What are you currently playing?

(Gaming discussion not related to Shenmue)

Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Segata Sanshiro Jr. » Sat Mar 08, 2014 9:15 pm

wude wrote: Playing los 2, gets repetitive some times but still very fun game, it's somewhere between prince of persia and god of war
the environments are beautiful too

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Just got pokemon Y

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Raithos » Sat Mar 15, 2014 5:03 am

Seeing Riku post his copy of Xenoblade made me want to play it again. Just finished the two games I was on, so I started another play through but this time I'm using dolphin and a wireless 360 pad. I even found some textures that replace the classic controller button prompts with actual 360 icons. Ran HDMI from the PC to TV so I could sit on the couch. Here goes another 100+ hours of my life, this time is HD.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Kenny » Sat Mar 15, 2014 6:56 pm

Arkham Orgins.

Almost done with it. I like it alot even though it's just Arkham City-lite. I can see where the disappointment comes from but with something like AC, where pretty much everything was going for it, it's kind of unrealistic to expect the next installment to top it.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Henry Spencer » Sat Mar 15, 2014 8:20 pm

Darks Souls 2 is a disappointment so far. :sad:
Miyazaki is more important to the series than initially thought, after all. It just seems to lack that something special that Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 had...willing to see if it picks up soon, but it just feels so weird [a different kind of "weird" than what the earlier games had]. And it's not "dark" enough either for me. [-(
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Who Really Cares? » Sun Mar 16, 2014 3:58 am

TitanFall. First couple games felt un fun because I was up against a bunch on level 30+ players but now I'm up to level 10 and finding my groove.

Last Titan standing is a lot of fun.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Axm » Sun Mar 16, 2014 7:15 am

Both free..
Team Fortress 2 (PC)
Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC)

Might do Left for Dead 2 sometime.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Henry Spencer » Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:15 am

The load times in Dark Souls 2 are ridiculous and feel much longer than they were in Dark Souls 1 & Demon's Souls. Also, not one to normally complain about performance issues, but man is it annoying; the audio lag, the disappearing enemies and the worst - the menu lag (literally 5~10 seconds for the main menu to pop up after pressing start). On the other hand, there's no place I've gone to so far that has Blighttown level bad framerate. I've heard the 360 version has its own issues like screen tearing though...really strange since they seemed to get the balance of the two console versions of Dark Souls 1 just right. Hope they patch all of these issues.

The art direction just seems all over the place in this game too and some areas just seem...unfinished, sort of like there's certain rooms or routes with just, dead ends and/or no enemies at all. You'll literally be running through an area with no enemies or threats present in ages and then there's a bonfire and no hidden items or anything. It's really weird.

Then there's other areas that have loads of enemies that run at you at once (like 6 or 7 at a time).
The design and overall structure of the game just feels inconsistent and really odd.

Did From Software rush this game out the gate or something? :-k
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Kenny » Sun Mar 16, 2014 6:52 pm

Played some Red Dead Redemption for the Poker, Crash Bandicoot 2 until that shit got too hard, and now Hitman: Absolution cause I bought it so might as well finish it.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby IrishNinja » Mon Mar 17, 2014 8:11 pm

finishing up Strider 3 (which has been great by the way), then borrowing a buddy's copy of South Park: Stick of truth. After that, i've a gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket so maybe Dark Souls 2 & the MGS 5 demo? not sure yet.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby OL » Tue Mar 18, 2014 2:26 am

I think I agree with Henry about Dark Souls 2 to an extent. I'm not really bothered by the technical stuff, because the audio lag only happens here and there with no real consequence, and the menu lag mainly just happens for me in Majula, so it's not like I'm getting killed because of it. Not sure about the load times being longer. Haven't played the others in a while.
But yeah, the art design isn't quite up to snuff with the last two games. In some cases it's really excellent (The Rotten, the Executioner's Chariot), while in others it seems surprisingly bland for the series. It's still better than most other games, but for this series in particular, there isn't as much memorable eye candy as I was expecting. I still have yet to see anything quite on the level of the Gaping Dragon, the Grey Wolf Sif, or Crossbreed Priscilla, and I'm 50 hours in. Do have to say I love the design of this one's flagship armor set (the one on the cover and all), though I have yet to find it. And some of the environments are pretty cool (I love the windmill-covered design of the Earthen Peak, for example), but few of them feel quite as immersive and atmospheric as before. There's nothing as awe-inspiring as Anor Londo, and that's a bit disappointing.
But that's all excusable as preferential stuff. I really only have two major gripes. The first is that the world doesn't feel as "unified" as in Dark Souls. It was kind of a big "holy shit" moment in the previous game when you'd fight your way through a dungeon for a while, make a ton of progress, then open a door and find that it was the locked one you passed a couple hours ago, and now you've got a heap of alternate paths to take advantage of. It worked amazingly well in the previous game (and even in Demon's Souls, to an extent), but in this one it feels like there are a bunch of opposite paths to head into that just don't join together in any meaningful way. It's like heading into sectioned-off levels, rather than a fully-congruous world. Granted, they also allowed fast-travel between bonfires right from the get-go, so it's not like they did anything wrong; it's just a different approach. But I think I liked it better the way it was before.
And second is the thing I mentioned in the games you bought topic: the world just doesn't offer much in the way of surprises. Both previous games had intense, unexpected dragon attacks, right there in the first few hours. Not boss fights, but scripted areas that you had to figure out a viable way of getting past. They offered environmental puzzles, in a way, without the use of switches or whatever. Even something like the Catacombs, where you had to kill the necromancers before the skeleton enemies would stay down for good, had its own sort of signature "gimmick" (I don't mean that in a negative way at all). The first Dark Souls also had insanely over-powered enemies scattered in different places, basically there to scare the shit out of you as you ground your way through lesser foes. I died to Havel countless times before I finally beat him late in the game, but the option was always there to challenge him any time I wanted. So far, Dark Souls 2 has nothing like that. Just standard enemies for each area all the way through, until you hit a boss fight.

I don't mean to sound so negative, because like I said in the other topic, I'm having a blast either way. The gameplay is still solid as hell, the level-up progression is very satisfying, and I think the personality is still there (characters slowly going mad and all), though I do think Henry's on the money that it isn't quite "dark" enough.
It's a great game, easily more worthwhile than most other RPGs out there. It just isn't really as good as Dark Souls. But that's a very high bar to set, so I'm having an easy time being forgiving.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Henry Spencer » Tue Mar 18, 2014 6:52 am

To add to that, I've noticed another big change from previous titles; after you have killed regular enemies a certain amount of time they disappear never to return. I suppose this was a design choice to stop people from farming souls, but I think there should have been a better compromise then that.

I'm enjoying the game much more now than I was before, by the way. Just found the game much harder to get into than the previous Souls games. The early areas are all over the place but I feel the areas I've been to now are more consistently good.

I agree on the lack of surprises though; where are the dragons? Where's the secret areas like the Painted World?
And despite me liking the game, I still don't think the game's anywhere near dark enough. There's still despair in the game world but it isn't as profound and the world is just too pretty to look like it is "decaying". Remember the areas in Demon's Souls where everything is so dark and dirty. Those areas were full of disease and misery. And I feel that the NPCs in this game are really lacking any distinctive characteristics that would make them memorable aside from the odd few. It's lacking that atmosphere that made the other Souls games masterpiece.

I still find the loading annoying too.

Having gotten all of that groaning out of the way, the gameplay is as fun as ever and I'm killing most bosses on my first or second try which is refreshing. I went with a Knight build, by the way. Using the Bastard Sword takes down most enemies in two strikes or at least stuns them long enough for me to regain my stamina and finish them off. I'm finding that I am using the co-op feature far more than in the previous games too.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Axm » Tue Mar 18, 2014 6:53 am

Liked Demons Souls more then Dark Souls, based on peoples impressions I will play DS2 but probably wait for it to drop in price.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby OL » Tue Mar 18, 2014 12:46 pm

Henry Spencer wrote:I'm finding that I am using the co-op feature far more than in the previous games too.


You know, aside from the actual game characters that you could summon to help, I never really used the multiplayer features in past games. I tried it in this one though, and it made a boss I was having trouble on a lot more epic and fun. I accidentally summoned two people (thinking the first one failed), so it was me and another guy slashing away at this giant knight while the other guy sent lightning bolts flying at it. Pretty fun doing things that way, and even though we couldn't communicate in anything other than character animation gestures, it really did make it feel like I was part of this larger online community, something I never tried out in the earlier games.
Still a pain in the ass when people invade your game though. I like the other online stuff, like the co-op summons and the messages littered everywhere (been using, and making, those more often now too), but getting invaded by some high-level jerk who can go invisible is nothing but annoying. One of them already made me accidentally hit an NPC, so I was forced to kill the character off eventually.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Henry Spencer » Tue Mar 18, 2014 6:13 pm

Yeah you've got to watch out for those dicks. There's plenty of trolls that intentionally do that sort of thing. The good part is that they've implemented a system where you can revive any dead characters you want. I've had two invade me at once whilst fighting a really tough enemy and they both spawned right behind me and I had quite a lot of souls on me at the time too; I don't think that should really be allowed, since how the heck do I have any chance of winning that? It should be one invasion max on your first playthrough, I think, up it on subsequent playthroughs. It's weird since From have changed it to being that you can only be invaded when you are Hollow whereas before you were only invaded when you were back to Human form.

But yes, fighting certain bosses in co-op is so much fun. There's also Player vs Player [where it's not really an invasion but a mode where people just duel] where some members are really quite polite and bow/let you heal up first before you fight, it's just a risk if you bow first because sometimes they're obviously not fighting it out fairly and will sneak a backstab in there before you're ready.

On another note, I finished Ground Zeroes story in one sitting (1hr 40). Can't say that I didn't really enjoy it though. The gameplay seems to bring back a lot of elements from MGS2 and MGS3 (crawling, slitting throats, interrogations, CQC throws, holding up enemies yields weapons, magazines can be thrown, first person shooting mode and first person mode when crawling in narrow spaces are all back. So is "!") Codec is now real time and mapped to L2 rather than Select [although there is tapes that you can listen to which is another version of Codec there's loads of those]. And my fears of it being if you're caught it being easy was put to rest; Big Boss goes down really quickly [short health bar], enemies alert each other as soon as you are caught even if they don't radio one another and the prisoners you have to rescue die in one hit which results in mission failure. And that's Normal mode. The tagging of enemies with your binoculars becomes very important since enemies can see you a fair distance away and there's no radar or camouflage now. I really liked the music since it had that dark moody electronic sound that the earlier Metal Gear games had. I must say the game does look stunning and found it really absorbing to play.

On the story side of things, it seems really interesting. Skull Face is an interesting villain, very messed guy
he makes Chico rape Paz and watches it. He also plants a bomb inside Paz's vagina. Then he destroys Mother Base, Big Boss HQ and kills most of Big Boss' men... He seems to have some vendetta against Zero himself and seems to be a former member of The Patriots.


Overall, pleasantly surprised by it and really excited for MGS5 now. My fears are almost put to rest now. I just really liked that it felt more like classic Metal Gear than it did Peace Walker or MGS4.

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Kenny » Tue Mar 18, 2014 7:13 pm

OMG, one hour?!

I'm totally waiting for it to go to the bargain bin now. Nonetheless, its sounds promising based on what you were saying though.
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