The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Carthrat]

And yet, they stay so familiar.

[Rezantis]

"Well, disguise is just above useless in a level where everything is flooded with lights and it at least is better than what lookout is putting up with."

Disguise is never useless - the extra couple seconds it buys you is often priceless.  I'm looking at you, palace levels. X_x

We used to have a scale of awesomeness that capped at epic.

Awesomeness has never had an upper limit!

--

Anyway, I played something funny yesterday: Broforce.

http://www.freelives.net/broforce/

Check it out - it's just a brototype right now, a combat demo, but it is totally worth a look.

[Jason_Miao]

I've been playing Defender's Quest, which was on sale last week on GOG.  It's a tower defense/RPG hybrid.  Basically your party runs around on the overworld map (on rails), and fights a tower defense combat with party members (whom can level up).

I generally don't play tower defense games, because they feel like a waste of time after I've played for an hour.  And I generally hate RPGs on rails (hence, I barely play any new RPGs).  But the Flash demo, which is the first third of the actual game, kept me involved enough to work through it.  Once it was on sale, I thought it was worth the few bucks GOG was charging to finish the exported save file game.

[Anastasia]

Doom: Slaughterfest 2012

I've been picking at various levels throughout it, mostly pistol starts with no saves. The map design and quality varies map to map since it's a community project. None of them (barring the bonus 3 maps) are bad, though I haven't seen too many that qualify as good. I've cleared maps 1-6, 9, 11, 16 and 33. A lot of these maps aren't hard so much as that they require figuring out how to successfully navigate and manipulate the hordes of monsters you have to deal with.

[Dracos]

I've been playing Defender's Quest, which was on sale last week on GOG.  It's a tower defense/RPG hybrid.  Basically your party runs around on the overworld map (on rails), and fights a tower defense combat with party members (whom can level up).

I generally don't play tower defense games, because they feel like a waste of time after I've played for an hour.  And I generally hate RPGs on rails (hence, I barely play any new RPGs).  But the Flash demo, which is the first third of the actual game, kept me involved enough to work through it.  Once it was on sale, I thought it was worth the few bucks GOG was charging to finish the exported save file game.

Was kinda neat.  Didn't buy though.

[Kt3]

Defender's Quest was fun enough.  The gameplay is relatively fun, but more time (or better understanding) could've been spent on improving the UI.

Also, for as much as the Steam page touted the game's plot as "written by an actual English major!", I found it (the plot) a tad cliche, and a touch pretentious, but with some decent-to-good parts on the other hand.

The music was nothing to write home about.

Graphics were on varying degree of "bad" to "fits the style".

(Bam, complete review.)

[Dracos]

Pretty much nothing in it escaped the amateur level.  It had a cute concept, but the vast amount of work in it is about the level you'd expect out of an advanced college gaming class that got polished a bit, rather than a fleshed product.  Maybe I'm just judgmental of the level of art going on too.  The vast majority of the character art seemed like basically two weeks work for a single artist.  It's simple unshaded art of the level that shows up in a lot of flash games that is basically 2-framed.  Most of the actual in game art has the same level.

It's a nice first effort, but without the polish to really stand out.

[Brian]

The math felt complex to me, but I'm not much of a math guy.  I did totally get sucked in to the point where the demo ended.

I might have sprung for it if I didn't have a huge backlog of unplayed games.

[Dracos]

well, complex but irrelevant for the most part.

Or at least most options are so subtle in their effects, it's just hard to experiment.

[Brian]

That's really unfortunate.

[Rezantis]

Regarding Defender's Quest, "written by an actual English major!" amused me.  Yes, the plot was cliche, but it was competently done and made no bones of pretending to be more than it was.  I picked it up a few months ago and played through it, I quite liked it overall. 

I'd give it a mild recommendation.  Not something where I'd yell PLAY IT, but worth a few bucks and I'd be interested to see what that dev does in future.

Or at least most options are so subtle in their effects, it's just hard to experiment.

Yeah, a single point here or there does very little, but sinking several points into the right abilities makes a very big difference.  It's not all that expensive to respec characters, though.

[Empyrean]

Anyway, I played something funny yesterday: Broforce.

http://www.freelives.net/broforce/

Check it out - it's just a brototype right now, a combat demo, but it is totally worth a look.

This game will make you want to gun down a million terrorists with a machine gun fired one handed, then say your catchphrase that includes a pun about freedom.

Side effects include growing hair on your chest (even women), voting Republican because that's what Reagan would do, and randomly replacing syllables with "bro."

Full game features:

* More explosions, camera shake and action than anything else, ever.
* Fully destructible terrain.
* Local bro-op play and online multiplayer bro-op.
* Deathmatch arenas with leaderboards and rankings.
* Unlockable "bros" – each with distinctive attacks and special brobilities.
* A level editor, the ability to challenge your friends and share your custom levels.
* Design your own Brofort – with unlockable rooms and additions to defend against terrorist onslaught, or just hang out.
* Vehicular action sequences, dinosaurs, aliens and epic Contra-inspired boss fights.
* Nuanced and strategic combat, explosive action and deadly stealth.
* For every terrorist killed in Broforce, a terrorist will die in real life.

[Dracos]

I admit, I have trouble looking past its name and graphics to try and picture myself playing it.

[Rezantis]

Waste five minutes of your life, bro!

[Rezantis]

Slightly more seriously . . . the Broforce prototype is actually a very well executed little game, Drac.  Rather like Monaco it looks a lot better in motion than it does in stills.  They haven't tried to do anything more complicated than a fun way to blow shit up.

I reckon it's worth a look; if it doesn't float your boat it's not going to have taken more than five minutes to download and try the thing.