What are you currently playing?

[JUSTINBAILEY]

Replaying Final Fantasy VI just cause. Old school ftw.

Kain and Cecil for the win. I liked this game just as much if not a little more than FF1, although 1 has the benefit of being my first FF game 4 has the benefit of being my second (Until my super NES broke) I remember wanting to play "2" first. It was too complicated for me and I could never find the bed in the castle at the beginning. I happily played 1 instead. After I managed to beat 1 my brother and I played through "2" together.

[InstrumentalityOne]

At the final boss of Persona 3 Portable.
I was halfway through the boss(or so it seemed, at least.)
Then I got hit by an insta-kill light skill because I forgot to switch Personas.



I don´t feel like re-doing the boss again, postponed until monday.

GRRRRR

[NemZ]

Kain and Cecil for the win.

Agreed, but he meant 6.

[schismatics]

I don´t feel like re-doing the boss again, postponed until monday.

Give it a few days and you'll be fine. I was stuck in Birth by Sleep at one of those damn "keyblade duel" bosses, but I waited like a week and for some reason I was able to do it one go, after consistently getting my ass handed to me.

Beat Kirby's Epic Yarn. Whee.

Then restarted on Twilight Princess. I'm not really sure, why I didn't give my Wii any love, there are some solid games on it.

[The Abhorrent]

Completed Castlevania: Lords of Shadow about a week back, very fun and interesting game. The series has been struggling to break into 3D for years now, so it's about damn time in that regard. Superbly balanced mix of combat, puzzles, and platforming. Still, some improvements could be made for the game. The best part of the game took place with the actual castle, making the last arc of the game a bit of a letdown in terms of how much fun it was and especially visually (easily the worst looking area in the game by far, even if it's justified to be that way). The controls can be a bit tempermental, as they don't always feel intuitive. It's most obvious when you're doing the platforming sections of the game, you don't move in referrence as the way the camera implies. To move Gabriel to his left, point the stick to the left even if that's downward on the screen. Once you understand it, that part of the game works out brilliantly.... but it takes some getting used to. On the whole though, a step in the right direction for the series.


This last week I've been jumping back and forth between a few other games:

• Final Fantasy IX - One of my favourite games in the series, a superb blend of the PS1 era graphics & gameplay and the older games' feel. Perfect game for a nostalgia trip without being too jarred by pre-polygon graphics. Also one of the funniest games I've ever played: "Ooh... soft." Unfortunately the game was starting to get a little annoying around the start of Disc 2 (Gargant Roo and Cleyra's Trunk, plus a party that isn't over-levelled.... yeah, many enemies are annoying). The storytelling and characters are superb throughout.
  
• Final Fantasy XIII - Had this sitting on my shelf for a while, so I decided to give it a shot. Very interesting gameplay, especially once you get access to the Paradigm system. Auto-battle is arguably a tad too effective (the AI will always pick the right attacks for the paradigm you're in), but you still have to pick targets and the Paradigm setup your characters are in manually. Finding the right setups for the fight and timing when to use them is the real challenge of the battle system. Storywise it's one of the weaker entrants in the series so far (5-6 hours in), but still decent. However, Vanille is definitely annoying me; the rest of the characters are still interesting (at least somewhat).
  
• Dragon Age: Origins - With DA2 right around the corner, started up a new game yet again. I've only played through the whole game once, but I've started new characters a couple dozen times who get nowhere. No idea if I'll get all the way through this time either. Turned off a couple mods this time, and it seems to be running MUCH smoother.... so maybe I'll get further without being annoyed by combat-lag (computer's a bit old now, but I can't quite afford to build a new one yet; fortunately, the old one is still running solid and able to handle just about anything except the newest and most demanding of games).
  
• Bayonetta - Another game which was sitting on the shelf for far too long (WoW's a bloody time-sink), but I gave this game another shot the last couple days. A hack & slash game, not too dissimilar to CV:LoS but has a far heavier focus on combat (minimal platforming so far, just dodging rapidly advancing obstacles or jumping between falling pieces of whatever to reach stable ground; puzzles are a bit more common but very simple in premise if tricky in execution). The tales of this game's style being so utterly insane aren't overstated. Heck, it probably can't be exaggerated at all. It revels in campiness and absurdity, literally demanding that common sense (and any sort of personal standard for that matter) be thrown out the window while playing the game. Honestly, this game must have escaped from the asylum.

[Azathoth]

Assassin's Creed 2 on my horrible school laptop (a MacBook Pro with dual core Intel i5 processor, I'm sure you can guess how well that works )

Having only played the first one on Ecksbawks I think I've never seen a game whose control-scheme fit so well to consoles and so poorly to a PC. It's not unplayably bad but it's painfully awkward to control after how natural the original felt. I guess the fact that this piece of shit computer cannot into framerate doesn't help either. Too bad because the game itself seems like it'd be quite fun with a better set-up, same entertaining blend of ren-fair cheesiness, tinfoil-hat ANCIENT FREEMASONS CONSPIRACY bullshit, and stealth/swashbuckling badassery. As in the first game though, the present-day stuff is so silly, weakly written, and badly acted it makes me wonder why they thought it was a good idea (apart from that it provides a convenient framing device - if that's all they wanted then why not pull a Dragon Age 2 and make the whole game part of a story being told to the grandkids or whatever). Whatever, core gameplay is still solid although still not remotely difficult, and Ezio is a much more interesting character than Altaïr - he's probably now above Sam Fisher on the scale of stealthan games protagonists, catching up to Solid Snake (although still a few miles behind Big Boss).

also "I mean besides vaginas" and "It's-a me, Mario" both made me laugh harder than any jokes in a video game I can remember.

[The Eva Monkey]

I purchased Hard Corps: Uprising from XBLA. It's pretty good. I am however pissed that you have to pay extra to download the third and fourth character. I'll bet it's already in the game package, you're just paying extra to unlock the content. Totally lame.

[Killer Bee]

[*]Bayonetta - Another game which was sitting on the shelf for far too long (WoW's a bloody time-sink), but I gave this game another shot the last couple days. A hack & slash game, not too dissimilar to CV:LoS but has a far heavier focus on combat (minimal platforming so far, just dodging rapidly advancing obstacles or jumping between falling pieces of whatever to reach stable ground; puzzles are a bit more common but very simple in premise if tricky in execution). The tales of this game's style being so utterly insane aren't overstated. Heck, it probably can't be exaggerated at all. It revels in campiness and absurdity, literally demanding that common sense (and any sort of personal standard for that matter) be thrown out the window while playing the game. Honestly, this game must have escaped from the asylum.

I love Bayonetta. I remember starting it for the first time and seeing the angels at the beginning cutscene and thinking, "Hey, those look just like the MP Evas. I wonder if..." And then I realized Fly Me To The Moon was playing in the background.

Gotta love subtle Eva references.

[gatotsu911]

Persona 3 Portable and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, with a little bit of Final Fantasy VIII and Dragon Quest V in-between. Gotta pick up my reserved copies of Radiant Historia and Tactics Ogre, not to mention download Xenogears (a game I've been meaning to play for ages).

[ZapX]

Xenogears is amazing, as long as you're cool with an Evangelion 25 and 26 TV disc 2 (the budget was cut and you get this existential, introspective storytelling device; I think it's fine but people complain about it) and the bad english dubbing. You seem like you have similar taste to mine in RPG's so I think you'll love it. Remember that disc 2 telling the story with a cut budget and that the dub is laughable at some points and you'll be fine. It's one of the best RPG's ever made.

I finished Killzone 3. It wasn't as good story wise as KZ2 but I think the gameplay was fun. Worth a rental, certainly. Right now I'm playing Okami and falling in love with it all over again in anticipation of the sequel that's coming in March.

After that I'll replay Parasite Eve 1 and 2 to get ready for the release of the 3rd game at the end of March.

[Azathoth]

Dark Athena frankly isn't as good as Butcher Bay was - the port of the original campaign is mediocre and the new content never really captures the feel of the original. But as usual Vin Diesel is fucking awesome. It's a pity that the Riddick movies seem to have stalled, they're the only entertaining space opera film franchise I can think of in the post-Star Wars era - I suppose because all the good space opera moved to video games. Funny how that works.

[arkiel]

Just finished Bulletstorm. Playing Mass Effect 2 now. Keep on trying to energy whip and kick krogans...

Bulletstorm should go over well in Japan. A first person shooter with a high score chart? Yeah, they'll eat that up.

[InstrumentalityOne]

Finally beaten Persona 3 Portable last night, I originally wanted to beat the final boss on monday but I nailed it, causing me to lose a lot of precious sleep.

But I did it! The final final boss was awesome too.

All in all, great game.
Now I´m thinking about if I should play Persona 4 or not, because I was careless and spoiled myself on danbooru.
(Played P3 kind of spoiled too, but it was okay.)

Maybe I should go play Persona 3 FES?

[ZapX]

To be fair, I got spoiled with P4 about halfway through, because of

SPOILER: Show

, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the hell out of it. FES is cool if you want to see things happen in 3D rather than VN style and play the epilogue, but I hate not being able to control my party since I've played P3P and P4. I think you should play FeMC's game too. It's a great new perspective on the game and Meguro's music is off the hook as always.

[InstrumentalityOne]

SPOILER: Show

, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the hell out of it. FES is cool if you want to see things happen in 3D rather than VN style and play the epilogue, but I hate not being able to control my party since I've played P3P and P4.

Maybe I´ll blast through FES in Beginner/Easy difficulty just for the epilogue, because I don´t really feel like spending too much time in Tartarus again.

SPOILER: Show

Oh, and the "Bitches and Whores" guy was Adachi? lol
I got spoiled because of this:

Oh yeah, and does playing a second cycle in Persona 3 Portable add anything new?

[ZapX]

I love Nanako&! New game + lets you keep all your personae from the last game and all your stats and weapons. Another good thing is that it doesn't matter whether you play male or female the next time, they still carry over. You also have the optional dungeon and Margaret's trials available from the start. The second time through P3P

HUGE Persona 3 Ending  SPOILER: Show

you can choose who you want to spend your last minutes with before you die. If you have a romantic relationship with Fuuka, Mitsuru, or Yukari, they talk to you as you go to sleep instead of Aigis.

[InstrumentalityOne]

HUGE Persona 3 Ending  SPOILER: Show

you can choose who you want to spend your last minutes with before you die. If you have a romantic relationship with Fuuka, Mitsuru, or Yukari, they talk to you as you go to sleep instead of Aigis.

SPOILER: Show

Eh, that´s pretty cool I guess, but I don´t feel like going through all that again just for an alternate cutscene at the end.

Re-play postponed until a few years for nostalgia, maybe.
I´m now trying to get a Persona 3 FES save so I can play The Answer directly.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSq_nfTs4Ko&feature=related
BURNED MY BREAD
YOU CANNOT UNHEAR


Got the undubbbed version of PS3FES:The Answer.

KEN IS VOICED BY MEGUMI OGATA?

[arkiel]

Well, Atlus screwed the pooch on Catherine. I'm out of 'moral' reasons to put off playing their non-domestic properties.

[InstrumentalityOne]

^
To be fair, ATLUS is currently in a lot of financial problems and a western release of Catherine just won´t sell/is too niche.

[arkiel]

So stick some subtitles on it and sell it as a download on the PSN. Minimal investment on top of what they've got already.

Someone really needs to sit down with Japanese firms and explain this shit to them.