What are you playing?

[Reseeded Hareline]

Dead Head Fred. Probably the funniest game I ever played in my life. It's really fun too. And damn it's a long and massive game.

[Exhuminator]

I still would rather use Magic Engine too, still have a licensed key for it I bought like 20 years ago as well. Only time I ever bought one as I felt they actually deserved a little coin for all the updates and the rest.

Magic Engine does have some really cool and unique features I've never seen in any other emulator. What can I say, except it works for me. I tried Mednafen or whatever it's called, and it's command line based. No thanks. Yeah I'm sure there are frontends for it, but I shouldn't have to download a frontend for an emulator. Nor should I have to write custom scripts to initiate it either. I'm trying to play games, not relive my DOS days. I download Ootake, but it requires being installed and that irked me. All the other emulators I use just unzip and take off running. Also I don't know if Ootake has an English version or not, the site was all in Japanese? It's probably a solid emulator, but Magic Engine already kicks ass and works with 64-bit operating systems so I'm happy.

Dead Head Fred. Probably the funniest game I ever played in my life. It's really fun too. And damn it's a long and massive game.

If you've got an Xbox, give this one a try sometime:

It's kind of in the same vein. There's a PC and Mac version of it too.

[Reseeded Hareline]

Played Stubbs before. Didn't like it, not the same as Fred. There's no Mckginley or Polito in it. The writing isn't as punny neither.

[Sarge]

I started up Titanfall 2 last night. It's definitely an interesting mix of gameplay! It reminds me a bit of Mirror's Edge, Metroid Prime, or Prince of Persia with all the platforming in first person. The mech combat is smooth, with quite a few options tactically. The shooting almost reminds me a little bit of TimeSplitters: Future Perfect on some level. And somehow, it all seems to work together very well. I figure I'll finish this one off for sure.

I also started up Bravely Second. Didn't get much time in, but it's definitely more of the same, so I figure if you liked the first game, you'll love this one too. I count myself in that camp, even with the asset reuse, and this one apparently has less of that going on.

[marurun]

Magic Engine does have some really cool and unique features I've never seen in any other emulator. What can I say, except it works for me. I tried Mednafen or whatever it's called, and it's command line based. No thanks. Yeah I'm sure there are frontends for it, but I shouldn't have to download a frontend for an emulator. Nor should I have to write custom scripts to initiate it either. I'm trying to play games, not relive my DOS days. I download Ootake, but it requires being installed and that irked me. All the other emulators I use just unzip and take off running. Also I don't know if Ootake has an English version or not, the site was all in Japanese? It's probably a solid emulator, but Magic Engine already kicks ass and works with 64-bit operating systems so I'm happy.

Despite being the most accurate, Mednafen is the least friendly, and for that reason I tend not to recommend it. My issue with Magic Engine is that between Mednafen, Ootake, and Magic Engine, ME has the worst audio emulation, it turns up the volume on the PSG channels too high compared to CD audio and ADPCM, and it has that creaky old custom interface. Ootake is hosted on a Japanese site but is in English. It has a standard Windows menu-based interface and has better emulation than ME. You can also load ISOs directly rather than having to mount them as a virtual disk. If you have an actual CD game, you can cache the game data to disk to speed up data loads, too.

Obviously, you should stick to what you like, but I do enjoy advocating for Ootake because it's both free and better! If only it would integrate the Mednafen audio core.

[Sarge]

The lack of a GUI is why I use WiiMednafen. Very user-friendly. Sometimes tweaking your ISOs right can be a pain, though. I've still got problems with Exile II not detecting the System Card 3.0, despite it saying it's using it on boot.

[Exhuminator]

Magic Engine, ME has the worst audio emulation, it turns up the volume on the PSG channels too high compared to CD audio and ADPCM, and it has that creaky old custom interface.

Well Magic Engine's interface may be creaky, but it has a lot of bells and whistles. For example, it allows you to change the audio mix as you see fit:



Meaning that the PSG volume versus CD/ADPCM can be adjusted to user preference.

But I will still check out Ootake eventually!

[Ack]

Argh, my Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 cart is being bitchy. I'll have to give it a good cleaning. I did sit down with Plok today though. It's a pretty fun little game, and I like the aesthetic, though I wish it had some kind of save system.

I'm also still going strong in Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate. My current mission is to rescue a space marine who was taken captive by Chaos troops back in level 3. I have to protect an apothecary unit the whole time, which may well suck. I'm thinking my techmarine and librarian are going to serve as his personal bodyguards the whole time.

[ElkinFencer10]

I'm getting real burnt out on Rise of the Tomb Raider. Don't get me wrong, the game is fantastic. I'm going for 100% complete, though (I have no idea why; I almost never do this with games), and finding the last relic or the last part of the last challenge in an area is getting extremely frustrating and extremely tiresome. I'll probably put it aside for a while and not do the DLC (aside from Baba Yaga which I already 100%ed and got every trophy except the score attack one). I'll obviously do the DLC later, especially after Sarge's glowing reviews, but I need a break, man...

[Gunstar Green]

Finally sat down with the Assault Suit Leynos remake today and man I had a lot of fun. The new main game was a little too easy but I loved all of the little references to Cybernator/Valken in it including pretty much the entire first level of that game. The "classic mode" that plays more like the original game has been kicking my butt though.

I'm not sure if I like it more that Dracue's previous game, Gunhound EX, but I do love it and I hope to see more games like this from them. Maybe a true Assault Suits sequel instead of a remake.

I've also been playing Dragon Ball Fusions on the 3DS. It's Dragon Ball meets Pokemon with a battle system that I can best describe as Grandia meets billiards. It's surprisingly insanely fun and addictive.