The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

[Torcer Arcana]

The only German game I remember is Darklands, which was awesome. German board games are so far superior to any other that it almost goes without saying. I’m actually a bit surprised that there aren’t more successful German video game developer internationally given how good German games can be. Now that the center of gaming is somewhat shifting from Japan to America, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more successful international German developers.

Wool, DQ=V uses the exact same graphics engine and the mechanics are about the same as DQV. DQ4 is good, but the story narrative is a bit disjointed because its broken into 5 chapters – with the first 4 chapters like a short story featuring a different character. If you like traditional JRPGs, then you’ll like it, but DQV has a tighter narrative focused on a central protaganist.

[Yaxa]

The only German game I remember is Darklands, which was awesome. German board games are so far superior to any other that it almost goes without saying. I’m actually a bit surprised that there aren’t more successful German video game developer internationally given how good German games can be. Now that the center of gaming is somewhat shifting from Japan to America, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more successful international German developers.

German adventures tend not to do too well internationally because they're often old school (which I personally think is a good thing. I like point & click adventures) and have a particular sense of humor (though some claim Germans have none).

A lot of German-made adventures that I've enjoyed in the past years have gotten relatively low review scores internationally.

Secret Files: Tunguska
Secret Files 2 likely won't fare any better (it comes out in English tomorrow).
Everlight
Jack Keane
the list goes on.

Crytek, of course, is fairly well known across the pond (Far Cry 1, Crysis series).

Then there's the strategy genre. The Anno series (<year> AD in the US), The Settlers... somewhat successful than the various adventures, but not exactly international hits either.

Gothic, of course. Probably my favorite RPG series. Also never had any success outside of Europe. Maybe Risen will do better.

[Axxin]

I got my girlfriend to try Left 4 Dead during the free promotion on Friday. We both bought it and have been playing it incessantly since.

[Yttrium]

Picked up Etrian Odyssey again, continuing my (young adventuring party) escapes again. I finally got to the second stratum. This game reminds me of the old-school RPGs in several ways, not least is the "if you don't get lucky during this fight, you're fucked" scenarios. I looked up some spoiler tips on how to build the classes, and I was way way way off. Bleh.

I'm also still playing WoW. I shouldn't be. I don't have the time to do all the raiding and grouping that I am, while I am in Grad School and working full time. But I'm doing it anyway. This expansion has been awesome, and the accessibility of the raid content is Pure Win.

I recently ordered two copies of Final Fantasy: Rings of Fate so the wife and I can multi-play on it. Any comments about the quality thereof? $20 for each was not bad at all.

[Neofelis]

Lord of the Rings Online at the moment.

[Torcer Arcana]

FFCCEOT Is fun, but not very deep. IOW, a typical action RPG like Diablo. I bet it would be a blast with another player, but don't expect it to hold your interest for a long time.

[Ronaan]

Enjoying Burnout Paradise a few times a week, and then that game off PSN with the rocket powered battle cars. Pinnacle of Awesome

[Yaxa]

FFCCEOT Is fun, but not very deep. IOW, a typical action RPG like Diablo. I bet it would be a blast with another player, but don't expect it to hold your interest for a long time.

Did you play that on the Wii or the DS? The reviews I've read so far unanimously said that the Wii version is a quite disappointing port.

I wish they'd remake Final Fantasy V for the DS.

[Torcer Arcana]

I played it on the DS. It’s a fun game, and gorgeous for the DS, but it’s shallow in a Children of Mana kind of way. I could see wasting a few afternoons on it, but it didn’t hold my interest for more than several hours. I wouldn’t pay more than $10 for it.

Part of the problem is that I’m playing Dragon Quest V, which is simply the best SNES era type JRPG that I’ve played since, well, the SNES era! I actually like it better than FFIV and almost as much as Chorno Trigger. One feature that I thought I’d hate is the Monster Collecting, but it turns out to be an awesome feature. Basically, after some battles you can recruit monsters and then level them. It’s just a lot of fun to be leveling them and unlocking their abilities, and you can switch monsters out to switch among abilities. A game that can get me not to hate its random battles must be doing something right.

[Yaxa]

shallow in a Children of Mana kind of way.

Children of Mana has been on my list of RPGs to get since I got a DS. Is it really that shallow?

The game is kind of hard to find here, so if it's not worth it, I'll just save myself the trouble.

[Torcer Arcana]

Its just hack and slash with a bare bones plot

[Wool]

So I'm playing two things right now. The first is the rpg I alluded to a week or so ago. Suikoden:Teirkries, which I got a few months ago but only am just now finding time to play.

For starters, I want to say that I am impressed with how much voice acting they got into a DS game. Unfortunately it is mildly terrible voice acting. Maybe not Star Ocean bad, but pretty bad. For the first few hours of the game, themaincharactertalksreallyfastlikethis. It's really. They also seem to completely miss the spirit of the character's lines a lot, as if they were just given lines to read with no context.

Additionally, the characters are almost all very stupid. It's like one of those things where you laugh out of sadness from how unintentionally funny everything is. There is one character that isn't constantly saying or doing stupid things, and usually has the job of correcting everyone else. I'm betting he goes insane by the end of the game.

Having said all that, I am enjoying it so far. I don't know if the weak areas are getting better, or if I am just getting used to it. The story looks like it might end up reasonably interesting (even if one of the major aspects of it is incredibly cliched), and the gameplay is solid, if very very simple.

I hope it gets a little more complicated, but so far it is basically sticking to the tried and true typical rpg formula, with the caveat that it is following the "you assign commands then they all activate at once" school of rpg combat design.



Second, Bionic Commando. Let me start by saying that most gamers today seem to be incredibly spoiled. I have a feeling this is going to be another Force Unleashed, aka a game I, personally, have a lot of fun with, but that most people pan relentlessly for its flaws. I don't know, every game I played as a kid wasn't CoD4 quality, why the expectations that they all should be now?

There were a lot of complaints about how hard it is to control up to release, which I was skeptical of, and rightly so. Rightly, laughably so. It takes a little getting used to, I'm still not a pro, but it only took me a few minutes to get the feel of the controls. It is also pretty forgiving, the HUD tells you when to let go in a swing, and if you hold the button down the arm latches on to the first thing that comes into range.


I've got two main complaints so far. 1) There is this blurring that occurs when your field of vision changes, which focuses after a moment. I can easily see why such a method exists, but I think it is a little slow and jarring.

2) According to what I've read, you have to find the secrets your first run through. While you can visit an old level, nothing you do there will count towards unlocks. I'm hoping this gets patched. I don't mind the punishing difficulty (you have to redo all the challenges and secrets in an area if you die between checkpoints), but it's stupid to expect me to get them all in one playthrough.

I'm in the first 10% of both games, so I will post updated impressions in a week or two.

[Maledict]

I'm playing Demi-god, which I bought on a whim, and am actually hugely enjoying it in single player. Which I know is odd - but I'm scared witless of playing online!

[Dawlin]

Aion, on the chinese servers. Actually enjoying it a lot - so much that I actually want to gather and craft - and I never was one for crafting.

Sorcerers are mages taken to the extreme - glass cannons! I'm enjoying that playstyle a lot right now - I usually play a pet class, so it's nice to have all your power to yourself, and not rely on a pet/external buffs(totems)

[Wool]

Finished Bionic Commando a few days ago, it was a blast, but pretty short. Expectations were for it to be a modern take on the old game, after playing it I see things a bit differently. Rearmed was a modern take on NES era gaming, BC was a modern take on Playstation era gaming.

The levels are linear and the action is hectic/arcadey. The levels are of decent size and you choose how to get through them, but they are very clearly segmented.

The swing mechanic was a ton of fun. There are some fights later on that get a little crazy, luckily you should be good enough with the arm at this point to be crazy yourself. Flying around like a madman while death bolts go shooting through where I just was = .

The challenge was pretty decent near the end, but overall leans to easy. Most of my deaths were volunteered when I was trying to achieve a challenge. There really aren't all that many enemies in the game, got to make each one of their screaming deaths count!



It wasn't all rosey though. The story pretty much sucked. Not a big deal, I wasn't expecting much, and I sort of respect what they tried to do, but they botched it. Very cheesey, which isn't a problem by itself, but, man I don't know. Additionally, there are walls of radiation that pen you in each level, sometimes you end up flying through it before realizing it is there and dieing. This is very annoying.

Spoiler for massive spoilers:

Super Joe turned out to be the bad guy. The hero you saved from the first game, that helped you take out the bad guys, has teamed up with what is left of those very same bad guys. And what's more, it turns out he was a bad guy in the first game too now, even before the main character lost his original arm and was made bionic.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if the game was long enough to accomodate the story, but most of the story consisted of "go here, then go here", it was barely present. And then near the end to just screw over the original? Bah I say, bah.

There is also a big reveal to the nature of Bionics that will have you looking for the Tylenol, but it isn't really that big a deal in comparison.

InFamous is next. Suikoden is better now, but also insanely easy. In an exploration area random battles are constant, and I just hit "autobattle" for every one. Major event battles have mostly been small and pitiful.

I don't get why the DS being a system that is "kid friendly" is an excuse for the games to take no effort to play. When I was a kid, games were hard!

[Dawlin]

When I was a kid, games were hard!

Case in point

[Yaxa]

I don't get why the DS being a system that is "kid friendly" is an excuse for the games to take no effort to play. When I was a kid, games were hard!

I think much of it has to do with the DS being a handheld system. Handheld games are often more forgiving, since most of them are designed in a way that lets you play them in 10-30 minute sessions.

When I played through Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, I kept thinking about the old games (Super Castlevania IV in particular). Portrait of Ruin seems "hard" (in a loose sense of the word) for a handheld game, but comes nowhere near the challenge of playing through the original games with limited power ups, no character progression, and no save feature.

There are other examples, of course, such as the Final Fantasy remakes, which can still easily cost you an hour or more of progress if you mess up in a dungeon.

[Yttrium]

Now that Target finally got their shit together, we have a PS3 again. I'm back to playing Bioshock, and I'm relieved that my "backup" worked - my saved games were preserved. However, it really hurts to give up backwards compatibility. I'm a Sad Panda.

After Bioshock, I'll walk through Eternal Sonata, then look for something new. I still get excited at the bite-size, but game-preserving implementation used for Civilization:Revolutions, so I'll most likely pick that up. I will also be trying some demos for inFamous and a few other dinky games.

I still need to finish MegaMan 9, from the PS3 store. Holy cow that game is hard.

[Lascaris]

I'm actually back on Pirates of the Burning Sea. Pretty low population but they've changed a few things and it's an amusing diversion while I wait for something better to strike my fancy.

[Wool]

I think I have mentioned having a large backlog before. I try and schedule it out, according to whatever genre I am in the mood for and whatever big release I know I won't be able to stay away from comes out. Sometimes someone throws a wrench in my plans, for example, the lot of you getting me into Warhammer when I was still trying to finish Tales of the Abyss.

Long story short I ended up playing Battlefield: Bad Company, both single and multiplayer. Honestly it isn't that amazing in comparison to any shooter I have played in the past year. It is actually kind of annoying at times. BUT it is still fun, for two reasons, and two reasons only. 1) It's oftentimes funny, Haggard and Sweetwater are jackasses. 2) Blowing up buildings is awesome.

I want to talk about blowing up buildings. Red Faction is the game that really pushes this gameplay the most, and a lot of people enjoy it for it. But to me, all the buildings in Red Faction feel like matchstick and lego objects built specifically so you can smash them. When you can exhale and blow up a building, it sort of detracts from the immersion in my opinion. Nothing feels "real".

In Bad Company, only walls are blown off, and the base remains. It also takes a bit more work to do maximum damage, so destruction progress is very apparent over the course of a firefight. And since you don't risk destroying an entire building with one attack, you can easily just make your own doors wherever you see fit without completely destroying cover.

So yeah, boom boom laugh fun, but overall doesn't compare to the best FPS I've played recently. After I beat it I will only ever play it when someone else asks me to, but it was an amusing ride for the price (I got it cheap).

I think much of it has to do with the DS being a handheld system. Handheld games are often more forgiving, since most of them are designed in a way that lets you play them in 10-30 minute sessions.

I don't know, I've played several "hard" handheld games. Look at Etrian Odyssey! Heck Crisis Core was designed for short sessions and some of the optional content would one-shot you. RPGs often have the reputation of having "press x to win" gameplay, but this is the first time that it has actually been very obviously true.

I'm trying to finish it up now, the story is actually pretty fun, but the game is still disappointingly easy.