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Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 4:28 pm
by Wombatwarlord777
In case you didn't know, Sonic: After the Sequel was released a few days ago. It's a 2D Sonic fangame much in the same vein as the Genesis games, and pretty damn good. I've played through the whole thing twice and have been having a great time.

In case you aren't interested in the game, you should definitely treat yourself and check out its custom-made soundtrack. It's quality is incredible for a fan project like this.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 11:29 pm
by FlashTHD
Lest we forget the first one.

I am... bitterly disappointed with ATS. About halfway through the game, everything begins gradually going to crap. Any sense of climactic buildup (something BTS did extremely well) is thrown out the window, and there doesn't seem to be a time-based ending anymore like BTS, which compensated for a lot of that game's deficiencies. The soundtrack slowly begins deteriorating into dubstep. That ice zone I can't pronounce is among the worst of its kind i've played in my life (bobbins that fucking shoot at you? on slippery floors?), and nothing about Storm Station sticks in my mind aside from the cheap-ass Sky Base laser grids that light up and shock you with random timing. I started to play again with Tails but the cutscenes didn't change when using him, so why even go to the damn trouble of making him seperately playable?

I'm not sure I even want to try for the good ending, because just thinking about the second half of ATS makes me mad. Eight extra months of wait for that soundtrack and the game still doesn't feel finished.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 11:48 pm
by FlashTHD
Addendum: I did still like most of Moonlit Mansion and Redhot Ride in hindsight, but jesus in heaven, those last 2 zones are hardcore fun-killing bullshit.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2013 9:29 pm
by Wombatwarlord777
The good ending... Isn't really worth it in my opinion, especially for the last act. At the very least I wouldn't take the effort to get the Chaos Emeralds to access it.

It's funny: I liked Parhelion Peak a lot, especially the third act, but I disliked Moon Mansion the most. There's really nothing there other than a lot of basic platforming and midbosses that aren't that clever and stop the action dead in its tracks.

I wholeheartedly agree that Storm Station is a disappointing last zone, though. I tried to find something good to say about it, and the closest thing I can come up with is that it's a lot like Scrap Brain in that it just keeps throwing obstacles and traps at you. It's has nothing special going for it, especially compared to Before the Sequel's Titanic Tower or Arcane Altitude.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2013 10:35 pm
by Blank
My boyfriend is a big Animal Crossing nerd so I've been farming hammerheads for him while hes at work. it still feels very much unchanged from when I originally played on Gamecube. Besides drawing patterns, I find myself pretty addicted to the flower gardening and town managing aspect of the game.

Other then that any spare time I have to game is usually spent on PSO2. Since PSOBB was one of my most influential games and I had so many great memories, I was really drawn to get back into the series and meet up with old friends. However I could pretty much write a laundry list of reasons PSO2 is kusoge and straight up doesn't hold a candle to the original in my opinion. Lack of item variety, quests, and a totally gacha-based f2p formula are all just scratching the surface of its problems. I feel they're really trying to rip on the success of Monster Hunter too much and have thrown away what made PSO1 so unique and accessible. It still has me like a dog on a leash though. I find it hard to get involved in other games at the moment that aren't on handhelds anyways. So when I do have free time its fun to satisfy my dungeon crawling needs.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 12:22 pm
by Radrappy
Blank wrote: Other then that any spare time I have to game is usually spent on PSO2. Since PSOBB was one of my most influential games and I had so many great memories, I was really drawn to get back into the series and meet up with old friends. However I could pretty much write a laundry list of reasons PSO2 is kusoge and straight up doesn't hold a candle to the original in my opinion. Lack of item variety, quests, and a totally gacha-based f2p formula are all just scratching the surface of its problems. I feel they're really trying to rip on the success of Monster Hunter too much and have thrown away what made PSO1 so unique and accessible. It still has me like a dog on a leash though. I find it hard to get involved in other games at the moment that aren't on handhelds anyways. So when I do have free time its fun to satisfy my dungeon crawling needs.
Man, did we ever have a topic about PSO2? Anyway, I played it for a couple months before deciding that it's absolutely terrible. Like, the worst game of 2012 for me. If you loved the original you owe it to yourself to never touch PSO2. I played it only out of obligation to my love for PSO1 and have never been more depressed playing a game.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 2:22 pm
by M.C.Dillinger
I'm not entirely sure why I've spent the past month playing Animal Crossing. If you'r playing New Leaf, come visit my magical land of Hellhole! (4300-2178-0733)

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 2:56 pm
by G.Silver
I picked up another eShop title, Kokuga, which is mainly significant because it's by Treasure's Hiroshi Iuchi, the main guy behind Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, and Gradius V. Other than that, it's a top-down tank game with a rotating turret controlled with the shoulder buttons (or whatever, they can be reassigned) and it plays pretty much how you'd expect! The one wrinkle is that you're given all your powerups at the start of a level, and you score more points for hitting enemies with them than your regular bullets, and they only last a short while. You can only access four power ups at a time, so sometimes you want to just waste a few to get more immediately useful ones to cycle in. So the game offers some incentive to have fun playing around with power ups and wreaking havoc with them, rather than always saving them for the last moment. It's nice enough for a budget title but not really something I think many would get excited about (my excitement level is kinda low tbh).

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 4:43 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
I found a 3DS lying on the side of the road, functional, just lying among the usual detritus. I thought it was just a casing or somesuch shit (it has Angry Birds stickers on it), but nope, real deal with Mario 3D Land. I haven't look through the menus to find out who owns the damned thing yet, and I'll be sure to return it to the little whippersnapper iffen I find out, but in the mean time I'mma play some Mario.

Some times it pays to have an unreliable car battery, I guess.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 8:13 am
by Neo
So Toki Tori 2 is pretty damn amazing. If you enjoy puzzle games, then this is one of the finest, most clever ones I've ever played. The intricacy of the game world is astounding and everything just makes sense when put together; there's this overwhelming feeling of cohesion that makes everything just feel right. Also, it's just plain charming! Look at the little creatures scuttling about! I think I'm gonna pass out from the overabundance of cuteness.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:16 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
So, I've been having another go at Away: Shuffle Dungeon. It's not a good game, but I'm glad I took pity on one of those forlorn copies that have been sitting at the local supermarket shelf for years all the same (though $15 was a little steep). I don't even now where to begin to dissect this; nothing seem to add up to anything? I never cared about the village itself, or the growth of the shops or their feng shui, or raising Fupong (which I guess canonizes Blue Spheres' onomatopoeia) which just end up in the abyss if you fuck up in one of the dungeons. And what dungeons! The shuffling was presumably meant to be an exciting aleatory feature, right? The later ones are just too damn long for that nonsense.

But I did care about the characters somewhat. Sword isn't as inspired as Sonic and Nights, but he's certainly a cut above Pinobee and Baby Wario, etc. He lacks the former's 'tude and the latter's otherworldliness, and is a rather bland cypher, but there's something there (stupid bangs notwithstanding). And I'm thinking Oshima has a thing for ruffs, or associates Western culture with them. I rather like the ancillary characters, the box-headed Majique in particular it too outre not to be memorable, and I imagine there's some self-satirizing with the saririman whose name escapes me.

I particularly like how the low-poly models are embraced style of the game (something that takes a moment to sink in if you're familiar with the NA version's box art), even though 80%-ish percent of the game is 2D sprites the characters are still Model 3-esque, it's not a product of the DS's limitations. Shit like that looks good forever.

And I love how the time machine is a outsized microwave oven. Or that access to the final dungeon involves Sword and Anella awkwardly but innocuously getting into bed together.

I don't like that one joke involves a grown scientist smitten with a pair of creepy underaged twin girls. And Tylor is just a terrible caricature.

I guess I'm saying is if Big Island had a webcomic, I'd subscribe to it.

Addendum: oh, and I still can't make a lick of sense out of the plot.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:53 pm
by G.Silver
Man I did not give very much time to Shuffle Dungeon. I picked it up pretty early on and really didn't get into it. I got in to a point where the dungeons did not really seem to be that challenging, I had the shuffle mechanic figured out, and then I just kind of abandoned it. I don't recall getting anywhere with any of the other elements, working on the village or whatever, but I did like the character design a lot. Like you said, Sword is pretty ordinary, but he's a nicely designed ordinary.

Is anybody playing or checking out Mercenary Kings? (I backed the Kickstarter.) I turned on single player for a bit and played through one stage which I thought was pretty unexciting and haven't messed with it since. I'm assuming it's more fun with more people or in the later stages (the bosses they teased early on looked cool after all), or maybe when the crafting comes more into play. I'm not usually one who is into crafting or customization, but at the end of the first mission I didn't have enough to build anything and felt a little let down.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 1:59 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
'Cause I love to belabor a subject, I went to look more info on this game and came across this:
Image
Found on GameFAQs, so maybe it's legit. Oshima's original sketches, I presume? (guess Sword isn't wearing a ruff, after all).

So I, internet stalker that I am, I went to check up on what else Artoon has been up to since. They were absorbed into Marvelous, and Oshima jumped ship to yet another company, Arzest. Incidentally, they're developing the next Yoshi's Island game, so I'm guessing he's a fan of the SNES classic! Neat!

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:56 pm
by Tsuyoshi-kun
I'm starting on Ducktales Remastered, which I just bought last night for my PS3.

I'm not too familiar with the NES version (I've barely played it; most of my knowledge of the game comes from YouTube videos), but so far I've been enjoying this a lot. WayForward really went out of their way to make the game as faithful (and as funny) to the cartoon series as possible, with colorful 2-D graphics and voiced cutscenes that at times is actually pretty darn funny. There are a few too many cutscenes, but I don't typically skip them because I enjoy the dialogue. (Scrooge seems more rude than he was in the show. Which makes it funny, of course.) Glumgold and Gyro's new actor sucks, but everyone else sounds decent despite the large gap of time from the original cartoon series.

It's quite hard, too. Out of the five levels, I've died in all but two in my first run-through. You have unlimited continues now, though you lose all the money you collected in that current stage if you run out of lives, and 1-Ups are extremely scarce. Everything being large sprite-wise (especially compared to the NES original) takes a bit getting used to, too. You can't really move too much off the top of the screen, and I've actually died a couple of times as a result of miscalculations.

All said, I'm quite liking this game.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 5:33 am
by Crowbar
I picked up a 3DS and Animal Crossing a while ago because all my friends suddenly got it and I felt legit peer pressured. It's pretty nice but it's still the only game I have for it.

I just found out that apparently a new Mario & Luigi game came out while I wasn't paying attention. I fucking loved the previous three. Has anybody played it? Is it good?

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 9:30 am
by G.Silver
I picked up Guacamelee on Steam, and I'm liking it pretty well. It's a Metroid-vania but all your special moves for navigation or unlocking areas are also physical attacks. My early concern with it was that I'd be feeling the initially limiting moveset, but that wasn't really the case, the game moves along at a fast clip and so far new moves and abilities have been unlocked very quickly (partly this is because I always buy them from the shop when available, rather than health upgrades). The setting of course (Luchadore-obsessed fantasy Mexico) is super cool and the game has a great sense of humor, there are references to other games (even indies) and internet memes all over the place, at once these are incredibly obvious but they're all dressed up to "fit" the game world, they don't seem obnoxious or out of place. A number of power ups are unlocked by destroying Chozo Statues, and they even fearlessly label them as such. I kinda feel like I'm "falling for it," obviously part of why they put those references in is so people would want to talk about it, but what can I say? It works!

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 9:20 pm
by G.Silver
I gave Gaurodan a shot today, from the maker of Maldita Castille, which you should also play. You're a Rodan-like pterodactyl thing shooting lasers to destroy buildings and aircraft and stuff. It's a straight forward sort of thing but it's got a really authentic kind of kaiju movie feel to it, like if any of those old Godzilla games had been any good, they'd have been like this. I haven't finished it yet (I actually hurt my hand while playing, agh) but there seems to be a subtle narrative going on as you progress, beyond just "humans escalate their resistance. It feels kinda classy!

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:51 am
by Popcorn
I played The Last of Us.

It's got problems, but it's a fascinating demonstration in how far you get with writing that's like, actually really good. I mean, it's got character development and everything.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 3:20 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
So I gave a good, earnest shot at Sonic Labyrinth and beat it with an elapsed 20-ish minutes. I kind of just dismissed it with everyone else, not that it turned out to be some unappreciated spinoff. Its saving grace is its music (also its brevity). I particularly like the Rockabilly styled Act 2 theme.

What really struck me (inasmuch as anything in this game can) is that it feels really Western, almost more so than Flickies' Island or Spinball (I swear one of the enemies in the final level is that dragon-bot from Toxic Caves). This thing could've been a reskinned ZX spectrum game.

On an interesting note, I've noticed that the Gems collection demo has the bad ending save stated. This is allegedly due to the game requiring actual hardware to access a requisite bonus room. This minutia will in no way better your life; but if I got to carry it around I'm going drag you all down with me.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 6:05 pm
by FlashTHD
Dr. BUGMAN wrote:This is allegedly due to the game requiring actual hardware to access a requisite bonus room.
Huh? I could reach the bonus stage in SADX's version no problem.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 12:20 pm
by Dr. BUGMAN
I was basing that on this, and the fact the Gems Collection didn't even bother to savestate the best ending (not that I can blame them).

But, yeah, I just did it myself. *shrug*

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 2:36 pm
by G.Silver
You mean this? GameFaqs really does not like direct liking, I can't even copy-paste the URL in!

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 11:03 am
by G.Silver
Volgarr the Viking is out today, I am playing it. I am playing it right now!

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2013 11:23 am
by G.Silver
So I have been playing Magicians and Looters, probably one of the only worthwhile things to come out of XBLI in quite a while. It's a Metroidvania kind of deal with three characters and a great sense of humor, probably one of the funniest games I've ever played (and I don't consider very many games to actually be funny). It contains nearly zero referential humor, and the funny quality just comes from the character dialog--it's really well written, sadly this isn't conveyed in the trailer, but a tiny bit here, maybe. It also plays well and has a neat combat system, though you can get by pretty well without fighting hardly at all if you prefer, so it's great for impatient people (I tend to be like that). Also only a dollar.

Re: What are you playing today?

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 3:58 pm
by Wombatwarlord777
LakeFepard's Sonic Chrono Adventure fangame came out yesterday. I liked his Before the Sequel and loved After the Sequel, but this one is less than stellar. In theory, the game is supposed to be along the lines of a Metroidvania where Sonic gains different powers and can access different areas later in the game. In reality, the game asks you to go through a series of linear levels focusing each on a single gimmick and every so often you'll need to whip out a sword to destroy a barrier or some awful green shoes to perform a buggy-ass high-jump.

That said, I think it's okay so far (I'm about 2 hours into the game with no hint of a conclusion, which is pretty impressive for a Sonic game, I suppose), and at least the art direction is (usually) pretty. That and we didn't have an eight-month delay this time!