What are you playing right now? VI

[Job McYossie]

I recently got DayZ. The standalone. This game is bullshit even for an Alpha, yet I love it. It's bullshit where I feel it should be. Still next to impossible to play alone though.

[DarkHoodness]

@Manco - As did I with Brothers. Short, but its impact was strong enough for me to think about for several days after.

We emulated (his copy of) PS2 Okami on the PC (using a PS3 controller, getting it to work was a faff) since his PS3 is broken. Graphics were surprisingly crystal clear though - Almost as good as the HD version.

[Phylum]

Nah, PCSX2 can't do Okami justice. If you played with the hardware renderer, which I'll assume you did if you said it was clear, you get everything nice and crisp but lose some of the overlay effects (which were apparently gruesome hacks by the devs) and most, if not all, of the post processing. Software mode is fairly accurate, but it still doesn't capture the original bloom and only runs at potato resolutions. Ammy actually glows in software mode, for example.

If you go back to a PS2 now you'll see what I mean, especially from hardware mode. Such a beautiful game, and emulation just doesn't do it justice.

[Kiyo]

Some Dark Souls 2.

[Manco]

Nah, PCSX2 can't do Okami justice. If you played with the hardware renderer, which I'll assume you did if you said it was clear, you get everything nice and crisp but lose some of the overlay effects (which were apparently gruesome hacks by the devs) and most, if not all, of the post processing. Software mode is fairly accurate, but it still doesn't capture the original bloom and only runs at potato resolutions. Ammy actually glows in software mode, for example.

If you go back to a PS2 now you'll see what I mean, especially from hardware mode. Such a beautiful game, and emulation just doesn't do it justice.

That would explain why the HD version toned down the overlay and bloom effects to an extent - I guess they couldn't figure out how to port them over fully.

On the one hand it's a shame to lose some of that original effect, but on the other hand the PS2 version sometimes felt like staring at a canvas while drunk and high on painkillers.

[Crashpunk]

I've only played Okami on the Wii. And the motion controls are perfect for it (When it actually works). We need to see a re-release on Wii U with the gamepad.

[DarkHoodness]

Nah, PCSX2 can't do Okami justice. If you played with the hardware renderer, which I'll assume you did if you said it was clear, you get everything nice and crisp but lose some of the overlay effects (which were apparently gruesome hacks by the devs) and most, if not all, of the post processing. Software mode is fairly accurate, but it still doesn't capture the original bloom and only runs at potato resolutions. Ammy actually glows in software mode, for example.

If you go back to a PS2 now you'll see what I mean, especially from hardware mode. Such a beautiful game, and emulation just doesn't do it justice.

Yeah, we noticed that the overlays didn't work properly and we had to look at vids to view the missing artwork normally displayed during story segments, but compromise is as compromise does. And that's emulation in a nutshell - but better than not being able to experience old titles at all.

[Job McYossie]

I got the weekly bundle for eurotruck 2, and ended up loving Tropic 4 a lot.

[Crashpunk]

Went back and did the Lambda Locator achievement in Half-Life 2. It was pretty easy. But a few caches are hard to locate without knowledge of them. Some of them are in hard to spot areas.

I still enjoy playing through that game. Every now and then I just start playing it again and I've become quite good at it. Even know some speed running tactics.

[V_O_T]

New N Tasty as of today lol. Yay!

[MeechMunchie]

Vertex Dispenser.

Christ. And I thought Multiwinia was twitchy. In this you've got to regulate your supplies of seven different resources, control units and fly a spaceship while solving a tricky logic puzzle. Competitively.

[OANST]

New N Tasty as of today lol. Yay!

Non-Oddwor...... Oh, fuck it. I don't care.

[Mac Sirloin]

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. I love this game. It is incredibly gruesome and brutal but also intelligently written without sacrificing fun. At times it feels like a gory rhythm game thanks to a thundering soundtrack and constant action. It makes other 3rd person action games look like fucking crap sandwiches stuffed with assbutter. And there's Orks too.

Dark Souls 2 has also eaten 350+ hours of my time since I got it two and a half months ago, but it deserves a bulbous sober post. You should buy it though, it's terrific.

[Mr. Bungle]

I need to continue the first Dark Souls, Blighttown has ravaged my soul beyond repair though. Fuck that town.

[Mac Sirloin]

Dark Souls is old enough that watching an LP to get through Blighttown is acceptable. However, there's a shortcut you can take to skip the vast majority of that stinky butthole of a level, if you head to the bottom of Firelink Shrine and take the elevator to New Londo Ruins, follow along the structure containing the elevator and you should find a doorway to the Valley of Drakes, I can't remember exactly where this doorway is but it's near the elevator; if you progress to a point where ghosts are attacking you you've gone much too far.

Anyway, there's a horrible cavern full of shitcaked ogres that leads to a point roughly halfway to two thirds of the way down blighttown. Buy lots of poison moss from the undead merchant at the end of the tunnel leading to the Undead Burg/Lower Undead Burg. Blighttown is bad, but it's hardly the worst area in the game and there's a lot of rewards for taking your sweet time. Bring a bow if you can, they've saved my bacon in Blighttown more often than I can count.

Also, if you have DS on PS3 we should play together.

I've also been playing Blood, a doomish FPS with its own humorous flair. It's tedious as heck manually saving, I've been spoiled by hard disks and autosave.

[OANST]

I finished A Link Between Worlds yesterday. I liked it a lot better than Spirit Tracks which was the last Zelda game I played.

[Wings of Fire]

I finished A Link Between Worlds yesterday. I liked it a lot better than Spirit Tracks which was the last Zelda game I played.

I can't even complain about how short LBW was because what was there was just so damn perfect.

I'm about to give my life to Sora no Kiseki so if anyone needs moderation then there's always Xavier.

[OANST]

I think it was shorter than modern Zelda games because they made the decision to use the same layout for the world as ALttP. Even with traveling between alternate dimensions, neither game was really very long. But yeah, it was very good. The puzzles weren't too hard, but occasionally they stumped me for a while until I realized that the solution was a lot simpler than I expected it to be.

I'd like to get around to playing Skyward Sword at some point, but I hate using the Wiimote to play games, so I probably won't until they eventually port it to a new console ten years from now.

[Crashpunk]

I haven't beat Link Between Worlds since I found it way too similar to ALttP. It was a good game, but I wanted something completely new.

[OANST]

Well..... almost all Zelda games use the same premise, adding only new mechanics, and puzzles to keep it interesting. This one was really well made, and part of the charm is the fact that you are returning to pretty much exactly the same Hyrule as the one in ALttP. As a one off, it's a pretty interesting idea, and was done well. If they did that a lot it would become a problem.

[Wings of Fire]

The ice dungeon from LBW is possibly the most perfectly put together and satisfying level I've ever played. I was actually sad when it was over and that never happens.

[Scrabaniac]

Me and my girlfriend just finished Outlast.. It was way too overhyped.

[Mac Sirloin]

All of these supposedly terrifying horror games are lackluster Manhunt ripoffs. That was a game that benefited from the limitations of its platform, it made everything a little dirtier. The stiff, robotic motion capture implemented in virtually every current horror game is horrendous and makes everything seem like a poor stage production put on by people with lots of recently healed injuries, their movement is so ginger and false.

Amnesia: The Dark descent did a good job of capturing horror as a feeling rather than as a snapshot eventuality: it was less of a jump and more of a dread. Outlast is about shocking you, over and over again to the point where you don't care. It's over the top and just feels silly, stealing shocking imagery from more well-executed sources to delude you into thinking it's clever or mature. It's like the first few Splicer miniboss characters from the first Bioshock all got stuck into an asylum but had the body horror corrected so they just look like gore splattered System of a Down band members.


I've been replaying Hotline Miami, the game that made violence fun again. You know what's fucking obnoxious? Shitty combo-based action games that require you to remember strings of button combinations to unleash dervish attacks on overdesigned demons until they fall over and turn into dust. I cannot fucking stand the gameplay of trash like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, it's like the worst mechanics of every other game stitched together into one worthless whole.
I should not need to slap a goatheaded motorcycle/octopus hybrid with a scythe twice my height 500 times to kill it. I should be able to instantly kill it by jamming my thumbs into its eyeholes and tugging because it makes me feel powerful. Action games generally do the opposite of what a video game should do and make me feel even weaker than I am in real life. Why does it take so many blows to defeat an enemy and yet I can only stand 10-12? It's completely self-defeating and makes Action Game characters just seem as powerful as an acrobat spinning around in circles with a kitchen knife.
Sure, I couldn't blow apart 20 zombies in a second with my telekinetic sky beams IRL, but I could definitely smash someones fucking head in with a cinderblock if the desire struck me. Since it does, constantly, I'm lucky to be able to play Hotline Miami which balances the fragility of your enemies and yourself perfectly, making you feel like the worlds greatest delusional repressed psychopath for each successive kill. The visual limitations of the pixelated style of Hotline Miami also help the violence feel distinctly more shocking and sick in such a colourful, pixelated world. Compare this to DMC, where every enemy is an angry hairy flying eyeball that pops in weird, tonedeaf bloodfire when it gets sprayed with a watergun too many times. Action games are fucking dumb if they're not Space Marine, Hotline Miami or some third option.

[OANST]

I liked Bayonetta, but I only played it on the mode that does the combos for you. I hate memorizing combos, and I refuse to do it. If the game doesn't have a mode that eliminates that necessity then I won't play it.

[Mac Sirloin]

Bayonetta was a lot of fun, but I played with the technical combo system which was foolish of me. I liked that the enemies cracked apart to reveal their gross meaty centers, but I found a lot of the designs senseless. It feels like all of the big action games like Ninja Gaiden and so forth really depend on a weird abrahamic-demon aesthetic that doesn't actually say anything about the enemies themselves except 'we are monsters'. I'm not saying each man eating garbage can needs to have a clever backstory, but they lack sense. It had a good sense of humor for what it was, much better than DMC. Fuck that game.

Since you clearly own a 3DS, have you tried the Mario and Luigi: Dream Team RPG? It's a lot of fun, if incredibly fucking tedious since there are tutorials right up until the end of the game. I had fun playing it until I accidentally kneeled on my 2DS.

[OANST]

Abbey has a 3DS, and Zoey (Stephanie's daughter) has a 2DS. I steal them from time to time to play games, but the only one's I've actually played on them so far are Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario 3D Land. Speaking of which, I just finished that one at 100%. Some of the special world levels (levels you unlock after beating the game) are haaaaaard.

[Varrok]

OANST is so depraved that he steals shit from his own children

[OANST]

Stephanie usually takes them away when they haven't cleaned their room, or something like that. That's when I swoop in!

[Mr. Molluck]

I'm playing bioshock. friggin amazing.

[Crashpunk]

I just finished that one at 100%. Some of the special world levels (levels you unlock after beating the game) are haaaaaard.

I know right. It actually took me by surprise of how hard they are. I don't think I've actually beat them thinking about it...