Rosenakahara wrote:I am enjoying it, however i am also a lore nut, so the fact that even nintendo cannot be even slightly consistent with THEIR OWN TIMELINE bothers me.

Nintendo couldn't keep to a timeline if their lives depended on it, might as well eject your brain in regards to Nintendo.

Been playing Far Cry 3 again recently. In terms of difficulty, in comparison to Far Cry at least, Ubisoft couldn't hold a candle to CryTek. It's comical that they actually had modify the original Far Cry for console release recently, because it was obviously perceived as way too hard.

Just finished up Ace Combat 6 for Xbox 360 and Operation C for Game Boy.

Since I finally got my replacement GamePad charger, I've started playing MK8 again.

Forgot how fun this game is.

Joy Evangelion wrote:Been playing Final Fantasy VIII for the last few days....

It's always been one of my life goals to beat a FF game, so I hope I make it through this one. Fighting.

I posted that back in April of this year, and I'm proud to say... I. DID. IT. But, no, I have not been playing it for eight months straight. If I was I'd probably have a level 1000000 Squall w/ 9999999 HP. Other things sort of got in the way of me playing it, which actually kind of bums me out now because I wasn't as in tuned with the story as I should have been.

A few thoughts.


Thinking of starting another FF soon, though not sure which(I'd play X but I am incredibly adverse to the main characters' design, unfortunately).

I bought one of those 40 games in 1 Classic Sega Genesis systems. Talk about FUN. Yeah the games
are emulated but I don't care.
It can even play regular Gen. carts too so I snatched up Road Rash 2 on amazon :)

Here's a list of the games on it:

Dataprime wrote:I bought one of those 40 games in 1 Classic Sega Genesis systems. Talk about FUN. Yeah the games
are emulated but I don't care.
It can even play regular Gen. carts too so I snatched up Road Rash 2 on amazon :)

Here's a list of the games on it:

SPOILER: Show

•Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle •Alien Storm •Altered Beast •Arrow Flash •Bonanza Bros. •Chaka: The Forever Man •Columns •Columns III •Comix Zone •Crack Down •Decap Attack •Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine •Ecco •Ecco 2: The Tides Of Time •Ecco Jr •ESWAT: City Under Seige •Eternal Champions •Fatal Labyrinth •Flicky •Gain Ground •Golden Axe •Golden Axe II •Golden Axe III •Jewel Master •Kid Chameleon •Ristar •Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi •Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master •Streets Of Rage1 •Streets Of Rage2 •Streets Of Rage3 •Sonic & Knuckles •Sonic Spinball •Sonic the Hedgehog •Sonic the Hedgehog II •Sonic 3D Blast - Flickie's Island •The Ooze •Vectorman •Vectorman II •VirtuaFighter II

You probably shoudn't have bought that, yeah I know you said you don't care about them being emulated, but the sound quality on some of them are really shitty. (Hopefully yours isn't lol)

OT: Last played Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Was gonna rent Super Mario 3D World, but my library didn't have it. Very enjoying this game so far, only played a few levels, but still.

I got 3 games for Christmas: The last of us, Littlebigplanet 3, Driveclub

The last of us is the only game I've played so far.

First impressions:
What I like: The voice acting, characters, game mechanics work really well.

What I don't like: The story seems pretty generic and the level design has been painfully linear so far, I hope that it becomes more complex as I progress.

Aiko Heiwa wrote: the sound quality on some of them are really shitty..

Only the Sonic games sound like crap. Must be all that Blast Processing

So last night I had to launch Modern Warfare 3 on my Wii and I discovered that the game is still online and it's surprisingly active, considering that's it's a game that probably sold less than 100k copies on a dead system that's supposed to have it's online gameplay disconnected (I guess Activision games didn't use NWC servers because apparently MW1, WaW, GoldenEye, and Blops are all still playable online on Wii). I mean, I'd expect maybe a couple hundred people, but when I did it, there was about 1500 people online. Later on this morning, there were over 2300 people online.

So, I guess I'm saying I've been playing MW3 on Wii recently. It's not a gorgeous game on Wii, but it's still fun and looks decent enough. I'm admitted not that into CoD, but I still like to play these games in multiplayer (even though I suck all the dicks available at them)

Donut thought he could gift me The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, so I gifted him MGSV Ground Zeroes right back, that fucking dick

The PC port is stellar by the way, already played it for 9 hours. It's just such a joy to move snake around in the fox engine on pc in such fluid grace.

Haven't had the time to game much due to uni but I got a lot of gaming in before and during the holidays so here's my
Winter Sale Purchases and a short review on them:

MGSV GZ Stellar port, plays like a fiddle.
Sid Meier's Pirates! Fun and compelling in the way most sid meier games are, lacking in long lasting appeal like most sid meier games for me like civ.
FTL: Faster Than Light Brilliant, but I suck at it
Valkyria ChroniclesStarts slow, not as good as VC2 on the PSP but still good. Themes of war are delivered so heavy handedly it hurts
Shadowrun: Dragonfall Great single player role playing game based on a great rpg universe, lack of user generated content and hacking portions somewhat dampens the experience
The Walking Dead (haven't beaten yet) Hoo boy, wow. Does what it tries to do very very well. Writing can seem a little off at times due to the nature of the game but it hits the notes when it wants to.
The Wolf Among Us Beat this in two sittings, great variety and the anti climactic nature of the last episode was brilliant. Good, but not great.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon I was hype cause it was all 80s and stuff and got Power Glove to do the OST but you can hardly hear the OST and the gameplay gets sort of tiring monotonous after a while even though it tries hard to be ridiculous and dumb in a so bad its good way. A little off, but it's still neat this exists.
Deus Ex GOTY I pirated this game like three times and now I bought it and I still can't beat the first level. I must be broken.
This War of Mine Incredibly well written and designed, go play this at least past day 7 or so when food gets scarce and everything likely comes tumbling down hard. Really strong but probably not for everyone.
Mark of the Ninja 2D Stealth done very right. Haven't beaten this yet but the way it's great so far.
Total War Arena: Closed Alpha Just doesn't work. at all
Insurgency Counter Strike and Call of Duty except a little more realistic without being arma levels of backwards. i.e.: FPS that is realistic in all the right places but still gamey enough to be fun without too steep of a learning curve. In this day and age where people are already ridiculously good at fps games by now this feels just right.
Call of Juarez I don't recall seeing this ever coming out but this is tons of fun. Plays sort of like a cross between Bulletstorm and GUN. Universe is meh but gameplay is tight like... something very tight

Spent my Christmas alone, so got drunk and went to BestBuy. Managed to somehow snatch Tomb Raider PS4 for only $19.99

Never played this reboot, gonna give it a shot and see if the hype was justified.

WOOO STEAM SALES

Bought a fair bit of vidya, including Deus Ex, Castle Crashers, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Vice City, Episodes from Liberty City, III and IV, Blockland and Postal 2. Also, Donut gifted me RPGmakerVXAce- thank you Donut!

I've been playing a lot of Fallout 3 recently. I seriously need to get enough caps to buy the plans for the Rock-It Launcher what with ammo being so scarce, and OH MY GOD THE FIRE ANTS ACTUALLY BREATHE FIRE

Just started Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut on Steam. Although I first heard about the series through the 100,000 Strong to Bring Back Mega Man Legends 3 page on Facebook, thanks go to our very own Rosenakahara for inspiring me to finally actually get one of the games.

First reactions:

* Wow is this a lazy port. These pixels are HUGE on my TV, and the blocky in-game graphics are all the more striking next to the extremely high res menus and fonts. Even that isn't so bad, though, compared to the complete clusterfuck that is the lazily translated controls: This is the only game in my entire Steam library that reverses B and A as menu confirm and cancel, contrary to the well-established standard.

* Wow is this game racy for something that I'm told is actually rated E for Everyone. I'd been told to expect a game that got a surprising amount past the radar but some of this isn't even below the radar -- I've never seen so much blocky jigglage.

* The humor has hit the mark with me so far. I was actually quite taken by surprise at what I've been laughing at. Maybe the faux childlike style of the game puts me just enough off guard for it to work.

* This is the first game in memory that marks bottomless pits very clearly to distinguish them from traversable ones. While the upwards-floating skull-and-crossbones sprites are a bit of an eyesore, I appreciate the clarity they provide. Most games of this type just do away with the concept entirely -- which I actually quite like about them so it's no knock to them that they didn't do this first.

* I was a bit worried about missing out on the first game but given how quick and threadbare the story is I suspect I'm not missing much by jumping straight into #2.

Eh the game looked a lot better on the 3ds and dsi where it was meant to be played but yeah the port is lazy, might switch force: hyper edition this is not.

Started playing Blade Symphony. It's a fairly simple multiplayer game- it's basically a fighting game based around sword duels- and yet it somehow manages to be pretty damn awesome. If you like sword dueling anime or vidya then I'd definitely recommend checking this out.

The premise is pretty simple- you choose from one of four characters, each with different speed and attack power benefits, choose a sword and then duel with other players. Notably, while there is a wide selection of different swords, there are only three real types of sword (longsword, katana, jian) and most of the 'swords' are just cosmetic changes; changing from one of the default swords to one of the ones you unlock will not increase your damage or anything, although it may make you look cooler. You get one sword from each class by default from the start, anyway, so you can just go through the game without unlocking anything.

Gameplay's also pretty cool; while it may initially seem unwieldy to switch between light, medium and heavy attacks (as well as air attacks) it actually works fairly well in practice and pulling off a combo is fairly easy after you've been in a few duels. This is also one of the few sword-fighting games I've played where you can parry an opponent's attack with one of your own; this also has some impact on which sword class you use as each sword adds a different benefit to your attacks- katanas grow more powerful as you parry, whereas longswords can pull off better combos and jians are better at exploiting weaknesses in the opponent's defense. Character class also comes into play in determining the weight and attack speed of your character- light characters can't take much punishment but attack and combo quickly, whereas heavier character hit hard but can't move quickly. I also like the fact that even with these bonuses duels are mostly decided by skill rather than by equipment choice; certain characters and weapons do not cancel each other out if your opponent is skilled enough.

Started playing Silent Hill 2.

Saw Pyramid Head raping a pair of those mannequin monsters. Had the weirdest boner...

So far, I haven't found myself really feeling the horror as much as I'd like. The monsters that I've encountered so far didn't really do much to scare, they're just kind of annoying. I think the radio static noise that alerts you to the presence of a monster nearby is more scary than them, since you don't really know what to expect when it starts going off. It could be just another straitjacket or it could be Pyramid Head or something new. Good use of psychological horror in that regard. And the puzzles are interesting, though I'm early into the game so I haven't encountered many. I also like the sparse lighting (you have to rely on your flashlight most of the time) and the classic horror setting of the quaint little haunted town. The gameplay works towards survival horror, as equipment and supplies are low. I like the small, confined areas like the apartments. SH2 does a good job of getting the atmosphere and visual presentation of a horror game down.

By contrast, I played a little bit of Fear 3 (or F3AR) with my cousin and found it to get the "darkness" aspect right (which is the easiest), but it's basically just another FPS shooter with horror elements that aren't really utilized that well. It was boring.

I also like the title Letter From Silent Heaven. Just sounds cool.

I've been playing tons of things, but the one that's inspired in me the most to write about is Watch Dogs

Of the actual gameplay, my first impressions are good. Lately I've been very ADD about any game that isn't Dark Souls 2, so for this game to hold my attention for longer than the intro mission speaks well of it. I enjoy playing characters leading double-lives, especially when it involves hiding in plain sight (I fucking loved Hitman: Blood Money) and being able to obtain knowledge one "shouldn't".

But of the graphics... I knew there was a big fuss raised about the discrepancy between the graphics Ubisoft used to promote the game and the actual final product, but man, even taking for granted that I should expect only Seventh Generation-level graphics, this game's got issues. Leaving aside the questionable stylistic choice of purposefully using such graphical flaws as artifacting and ghosting in the cinematography, this thing visually tears like SCP-372 is trying to hide in them. Even after I found the vsync option it still didn't look like the problem had completely gone away. But regardless, for the generation it's allegedly a member of, this game just looks bad, or at least subpar.

Between this and the graphical issues that have been plaguing my playthrough of Assassin's Creed 3 I'm left wondering what the fuck is wrong with Ubisoft's technical division and why they can't keep it together as well as Kojima's team does. (Playing Ground Zeroes followed by Watch Dogs is an especially jarring juxtaposition.)

Have you tried fixing it via the .ini file in the game folders? IIRC there is a way to unlock the graphics to a much better standard via changing a few lines of code in an .ini file (which locks the graphics for...reasons?) although it still won't look quite as nice as the teaser promised.

But yeah, Ubisoft sucks at PC ports (at least lately anyway). Having witnessed the disaster that is the AC Unity PC port I refuse to buy it, which is a shame as I have been meaning to get into AC for a while now (is it worth starting from the first game?).

Speaking of technical clusterfucks, I attempted to play GTA IV, but...it doesn't work. All the graphics options are set to an absolute minimum (resulting in a tiny, tiny resolution of something like 800 by 600) and when I actually try and start playing, it...doesn't work. I tried turning up the settings but it won't let me, claiming my hardware isn't powerful enough. Bear in mind my PC can run FFXIV ARR at max settings without breaking a sweat, so either GTA IV is the most hardware-intensive game ever (so, more draining than an MMO from 2014 with outstanding graphical fidelity...OK then?) or it's really, really poorly optimized (or perhaps it just runs like shit on newer systems?)

So yeah, I guess I shall have to wait for my dose of YELLOW CAR.

I found the graphics mod for Watch Dogs, installed it, and despite the very noticeable extra effects the game is still underwhelming graphically. Serviceable and fine and all, but not as wowing as I remember from this one or two times I watched demos of it. Can't quite put my finger on it. Part of it I suppose is that the distance blur is not used particularly artfully and seems to spend most of its time just not there at all.

Now I'm wondering, did the infamous E3 demos ever actually look that good? Or have my expectations been spoiled by such graphical wizardry as the Ground Zeroes opening cinematic?

Gameplay-wise though I'm still enjoying it quite a bit, although the crime-stopping aspect has already gotten old because I've yet to do any that aren't simply a matter of chasing the guy down and tapping B.

^ One of the major reasons Watch Dogs disappointed so many was that it didn't really look like the next generation game it was promised to be. The trailers fooled the industry. It was also more limited than expected in terms of gameplay, too.