The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Empyrean]

Or just play it online. Not a big investment either way.

[Dracos]

Playing some Muramasa.

I'm hella rusty.  100 monks even got to beat me down once.

But it's fun getting back into the sword swinging action.

[Brian]

Sharpening stones.

I really enjoyed that game ... will probably give it another re-playthrough or six when you're done.

My backlog of games at this point has on occasion been mistaken for a moon by escaping rebel starships.

[Empyrean]

Dark Souls. Bought it on the steam sale, got killed twice just running the installer.

[Jason_Miao]

Based on this, I bought Hotline Miami when it was on sale at gog a few weeks ago.  Just as billed, it's strange, frentic, and hyperviolent.


I think it's fun as hell, but most games that I like tend to require fast, accurate reflexes and the minimum amount of plot.  This is pretty much the opposite of how most people play computer games these days, so keep that perspective in mind.

[Brian]

Played a little Shadowrun Returns.  Not a big fan of the lack of manual saving ability.

This is the same issue I ran into with DARK.  While I enjoy DARK, in order to save as much as I wanted, I needed to switch the game to easy to unlock unlimited saves (otherwise you get like ... 2 per level plus autosaves).  At least it's an option, there (though, from what I can tell, difficulty only controls the number of saves you get anyway).

From what I can tell, Shadowrun Returns lacks the ability to manually save because coding it was complex.  Not ... really happy about that at all.

I've got a huge backlog of other games to play, so Shadowrun Returns is going to gather dust for a bit while it waits for either an official patch or a modder who figures it out first.

[Dracos]

Finished my muramasa run.

Now to play something new before the next set of games arrives.

[Dracos]

Been playing some Bioshock Infinite.

Had a rough start and started cheating to see the story.  Ran into some apparently graphics related crashes (Finally figured that out and fixed it by the fourth time taking the Zepplin down and then crashing on a fink factory load screen).  Rough and I'm angry about it at the moment, but it's not really much of a fair statement to the game.

Got rather ticked off at the UI just flat out lying to me with hovering over potential enemies.  "Oh?  Not red crosshair?  No lifebar?  Okay, moving...Now they're shooting at me.  Thanks UI, I could've at least shot them first.  Shame about the whole early game suggestion about not shooting everything that moves." 

Seriously, I've just had a real bad go of the game's attempt at a society with times to shoot and times not to.  I think I'd almost rather at this point just shoot at everything that moves since it seems that there isn't much of a penalty for it, and then hey, at least you get in the first shot.  I get it, they're ticked I looked at the cash register (which is only usually red) because that's their money, but why are the slum guys ticked that I just robbed one of Fink's vending machines?  Convenience?  Cuz they sure aren't making that money.  It definitely eliminates my view of them as people when I possess a vending machine and everyone in the next two buildings starts shooting immediately.  Why aren't some of the characters trying to get away from the crazy robber dude?

  The aggro system just really frustrates me in it, because it demolishes my recognition of the NPCs as people and reduces them to a mere shooting gallery.  No one ever calls out "Hey, you can't pass" before a checkpoint they want you not to be at.  No one ever tries to run when you kill all their friends.  If it was a doom-like where everything was out to kill you, sure.  But Bioshock tries to mimic some resemblence to human society, and it just falls over when the random civilians act the same way as the police which act the same way as the military grunts (Nevermind the guys wearing demon/clown masks in the factory.  I'm not sure where that came from).  There's a lot of group based aggro AI in the game, which only really tends to aggrevate the issue when it gets applied to random bums on the street.

I'm probably done with it, and I know my experience with it seems to be far out of wave with the common play.  I know I definitely don't feel in the flow with it.  I'm not really cool with how the game pretty much has a horde of cops and robot guards to deal with before you get shield (which seriously changes the flow of combat in making meaningful fade back as a strategy).  I found a lot of times when I was in sync with the combat it felt sort of shooting galleryish (and fun), and when I wasn't, it felt like bullets were coming from everywhere.  Dealing with the shaking floors really was tiresome though.  Very not fun when it's not that the NPCs are dodging but actually the ship they're on is just swaying so much it effectively moves their body a foot or so distance around.

I found the rendering/shader work neat, but strangely didn't care as much with the mesh-work (The models, especially the hands felt weird), and apparently my eyes weren't all that good at catching all of the various symbolism they were suggesting with their alternate realities intermingled storyline.  I could've really gone for a little less on the environmental shading, and a lot less on the fog at various points.  But it did make it different.

What really ended up grinding was just an inability to 'click' with any of the cast.  The best of the lot were the two kooky quantum-physcists.  They were neat and oddball and probably had some interesting things to say as the game went further.  It's really not a surprise relative to the other Bioshock game that I played, but I suppose I just wasn't in the mood for a cast of just obvious jerks.  The entire group very much gives a plague on all your houses, but you're politely prevented from just putting a bullet in all of their heads.  In Bioshock one, that was going on, but at least the Little Sisters were just naive characters on your side once you saved them and most of the characters you fought were just openly bat-shit insane from the start.  Here?  Guy meddling with some kind of time thing in order to manage to be a prophet I assume, fine primary villain, I get that.  And your debt holders aren't any better, whoever they are.  Next?  Fink?  "Come, join me and oppress lots of black people or die!"  Fitzroy?  "Hey, I might be a scullery maid who drummed up a revolution, but I'm more interested in convenient stories to enrage the ridiculously oppressed people and my gigantic showy building sized posters then winning, so I'm just going to tell you flat out I'm going to kill you.  I can also call you up in the elevator of Fink's company.  Just like that."  Main character?  Hey, I'm just here because of a debt and I can't even fake it long enough to get out of the city.  Sure, I'm an anti-hero, washed up soldier but I can't get any positive waves, just trying to get through the day.  Kidnap and rescue, like a jobber.  Maybe the girl?  But something threw me off caring about the girl too, and it wasn't like the protagonist had a good vibe with her.  She just was the innocent to say "Look, I think I see some goodness in columbia" and be wrong repeatedly.

Anyhow, quitting for now, enough for me to forget what's the bother.  Maybe I'll let's play the rest of the story.  Maybe not, since the rest of the folks will probably be downers, and I get the sense it isn't a Good Guys win story.

[Brian]

After all that's said, the ending is still the worst part of the game.

[Dracos]

Dragon's Crown is a bit slow and has an enormously clumsy localization.

But it is fun.  Will try it more.

Also the sorceress is hillarious ridiculous.  So is stone dwarf.  And so is everybody in the environment.

[Rezantis]

Played a little Shadowrun Returns.  Not a big fan of the lack of manual saving ability.

Honestly, it threw me briefly but I don't consider it a big deal; it's much like needing to save at a save point. 

I've got a huge backlog of other games to play, so Shadowrun Returns is going to gather dust for a bit while it waits for either an official patch or a modder who figures it out first.

I think that's going to be gathers dust forever, I wouldn't expect to see that happen period.

[Dracos]

Dragon's Crown.

It has it's rough spots, but once the "Complete multiple stages for stacking rewards" rolled out, there was no looking back.

[Brian]

The Shadowrun Returns team has said they are working hard to add the ability to save anywhere, so that's a positive.

Recently blew through Saint's Row IV.  Had some very strong points, and was a great game.  Was severely lacking in actual content and felt ... disappointingly short.

It also pretty much recycles the world from SR III, which was a bit annoying, though kind of handy insofar as I knew my way around already.  They really improved the movement mechanics, a lot of the other mechanics are much better in general, but at a bit of an expense in some areas.  They also toned down the number of activities, and some of the more annoying activities from SR III didn't come back -- but neither did the SERCs, which was a bit of a letdown, especially since Fraud stayed in.  On the other hand, they also added ratings to activities (gold, silver, bronze), so they're a bit more forgiving if you only want to clear, not ace, something you don't like.

I could go on, but I'm going to make Drac bribe me into a full review because I am a bastard. :3

This may not be a completely fair comparison, though, since I only played SR III with all DLC, and so far, SR IV has no DLC.  So this is an issue that may be resolved.  On the other hand, while I enjoyed it, my thoughts are that if you have not already spent money on this game, don't bother until all DLC is released and you can just grab a 'complete' pack, probably on a Steamsale.

[Bezzerker]

Currently playing LoZ : Oracle of Ages/Seasons. I am attempting to get as many rings as I can before using the Secret to start the next game (as well as get the last Piece of Heart from Maple RRRGGH). I rather enjoy playing the games, and would have liked to see what the third potential game would be like story-wise.

[Brian]

Played and recently beat the Deadpool game.  It was mostly very fun, a bit silly, and had a very fun combat system.  It is, unfortunately, not very long.

It had a few major annoyances, though one of them actually surprised me in its resolution.  There was suddenly a stealth segment, which is always especially fun in games that aren't specifically designed to be stealth games, and I was getting annoyed at constantly failing it.  After the dozenth time or so, the character complained, "Alright, already, let's just skip this part!" and then did.  I approved of that.

Later in the game I ran into some buggy issues that made getting through a segment with maximum points very, very difficult, which was _quite_ frustrating.  Other than that, the main game was smooth sailing and great fun.  Especially the part where I abused the game's exponential reward system for high combo values with a pair of regenerating mooks and the lowest damage weapon in the game.  Got an achievement and 300k exp, which seemed like a lot.  Later in the game, when I was regularly dishing out 100 hit combos for 50k-ish exp, it was a little less astounding, but still fun.

The very end-game was three fights, which seems to be the new standard.  1: Wave after wave of mooks.  2: Unpleasantly difficult boss fight.  3: Jokishly easy final boss fight.  The first two were extremely frustrating, and didn't at all map well to the difficulty curve of the rest of the game, but I was able to finally beat them (turned out I was under-utilizing gun kata).

The game is fun, and I'd strongly suggest it, but not for more than 20$.