What are you playing?

[Exhuminator]

I've just realized I've actively got more games going on at once than ever before. It's unusual for me. Maybe it's more efficient though, who knows. Well here's what I'm playing currently and thoughts...

Deadly Premonition (360) - I just started Episode 3 out of what looks to be 7 total Episodes. So I guess I'm not even halfway done yet. I've already got nearly 12 hours in this one... most of that time was sunk into just exploring the town and looking for sidequests. I managed to get some of the unlimited ammo weapons (including the magnum). I found out last night you could buy new cars from the junkyard, so I bought a hotrod and now I can zip around town a lot faster. Right after that I got the radio though, which means I can warp around town and the car kinda doesn't matter now. I'm still strongly enjoying the story and characters, those aspects are top tier for this medium. The gameplay itself (town traversal / fetch quests / third person shooting) is pretty bland and really brings the experience down. So far this has been a better movie than a game.

A Link Between Worlds (3DS) - I've only put four hours into this so far. I had my hopes too high from all the hyperbole I read about it, and I was let down from what I've played so far. It's not that the game is bad, it's just that the game feels exactly like ALttP with the one caveat of wall sliding. I was looking for something a bit more innovative in design, but this has been a near total rehash thus far. Now, I fully understand ALBW could become more interesting as I go further in, and I'm willing to push through the ho-hum deja vu to see if that does happen. I'm planning to hit this one back up hardcore once I finish Deadly Premonition.

Lagrange Point (FC) - I started playing this old JRPG for the novelty of its proprietary soundchip and thus a truly unique OST for its platform. Also, it's a spaced themed JRPG and those are a lot more rare than your average fantasy one. I've put about five hours into this and I have mixed feelings. The music is amazing for what it's working with, and the graphics are above average as well. The pacing is good and the futuristic atmosphere is handled nicely. But what's ruining the fun for me is the utterly ridiculous encounter rate. As in, you can get into fights every half-second to two seconds. And not only that, but random encounters can occur while you're already in a fight! The monotony of the constant fighting has really sucked the fun out of this one for me, and I might just drop it because of that.

Resident Evil 6 (360) - I've been working my way through this via co-op with my wife. There are four large campaigns in the game, and we've finished the first and we're nearly done with the second. This is a HUGE game, way bigger than your typical third person shooter. And while it really fails to feel like a survival horror experience, the run'n'gun action is pretty damned fun... at least in co-op. I think this one might be a bit underrated, but at the same time I can understand people being disillusioned with how non-survival horror the series had become by this point. If you're looking for a solid action-adventure-third-person-shooter though, you get a lot of bang for your buck with Resident Evil 6.

Professor Layton and The Diabolical Box (DS) - I started playing this back in January I think. This game is "watching paint dry" boring and has utterly failed at intriguing me in the way that The Curious Village did. I'm just trying to push my way through it for the story, because when the story's actually going on, the game is somewhat entertaining. However, due to terrible pacing, there are very long stretches without any real plot action happening, and instead you're just solving left over milquetoast puzzles Level-5 drudged up from the cutting room floor of the first game.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I remember playing some old JRPG - War of the Dead maybe - where random counters can initiate while standing still. It took awhile for some developers to get on board with that whole "footstep" algorithm. Lagrange Point is a game I've been meaning to get for some time, but it's quite expensive for Famicom standards.

[Exhuminator]

where random counters can initiate while standing still

That right there is what made me stop playing The Sword Of Hope. It was such a cool game, but the incessant random encounters totally ruined it for me.

[Damm64]

More XCOM, each time i have fry time i spend playin it... its addicting. Was wondering if enemy within is worth it so i just watched a video and theres some good stuff in there!

Question: When the game difficulty says imposible... how accurate is that statement?

[noiseredux]

More XCOM, each time i have fry time i spend playin it... its addicting. Was wondering if enemy within is worth it so i just watched a video and theres some good stuff in there!

Question: When the game difficulty says imposible... how accurate is that statement?

EU and EW feel like radically different games as far as pacing goes. At the end of the day, I prefer of EU, but I totally feel like both should be played so you can experience both sides of the same coin.

Believe it or not I've never played on Impossible. I don't know why really. Hmm.

Do you have a sniper named Noise yet? You should.

[Ack]

I also have several games going right now(or I should say I'm about to), which is unusual for me since I typically only focus on one or two at any given time:

Quake - It's about time I finally got around to beating this one, as it's the only game in the series I have yet to finish. I know, I know, been dragging my feet for a couple of decades.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter - Exhuminator issued a challenge, so I took it. I'm only at the start of the fourth level, but so far it's been a pretty wild ride, full of intrigue, explosions, and dumb AI. Fun fun all around!

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 - Looks like this is the new game I'll be playing on Thursdays for a bit with Fast, Noise, and my buddy Xen. That's great though, as it's also been sitting in my backlog since it popped up on GOG. Glad to finally spend some time with it.

Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000 - I am about to start the arduous process of getting this to run because I need to know how it plays, and because lately I've had a hankering to play something in a genre I like but don't explore often enough.

[Exhuminator]

-Quake

A total classic and absolutely worth playing and finishing.

-Star Wars: Battlefront 2

I beat this one years ago via split-screen co-op on Xbox. It was a LOT of fun. I'm sure it still is.

-Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000

I can't help thinking you'd be better off with Relic's RTS games in this franchise.

[Erik_Twice]

Final Fight never becomes easy, each encounter keeps being hard even after you have played them a dozen times and even videos of people clearing the game are full of mistakes and struggles because even good strategies aren't sureproof. The game feels very different from say, Strider or a shmup, in that way.

I have a couple roadblocks now:

- Right at the first fight of Stage 3 I lose tons and tons of health. It's the first time you face so many enemies at once and they come from both sides at once so you need to be good at crowd control or you'll be forced to spam your desperation move over and over.
- The Andore cage fight is far more tricky than it seems! It seems at first you can simply put them on the same side and kick them to death or abuse the range of the pipe but they are not really reliable strategies because the moment they desincronize you get hit.

I'm credit feeding a little so I have the chance to try out the battle with Eddie. He's an example of the game seeming mroe unfair than it is at first, his "pistol whip" attack has a lot of priority and takes a lot of your life but the truth is that he's easy to grab and weak if there aren't a lot of other enemies around.

By the way, I'm an idiot. I thought the fire on the industrial area was dumb and unfair and thought people were just abusing the game's physics to get through it when the fire doesn't actually cover the entire floor. Duh, there are clearly only three "fires" so there are safe gaps between one and the other.

That makes the whole section far, far easier hahaha

[Ack]

-Quake

A total classic and absolutely worth playing and finishing.

-Star Wars: Battlefront 2

I beat this one years ago via split-screen co-op on Xbox. It was a LOT of fun. I'm sure it still is.

-Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000

I can't help thinking you'd be better off with Relic's RTS games in this franchise.

You mean the Dawn of War series? They're ok, but they came out at a time when my interest in RTS was fading. Unfortunately it still hasn't resurfaced. Since I also don't spend nearly enough time with turn-based strategy, I want to check it out.

Besides, it lets me play as Space Marines and Imperial Guard. That's exactly what I like.

FOR THE EMPEROR!

[Xeogred]

Does Quake 3 even have a campaign?

Kind of irked I bought Quake 4 off Steam earlier this year or last in hopes I could get it running with some of the visual mods out there, but even vanilla was crashing and not working. I'll have to try it again. I remember liking it a lot on the 360 though, like an amped up Doom 3 with more speed.

Quake 2 was great, haven't played it since the PSX days though. I wonder how it holds up compared to Unreal and others.

I played Unreal finally only a few years ago (seriously had no idea it had a campaign for years) and frankly it blew me away. I know it's not for everyone, but the atmosphere was insanely good and it felt like the blueprint for other games like Halo or Metroid Prime. I liked that it had weird puzzles and big outdoor environments, temples, etc, that weird neo-gothic sci-fi thing going on. I like how it was kind of the last of its kind too with map design by specific level designers and even credited them. Always loved that about old FPS's and to see the diversity between the designers.

Never played Unreal 2.

So I need to play Quake and Unreal 2 sometime.