What are you currently playing?

[aquaticiguana | 12]

Just finished Stubbs the Zombie. I've wanted to play it since I first saw it on X-play in 2005. 

It was ok.

Some funky game design, particularly the tank level. I had killed all the humans and then only via gamefaqs did I learn I had to fart to get the driver to climb out. At that point there were no humans left to refill my meters. Game in general was pretty monotonous after the farm level. That said it was genuinely funny, the music was good, and the initial premise of having a zombie army was actually really fun. They really just needed to mix it up more.

Morgan and Adam were right, 3/5.

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

Back on RE2 remake... might pull the trigger on RE3 here soon but may wait for a price drop depending how much RE2 I play or if I move on to something else. Really tough to pay $90 for a new game regardless of how bad I want to play it.

[TDIRunner | 2,742]

After enjoying the Link's Awakening remake so much, I though, why not try the original?  Working on Catfish Maw dungeon right now.  The original is definitely a masterpiece and I feel like I missed out on an amazing game by not playing it back when it was released.  With that said, I love the modern revisions to the remake, especially the extra action buttons.  Changing between all of the different items on the original can be a pain in the ass.  And of course, the extra detail on the map on the remake really helps.  

[Hammerfestus | 3,852]

On 4/1/2020 at 11:46 PM, Tanooki said:

Biology or UFOlogy, something of the sort.  I beat that one close to 10 years ago maybe now or a bit less, it's an oddity.  I want to say it's well done, and in theory it is, but EVO is kind of crappy on the boss fights, overall lacking and due to some oddities with it you have to game the system in evolving repeated to stay alive long enough while pounding on your target.

I’ve had it since I was a kid and I always really enjoyed it but it definitely gets really weird really quickly.  I always thought it was quirky and had a really good atmosphere.  The bit where the dinosaurs die with the mama dinos shielding their babies and all is still one of the saddest video game moments I’ve ever encountered.

[profholt82 | 60]

For whatever reason, I recently decided to play some SimCity 2000 for the first time in possibly decades. I set it up in DosBox on my PC and it worked perfectly. I put so much time into this game on my family PC when I was around 12 or so, but honestly, I can't recall if I've played it since. Well, one thing's for sure. I'm rusty as heck at it.

It took me 3 or 4 tries before I finally made a city that actually made money annually. I basically just ruled like a bastard. Coal power plant, cut police, fire, hospital, education budgets to almost nothing, and added sales tax, income tax and parking fines. And after some lean early years, Holtsville blossomed into a bustling metropolis.

At that point, I upped the budgets and added public services to make the city nicer and encourage growth. Eventually, the Navy set up a base on my ocean front, and wouldn't you know it, within a couple years of that, a massive monster attacked my fair city and sent a good portion of it into chaos and wreckage. Mayor Holt kept a stiff upper lip in those tough times, however, and we rebuilt and are now stronger than ever. And the people gave their mayor a glowing 69% approval rating.

Such a fun game, a real escape and time sinker as well. I had a lot of fun with it yesterday afternoon. My daughters were fascinated by the game, and watched some of the action, so I named a stadium and museum after them. And their mother is naturally the warden of the penitentiary.

[zeppelin03 | 314]

I decided to pick up Dead Cells after not touching it in probably 6 months.  Beat it on my first go.  Can add this game to the finished list.

[StanJr | 7]

Trying to finish out Castlevania Circle of the Moon, but man is it hard!  I don't know that I've ever beaten it before, despite making a good run at the GBA Castlevanias when they first hit.  The Battle Arena is just stupid and I'm getting killed by the Doppleganger.  Currently tracking down whatever DSS cards I'm missing in hopes I will grind enough and get enough powers that I can finally push through.

[TDIRunner | 2,742]

Officially completed the original Game Boy version of Link's Awakening (as much as I hate to admit it), for the very first time.

[NZCollector | 107]

Completed LA Noire finally. Been meaning to for months. I can safely say it's one of my favourite games I've ever played. The story was extremely captivating, and the ending was quite sad. Took me longer than most people, 45 hours, but I did go out of my way to get all the street missions done and landmarks checked. Definitely moving on to Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn now (have no more distractions) and on the side tossed up between Crash N-Sane Trilogy or Toki Tori 2+ (other half of Toki Tori Collection). 

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

I started playing Apex Legends with my brother and my best friend. I was initially hesitant since it's a F2P battle royale game, which is basically a combination of everything I hate about the current state of gaming. That being said, it actually manages to be entertaining pretty much every round. The learning curve is steep, but the special abilities are fun and the shooting feels really smooth. It's set in the Titanfall 2 universe and uses the same game engine, so if you liked that, you may like this. Thankfully the F2P content is completely optional and only cosmetic. I'm actually amazed  that these kinds of games can make money since you can't see your own cosmetics. I think there is some kind of season pass, but it doesn't interest me.

If anyone wants to play a few rounds, I am usually on after 10p EST on Xbox. Xbox Live ID RenegadeSaint.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,545]

Diablo III

It's a Diablo alright...

[Tanooki | 4,934]

It's a one off, but worth mentioning.  I got it in my today to use some old stuff.  It hit me I hadn't seen Faxanadu in years, so I pulled the cart out and went as far as the mattock, third town and saved it.  I'm not so sure looking back on it and now that it's so much a hard game, but just not that well designed as it has plenty of unavoidable stupid cheap hits.  Despite that, good either way and nice atmosphere.

[Strange | 1,700]

Besides Animal Crossing, I decided to give Warframe another try after seeing that they’ve added some MMO-ish open areas, activities, pets, etc. I’m playing it on my Switch though because I value the ability to lay on my ass in bed and play something up close.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

Getting back into Jedi Fallen Order after dropping it for a couple months. I didn't realize how Dark Souls-esque it really is until today. Seems like it's gonna be a fun ride for the next 15 hours or so.

[cj_robot | 542]

Capped off my "Best of '87" run by completing Mega Man. Moving on to the games of '88.

Beat Contra for the first time in a long time. Trying to go for a no-death run. Can't seem to get too far in GunSmoke though.

[StanJr | 7]

Started Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility for a change of pace.  It's pretty impressively good.  Relaxing farming to ease my troubles.

[Skorp | 383]

What day am I on, like 20 with Animal Crossing now. Even bought like 6 other Switch games after this including Super Mario Maker 2 and still haven't played or open them. Too addicted...

[Astor Reinhardt | 199]

Obsessed with ACNH...I have to log in daily and do my "chores"...like shake my trees, hit my rocks, chop the trees for wood, talk to my villagers, look at new items in the shops, hunt down my random visitor, dig up fossils...and by that time I'm 4 hours in...wondering where the day went.

[Doctornick | 419]

Ghouls n Ghosts for the SMS and Doom Eternal for my current gen fix.  I love both for different reasons, and man does Doom Eternal have amazing music!

[Kguillemette | 1,545]

Chrono trigger with sporadic bits of MKII and Just Shapes and Beats mixed in.

[MeganJoanne | 365]

Been playing Brain Lord for some time and finally beat it. I started out enjoying it, but as I progressed found stupid shit abound, the kinda thing that makes me think the game designers were sadistic assholes... let's make a dark area to a game where no light from the light fairy works, the layout of the room even in the x-ray map not shown and no exit from said room if you happen to find yourself stuck somewhere in the middle of it blindly bumping into walls and the warp gate not usuable in there - roam around in pitch black until you find your way bumping into one wall and then another and another and either luck at finding the next door to exit it or fall into gamer rage. And that was in the last place, but the place before that had rooms full of rocks that if you step in certain places that are not even clued to you exactly what those spots are the rocks will change position in the room so you can get through them. And then lava, only way through is to run or hop through it, and this idiot of a hero isn't even wearing shoes! First stupid puzzle I came across was a clue on one of the wall plaques that told me that the key is in the control panel, something of the such, thus as it turned out to be that it wasn't anything to look for in the game to open a particular door, just walk up to it and press a certain button on your controller, thus I would not have gotten that one except by chance. The first half of the game was not bad, just that somewhere along the way they decided to hurt the player with the kind of nonsense that could just piss them off with all the guessing and constant long backtracking just to figure shit out among all the many keys and doors you have to unlock in each place. While some of the puzzles involving boulders and huge steel balls were challenging and sometimes got me a tad flustered until I found their solution, those were fair, just took some thought, but those dark areas in the last place were just like, let's see how long you can wander around in the dark before you hate the game. I liked the game to start, then found myself later wanting to like the game, and then as I closed in on the final leg, got to thinking, I'm so glad I don't own an actual cart of this game, I'd want to smash it to bits. It started out strong and interesting and got tediously annoying and stupid and felt suddenly rushed or lazy. The game has some plusses, but not enough for me to return to it. One time, game beaten, never to be played again.

I like the cast of characters, though feel they could have done even more with them. The Jades with different types of fairies are very useful and how the experience in this game is relating to leveling those up, not your character, only issue being most I feel are not as useful or are completely unnecessary thus given the title of the game there could have been certain places where it was necessary to have each of them, but like with the supporting cast, didn't quite reach its potential. The game world is very small, two towns and short outside areas between those and a few other dungeon like locations, most time spent will be in those dungeons, towers, ect which is where the meat of the game is, just with it feeling so small of a world there's not much there for free roaming, and the game is linear, always having to be played out the same way or order which is really not much different than other similar adventure games be it overhead like Crystalis, Willow, Soul Blazer, Alundra (which Brain Lord feels the most like with the puzzles and some difficult platforming in places), ect, or side view like Zelda 2, Faxanadu and other such games, only many of those had larger worlds to explore besides their dungeons, so Brain Lord was lacking on a full realized world, making me wonder, what the rest of the world beyond those couple towns is like besides a very empty desert and the side of a volcano and a path leading to the intial dungeon, the Tower of Light. Weapons vary and some are useful in ways aside from just killing enemies, such as the axe which can break some smaller rocks but still not used enough. And while there are a variety of weapons once I got the boomerang and the morning star I really didn't need anything else. I like how the game doesn't use MP for magic like most, instead you hold the attack button and charge up your magic and when the meter is full can unleash it, and the magic is useful certainly when you want to hit an enemy from a distance or wittle them down a little before charging in to melee attack it, but the coolest is gotten in the final area which creates magical bridges when you shoot the blast over pits, very nice, though my gripe about that one is how thin it is so turning in place to move or aim in another direction can result in accidently falling off, still cool spell that is not one of the usual typical magics. Shields are very effective and have their own hit points and then they break after they run out, but can block most attacks as well as do damage when enemies smack into them. The warp gates which you can buy are a really awesome teleportation item, can teleport anywhere you have been from anywhere (except those dark areas in the final area). I hate that the game forces you to have to redo puzzles again if you enter that room again, even after you completed a puzzle, you return and it has reset to default position, that is fine if you hadn't solved it but it should stay put if you had, thus found myself having to waste time repeating moving blocks or rolling steel balls around just to get through the same door I already been through had I gone back, very irritating. The quick reset option in the submenu is helpful if you need to quickly reset a room or go back to the last door you entered from. When I started the game I really expected the game to have a ton more puzzles to solve than what it actually has, it does have a lot and some are tough to figure out, the worst of them being really weird stuff such as I've already complained about and lots of wandering looking for keys, but given the title of the game still it felt a little lacking, and that the fairies were not used in puzzles disappoints.

Oh, almost forgot, the highest praise in this game, the soundtrack, the music is really good and thus found myself enjoying humming the tunes even when not playing the game. And also the instant the game started, new it would be given it sounded just like the music from Cybernator. Yep, best thing about the game.

Final boss was lame (but then none of the bosses were very good), beat it easily on my first try, then did it again real quick for this video.

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by MeganJoanne

[ookii_risu | 206]

I started playing Brain Lord, too, because Megan was playing it. I remembered renting it back in the day but getting tired of it. Didn't really know why, but when my save got screwed up and I watched her play more, I realized that I would not like it at all later on. Thanks for playing it so I didn't have to!

Just re-downloaded Prison Architect for the umpteenth time on Steam. I love the game, been playing it since it was in Alpha. I've put hundreds of hours in it over the years. Fun and relaxing micro-management.

Edited April 21, 2020 by ookii_risu

[ookii_risu | 206]

On 4/10/2020 at 11:29 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

Diablo III

It's a Diablo alright...

Got back into that about half a year ago. Played it for a year when it came out and then ditched it until last year. I liked the challenges and grinding with new friends. Was a lot of fun. Looking forward to D4, though.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

Finished off Jedi: Fallen Order which was good, but not great, and finally started Ori and the Will of the Wisps. The original Ori is one of my all-time favorite games and struck a perfect balance between exploration and platforming. So far the second game plays similarly and is beautiful to boot. My biggest gripe is that movement options feel very limited at the start of the game, which is a problem with many modern platformers.

Thankfully, it follows Doc's Golden Rule of Metroidvanias: The first movement upgrade should always be the double jump. I don't care if that means including a triple jump or flight powers so that later areas can still be easily gated for exploration. It's just FUN to have a double jump. I also really appreciate an early dash upgrade since moving quickly is a big contributor to enjoyment in games with a lot of exploration. So here's hoping that a dash or sprint comes into play quickly.

Edited April 25, 2020 by DoctorEncore

[zeppelin03 | 314]

Started a playthrough of Diablo II last night.  Still have no idea whats happening but I like walking around killing stuff.