What are you playing?

[Ack]

After making my way through the Riddick games, I have now decided for a change of pace and am now playing the city-builder Banished. It's proving to be an entertaining time sink, though I have only just begun and am still getting a hang of the flow of things. I find I have issues expanding food production fast enough at the start, which led to my first village being reduced to starvation and, in my mind, cannibalism. Not really of course, but...well, you are what you eat.

The second village is doing much better and has already expanded beyond the point of the first because I started with more livestock and farming from the beginning. I also have a small island that I am keeping relatively pristine with rangers, gatherers, and herbalists. I will probably build a hunting shack there soon too and then leave it alone to do what it will.

[Damm64]

Starting MGS 4 after one hour of play all i can think is that Kojima saw Call of Duty and tought "I can do that!"

[SNKnicotine]

Just started playing Legend of Kage 2 on the DS, While it got mixed review I tried to keep my opinion unbiased and am glad to say that I'm really enjoying the game! It pays homage to the original and other hack and slash games from the NES era, the game is fast paced and requires the player to fast on the trigger.
NTRPYLKJshots.jpg

[prfsnl_gmr]

Legend of Kage 2

Yes. It was one of the first games I bought for my DS, and I really enjoyed it (despite not liking the original at all). If you like it, you should try Shinobi (3DS). The games are made by different companies, but they "feel" very similar.

[Megalatron]

Playing through MGS V. It doesn't quite feel like a MGS game but I'm enjoying it none the less.

Also Xeodrifter from this months Playstation Plus is really good. I'm not normally a huge fan of the faux retro games but it is addictive.

[Sam_P]

Started playing GTA: Vice City again, easily my favorite of the PS2 Grand Theft Auto's. Though Demolition Man is testing my patience.

[Damm64]

Taking a break from MGS games so now im playing dead space 2. Having a bit of fun with that. Still baffles my mind how people call that series "THE GREATEST SURVIVAL HORROR IN YEARS" yet call silent hill homecoming awfull. DS only has jumpscares... and lots of them, you become inmune to them after the first hour... and they throw them every 5-10 minutes of the game.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Would you recommend it? I'm in two minds about buying it after NHL 14 and 15.

Bit late on this sorry.

If you didn't like NHL 14 it's basically just brought back most of that stuff. It's definitely an improvement over 15 from what I've seen.

It's mostly the little things that bring it down. If you want a game that plays super well and looks good on modern hardware 16 is pretty great in that regard.

[Ack]

Well, while I wait to see what the next Together RPG game is, I'm continuing to play Banished...poorly.

My first hamlet didn't get very far because I didn't produce enough food fast enough from the get go. We're talking sub-40 people here. I learned from it and moved onto the second hamlet...

...which hasn't done that well either, unfortunately. I doubled the size of my population from the first attempt, but I built too many cheap wooden houses and tried expanding into other buildings too quickly. The result was a deficit of logs because of the massive need for firewood that created a bottleneck where I lack tools, thus reducing effectiveness of food production. This led to a death wave where my peak population of 86 workers dropped to 60 in less than a year due to mass starvation. This further hindered all of my production because I lost the required manpower to continue sustaining all of my farms, fishing docks, forester stations, and so on. But, on the upside, my cemetery worked.

I think I will take what lessons I learned and move on to a third hamlet. I also think maybe I'll build a school this time.

[alienjesus]

Playing through a few games at the minute:

Retro Game Challenge: I'm working on finishing all 8 'games' in this one. I've taken out Haggleman 1, 2 & 3, Cosmic Gate, Rally King and Rally King SP, so there are 2 left to go. Star Prince is a short shmup, so I should be OK, but Guadia Quest could be a bit of a trek. I'm trying to make it a mission to beat one short (or short-ish) game each weekend from now until Christmas and cut down my backloggery a bit. Last weekend I finished Kirby & The Rainbow Paintbrush, and the weekend before I took out 3 short Game Gear platformers. Having fun, just needed something to push me to playing them.

I'm also playing Mario Golf for Together Retro on and off. There's no way I'll finish by the end of the month, but I am having fun with it, so I'll keep at it. It's not the type of game I want to play all day, but a session here or there is really fun.

And my alphabet marathon is still (slooooowly) chugging along. I'm on game I now, so I've been getting stuck into Inazuma Eleven for DS. It's still early days yet, but it's been fun enough.