What are you playing?

[BoneSnapDeez]

The "lives reset back to three" thing was common in older platformers. You see it in Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country, if memory serves me.

[Exhuminator]

Huh. I guess I just never noticed it until SMG2. Weird.

[Segata]

Persona 5

[Exhuminator]

Super Mario Galaxy 2

I made it to world 5 (or is it galaxy 5?). Trucking along.

SMG2 is a very well made game, but strangely I find after an hour of playing, I always start to feel bored, and want to do something else. I guess I just don't find SMG2 to be as engaging as SMG1. I'm not sure why? I haven't figured out what the deal is yet. Maybe it's the overall lack of spherical levels (my favorites) versus a plethora of more flat linear ones.

Also I find the star-gating to be a bit obnoxious in SMG2, but 'eh not a show stopper.

[Segata]

Assault Suit Leynos again for PS4.

[Damm64]

Super Mario Galaxy 2

I made it to world 5 (or is it galaxy 5?). Trucking along.

SMG2 is a very well made game, but strangely I find after an hour of playing, I always start to feel bored, and want to do something else. I guess I just don't find SMG2 to be as engaging as SMG1. I'm not sure why? I haven't figured out what the deal is yet. Maybe it's the overall lack of spherical levels (my favorites) versus a plethora of more flat linear ones.

Also I find the star-gating to be a bit obnoxious in SMG2, but 'eh not a show stopper.

I have this same thing with galaxy 1 now. I play for in 1 hour, get bored do something else and come back the next day or a few hours later, thouhg i dont know if the level design changes between galaxy 1 and 2. I really enjoy the game but is something constant. Even with that im now at 40 stars at the 4th galaxy and i could skip it entirely just jumping to the boss fight... but then ill be short on stars for the next one.

[Xeogred]

I got that at times too, but still loved the game to death. Just needed to take it in chunks.

3D World on the other hand I beat in a weekend.

[Exhuminator]

I have this same thing with galaxy 1 now. I play for in 1 hour, get bored do something else and come back the next day or a few hours later

Yeah I was looking at credits trying to figure out what happened. Why I found myself more drawn to SMG1 than SMG2. It turns out there were some key personnel changes between the two:

Super Mario Galaxy
Director: Yoshiaki Koizumi
Level Design Director: Koichi Hayashida
Producers: Shigeru Miyamoto, Takao Shimizu, Takashi Tezuka

Super Mario Galaxy 2
Director: Koichi Hayashida
Level Design Director: Haruka Kakinuma
Producer: Takashi Tezuka

So the level design director of SMG1 became the director of SMG2, and a new lead level design director was put into place for SMG2. Also, SMG2 only had one producer looking over things, versus three on the original. I think these key personnel changes had a noticeable shift on the pacing and overall flow of SMG2 versus SMG1. That's not to say SMG2 isn't good, it's good, but it definitely "feels" different than SMG1.

I think what I'm going to do, is just get 1 star a night. Then I'll play something else more engaging. That way I'll continue to work through the game, but won't get burnt out on it.

I think I'll start Binary Domain tonight.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I was listening to some kinda old podcasts the other day and got really psyched for Watchdogs 2 hearing how much they were enjoying it. As luck would have it, I got a great deal on Watchdogs 2 in the resale store in town yesterday, so I picked it up and started it tonight.

It's super fun! I've mostly just mucked around looking for goodies in the overworld so far, but I'm really digging the characters so far. I'm also fairly surprised the online components work without a PSN subscription, as while I thought my lack of a subscription would keep me safe, my game kept getting invaded and annoying the crap out of me. Luckily it's fairly simple to just turn it off. I know some people really like that kind of thing, but I play these games to muck around in a big city and to find goodies (and usually experience some kind of nice story), so that's just not what I'm lookin' for.

[Exhuminator]

I put 2.5 hours into Binary Domain in my first playthrough. It's fun so far, although a bit of a cakewalk on normal difficulty. Maybe it'll get harder. I'm rocking Faye and Rachael as my sidekicks. I'm also not using the voice commands.