The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Dracos]

So it's playable huh, brian?

I played some Bittrip Runner and got about 10 levels in before it suddenly leaped to too hard for me to do.  Many of them it's almost easier to do it perfect than to miss a beat and still win at all, since one failure sends you back to the beginning.  As a rhythm game, I like it a lot, but it definitely has the 'well, if I can't beat this level, the other 40 levels cannot be played at all.  Sucks.' setup.  It's got a good 'you feel cool at doing good' setup though and a solid, 'we'll teach you the new hardiness' at the beginning of levels.  So if you can do the first 30-40 seconds of a level, you have the skills to do the rest of it technically.

Played some nightsky.  My grudge here is a lack of purpose.  I'm a marble.  I can spin.  Yes, this worked in many old games (Marble Madness), but there's just a general lack of feedback.  I am just drifting.  It's relaxing, but I'd probably never pay for it in a normal setup.  It just is missing either depth or excitement.

Played some Space Battles, but yeah, not my thing.  again, it lacks a narrative, and the numbers are so vast I'm not getting much of a feel for what's going on.

The new music of Cave Story+ is an abomination.  Utterly a terrible job.  The art is pretty neat though.  Maybe I should give hard a try, but then I don't generally play it for its difficulty, but for it's depth.

[Brian]

So it's playable huh, brian?

That's what I was trying to imply without stating, to avoid offending our highly-skilled danmaku bretheren.  Also, it has multiplayer ... except, I think local only, which is something of a pity.

I do want to comment to others in this thread, RE: Controllers.

I bought a controller to use with ZSNES, because I wanted to play FFV, and didn't want to screw around with the keyboard to do it.  Now that I've gotten it, though, I'm finding that a good controller is a sound investment.  For any Windows system, you can purchase an Xbox controller with USB connection, and that's ... actually all you need.  I got the Logitech controller myself; the model escapes me, but it's effectively a PS2 controller (dual analog, four shoulder buttons, analog sticks can be pressed as R3/L3).  Incidentally, quite a few of the games I've been playing are 'controller compatible', and sometimes that's great.  (Sometimes, it's awful.)

Skyrim could be played with a controller, but I never even considered bothering to try for a minute.  Waves can be played with a keyboard and mouse -- but the dual analog stick is what it was designed for.  I'm not sure why I'm seeing so much reluctance to get controllers in this thread ... though, now that I've brought it up: Jamestown could probably suck pretty bad without a controller.

Edit: Can't you just enable the classic music in Cave Story+?  I could have sworn someone mention that was an option.

[Dracos]

yes, you can.  But I have to bash the new music every time CaveStory+ is brought up now.  It's like someone painting a silly mustache on your favorite picture.  "Sure, I can cover it up, but they didn't even do a good job of a silly mustache!  Why would anyone DO THAT?"

Controllers are awesome.  I should pick up a pc one again.  I had this awesome logitech one for years that worked in all sorts of good methods and was great for emulation gaming and then when game ports stopped existing, I couldn't use it anymore and just never ended up picking up another one.  They're not expensive either, but just seem to not get into the house.  Merc might have a similar tale there.  It's not that it isn't a cool/useful thing, just that it isn't there.

[Merc]

Yeah, it really is pretty much an issue of 'it's cool/useful, but I never seem to buy one when I see one, thinking I can play the games I got just fine'. I had one ages ago, just never really bought another afterwards.

[Brian]

One year I got my little brother a USB controller and a card pointing to a URL where he could download ZSNES along with, "I just brought your childhood back.  And more."

He still says it was one of the best gifts ever.

Edit: Just got an e-mail update from Humble Bundle offering, among other things ... new soundtracks for Cave Story+.

Drac: You complainin' AWESOME.  I wish I got results like that!

Edit of edit: Read it wrong.  But I don't find the new music that offensive ... yet.  Maybe it gets worse.

[Kt3]

I picked up a number of games on the cheap on Black Friday, only recently have I been able to go through them.

Bastion is amazing.  Action/RPG with well oiled mechanics, fun to play, beautiful music (but not enough of it in my opinion), beautiful art style.  Everyone goes on and on about the narration... and it's warranted, but there's a lot more to it than the unique narration.

Bought Overlord as well.  It feels like Dungeon Keeper meets Pikmin.  That's about all I can say about it so far, because I haven't spent that much time on it.  I'm interested in seeing more though.  Interesting control scheme as well, I'd say it works for the most part, and haven't really seen it used before where the left hand on the keyboard controls the Overlord, and the hand on the mouse controls the minions.

Re: Controllers - Yes, Virginia, I do believe that a good controller is a sound investment.  I personally use a Dualshock 2 with a USB converter that I picked up from Radio Shack.  Very reliable, solid as hell.  Pretty sure just getting a controller for a console and finding a USB converter is anyone's best option, because it always feels like the ones "for computer" are just shoddy works built cheaply.

[Brian]

From the humble bundle, still, and I don't think anyone else has touched on it yet:

Holy CROW Shank is a violent game.  Not a 'beat-'em-up' as much as a 'slaughter them all'.  The art style is actually pretty strong, and the story....  I....  I'm really not sure?  It is aware enough to be self-parodying, or so over-the-top it's just kind of enjoyable for what it is?

From a design point, for an indie game, they got a lot of things amazingly right.  Most noticeably, when you're in one of those 'do x or die' spots, time slows down to make it look cool, not be a contest of reflexes.  This does make certain things like 'jump over the meatgrinder of doom' feel almost trivially easy, but then, this isn't a game about platforming.  It's seeing how well you can combo from knives to shotgun to machettes, and back.

Grenade balance is amazing.  Namely, except against bosses (at least on normal difficulty), they just kill enemies.  Annoying enemy type you don't like?  (Looking at YOU, shield/shotgun dude.)  Chuck a grenade at them and call it a day.  The Shank character has a surprising move library, enough that I expect this would be unplayable with keyboard.  With controller, though, it feels like I just found one of the world's campiest (and violent) beat-em-ups.  That's not to say it's exceptionally gory (though it has its share of beheadings, and a lack of remorse), but there's a lot of blood.  Like, a looooot of blood.



For Night Sky, I, uh....  Cleared, I think 'the old factory' (and did find a star in the second ... level?  Mapset?  Whatever they are), but while I enjoy the odd physics game once-in-a-while, too bored with it to go back.  I'm not sure what's really going on with it, but it just didn't pull me in.

[Brian]

Super Meat Boy.  I think I ... missed the memo on this one?  I'd say it warrants a flat 'what' but that doesn't say much.

I'll just say: Punishing design is punishing.  I think Dunefar would enjoy the difficulty level.

[Dracos]

As I understand it the draw of super meat boy is the Replay mode when you do win, where you see potentially thousands of attempts all being done in parallel together.  This ends up producing an amusing video to share with friends.

[Dracos]

For Night Sky, I, uh....  Cleared, I think 'the old factory' (and did find a star in the second ... level?  Mapset?  Whatever they are), but while I enjoy the odd physics game once-in-a-while, too bored with it to go back.  I'm not sure what's really going on with it, but it just didn't pull me in.

Cool, trying shank soon.  installed it yesterday.  I think really Nightsky suffers terribly just from a lack of purpose most of all.  There's no narrative reason to do anything in it, and the 'puzzles' are all so simple, you can't even get one from the basis of skillful puzzle solving.

[Brian]

BAH.  Skyrim's 'glass mooks, adamantine bosses' imbalance flaw is starting to irritate me.

Almost as much as the fact that every time I improve my skills, my enemy's skills seems to outstrip me.

Revising my previous review: Absolutely don't buy this game until it's ~40$ -- because I expect that to coincide with when the modder community fixes Bethesda's game for them.  Until then, hooray for console commands, the only other saving grace.

[Jason_Miao]

gog is running a holiday sale, so I recently bought up all the old ultima games.  I'd owned them all previously, but it's hard to fit those old floppies into my CD drive, so $3 to save myself the effort wasn't a bad deal.

Anyway, beat Ultima 7 yesterday.  The game says it took 18 (game) days, with a self-imposed rule of no stealing.  I'm wondering whether to start V, VI, or try to finish VII faster by abusing Telekinesis/stealing/offensive potion mechanics.

[Jason_Miao]

Still playing PoFV; still failing to beat Aya in Hard on match mode.  However, I'll sometimes win one fight, and I'm occasionally able to sustain bonusing for more than a couple of seconds, which means I'm on the way to not completely sucking at this game.

[Merc]

Tried VVVVV from the added games to humble bundle. I liked it at first, even with some of the really twitchy reflexes needed (more than I expected honestly) since it has super generous save points, but some of the rooms really do try your patience. I pretty much gave up on the bonus content orbs when I saw what the rooms to get to one of them was like.

Won't be finishing it either, after rescuing the fourth guy I got tossed into the 'Graviton' room, which is a timed survival match where enemies are getting fired at me and the only control I have is left or right as I'm bouncing uncontrollably. My reflexes aren't good enough to last long, unfortunately.

Oh well, had fun with what I did play at least.

[Merc]

The guy who made "And yet it moves" is a fucking lunatic. >_>