The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Dracos]

I died a bunch on the gravitron but yeah, pretty much at most ten deaths.  It wasn't too hard to make it another five seconds on a fresh go.

I think I died 25 times on that section you talked about.  3 times to the spike floor passing through the trampoline.  Then I just relaxed and did the motion as fast as I could without paying much attention.  Died on the way to the save point.  Tried again, reached the save point.  Still, I can understand the frustration.

The tower levels were not pleasant.

[Grahf]

I've been spending an odd amount of time lately playing The Binding of Isaac, which I bought when it was on sale during Christmas. It's strangely addictive.

[Anastasia]

I've been spending an odd amount of time lately playing The Binding of Isaac, which I bought when it was on sale during Christmas. It's strangely addictive.

What's that about? I've heard it mentioned a few times lately.

[Merc]

It's an indie game by the guys who did Super Meat Boy. It's about a baby who's mom wants to kill him so he goes into a randomized dungeon where he deals with monsters, permadeath and an evil mother.

[Grahf]

Pretty much. It's a fun game and the randomness adds some challenge and keeps it fresh. It also doesn't demand too much time.

[Kt3]

And thus, Soulriders finds the joys of roguelikes.

Although Binding of Isaac is nothing like most roguelikes in terms of difficulty, it still has the same draws.   I've also noticed a couple of Soulriders trying their hands at Dungeons of Dredmor, another roguelike that's been gaining some popularity on Steam.

I have not played it myself.  However, I've watched a good friend go through a bit of it, and it has a rather hokey yet charming sense of humor in addition to its gameplay.

[Grahf]

Although Binding of Isaac is nothing like most roguelikes in terms of difficulty

I don't know if it's just because I've played a lot of games, but I don't find BoI to be as hard as I'd heard. Most of the difficulty comes from getting poor drops, which is mostly the RNG screwing you over rather than anything having to do with skill.

[Brian]

That's pretty much what roguelikes are.  RNG gives you bad drops, bad spawns, bad <whatever> -- and that's what provides the (sometimes maddening) difficulty.  The dungeons and encounters aren't designed by a team, but an automated engine....

[Grahf]

BoI is rather lenient in terms of being a roguelike, it's basically the lightest version possible since although the enemies and room placements are random you won't generally see enemies from the later levels show up on the first area, same with bosses. There's also generally at least two drops per level, so odds are fairly good that something useful will show up.

That being said it's not a bad game, just as Kt3 said it's not like other roguelikes in terms of handing you your ass on a silver platter.

[Brian]

S.P.A.Z.

(Space Pirates And Zombies)--  Got it for 3.99 on steamsale this weekend.  You harvest a super-valuable magical element nicknamed ... 'Rez'.  Surprisingly fun so far, though I've only touched the surface.  Looks like it has a surprising amount of depth to it!

[Jason_Miao]

I recently purchased Star Ruler, a game that is like Sins of a Solar Empire if you permit (in fact, effectively require) user-customized ship designs, removed the graph-like travel restrictions from maps and made newtonian physics for travel, removed fleet size caps, removed ship size caps, removed map restrictions as to number of solar systems created in a galaxy -- so, other than sharing genres (space-based 4X RTS), it's pretty much nothing like SoaSE.  They do share pew-pew lasers, explosions, and space pirates, so they're similar in some ways.

[Anastasia]

Doom: Combat Shock.

Been playing this and fiddling with all four levels. I've made inroads into all of them with casual play, and now I'm trying to get a good run of map 1. It's a frustrating map to run - it's simple until the revenant/archvile fight right after you grab the rocket launcher (as seen in this demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=We-5T9g_rNs#t=195s), which is kicking my ass time and time again. I can't get that fight to go right for the life of me. It's not that hard a battle, I've done it before on casual runs. Yet for the life of me, I can't get the damn fight to end any other way than being archvile or revenant splattered. I want a couple of good runs of this level before trying map 2 or 3, damn it.

[Kaldrak]

Dead Island.

It's a strange cross between Borderlands and Dead Rising II. The multiplayer is rather glitchy though, as people have dropped unexpectedly in the middle of our sessions several times and most recently, no one could join my game.

Also, just started Playing Deus Ex HR. Fun game!

[Brian]

I bought Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, since everyone was saying it was so awesome, not just the two big shills at Penny Arcade.

After purchasing the game through Steam, I was treated to needing to authenticate with EA (while connected to Steam) in order to play it.

I suppose, not 'what are you playing' as much as 'what offended you too much to play it'.

[Jon]

Yeah, I simply won't buy EA stuff on PC anymore.

(I bought KoA:R on 360. You're welcome to borrow it, if you like.)