What are you currently playing? [3]

[Final Messenger]

Recently I have been replaying FE8. Oh how I forgot how much I loved this game, it was my first FE and was really sad when my old GBA copy of it broke.

Also been playing metal gear rising revangence really fun game although I generally suck at action games I'm still having fun with it. Also boss fights are the hypest I haven't done many yet only the first few but the vs metal gear Ray and mistreil fights were so cool.

oh yeah I'm still playing FE 13 too on my hard mode playthrough and its pretty easy although not as free as normal was.

[kuribo-04]

FF7 has a couple of Eva references. There's the "Magma diver, d-type equipment" thing,

SPOILER: Show

and one of the plans to kill... Diamond WEAPON, I think, greatly resembles Operation Yashima.

You´re right! I hadn´t noticed. Also

SPOILER: Show

the way Junon transforsm into a place full of weapons reminds me of Tokyo-3.

[Redtophat]

oh yeah I'm still playing FE 13 too on my hard mode playthrough and its pretty easy although not as free as normal was.

I hope this time you won't make the mistake of choosing the inferior waifu, and join the Cherche club instead.

[Final Messenger]

I hope this time you won't make the mistake of choosing the inferior waifu, and join the Cherche club instead.

too late already chose Tharja again. Although dat back of Cherche is really tempting but unfortunately I'm a one woman type of guy

[Redtophat]

too late already chose Tharja again. Although dat back of Cherche is really tempting but unfortunately I'm a one woman type of guy

[Monk Ed]

I haven't updated this thread in a while, so pardon the dump. I guess I'll start with the latest:

I beat Amnesia: Justine tonight.

ending  SPOILER: Show

As I figured, it turned out you were playing Justine all along. This is what I figured from literally the first time I played the game. Technically, from even before that: I figured the story was called Justine because it's the story of Justine and therefore you must be playing Justine, but even when I actually started the game I guessed the twist immediately: My first thought when I heard the phonograph in the first room was "I bet I'm playing the character whose voice is on that recording". It was probably my first guess largely because I could tell that I was playing a female, and the voice on the phonograph was female, and I didn't know who the character I was playing was and there was no introduction or anything so for lack of any viable alternatives I naturally put the two together and figured they must be the same person. That, and knowing that the series is called "Amnesia" and something like that would be an expected kind of twist in such a series. That, and why would this voice on the recording care about anyone's moral character so deeply as to do all this setup unless it was her own being examined.

The only thing I'm left wondering at this point is whether Justine knew she was Justine the whole time. The series is called Amnesia, so I'm wondering if what Justine actually did was induce herself to forget who she was so that she could examine her own moral core by examining how she behaves without the benefit of her usual knowledge. That seems to be the only possibility that makes sense, because otherwise wouldn't Justine know the solutions to all the situations she set up for herself, and why would she listen to herself on those phonographs? But if she did give herself amnesia, why did she regain her memories in the final room?

I've also been playing Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven.

length  SPOILER: Show

I've been enjoying this game a lot -- vastly out of proportion with its objective quality. The camera is awful, the analog stick Y-axes cannot be un-reversed, and yet I so enjoy watching guards carefully before running up to them from behind and assassinating them. I guess the easiest way to break down what I like about the game is to do so in list form:

* The game doesn't encourage you to go non-lethal as all too many stealth games do.

* The guard patterns are often designed specifically to fool you, to lure you into pouncing early. I don't think I've ever played another stealth game that does this, and I love it; I have always felt that most other stealth games tended to be way too accommodating in this area. I would liken it to how Egoraptor described the difference in level design and enemy placement and such between Castlevania I and II.

* The game controls less realistically than most stealth games I've played, in that you run and jump much like in a typical ninja action game or platformer. You're also fairly free to ninja-hook around, so it feels more free than realistic-clunky games like Splinter Cell or games like MGS where you can't jump at all.

* The game is so old school you hold down a shoulder button to crouch. Who does that anymore?

* Even the game's control and camera flaws are part of the fun. The camera is so control-resistant that you have to either stand still or hug a wall to look properly around a corner, and the only way to look down over a ledge is to sidle up to it because the camera doesn't let you control the vertical axis at all outside of aiming/looking, and because of these issues you can't very easily "cheat" with the camera to look around corners or over ledges without putting yourself at some risk.

* Crouching, running, and rolling all have different stealth upsides and downsides that add a needed and welcome level of complexity that makes pulling off a kill feel like I'm a boss compared to, say, Splinter Cell, where you have almost no reason not to crouch-walk most of the time.

* You have to remember to hold the crouch button when you fall a long way to land safely.

Little touches like the last two or three (especially the last two) go a long way towards making me feel skillful. It's because the whole game is not streamlined and simplified out the wazoo that it's as fun as it is, even if the underlying gameplay fundamentally is simple in terms of what you're trying to do and where you're trying to go.

Oh, I actually forgot one:

* The ki meter. I cannot stress how much this adds to the experience and I wish more games had it. The ki meter gives you a numerical idea of how close the nearest enemy is (but it's not represented in actual distance, the number goes up to 100 instead of down to 0 as they get closer), and because of that the game can by without a radar but also without an overly controllable camera, making it so you have to watch the meter and use some detective skills to figure out what way an enemy is probably facing or where they are before you can see them. Another sweet features is that it lets you know when you're close enough in their field of vision to be in danger of detection, compared to stealth games that are a bit too all-or-nothing in this department and require trial and error for you to figure out the enemy's vision range. I liked this feature because it let me approach my prey carefully and scientifically. Not recommended for horror stealth games because in those it's better not to know how well the enemy can see.

I've also been playing Penumbra.

length  SPOILER: Show

Though technically nothing I'm about to say is a spoiler, anyone interested in this game and interested in preserving its capacity to scare you shouldn't read further.

I bought this game based entirely on 1) that it was made by the guys who did Amnesia and they seem to know fear so I was hoping that one of their earlier works might be even scarier because they wouldn't have been appealing to as wide of an audience back then and 2) a Steam trailer and Youtube let's-play I saw of Penumbra: Black Plague. In the former, there was a part that scared me pretty decently, where the player turns around and turns his flashlight on a creepy alien-looking "grey" which then covers its creepy face in surprise, and that fleeting glimpse of its face was an inspiring enough scare to make me want the game. In the latter, there was a part where the player was running from something (only later did I learn that it was just another grey), and when he looks back and sees it coming after him around the corner and panics I got the chills too and I wondered to myself if I would be able to handle it.

But then when I encountered my first one of those things in the actual game it was anything but scary. I was hiding behind an overturned desk in a room, and the thing came in, and it was holding a flashlight of all things and I thought ... really? A flashlight? That's way too human of a thing to be doing. And then it spoke! It said "something seems wrong". It talks too? In English? This thing is supposed to be an alien! It's supposed to be different, weird, incomprehensible, not relatable!

After that the game was pretty much never scary again. Sometimes it got pseudo-scary when I was being chased by one of those things, just because their faces have a decent level of inherent creep-factor for me in their design, but really, that's it. By the time I got to the part I'd seen in the let's-play, I was so unafraid I decided to go back and let myself get hit a few times just out of curiosity to see what it looked like up close. And the part where you turn around and the alien covers its face in surprise? Never happens -- or at least, I could never get it to happen in my playthrough, no matter how many times I intentionally baited one to chase me.

[Giji Shinka]

It sure did. I never knew there were developers willing to lock you into a space of, say 6x6 then have the boss do an area attack 7x7 in size. Multiple times.
It's one of the worst boss fights I have ever played.

Sad you didn't like the game.

[ssguy]

[quote="kuribo-04#603946"And the story reminds me of Eva (The creators of the game saw Eva, I´m sure).[/quote]

Man, Eva is pretty much everywhere. The recent Winnie the Pooh movie had the word Seele etched in some honey (which of course looked like LCL), Pinky and the Brain had a few visual references like Seele's icon, etc. It's unconfirmed but I've heard that the doorknocker on the Simpson's house is meant to resemble Sachiel. Hell, lots of old cartoons are filled with jokes that are just pop culture references lost on us now. Bugs Bunny eating a carrot? He's mimicking a famous scene from a Clark Gable movie.

Akira is in a similar position. The freight elevators from MGS and Half Life are both made to directly resemble the one in Akira.

Every work is inspired by a previous one, it's impossible not to be. Some simply like to show it off more than others.

[The Killer of Heroes]

I somehow doubt, of all things, Winnie the Pooh was intentionally referencing NGE.

[ssguy]

I somehow doubt, of all things, Winnie the Pooh was intentionally referencing NGE.

It's not part of Christopher Robin's message so it's clearly not a coincidence.

Disney actually plagiarizes from anime on a fairly regularly basis, such as Kimba the White Lion becoming Simba. They've actually lifted a fair bit from Nadia, which is another Gainax property. It's not hard to imagine that one of the guys working on the movie happened to like Eva.

[The Killer of Heroes]

You sure it's not just a weird variation on "school"? I haven't seen that movie in years, but I kind of have trouble believing some random animator was putting NGE references in a Winnie the Pooh movie in 1997 before NGE might have even been really available for English audiences.

Also, this is off-topic but I don't really buy the Kimba and Lion King ripoff argument either. I haven't seen Nadia yet so I don't really know how much it resembles Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Though both series come from the exact same source material so similarities are bound to exist).

[TehDonutKing]

Actually, Disney originally planned to do an adaptation, nbut couldn't get the rights. If you buy the special edition DVD, they even have pictures of albino SImba.

[The Killer of Heroes]

Actually, Disney originally planned to do an adaptation, nbut couldn't get the rights.

Do you have an official source for this? I've heard of this as a rumor but have never seen it proved before.

If you buy the special edition DVD, they even have pictures of albino SImba.

White lions are also a real thing, so it's not like the only way for a white Simba concept to exist for TLK would be as an intentional plagiarism of Kimba.

-

Anyways, getting back on-topic, I've been getting back to my first playthrough of Xenogears again lately. Just got to Thames, and I'm enjoying this game a lot so far.

I love how the name of one attack where birds rush you is called "Hitchcock". XD

[The Eva Monkey]

I am currently playing:

Time Crisis on PlayStation

Astro Warrior on mother fucking Sega Master System.

[BlackberryMilk]

I haven't updated this thread in a while, so pardon the dump. I guess I'll start with the latest:

I beat Amnesia: Justine tonight.

ending  SPOILER: Show

As I figured, it turned out you were playing Justine all along. This is what I figured from literally the first time I played the game. Technically, from even before that: I figured the story was called Justine because it's the story of Justine and therefore you must be playing Justine, but even when I actually started the game I guessed the twist immediately: My first thought when I heard the phonograph in the first room was "I bet I'm playing the character whose voice is on that recording". It was probably my first guess largely because I could tell that I was playing a female, and the voice on the phonograph was female, and I didn't know who the character I was playing was and there was no introduction or anything so for lack of any viable alternatives I naturally put the two together and figured they must be the same person. That, and knowing that the series is called "Amnesia" and something like that would be an expected kind of twist in such a series. That, and why would this voice on the recording care about anyone's moral character so deeply as to do all this setup unless it was her own being examined.

The only thing I'm left wondering at this point is whether Justine knew she was Justine the whole time. The series is called Amnesia, so I'm wondering if what Justine actually did was induce herself to forget who she was so that she could examine her own moral core by examining how she behaves without the benefit of her usual knowledge. That seems to be the only possibility that makes sense, because otherwise wouldn't Justine know the solutions to all the situations she set up for herself, and why would she listen to herself on those phonographs? But if she did give herself amnesia, why did she regain her memories in the final room?

I've also been playing Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven.

length  SPOILER: Show

I've been enjoying this game a lot -- vastly out of proportion with its objective quality. The camera is awful, the analog stick Y-axes cannot be un-reversed, and yet I so enjoy watching guards carefully before running up to them from behind and assassinating them. I guess the easiest way to break down what I like about the game is to do so in list form:

* The game doesn't encourage you to go non-lethal as all too many stealth games do.

* The guard patterns are often designed specifically to fool you, to lure you into pouncing early. I don't think I've ever played another stealth game that does this, and I love it; I have always felt that most other stealth games tended to be way too accommodating in this area. I would liken it to how Egoraptor described the difference in level design and enemy placement and such between Castlevania I and II.

* The game controls less realistically than most stealth games I've played, in that you run and jump much like in a typical ninja action game or platformer. You're also fairly free to ninja-hook around, so it feels more free than realistic-clunky games like Splinter Cell or games like MGS where you can't jump at all.

* The game is so old school you hold down a shoulder button to crouch. Who does that anymore?

* Even the game's control and camera flaws are part of the fun. The camera is so control-resistant that you have to either stand still or hug a wall to look properly around a corner, and the only way to look down over a ledge is to sidle up to it because the camera doesn't let you control the vertical axis at all outside of aiming/looking, and because of these issues you can't very easily "cheat" with the camera to look around corners or over ledges without putting yourself at some risk.

* Crouching, running, and rolling all have different stealth upsides and downsides that add a needed and welcome level of complexity that makes pulling off a kill feel like I'm a boss compared to, say, Splinter Cell, where you have almost no reason not to crouch-walk most of the time.

* You have to remember to hold the crouch button when you fall a long way to land safely.

Little touches like the last two or three (especially the last two) go a long way towards making me feel skillful. It's because the whole game is not streamlined and simplified out the wazoo that it's as fun as it is, even if the underlying gameplay fundamentally is simple in terms of what you're trying to do and where you're trying to go.

Oh, I actually forgot one:

* The ki meter. I cannot stress how much this adds to the experience and I wish more games had it. The ki meter gives you a numerical idea of how close the nearest enemy is (but it's not represented in actual distance, the number goes up to 100 instead of down to 0 as they get closer), and because of that the game can by without a radar but also without an overly controllable camera, making it so you have to watch the meter and use some detective skills to figure out what way an enemy is probably facing or where they are before you can see them. Another sweet features is that it lets you know when you're close enough in their field of vision to be in danger of detection, compared to stealth games that are a bit too all-or-nothing in this department and require trial and error for you to figure out the enemy's vision range. I liked this feature because it let me approach my prey carefully and scientifically. Not recommended for horror stealth games because in those it's better not to know how well the enemy can see.

I've also been playing Penumbra.

length  SPOILER: Show

Though technically nothing I'm about to say is a spoiler, anyone interested in this game and interested in preserving its capacity to scare you shouldn't read further.

I bought this game based entirely on 1) that it was made by the guys who did Amnesia and they seem to know fear so I was hoping that one of their earlier works might be even scarier because they wouldn't have been appealing to as wide of an audience back then and 2) a Steam trailer and Youtube let's-play I saw of Penumbra: Black Plague. In the former, there was a part that scared me pretty decently, where the player turns around and turns his flashlight on a creepy alien-looking "grey" which then covers its creepy face in surprise, and that fleeting glimpse of its face was an inspiring enough scare to make me want the game. In the latter, there was a part where the player was running from something (only later did I learn that it was just another grey), and when he looks back and sees it coming after him around the corner and panics I got the chills too and I wondered to myself if I would be able to handle it.

But then when I encountered my first one of those things in the actual game it was anything but scary. I was hiding behind an overturned desk in a room, and the thing came in, and it was holding a flashlight of all things and I thought ... really? A flashlight? That's way too human of a thing to be doing. And then it spoke! It said "something seems wrong". It talks too? In English? This thing is supposed to be an alien! It's supposed to be different, weird, incomprehensible, not relatable!

After that the game was pretty much never scary again. Sometimes it got pseudo-scary when I was being chased by one of those things, just because their faces have a decent level of inherent creep-factor for me in their design, but really, that's it. By the time I got to the part I'd seen in the let's-play, I was so unafraid I decided to go back and let myself get hit a few times just out of curiosity to see what it looked like up close. And the part where you turn around and the alien covers its face in surprise? Never happens -- or at least, I could never get it to happen in my playthrough, no matter how many times I intentionally baited one to chase me.

I've been wanting to play both Penumbra and Amnesia, but due to the amount of noise around the games.. Im afraid I'll be let down.

Anyone else excited for Cyberpunk 2077? I am ecstatic, the original was amazing as it was.. Now I'm pretty anxious to see it roided up haha.

Currently playing-

-Pokemon Black 2 (Currently EV training)
-Skyrim (With the release of the DLC's finally--So far, I haven't run into any glitches. I may be the only PS3 users who's never had any major glitches with Bethesda.)
- And Metal Gear Rising

[Monk Ed]

I've been wanting to play both Penumbra and Amnesia, but due to the amount of noise around the games.. Im afraid I'll be let down.

I didn't know there was any "noise" around Penumbra (except the noise I just made). I don't think I've ever really heard anything about it except as "the previous game by the guys who made Amnesia". As for Amnesia, what have you heard? In what way are you afraid it will be a letdown? That it won't be scary enough?

- And Metal Gear Rising

The couple of opinions right now in this topic on this game include a ringing endorsement and a much less enthusiastic one. Where do you rank it?

[kuribo-04]

Man, Eva is pretty much everywhere. The recent Winnie the Pooh movie had the word Seele etched in some honey (which of course looked like LCL), Pinky and the Brain had a few visual references like Seele's icon, etc. It's unconfirmed but I've heard that the doorknocker on the Simpson's house is meant to resemble Sachiel. Hell, lots of old cartoons are filled with jokes that are just pop culture references lost on us now. Bugs Bunny eating a carrot? He's mimicking a famous scene from a Clark Gable movie.

Akira is in a similar position. The freight elevators from MGS and Half Life are both made to directly resemble the one in Akira.

Every work is inspired by a previous one, it's impossible not to be. Some simply like to show it off more than others.

Interesting information. Maybe the joke is that the honey resembles LCL?

[CJD]

Time Crisis on PlayStation

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!!! Is it half as fun as it was at the arcade? Fuck so many quarters I must have spent on that game and it's sequel. I miss arcades (but my wallet doesn't).

[kuribo-04]

Are the Metal Gear games really that good? I want to buy them all. (I think what interests me the most about them is the story. And David Hayter's badass voice.)

[ssguy]

Are the Metal Gear games really that good? I want to buy them all. (I think what interests me the most about them is the story. And David Hayter's badass voice.)

YES.

If you have a PS3, get MGS1 on PSN, the HD collection and 4. Then, play the games in release order. MG1 and 2 for the MSX can be skipped, but you should at least read the plot summaries online. Both of those games are on the MGS3 main menu in the HD collection, so it's not like they're hard to find, and I do think they're really fantastic games.

Peace Walker came out after 4, but is on the HD collection. Don't play it until after 4. To be honest I didn't like it as much; it was originally a PSP game so instead of one big seamless level it's split into 2 or 3 minute levels. However, this does mean that there's lots of replayability, even after the main game is over. Oh, and chapter 5 is the epilogue chapter and really boring until the end, but goddamn you need to see the end.

I know pretty much everything about these games so feel free to ask. They usually have great easter eggs, with MGS3 being the king of easter eggs. No game is better than MGS3 in terms of this.

It's a shame you can't experience MGO. At least, not unless they bring it back.

Also, for the love of god get a smaller forum signature. It's larger than any of your posts.