Whatcha Been Playing?

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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

I've been playing absolutely fuck all because my 360 died out of nowhere.

:I
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Oh, no!

Really sorry to hear that, man. :(

Good ol' RRoD, still ruining lives in 2019.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

Oooofff!

Will there be a significant amount of setup to get the next one back to where this one was with all the stuff you've got on it?
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

Thanks for the support, gents. It may have risen from the grave after several hours of fannying around and flashing the NAND and stuff. I'm at least back to square one with a machine that boots to the XB dash. It's a relief to be able to start from scratch, in any case.
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shadowless_kick
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by shadowless_kick »

Alex79uk wrote: June 9th, 2019, 3:15 pm
Did you play the originals..?
I mean, it's definitely a call back, but it was used with more restraint in the originals. it feels like the Mania team were having too much fun designing the levels. they are gorgeous, tho.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Today in KSub vs. Capcom:

I decide to boot up my 360 in order to test the controller that's giving me trouble on PC just to be sure. I select RE4, because it's pinned at the start, I don't have to insert any disc and the trigger functionalities are easily accessible. There is a mix-up at the title screen and the game starts without selecting any storage device and boots up the default system data. I go back and select my HDD. The game then decides to overwrite my previous system data with the "new" one and promptly deletes all of my unlockables and Mercs scores without a care in the world. Now I'm staring at the default title screen with all my NG+ non sequitur save files chilling in the background. Cool. :|

Thankfully it's not my version of choice these days and those scores weren't anything to boast about, but still. Perfect example of the thoughtlessness with which they're treating their properties and the half-assed, barely competent ports they're polluting the market with.

Can't wait to dive headfirst into the exact same murky waters of incompetence of the overpriced Switch version with the broken framerate and associated glitches that are supposed to patch themselves later this year. :thumbsup:
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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clippa wrote: June 12th, 2019, 9:47 pm Oof, they say bad luck comes in threes, you've had 2 so you're over the worst of it.
Actually, that was the third one. I got mugged by the gubberment earlier today. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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A little bit of American Truck Simulator, not sure if it’ll hold up long term. It has some appeal as I used to live in California but outside of that the missions may be a little too one-note.

Surprised to see Clippa has some significant time logged, wouldn’t have expected that :D
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

For some reason I've been playing Infinite Undiscovery which was in the recent final batch of XB1 backward compatible games. This is from a very different period in the time I've been playing games. In fact, judging by achievements, it was almost exactly 10 years since I last played it. Only a few weeks out. That was a period when I was still kind of feeling out the JRPG genre and seeing if I could find anything in it I liked. Back then basically any JRPG that had action combat was worth a look for me, so I actually enjoyed this one a fair bit. Although I never finished it at the time. So I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it, even though I think I could tell at the time it was pretty janky and rough. As time went on I thought going back to it would be impossible, with how games and my own tastes have evolved. Yet I decided to take this chance to take another look. And... I think I like it. At least for now. Yet at the same time, pretty much everything about it is quite bad.

The combat is really stiff and clunky. There's quite a few systems going on with it, but they don't naturally flow very well. For example, you get certain bonuses for chaining a combo against an enemy while they're in a certain stun-locked state. But the problem is actually getting an enemy in to two of those three states seems like dumb luck, which is not helped by your party knocking them out of it with their own attacks. A lot of enemies just don't seem to respond to being knocked in to those states either. There's also a parry move you can do that stuns an enemy giving you an opening. Except the move comes out way too slowly to be useful, and it's not clear what enemies it even works on.

It's also a pretty ugly game. It has that kind of look you see in quite a few low-budget early 360 games. Everything looks pretty flat and muddy, with drab lighting and not much artistic flourish in the environments. Character designs look fine I suppose, but their faces and animations look stiff and lifeless. It does have one nice little touch of style though. In this world, the antagonistic force has chained the moon to the earth, and you can always see it in the sky, and it's quite a dramatic image. It's pretty pixelated, as is the whole low-res image, but the scene of that moon with chains wrapped around it in a way that almost looks like if the rings of Saturn covered the whole planet, with some of them reaching all the way down to the horizon is pretty cool looking. Shame they didn't capture that feeling anywhere else in the visual design.

The story so far is pretty bland and shallow, but there is a little twist to it later on that is pretty cool. I'm nowhere near this point on this run, but I remember from playing it originally it actually does something pretty interesting halfway through. So spoilers for a bad, 10 year old game.
Spoiler: show
You don't play as the special chosen one in this game, but instead you are in their adventuring party, and your character looks identical to them. Halfway through the game or so, the chosen one actually gets killed by the bad guys, and so to keep the cause going and morale high, your character takes their place and poses as them for the rest of the game. I've always thought that was a neat twist on the chosen one trope, although I expect by the end it'll turn out the reason you look so similar is because you are their reincarnation and that was always supposed to happen, making you the real chosen one after all. But still, pretty neat approach to it.
The dialogue and voice acting though is awful. It's really amateurish and stilted, in that way that is pretty familiar if you've played any Japanese game that got dubbed in to English before localisation really got to the quality we expect today. I've been enjoying it though. It's hilariously bad. The game is also trying to be pretty comedic too, or at least I think so. But the jokes are so bad and poorly delivered I'm more laughing at it than with it. But I think it's trying to be silly in a lot of places, so it has a certain earnestness to it.

Not sure how long I'll keep playing. I'm unlikely to finish it, but I've been surprised by how much more I've been wanting to play already. It feels like there's some parallels with my recent trip back to Kingdoms of Amalur. But with that game, it at least started off on the right foot and was genuinely enjoyable for a while. This though has been pretty trashy from the start, but for some reason I don't feel like I've had my fill yet.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Flabyo »

I play Elite Dangerous for much the same reasons. Handy to have something that doesn’t occupy all of your brain from time to time.
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stvnorman
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by stvnorman »

I heard Super Mario Land mentioned the other day and couldn’t resist digging it out. Still love the way that game plays, and it might be short but the environments are fantastic. The final section is still a bugger though! I was really spoilt the day I got that and Tetris with my Game Boy - portable perfection!

Knowing little about SNES PilotWings when I started playing it on 3DS recently, I didn’t see a helicopter combat section coming! Still hate the parachute sections - actually, I wish I could just the plane all the time - but I’ve got the hang of most things now and am enjoying what I think is the last of the advanced lessons. Then a bit more helicopter combat.

Otherwise, just got through a fairly frustrating climbing bit in Final Fantasy 7 where I kept being forced to restart solely because of my impatience! The snowboard bit just before it was a pleasant surprise, but one of the longest cut scenes I’ve ever experienced just after wasn’t so much when I really needed to turn off and do other stuff!

And a had quick go on the new Contra collection. I’ve only ever played NES Contra and Special C before. Any particular order I should appreciate them all in?
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Re: American Truck Simulator/Elite

I can see where you guys are coming from but I think the game is just a bit too light on things to do to keep my interest (he says, having played for 7 hours). With Elite, you had that incredibly difficult learning curve at least, and I'm all out of podcasts.

I will give it another little go, focusing on the business side a wee bit this time. I'm also hoping it will allow me to shoehorn in a joke that I was able to make with Rig'n'Roll several years ago, so stay tuned for that :geek:
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Ok, I've now installed a few mods, including the one which plays real local stations as you drive into their catchment area. This is providing the final piece of feedback to keep me engaged.

On the downside of that, nothing against Christians themselves obvs, but these 'Christian' radio stations only exist to bilk the rubes of their hard-earned cash. The one I was listening to (CSN) was just a relentless barrage of panhandling for donations. :(

'We're a couple of weeks from our fiscal year end and we'd love for you to make us a gift. 1-888-LOVE-GOD'. Verbatim. I am serious. :x
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Chopper wrote: June 14th, 2019, 1:57 pm On the downside of that, nothing against Christians themselves obvs, but these 'Christian' radio stations only exist to bilk the rubes of their hard-earned cash. The one I was listening to (CSN) was just a relentless barrage of panhandling for donations. :(

'We're a couple of weeks from our fiscal year end and we'd love for you to make us a gift. 1-888-LOVE-GOD'. Verbatim. I am serious. :x
Mate honestly, everything I read and hear about american televangelists and their radio brethren leads me to believe that these are just two-bit con artists preying on the weak and vulnerable. A simple palette swap from "fortune tellers" with a bit of gratuitous Latin sprinkled on top and as far removed from original christian doctrine as one could possibly imagine. Gross.

I don't think any regular parishioner is gonna take issue with your statement.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

It really is reprehensible. And breathtaking. Now they are selling DVDs of Yosemite and Zion National Parks......which show evidence of a global flood long ago. :D

I gotta get out of this area (central Arizona) :lol:
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

$34.99 per DVD, I would imagine.

Chopper wrote: June 14th, 2019, 2:43 pm I gotta get out of this area (central Arizona) :lol:
Quite the diagnosis! :lol:
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Simonsloth
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Simonsloth »

Really really enjoying Prey.

I had no idea it was a Dishonored-Bioshock-Deus ex hybrid. All 3 games are things I really enjoy so this seems right up my street. Pleasantly surprised.
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ColinAlonso
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ColinAlonso »

Losing steam on Final Fantasy XII now. I'm 45 hours in and may drop doing hunts and just barrel through the rest of the story.

Picked up Crypt of the Necrodancer on Switch as its only €4 now and I've been tempted for some time.
Its the first roguelite that I haven't bounced off since Rogue Legacy on Vita a few years ago. Lots of fun keeping a beat but level 2 is a big difficulty spike. Learning the patterns of new, more complicated enemies while keeping the beat is mentally tough.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

Simonsloth wrote: June 14th, 2019, 8:42 pm Really really enjoying Prey.
Delighted to hear it, as the beginning can be a bit finicky. It didn't click for me until several hours in. You'll be glad to hear it...errrr....broadens and deepens as you go along too.
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