What are you playing?

[Raban]

I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence to refresh my memory before I head into Peace Walker, and I have some thoughts.

For a long time, this was actually my least favorite MGS game to play, but on this playthrough I'm enjoying it a lot more. I think other posters on here have spoken at length about how MGS1 and 2 have a more straightforward, almost arcade-like quality to the stealth, where nearly all the information a player would need to sneak through an area undetected was given to them and success laid solely in execution. MGS3 always struck me as more of a stealth simulation. Enemies were more unpredictable, a lot of information is purposely kept from you, and the camouflage system was the antithesis of the old vision-cone when it came to staying out of sight. It frustrated me to no end on initial runs of this game when enemies could blend into the environment just as I could.

This time around I'm approaching the game with much more patience, and a rigorous method. I'm aiming for a no-alert, no-kill run and reloading my game any time I break either of these rules. I try to limit my saves to once every two areas, and it's given me the opportunity to really experiment with and understand the underlying mechanics of this game. My original approach when I played MGS3 at launch was to try sprinting through it, and this ruins the pace of the game somewhat since you spend a lot less time in-game than you do watching cutscenes/codec convos. Now that I take each area nice and slow and experiment with different methods of subduing guards or taking the time to find all the hidden items, I enjoy enough actual gameplay time that I'm willingly calling people on the codec for flavor from Para-Medic and Sigint. If you think that sounds crazy, I actually play the game with the original fixed camera enabled to add an extra element of challenge (though I genuinely like the controls for that camera more than the standard third-person camera Subsistence added).

tl;dr MGS3 is a mechanically unique game, and overcoming the learning curve has been very rewarding for me

[Himu]

Only issue with mgs3 is taking forever to clear the alert and evasion timers. Why the fuck is it so long? Makes play a chore if you're caught. It'd be faster to just reload your game.

[Raban]

Murdering everyone in the area brings alerts to an early end but that's probably not for everyone. The changes to the alert system coming from 2 are all rather jarring. The fact that the game instantly goes into alert mode upon being seen (where in 2 enemies needed to make radio contact first), and that evasion mode is a minimum of 90 seconds wait-time makes for severe punishment if you are spotted. All the more incentive to stay hidden, I suppose.

[Himu]

I agree but I still think it's shit.

*spits*

It's the only problem with the game. It makes too much of the game sitting in the grass. Very slow compared to MGS1 and2. I found 4 to have the best medium between the two play styles. It's such a shame it decides to stop being a stealth game half way.

[The Sceneman]

whats the best character class to play as in Borderlands 2? I'm leaning towards the Ryan Gosling looking sniper motherfucker

[Himu]

DLC mechromancer.

[The Sceneman]

you reckon? DLC expensive?

[Himu]

not sure, but my friend dueled me with his mechro and destroyed me in just a few seconds. i couldn't do shit to him. mechro is broke as fuck

[demi]

whats the best character class to play as in Borderlands 2? I'm leaning towards the Ryan Gosling looking sniper motherfucker

Siren

[chronovore]

Started Raving Rabbids. There is NO DiFFICULTY CURVE at all in this: easy, easy, then suddenly IMPOSSIBLE TO PASS. I'm going to try it with the Xbox Vision Camera plugged in, see if it is even marginally playable through that -- I don't see how it could be, though. The visuals are pretty sweet, and the sound is good, but I can't imagine anyone getting into this in a party session.

Also, LOL at Ubisoft getting this through certification:
http://www.trueachievements.com/a18792/rayman-loves-drawing-achievement.htm?showguides=1

It is not possible to get this achievement. This is due to a scoring bug in the game which disallows the final challenge to unlock.

Highest possible score before unlocking challenge: 173,000 (actually less due to additional bugs in some Shake Your Booty games).
Score required to unlock challenge: 174,000.
Artwork unlocks at: 183,000.

This prevents any player from getting a score high enough to unlock the final artwork.

Going back and enjoying more Rock Band 3 again after my compulsive DLC grab a few weeks ago. Need to reassemble my drums from storage and get some RB1, RB2, and RB3 drum 'cheevos.

On iOS, I still find myself going through a rotation of Battle Nations, Trade Nations (ptui!), Happy Street, and a turn or two in Letterpress and Carcassonne. I mention these because I find myself spending more time in these than on the Xbox, even when I've got the TV to myself. It's weird.

[The Sceneman]

 Goddamn. Hey Chronovore I just got Borderlands 2, if youre interested in that game. Great co-op action apparently!

[demi]

Started Raving Rabbids. There is NO DiFFICULTY CURVE at all in this: easy, easy, then suddenly IMPOSSIBLE TO PASS. I'm going to try it with the Xbox Vision Camera plugged in, see if it is even marginally playable through that -- I don't see how it could be, though. The visuals are pretty sweet, and the sound is good, but I can't imagine anyone getting into this in a party session.

Also, LOL at Ubisoft getting this through certification:
http://www.trueachievements.com/a18792/rayman-loves-drawing-achievement.htm?showguides=1

It is not possible to get this achievement. This is due to a scoring bug in the game which disallows the final challenge to unlock.

Highest possible score before unlocking challenge: 173,000 (actually less due to additional bugs in some Shake Your Booty games).
Score required to unlock challenge: 174,000.
Artwork unlocks at: 183,000.

This prevents any player from getting a score high enough to unlock the final artwork.

Just quoting this to say I told you so. You can get 1000 on DMMM, making it the superior game.

[Joe Molotov]

250G of glitched achievements.

[Rahxephon91]

I'm playing Ninja Gaiden 3 because I don't know.

[Mr. Gundam]

I'm playing Ninja Gaiden 3 because I don't know.

I've got it in my backlog... I got it for $5 and want to view the train wreck.

[demi]

Might as well get rid of it, wait for the "superior" version.

Though I'm sure the game is shit either way.

[Rahxephon91]

For $5, I'll probably buy any game that's got a recognizable name or at least not licensed fair like Hannah Montana the movie the game. 

I had a $5 off coupon for Gamestop so I got it for $10. I'm just kind of curious about how bad it is. I mean I hate to say it, but I like the look of the game at least.

[chronovore]

Just quoting this to say I told you so. You can get 1000 on DMMM, making it the superior game.

250G of glitched achievements.

  :'( :'( :'(

Well, it's pretty. But, yeah, it sucks. Is this the French studio, or the French-Canadian studio? I need to know which country to visit so I can pee on their wall.

 Goddamn. Hey Chronovore I just got Borderlands 2, if youre interested in that game. Great co-op action apparently!

I'll have to keep an eye open for it. I only have the original.

DD on Xbox.com is US$59.99, so I'll wait until it's on sale.

Looks like you finished Fiddy Cen' without me!

[The Sceneman]

For $5, I'll probably buy any game that's got a recognizable name or at least not licensed fair like Hannah Montana the movie the game. 

I had a $5 off coupon for Gamestop so I got it for $10. I'm just kind of curious about how bad it is. I mean I hate to say it, but I like the look of the game at least.

Hannah the Movie the Game is awesome

[Great Rumbler]

I'm pretty much totally in love with Lost Odyssey right now at 8 hours in. The story and characters are pulling me in a big way, the graphics aren't too hot but the locations have good enough design/art to still look pretty good, the music is a typically great Uematsu soundtrack, and I could spend all day reading those Dreams. It would be nice if the combat were more interesting, but at "merely adequate" it's good enough [and doesn't get in the way enough] for me to not really think that much about it. Unless the game really craters at some point, it'll probably end up on my top 20 list of games of this generation.

[demi]

It doesnt really crater, but it also doesnt really get better. It stays safely middling. The ending is really good, though.

[archnemesis]

I never liked where the story went in Lost Odyssey. In the beginning I was hoping it would be filled with political intrigue like a Suikoden or something, but you'll quickly realize that is just another story about heroes saving the world from an evil stereotype. The dreams are great though.

[archnemesis]

It also did a lot of other things right compared to the more recent Final Fantasy games. The level designs are really good for being an RPG and there are plenty of sidequests to do. The character progression system had potential, but there wasn't enough customization for my taste. I would have preferred if I could min-max more and steer characters into specific roles.

[The Sceneman]

Borderlands 2 seems to be a bit better than the first so far. The writing is much, much better. Seems to be more weapon variety too.

[magus]

I never liked where the story went in Lost Odyssey. In the beginning I was hoping it would be filled with political intrigue like a Suikoden or something, but you'll quickly realize that is just another story about heroes saving the world from an evil stereotype. The dreams are great though.

ayuppppppp,since the plot deals with an immortal guy,i wanted some thousand year long plot a-la dragon quest V and instead i got super generic,some part are really just plain stupid

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the villain makes the prince disappear and crown himself the new king and nobody bats an eyelid,then the prince returns and everybody is like "IT MUST BE A FAKE PRINCE" and then they chase him away

[close]

it's not a bad game but for being made "FROM THE CREATOR OF FINAL FANTASY" it's a super disappointing one
i still 1000/1000 like the rpg whore i am :'(

[Great Rumbler]

it's not a bad game but for being made "FROM THE CREATOR OF FINAL FANTASY" it's a super disappointing one

It's a better Final Fantasy than any Square has made in a good while, that's for sure.

[magus]

still playing that marvelous: another treasure game i posted a few pages ago and it's really something,it plays pretty much like link to the past in that the game throws you a bunch of tool's and you use them to solve a bunch of puzzle's although the game throws you once in a while a layton-esque puzzle (solve the password! noses,legs of birds,legs of ants,legs of spiders) but it basicaly remove all the dicking around,dungeon spelunking and combat and fit it in a linear package instead

the plot is that a team of 3 kid go camping on an island,there is a fat kid,a tall nerdy kid and a normal kid whose sprite looks really really similiar to link in ALTTP,but the island they decide to visit is actualy infested by tiny little pirates who believe that they can get some treasure by gathering 4 magical mcguffin's,the pirate kidnap the kids teacher and it's up to the kids to gather the magical mcguffin's so that they can get their teacher back

what i really like about the game is there's a lot of attention to details,the fat kid get a pair of shoes that let him kick things,if you kick a wall,he starts holding his foot and jumping in pain ,later you get to an x-ray machine and if you put each kid near it,each kid get a different scan even tough you don't really need to do it,there is also a lot of variety to it,while the puzzle all fall the usual pattern you have seen in vidyagames,they usualy come and go pretty quickly and some of them are pretty hilarious (in one you have to play the wingman between a group of male penguins and a group of female penguins so that you can enlist the help of the remaining FOREVER ALONE unpaired penguin) each magical mcguffin also has it's own mini-plot to follow,the third one is about

spoiler (click to show/hide)

human eating mutant plants,pretty grisly for a nintendo game

[close]

mmm what else,you can touch the boobs of your teacher early in the game,good thing this game has never leaved japan or we would be having a 5 page discussion about sexism in videogames

#t=5m16s

[Rahxephon91]

Yeah Ninja Gaiden 3 isn't that bad.

The fact that I can't turn off the tutorial stuff and still have QTEs appear is beyond dumb. Yeah, NG3 I think I know how to do a wall run now..

[Bebpo]

Kind of addicted to Trails in the Sky - Second Chapter - It's still slow, both plot-wise and battles and still really could use a quick travel and mini-maps in dungeons...but it's been enough time since I played FC that even though it's really expansion-style, re-visiting all the towns again and characters and seeing how everyone's changed is real nice.  Plus there's actually real antagonists this time! 

Slowly still working through SRW 2nd OGs, I'm in the middle so it's kind of stretched out and a lot of the 60 min long maps bring nothing to the plot besides "Hey, I'm a new enemy!  Let me test your ability before I run away to fight you later in real plot moments!"

AC3 has been completely shelved at this point until I finish SRW.  I kind of like AC3, but since it's not very gripping or well designed, I really just need to have a few all day sessions and knock the game out 100%.  I can play for like 2 hours and feel like I accomplished nothing.  Game's only really satisfying in all day sessions.

Zettai Hero Project 2 I shelved this two to concentrate on getting through 2nd OGs.  Might get back to playing it soon.  Been missing playing it since it was a whole lot of fun when I started it.


I noticed that the last videogame I finished was in mid-January   I have no clue why am I playing 3 rpgs and a 50 hour Assassin's Creed game.  This is probably all I'm playing for the first half of 2013.  Need to start playing short games again.  Especially since I only game 10 or so hours a week these days.

[Cormacaroni]

epic post from Borys

[chronovore]

Yeah, I felt like I was trapped in a DOS dungeon for several minutes.

[Positive Touch]

good god i wish i had the patience to play one of those old-school games. they always look so fuckin awesome.

[Great Rumbler]

I've still got Thunderscape on CD around somewhere, I may have to bust out that bad boy and play it a little.

[magus]

you guys really have to try marvelous: another treasure,turns out that

spoiler (click to show/hide)

they aren't just human eating mutant plant,they are HUMAN EATING MUTANT PLANT THAT COPY THEIR HOST,THEY EVEN MURDER A DOG! AND YOU GET TO FIND THE DOG SKELETON! more ballsy than modern warfare murdered child i tell ya! so you have to go all blade runner like on the whole village solving stuff and spraying random NPC with salt water since salt water makes the plant dissolve like the wicked witch of the west,it's hilarious

[close]

in mcguffin number 4

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the party get shrinked to microscopic size and they have to help a bunch of tiny fairies in a war against blue ants

[close]

 

[Fifstar]

Still playing The Witcher. Good game, although I expected it to be a bit more hardcore. Character development is a bit simple and quest markers and the journal make things a bit too streamlined. On the positive side, there's shit lots to do and you pretty consistently get stuff done so it's motivating to play.

[Eric P]

was having a bit of fun w/ Legacy of Kain but I got a bit bored with it.  Etherlords 2 campaign hit a brick wall and there's a guy i can't figure out how to beat.  he spams these weakness spells over and over which lead me to have creatures with 0 attack and there aren't enough direct damage spells to drop him.  totes annoying.

so i've started working on Divine Divinity.  it's fun in a kind of janky way.  like a slow Diablo clone

[tiesto]

I remember on one of my first dates with an ex (this was back in the early 2000's, maybe my 3rd or 4th gf ever?), she was showing me Divine Divinity... since she liked a lot of obscure PC RPGs from Germany and Eastern Europe. Then I let her borrow Skies of Arcadia GC and... well now she's buying Gust games and stuff

I'm playing Soul Bubbles. I got halfway through it, then quit, because I hated it. But now I have stockholm syndrome with the game and I want to get every S rank in the game. I'm now up to the final world, did the first stage but got fucked over at the end. Game is so obnoxious but now I just want to beat it just to be all like "FUCK YOU GAME".

Also played Shadow of the Ninja NES - it's pretty good but a bit frustrating. And Sonic Generations, which is much better than I expected, even if the 3D stages aren't as good as the 2D ones. Definitely the best Sonic since the Genesis days though.

[Eric P]

well diablo in the action rpg way

[Eric P]

got out of the first dungeon and Divine Divinty is now pretty awesome.  I keep forgetting to save though so i'll just get wiped tf out and lose a half hour or so.  suxx

[Eric P]

also it's actually funny in a surreal way.  really unexpected to have skeletons explode after having an existential crisis

[Positive Touch]

  keep it coming bro

[Great Rumbler]

What kind of DOSBox setting are you using, Borys?

[tiesto]

What kind of DOSBox setting are you using, Borys?

DOSBox? He's probably running that on his brand-new 486 DX33!

[Great Rumbler]

[G The Resurrected]

something on a 4th gen sony console made by crazy asians who still don't know how to make games 

[Cerveza mas fina]

That game looks cool B, but I can never play those dungeon crawlers. I even tried that new one on Steam and it was cool for a few hours but then I just quit.

[The Sceneman]

sounds like u need these new dick pills, I heard these r da bomb! I'm running shit on Devon Street with my new 12" dick!

[Great Rumbler]

It's vanilla DOSBox: SoundBlaster 16 or compatible (cannot get Gravis Ultrasound to work ), 35000 CPU cycles, full-screen 320x240 with bilinear filtering I think.

Are you using the CD at all? I've tried everything I can think of, but the game just instantly crashes every time I start it up.

[hampster]

I used my $10 PSN bribe to buy Final Fantasy 9. Man does the game look good on the vita's screen. So many happy memories flooding back

The battle system is slower than I remembered though I'm looking forward to when I can get auto-haste on my entire party

[The Sceneman]

game is so good.

[magus]

i've finished marvelous,the kid get back to the island with all the mcguffins,solve another last batch of puzzle's (including a sliding one,i hate sliding puzzle's) rescue their teacher and find the treasure (which turns out to be a hot-air balloon...) once again,if you are the kind of guy who dick around with a snes emulator you should play it

[Great Rumbler]

I found a site that sets it all up for me, so I'm gonna play some Thunderscape later this week!

[Cormacaroni]

dicked around with Quake 3/Quake Live last night out of nostalgia. It was shocking how bad at it I've gotten but MAN after all these shitty slow-paced console FPSes it was a blast to play something that fast and crazy again. I wasn't even a big fan of it back in the day (Quake 2/UT mostly) but it makes a really refreshing change. And watching the demos of the current top players is so much fun. They are just otherworldly in terms of skill and strategy.

[Freyj]

game is so good.

game is so    s     l     o      w

[Great Rumbler]

dicked around with Quake 3/Quake Live last night out of nostalgia. It was shocking how bad at it I've gotten but MAN after all these shitty slow-paced console FPSes it was a blast to play something that fast and crazy again. I wasn't even a big fan of it back in the day (Quake 2/UT mostly) but it makes a really refreshing change. And watching the demos of the current top players is so much fun. They are just otherworldly in terms of skill and strategy.

Watching the Quake Live championship matches at QuakeCon is so much fun, those guys are incredibly good at it.

[Cormacaroni]

that dude rapha is godlike - I saw a youtube vid of him commenting on one of his matches against cooller and his tactical thinking is just off the freakin' charts.

I bet he could stop the demo at any point and give you a solid approximate read on where the other is and what their health/armor/items are too. After spending several years on Quake 2, I could do that on maybe q2dm1 and that's it

[Cormacaroni]

feel free to hit me up with links to awesome demos btw, i am chewing through them like a fat kid eats cake

[Rahxephon91]

Awesome. New Battlefield 3 maps today for PS3 users. move over Tomb Raider.

[magus]

would anyone care if i talked more in details about the board games i play online? i mean they aren't really vidyagames and there's no reason to describe/talk about them if nobody cares in the first place

[magus]

i just don't want to sound like a broken record

anyway i play this shit called race to the galaxy a lot,it's a role selector game,basicaly in these kind of games each player picks a role and then stuff happens based on roles picked,in race to the galaxy each player starts with 4 card,some cards rappresent world to settle and other technologies that help you

at the start of each turn each player has to decide between exploring (drawing cards) settling (play a world card) developing (play a technology card) consuming (which let you use your commercial world and technologies to score point based on goods you have or it let you sell goods so you can draw more cards) and produce (which produce goods based on the world you played) each card in your hand is played by discarding the number of card on the top left so there is a lot of decision to take! sometimes 2 card in your hand will work well together but they are both expensive so you have to decide between taking it slow and accumulating card so you can play them both or just playing 1 and hope you can do without the other one

most of the card usualy give you a bonus when certain roles are picked (the bank let you draw extra card everytime the develop role is picked for example) so it's important to abuse as many bonus as possible but what really gives a tone to the game are 6-cost development,these are the most expensive card but unlike the other card who usualy are worth a fixed and small number of points,these give you a number of points which varies depending on what is in your board which is usualy pretty big,this usualy force you to follow a theme when playing cards therefore making the game pretty thematic,the first time i played all the military card (which are required to settle militarized planet) and then finished by playing a card that let you score based on military therefore achieving victory by EVIL EMPIRE POWER! there is a 6-cost that reward you for playing technologies,one that reward you for playing economic card and it's really really neat when you build a board that works

best part of all,all you need to play is to download this program
http://keldon.net/rftg/