The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

[Yaxa]

Finished Ocarina of Time 3D today. Despite being a port of a 13-year-old title, it's probably the best game you can get for the 3DS today. Which is quite sad four months in. Nevertheless, it's still a great game. But I don't think I have the patience to start the Master Quest right away, which probably means several months of waiting for another "worthy" 3DS game.

[Wool]

I'm playing Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It's a first person spinoff of the Heroes of Might and Magic series. I think the story is connected to HoMM5 and its expansion directly, but I don't remember the details.

I picked it up for 3 dollars during the Steam sale, because I have a friend that has been constantly talking about it for years. I always dismissed it because the gaming media always painted it as a buggier copycat of Oblivion, but they were wrong.

My first surprise was that it isn't open world at all, it's completely linear, although you are occasionally presented with alternate routes or puzzles. The story is also kind of predictable/hokey, and the balance is a little off at times.

But it's got the best first person fantasy combat I've played in a long time. The sword swinging itself isn't too unusual, same general mechanics of other games of the type, although they seem to work a little better, feel a little more visceral. But in addition to using your weapons or magic, you can also use the environment to kill the enemy. It's honestly a little ridiculous at times, but no more so than the ever present exploding barrel in shooters.

So, you can pick things up, you can cut ropes, and you can kick. See an orc standing on a ledge? Kick him off! Kick that guard into a fire! Cut the rope on the bridge, or destroy the support structure to a ceiling/statue. If all else fails, pick up a barrel and throw it at your opponent, then rush forward and perform a coup de grace. Fun fun.

Finished Ocarina of Time 3D today. Despite being a port of a 13-year-old title, it's probably the best game you can get for the 3DS today. Which is quite sad four months in. Nevertheless, it's still a great game. But I don't think I have the patience to start the Master Quest right away, which probably means several months of waiting for another "worthy" 3DS game.

Yeah, I'm not in the mood for Master Quest either at the moment. I haven't even gotten all the gold skultulas yet. I used to 100% every Zelda game, until Wind Waker came along with it's ridiculouslness.

And I've probably said it before, but I'm not really disappointed, because I don't ever remember being impressed by a console launch's first year. Some are moderately better than others. The next game is going to be Starfox, which I loved on the N64, but isn't going to be a big enough deal to keep me playing the 3DS. I think it's probably going to be this holiday when more stuff worth playing finally starts coming out.

Although some Japanese companies are getting extremely gun-shy about developing for the 3DS. It's a little ridiculous, as it threatens to create a situation in which once again, Nintendo makes the only games worth playing on a Nintendo console. 3rd party devs don't want to risk making games for a small user base, but the user base won't grow until there are more 3rd party games.

[Fenlayen]

I'm playing Bastion and From Dust on the xbox. Having fun playing both of them

[Yaxa]

Finally got around to starting LA Noire (Alice took longer than expected) and I find it quite... disappointing. I'm only at the beginning of disc 2 (homicide desk) and I'm already tired of doing the same thing over and over. It's like an adventure game with only one puzzle, even making you relive ye olde pixel hunting days.

On top of that, your performance on a case doesn't seem to matter at all. The game simply makes you try again if you stray outside certain parameters (letting someone escape, getting a witness or civilian killed, etc), and even handling a case so badly that you barely just solve it (1 star rating) doesn't result in more than a cursory chastising which is forgotten by the next scene, in which you're presented with your next case because you did so well on the last one. Uh, right...

The only choice the game seems to give you is that you can "choose" to ignore street crimes. Which apparently can only be solved by shooting all of the suspects. Not that your supervisor cares that you're racking up a body count that would put any serial killer to shame.

Admittedly, the facial animations are great. But it seems that the developers put so much effort into those that they forgot to build a compelling game around them.

[Wool]

LA Noire sounds more like an interactive movie than a game. It might be more enjoyable if you play it on the side, a few missions at a time, instead of focusing on only it.

I'm playing Alpha Protocol. One of the things I got for cheap from Steam. I'm glad I got it for $5, and would have been pretty upset if I got it at $50. The crazy thing is they delayed it like two or three times, I can't imagine how unplayable it was at those points.

I want to like it, but they aren't making it easy. The core of the game is fine. It's like a halfway between Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2. Not as action-ey as the latter, but more focused than the former. The different things you can do, the way conversations work, it's all very interesting and fun.

The problem is how poorly the game plays, performance wise. I haven't run into any game breaking bugs, but there are plenty of immersion-killing ones. Loading times are slow, the interface is awkward, and the controls are frustrating. Mouse acceleration in particular is terrible, even after tweaking the ini. PC gamers like to complain that consolification ruins PC games all the time, but this might be one of the times it is actually true. Not in design though*, just the controls. I'm too stubborn to switch to a gamepad though.

*The one exception is the save system. You cannot save anywhere. There are constant checkpoints along a level at which point it autosaves; you can save at any of these checkpoints, although it isn't unusual to think you are doing well and mess up your autosave if you haven't manually saved in awhile.

At one point I accidentally set off an alarm as I walked through a door, but I couldn't turn around and deal with it because it was a checkpoint. As soon as I walked in, the door locked behind me and all the guards in the room I just left starting firing wildly and throwing grenades at the door, alerting everyone in the new room to my location. Annoying. And since it was a checkpoint (and I hadn't saved in awhile), I was stuck with that same scenario every time I loaded.


P.S. I feel like I'm spamming this thread lately, but I bought a lot of games from Steam, and I intend to beat them dangit.

[Yttrium]

I strolled casually through Uncharted and Uncharted II - both were excellent games, and I'm glad I got around to playing them. I haven't done much of the multiplayer on Uncharted II, though the online-co-op stuff is pretty slick. I think both games rate a 9/10, easy.

In the quieter moments of consoling, I am still playing through Battles of Heroes of Might and Magic (or whatever it's called). It's a puzzle fighter, and it's easy to pick up again after a hiatus. I'm about halfway through the game.

On the handheld, I'm playing Puzzle Kingdoms, the "supposed" sequel to a very popular puzzle fighter. This game is terrible - the graphics are poorly executed, the writing is really pathetic, and the overall plot is thin and predictable. The actual puzzle fighting, though, is a unique perspective - instead of swapping two items on a row/column/adjacency/whatever, you push on the entire row/column from the end. There are icons to show you what color tile is coming up, and completion is done when 3+ blocks are touching (long side, not corners). Gravity pulls things down to fill holes, and special blocks sometimes pop up in the voids - but never from the edges. Once I got the hang of the puzzle aspect, I started to enjoy it. The rest of the game is just stupid shit.

On the PC, I'm working my way through Mass Effect (Steam purchase). I'm also taking a few more turns at Team Fortress II for some mindless fun. When I need to kill a few minutes, I'm playing Realm of the Mad God. It's a dinky, pixelated-style game, but it's mindlessly fun and addictive. I'm surprised we haven't heard more about it, here.

[Mileron]

I'm in a gaming slump.
Stopped playing WoW at the end of January.
Stopped playing STO at the end of February.
Stopped playing LotRO, and others here and there, and haven't even updated any in a long time.

Even though I bought ME and ME2 from Steam (since I cannot find any of my original ME purchase info from 2 years ago, let alone remember who I got it from) during the summer sale, I attempted to re-start ME, only to realize a feeling of "ugh" because I'd gotten three quarters of the way through and now have to re-start for no good reason and also no longer have any of the DLC I'd had.

So I've been playing a few games here and there that I picked up:
Terraria is a fun one, got it for 2.50 from Steam during the pricing woops, and though I'd been focusing on single-player on that I haven't touched it in a month

Minecraft (yes, I got into it after my color complaints in the old thread which are no longer as big of an issue, I blame Dale) which I play a few hours a week

Hellgate - in re-beta from t3fun/Hanbitsoft - it's the same game, mostly, with a lot of the same bugs. New tutorial, some bad translations, and in order to get into act 3 you have to buy a micro-transaction "in-game ticket" (or buy it from other players for 350k+ paladium) but that opens it up for all characters on your account. Also, it gives you access to Stonehenge and eventually Tokyo.

But mostly I've been dealing with life, and Geocaching in between. Being outside is SO refreshing - I have a tan! - and I haven't had a major allergy attack since the beginning of June.

[Melcar]

I'm in a gaming slump.

Aren't we all?

Hellgate - in re-beta from t3fun/Hanbitsoft - it's the same game, mostly, with a lot of the same bugs. New tutorial, some bad translations, and in order to get into act 3 you have to buy a micro-transaction "in-game ticket" (or buy it from other players for 350k+ paladium) but that opens it up for all characters on your account. Also, it gives you access to Stonehenge and eventually Tokyo.

HA, I've been playing thought that Coop with my brother. We just moved on to Act 3 - (had to save up enough Paladium to buy 2 tickets -- not to big of a deal; just ran a 2nd set of characters up through Act 2.)

[Grindel]

I got Terraria gifted to me yesterday; hoping to get some time to play it this weekend. I finished up Duke Forever, yawn. I bought Infamous 2 but I haven't had much face time with the TV to play it though. I must say it's somewhat jarring to hear Ellis' voice from LFD2 whenever Cole opens his mouth. And then there's Civ5 of course, which is still my fallback game.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

I got Terraria gifted to me yesterday; hoping to get some time to play it this weekend.

You're going to want to go "softcore" mode and once you have a chest built, bank your coin there (don't bother with the piggy bank). That's the original released mode and banking your cash will prevent any untimely surprises like blood moons or your first boss mob discovery from removing all your hard-earned cash.

They added hardcore, made some changes to how weapons work, and larger monster spawns in 1.04 or 5 to please the combat-loving crowd and continued that in 1.06 making combat even more difficult by decreasing potion effectiveness drastically amongst other things. I'm hoping they add a "build" mode for 1.07 with old spawn rates and potion effectiveness to please those of us enterprising construction-types, but if it's too difficult for now, be patient. I'm hoping it'll get better as they've proven they regularly listen to their forum posters (almost all of the changes in have been asked for by *someone*.)

I also recommend the wiki for "omg what just happened?!?" questions.

[Mileron]

You're going to want to go "softcore" mode and once you have a chest built, bank your coin there (don't bother with the piggy bank). That's the original released mode and banking your cash will prevent any untimely surprises like blood moons or your first boss mob discovery from removing all your hard-earned cash.

If you get back to where you died, though, you can usually* recover what you'd lost.

*Usually = if you don't die again/repeatedly/can get back.

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

If you get back to where you died, though, you can usually* recover what you'd lost.

*Usually = if you don't die again/repeatedly/can get back.

Yeah, absolutely, but if you play on mediumcore, you drop *all* of your items according to the patch notes.
Hope you've got spare armor/weapons/pickaxe/torches/potions/special items in your house chests.

[Grindel]

Yeah, absolutely, but if you play on mediumcore, you drop *all* of your items according to the patch notes.
Hope you've got spare armor/weapons/pickaxe/torches/potions/special items in your house chests.

Sounds like an old-skool PoFear raid!

[Gidizlo]

Civ4 earlier this summer, but thanks to you lot and the Steam summer camp, I made the jump to CiV. Working on the Steam achievements, lol.

[Wool]

I bought the PSP port of Persona 1 awhile back but never played it. The PSP port of Persona 2 comes out next month, so I figured I should play the first one to justify a purchase.

Old school of old school. Very little plot exposition, even by old game standards. Within the first 30 seconds of the game you have your superpowers, congrats! Also very little explanation as to wtf is going on gameplay wise. Had to actually read the manual, because the game also has weird mechanics that don't immediately make sense.

You can talk to monsters in random combat, and try and affect their emotions, which might debuff them, cause them to attack, flee, or give you items.

It's interesting going back and seeing where the series started, especially considering it wasn't generic like most older jrpgs, but I can't say it's that great otherwise.

[Wool]

Lost internet access last month, and most of my PC games needed it to function correctly. Even games without online DRM had various problems, such as stuttering caused by checking for a connection, needing to be patched, etc. So the only thing I actually played last month was Star Ocean 2 for the PSP, which was fun and only sometimes stupid.

It got me to thinking about what exactly is wrong with modern jrpgs. I think the answer might be that they are just too bloated, but further testing is required. Lack of innovation alone can't be the problem if I can still have fun with an older game.

Anyway, to make up for last month, and the fact I won't be buying any of the new titles this month (need to upgrade computer and fix car), I'm going to binge like crazy on some of the stuff I already have.

Starting with:
Jeanne D'arc - PSP. Srpg. Had this forever and never got around to it, it's really good. I hate the stupid animals though.

Naruto Ninja Storm 2 - PS3. Fighting game. First one had an open area to run around in, but boring missions and no story. This one is linear, but has more interesting missions.

Singularity - PC. Fps. It's like someone threw Bioshock, Fear, Half Life, Wolfenstein, etc all into a blender. It's a lot of fun so far.

I am prone to fickle whims, so this isn't certain, but I intend to beat the rest of the stuff I got on sale a couple months ago (just in time for the next holiday sale, ho ho ho): Just Cause 2, Assassin's Creed 2, and Bulletstorm. Depending on how much time I end up having, I might end up spamming this thread every week.

[Ronaan]

Finished Fallout New Vegas (story at least... lots to do still) and spent the last few weeks playing inFamous in 30 minute sessions basically.

Finally beat it yesterday, now on towards Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

And I still have an unfinished Ratchet & Clank, Gran Turismo 5, plus the still untouched Prince of Persia stuff....

I seriously need to play more.

[Grindel]

I got Terraria gifted to me yesterday; hoping to get some time to play it this weekend. I finished up Duke Forever, yawn. I bought Infamous 2 but I haven't had much face time with the TV to play it though. I must say it's somewhat jarring to hear Ellis' voice from LFD2 whenever Cole opens his mouth. And then there's Civ5 of course, which is still my fallback game.

I dropped Terraria like a bad habit once Satan Himself gifted me Fallout New Vegas. I'm 74 hours in already and I'm probably not halfway through. Not even counting the DLC. These types of games are a completionist's crack cocaine.

inFamous 2 turned out to be a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it. I'd pick up Dark Souls, but I don't have the time for two huge open world games at once. As soon as I'm done with New Vegas I'll get it.

[Silverblade-T-E]

Wool
"Bullestorm" is actually a hoot, if you realize it's NOT yer typical FPS, and is meant to be played, literally, over the top for shits n' giggles :P

[Fenlayen]

Forza 4, Fallout new vegas and another play through of bastion