Whatcha Been Playing?

[dezm0nd]

Been playing a lot of Dark Souls 2, still! Can smell the end-game but that probably means another 20 hours of gametime... That and Mario Galaxy 2 have been taking up my spare time and it's a wonderful thing.

[DomsBeard]

Loving Halo 4 even though I don't have a clue about the story and who the forerunners are. The gunplay is so satisfying and in turning it down to Normal the Prometheon Knights are less ridiculous (cheap one hit kills).

South Park is quite enjoyable. Had me grinning like a idiot throughout playing it. TIMMY!

[NokkonWud]

I didn't like Halo 4 that much. Halo has always stood out for being impeccably well balanced, never more so than with Halo Reach which, for me, absolutely nailed how you do a hard difficulty. That balance was completely lost by 343. The creativity that thrived in Halo 3 and Halo Reach was also lost, instead we got a clinical shooter with no imagination. I think back to all the brilliant moments from SP and MP in Reach and it makes me sad to think how 343 just completely missed the boat.

[hazeredmist]

Loved 3, but tired of Halo 4 within 3 levels.

[hazeredmist]

Just started Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS. Surprised a top-down game has possibly the best 3D I've seen on the console so far. Subtle but ace.

[Flabyo]

Decided to mount an attack on my pile of shame. Started by going back to Phoenix Wright 5 on the 3DS. It's... still not clicking. And I *love* this game series, so I'm not entirely sure what about this one I'm not liking. I've told myself I have to try to finish it before I'm allowed to move on to Layton vs Wright though.

[Scrustle]

Went back to XB1 games a bit today.

Still can't get on with drifting in Forza 5. I can kind of do it, but I'm still pretty terrible and inconsistent at it, and tuning cars is still totally defeating me. It's really annoying. The balance of keeping the car sideways has a way narrower window now, and on top of that cars just sometimes seem to spin out with no warning at all. And they still haven't fixed the glitch with the gear ratio graph in the tuning screen. That's such a pain. I'm starting to think that maybe the controller might be a contributing factor. Not that it's broken or anything, but that the vibration is being far more of a hindrance than a help. At the very least it's extremely noisy when you're driving your car sideways. Constantly buzzing as hard as it can.

Also did some more in Strider. I thought I was in a bit I was stuck on, but I managed get past it without actually much problem. Fought some bosses too. They weren't really hard at all. After that huge difficulty spike of that jetpack guy, they've gone back to being more or less as hard as they were before. Those bloody bugs that climb over the walls with the hard shells though. They are the absolute worst.

[dezm0nd]

Finally got over my dislike for NES remix and got pretty hooked on it. Its a really good idea but takes too long to get to the good stuff by making you play predictable and somewhat tedious NES games. Remix 2 definitely has a better, more obscure (a bit) library so I'll definitely get it, I just hope they get to the fun stuff quicker!

[RoboticMonk3y]

Cool, one thing that annoyed me about that game though is that it doesn't seem you can go back to areas you already played to mop up the rest of the collectables. You have to start each level from 0%, unless I missed something in the options? X

Nope, all the stuff you've found stays found.
It's great going back to get all the collectibles, you end up exploring all the hidden nooks (and get to hear a really pretty vocal acoustic hidden song!)
I've platinumed the game now, I'm going to wipe my save and let my 9 year old have a play through.

As for ending messages with an x, I do that in text messages far too often!

[Combine Hunter]

I've been getting stuck into Assassin's Creed 4 recently, and I've found myself really enjoying it so far. While I did play the opening sections of revelations and AC3, it "feels" like it has been a long time since I've played an AC game, and I think that has certainly contributed to my positive feelings towards the game. But what strikes me about AC 4 compared to other entries in the series, is how compelling the side content is. The story missions follow similar game design patterns I've seen in past AC games, and while well constructed and fun, do feel a bit familiar. The side content on the other hand, feels really different. Raiding ships, building up a fleet, capturing outposts and hunting for large ocean creatures. Even the optional assassination and Templar hunt missions, while not a new concept, feel much better thought out in this entry. All that, plus I just really love the setting this time out. I loved the Renaissance period in AC 2 and Brotherhood, but I had burnt out on it by the time I got round to Revelations. And AC 3 just failed to capture my attention at all. I'm glad this series has managed to re-capture the spark I felt during AC 2 and Brotherhood.

[Scrustle]

Did some Majora's Mask today. I was intending to start it properly right after finishing Twilight Princess, but I guess I lagged a little. Got in to it now though. Did the Woodfall Temple and did a bunch of the sidequests.

Went back to Dragon's Dogma a bit too. Just decided to do a bit of exploring and leveling up my vocation. Found some cave system which I'd never been in before, which was mostly a really large gorge. There also happened to be a cyclops sitting on the tiny bridge across the thing. Managed to actually knock it off the side though.

But as I've levelled up my vocation class I've found it's gotten a much wider selection of skills. The early stuff was basically temporarily enchanting your shield so that it caused certain effects when you blocked enemy attacks, with the effects being stronger if you time your blocks correctly. Mostly it was just elemental stuff. But now I've got some more interesting stuff. An actual magical projectile attack, which is really useful, as well as finally being able to enchant my sword myself too. Before I had to rely a lot on other elements of the game to really make use of stuff. Like to use the shield stuff I had to rely on enemies attacking me, and they're not really that aggressive. Often my pawns were even taking out enemies as I was standing there waiting for them to attack me. And since I changed to this class, I found my mage pawn for some reason wasn't bothering to enchant my weapon at all when I needed it. So now I don't need to worry about that stuff, and the skills are actually more useful and varied too.

I also tried to get back in to Curse of Darkness, but I think my PS2 has finally given up the ghost. Discs won't spin at all now unless I put significant pressure on a certain spot constantly, which is probably not a good idea anyway. It's almost impressive it's gone on this long, considering I first noticed this problem when I first had the original God of War. So it's probably been almost a decade before it's finally conked out. Now I'm wondering about replacing the thing. I definitely still want a working PS2, but I'm not sure exactly how to go about getting a replacement. I took a look earlier today, and it seems that a new console costs just over £100. Used are far cheaper, around £35 even, but I'm not sure I trust a used PS2.

[Flabyo]

One of the fun things about Dragon's Dogma is that when you change class you can still equip some of the skills you've levelled up from playing other classes. You can eventually end up with some pretty crazy hybrid skill sets (my endgame Magic Archer had all sorts of off-class abilities)

[hazeredmist]

Decided to mount an attack on my pile of shame. Started by going back to Phoenix Wright 5 on the 3DS. It's... still not clicking. And I *love* this game series, so I'm not entirely sure what about this one I'm not liking. I've told myself I have to try to finish it before I'm allowed to move on to Layton vs Wright though.

Shit. I'm a HUGE fan of this series and am kind of struggling in the same way. There's something different, can't quite put my finger on it. The new characters, the music, the writing, it's just not quite as charming somehow. I'm only on the back end of the second case so I'll stick with it.

[Flabyo]

I think it's that there seem to be too many simpering 'Yamato Nadeshiko' characters. This one seems to be the most obviously Japanese in setting too, despite the localisation continuing to insist we're in the US... (yes, even more than the previous ones with all their Shrine Maiden stuff...) I'm currently investigating a murder at a school festival... you don't get a much more cliche Japanese setting than that.

Perhaps it's just that the whole game design is too stale now. I did enjoy when they mixed it up in the Edgeworth game, and when Capcom tried to clone the gameplay with their Harvey Birdman game it fell incredibly flat so...

[hazeredmist]

Yeah, you could be right on the character front. I'm desperate to finish the case I'm on so I can set the game aside for now, I've got Trigger Happy Havok on Vita which I'm excited about trying, and looks to be of a similar note with a fresh take.

It's strange, I really, really love the Phoenix Wright games to the point where I've replayed them all several times, and I'm struggling to even get through this one. Reviews were good too, I don't get it. It's one of those 'is it me or the game' situations.

[Scrustle]

Bit more of Dragon's Dogma. I've had a go at exploring Bitterblack Isle finally. Haven't been able to get far though. Seems most of it is blocked off to begin with. I explored what I could though. Enemies there are way tougher than in the rest of the game, but they were mostly still manageable with my level 63 character. A few were a bit of trouble though, but I managed to dispatch them soon enough. But I did come across something very intimidating. An enormous boss. A giant cyclops, chained to the walls. Strangely, I could attack it while it was chained up there and it didn't retaliate. But my attacks were only chipping away tiny chunks of its health, and it had like 10 health bars. I decided not to push my luck and left before long. My pawns didn't seem too keen on the idea of taking that guy on either. It was kind of amusing to hear them actually show fear, as they pleaded with me to just let the monster be. Never seen them act anything like that before.

So I don't really know what to do now. I assume taking on that thing is what I'm supposed to do, since there doesn't seem to be any other option, but do they really expect me to take on that thing? I know this part of the game is supposed to be for veteran players, but isn't level 60+ enough? It seems like I would need to be even a way higher level than I am now to even stand a chance, judging by how little damage I was doing.

Also got back to Curse of Darkness too, thanks to a replacement PS2. I decided that I would go ahead and get a new one, since that's probably the most reliable option, and they're only going to get more expensive from now on too, since they don't produce them any more. In fact, the price already went up a little in the time I was deliberating about it. I was somewhat surprised by exactly what I received when I got the thing though. Not only was there a slight visual redesign from my old PS2 slim, but this new one came without a power brick at all. The power cable was just a single chord. And on top of that, the cable provided didn't end in a UK style 3-pronged plug. It was a 2-pronged one. And just loose in the package, not the actual box with the machine in, there was this odd adapter for the plug. This weird thing that I snapped the plug in to that turned it in to a 3-pronged one. This thing had a fuse in it too. I also noticed that some of the prominent text on the cover of the manual was in what looked like Arabic too, but only that little bit. All very strange. It's still a PAL system and it's in English and works fine, but those few things stood out as very strange. I guess they stopped making PS2s specifically for the UK towards the end of their production run.

[Alex79]

Is Rockstars Bully still worth playing? I've been meaning to for years and got just enough sitting in my PSN wallet.

[suzzopher]

Upgraded FFXIV from PS3 to PS4 this morning, made my shitty week end on a high. It is a massive jump from PS3 to PS4 in terms of appearance and performance. I can't see me playing anything else for a good few weeks now

[Todinho]

I dont know how well it holds up today but it's my favorite rockstar game(or rather only game I like from them) other than Red Dead Redemption,I think it's really good but I was a kid when I played it so that might have something to do with it,I'd check some videos of the cutscenes to see if the game's style appeals to you or not because other than that I cant think of anything in the game too different from the GTA formula and if you like that I dont think you'll have a problem enjoying the game.

[Bakers_12]

Is Rockstars Bully still worth playing? I've been meaning to for years and got just enough sitting in my PSN wallet.

I played it at the end of last year just before GTA V came out and loved it. Defo worth getting.