The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Ragnar]

I bought KOF 2000/2001 for the PS2 the other day, and have been hammering away at 2001. The problem is that the manufacturers of this version decided not to put in analog controls, so I have to use the d-pad for everything. In a fighting game.
Not nice.
The art is kinda weird in 2001, but I admit it's kind of nice in an Expressionist way.

Anyway, I'd suggest you get some other version of these games if you want to play them. My thumbs hurt...

[Olvelsper]

I finished Castlevania Curse of Darkness today. Awesome rendition of Death in that game, and it brings up lots of little plot threads that could be used later on without a problem, I think.

I'm on my way to destroy Colossi 9 through 16 in Shadow of the Colossus now for the first time. When I'm done with it, I'll just go and pick up something from my backlog of recent purchases to play.

[Dexie Oblivion]

Pokemon still.

The Sinnoh Dex is largely unfinished, but I have an upcoming tourney I'm raising monsters for.

Think of running my team as Skarmory/Breloom/Milotic/Gardevoir/Umbreon/Snorlax. I dunno.

[Anastasia]

Hearts of Iron 2:

Playing Germany. Sealion went well and the British Islands are under my control by the winter of 1941. Come May 8th, 1941, Barbarossa began. My panzer spearheads have encircled over 60 Russian divisions and Leningrad has fallen. It's now early August and Moscow's defense just broke around the same time eastern Ukraine was abandoned by the reds. If I can capture Stalingrad(likely), Kybuyshev(So-so odds) and Sverdlosk(Eeh...) by the end of the year, I should be able to have Russia wrapped up before the USA gets seriously invovled in the western war.

---

Valkyrie Profile 2:

Played up to the start of Chapter 2, entered Dipan Castle. While the game is gorgeous, the gameplay doesn't keep my attention and I don't like the characters. Bleh. The foreshadowing's also painfully obvious at times; granted, I already got spoiled on Dylan.

---

Castlevania Chronicals:

I replayed this. The Herb makes the difficulty curve largley meaningless, assuming you can avoid pitdeath. I did, so the game was a breeze.

[Karlinn]

*dusts off his profile*

Latest on my plate is and has been S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which joins games like Oblivion and Arcanum on my short list of games that succeed despite the best efforts of their developers.  The long version of my take on it can be found here; the short version is that it's far from technically competent, but is saved twice over by some amazing atmosphere and some very intense first-person action, with a decent (if sparse) plot to tie it together.  It's finally been patched properly, and the mod community has made some welcome improvements - and this is without the SDK, which should be out later this year.  Bottom line, worth the money if you can forgive some scripting problems and a shortage of compelling characters.

Also went through Condemned, sometimes known as Monolith's hobo-beating simulator.  It started out dull, got interesting, got really interesting, and then got all kinds of lame.  It's a legitimately good crime thriller at heart, but then it brings in some stupid eleventh hour twists that it never bothers to explain.  You just don't go from a tense, well-acted confrontation with a serial killer holding you at knifepoint to fighting stick-wielding Hellraiser ninjas with a shovel; you just don't.  The game could easily have been 'merely' a well-told cops-and-robbers story, but it opted instead for inexplicable nonsense, and that saddens me.

[Dexie Oblivion]

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest.

Prolly my favorite platformer ever, DEFINATELY my favorite game OST ever. <3

[Dracos]

Heard I should look at stalker.

Finished Godfather a bit ago.  It kind of winds off weakly.  They gave me a million extra dollars when I became don of new york, right after becoming don of the coreleones.  Yeah, that bit was a little 'you could explain this instead of just making it happen.  There was a don living five minutes ago.'

Neither felt really necessary for the fantasy.  

Why?  I didn't have anything left to buy and I had 2.6 million in cash at that point in time?  There also didn't seem to be nearly enough quests to get  a maxed out character.  I got like 48 points I think, which was far from the 70ish points of a all stats maxed character.  There also at that point was no way to really progress that, since the bar demands so much after a while.  Maybe if I had left a lot more till later it could've happened, but there didn't seem a good reason to (beside it being stupid to do minor tasks as the don).  Anyhow, it didn't bother me, but I suspect it could've been really annoying to someone who spent their points poorly, especially early on when you get them pretty easily.


Moved on to Command and Conquer 3.  I'm having fun with it but the movies feel like they're not as...Charismatic as before.  Yeah, we got a decently cute gal giving the general briefings, but no one up there seems to be seizing the stage.  Even if they're all famous sci fi actors as I recall.

Dracos

Dracos

[Ginrai]

Been playing Custom Robo Arena lately. Decent enough game, though more for the 'building your own robot and beating other robots with it' aspect and not the plot.

Also decided to buy Odin Sphere today after reading some positive first impressions of it.

[Ranma_007]

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.

On the plus side, the game is addicting.

On the down side, not only is the game addicting, it seems like it takes FOREVER to accomplish something. I need to get to this town. To get there, I need to take a blimp. Wait, I need to get a blimp ticket. The only blimp tickets are sold by the mob. Wait, I need to find the mob boss. Wait, I need to find the mob boss's daughter in order to get a ticket. Wait, I need to find a wedding ring in order to have the mob boss's daughter go back to the mob boss so I can get a blimp ticket. WTF you only have half of the ticket?!?

The following was a exaggeration of what happens in the game, but it's annoying nontheless.

[Dracos]

Beat Command and Conquer 3, GDI route today.  Despite what should've  been a dramatic end, it felt like it just sort of died off rather than dramatically ended.  The massive number of times my actions were 'critical' or 'war ending' really kind of threw me out if the victory sensation to a 'oh, it is really over this time?'  By the end I wasn't excited at any of the overlying story.  I also kind of wish the overlying story was also an overlying metagame, rather than a raw series of missions in which your decisions don't seem to matter.  Sure, fun, but it seemed a missed opportunity.

The writing needed work.  I really appreciate and like the return of the short film segments.  They really did a lot for the experience.  The GDI needed someone with more charisma.  I know I never sympathized with director boyle and little more with the general...who didn't feel like he was a general.  He felt like he was  an aide or beaurcrat.  I also rarely felt like I was part of any bigger happening, except in the worst way: "You did this difficult task, now our armies have replicated it at every similar across the globe!" ...okay...

The alien invasion felt forced.  Which it shouldn't have since alien invasions are fucking easy.  The best one of those missions were easily the early ones with some excellent voice work on the whole escaping scientists (even if they were a touch chatty).  It was all downhill from there as  you got into such odd circumstances as them...defending the swiss border and this being a major turnaround point for an enemy that is attacking worldwide?  They went so aggressive  on the actions being important that by the time you GOT to real war changing actions it seemed nonchalant.  Seems like the had a game designer in the chair or something...

Anyhow, a lot of the last levels are pretty interestingly designed, which I appreciated.  It made it more difficult through use of terrain, which didn't feel like it happens that  often in rts games.  Good crevease use.  The game seemed to lag a lot when I got a good 20ish units out, but it could've been I had it at too high res or something.  The 3d look suits the game well and looked pretty awesome.  I enjoyed that.

Anyhow, played a bit of the nod.  Different feeling there.  Better generic speaker guy with you, but still, the writing is kind of bad.  I know, they're going for cheesy awesome.  That  shouldn't have interfered with getting someone that really knew how to bring that out.

Dracos

[Dracos]

Beat Jade Empire some 1.6 times.  Thanks Trunky.  Sort of stopped caring today when  I started hitting the part where everything is a ghost and nothing is vulnerable to harmonic combos.

Beat the first two cases of Phoenix Wright 2.  It still suffers from being very One peg per hole, even if two or more are appropriate.

Odin sphere or god of war will enter my ps2 soon.  

Dracos

[Dexie Oblivion]

Ew, God of War. XP

Been playing Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2 and Atelier Iris 3: GRAND PHANTASM (*WHOOSH!*) the past couple days.

Taijutsu Naruto is just a fucking awesome character.

Also started Sea Dogs 2, only played for a bit, though.

[Dracos]

You can say that with a straight face while playing Naruto?

Dracos

[Dexie Oblivion]

Yes, yes I can, because it's actually a decent fighter, which is hard to come by lately. :p

[thepanda]

Odinsphere.

I want this soundtrack so much right now.