The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Jason_Miao]

Spent quite a few hours last night playing Metajo, one of those old turn-based square tiled tactical combat games (like Flame Dragon and Shining Force).



I think I'll write a review about it, as a study break.  Too bad I didn't think about taking screenshots.

[twentytwo]

Dragon Quarter...

Go replay it. The game retains at least 60 percent of the narrative hidden in sections you can't get to the first time through and the replays go significantly faster (6-12 hours) then the original playthrough anyway.

Eh, nothing you couldn't read between the lines...

1/2048 => 1/128 => 1/16 => 1/4
Trick: Side Slash and Slice. If you overpower Ryu, you can kill anything, even Dover, ridiculously fast...

Keep on truckin'...
-22

[Merc]

Started playing Super Paper Mario, went for about 4 hours before quitting just now. Bought the game as I was leaving work.

Drac will probably love this game given in his long past review of Paper Mario: TYD, he commented that the rpg style didn't really help the game due to pacing and levels such as that annoying dark forest area. No turn based battles, you just jump on the enemy until it dies (or bomb it or what have you).

Notably this makes the game a lot quicked than TYD, but I'm thinking it's also more fun. And while levels are pretty easy (at least in the start that I've seen, hopefully it'll have more challenging events), the exploring between 2D and 3D is very fun with Mario. Discovering little hidden areas with new enemies, items and cards, it's fun for the collector in me.

The game also has some very nice humor inserted in it, for example the first level boss is a robotic dragon. When it meets you, it thinks it recognizes Mario and starts searching its database. Its eye changes from an eyeball into that little blue circular logo that pops up whenever you're searching for upgrades for the wii. The intro to the game is also fairly cute, though I feel it's more enjoyable to watch after you meet Tippi (who coincidentally gives you tips) though, since it fits timeline-wise better at that point.

The Pixl helpers have cute pun names too. There's Tippi (who gives tips), Thoreau ('thrower', he grabs stuff for you to throw), Boomer (He makes booms by exploding), and others whose names you can look up in the wikipedia article if you're curious.

Anyhoo, yeah, enjoying the game so far, despite the lack of difficulty (which I admit is because the game seems to award explorers and I love to explore ^^).

[Dracos]

I have it, but haven't started it.

I'm actually... In The Dark Forest of Paper Mario 2.

Go figure?

Dracos

[Dracos]

Doopliss still sucks.  Man, I can totally feel the point in this bit where the designer decided "I'm just going to be a jackass and keep the player in MY level longer."

Dracos

[Olvelsper]

I beat Valkyrie Profile 1 and lead my forces to rule over all. Now I'm working on Valkyrie Profile 2 along with God Hand.

[Dracos]

Super paper mario.

Which still includes snoring when I put down the controller.

Dracos

[Dexie Oblivion]

Super Paper Mario, here as well.

It's pretty easy to tell that the developers had a lot of fun making this one, I think.

[Merc]

Just finished Super Paper Mario earlier today. Man, that has to be the fastest I've ever finished a game. Even Sonic & The Secret Rings lasted me more time and has -much- better replay value.

For the most part SPM was a fun game, especially if you just treat it as a Mario title and not a Paper Mario title (just not paper enough), but not a buy-worthy game I find. Rent-worthy though? Heck yeah.

Assuming you don't try to collect every card and cooking recipe, you can find everything else and finish all sidequests and the game itself in the time you get for renting the game. And it's definitely worth one play through I say.

Having finished this game though, I find myself wanting to finish the prequel, Thousand Year Door. I never did go past Bobbery joining my party.

[Dexie Oblivion]

Breaking from Super Paper Mario. Will continue tommorrow.

Today's gametime belongs to Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship 2007.

[Dracos]

Okay, been playing Super Paper Mario following my marathon of paper mario 2. Now, PM2 had it's problems, but I enjoyed another run of it. It didn't get shut off during it. Super Paper mario? Knocks me out of the flow all the time. I'm around world 3 now, so about 3/8ths through the game.

It's sad that my most minor problem is that it shouldn't be a paper mario game. Other than using the engine and the sprites, it really doesn't draw anything from the paper motif and gets weird narrative discontinuities occassionally from it, and really most the interface holdovers from the series suck. It's so annoying having to enter a menu to swap characters when it's a frequent occurence and I should be able to do it with one button press.

The porting to the wii clearly didn't help this game. Most Wii related functionality feels awkward and out of place. The control scheme has me commonly going into menus, which breaks up the flow of classic marioish action. Scarily, they have more buttons. They really could've used them to offer shortcuts to these common things. Or, like PM2 did, just provide ways to have all mario's dungeon solving tools avaliable at the same time. "No, I need a bomb, now a hammer, now a thrower...menu, menu, menu.' Heck, they could've used the wii remote for that. Some kind of toss for bomb, a jab forward for throw...I dunno, work with me Nintendo, you can do better than that.

The level design is pretty middling so far. I ran around in a gerbil wheel for like 10 minutes last night. That was the 'correct' way to play. The fastest (daresay only) route through that level. Somebody thought that was fun? Because they both did 2d-3d AND invisible objects/doors, it's almost perpetual that you really can't trust your eyes. This would be even more bothersome if it wasn't for the fact that to counter this, they made it a platforming environment where you never have a good reason to hurry up. Basically, you can never just look at 1 mode and get a good picture of what you're interacting with. Usually 2 is enough, though sometimes you need to use all 3.

They had this whole digital and 2d to 3d concept. They really don't feel like they have anything else up their sleeve. They're hammering it in hard, wearing out any welcome it might've had in my mind for being a relatively unique and interesting mechanic. It felt for a good portion of the early game that the only interaction I had was to hop on things or go 3d. Going 3d wasn't really fun and it was timed anyway, so I couldn't ever really just get in the habit of charging down the slopes in 3d anyway. And they didn't have a lot of enemies to hop on. There was talking to people, but the town was small and not fun to navigate really and there really wasn't anything involved to do with them. They didn't even have multiple text strings to read. It's gotten slightly better as it's gone on, but I still don't really feel like I'm interacting with the game universe often, and most of my actions are solely fighting to move around it. "Joy, a wall, 3d, past it, back to 2d, another wall, 3d, repeat 4 times, oh a key.'

Megastar is just like megamushroom so far, only it really feels less useful since it isn't giving some sort of minigame for more lives midpower up. At least it isn't everywhere, so it maintains the cute surprise factor.

This is clearly not aimed towards me. Sure, that I understand but it makes me sad and really is part of why I'm not enjoying it. This is aimed towards kids like a third my age. Of course, this makes some of the pixilized stylistics odd since they're more appropriately nostalgic for folks that lived through the original mario and such... but aside from those touches, everything seems geared to hit an age 6-10 target market. Battles match that, as I seem to have overwhelmingly enough hp to deal with any boss without thinking of a strategy.

This feels like it was made budget. The engine was already made and wasn't really modified all that well. They flat out took an ability from the previous game and gave it to mario again. A large portion of character sprites aren't new. Most the graphics that are new are pretty simple with a few exceptions. The 3d space is cute but really hasn't sold me as something that added to the fun value of a mario platformer.

And of course, my usual axe to g rind, the secret design is lame as usual. "Jump in this unmarked pit to be rewarded! Jump in this one to take damage!" I understand rewarding pushing against the conventions of the game universe, that's all well and good, but if pits in the same area act differently, they need some other identifier. Rewarding me for realizing that it would be within their heuristics to put crap in a pit (which they did) doesn't work if you punish me for trying that on the very next one in the same area. If I'd gone the other order, I'd never reasonably have found it.

Dracos

[Dexie Oblivion]

Diamond still. Hope to finish the Sinnoh Dex by Sunday.

[Merc]

Got off Final Fantasy III for a while, finally starting to play with Pokemon Diamond. I hate Abra and what a pain it is to (a) find him (b) catch him after finding him.

[Dracos]

Finished up Super Robot Wars  Original Generation 2 a second time today.  Man that  last special boss is stupid looking.

Dracos

[Dracos]

I have been doing runs for the Godfather, currently Don Vito, but it seems his son, sonny, is soon to replace him or something. Yesterday, I took little Italy. Then I took the Bronx and new jeresy too. Their families were sent fleeing from the flaming wreckage of their homes. The black market needs to research some better bombs though. Maybe ones on fifteen second timers. Ones that let a man...leave the building once the bomb is set before the fiery explosion. I think I would come to appreciate that. The Corleonnes would like to thank the police, for consistently being little better than a paid mercenary squad who will attack my enemies and guard me with their lives for nothing more than pocket change or threats. I appreciate that arrangement, despite the shitty algorithm design.

I move now north, to midtown. There be barizanis there. They do not pay tribute. This will be remedied.

Dracos