What are you currently playing?

[Amir]

Finally completed original Half-Life! Got the Valve Complete back in Steam Summer Sale back in 2011, completed HL2 back then, Episodes 1 and 2 last June, and Portal 1 and 2 before Xmas. Half-Life 1 and the expansions became available for OS X in between, so I've played through the original the past month (don't get that much time to game). Will give FPSes a break before playing Opposing Force and Blue Shift, got some Dreamcast games I still need to complete after all these years!:

Skies of Arcadia
Jet Set Radio
Headhunter
Lack of Love
Soul Reaver

[Riku Rose]

^Recognized your picture from lurking at mygnr. Nice to see another Guns fan.

[Thief]

Still digital devil saga, I'm at 15 hours in and I'm retardedly overpowered

I invested pretty much all my points in strength for Serph and can end almost any battle pretty much like this: Serph: use Power Charge, Gale: Tarukaja, Argilla: Pass, Serph: Genocide. Does like 1000 damage to everyone. After the battle I heal up with either Heat or Cielo so I don't waste any MP for my main party. If any enemies are immune to physical or something, then I just use Gale or Argilla as magic casters.

I haven't done any grinding or anything, so I'm guessing this is just a lull in the difficulty for the moment, but it does feel fun to destroy everyone... unless they're dicks and use status effect stuff or, heaven forbid, FUCKING MUDO (insta death)

anyway, still a fun game.

[Amir]

^Recognized your picture from lurking at mygnr. Nice to see another Guns fan.

Hah, yeah, I couldn't be arsed to make another size-appropriate avatar so thought, fuck it, MYGNR avatar it is ;)

Wish I had obsessions with projects that were likely to be released as opposed to Shenmue III and Chinese Democracy II... Oh well

[Thief]

I finished the first Digital Devil Saga, and needless to say, I'm now a fan of the Megami Tensei series. Bad news though, is that my copy of Digital Devil Saga 2 still hasn't arrived in the mail yet... but it got me thinking...

Since Digital Devil Saga ends on a cliffhanger, a really really huge cliffhanger, it would sort of diminish the effect of a cliffhanger to begin the next game immediately. So I've decided not to. Instead, I'm going to play Persona 2: Innocent Sin.

About a year ago I traded some books into Bookmans and bought Eternal Punishment with the credit they gave me, and then shortly afterwards (when I found out it was actually the second game) I burned a copy of Innocent Sin (the PSX fan translation)... and then never played it more than 10 minutes of testing.

So my new plan is to stagger my playthrough of Digital Devil Saga and Persona 2

1.) Digital Devil Saga *check*
2.) Innocent Sin *in progress*
3.) Digital Devil Saga 2
4.) Eternal Punishment

I have a problem where I get excited about things.... and then plan them out... and maybe never fall through with those plans... but this is how I'm feeling right now.

Anyway, I started up Innocent Sin and played for about an hour or so and first impressions are very good. Story seems interesting and the music is HOLY SHIT WOW good. Somehow manages to be better than DDS (and that music was damn good too). Why did I have to get so obsessed with this series all of a sudden now I'll never have any free time!

[OL]

Story seems interesting and the music is HOLY SHIT WOW good. Somehow manages to be better than DDS.

HERESYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

[Henry Spencer]

Eikichi is probably my favourite Persona protagonist. He's essentially a J-rock band stereotype (complete with all of the make up and effeminate behaviour), the comic relief who is actually funny for a change, with a really cool character development and his weapon of choice is a Mariachi style guitar case that converts into a gun! Love his battle quotes too.

And yeah, both halves of Persona 2 are definitely my second favourite OSTs in the SMT series after DDS, so I can see why you like it. It's very 90s and so, so rad. You should definitely check out the PSP soundtrack since it is also just as amazing (some tracks are even better as every single track was rearranged by ATLUS Sound Team).

As for what I'm currently playing:



Harder than what I thought it would be but really addictive. Great OST. I love PSX era game soundtracks.



It's basically the Hollywood action blockbuster version of a From Software game. Meaning it's different from anything else I have played by them. It's a lot of fun, even if it does have a ridiculous amount of QTEs and the scenarios are well varied. The action in this game is off the wall crazy. Jumping off missiles, running down skyscrapers really fast taking down monsters, stopping planes from running people over, cheesy voice acting galore and it honestly makes me laugh at times how silly/crazy/awesome the scenes get.

[OL]

^^Are you using the Human Plus trick in Armored Core?
It's a bit of a cheat, but I did it a few years back when I played through it. Next time I play, I'm going to try to play the game clean, no Human Plus at all. But yeah, it's gonna be tough.

[Henry Spencer]

Is that the trick involving quad legs as opposed to the others? I normally peek out and use the walls as covers just taking pot shots every so often. Thankfully missiles that lock on can swerve around the corner and hit the targets sometimes too. And in the wide open areas, I just immediately go for the targets and wing it, since if I try to take all of the enemies down on those maps I get taken down before I complete the mission. The game is brutal. Are the other PSX Armored Core games this hard?

[OL]

Nah, Human Plus is this thing where you start the game, then fail missions hard enough until you're 50000 credits in debt.
Once that happens, the game runs a cutscene where you go through some kind of surgery, basically enhancing your skills as a pilot. Then the game restarts from the beginning, your wallet reset to 0, and you'll have some new enhancement. You can do this 10 times in total to get all enhancements. Enhancements range from slightly better energy usage to beam swords sending out a shockwave when you swing them (very useful). Makes the game much more manageable.
Technically it could be thought of as a cheat, but it's literally a part of the game's lore; there's one mission where you're sent to destroy an escaped Human Plus prototype, for example. So the whole thing is a bit more woven into the fabric of the game, rather than just being a cheat code.
Plus, it's not exactly an automatic win. The game still requires a lot of skill, even with all 10 enhancements. It just eases things up slightly.
And if I remember correctly, the enhancements also transfer over if you use your save data when starting either Project Phantasma or Master of Arena.

[Henry Spencer]

Coolio. May give it a go, I'm a ways in already, but that sounds very useful. Don't know why they don't let you just buy those abilities instead of having to go through that, but nevermind.

Speaking of, I've managed to finally get my PS2 soft modded so I can play American and Japanese imports, so I started up Front Mission 4, since I'm in that mech mood, if it wasn't obvious enough by now and man, it really does feel so good to be able to play these Front Mission games I never would have been able to otherwise. Here in the UK, we only ever got Evolved and FM3, even Front Mission DS had to be an import. But now knowing that I will be able to play the english fan translation of FM5 after I've finished FM4 is such a good feeling, man.

FM4 is reminding me why it's one of my favourite games series to come from Square and a nice reminder of how much I love both mech games and Strategy RPGs. Just levelling up my mechs and seeing how both of these stories unfold is so addictive. Plugged it in earlier today and basically played for 4-5 hours straight.

[Axm]

Played a little bit of this today.. Found this in the archive of my games from the states. Soooo Nostalgic. Probably one of my all time faves.

[Axm]

South Park: Stick of Truth.

Barely into it but I really like what i'm playing so far.

[Calshot]

I must have not been in the right mood when I first played, since I put it down after 1 or 2 missions. Having picked it up again recently after a year or so of not playing, I played through the whole campaign in a few days. Crazy fun from Platinum as usual. I only wish it had local multiplayer.

[south carmain]

Going for the platinum in yakuza 4.