The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Jon]

BvS?

I'm guessing Blants versus Sombies.

Meantime, I've started in on Mass Effect 3 for 360. Not quite sure what to think of it yet.

[VySaika]

Billy vs Snakeman. It's a...largely Naruto based browser game. I stopped playing it like a year ago. It has some pretty dedicated followers though.

[Dracos]

Hmmm, I want ME3.

But I got plenty and a need to not waste money.

[Anastasia]

Doom: Combat Shock.

Argh trying to get a play through map 4 is cold blooded murder. There's so many stupid ways to die and I loathe the beginning. Getting nowhere with it at all.

[Jon]

If you own a PS3, get Journey. It's $15. Avoid trailers if you can; especially avoid spoilers.

Trust me.

(If, after playing it, you honestly think it was a waste of your money, I'll refund it to you.)

[VySaika]

Jon: I've been looking at that. Sadly my PS3 is running out of space on the hd, dunno if I can fit it on. Is it PS3 only, or also PC like some downloadable things are?

For what I'm playing currently: Dynasty Warriors 7 Xtreme Legends. Chaos difficulty, even on only 1 star stages, is in no way shape or form fucking around. Archers will ruin your day and how. Really liking some of the new weapons, especially whatever it is they're calling the giant sais. The chick who uses those has an amazing EX and her musous are also great, the second being an unblockable grab from the AIR. May be the first of those I've seen. So far, a great expansion to what's easily the best Dynasty Warriors yet.

[Jon]

Sadly, it's PS3 only; Sony has exclusive rights to it. The download size is only about half a gig; delete the game install for some game you haven't played recently.

[Kt3]

Tales of Graces f.

Boy is the plot cliched as all hell.  But boy is the combat system fun, detailed, and frantic.

Really, all of these Tales plots lately have just been vehicles to drive interesting battle mechanics.  You don't play the Tales game for the story, you play it for the combat, and the amusing characters within the cliched story.

[VySaika]

Graces f certainly doesn't dissapoint on the combat angle, though. Most fun I've ever had with a Tales game, and the one with the most balanced cast I'd think. Even more impressivly, everyone so far has been fun to control at points. Can't think of any other tales game(or any ARPG, frankly) that's managed that.

[Brian]

You know what I like about it?

Co-op.

[Dracos]

Aye to all of the above.

You know what I like about Tales?

Every single one of them supported good co-op and actiony battles.

[thepanda]

Aye to all of the above.

You know what I like about Tales?

Every single one of them supported good co-op and actiony battles.

I love the little theater bits where you get a real sense of who the characters are and how they relate to each other.

Funnily enough, the Grandia games also have really good combat (so long as you don't use the Eyes of Valmar in part 2). Sadly, the stories go to shit half way through the game and the final bosses are a joke. -_-

But other than that, Hey! Grandia!

[Brian]

I think Grandia II was great.

Never used the Eyes.  or any other Valmar parts, come to think of it.  The normal spells were too much fun, plus, who doesn't love hearing Milenia scream, "Deep fried goodness!"

Heck, that audio clip is in my MP3 playlist. :D

[thepanda]

I didn't use them, either until the end. Mostly because I was convinced by RPG logic that those spells wouldn't be very effective on bosses.

I tried it out just to see if I was right.

Turns out using the Eyes is only slightly less broken than using phoenix down on undead.

[Jason_Miao]

I wrote about Star Ruler last January.  I've been playing it intermittently for two months now.

Pros: Almost everything that every Space-based 4x game should have is part of this game.  And it's moddable to boot.

Cons: If it even exists, crappy, and sometimes wrong, documentation.  This is a real killer, since if you're not interested in code diving (i.e, 99% of us) to figure out the economics of the game, the game sure isn't going to give you many hints.  And the economics is a huge deal.


Tutorial does a good job of teaching you how to play, but lack of mechanics knowledge means that it's hard to understand what your choices mean (e.g, what are the real tradeoffs of researching two levels of megaconstruction instead of energy weapons).  There's a wiki, but it (1) just copy-pastes code into most sections (2) that code is for old versions of the game, so is flat-out wrong in many cases (3) the page that describes what many of the functions do isn't accessible by link traversal.

And that's a shame - I'm *this* close to being a raving fanboy about this game and telling everyone that they must buy it, but that most people won't understand how to play without stupid amounts of research they shouldn't have to do in the first place.  Expecting people to do that and have fun is an idiotic expectation, and I try not to be an idiot.  Right now, the game is awesome if you like Space 4x games so much that you're willing to put in the effort to figure it out by immense trial and error.  Otherwise, go play something better documented, like EVE