Whatcha Been Playing?

[Flabyo]

XBLA certainly does have some issues as regards discovery doesn't it? For example, I noticed yesterday that you can get Contrast for the 360. I don't remember that being made particularly clear, erm, anywhere.

I'm playing the Freedom Cry DLC for Assassin's Creed 4 at the moment. It's basically more of the same, but it's dealing with a moment in history I know bugger all about and that makes it pretty interesting.

[RoboticMonk3y]

5 hours later and I've forgotten to eat or wee. SUCH A GOOD GAME.

best box quote ever!

[Seanakin]

Finished the first of five episodes which comprise Telltale's "Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse" series, this first installment entitled "The Penal Zone." I'm only doing this in order to feel justified in getting these off my HDD once and for all, but holy HELL that was ROUGH. Suffice to say Telltale have come a long way since those days.

[Scrustle]

Finally finished off the dungeon I was stuck on in Spirit Tracks. It just so happens that it was that games version of a Water Temple too. It's so weird how in almost every Zelda game with a Water Temple in, that's always the one that's a pain in the arse. Oddly, I've never had a problem with that temple in Ocarina of Time. But in almost every other game that they've had one, it's been the least enjoyable one.

Played some more DMC4 too. Got past Chapter 18 with the fight with the Saviour. Now I'm on to the boss rush level. It's kind of a pain. It's not the die game that annoys me though. With that pretty much every spot you land on is something good. You either get a load of free orbs, a few low level enemies to tear through (which is supposed to be the "bad" spot I suppose), or advancement through the level. But it's when you actually advance and get to the boss that it gets annoying. You're playing as Nero at that point, but the bosses are now much tougher than they were when you first fought them. Managed to get past Berial without much trouble. I did die once, but I just wasn't fighting very smart, so the second try I did much better. But after that you fight Dagon, and I just got slaughtered. It was mostly because the lures it sends out freeze me and then it jumps out while I'm frozen and eats me. But there's absolutely no tell when this freezing attack is coming, and seemingly no way to avoid it. The attack that comes after is the most brutal one too. Takes away a huge chunk of health.

And my replacement sticks for my PS3 controller finally arrived! So I took apart my controller, which was fiddly as shit, to only find out that the sticks don't fit. They don't fit down on to the little pegs far enough, so there's not enough clearance for them to rotate around freely. So I had to take apart the thing again and put the old sticks back. Putting it back together at the end was even more fiddly. Tried sticking the buttons down with tape to make sure they didn't fall out, but it didn't really help, and it just left tape glue over the controller at the end. At least the thing still worked when I put it back together, but that was a total waste of time and the £1.50 or whatever it was I spent on those sticks. So yeah, I suppose I can now officially tell everyone don't try to replace the PS3 sticks with 360 sticks. It doesn't work.

[RoboticMonk3y]

out of interest, why were you trying to replace the sticks?

[Scrustle]

I don't really like the way the normal ones feel. They're alright, but being convex I don't feel like I have as much grip on them as the concave sticks if the 360. I thought they would be better for playing faster paced games or ones that require more precision. I do have some grips that go over the normal sticks, and they help, but they're not ideal. I guess I'll have to stick with them anyway.

[RoboticMonk3y]

I guess I'll have to stick with them anyway.

pun intended?

I was going to suggest these,
link.
but if you seem to already be using some, they've made my 360 pad feel brand new

[AndyKurosaki]

Rented Puppeteer, can't say it's doing much for me so far. It's not that it's bad, I'm just not connecting with it. The constant audience laughing/clapping at the end of each bit isn't helping. Fuck knows what they're jizzing themselves over.
Dare say it'll be on Plus sooner or later, but I'd have hated to have spent £40 on it. The amazon reviews are good for a laugh though. "why isn't this hyped up, but Grand Theft Auto V is!!". Ridiculous.

[Todinho]

Yeah I find ridiculus a game that does very few new things with it's license other than making it bigger gets hyped and a game that has actual creativity and care behind isnt

PS:havent played a GTA game since San Andreas,which I played 5 minutes of.

[wolfrider]

A couple of levels into Transformers-Fall of Cybertron, and I'm loving it. This is what the movies should have been like. The gameplay conveys the feeling of being in a war, that you are struggling to win. The movement of the Autobots is realistic and the voice acting is as good as always, especially from Peter Cullen.

[DomsBeard]

Is that the second game? I keep meaning to pick it up as I loved the first one.

[AndyKurosaki]

Yeah, it's brilliant. Seeing as you loved the first one, you can't go wrong with it. Shame their Deadpool game wasn't of the same calibre. It was ok, but their Transformers games are way better.
Given up on Pupetteer, just can't be arsed with it.

[ratsoalbion]

I haven't played the Transformers games but for me Deadpool fell below the standard of "ok". Not trolling you Andy just wanted to warn people off trying it!

[wolfrider]

Is that the second game? I keep meaning to pick it up as I loved the first one.

Yeah you will love the second one. The story so far is much better than the first.

[AndyKurosaki]

I haven't played the Transformers games but for me Deadpool fell below the standard of "ok". Not trolling you Andy just wanted to warn people off trying it!

Heh, fair enough I found it alright to start with, but I wouldn't have paid £40 for it. I had high hopes considering their Transformers work, but it falls way short. It's still going for full price at my local Tesco. Good luck with that.

[Flabyo]

Deadpool has been delisted from the online stores (along with everything else Marvel, seems all the contracts expired at the end of 2013), so physical copies are all you can get now. That'll keep the price higher than the norm for older games for a while.

[Cass]

Just finished DmC, which was bloody glorious. I've read in places that this game takes itself too seriously, which, how the hell could you come to that conclusion when the game features such moments as:

Spoiler: show

Starting the game as a naked numetal pretty boy who dresses himself by vaulting through his outfit as he flies through the ballistic remains of his trailer;
The facelifted demon mistress of the main villain making you run a nightclub-based gauntlet (complete with fighting game announcer);
The same mistress villain giving birth to a giant demon baby which then sucks up its mother, which you defeat by dragging her out by the high heels;
And my personal favourite, traversing a demonic prison only to wind up inside the demonic equivalent of Fox News fighting Rush Limbaugh's devil counterpart.

It was ridiculous and amazing and a pleasure to watch and play. Highly recommended, though I think it helps that I had no significant experience with or attachment to the original series, so I had no expectations to disappoint.

[Todinho]

well I recommend you read what I wrote in the games completed thread about the game taking itself too seriously(it really does it tries too hard) but maybe that's just because I've played DMC4 still even if I didnt it wouldnt take the scene I showed as an example as funny or anything else than trying to be edgy

[Scrustle]

The thing about DmC is that it plays all those moments straight, as if they're supposed to be taken seriously. With the exception of that one at the very beginning of the game with the pizza, but that moment is an anomaly. I would actually have enjoyed it if it kept up that tone, but it quickly dropped it. The game is great to play, and I would recommend it too, but it plays most of its story in a way that looks like it wants you to take is seriously. But when they do try to inject a bit of humour in to things, it falls really flat too. It basically just amounts to Dante being a dick to people and swearing a lot, with this kind of swagger as if he thinks it makes him really cool. But I will say that the game does the whole "They Live" thing better than the actual movie does, but that's mostly because I can't really think of any way that it could be done worse than that movie.

Anyway, yesterday I dug out the PS2 and played some SSX 3 and On Tour, since I've been playing the reboot a little recently. Cemented my feelings about the level design in the new game. The older ones feel much better. They flow much more naturally, like they were designed way more with the idea in mind that everything should be perfect for snowboarding. Maybe the fact that the new game used real-world topographic data as a starting point for the levels in that game is the reason for that. The scenery in the older games felt a lot more lively too, especially in SSX 3. In that game there's loads of colours and neon lights and stuff. In On Tour they have that kind of hard rock aesthetic bleeding over in to the scenery too, and at lower points in some of the runs you go through towns. SSX 3 does that too. There are a few levels where you go through a city filled with lights and stuff. Although the new game isn't completely barren, compared to the older ones there's not much to it apart from ice and snow.

Played some more Spirit Tracks today as well. Starting to get near the end of that I think. Just did the first little bit in the Goron village and got a cargo carriage for my train. I'm missing loads of side-stuff in that game though. It seems to be a trend for me with these top-down Zeldas, that all the side-quests just seem like such a pain in the arse that they're not worth doing. They usually involve finding things and doing stuff that you would just never even be aware of if you didn't look it up in a walkthrough. Often involving a really long and convoluted chain of events where you are given no clue as to what you're supposed to do each time, etc. It seems like most of the time when I come across someone who is obviously involved in a sidequest, they're never the person who starts it, but they're some random person I have to go to in the middle of it, so there's nothing I can do. I just come across all these people who I know are related to some task, but I have no idea what the task is. So I hardly ever get any extra heart pieces or upgrades or stuff like that. It's really annoying.

I am enjoying the main storyline though. I don't get why people hate on these DS games as being some of the worst Zeldas, especially Spirit Tracks. Despite my problems I have with them, I've found them by far the most enjoyable top-down Zeldas. I guess I can understand why someone would hate the dungeon you have to keep coming back to in Phantom Hourglass, but the rest of the game is fun. Well, actually, I guess that dungeon is so bad it could ruin the game for somebody. It almost did with me. But still, overall I enjoyed the game. There's much more to it than that one terrible thing. But Spirit Tracks doesn't have that problem at all, yet people seem to hate it just as much. Sometimes even more. There is a dungeon that you have to go back to through the game, but you don't ever have to go through the same floor more than once, and there's no time limit, so everything that made that mechanic bad in PH is fixed. So there's nothing really majorly wrong about it.

Also, since I've been playing A Link to the Past recently, I think I may have worked out why I like these DS games better than other top-down Zeldas. It's the freedom of movement. I absolutely hate how limited you movement and attacks are in those old games. It's clunky as fuck, with the way you can only face in one of four directions, and your sword swipe which has this really small arc that only swipes across 90 degrees. It makes every possible encounter with any small enemy potentially fatal. With the way they charge you over and over, tearing through your hearts, while you can't hit or even block them at all because they came at you from an odd angle. In the DS games you just go in the direction you point, and tap on an enemy to hit them. Simple and easy. So because of that I thought that maybe I might like A Link Between Worlds after all. Because of my general experience with Zeldas of that style, I was put off it. But you have freedom of movement in that game, so maybe I'll like it after all. That is of course, ignoring the stuff about side-quests and stuff.

[Alex79]

The best Zelda game was Minish Cap on the GBA. No contest.