Game: What game are you currently playing??

[Animeniax]

Playing Metro Last Light. I think I was one of the lucky ones who discovered the gem that is the original Metro 2033 and having played that makes this sequel that much more meaningful and engrossing. I just started it and the detail and gameplay is amazing.

One gripe is that the story follows canon from the novel as far as your decision whether or not to nuke the Dark Ones in the first game. It's understandable that they couldn't make two different games based on the decision you made in the previous game, but it does bother me just a little that the effort to get the good ending in the first game doesn't matter for the second game.

[Archangel]

Looking forward to it

[Animeniax]

Finished Metro Last Light again, this time with the "good" ending. Turns out you basically can't kill any humans throughout most of the game in order to get enough moral points for the good ending. Ranger hardcore mode isn't challenging at all since you do so much damage that you can kill most mobs with one or two shots, negating the effect of reduced ammo availability.

[David75]

RealRacing3 again.
Since I have money+gold unlimited, that makes it a "playable game"
After spending quite some time on it (thanks the under average anime season), I'm getting the hang of it.

I don't exactly know how many players there are worldwide, but on time trials I'm often in the top 500 to 300, sometimes top 300 to 100.
Recently I've been able to score top 50 and even a top 20.
But it moves quickly and you have to go at it again.

Today, I just decided to use the hood camera, that makes the game even better looking. I'm a traditionalist, I love the cockpit view. But it is not a driving sim. It's more of a high speed stock car competition. Because AIs are programmed to smash into you wheneven they can, to suddenly brake and go through the raceline so that you crash into them etc... They are even skillfull enough to lift you rear end side enough so that you spin into that corner where you try to optmize your trajectory.
Why is that?
Obviously in app purchase. Repairing you car costs a lot of time... or real money if you can't wait!
But that doesn't matter when you hack the game.

So why is it fun?
Well, you can hone your skills in time trials, you can play against AI friends... meaning their race is supposedly recorded for an AI to mimic it in your race.
Picture quality is nice
Its fluid
and time trials are addictive, trying to beat your own ghost and your friends' best times.
What's pure gold is when at the 10th... (or more) try, you finally are able to get all your break points, reacceleration points and corners right and get the best time.
Just happened today, I was struggling to beat an old time I did last week. Then I was starting to beat the ghost by quite a margin on some corners. Another step was when I was nearing that best time on multiple occasions, by gaining time on different corners, and losing it all elsewhere.
And then bam, everything connected, 2.5 seconds improvement, 2 seconds better than the best of my friends for that circuit/car

Oh yes, each car handles differently enough that raceline change a little (or at times quite a bit), and of course break/accel points.
So you have lots of time trials for each car/circuit.

Of course, nothing's perfect, it's only an ipad, you'll never get what's in a car on a circuit. Believe me the latter is just incredibly mind and guts blowing (at least in a car with serious grip/Hp).
So just get it in your minds it's more arcade than anything. The most important is enjoying your time playing it and get over the fact that yes, cutting some corners in the grass can get you ahead, sometimes by a great margin... So play by those rules, or do not play those circuits (or at all).

See You!

[rockmanj]

I just got The Last of Us on Friday and cannot put it down. I think it is one of the best games I have ever played.

[Animeniax]

I just got The Last of Us on Friday and cannot put it down. I think it is one of the best games I have ever played.

I just started this game on Saturday and it's pretty awesome. I find it hard to stop playing too.

[rockmanj]

It has a really gripping story, which is saying a lot for a video game. I bet if Roger Ebert (r.i.p.) took the time to try this game out, he probably would have liked it.

[Animeniax]

I'm not usually that interested in stories in video games, but this game ties the action and adventure into the storyline so well that it's enjoyable and engrossing. It's not like a lot of games where the story just fills space between gun fights or leveling up your character.

[Buffalobiian]

Finished Batman Arkham Asylum the other day and that was pretty good. Apparently the sequel is the better one so I'm looking forward to that on the weekend.

[Dark Dragon]

Tales of Xillia and Dragon's Crown, getting my RPG on.

[Ryllharu]

Playing Dragon's Crown on the Vita, where it was apparently made for (touchscreen clicking is so much better than the weird target system).

Damn that game is beautiful.

The way even fairly mundane tasks are narrated is perfect. The narrator's English (no option to change that one) voice is also spot on. It's like it is straight out of fairy tale animated movies.

Gameplay wise, it's like Gauntlet + Old School D&D, with the plot reminiscent of really old text RPGs.

This might be Vanillaware's best game yet, with Odin Sphere (bugs aside) being the close second. The art style is very western, far more than their usual Nordic/Celtic feel. It's almost like Baroque Romanticism. The little details everywhere are just that much better. I am all over collecting the artwork too. Screenshots of the collectable art, effortless on the Vita (PS Button + Start), make for good system menu backgrounds.

Also...those Elf boots.

[shinta|hikari]

Better than Odin's Sphere???

How does that weird targeting system work? Should it put me off from playing this?

[Dark Dragon]

This is a pretty good review that also explain most of the game mechanics.

[Ryllharu]

How does that weird targeting system work? Should it put me off from playing this?

It just makes things less convenient. On the PS3 (or the Vita, which has both), you have to move a cursor with the right stick and click a button to activate searching in the background or having the party thief unlock stuff. On the vita, you just use the touchscreen with a spare finger, so there's less of a break in the action.

It'll slow down gameplay by about...5 seconds per screen. Don't let it get in the way of purchasing it. If you have a Vita, get it on that, if you don't, get it on PS3. If you have neither system, buy one.

This game is why I bought a Vita (even though it got delayed).

[fahoumh]

I pre-ordered a copy of Dragon's Crown for the PS3 simply for the art book...I figured if I waited to pick up a used copy I would have missed out on it, plus Atlus has a reputation for limited production runs. I bought it mostly on how much I loved Muramasa for the Wii...now all I need is a PS3 to actually play it.

(edit: the rest of the discussion is moved to Next Generation Console thread.)

[Animeniax]

Playing Tomb Raider Underworld. It's amazing how dumbed-down and easy they've made the new TR game (and games in general) in comparison to previous games. You actually have to think and figure things out in order to progress in the older games. Now everything is so straightforward and linear its disgusting.

Is it that the developers spend too much time on visuals and ease of gameplay and not enough on story and making a game challenging, or is this what gamers want? I know it's not what I want from a game. I don't want to speed through a game in 8 hours because it's so damn easy.

[Ryllharu]

It's a tradeoff, back in the era when NintendoHard was a standard, games could be beaten in under a half hour, quite regularly (watch a few no-glitch speed runs of a lot of 8-bit or even a lot of 16-bit games). They pad the game out by making it stupid hard (Ghosts 'n Goblins series, NES Ninja Turtles, etc.) or just simple inscrutably impossible (Milon's Secret Castle).

So a lot of games, even through the PS/PS2 era just were left unbeaten by a lot of players.

As games get more cinematic, development teams obviously want players to see the full game...so they make the default difficulties pretty easy, or even include a Casual difficulty for people who are more into experiencing the story than being challenged.

With certain indie titles or games like Dark Souls getting a lot of word of mouth for being throwbacks to the NintendoHard Era, there is a return of that to a degree, but a lot of developers want their project to be enjoyed, not thrown aside in frustration after a few hours.

Bioware made the stats on the Mass Effect series public a few times, and the results are pretty discouraging (at least from my standpoint). A number of people never even finished the games, and a lot of them never bothered to customize Shepard in the first place. Now imagine that with a game like DMC3 or Bayonetta (the latter of which thankfully has flawless controls, but isn't easy for the casual player).

[shinta|hikari]

I think simply having an inferno difficulty setting would be enough to quell the "games are too easy" complaints. I personally play games in normal or even casual difficulty unless I really like them, then I go through until the hardest setting.

[Animeniax]

That makes sense about the cinematic nature of a game resulting in developers wanting players to finish the game to get the full experience. Plus who will buy a sequel if they don't even finish the first game because it's too difficult.

Games like the new Tomb Raider are easy even on the hardest difficulty. How can they make it more difficult with the gameplay style they chose? By reducing available ammo, or making the bad guys tougher? What made the original TR games interesting (besides the double Ds and short shorts) was the challenging puzzles to advance through levels. Shooting and gunplay were minimized and not central aspects of the game. The new TR is just a straight-forward 3rd person shooter that walks you from gun fight to gun fight with a small amount of effort required.

I guess it's not all bad; there are still some quality games being made.

[shinta|hikari]

Did you finish all the temples in TR? I found those really annoying because of the puzzles. You should have liked those.