conspired to leave me with nothing to play but Skyrim, but I finally finished it a few days ago.

I liked it much more than Oblivion, but it still had a ton of bugs and balance issues. Chief among them, perhaps, was Bethseda's apparent desire to make dragons lose all magic and make you absolutely sick of them. I could not go anywhere without being attacked by a dragon. Fast travel to sell loot, dragon. Fast travel to start quest, dragon. Fast travel to end quest, dragon. Leaving a building, dragon. Take a piss, dragon. The fact that they are incredibly freaking weak (I've seen dragons struggle to kill simple animals, they only seem to kill anything else in scripted encounters) isn't what bothered me as much as the repetition.

Anyway, that done, internet fixed, XCOM download finished, time to kill some xrays! I binged on it over the weekend and it's extremely fun. I like it rather a lot, although there are design choices that are incredibly annoying and/or frustrating. Additionally the UI is terrible and a huge pain in the ass. Whoever convinced me to start on classic ironman also needs a kick in the balls! :p I like ironman, but classic feels unfair, and I'm really missing features I have come to expect from a strategy rpg, like a visual representation of firing range for my own guys, or movement range for the enemy. When each move is permanent, it's bullshit to not know I am within one hit kill range of some horrifying monster. I'm sticking with it anyway (for now) because I hear normal mode just gets too easy, but I don't think it was the right way to start. If anything, playing on normal mode is how you learn the strategies to use in classic, but whatever.

Will probably play a freak load of stuff over the coming week, I think next is going to be Trine 2 co op with a friend. I booted it up to map the controls and try out the first level and it already looks like a large improvement over the original. It's quite beautiful, and the 3D is pretty amazing. It might be the best 3D I've seen, to my great surprise.

I agree 100% with your assessment of the dragon frequency.

I spent a bit of time with the (unsurprisingly overpriced) iOS port of Final Fantasy IV the other day. Visually it looks much better than its Nintendo DS counterpart, courtesy of the higher resolution (but still without texture filtering).

Unfortunately that's where the advantages end. Playing the game on a third gen iPod touch, the graphics stuttered frequently (especially in towns and castles, a little less on the world map) and sound (especially voice overs) occasionally got stuck or repeated. Touchscreen controls are passable. The virtual, place-anywhere thumbstick works ok for character movement, though in dungeons I often found myself going the wrong way by accident, which isn't a good thing if you're aiming for the most direct route to avoid random encounters. The whole interface seems to have shrunk compared to FF3, making battle and menu buttons that much harder to hit, and some text harder to read on so small a screen. The port was probably designed for newer iOS devices (retina iPod/iPhone, iPad/mini), with (bad) support for legacy devices thrown in to maximize the potential customer base.

That said, it's still a good game. It just reeks of a minimum-effort port.

Need some time to kill, so I'm going to post some of the stuff I've been playing earlier than I had planned. Apologies if I end up getting spammy this week. :p

I put Xcom on hold. End of the year is busy for me and I haven't had time for it. Someone sent me the Binding of Isaac and I've been playing that in free moments instead. It's a very twisted zelda-ish roguelike thing about horrible things.

Did make time for Trine 2. I enjoyed it much more than the first one, perhaps thanks to the co-op. I still maintain that the graphics (and especially the 3D effects) were incredible. Very surprising for a non big budget title. The controls are still floaty (bad) though.

Got and played Journey last night. It was really good, but way more linear than I was expecting. I thought the idea was that you would randomly meet people and then go your separate ways, but there was only one way to go. Another cool thing about this game is that the story as told to the player isn't all that interesting. But the story you tell yourself as you interact with a random stranger you can't even talk to is.

Finally, got Paper Mario for the 3DS as a gift and have been playing it before bed. It's cute, predictably easy but not frustratingly so. I sort of wish the puzzles were better but the combat and levels are good. Music is surprisingly good.

Funny thing is, part of why I wanted this was because a year or so ago when I got my 3DS, the preview I had seen of this was the best 3D I had seen up to that point. But by unfortunate chance, I played this at the same time as Trine 2, which pretty much smokes anything else I have seen, including Paper Mario. Oh well. :p

Finally got around to starting Assassin's Creed III... and only made it through the first two sequences before getting bored. Is the rest of the game as slow and dull as the beginning? I must have spent more time watching cutscenes than actually playing. And the first "missions" weren't particularly exciting either.

Besides that I played Tony Hawk HD literally until my thumbs started hurting. I forgot how addictive those games could be. I can almost feel the old calluses growing back. Unfortunately the game isn't quite as challenging as I remember it. I've already maxed out my skater's stats and completed most of the challenges. Not sure about Marseille as the final level. Seems more like a punishment than a treat.

Physics and collision detection ended up being more irritating than the graphics. Nothing like having your skater fly off the board for no apparent reason. I'm hoping for a sequel with more refinement (and the ability to import the old levels).

Picked up ac3 in time for christmas and yeah the beginning was somewhat meh.

It got better around sequence 5 or so.

Angry Birds, until I can get another computer.

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Originally Posted by Neofelis

Angry Birds, until I can get another computer.

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Heheh. The Star Wars themed Angry Birds is pretty funny.

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Originally Posted by Nerkahia

Heheh. The Star Wars themed Angry Birds is pretty funny.

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Yeah, I had fun with it.

Over the past few days I got around to completing Bayonetta (bought it a couple years ago, got halfway through and set it aside) and Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Neither were all that great in my opinion. I know Bayonetta was pretty popular back in the day but I don't care for the style of game I guess (though I loved Lollipop Chainsaw). It was a bit over the top with the fan service, the story was a convoluted mess and it was frustratingly difficult in places for me. Medal of Honor was OK but nothing to write home about.

I've been looking for a game that really grabs my attention and holds it for awhile. I bought Radiata Stories years ago but never got more than a couple hours into it before a newer game came out. But because of my attitude towards new video games these days, I've started it up again and am having fun with it. It's, kind of, what I'm looking for. A good JRPG with a ton to do and it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Meanwhile I've got a pretty large Steam backlog after the Summer, Black Friday and Winter sale but I mostly play PC games when my wife is at home (when she's at home, she pretty much controls the TV so I don't play too many console games). Not sure what I'll start next from there though.

Just finished two play throughs of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Definitely enjoyed it more than I thought I would being so stealth oriented. Just picked up Max Payne 3 (complete opposite lol) and enjoying it so far. I know I'm a good 6 months or a year behind most of the folks here lol.

:p

I started a new game of Fallout 3 (GotY this time). I've never finished the game before, because it gave me major motion/simulator sickness when it originally came out. I'm not sure what exactly changed that -- patches, faster system, over-the-shoulder 3rd person camera mod -- but it's no longer an issue. Plus, with some visual mods, the game can look pretty damn great. I still don't like the combat much, so as I did in New Vegas, I'm using companions for that (which makes levelling up a bit harder, but exploration much easier).

Assassin's Creed III is on the back burner. I just can't bring up the motivation to continue what so far (sequence 5 or 6) is a rather boring story with not much gameplay.

Finishing up Mark of the Ninja while my friend isn't around, and then playing a co-op game of Torchlight 2 with him. Really enjoying both games, the story in Mark of the Ninja is a little lacking, but i love the stealthiness of the game. Torchlight 2 I am finding more enjoyable than Diablo 3.

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Originally Posted by Nerkahia

know I'm a good 6 months or a year behind most of the folks here lol.

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Oh I don't know about that. I'm sure I'm not the only cheap bastard that waits until they go on sale. :D