The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

[Yttrium]

Thanks, I'll try Bad Company 2.

[Ninetoes]

Thanks, I'll try Bad Company 2.

Its fun. The Vietnam expac is great too.

Sent from beyond time and space - because that's how I roll.

[Wool]

When I built my new computer, I got Arkham City with my gpu, but I kept putting off playing it for one reason or another. I realized if I kept procrastinating I would never have time for it, so went ahead and started it over the weekend.

Anyway, it was excellent. It was a very good open world game, although I think a few things were lost in the translation, and I might prefer Arkham Asylum more, despite clear incremental improvements in the franchise.

The only thing I was really disappointed by was the story. Oh boy was it bad. It had it's moments, but far too many plot points were stupid.

Thanks, I'll try Bad Company 2.

I would like to know what you think when you do.

[Yaxa]

I picked up Ni no Kuni yesterday. Didn't get very far before the English voice acting got on my nerves and I started over in Japanese

[Wool]

It's great that that can be an option now. I think the new Fire Emblem has that option as well. Both No nu Kuni and Fire Emblem are due next week for me. In the meantime I played Resistance 3 and am currently playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood while waiting.

Resistance 3 was okay: equal parts fun and irritating, but the story wasn't interesting compared to the previous game. They listened to fans and made it more like the first game, which makes it feel like a step back to me. On the plus side, it doesn't have the crappy gimmicky parts from the second game as a result.

I think I've finally come up with a verdict on PS3 3D too: very disappointing. For most (not all) games I have tried it with, it has resulted in a blurred or fuzzy image. The graphics in Resistance 3 aren't that good to begin with, and it was so intolerable I had to turn it off. I paid a little bit extra for a computer monitor I could use PS3 3D with, only to (eventually) discover that the platform just isn't powerful enough to make it worthwhile. While sure, I had the luxury of playing better 3D games before this to color my opinion, I still don't see how anyone could gloss over this. I always heard this game was good at it, oh well.

Assassin's Brotherhood I am also a bit lukewarm with, but that might be because I wish I was playing something else. It seems to be a good game (expansion? ), but the new stuff they added isn't working for me so far. Chain kills in particular are so beyond op as to become stupid. I didn't even know what I did the first few times I did them, everyone just fell over dead. I eventually realized I was killing multiple people at the same time, just by holding a button down. Still at the beginning, we will see if I get more into it.

[Ronaan]

Back in Gran Turismo 5 for a while

[Wool]

About a month ago, I decided to use LA Noire as a game I could play casually during the downtime between releases this month. I had heard because of the structure of the game, it gets old fast if you try and play straight through it.

I sort of can appreciate what they are trying to do with this, it's got a cool atmosphere going on, but they ruin it with questionable design decisions.

It's practically impossible to really fail. The missions will find alternative ways of giving you information you missed, and can still be completed if you still manage to screw it up. This is a good thing, in my opinion, because it makes the game feel more like an interactive story than a game. The problem is, they still felt the need to try and force "gamey" bits in. So for example, the game will tell you when you picked the wrong dialogue choices. It's no longer a story you are experiencing and turns into a game that you are doing wrong. It breaks immersion and ruins the experience. That's just one example of many. The traffic is also intolerably bad. You can skip driving to destinations but then you miss plot and character dialogue.

It's still a cool game and well worth the $5 I spent for it, it just could have been better.

I'm also still playing Fire Emblem. Dang game is going to give me an aneurysm. Do not play on hard/classic unless you are willing to set aside most of your army and only focus on the more overpowered units. You will drive yourself insane. (classic is permadeath, a staple of the series, but they add reasons to want to keep units around now, so I refuse to let anyone die, sigh)

[Ronaan]

Gran Turismo 5 got tedious (advanced into the endurance races... yeah right, nothanx)

So I did what every straight thinking gamer would do and considered going back to X-Com on Classic/Ironman... or EQ1 to level my lvl 86 undergeared monk some...

and in the end I bought Cataclysm and Pandaria and hopped straight back into WoW.

[Naean]

I just finished an iPad game called little inferno. Really addictive and well worth a couple bucks. All you do is burn items in a little fireplace.

[Yttrium]

I stopped my "do it all" playthrough of Kingdoms of Amalur and took a break from the game. I'm doing my first playthrough of Mass Effect 3. Fun game. I can't wait to hate the ending

[Ayralin]

I stopped my "do it all" playthrough of Kingdoms of Amalur and took a break from the game. I'm doing my first playthrough of Mass Effect 3. Fun game. I can't wait to hate the ending

Play it once just to see it; after the Extended Cut DLC, it's not as terrible. Then install this. Spoiler warning, in case all you know about the ending is "it's bad."

Citadel DLC is also very, very good.

[Thwick]

I just finished up a playthrough of Borderlands 2 with two of my friends, co-op all the way through it. What a fun ride that was! The writing and voice acting in that game is just so well done, so much color added to all of the side quests as well. We still have the DLC and probably do the true vault hunter mode to get up to level 50.

I've also been playing a lot of DOTA2, just doing co-op bot matches though as i'm still pretty new (only about 15-20 bot matches right now). I have some extra beta invites to that on Steam if anyone wants one.

[Yttrium]

Play it once just to see it; after the Extended Cut DLC, it's not as terrible. Then install this. Spoiler warning, in case all you know about the ending is "it's bad."

Citadel DLC is also very, very good.

I wouldn't mind trying out the mod you linked; I'll look into it. Thanks
I have seen all the possible endings, and I lament not getting to try the multiplayer.

[Yaxa]

I couldn't resist grabbing the iOS port of Final Fantasy V. This one has always been one of my favorites.

I like the Dimensions-esque high-res pixel art much better than the 3D graphics of the previous two ports. There's also, thankfully, no voice acting, and no superfluous videos. On the other hand, there's also no enhanced soundtrack. Oddly enough the graphics do not seem to be optimized for any iOS device. The game is always either letterboxed or windowboxed, with the unused space partially filled by a clock and a battery indicator, and the pixel art itself does not use the retina iPad's full resolution.

As with the other iOS (and Android) ports, touch-based battles work well enough, but the virtual d-pad is a pain in the ass. This may not seem like a big issue in an RPG, but can get irritating really quickly, especially when you're trying for a precise path through dungeons to keep the random encounters to a minimum.

FFV has always stood in the shadows of VI, so I doubt that many people are going to be willing to put up with the usual Square premium pricing to pick this one up.

[Mileron]

I picked up FF Dimensions on sale (Android) a couple weeks ago but only just started to play it. It's pretty good so far, and I'm liking the music (and wishing there were a way to extract it from the APK). I've only just opened the first 7 jobs and am working on leveling them since I have only gotten 3-5 minutes' playtime when I actually go to start it up.

I don't mind the on-screen pad; on my SGSII it's pretty accurate, though there's this odd bug whenever I talk to NPCs that I always take one step down afterwards.

Still WoWing (6x90s, will be getting my warlock into LFR tonight) and occasionally Minecrafting with my brother.

[Yaxa]

One thing I really wish these classic ports had is Dropbox support for saves. If a small developer like Revolution can figure it out, surely it's not too much to ask of Square.

[Yttrium]

One thing I really wish these classic ports had is Dropbox support for saves. If a small developer like Revolution can figure it out, surely it's not too much to ask of Square.

User-based cloud saves? That's a great idea. Hm.

[Yaxa]

User-based cloud saves? That's a great idea. Hm.

Yup. Broken Sword II Remastered lets you use Dropbox to backup and restore saves. You can even share the same saves between iOS and Android devices.

[Macfudd]

I came to the realisation just before Easter that the only game I've actually finished in the 12 months or so has been X-Com.

So I've trimmed my WoW time down significantly and played through the main campaign of Dungeon Defenders. There's extra levels to go from here but most of them seem to require me to grind out character levels first, plus the game seems like it would be a heap more fun with more people playing so I'm going to park it for now until I can convince more friends to buy it.

Now I've moved on to Neverwinter Nights 2. I thought I'd played this already but turns out I was confusing it with Neverwinter Nights 1 -and I am quite annoyed at myself for not playing it earlier as I am having a heap of fun. Going for a wizard/caster build so I can have a go at the Eldritch Knight prestige class. I just started playing D&D in real life a few weeks ago too so am in RPG overload a bit

[Silverblade-T-E]

Neverwinter 2 is REAL fun, adore playing a wizard or warlock in that