What Are You Playing Now?, Summer Edition

Now soaking in the hot, hot heat

I just recently got Dragon's Dogma and see my impressions thread that I posted earlier.

I've been somewhat juggling along briefly with either Tales of Graces F, Jak II via its HD colletion and replaying Mass Effect 2 but nothing much else.

And I would be playing Diablo III right now if my PC video card wasn't having driver issues (the current Radeon ones don't install properly) but hopefully I can get a work around someway or another. At least on the plus side whenever I do get the chance to play D3 then an "offline mode" will finally be available, dispite all of the huge online issues the game has (although Blizzard states will be more balanced with later patches).

Games to get this month:
- Marvel Pinball: Avenger's Chronicles (June?) - This is the 3rd Marvel-based set of tables from Zen Studios and almost all of their pinball stuff have been greatly well done and most are damn awesome to play. 1st is solely based on the newest Avengers movie, 2nd is "World War Hulk", 3rd is "Fear Itself" that seems like a Thor spin-off story, and last is based on "The Infinity Gauntlet" which could possibly be the plot of the next Avengers movie but we'll see. Unforunately there is no final release date but should be very shortly.

On the fence:
- Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown (06/05) - A downloadable-only follow-up to the highly addictive classic fighting series that adds a couple new charactors with a couple returning ones and I'm sure a shit-ton load of new outfits and bonus wearables. I've had VF5 on the 360 a long while back and while I'd probably would of gotten my ass handed down playing online I did love the arcade quest mode from the last and hopefully it'll be making a comeback, but I just hope it's not mainly an online-only game. (I'm staring at you, Soul Calibur V)
- Lollipop Chainsaw (06/12) - A hot cheerleader chick mowing down zombie hordes with a 4-foot long chainsaw? What's not to love? Also it's developed by No More Heroes' Suda 51 over at Grasshopper Manufacture. Also did I mention there will be bonus anime cosplay outfits. Actually I'm still not sure if this will justify a full $60 retail purchase but will eventually check out in the future.

Max Payne 3. Using slomo is actually kinda tricky now rather than being as spammable as the good old days. As far as I remember anyway. Or I just suck. It is kind of strange not having regenerating health anymore - so my conditioned high risk approach to things has slapped me back in the face pretty hard, and I find myself playing the absolute chicken in corners of the map using rifles cause I ran outta painkillers and am running on my last pint of blood.

Still it is pretty fun. The last stand thing is kinda interesting. Need to remember I can dive through windows again. And that I have slomo powers. The game is kinda balanced in a way that not using your slomo powers effectively makes things harder.

Knights of the Old Republic. No, not The Old Republic, Knights of the Old Republic. The first one. It's been years since I played it, and I felt like taking a run through it again, due to some old books I've been reading. It was very unstable at first: kept crashing every couple of minutes until I ran across the information that it wasn't made to handle multiple processors. Fortunately, the same post had a line that I could use in a shorcut (once I'd adapted it to the directory where I'd installed the game) for the game that seems to fix the issue. Now it only crashes once in a while... which is about as good as I remember it doing on my old machines, so I'm probably set.

Because it's been years since I last played it, I don't remember the game well enough to be tired of it, so I'm finding it to be fun again. It's good to dig out old games and replay them every once in a while.

Scaler

A very average, budget platformer.

Spec Ops: The Line.

What initially seemed like it could be an interesting mechanic - busting windows and dropping sand on stuff and revealing new paths kinda disappeared somewhere after the first quarter of the game. So it was just linear cover based shooting shenanigans. Sad, wish they did more with the sand but it was just superficial scripted stuff.

The story though. Oh wow. Now that's an interesting story, not something you'd expect out of shooters with American soldiers these days.

Also you kinda run around shooting American soldiers for like most of the game. It was kinda like hmm, I don't ever remember shooting up American soldiers in my shooters!

Grandia II

Grandia has the best battle system! That, and Tales.

Playing:

PC: Diablo 3, ad nauseum. The naysayers are full of it; this game is a lot of fun imo.

The entire Humble Bundle 5.

X360: Lollipop Chainsaw. Just can't stop playing this.

Mobile: Plants vs. Zombies, Elder Sign: Omens.

Damn, that sounded rather cool when I was hearing about it from previews and such. But still, if the story's good, I may check it out. I didn't realize it was out yet.

Playing Vagrant Story. Picked up this little gem at a local videogame shop today for $58.







I didn't open it of course. Instead I just downloaded it so I can keep this sealed. It's one of the very few PSX RPGs from Squaresoft that I never got around to playing.

Good move there, you could possibly resell it in the future for well over $100 (also, that's odd, I don't remember that game being on 2-discs, hell the PSN download is less than 100 MB)

Of course it's now July and here's my gaming updates:

Now Playing:
- Dragon's Dogma - Sure the story isn't as epic as Skyrim's but it's still pretty fun to play despite some of the game's flaws (especially with the crap-ass escort missions >_<). I'm really liking it when you don't play your game for a while and come back to it to find a lot of people have been using your personal pawn and giving you some gifts (although most them were plain junk) and also earning you more "rift points" in order to hire stronger ones, last time I got nearly 20,000 and just recently hired a couple level 45s. Also in the usual Capcom business motives they are constantly releasing little DLC packs such as more quests or new armor and weapons but are getting those really damn worth it? And now Capcom is considering this game series as a major property and may most likely make more of them but I'm really hoping the next title will be a fairly hefty improvement.
- Marvel Pinball: The Avengers Chronicles - The newest comic pinball set from Zen Studios that are all based on past Avengers stories with of course including one based on the latest Avengers movie and I will have to say that this is the best pinball series yet released by them and all not too shabby for a $10 purchase.
- The Mass Effect series - The new "extended cut" ending for Mass Effect 3 has just been released, which is thankfully 100% free of charge abliet as a massive near 2 gigabyte download. Although a somewhat downside to seeing the new ending/s is to at least replay through the final two planet missions so you can't just load up the last autosave right before the final game moment. I haven't seen any of the new content yet but plan to very shortly and also want to eventually bring my paragon Sheppard from ME2 to the final reaper fight as well (my current one is a female renagade).

Unsure if I'll get back to Tales of Graces F, Skyrim (especially with the new expansion out) and Dark Souls but we'll wait and see. Also again I should be playing Diablo III right now but I've yet to fix my PC video card driver issues which hopefully I'll be able to fix up very soon.

Games buying this month:
- Quantum Conundrum (07/11 on XBLA, 07/10 on PSN, PC now) - The newest first person, multi-dimensional shifting puzzler from the same creator of the original Portal game (although this is not made by Valve) and IGN rated the PC version an 8/10 while Gametrailers.com rated it a 7.9/10. It has 50 puzzles to solve but reviews state only a handfull are that rememberable and the ending is way too open-ended, possibly just to sucker you in for more future DLC or maybe a full-on sequel, still I really think this will be a blast to play throughout and will cost $15.

This post has been edited by VasHtheStampede on Jul 1 2012, 02:13 PM

Having a kick at Ghost Recon Future Soldier. Commanding a robot armed with a mortar and missile launcher was hilarious.

That said, its kinda like R6: Vegas but with tacticool gear and less door breaching, and I guess by that extension more hand holding. You snoop around, get your team mates to line up shots so you can simultaneously dispatch them silently. In fact, do it right and you can get away with never having fired a single shot yourself. Though shit does inevitably hit the fan and it goes down to typical cover based shooting.

Your stealth camo allows you a lot of lee way(hilariously a lot) in snooping around in the open - that is before enemies are alerted. After they are alerted though, your camo might as well not be there.

There are some interesting toys to play with and a certain emphasis on informational warfare. You have sensor grenades that reveal the positions of all enemies within its radius, regardless of cover. Then you can deploy UAVs to snoop around and to mark targets in your stead for your teammates to take down.

There are some bleh segments that does force you into firefights, and also force you into stealth. Get detected and fail immediately.

It ultimately does get repetitive and dry though. The characters don't say a whole lot so its hard to get a grip on their personalities, let alone even care about them. You kinda just get some mission briefings, some really short cutscenes of the ghost recon members doing stuff and you're off to shoot stuff. Its a fairly basic plot involving Russia and bombs. Call of Duty might not toy with game mechanics as much, but at least it has a certain flair with theatrics!

So basically same old third person shooter with some additional ding dongs. Really dry story.

Persona 1, 2, and 3 are on sale on the PSN (all PSP versions) for $10, $15, and $10 respectively. I took the chance to finally see what this "young people shooting themselves in the face for fun and profit" shit was all about and grabbed 3. So far, the music is reminding me of The World Ends With You in a good way, but I haven't really played any of it yet.

Otherwise, playing the wonderful Pokemon Conquest for DS. FFT meets Pokemans. A tad easy, but who cares when you can conquer Japan with Jigglypuff and Charmander!

Also playing the deeply discounted Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands on 360. Combat is the worst in the entire series, which is saying something. Platforming remains fun, but nothing real special. People who bitched out PoP 09 in favor of this game are straight up retarded.

Gonna get:
-Penny Arcade Episode 3
-Darksiders 2 next month
-Spec Ops: The Line when there's a good sale

For some reason I've been bitten by a nostalgia bug, and have begun playing Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. ...This game is harder than I remember it being.

You probably got used to playing it like I did - using the console to cheat make wonderful things happen. The pre-lightsaber bits are particularly hard, although playing those levels as a Jedi can be pretty entertaining.

You get used to the days of regenerating health and going back makes you realize that you've gotten soft.

Though with the heal force power, you technically do have regenerating health.

I do miss the days of choking storm troopers and slamming them repeatedly into walls though. Choke everything. Gloriooous.

I think this is the biggest part, although uncreative isn't entirely wrong that I did tend to make a lot of use of the console commands back in those days. But I know I played it through at least once without cheating, and probably several times (I replayed the game more times than I can count), so I'm thinking that, in some ways, a lot of modern games have just become easier.

I loved grabbing them with the force-choke and tossing them off ledges. So much fun. Also, once both jump and pull were at maximum, jumping as high as I could and then pulling at the enemies on the ground would launch them past me to come crashing down in a mess. That one even worked on dark jedi about half the time, so it could be a good finisher for some otherwise tough fights.

This post has been edited by Random Wanderer on Jul 7 2012, 12:39 AM

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy - Absurd name, but strangely compelling and awesome rhythm gameplay.

Following the logical progression, I have moved on to Jedi Academy. Just getting started. As I recall, it offered some gameplay improvements, but the writing was somewhat inferior to its predecessor.

...Gameplay improvements being a relative term, of course. They either bugged or nerfed saber-throw so that the blade only kills targets when it's going out, not when it's returning, which is stupid stupid stupid, and eliminates half of the usefulness it had in Outcast. I will never forgive them for that.

I didn't notice that about saber throw in Jedi Academy, since I went with staffs. I liked the additional saber moves - they added a bit more depth to multiplayer duels rather than mad saber flailings. A heavy stance kata planted right can be such a game maker, a move my friend learned.

Dual wield is cool at first, and for dicing storm troopers but I found it fairly useless in saber combat. I prefer the staff for most part.

Ultimately though, my multiplayer tactics didn't really change that much. Namely screw dueling. I was a mega coward, would abuse force speed to escape every losing battle to deny kills. Force drain to turn things into a battle of attrition against dark force users. And of course abuse explosives - while the AI is completely broken in terms of force push reaction speeds, people namely my friends aren't quite there. So explosives work. So does using force speed to run into an ongoing fight, plant a long line of remote detonators and nuke the whole corridor.

Friendships were strained during the time when I MP-ed Jedi Academy with my friends.

I remember dual-wield having a gamebreaker move (I think it was just crouch-forward-attack, but I haven't gotten far enough yet to use it again and know for sure) that spun the blades in an impenetrable wall of death in front of you. Nothing could get past it, and it quickly killed off anything it hit. Also, I twice managed a move that I don't know the key-combo for where I would get in a saber-lock with an enemy, and then throw one of the blades while maintaining the lock with the other one, and the thrown blade would loop around behind the enemy and kill him. Dual-wielding was good for achieving various cool moves like that, but you're right that if you wanted to really fight the target rather than just spam cheap attacks, the saber-staff was the better choice.

I admit, I never did multiplayer. As I recall, my friends were mostly done playing it by the time I got the game, so our periods of interest in it didn't overlap. So I didn't really have anyone to try muliplayer with. Kind of a shame, I suppose... I enjoyed multiplayer in the original Jedi Knight (Dark Forces 2) with my sister (she quickly became nearly as good as I was, and only my longer experience with the game allowed me to keep a slight edge over her), so I probably could have had fun with academy, but... well, it never happened.

Lately Xenoblade Chronicle has been consuming my time.

It was hard to utilize correctly, since well you had to crouch. It was definitely powerful and would chop just about anyone down. But you pretty much had to absolutely corner someone or bait them. I think you could move forward while doing it so it was more flexible than the staff version, where you had to stand still and missing left you open like a complete twit. In straight multiplayer games though, with the force levels set high anyway, people will generally have force speed and abuse the absolute dick out of it leaving such an immobile attack to be useless most of the time.

They were definitely an interesting option for duels and power duels. But overall its use was kinda limited to campaign since enemy dark jedis were.... assholes. Perfect force counters to all your force powers, super dodge against disruptor rifles, perfect deflection of any explosives. Which is something I hated - saber duels are ultimately very unpredictable. Disruptors and explosives are decisive! I think it ultimately boiled down to leaving force absorb/protect on and flailing your saber around.

My MP funtimes with Academy only happened way after the game was out. Since I lived in a dorm-like community with a LAN connection between us, and our computers had varying performances - we often looked for older games to LAN with. And Academy had its turn. Also being in Malaysia, we were stuck with Dial Up for longer than a lot of countries so cybercafe gaming was quite a thing. Used to play Jedi Outcast with friends during those times.

I think there is a MP community still going on for those games in GameRanger, some sorta Garena/Hamachi sorta means to playing games. Though it crashed and is refusing to start back up so I can't check for sure. I was using GameRanger to scratch my Mechwarrior itch with MWO looming, and me being unable to connect to the MekTek servers.

I've been playing fn Slenderman lol free.
Slenderman

This post has been edited by Meina on Jul 13 2012, 11:45 PM

Spec Ops: The Line. Kinda thought it was gonna be a brown CoD type game. It is most assuredly not. It is not the tone I had expected at all. Still, I'd recommend it.