Whatcha Been Playing?

[Todinho]

The Dragon has fallen!!! After 12 attempts today I finnally downed the bastard, and I have to admit I was overreacting yesterday he isnt nearly as bullshit as I thought, most of his moves while very fast and wide are telegraphed enough that you can dodge them with good timing some of those fire attacks however(the ones reminicent of Ancient dragon) Im really not sure how to avoid getting hit by it, Im sure there's a how but it's difficult to tell because when he does those moves he leaves the screen and you cant catch up quicklly enough to know where to run, also after many of his moves he stays still so you can go and hit him but I was usually too far to take advantage.
I took Ksub's advice and played trying to keep him more at a distance rather then trying to be on him at all times, then I'd hit and run, I also switched weapons from the Carthus Curved Greatsword to the sellswords twinblades, I thought I'd need a great sword like weapon to hit his head but he actually leaves it low enough that you can hit with anything, it's nowhere near as bad as king of the storm, the twinblades gave the speed I needed to get damage in and run because the greatsword was just too slow and I was always getting hit while trying to damage him, with the twinblades I could hit him for just as much damage and not get hit, also while he has a bunch of health it isnt nearlly as much as you think because when he was around 15% of health he opens for a critical attack that kills him straight away(It was so bloody satisfying XD) so it isnt as bad as you think.

Not sure Im a convert yet but I can see why people like this fight, and man I really wish they'd add a boss rush or select mode in these games the only way I can re fight him now is either rolling a whole new character or by joining someone in co-op...

[KSubzero1000]

@Todinho:
Congrats! I knew you could do it.

[Chopper]

Yeah there are some real dicks in the game. Some brilliant characters though. I really liked The Bloody Baron (as in he seemed really believable and well written, I didn't 'like' him), and Dijkstra, again, fantastically written.

Geralt is a bit of a twat too, he's already slept with three different women and told them all how much they meant to him. (Or, in hindsight, is it absolutely me - his puppet master - who is the twat?)

I've spent so long in this world it almost feels like a real place. Like somewhere I've really been. I can't remember the last time that happened in a game.

Agree, it's a cracking game. I just wish I had the staying power to complete it but I'm going more and more for shorter experiences these days.

Gaming - got past a puzzle in Statik that I'd been stuck on - I knew what to do but there was a speed element introduced and I was finding it difficult to get past. Happy I went back to it and persevered, I should be able to finish it now.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided - this is a big game but doesn't feel big, because it consists of millions of side quest-sized sections. Enjoying it, but the only complaint is that the gamespace (mostly Prague so far) is so dense that you always stumble on quests you haven't reached yet, purely by wondering where this vent goes, or what's up this ladder? There are possibly too many ways to approach each quest (which I guess is because the designers had to make every quest accessible to every character build) which doesn't quite work for me (and the side-questy nature of everything takes away something from the narrative, I think).

Playing a bit of Madden, struggling with Defense this year; they've made a real pig's ear of that aspect of the game.

[hazeredmist]

And so I've shelved Persona (sorry Persona, I tried. It's no 3, 4, or 5) to start playing Danganronpa (Vita, of course), because like many other digital titles on my Vita (including SteinsGate 0, Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters, Zero Escape, Psycho-Pass, etc) it has been starring at my for months, unplayed, wondering "come on... play me already! You know you wanna!".

Still in the Prologue, so early days...

The first one? Trigger Happy Havoc? Fantastic! I re-purchased it a while back to play again someday after regretting selling it on completion. It's excellent.

[hazeredmist]

Borderlands 2. A lot. Anyone else still playing this?

Yeah from time to time on the Vita. Not a great port as the frame rate is pretty shocking at times, but it's worth the trade off for having a game like that on hand held.

Only just saw your reply dude - I play on the Vita sometimes too, it's a lot more difficult I find purely because your fingers are gnarling more to control it, but it's generally pretty good.

I'm a bit annoyed as there seems to be no way to get the dlc anymore, so for the first time in pretty much ever I wish I'd got the digital version as it was £6.99 recently which is frankly insane for such a good, big game that included all the dlc. The physical version requires a code which my second hand copy didn't have, it seems there's no way to get it. Other than that I love the fact you can cross save between Vita and PS4.

I've put about 34 hours in which is the most since GTA Online (I will go back to that at some point) and Destiny (I will not go back to that). I absolutely love it. Beautiful art, satisfying mechanics and basically seems to be everything I loved about Destiny, minus the negative bits.

[Joshihatsumitsu]

And so I've shelved Persona (sorry Persona, I tried. It's no 3, 4, or 5) to start playing Danganronpa (Vita, of course), because like many other digital titles on my Vita (including SteinsGate 0, Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters, Zero Escape, Psycho-Pass, etc) it has been starring at my for months, unplayed, wondering "come on... play me already! You know you wanna!".

Still in the Prologue, so early days...

The first one? Trigger Happy Havoc? Fantastic! I re-purchased it a while back to play again someday after regretting selling it on completion. It's excellent.

Yeah, Trigger Happy Havoc. Really getting into it now!

[Diginauts]

75 hours in to The Witcher 3, and I've just got to Skellige. I'll be honest, I was just starting to get a little fatigued...

I was so worn out when I got there I rushed through it and barely got to see it. Something I regret to this day.

[Craig]

Axiom Verge for Switch.

Really impressed that even though it apes Super Metroid, it still has enough of its own ideas and voice to feel like something different.

I seem to be finding quite a lot of optional weapons, but I’m still mostly returning to the default one.

[Suits]

Axiom Verge for Switch.

I’ve got the physical special edition coming, although it seems to be delayed for some reason so haven’t played it.

That said, with having just finished Metroid 2 and Steam World Dig 2 out and getting rave reviews - perhaps I’d wait a while until I dip in anyway.

Stardew Vally will wait until MP drops I think, as I’ve played it on the Xbox already.

I’ve just picked up Golf Story to tide me over until Mario comes out, something a bit chill is nice.

Sooooo, many games !!!!

[seansthomas]

Thimbleweed Park is great for all the reasons Monkey Island and it’s ilk were and also irritating as hell for similar reasons. So often I know what to do but have to use the hint line as I need to activate a sequence for it to occur with a particular character or at a specific point in time.

Really charming game and incredibly smart at times, but I’d forgotten how maddeningly stubborn these point n click games are.

[Stanshall]

I've enjoyed what little I've played of Thimbleweed Park but I'm almost waiting for the colder darker nights to draw in, to play it in bed with the covers pulled up.

I've been playing a heck of a lot of FIFA on the Switch. Really enjoying it a great deal, getting promoted up through the FUT leagues, building my team. It plays really well and I'm finding it as much fun in handheld as with the Pro Controller, in contrast to James Farley's feelings on it this week.

Butcher is also damn good fun, really brutal sense of weight to the weaponry and the controls are pretty snappy now I've got used to them. It's the kind of game which would have been banned in the early 90s, that kind of vibe. It feels awesome to shotgun some jet pack guy and see the exploding fuel incinerate some other bad bastards who were gunning for you.

Sine Mora Ex is also quality. Definitely very challenging for me but a beautiful game with a real satisfying learning curve. I could probably do without the story and loading transition screens but it's an excellent shmup, maybe the best of its kind on the system - and there's plenty of choice now.

On that note, looking forward to putting a bit more time into Earth Atlantis, to see what else it has to offer. It's got quite an unusual kinda Boss Rush/Metroidvania gameplay loop and a strange pencil-drawn underwater mechanical crustacean aesthetic, which I thought might be hard to look at for long but it works well. It's unusual but quite attractive in its own way. It kind of reminds me of Everyday Shooter, the old Vita/PS3 title, in its sketchy look. I'd say it's on the level of Graceful Explosion Machine, which I think is quite good, if lacking in progression.

I've also been playing a bit of Deemo, which is a really pretty sounding piano driven rhythm game by the makers of Voez. It's touch screen only and therefore best played by removing the Joycon. It's not as colourful or visually stimulating as Voez but it's got a much better song library, to my tastes, anyway. It's also got loads and loads of songs. If you're tempted, I believe it's also available as a F2P mobile game, where you pay for individual songs or something. It's also a lovely, soothing game to play just before bed.

[Scrustle]

After so many years of telling myself I'd get around to it, I'm finally replaying No More Heroes 2. I was initially intending to do it when I first got my Wii U, so it's been a long time coming. Been enjoying it so far, with my experiences being mostly similar to how I remember it being the first time round, albeit a bit more extreme in both directions.

I've never really liked the little side-job minigames in this one. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I always kind of preferred the versions in the original game. Even though I guess these are technically "better" on a conceptual design level, in practice I've never liked how they turned out as much. The versions on NMH1 were mundane and repetitive. Here they try to make them more fun and "gamey" with their 8-bit styling and such. Sounds like a good idea. Yet in practice I find them not particularly enjoyable, and still pretty repetitive. Over time my opinion softened on them, coming around to the idea that they were a better idea than what NMH1 had, but after actually playing them again, I'm reminded of exactly why I never liked them in the first place. One major problem I think quite a few of them have is that they require you to use the analogue stick for movement controls, despite requiring pretty precise controls in something that looks like it was meant for a D-pad. Ends up feeling clumsy and frustrating.

On the other hand, I'm having fun with the combat again. Slightly more than I was expecting too. While the passage of time also played in to that a bit, I think most of it might be down to my weird relationship with the difficulty in these games. I've always found them rather odd, in that for both NMH games, the default medium level has always seemed just a bit too hard, making me go down to easy, which ends up being far too easy. Which I've never really felt bad about, because honestly, even though I really like these games, they're not designed that well in terms of combat mechanics. They can sometimes be kind of clunky and awkward, with annoying difficulty spikes and such. I enjoy it more for the style and pantomime of it all. When I played this game the first time round, I tried it on normal at first, but then gave up about a quarter of the way through as I hit a boss that seemed unfairly designed. So I started again on easy and blasted my way through the game kind of mindlessly. Still enjoying myself, but it makes the game little more than a simple button-masher. Which to me always seemed to suit these games anyway. This time around though, I decided to give medium a go again, and just reached that same boss. This time I managed to beat him without too much trouble. Still quite a bit harder than what came before, but far from anything I'd call unfair. So either I got better, or I was just unconsciously coming at it with less of the button-masher mentality. Either way, it has made all the boss fights so far feel more engaging in requiring a bit more from the player, and simply making the fights last longer too, making them seem like less of an anti-climax.

[seansthomas]

After so many years of telling myself I'd get around to it, I'm finally replaying No More Heroes 2. I was initially intending to do it when I first got my Wii U, so it's been a long time coming. Been enjoying it so far, with my experiences being mostly similar to how I remember it being the first time round, albeit a bit more extreme in both directions.

I've never really liked the little side-job minigames in this one. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I always kind of preferred the versions in the original game. Even though I guess these are technically "better" on a conceptual design level, in practice I've never liked how they turned out as much. The versions on NMH1 were mundane and repetitive. Here they try to make them more fun and "gamey" with their 8-bit styling and such. Sounds like a good idea. Yet in practice I find them not particularly enjoyable, and still pretty repetitive. Over time my opinion softened on them, coming around to the idea that they were a better idea than what NMH1 had, but after actually playing them again, I'm reminded of exactly why I never liked them in the first place. One major problem I think quite a few of them have is that they require you to use the analogue stick for movement controls, despite requiring pretty precise controls in something that looks like it was meant for a D-pad. Ends up feeling clumsy and frustrating.

On the other hand, I'm having fun with the combat again. Slightly more than I was expecting too. While the passage of time also played in to that a bit, I think most of it might be down to my weird relationship with the difficulty in these games. I've always found them rather odd, in that for both NMH games, the default medium level has always seemed just a bit too hard, making me go down to easy, which ends up being far too easy. Which I've never really felt bad about, because honestly, even though I really like these games, they're not designed that well in terms of combat mechanics. They can sometimes be kind of clunky and awkward, with annoying difficulty spikes and such. I enjoy it more for the style and pantomime of it all. When I played this game the first time round, I tried it on normal at first, but then gave up about a quarter of the way through as I hit a boss that seemed unfairly designed. So I started again on easy and blasted my way through the game kind of mindlessly. Still enjoying myself, but it makes the game little more than a simple button-masher. Which to me always seemed to suit these games anyway. This time around though, I decided to give medium a go again, and just reached that same boss. This time I managed to beat him without too much trouble. Still quite a bit harder than what came before, but far from anything I'd call unfair. So either I got better, or I was just unconsciously coming at it with less of the button-masher mentality. Either way, it has made all the boss fights so far feel more engaging in requiring a bit more from the player, and simply making the fights last longer too, making them seem like less of an anti-climax.

Always been conflicted by NMH2. Slicker and sometimes better combat than the original, but lacked any of its charm for me. Found movement in those enclosed spaces with the female character barely passable, many of the bosses not as epic and, like you, actually preferred the mini games of one.

Never got why the second game gets all the love compared to the original personally.

[kintaris]

Having been out of the Playstation loop for many years, it's time to catch up on those Naughty Dog games everyone has been raving about while I've been away.

That's right, I'm playing the re-release of Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Seriously though, I have more fond feelings for this game than I realised, given that I found myself muttering a lot of the dialogue from the opening cutscenes just before it was spoken! I first played it around release, at a time when we couldn't afford tons of games per year. I suspect I played through it at least five or six times back then.

I think it still holds up pretty well. Sure, the camera's a pain, but that's true of most 3D platformers of the period. And that day/night cycle is still lovely to behold. I vividly remember being blown away by that.

I'm also starting Alien: Isolation this week, as there's a small chance I might be discussing it on my first ever podcast gig It's not Cane and Rinse, of course, but we all have to start somewhere. I just re-watched Alien tonight and boy has it helped me appreciate the effort put into the art direction of Isolation. The opening level in particular is exquisitely nostalgic - I admire its purity.

[Alex79]

Tell you what I haven't been playing. The Gran Turismo Sport timed demo. Both times I've tried it the server has been down and it won't let you play offline. I really want to like that game but it's done everything wrong so far. I mean like everything >_< No career mode, poor choice of cars, underwhelming beta, unplayable demo... it's been mess up after mess up for that game. Such a sad way for the best ever racing series to go.

[Joshihatsumitsu]

But surely making a game/demo online only, with no offline mode, is the best idea ever? I can’t think of a single example of that ever backfiring or failing ever!

I think after personally giving Gran Turismo 5 far more time and energy than it deserved, I’m kinda okay with being done with the series. I mean geez... I still have my PSP UMD of Gran Turismo, I don’t feel too bad for skipping future releases.

[Suits]

Such a sad way for the best ever racing series to go.

I understand that you may be speaking from preference here, in which case fair enough but in the interest of conversation, surely the tide on that statement must be starting to turn now, if not already.

For me, ever since Forza 2, my preference for console racers has been the Forza series - primarily Motorsport..

I was an outstanding Gran Tourismo fan but after that drab, stagnant, half baked Gran Tourismo 5 on the PS3, I never once looked back from Forza that had grabbed my attention from the sooner released, more modern, more fun Xbox 360.

Since then the Forza series has gone from strength to strength, building on its robust physics and slightly more accessible arcade flavor.

Couple that with the Horizon series and I'm starting to think that Forza now holds the crown of best ever racing series.

[KSubzero1000]

I'm not sure I agree with how casually arcade racers are seemingly being left out of the conversation here...

There's more to the racing genre than GT and Forza, just as there is more to FPSs than CoD and Battlefield. Just because they're the big budget "realistic" flagship titles that are currently dominating the market doesn't render the others irrelevant.

Of course I understand that these are great games who have earned the enthusiasm of their fans, it's just that "best X ever" discussions should be a bit more inclusive than that, in my opinion.

[Michiel K]

F-Zero GX is the best ever racing game (and one of the greatest games overall) from where I stand. Not bad for a game with cars that don't have wheels.

[Alex79]

Haha that was absolutely my own opinion. As someone who isn't a big fan of arcade racers in general (Outrun notwithstanding) I really go for the more sim like games. Loved Forza on 360 but haven't got an Xbox One, and the Gran Turismo series feels special to me since I've been there since day one. Literally. Bought the first game when it came out and every version since. The original prompted me in to buying the analogue pad for PS1 before they were standard, and it's just a series I've really been in love with over the years. The last instalment, GT6, was the first one which set the alarm bells ringing for me since it just wasn't an improvement over 5. But this new one seems to have left out everything I loved about the series, because for me, the actual racing of cars around the track was just one aspect of a huge, involving game. Sport has thrown pretty much everything out of the window in that regard.