wtf are you playing... - Page 65

Sorry Harford, didn't want to say anything since you'd already bought it but yeah, Force Unleashed II is ass. Without exaggeration, it feels like they have 90 minutes or so of original gameplay that they then try and cut and paste into something approaching 4 or 5. EASILY the laziest bit of game development I've ever seen, if not the outright worst game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Splatoon 

Sorry Harford, didn't want to say anything since you'd already bought it but yeah, Force Unleashed II is ass. Without exaggeration, it feels like they have 90 minutes or so of original gameplay that they then try and cut and paste into something approaching 4 or 5. EASILY the laziest bit of game development I've ever seen, if not the outright worst game.

Eh, don't worry about it. I brought that one on myself I guess. They should have simply rereleased the first game with the slightly improved targeting that shows up in the sequel. I only spent $15 to get "FU2" and I still feel ripped off.  I can only imagine the heart attack waiting for those who paid  full price. 

What sucks about what I'm playing over the holidays is that my cool Merc Stealth gaming keybord crapped out on me, and I've had to temporarily exchange it with this tiny shitty pack-in I had in my garage. I can't seem to game anymore without that keyboard. Far Cry 3 and Dishonored have to wait until the new one arrives.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mongycore 

Since you're already in, get the canon raping dlc and kill off all your beloved OT trilogy characters for the lols...or not.
Lego Lord of the Rings - Wut, they broke narrative and let me fight the balrog after Gandalf's fall instead of saving that for the Two Towers chapter opening? Started the two towers, and its interesting you can choose which narrative threads you want to tackle by switching between parties in the overworld. Still loving this game.
XCOM - Started a new campaign on xbox. Still spending too much time customizing and naming my squad.
AssCreedRev - Zzzzzz, long in the tooth boring gameplay filler is what it is after the umpteenth time. I don't think I'll even bother with 3 now, if I'm really hard up for naval battles I still have Sid Meiers pirates for the psp.

Don't judge AC3 by AssCreedRev. AC3 is a FAR better game made by a far better dev team.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mongycore 

Since you're already in, get the canon raping dlc and kill off all your beloved OT trilogy characters for the lols...or not.

I read about that but you know what? While I might not be the biggest fan of the Ewoks and the role they played in Return of the Jedi, I don't feel any particular animus towards them, not enough to motivate me to shell out a dollar for the privilege of slaughtering a bunch of teddy bears, anyway. Fighting wookies in the first game was fun because to anyone other than Darth Vader, a wookie warrior would be a fearsome opponent. Killing ewoks just seems like picking on the weak, and I tend to shy away from cruelty towards animals in games.

After seeing THE HOBBIT I was itching to go dungeon crawling so I fired up TORCHLIGHT and man oh man does this game scratch that itch. So much fun.
 

Been flitting back and forth, working through my online Christmas sale haul.

Sleeping Dogs: Played about an hour and had a blast. It's standard GTA-style open world fare but done really well, has a fantastic melee system and looks gorgeous to boot. Holding off though until it becomesa daily, and I'll snag some more of the DLC.

Sniper Elite V2: After playing Spec Ops recently, it's hard not to play this game and be ultra-conscious of how much you're enjoying the morbid-as-hell slo-mo x-ray killshots. But I can't deny that my evil side has a blast with it.

Awesomenauts: Really fun stuff. Part platformer, part MOBA and the cartoonish artstyle and tone is way more charming than I was expecting. I stumbled into an online match still with no idea how everything worked and still had a blast, which is always a good sign.

Dark Souls: Put in close to two hours and haven't even made it out of the tutorial area yet. The game really is rock-hard, but it's a steady, measured kind of hard. You really have to put your brain into the combat here in a way that's really tense and challenging. very promising so far.

Magic 2012: Hopefully the tutorial stuff isn't as shit as it looks and I'll actually be able to learn how to play this.

Doom 3 BFG Edition: While I know the general consensus is that this version's inferior to the original, I'm having good fun with this. Pity about the slightly shoddy PC optimization, but it's not the end of the world for $4.50.

Dishonoured/Morrowind: These two I've barely touched because they're both huge-investment games that demand you sink long hours into at a time, but they both look great.
 

The final boss in Titan Quest is fucking hard. I seriously need to level up my guy up to even have a prayer, because as it is I barely last two seconds. It's kind of unfair, because I sliced through everything before him like butter, and then they throw this shit at you.

I haven't been in much of a "grind mood" this week, so I've been playing Resonance. It's an indie adventure game from the guys that did Gemini Rue. I don't know why I give them so much rope: these games aren't nearly as good as they think they are. But then, they aren't really bad. They're solid attempts at blending strong scifi storytelling with a game style that blends the sensibilities of LucasArts and Sierra. But there's just something missing that keeps these games from being complete home runs.

Workyticket,

Stick with Dark Souls.  It's exteremely hard, but it's very rewarding.  Don't feel bad about looking up hints online either.  The game is so hard and so cryptic that you'll miss a lot of things.  I also love how if you do not sit at a bonfire, none of the enemies that you defeated come back.  It forces you to be careful when in battle so you can have time to explore.  The next enemy is usualyl right around the corenr though.

And Dishonored was a great game, as well.  I advise on the stealthy approach.  Possessing rats to gain entry into some unauthorized areas is very satisfying.

I am working on Far Cry 3 right now.  Having a lot of fun with that.

Games I am currently playing:

Far Cry 3 - I can't get enough of this one.  The hunting, the random NPC events interacting with the world (including animals), liberating outposts, and just the adventure in general are all tons of fun.

Fifa 13 - Best football/soccer game ever.  It just feels so organic and less mechanical than Fifa 12.  Best sports game of all time, in my opinion.

Black Ops II - Multiplayer is still a lot of fun.  It doesn't get too old, especially if you play a bunch of different types such as domination, deathmatch, kill confirmed, search & destroy, etc.  Love the customization options too.  The "pick 10" is genius.  This way, not everyone has a similar class like past games.  Campaign was interesting too, but I wasn't totally invested.

Halo 4 - Also a lot of fun.  I need to take it off Legendary mode though for the campaign.  That is straight unfair.  Dark Souls unfair even.

Games I just completed and my rating:

AC3 - 7 out of 10 - Lost interest about halfway through, but still managed to complete it.

Dishonored - 9 out of 10 - I thought it was a little too short and sort of too linear, but those ar ethe only two things holding it back from a perfect score.  Beautiful setting, and lots of choices on how to complete objectives.

Walking Dead - 8 out of 10 - By the end of episode 5, I was ready to move on, but what an interesting and intense journey that was.  If someone can make an open world zombie game with choices that affect the story and characters around you like this game did, I'll be first in line to buy it.  So maybe something like Dead Island meets the Walking Dead?  This needs to happen.  I don't have high hopes for the FPS Walking Dead game, but you never know.

Starting to dip my toes into DOTA 2. I haven't played a game with such a high, almost non existant, skill ceiling since I was semi-seriously into Quake 3. This game is fucking hard.

Harder than Dark Souls?

It's extremely different. It couldn't be any more different actually. You die fast in both of them. The difference is in DOTA you never have any idea what's past the corner.

Christmas gift was a PS3 - so I immediately took advantage of a Best Buy sale to pick up FIFA 13. Also dabbled a bit in one of the games that came with the system - the first Uncharted, Drake's Fortune. I normally suck at those types of games so I wish there was a way I could just play through invincibly just to experience the story. X-COM will be purchased soon.

I finally got myself an XBox 360; the newest gaming system I had was a PS2, which was great for the past 8 years but I figured it was time to join the modern world and be more up to date. Plus, listening to various podcasts and reading various sites, there are plenty of games I want to try out. It was the Holiday Bundle with Forza 4 and Skyrim. I got some other games, including UFC Undisputed 2010. That was the first game I played on the new system and it is nice as I can play it for a short amount of time rather than something where I would go down the rabbit hole and feel like having to play it for hours at a time. The UFC game is entertaining (at least if you enjoy mixed martial arts) and fine for easing my way into something new.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaxYumTime 

 

Fifa 13 - Best football/soccer game ever.  It just feels so organic and less mechanical than Fifa 12.  Best sports game of all time, in my opinion.

 

FIFA 13 is great. I'm currently getting sucked back into Football Manager (My mainstay), but still throw in FIFA for a few matches. The engine is just beautifully tuned.

I downloaded this but it didn't really click for me, and ended up gettin sucked into Darksiders 2 instead. Still have this on the HD, might give it another shot when i finish AC3

Mostly finished with Assassins Creed 3. I usually try and get all achievements in a game if possible, just to feel like I've fully finished the game but not sure if I want to do it in this instance. I've switched over to Xcom though, perhaps I'll go back to AC3 in a bit. In relation to Xcom, it's funny, I don't want any of my first guys to die, hell, my first guy is named nicknamed Papa Bear! Can't let the old vet die! I also love how they get assigned nicknames, my assault guy who I run and gun a lot with got nicknamed Hazard. I know I'm late to this party as I asked and got this game for Xmas but damn if it isn't a blast!

I'm going to play the official videogame of Batman Begins.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mongycore 

Battleheart - Neat little rpg tactical field battler on the ipad. Trying out the various people/classes you can recruit. Most play I've devoted to an ios game since gamedevstory.

Huge fan of Battleheart. If you want to put some truly ridiculous time into the thing, there are ultra-rare weapons for every class that only drop at certain places (you would probably want to google the drop locations and rates, if you are interested; you almost assuredly will not randomly find them).

ETA: didn't realize I was responding to mongycore, aka 'The King of Drop-rates'. Well, there's some cool stuff buried there, is the point.

Tried out Brutal Doom, a mod for, you guessed it, Doom & Doom 2. It somehow makes the original classics even more depraved, and you can change the control scheme to a more modern "look with mouse and move around with WASD" set up, which would be cheating in a vanilla  Doom game. But the mod pumps up the number of bad guys and the power of the weapons (your's and their's). In a way, it makes the game feel like it did when you were 11 all over again, while adding a dash of Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad.

Just got my best drop ever in an ARPG in Titan Quest. I recently bought the expansion, but it doesn't let you jump to the new content ala Lord of Destruction, though, so I'm taking my guy through the campaign again on an increased difficulty. Which means better drops and whatnot, which is cool, but going through the same content again to get to the expansion stuff feels like a bit of a chore.

I started over on Witcher 2, as I started playing it in offline mode (traveling for the holidays) and missed out on some achievements. I wasn't all that far anyway, and it was a good chance to get the combat down a bit better. But I dig it. The first one kind of rushes to its end and becomes an absurd (but nonetheless enjoyable) fantasy version of a Metal Gear game, and I expect no different here. But it is off to a much stronger start with its start, and I like that the combat is more actioney while the town sections feel deeper than in the first game (so far). Haven't had any tough decisions yet, but I bet I'll have the pleasure of deciding which douchebags to disappoint soon enough. Also, it sure is purty, even though I have to play it on low-ish settings.

Borrowed the first Assassin's Creed from a friend so I'm giving that a go.  It's...okay, so far, I guess.  The Matrix-y stuff feels weird and gimmicky (and as a friend on Facebook said last night - "Great, I'm the douchebag ancestor of someone who did cool stuff") and there's the whole cheap metatextual thing to it that feels like it's saying "Remember how clever Bioshock was?" without really having any IDEA why Bioshock was so clever.  I'm not too far into it yet though so I'm hoping it gets better.

Without getting into details, the meta sci-fi element definitely peaks in Assassins Creed 2, and after that you get the sense they're not really sure what they're doing with it.

Exactly. In the second one it starts to feel a bit more like a passable riff on the New Gods or something. I doesn't last long. It's also the best video game in the series.

Quote:

Originally Posted by D.S. Randlett 

Exactly. In the second one it starts to feel a bit more like a passable riff on the New Gods or something. I doesn't last long. It's also the best video game in the series.

Mechanically I prefer Brotherhood, but as an overall package I'd certainly agree. And at the time that ending seemed inspired, it's too bad that the meta-game now seems more like an albatross they're stuck with then the interesting hook they originally presented. Also, to your point Dr Harford, it's something I hear talked about on gaming podcasts from time to time, but is anyone really looking forward to the (seemingly) inevitable all Desmond future edition?

Funny enough, i actually was starting to. Revelations and III both do interesting stuff with Desmond when he's not in the Animus.

Then ACIII's ending happened.

Finally started taking XCOM for a spin on PS3. I'm suffering a bit from having played the original so damn much (what do you mean I just can't go out and buy Engineers??) but it's still pretty damn fun. This plus FIFA 13 makes console gaming worthwhile.

Brutal Doom is some outstanding shit. I played it with Final Doom a couple weeks back.

I'm going through Singularity currently, and I will pick up Episodes From Liberty City tomorrow for PS3.

Singularity it great fun. It's from Raven, the developers of Jedi Outcast and the underrated Wolfenstein reboot.

Playing RESIDENT EVIL 6 right now.. Enjoying it enough, although something's not quite right about the game, at least when compared to 4 and 5..  Playing the single player campaign, RE5 was a slight bitch at times.. RE6 is a bitch a lot of the time.. 

Resident Evil has basically resorted to a "Zombie Headshot" game anymore, and that's about it.  Which I'm fine with... I'm a biased fan of the series, and the shooting mechanics are tight.. but RE6 is filled with a lot of pointless shit.. I just shake my head during most of the cutscenes.  

I read a recent review for RE6 and the reviewer stated that you'd be better off just re-playing 4 again, yet have a friend smack the controller out of your hands every 30 seconds... 

I'm using my Vita to play another PSP game, but at least this one is new for me...  Ragnarok Tactics.  I dig these turn based strategy games and this one plays it safe with mechanics and expectations, but that suits me just fine.  I'm finding it to be rather enjoyable actually.  I also have Persona 4 for the Vita waiting in the wings, but I'm going to try to maintain a focus here and stick with Ragnarok Tactics for a while.  Fingers crossed.

On the consoles I'm still a bit all over the place, but I'm trying to finish a game here and there if I can.  Like, I'm enjoying Splinter Cell: Conviction on the 360 quite a bit, and I know it's not a huge game, so finishing it should be possible.  and it's a bigger game for sure, but I'm trying to get back to Final Fantasy XIII-2.  I've already gotten myself used to the gameplay mechanics again.  I had forgotten the intricacies of the battle system the first time I turned it back on and felt lost, but i re-adjusted quickly.  I had a weird love/hate thing with XIII and I find this one easier to enjoy without WONDERING if I'm enjoying it.  HA!  I'm sure I will dabble elsewhere when I have console time, but I think those two are ones I want to try to stick with for now.  And there are many, many more where they came from.

Finished Borderlands 2 and both DLCs - I'm lvl 47 and eager for more.

Moved on to Dishonored in the meantime. Very cool so far.

I'm on my third story mission in Dishonored, just starting the main story in the new Hitman, I'm dabbling in FTL, Mark of the Ninja, and Sleeping Dogs. I'm having technical troubles with Far Cry 3, so that's on the back burner for now.

Really enjoying Dishonored, and Hitman is drop-dead gorgeous, if a little wonky.

I was playing Torchlight 1 so I could get into my recently purchased copy of Torchlight 2 but then I got FASTER THAN LIGHT and well...fuck...all my time has been sucked into that game's vortex.
 

I need a game to play while I'm waiting for Dead Space 3 and I've almost played them all.  I'm thinking about Hitman, but have heard mixed things.

Jacob, do you recommend Hitman?  I've played Blood Money and kind of got sick of it, but I was wondering how this compares and if the mechanics are improved.