What are you currently playing?

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Balloon Simulator 2014: Company of the Inflated and 2015: That Gives Me a Rise

Less lofty: Into the Fire and Flames

[Mr. GOH!]

Playing Papers, Please! A dystopian document thriller. It's great for a $10 game. Brilliantly designed. 

 

You play a lucky soul who wins the October, 1982 Labor Lottery in the fictional Eastern Bloc country Arzstotzka. You are assigned to be the bureaucrat-on-the-spot at a new customs checkpoint. You earn money for every person you correctly let into the country. You must manually check immigrants' and visitors papers, passports, visas, and so on to make sure everything is right. You must also earn enough money to pay your rent and buy food for your family and pay the heating bill. Of course, trying to make it in a terrible communist bureaucratic hell is tough, with the government changing entry requirements daily, terrorist cells attempting to bribe or blackmail you, and your coworkers trying to make deals. It's fantastic.

 

http://dukope.com/ <--- great capsule description from the maker

 

http://papersplea.se/

Edited August 11, 2013 by Mr. GOH!

[TheMightyEthan]

 

Played the tutorials and one real level, and am really enjoying it so far.

[Strangelove]

It took them 4 games, but Nintendo finally made a Good NEW SMB game. The Wii U version is fantastic. For the most part its because every world and every other stage on those worlds seems to introduce new mechanics and enemies never seen before. I dare say most of the game truly is new and the old enemies are only really sprinkled on into the game. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I did not like NSMB Wii, but I loved the Wii U version.

[Eleven]

Playing Papers, Please! A dystopian document thriller. It's great for a $10 game. Brilliantly designed. 

 

 

That's an interesting game... I'm adding it to my wishlist. I assume you have to look for inconsistencies or discrepancies yourself? There seems to be a "show discrepancies" option and wouldn't that take the fun away from the game?

[CrowKnow]

Currently playing unepic and half minute hero.  Unepic is a nice relaxing game to play with a podcast in the background.  Metroidvania type game with some shameless references and amusingly translated "Unenglish". I played the original half minute hero up to around the last boss so the game is becoming kinda grind... not too fond of the new art either.  I also feel like there was a balance change or something because I remember the health drain while dashing being far less of an issue in the original.

[Strangelove]

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge. Im divided on it. I think people judged it too harshly, even after they went back and tried to fix it. It feels like a real NG game now, but a lot of stuff in it annoys the hell out of me. Mostly 2 things - the QTEs are really awful. I dont care if theyre in there or not, but theyre just not done very well. The other problem is the bosses. They are total assholes. I know NG games tend to have difficult bosses, but the difference between regular enemies and bosses is ridiculous. I can play the game just fine on normal, its hard but not too hard. Its what it should be....but the bosses? Ive had to lower the difficulty for all of them. They are just ridiculous.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Need for speed: most wanted. I'm finding it super difficult. Usually you win the firs dozen or so races without trying even if you crash a few times, but in this game I'm struggling not to come last already. I think I'm enjoying it though.

[Strangelove]

I gave up on that game quickly. The driving was really stiff, at least on the Wii U version.

[Hot Heart]

I gave up on the game because it was the PC version and Criterion can't port worth a shit. Occasional CTDs during normal play, and always CTDs when trying to load those shitty arty 'cutscenes' before the actual Most Wanted events (and only those, for some reason). Should've learnt my lesson from Hot Pursuit (wouldn't run properly on multi-core processor machines? COME ON!) but it was supercheap.

 

Wish they'd just make another decent arcadey Burnout anyway.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Hot Heart

[TheFlyingGerbil]

yeesh. Glad it was free! I'll keep going for a bit, and then move on to Amalur, maybe.

[Thursday Next]

I flippin' hate those retarded intro things. Complete pain in the arse and utterly pointless. No idea what they were thinking.

 

Personally I find it too easy. Since you aren't really progressing up a linear path once you've maxed out one car and move on to the next you go back to super easy and slowly work your way up again to slightly difficult. It's one of those games that I play on my Vita on flights because it's easy to pick up where you left off and once you've completed a car you can just hop to another game for a bit.

[Mr. GOH!]

 

Playing Papers, Please! A dystopian document thriller. It's great for a $10 game. Brilliantly designed. 

 

 

That's an interesting game... I'm adding it to my wishlist. I assume you have to look for inconsistencies or discrepancies yourself? There seems to be a "show discrepancies" option and wouldn't that take the fun away from the game?

 

No, because everything is timed and the 'show discrepancies' feature takes a bunch of time to process and use. Faster to let your trained eyes flick across the relevant data points. And you don't always have access to the 'show discrepancies' machine.

[toxicitizen]

Decided to give another shot to Rayman Origins. I kind of hated it the first time. I don't know about this one, I keep going back and forth between loving and hating it. Most of the time it's fun, the levels are mostly well designed and it oozes charm from every pore. When it all comes together it can be an absolute joy to play. But I almost always inevitably end up feeling like I'm fighting the controls in some way.

 

The game looks beautiful but that's kind of irrelevant when I get so pissed at it that I want to fly to France and stab Michel Ancel in the balls. I recently played a few platforming-heavy games and had a lot of fun with them, which is what made me want to revisit it. But this game genuinely makes me wonder whether I just hate platformers. Which is really weird considering how much I fucking love games like Super Meat Boy, They Bleed Pixels and Spelunky because that's about as challenging as platforming gets. I get angry at those games but I never feel like I hate them.

Edited August 20, 2013 by FLD

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Started Kingdoms of Amalur today. Looks OK so far. the character looks like she's skating on ice though and just seems to control a bit weird. nothing to spoil the game though.

 

I started it on casual, then restarted on Hard as I thought about getting the Platinum trophy since it's single player only. Which leads me to the question: is this easy to platinum? i.e. there's no stupid wild goose chases to get 1001 super hidden items or anything like that? I'd like to get most trophies naturally and do a mop up at the end. If it's going to be a big hassle though I'll to put it on casual again as I want to burn through a bit of my backlog.

[toxicitizen]

Started Kingdoms of Amalur today. Looks OK so far. the character looks like she's skating on ice though and just seems to control a bit weird. nothing to spoil the game though.

 

I started it on casual, then restarted on Hard as I thought about getting the Platinum trophy since it's single player only. Which leads me to the question: is this easy to platinum? i.e. there's no stupid wild goose chases to get 1001 super hidden items or anything like that? I'd like to get most trophies naturally and do a mop up at the end. If it's going to be a big hassle though I'll to put it on casual again as I want to burn through a bit of my backlog.

 

According to this, it's rather easy to plat. Rating's at the top. http://www.ps3trophies.org/forum/kingdoms-amalur-reckoning/146374-kingdoms-amalur-reckoning-trophy-guide-road-map.html

 

Pretty handy site. Can easily see how difficult a game is to get everything and whether or not there's any missable stuff you need to look out for. I usually avoid looking at it on a first playthrough, though.

[Little Pirate]

I keep meaning to try Phoenix Wright since so many people I know have played it and I'm tired of being out of the loop when it comes up in conversations.  I do like investigative games, so I finally got a copy.  It looks fun, I'm pretty eager to get through it.

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm replaying Skyward Sword, and liking it more than I remember doing the first time.  I think the trick is to play it in shorter bursts than you might play other Zeldas.  Because the dynamic between the overworld and dungeons has changed, with most of the "overworld" questing also feeling like a dungeon, it's easy to get mentally exhausted without that downtime of running around in the overworld getting things set up for the next dungeon.

[Mr. GOH!]

I've been revisiting Skyrim now that I have Dawnguard and Dragonborn, and a host of other graphical improvement mods.. I forgot how much I like just exploring Skyrim, and how there's so fucking much to do.

[toxicitizen]

A few things, actually. In my last stretch before going back to school, I've been mostly sticking to shorter games. Stuff I can beat in a day or two and move on. But now I felt like playing something a bit more substantial.

 

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.

 

I fucking love this game. JRPG-inspired story and with the addictive Puzzle Quest kind of gameplay but with a much more interesting and strategic mechanic than simple Bejeweled-style connect 3. Played this on PSN a year or so ago but never finished it because of the difficulty spike in the last chapter.

 

Grabbed it again on Steam at some point because, well... Steam sale, most likely. Started it again out of boredom a couple days ago because I couldn't decide what to play next. It just sucked me right back in. Almost done with the second campaign now.

 

Sonic Generations.

 

This and Rayman Origins were two platformers I normally wouldn't have bothered with but bought during Steam sales because of all the praise I kept hearing about them. With Rayman out of the way, I figured I'd give this one a shot.

 

After playing the first few stages, my initial impression was "I am going to fucking hate this game". As someone who hasn't played a Sonic game since owning a Genesis and Sonic 2 (so, like... 15 years ago?), I am absolutely godawful at it. Then I made it to the first boss. "Oh shit! That's the robot from the end of Sonic 2!!" Nostalgia is a funny thing. The game pretty much won me over from that point on. I don't see myself playing this for long sessions or anything. I just beat the second set of stages and boss and stopped. Probably won't touch it again until tomorrow.

 

Catherine.

 

For some reason, I felt like playing some Persona last night. Of course, with only a week of vacation left, that just wasn't an option. So I went back to this one instead. When I first bought it over a year ago, I ended up getting stuck (on the fifth night, I think) and never went back to it. Didn't remember much of the story, so I started over from the beginning and I'm almost back to where I was. I definitely intend on finishing it this time.

[TCP]

I've been revisiting Skyrim now that I have Dawnguard and Dragonborn, and a host of other graphical improvement mods.. I forgot how much I like just exploring Skyrim, and how there's so fucking much to do.

I still love booting up Skyrim every once in awhile and just exploring the world. Even 150 hrs in, there's places I've never been. Bethesda is second to none in world design, IMHO.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Well when you have big empty worlds it's not very hard. Especially with randomly generated missions.

[NeoStarr]

Between beta and release, Steam tells me that I've played as much Payday 2 in one month as I did in two years of the original. And I fucking loved the original.

[Strangelove]

Super late to the party, but I just started Limbo on my Vita and I already got stuck. Im stuck at the part int he very beginning where theres a box in the water and I guess I have to push it then get on it or something. I dunno. 

 

Pretty cool game though. Plays/controls better than half the "indie" pc crap that gets ported to the Vita/PS3.