The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

[Torcer Arcana]

Zelda Spirit Tracks is better than Phantom Hour Glass; It's really top notch. I loathed the boat in PHG, and was skeptical of the train in Z: ST, but it actually works quite well. There seems to be a bit more writing and dialogue in ST than in an average Zelda, it's cute and note exactly Dragon Age caliber, but its good for what it is. It's the 1st Zelda in a long time that's felt like a real Zelda to me.*

*I'm only about 2 hours in, so these are initial impresions.

[Wool]

You cad! How do you keep getting everything early!?

I'll be starting Spirit Tracks whenever it gets here. On the PC/console front I think I've finally had enough of Dragon Age, after attempting to play every Origin. Need to pick something short to play next. Deciding between Assassin's Creed (first one), Indigo Prophecy, Battallion Wars 2 (wii), or Muramasa.

[Neofelis]

Nothing right now.

[Lysandor]

Nothing right now.

You seriously jumped in to add "nothing right now"?

Jesus brother, come get some breakfast. You scare me with your bleak nihilism.

[Lascaris]

I am currently enjoying Fallen Earth, a lot. Waiting for The Secret World.

Did Fallen Earth improve since the beta? I was pretty underwhelmed and decided not to pick it up after launch. BTW, am also seriously waiting for The Secret World. Hopefully it will be worth playing as I love the genre.

[Yaxa]

Indigo Prophecy

Try to get the uncensored version (Fahrenheit) instead. I've actually been thinking about playing that too.

[Wool]

I'm actually drawing from a pool of games I bought earlier this year for cheap. I'm not too concerned, as far as I can tell the only thing I am missing is a silly sex mini-game (push spacebar to thrust!).

Now if they censored my exploding heads, then I would be pissed!

[Yaxa]

Depending on which version of the game you got you might be able to "uncensor" it yourself. Open Indigo Prophecy.ini and change the line USMode= from 1 to 0. This doesn't work with all versions of the game, though (the option is known to be completely removed from the Steam release).

[Ronaan]

On the shelf right now:

Prince of Persia (PS3) - they started a "software pyramid" thing like all other systems already have, games are €20 on there. Has some new-ish stuff too (Mirror's Edge for example, can't remember much else atm). In addition to the Platinum deals this is really cool.
So I picked this up and it's not been in the drive once.

SBK 08
Not too bad so far, but ordered MotoGP 08 too, it just doesn't "kick" me the right way. Did some of the time trial things, but will end up spending most of the time in carreer mode.

Still playing Fallout 3, I'm not very far through the storyline I think... just arrived at GNR, level 7.5 so far. I keep running out of ammo and caps. Yes I know to use V.A.S.T. or whatever it's called, still running out of ammo. Been getting better with the money problem since I found out how to repair my own stuff though. Fucking n00blet.

Need for Speed: Shift
Ridiculously cheap as a UK import already, like €35 for a game that's barely a month or two old and that retailed at €70 or so at release. Couldn't resist. The wait for GT5 is too long.
Eagerly awaiting this in the mail in fact... should arrive monday at the latest.

That said, where are all the racing game (sim?) fans? I can't be alone...

[Wool]

The cinematic atmosphere of Indigo Prophecy is pretty cool/interesting, but I loathe the quicktime events. I appreciate what they tried to do, but they are just so sloppily handeled. They are too long, have little relevancy, and begin without warning. Sure the game says "Get Ready", but then it immediately starts, causing me to not even see whatever the first input was supposed to be. Instead of being a way for you to "play the cutscenes", it comes off feeling like tacked on gameplay.

Did I mention they are too long? Some of the inputs try to pretend they have relevancy to the scene, hit the top buttons and the guy jumps in the cutscene, yay, fine. But that is in between about a dozen random presses that have no meaning in anything. It's incredibly obnoxious. And the scenes drag on forever, I nearly lost my mind during that stupid

Spoiler for about halfway through the game:

apartment scene. I had to dodge every dang freaking piece of furniture in that apartment, and the main character was still somehow surprised each time. If you are reading this without having played the scene, maybe it's hard to imagine why this would be annoying. It isn't a matter of dodging the chairs and couch, the tv, and a few misc objects. He literally dodges every object in his very full apartment. If there were car keys on a table, you would dodge them too with a quicktime event. I swear it was the longest quicktime scene I've ever been tortured through.

Some of the other irregular scenes are pretty amusing though. Like playing as someone with a phobia of tight spaces, regulating your breathing as you try and find your way through the dark.

Makes me wonder about Heavy Rain. Will it follow the same formula of having awesome atmosphere but unbearable action sequences?

[Neofelis]

You seriously jumped in to add "nothing right now"?

Jesus brother, come get some breakfast. You scare me with your bleak nihilism.

Hehe

[Yaxa]

I started Dead Space (PC) the other day since I got it cheaply during the Steam sale. I like it so far, though I'm slightly baffled how this game made it past the German ratings system uncensored.

On a technical note, controls are horribly sluggish unless you force VSync on through the driver options. The game has an ingame option for VSync, but only the driver option will fix the awful input lag.

This might actually be the only shooter in existance that plays better with an Xbox 360 controller than a mouse and keyboard.

[Yaxa]

Finished Dead Space. I can't remember another game in recent history that pissed me off so much. They weren't even trying to hide the fact that you just kept doing the same thing over and over. And the number of times it should have been over but wasn't must be some sort of record.

Glad it only cost €10.

[Nadiar]

Finished Dead Space. I can't remember another game in recent history that pissed me off so much. They weren't even trying to hide the fact that you just kept doing the same thing over and over. And the number of times it should have been over but wasn't must be some sort of record.

Glad it only cost €10.

I liked it, but my brother played missions 6-9 or something, so I didn't have that annoying repetition. I think it was a shining example of how fucked up it is that consumers try to "force" a game to have a certain length. FPS games don't need to be 10 hours! 6 Hours is fine! Thats why I fucking love the HL2 Episodes, but wasn't in love with HL2.

[Yaxa]

I liked it, but my brother played missions 6-9 or something, so I didn't have that annoying repetition. I think it was a shining example of how fucked up it is that consumers try to "force" a game to have a certain length. FPS games don't need to be 10 hours! 6 Hours is fine! Thats why I fucking love the HL2 Episodes, but wasn't in love with HL2.

That's tricky. Most of the short shooters have a multiplayer mode to make up for it. IMO, a short game with no multiplayer had better be a budget title (like the HL2 Episodes). With a limited replay value due to their linearity, I'd be hard pressed to pick up a 6-hour shooter with no multiplayer mode at full price.

Anyway, I would have been pissed if I had paid the full €60 for Dead Space a year ago. In my opinion that one is actually a game that would have benefitted from being half as long as it actually was.

[Agent-Jesus]

Dead Space was amazing. The flamethrower sucked and there were too many contamination type rooms in the last 2 chapters, but those were my only problems.

[Yaxa]

Dead Space was amazing. The flamethrower sucked and there were too many contamination type rooms in the last 2 chapters, but those were my only problems.

I'm curious what you enjoyed about it in particular. For me, the game lost its atmosphere after the first chapter. It was supposed to be scary, but since it keeps happening the same way, you simply expect things to jump at you whenever you open a door or round a corner. No amount of sound design can change that, nor can giving the necromorphs a darker color scheme in the second half of the game.

I became seriously annoyed with the missions. Get from A to B to fix/break/turn on/turn off something. But oh, wouldn't you know it, you can't take the direct route, so you have to go through C, D, E and F and pick up/turn on/turn off X, Y and Z along the way! Once you've done that, queue up the inevitable news from your "partners" that what you just did didn't work, so you'll have to try something else. Rinse, repeat. Add in the three or four times when the game was building up to a conclusion only to pull the rug out from under your feet and throw you into yet more missions of exactly the same type.

Since I played the game on the PC I didn't have the "benefit" of DLC. From reading the descriptions of the packages it seems that most of them were specifically designed as a paid removal of tedium.

For me, Dead Space was a massive disappointment after all the type that surrounded the game a year ago.

[Agent-Jesus]

I was going to add more in that first post, but I couldn't really think of what to say when you hated it that much.

It does get a bit repetitive with Isaac go do this! Now go to this! OH NO, back to this! But not to an unbearable degree and many horror games involve backtracking. The objective line he shoots from his palm also made this much less tedious than it would be in other games.

The sound and atmosphere make the game scary, not really the monsters themselves. I dunno, I played it on hard and was always nearly out of ammo/health which would have added to it but I found it fairly scary. Apparently a whole lot of easily-scared people simply couldn't even play the game for long periods of time and the devs said that the sequel will be paced so as to give you periods of feeling like a badass as a break in between highly tense, dangerous situations.

As for things I liked about it, it has a better atmosphere than 95% of the games I've played, the sound design is incredible, the guns (flamethrower aside) are all fun to use, and the enemies are fun to fight. The trend of HUD-less gameplay has annoyed me more often than not, but Dead Space does it perfectly and believably. I was looking at Mass Effect 2 and instead of a health bar, you now have these stupid veins encroaching on the edges of the screen when your HP starts to drop and found myself wishing they had just copied Dead Space.

I never bought any DLC, all they do is give you better armor.

[Yaxa]

The sound and atmosphere make the game scary, not really the monsters themselves. I dunno, I played it on hard and was always nearly out of ammo/health which would have added to it but I found it fairly scary. Apparently a whole lot of easily-scared people simply couldn't even play the game for long periods of time and the devs said that the sequel will be paced so as to give you periods of feeling like a badass as a break in between highly tense, dangerous situations.

I guess I watch too many horror movies. I don't scare easily anymore

I did keep running out of ammo on normal difficulty as well, but for me most of the tenser moments were self-imposed (trying to backtrack and getting stuck with an autosave in a monster-filled room and no ammo, no health).

[DietCanada]

break form eq. just dont have the time to really play that like i use to hehe.

i was on break from wow for a whiel but the last patch is really addicting with the dungeon revamp.

here and there im also playing wwe smack down vs raw. i love the road to wrestlmaina!

im playing uncharted 2 mostly tho. on about chapter 20 with some kind of yettis.
after that im going to play either MGS 4 or prototype or torchlight