What are you playing?

[iconoclast]

Lost Planet 2 is $10 at newegg on the X360 and I have a $10 gift card so it'd only cost 83 cents tax w/free shipping, but I still don't think it'll be worth it.  No one's left to play coop with and I really don't want to 1p the game from everything I've heard :\

Oh my god why is the PS3 so annoying. Every 10 minutes Heavy Rain keeps asking me to download a 1GB patch. I have pressed circle like 5 times by now, fuck off

Why not just download the patch? ^^;

AFAIK it's just a Move compatibility patch and I really don't care to spend 60 minutes downloading something I'll never use. I just want to play the game.

For what it's worth, there were still quite a few people playing LP2 online when I last had it a few months ago. It's still not as good as LP1 though. Best part of the game is the graphics to be honest.

[Diunx]

Downloaded Odin's Sphere and Shin Megami Nocturne but haven't played any of them since I still have to finish Tales of the Abyss.

Spend the afternoon playing Black Ops on ps3 but it pisses me off that you can't use more than one account while playing online on the same tv, its that feature a ps3 exclusive or is it like that on the 360 too?

[Positive Touch]

360 has the same dumb shit.  i have multiple accounts on it but only MY gold account can play online.  just let my friends get some cheevs while we splitscreen jeez

[Trent Dole]

So Mad World is 480i, eeew. Plays like a low rent No More Heroes. I'll give it another try later and see if it grows on me, if not I got it for cheap just to finish off a gift card to Amazon anyway so it may just get traded in for something better.

[iconoclast]

MadWorld is pretty awful. The boss battles are the only good thing about the game, everything in between is abysmal.

Anyway, I kinda like Heavy Rain so far. It's QTEs: The Game, but they're at least pretty varied and I'm interested in seeing where the story goes. The ARI shit had me ing for a while though. So wacky and out of place.

[Bebpo]

Heavy Rain is a good game.  It's an adventure QTE game, but the story has very cool branching and is engaging after the early slowness. 

I think it's lolz that people are complaining so much about it getting #6 in GAF's GOTY awards yet everyone is ok with GoWIII being #5.  I think HR is definitely the better game between the two.

[Smooth Groove]

Heavy Rain is a good game.  It's an adventure QTE game, but the story has very cool branching and is engaging after the early slowness. 

I think it's lolz that people are complaining so much about it getting #6 in GAF's GOTY awards yet everyone is ok with GoWIII being #5.  I think HR is definitely the better game between the two.

Yeah, GAF's horrible tastes confirmed.  At least Heavy Rain brought something new to the table.

If I wanna play GOW, I'd probably play Ghost of Sparta instead even though I generally think handheld gaming sucks.   Ghost of Sparta has a nicer framerate, better story and the game isn't focused on showing off its engine.  All the zooming in and out in GOW3 did nothing but annoy me. 

[Bebpo]

Actually Sparta has the worse framerate between the two   It tries to be 30fps locked, but it's not and is probably ~20-25fps a lot.  GoW3 is somewhere between 30-60 at any given moment.

I like both, GoW3 has better environments/weapons/more bosses; Sparta has better story.

[Smooth Groove]

Ok, I trust your word since I only played the first 45 mins of Ghost of Sparta.  The framerate was pretty stable in the early parts of the game and I was quite impressed with the visuals it was pulling off on the PSP.  It looked almost like a PS2 game. 

I'm fairly sure that GOW3 dip below 30 in quite a few spots though.  For example, I kept screwing up against the spider boss because of the framerate lag. 

[cool breeze]

does Ghost of Sparta run at 333 normally? I think CoO did.  If not, I'll probably up it whenever I get around to playing it and hopefully that'll help.  I'm still feeling sick about playing those types of games again after castlevania.

and you know you're posting on gaf when there are three weak Sony games in the top 10.  Of them, Heavy Rain probably deserves it the most.  Not that God of War 3 is bad because I liked it quite a bit, but it's God of War again.  For the terrible story, writing, voice acting, etc. from Heavy Rain at least it did a lot of nice things other games need to copy.  The branching story did a good job into making you think your choices mattered, even though it was a lot of smoke and mirror nonsense.  But I thought games like 999 and Alpha Protocol did it better.  I think the best thing it did was make QTEs exciting, dynamic, engaging, satisfying, other shallow praise, etc.  Good effort considering Indigo Prophecy QTE was just simon while watching an unrelated video play in the background.

[Bebpo]

I thought the most lolz thing on that list was FFXIII being #18.  After all the backlash I really wouldn't have expected it anywhere on a GoTY list.

[magus]

MadWorld is pretty awful. The boss battles are the only good thing about the game, everything in between is abysmal.

Anyway, I kinda like Heavy Rain so far. It's QTEs: The Game, but they're at least pretty varied and I'm interested in seeing where the story goes. The ARI shit had me ing for a while though. So wacky and out of place.

i like madworld but it's more for the dark humor ("i like jack style,he either hits people with stuff or he hits stuff with people") than for the game itself... the bosses sucks,they are all hit and run affair with lame QTE at the end

[iconoclast]

I'm surprised Bayonetta did well. It can't beat out the mass appeal games like ME2, RDR, and Mario, but #4 is a good place for it. The real travesty is Alan Wake being one place ahead of Vanquish. Shameful, just shameful.

[Smooth Groove]

Just finished Yakuza PSP/Black Leopard.  It was pretty awesome, though the story came a bit unglued at the end, moreso than usual for the series.  It definitely felt cut back from the PS3/PS2 games, but there was still lots of stuff to do.  The battle system is totally the AKI engine from No Mercy/Def Jam with a few Yakuza trappings bolted on, so it was different, but still awesome.

Guess I'll head back to Etrian Odyssey 3 now.

Sounds interesting.  Will there be a US version though?

[Robo]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=418389

324. Iron Roses

 

[Stoney Mason]

Played about an hour of Darksiders last evening. Seems fun enough.

[iconoclast]

Just finished Heavy Rain with the best possible ending I think. Awesome game with an Oscar-worthy story for sure.

But seriously, I liked it. There's a lot of stupid crap that happens in the story and there are a few plotholes, but you know what, I don't really care! The game was still fun from start to finish (well, for the most part). Which is quite an achievement actually, since QTEs are inherently awful. I'll probably get the platinum before I send it back.

[Bebpo]

If you want to platinum I think you need to beat it a bunch of times with every possible ending, so you might want to not bother or you could end up hating the game by the end 

[pilonv1]

Wasn't Iron Roses a 2009 game?

[Great Rumbler]

Wasn't Iron Roses a 2009 game?

Yeah, but I doubt anyone knew it existed until the retail and Steam releases, which were both February of this year.

[Stoney Mason]

Swapping back and forth between Darksiders and Mass Effect on the PC. I have a feeling this will take me awhile.

Also some Civ 5 mixed in there. I like Civ 5. Perhaps I'm just a low-level player so the fact that it isn't as tough as Civ 4 doesn't really bother me like it bothers others. Enjoying myself playing that.

[cool breeze]

If you're playing Mass Effect on PC, I think one the DLC packs are free (probably the first).  The second, pinnacle station is pretty whack, but it at least helps you hit the level cap in one playthrough.


I'm replaying Batman AA on PC.  Got it for free with my video card like a month after it was released and at that time I had it on the PS3.  The physx effects are taxing my single gtx275, but they really add to the atmosphere.  Forgot how good this game is.

[duckman2000]

Batman AA

Splinter Cell Conviction

[tiesto]

Planescape Torment - about to leave for the Fortress. Hope to have this beaten this weekend.

Cthulu Saves the World - friend saved over my game the other day so I had to start over, now up to the zombie town

Maids With Balloons - it's even worse than I imagined. Seriously, you guys need to d/l the demo just to be like "what the hell"? One of the worst indie games yet.

Vorpal - pretty good indie shmup, nice red/white/black colorscheme and a few twists and turns on the old bullet-hell formula. Especially like the "locator rectangle" at the bottom of the screen.

[Robo]

The Force Unleashed - So they must've gotten this game about 70% complete and either ran out of time/money or just kinda gave up, huh.

[maxy]

Heavy Rain is a good game.  It's an adventure QTE game, but the story has very cool branching and is engaging after the early slowness. 

I think it's lolz that people are complaining so much about it getting #6 in GAF's GOTY awards yet everyone is ok with GoWIII being #5.  I think HR is definitely the better game between the two.

Yeah, GAF's horrible tastes confirmed.  At least Heavy Rain brought something new to the table.

If I wanna play GOW, I'd probably play Ghost of Sparta instead even though I generally think handheld gaming sucks.   Ghost of Sparta has a nicer framerate, better story and the game isn't focused on showing off its engine.  All the zooming in and out in GOW3 did nothing but annoy me. 

Unrelated to this,but check this Peace Walker framerate analysis,interesting
http://blog.livedoor.jp/ps360/archives/51316433.html#more


I think i saw portable GOW analysis some time ago,could be deleted

Found it
[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

Check his youtube channel,tons of vids there

http://www.youtube.com/user/ps360frame?ob=0

[Bebpo]

Most 3d game framerates on handhelds are sub-30fps.  Wonder if it'll change with 3DS and PSP2.

[The Sceneman]

it will change, but battery life will then be sub-30mins. lol

[magus]

i'm starting to get pissed at the turtle's i killed 5 of them in a row and none of them dropped a single ingot,i'm starting to think that maybe i should switch to a safer/less annoying way to make money for treasure hunter achievement....

i've already done every lightining weapon,snow weapon and sazh weapon (except the one which requires a dark matter to upgrade) maybe i should just sell all of my upgraded stuff and see if i get enough money to get the rest?

[demi]

There is no safer/less annoying way. Enjoy your grind.

Selling excess is a good way to catch up near the end though.

[magus]

eh gamefaqs says otherwise,they suggest either

1) Murdering mark 7 over and over which drop accessories that either sell for 15.000 or 40.000,while the net gain is lower i'm pretty sure it takes me 2 second to murder him as opposed to 2 minutes

2) in taijin tower there is a very easy mark to repeat,every repeat you get material for 6.000 bucks,it's even smaller than method number 1 but at least it doesn't rely on roll of dices

but anyway i will still continue the turtlecide until every character is maxed and i get the master seal achievement,then i'm going to finish every mark getting galuf's grail,l'cie paragon and exorcist,then i'm going to murder the shaolong for the adamant will achievement and finaly after that i hope i will have enough money to get the treasure hunter one

oh by the way,this has bothered me for a while... what happens if i play the first half of the game in a language and then switch language in the mid? would all the achievements i get after switching the language be translated in the language when i started playing or the language after i switch?

[iconoclast]

The best way I found of getting money was to do the mark (50 something, I think) that asks you to kill one of the turtles in the open field. Start the quest, go to the field, get on your chocobo, and circle around the field killing all 5 turtles. When you complete the mark, you get some guaranteed money + whatever random loot you got from the turtles (traps, ingots). Rinse and repeat about 100 times.

[magus]

ah yes there is that too,you get a gold nugget everytime you repeat the mark which i believe sells either for 15.000 or 30.000 i can't really remember... but really the point is that i want to stop making money murdering turtle because it still takes 2 minute to kill them!

[demi]

oh by the way,this has bothered me for a while... what happens if i play the first half of the game in a language and then switch language in the mid? would all the achievements i get after switching the language be translated in the language when i started playing or the language after i switch?

A game's achievements are by region. I'm pretty sure FF13 has one set of achievements, all english. Some games will be labeled as such. For example it might be

Gears of War

Gears of War [JP]

Magna Carta 2

Magna Carta 2 [EU]

[magus]

ok i finaly got the master seal achievement,i have done everybody tier 2 weapons except fang,i have 2 trap from the turtle's tough from what i understand i can get 3 extra more by dismantling genji gloves and another 1 if i dismantle either the tier 3 weapon of either fang or vanille

so basicaly

1) go murder the remaining hunts
2) go murder the shaolong gui
3) continue murdering the shaolong gui until he drops 5 dark matter
4) grind some extra money to get all the perovskite i need to upgrade all those annoying status resist ailment

and i should be done

[Raban]

Picked up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West over the weekend and beat it in a couple days. Awesome game. It feels a lot like this gen's BG&E. I got like half the cheevs going through it on Hard the first time, gonna go back and 1000 it one of these days, since I really wanna play Pigsy's Perfect 10 as well.

Certain things about Enslaved really bothered me, though. The combat isn't too fun near the end of the game and during the final phase of the last boss fight I used a finisher move on an enemy and ended up disabling my attacks due to some glitch, so I had to return to the last checkpoint and it put me back at the beginning of the boss fight. That kinda sucked. Also it sucks they ended Enslaved how they did, because I would've really like a sequel

[maxy]

Picked up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West over the weekend and beat it in a couple days. Awesome game. It feels a lot like this gen's BG&E. I got like half the cheevs going through it on Hard the first time, gonna go back and 1000 it one of these days, since I really wanna play Pigsy's Perfect 10 as well.

Certain things about Enslaved really bothered me, though. The combat isn't too fun near the end of the game and during the final phase of the last boss fight I used a finisher move on an enemy and ended up disabling my attacks due to some glitch, so I had to return to the last checkpoint and it put me back at the beginning of the boss fight. That kinda sucked. Also it sucks they ended Enslaved how they did, because I would've really like a sequel

I think they said that they would love to make a sequel

[magus]

i defeat the long gui quickly enough thanks to the fact that he's knocked down everytime you summon (i summoned twice trough an elixir) but defeating the shaolong is a huge pain in the ass,it took me 30 minutes to get the timing to defeat this thing right and after all my effort what did i got? a gold ingot! and i have to get 5 dark matter fighting these things AND they are a rare drop?

fuck the 1000/1000,i quit at 920/1000

[iconoclast]

Dark matter isn't nearly as rare as the Traps, from my experience. I got like 4 of them within an hour or two.

[magus]

it's just that i'm having an incredibly hard time murdering the shaolongs and i don't have any idea how i'm supposed to do better! i can stagger the thing once and shave 5-7 million HP out of it,but after that the turtle start spamming ultima and i have to waste tons of time defending and healing before i can stagger it again and deal the final 5-3 million damage

it was already incredibly annoying to do once,i don't want to go trough that shit several times until it decides to give up

maybe if i summoned after staggering it?

[iconoclast]

I never bothered using summons since they take 3 TP and you only get 5 total. I really only used them when I was too weak to kill the turtles normally, or as a last resort when I was about to die. It's better to just find a strategy that you can repeat consistently. IIRC, it should only take a few minutes to kill them once you get the rhythm down.

[magus]

apparently the turtle can be hit with daze which stops him dead in his track and give you more time to punch it in the face as it stops the chain bar too... i'll try go with that and see if it's more efficent

[Robo]

Walmart.com has the 360 version of Singularity for $15.  Worth it?

[Stoney Mason]

Walmart.com has the 360 version of Singularity for $15.  Worth it?

I liked it but it totally depends on how you value $15 dollars. It's sort of a Bioshock meets Half-Life wanna-be. Not as good as either title obviously but I did find it a pleaseant diversion. The MP is dead though so you are strictly paying/playing for the 5 or 6 hour campaign.

[Robo]

$15 dollars is about a half hour at the bar, so I'd say it's worth it for 5 or 6 hours of good gaming.  Thanks

[Raban]

Picked up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West over the weekend and beat it in a couple days. Awesome game. It feels a lot like this gen's BG&E. I got like half the cheevs going through it on Hard the first time, gonna go back and 1000 it one of these days, since I really wanna play Pigsy's Perfect 10 as well.

Certain things about Enslaved really bothered me, though. The combat isn't too fun near the end of the game and during the final phase of the last boss fight I used a finisher move on an enemy and ended up disabling my attacks due to some glitch, so I had to return to the last checkpoint and it put me back at the beginning of the boss fight. That kinda sucked. Also it sucks they ended Enslaved how they did, because I would've really like a sequel

I think they said that they would love to make a sequel

Yay! It just seemed the way they ended was like "We don't give a fuck, this game will never sell."

[iconoclast]

Nearly done with the season in Split Second. The game gets a lot better once you start unlocking cars that handle like they belong in an arcade racer. I've still got some problems with the game, like the horrible rubberbanding and the party game-esque ability to lose by no fault of your own, but it's still pretty fun. One thing that is hilariously bad is how often a car will come up from behind you, speed up massively, ram into your bumper, and go under your car. I have never seen that happen in any racing game.

Decent game though. It doesn't compare to the kings of the genre, but it's good enough.

[Bebpo]

Split/Second has the worst rubberband in a racing game.  Even beats out Mario Kart.  I couldn't stand that shit after a while.  Without the rubberbanding it would've been a cool SP game.  As it stands it's a cool MP game with a lame SP.  I liked Blur SP much more.


I'm 65% through PoP The Two Thrones.  It's a lot better than Warrior Within, but everything that isn't platforming is still full of suck and the story/acting are terrible.  PoP was a pretty shoddy series last gen (although I guess a lot of people will argue it's pretty shoddy this gen too, but I liked both 2008 & Forgotten Sands).  I think 2008 & FS show ubisoft has the right idea that PoP should be about the platforming with combat as an afterthought occasionally.  The last gen trilogy focused way too much on having the games be action titles with occasional platforming (although SoT had really really good platforming to make up for it).

[iconoclast]

Yeah, the rubberbanding is really as bad as it gets. Combine that with bullshit powers that can knock you from 1st to 7th in an instant and the single player is basically garbage. Only got one more episode to gold medal though, thank god this is almost over.

[magus]

i killed 2 shaolong gui and they dropped nothing,i tried to murder a third one but it would always cast bay murdering my whole party because daze didn't stick long enough so in short fuck the treasure hunter achievement!

so i started lost odyssey but i can't really say much at the moment,i got dropped in a city and i checked every single pot/pillar/poster/crate/stray cat... talk about an anal retentive achievement! the music is really good but it should be no surprise considered it's made by uematsu which is like king of videogame musician

the frame rate sometimes take a dips especialy when the camera splits which is a little lame... i'm also not sure i like the whole "PRESS RT AND RELEASE" system... why they couldn't just let me push a button? other than that so far it looks like a really solid JRPG,fixed camera,nice looking place's,great music,an interessing premise

one thing that struck me as odd is that when i started the game there were no logo or stuff,it just went straight to the title screen which was just kinda of empty looking... is it supposed to be like that?

[demi]

Yes

Also install all your games... providing you have the firmware update that lets you

[Positive Touch]

one thing that struck me as odd is that when i started the game there were no logo or stuff,it just went straight to the title screen which was just kinda of empty looking... is it supposed to be like that?

omg seriously?  ive wished for that ever since companies started putting dumb animations at the start of their games back in the 90s

[maxy]

one thing that struck me as odd is that when i started the game there were no logo or stuff,it just went straight to the title screen which was just kinda of empty looking... is it supposed to be like that?

LO is like that,Blue Dragon also...you will probably see Microsoft Game Studios logo and then some white or black screen
Also install games just like Demi said,loading times are quicker in LO if you install(like in 99.99% other games)

One other thing,if you plan to get Blue Dragon,get version that has Japanese voices,much much better

[Himu]

LO owns

BD owns

[Herr Mafflard]

The thousand year dreams are pretty sick as well. I'm still ashamed i only read about half of them before i finished the game.

[iconoclast]

Made it to stage 5 in Maniac mode in Mushihime-sama Futari Black Label (with Reco).

The stages are fairly easy in Black Label, it's the bosses (and some mid-bosses) that are kicking my ass. I think if I hit up training mode for a while I could clear this, which kinda surprises me. I always thought anything above Original would be too hard without tons of practice, but Maniac BL is much more forgiving than I expected. Plus the scoring is a lot more fun compared to Original. What an amazing game, one of the very few classics of this generation.

[magus]

The thousand year dreams are pretty sick as well. I'm still ashamed i only read about half of them before i finished the game.

yea i like them a lot,there is something about them that i can't really explain,it's like when i watched kino's journey.....

i'm still not sure what to feel about the rest of the game,it's really well done but it feels somewhat bland,i crossed a generic mountain and one of the enemies was a blue bird... wow.... inspired! i would joke "what's next? giant scorpions?" but the next dungeon actualy had them..... the battle also feel a little slow

one nice touch is that accesories are visible so kaim sometimes ends up wearing a rubbish pair of earrings or some sweet-ass googles

but anyway is there any reason to equip a skill accessory on mortals? do they have the skill as long as they keep the accessories around? is there any difference between learning a skill by linking with a mortal or trough an accessory? i could learn "steal" with both and just went with learning it by linking to jansen just to save myself the money required to buy the accessory

[iconoclast]

Finished the season in Split Second. The single player is atrocious in this game with the aforementioned rubberbanding and power up garbage. Now I've been spending time playing online trying to get to rank 1. Then this happens:

> get stuck in an infinite loading loop before the race begins
> dashboard out after 15 minutes
> lose 10 ranks

Garbage game. 2/10

[OptimoPeach]

I'm probably like 2-3 hours from finishing Arkham Asylum and I can't wait to be done at this point. This game would be a boring crapfest if it weren't for the stealth parts

[Bebpo]

Finished The Two Thrones, so now my playthrough of the last-gen PoP trilogy is complete.  Wasn't a particularly good trilogy and especially doesn't hold up these days.  Sands of Time outside of the fighting is still awesome and an incredibly well designed game like playing an old Mario title.  Warrior Within sucks shit.  The Two Thrones sucks less shit, but instead of feeling like a fanmod like WW, it feels like an outsourced game that is a hollow shell of what the franchise should be and is just mimicing what the previous games did with a new paint of coat.  I didn't hate my time spent with TTT like I did in WW, but about 20% of TTT was RAGE/hate mode from some awful game design choices; luckily the other 80% was enjoyable, just never enjoyable to the point that Sands of Time or even Forgotten Sands was. 

Hopefully whatever PoP they do next is good and doesn't go all WW on us.  This gen doesn't need any PoP games like WW/TTT imo. 


Now I should probably turn to another Ubisoft franchise I need to catch up on by playing Splinter Cell Conviction.