The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

[Yaxa]

OK.. seriously. What's with the assholes that take 20 headshots to go down? Are they now applying multiplayer balance to the single player campaign in Uncharted 3?

[Yttrium]

I've attained 100% of Arkham City, but I don't have the platinum trophy because I can't get "perfect freeflow 2.0" - you have to have a perfect chain in combat, and include all 12 of your possible moves in the chain. It's a lot harder than it sounds. Even after much research and practice, I still screw it up. Bleh.

However, we did order Arkham Asylum for me to play through again weee~

We just started Super Mario Galaxy 2, and it's easily as much fun, or better, than the first one. It's a great game to be interactive with another person, too - my wife likes the role she fills. The second player's abilities is increased in this version, which helps.

[Wool]

I got a free month of Gamefly, so decided to rent some stuff I wanted to play but never felt like spending money on.

First up is Heavy Rain. This game does a lot of things right and a lot of things horribly horribly wrong.

Good: Cinematic atmosphere is top notch, and I feel pretty connected with the characters despite the poor voice acting

Bad: I don't mind quicktimes, and the implementation in this is pretty cool, but they get obnoxious as heck. It makes me physically sick to succeed in the button mashing only to have the character fail anyway. There is also a lot of chaff, making me feel like I'm wasting my time and it doesn't matter what I do. Really really sours the game for me. Controls in any tight space are also ridiculously bad, like immersion breaking bad. It took me fifteen minutes to do a five minute sequence because I couldn't control my character down the right corridors.

OK.. seriously. What's with the assholes that take 20 headshots to go down? Are they now applying multiplayer balance to the single player campaign in Uncharted 3?

It's not multiplayer balance, it's enemy variety and progression scaling. You will actually die fairly fast in multiplayer.

I'm going to make an assumption based on what you are talking about, and if that assumption is correct you really shouldn't worry about it.

I remember being at first too, trying to kill these guys with pistol headshots. Then a few levels later better weapons drop in the levels and you just obliterate those guys.

There is only one enemy that will deserve your scorn, and in single player it only shows up once. The bots in co-op are pretty hard though. The more visible armor the bot has, the harder it is to take down.

[Yaxa]

I'm going to make an assumption based on what you are talking about, and if that assumption is correct you really shouldn't worry about it.

These guys are wearing body armor and those retro ski goggles. I never encountered them in high enough numbers to get frustrating... until the ship graveyard where they just kept coming and coming. I actually found them easier to take down in hand-to-hand combat (so fists work better than a full clip to the head?), but with reinforcements coming and getting shot at or grenades hurled at me from every direction, that often wasn't possible.

Took me at least a dozen attempts just to get past the boat-hopping stage of that chapter, and at the end I wasted a good 30-40 minutes trying to get on the large ship because Nate went "getting close" and "Sulli must be around here" at the opposite end of the ship from where I was supposed to get in.

On a positive note: I did appreciate the puzzles in the previous chapters.

[Yaxa]

Finished Uncharted 3. Overall it wasn't bad, but I still think the second one was the high point. I would have preferred more puzzles and platforming over the constant shootouts, but that's just me. I did find some of the platforming sequences more challenging than those of the previous games because it often wasn't apparent where you were supposed to go (sometimes to a fault). What I found curious is the distribution of checkpoints. It seems that the developers expected people to be good at the shootouts but suck at platforming, because there usually were plenty of checkpoints in the middle of the latter, but dying during the shootouts usually meant starting the whole sequence over from scratch.

Spoiler for desert:

I know Uncharted has never been big on realism, but that Drake can spend days in the desert without water, barely able to stand straight, and suddenly have the strength to climb around a desert city like a monkey and fight his way out is beyond ridiculous.

Spoiler for ending:

I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of an elaborately staged boss fight. Though having to fight my way out through scores of henchmen was a bit irritating. Surely these guys can't be that loyal that they would risk getting buried there rather than flee? The same goes for the burning mansion earlier in the game.

[Wool]

Spoiler for ending:

I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of an elaborately staged boss fight. Though having to fight my way out through scores of henchmen was a bit irritating. Surely these guys can't be that loyal that they would risk getting buried there rather than flee? The same goes for the burning mansion earlier in the game.

I noticed that too, I was kind of amused. And I figured you would appreciate the boss system, although I was expecting a little rage over the heavy on the boat level.

[Yaxa]

I was expecting a little rage over the heavy on the boat level.

Spoiler for boat boss:

That one actually gave me less trouble than the yard trash during the barge hopping and in the ballroom. Only took a couple of shots to the back of the head after being stunned by a grenade. Although that was mostly by accident as it wasn't actually my grenade that stunned him.

[Wool]

That's funny. I blew through most of the game and that was really the only part that annoyed me. That and discovering to my horror that the guy I just sneaked up on could not be melee-ed. Also picking up miniguns and then losing them to open the door to the next area, before I have a chance to use them.

[Thwick]

Just started Gears of War 3 last night. So far just have only beaten Act 1 but I'm happy to see Cole Train is back. Story so far is okay, graphically the game is pretty great. I'm amazed at some of the details CliffyB and Epic can squeeze out of the 360.

[Gnizmo]

Just finished up Resident Evil Revelations. I really loved it for the most part. Some definite shitty stages, but they are pretty infrequent. I can think of only 2 that I viewed as really just awful. Still have some more to do in Raid mode too! I managed to beat the 20 normal stages. I am going back through on Trench and I need to finish the bonus stage which is utter bullshit. Final boss was a blast, and so was Raid stage 20. I really wish they would use this game as a model for future RE games. Have the story take place essentially two different ways in order to keep appealing to the survival horror roots while maintaining the action the new people to the series love.

[Yaxa]

Started Final Fantasy XIII-2. So far it's fun. The combat system was easy to get back into even after almost two years, though I'm not entirely sure I like the idea of having to twitch-switch paradigms. At first I was dubious about the "Cinematic Actions" as well, but I actually like the concept of a quicktime event that you have a certain degree of influence over rather than the usual "press or fail" mechanic.

That said, I find it disappointing that the first couple of hours of the game already exhibit noticeable performance issues.

[Yaxa]

XIII-2 has the dubious honor of being the first Final Fantasy where I'm tempted to turn off the background music. The looped vocal tracks get quite annoying after a while. And don't get me started on the boss "music"...

[Mileron]

STO (the Dominion-starring new Feature Episode started on 2/11, and the second part is available now), Forza 4 (trying to earn some manufacturer affinity with events so I can upgrade for career), Castlevania: Lord of Shadow (brown environments!)

I was probably going to pick up FFXIII for 360, I dunno, don't have much time at the moment now anyway...

[Wool]

With a computer finally able to handle it, I played through the Battlefield 3 campaign last week. Amazon then finally sold Modern Warfare 2 for the price I wanted to pay for it ($5) and I binged that this weekend. On the side I've been playing Space Pirates and Zombies.

Whenever people said EA tried too hard to make BF3 like Call of Duty I scoffed, but now that I've played it myself I think they were right. There are several new mechanics that I really like, and then several design decisions that I do not. For some reason they also decided to add some really annoying quicktime sequences instead of just letting me shoot the target myself. There's one in co-op in particular in which you have to disarm a bomb, on a keyboard it just seems stupid and random, and when the sequence is bugged it kills all immersion.

The campaign itself disappointed me the most, a long series of narrow corridors in which you don't do much but follow around a couple npcs. In big firefights you get focus fired so the AI does all the work, but every so often there is one single guy that you and only you can shoot/knife. It's like they are trying to remind (convince) you it's a game. But it's less a game, and more a showcase of amazing visuals. And they are amazing.


I then played Modern Warfare 2 right afterwards, to compare the two games more closely. (I realize MW3 is the newest one, but it's not like they are doing much to change the series, they even re-use the same assets) I was mildly disappointed by this one too. I don't know if Call of Duty 4 was better, or if I've simply become jaded to the formula. The shooting/guns don't feel right compared to BF3 and the story annoyed me, but Call of Duty is clearly still the king of ambient events. That is to say, all the cool stuff that goes on in the backgrounds of the stages you are playing. The first half of the game was dull, but the second half had some really cool levels.

I still prefer Bad Company 2's campaign than either of these. That game had open environments, you played point (and didn't just follow others around), and had some awesome firefights in which by the end all the structures and cover around you had been destroyed. In BF3 cover disintegrates too fast to have the same value, the areas are smaller, and the levels don't really seem to have design subtlety. Modern Warfare 2 has better areas, but worse enemy behavior. It's just waves and waves of fodder constantly running at you. MW2 does have a challenge mode that is pretty fun though.

[Yttrium]

I finally finished Batman: Arkham Asylum today. 100% completion (all challenges), including the Platinum Trophy. Between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, I'd not really separate much between them. The polish is only slightly less on AA, the first of the two games. If you haven't played either/both, I highly recommend them. In fact, I even recommend getting both at once and playing through both as a single game - the story lines merge, more or less.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is still keeping the (very preggers) wife and I busy and entertained. I am frequently surprised by the quality and consistency of these core Nintendo properties on multiple platforms. If only Zelda was getting the same treatment

Next up: Final Fantasy (I) on the DS via GBA cartridge and Uncharted 3.

[Ronaan]

Still on AC: Revelations... every time I start to play, I get a nasty case of OCD and waste my time sending out assassins, recruiting more, and running around collecting shinies. I should focus on the story missions if I ever want to finish this game...

[Thwick]

I beat Gears of War 3 last night, the story was decent. It was a good finish to the trilogy. I felt like this third one had a little too much of Halo's Flood with the Lambent and all of the

Spoiler for minor plot spoiler:

human lambent were really just reskinned zombies

. It was also kind of formulaic and repetitive. I felt like the cover wasn't realistic as there would be boxes and such set up perfectly for bunkers to hide behind. The boss fights were no where near as epic either. Not sure i'll play any of the multiplayer.

Probably going to pick up AC:Revelations now or start Skyrim.

[Yaxa]

So... Final Fantasy XIII-2, about 20 hours in. The extreme non-linearity of the game means that there isn't always a story thread to follow. You'll often have to return to areas you've already been to, as well as visit them in different eras or alternate timelines. It's also not always apparent which locations are strictly "optional", so those wishing to simply experience the story without all of the side quests may get frustrated.

At this point I've run out of Wild Artifacts to open new portals, so I can't even proceed in the main story without first scouring old locations again.

One major beef I have with the game is the lack of a centralized quest log. The Historia Crux only shows the number of portals and fragments, but to see any other quests you have to actually enter the area (accompanied by major load times).

[Naean]

So... Final Fantasy XIII-2, about 20 hours in. The extreme non-linearity of the game means that there isn't always a story thread to follow. You'll often have to return to areas you've already been to, as well as visit them in different eras or alternate timelines. It's also not always apparent which locations are strictly "optional", so those wishing to simply experience the story without all of the side quests may get frustrated.

At this point I've run out of Wild Artifacts to open new portals, so I can't even proceed in the main story without first scouring old locations again.

One major beef I have with the game is the lack of a centralized quest log. The Historia Crux only shows the number of portals and fragments, but to see any other quests you have to actually enter the area (accompanied by major load times).

So it sounds like they did a complete 180 from FF13 and messed it all up? I was kinda on the fence about this game but this post settles me firmly on not getting it, thanks!

The last FF I enjoyed side-questing in was 7. I thought 13 was awesome because they took all the things that JRPGs are good for and ran with them, and left behind all the things that other games tend to do better, rather than try to half-ass compensate for it.

[DietCanada]

doing some street fighter and just finished up Mass effect 2. time to dome more kingdoms of amular.

if anyone is bored here is like a recent arcade run i did to music!
is about a hour long btw lol.