So, what're you playing?

[apocrypha]

Metro: Last Light was finally on sale cheap enough for me to consider.

What a gorgeous looking game. Really digging the minimal interface, makes it very immersive.

[Shrike]

Been awhile, but...

Still subbed to WoW. My shaman is presently on vacation since I've nothing left to do and she's VP capped. So, a week off in the Exodar until 5.4 drops next Tuesday.

Skyrim. Holy cats. I came to this game late and it's been nearly monopolizing my time. On the second playthrough with a third planned. I'm very pleasantly surprised by this game, considering I detested Morrowind. 212 hours so far.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I originally bought this on the 360, but ended up with a free PC version and decided to see how it looked on a high end PC. About the same, as it turns out. Still having a blast with it. Static sniper carry strategy is working extremely well in this game, and somewhat similar to what I used to do in UFO Defense.

On deck:

Been meaning to finally sit down and play the Witcher games. They're set up and ready to go whenever I get around to them.

Also, got talked into Diablo 3 on the console. Got my copy yesterday, but then the crew at work started waffling on actually picking it up, the cheap bastards. Still, going to demon hunter it up this coming weekend after the OSU game Saturday.

[Druzil]

Catherine - Currently replaying to get all the endings.  Such an amazing game I'm sad I waited so long to actually throw it in.

FFXIV - Kind of, when I have time, which is basically rarely these days.


I also gave up on Cube World almost right away,  It felt like a game I should like and wanted to like, but just never really got interesting.  It's currently in the bucket with Star Forge which may be interesting on some level, some day, maybe.

[Kail]

Finished Dark, ugh.  Everything about that game was just a mess.  Some games, they're like 95% great and then there's one flaw that screws everything up or something... and then there's games like Dark, where playing it is like falling down the stairs, just a constant stream of screw ups and cursing.  I'm pretty sure I was playing the game on normal difficulty, but for some reason, when I beat it, I got the achievement for beating it on hard.  So I thought, "hey, if I can 100% this without having to do another full run, might be worth it" and checked out the achievements I hadn't unlocked yet.  Turns out there's an achievement for playing the game with the oculus rift.  Really, guys?  Siiiiiiigh.

Grabbed the new TMNT game, that's kind of a clusterfuck too.  Not sure if it's really bad or I'm just bad at it, but it seems like someone based an entire game around the combat from Batman: Arkham Asylum except with more awkward and unresponsive controls.

Been playing a lot of Master of Magic recently.  I wish the modern "spiritual successors" to it were anywhere near as diverse as the original.  FFH is dead, Warlock is kind of shallow.  I haven't played Elemental/Fallen Enchantress yet, I suppose I may as well give it a shot given it's on sale today.

Finally finished Saint's Row 3.  A long ride (given that I took like a year break in the middle of playing it), but a fun one.  Probably going to tackle the DLC before I look to number 4.

Also been playing Game Dev Tycoon, which is a fun little time waster in which you run your own simulated video game company.  They had a pretty interesting anti-piracy campaign going earlier.  I don't know how much replay value is in it, but had fun in my playthrough.  Earned millions with "Ralph" Koster's MMO (HAM ONLINE II: Pigs in Space) but promptly lost it all developing a high budget AAA Cyberpunk RPG for this game's equivalent of the OUYA.

I'm currently eyeing Guild Wars 2.  If it was cheaper, or on Steam, I'd probably be playing it right now, but money's kinda tight for me.

[JWIV]

Still putzing around with TS2013 of course.
Picked up the Paradox Humble Bundle and slowly getting over the learning curve of Crusader Kings 2. Definitely enjoying it, even though the body count is absurdly high right now.

I'll probably move on to EU3 next, as I've never played it, and I don't have the cash to drop on EU IV right now. 

[Jeff Kelly]

Nearly done with Rayman Legends. I've basically used all of the free time I had this week just for that game and I still like it as much if not more than before.

I have encountered a single level that to me seems unbalanced and unfairly hard. That's one level out of more than sixty. The rest is fun and challenging to various degrees in a way I haven't experienced for a long time.

At a certain point in the game you unlock a bonus world with '8 bit versions' of previous music/rhythm sections and those levels are probably some of the weirdest things I have ever seen

this is the original level: http://youtu.be/4gqvmhExZOY
this is the '8 bit version': http://youtu.be/8Vh2SY4qXXA

This game is so full of ideas and creative stuff.

[Signe]

I sincerely appreciate the outpouring of advice for this polish nightmare. I feel obligated to give it another try. I mean, ffs, I've only seen one tit so far.

It took me a while, too, so I watched it a bit.  I put down the Yrden trap and used roll to get out of the way when the tentacle was up.  I chopped it off a bit slow because it gives you time to heal while you're doing that and then the last bit is an automatic scene.  Drinking the potion made the fight way easier.  There is also a little place near the statue where it can't reach you so you can heal there, too, if your health is low. 

[Hawkbit]

Soooo. I had a few games that I wasn't playing anymore and Gamestop had a deal that I could get Diablo 3 PS3 for $10. 

Actually, it's a lot of fun, especially playing co-op with my kid.  Of course, I'm not sure it's appropriate for an 8 year old and gear upgrades revolve more around aesthetics than the numbers.  But it's a good time.

[jakonovski]

I've been playing Grid2. It's not immediately apparent, but people are right when they say it's the worst Codemasters game in a while. The first thing that you notice is that the voice overs spout complete gibberish, probably because the game can't tell when you restart or quit the game. So what you get is stuff like "there's been an accident" right after you restart the race after crashing, or "you sucked but that's all right" after winning a race but having to save and quit before finisihing the whole race series.

Then there's the AI, which is the worst on rails monstrosity I've ever seen. Most tracks seem to be really narrow and walled off on both sides. So the faster cars you drive, the more you experience a flipper effect, where a crash leads to you being bounced all over the place by AI juggernauts that don't even acknowledge your existence. You are then left on the trackside, miraculously the only one to have spun out. Conversely, if the RNG decides that an AI car spins in a corner, everything piles into a hopeless tangle behind it, giving you an easy victory.

Finally we have the nonsensical handling model where everything drifts, even front wheel drive cars labeled "grip". It's really dumb and you have to unlearn regular video game driving.

Still, it's pleasant to play and hell of pretty at constant 60fps, so I keep at it.

[KallDrexx]

I needed a new DS game for a work trip up in Boston, so I decided to take a risk and bought Etrian Odyssey 3.  I'm addicted a lot more than I thought I would be..

[ghost]

You know you've been playing Skyrim too much when you're walking through your neighborhood and you think, "Damn, I should pick those for potions" when you pass your neighbors plumbago.   

[rk47]

wait till u hear that shrilling soft sound in your garden...
'niiiirnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn'

best reagent ever.
Anyways, I'm waiting for a sale on skyrim's DLC before doing a clean start with new mods.
Still messing around with Requiem modded Skyrim. Lvl 25 - felt good kicking ass.

[koro]

I'm hoping for an Elder Scrolls Midweek Madness on Steam this week, to coincide with the Anthology box set.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm now mostly done with Guacamelee.

I'm still undecided whether I really like it or not. I'm usually a sucker for Metroid-style games but Guacamelee's array of special powers or upgrades is too limited and the game is too linear. Those games are only truly good if there are lots of nooks and crannies you can explore and you are so deep into scavenger and treasure hunter mode that you gladly backtrack through the whole game every time you get a new upgrade just for the chance that you might find another hidden thing that you couldn't access before. Guacamelee offers too little of that and when it does all you can find are health or stamina upgrades anyway (all power upgrades are available through the main questline and you can't miss any of them) The controls are also not precise enough which makes some encounters or obstacles even harder and since the general difficulty level can already be quite high at times this makes for a frustrating experience. Enemies tend to be quite fast at movement and attack and they usually attack in groups also midway through the game most enemies have shields that can only be broken by certain special powers or combos. It's annoying when the lack of precision of the controls makes it so that you accidentally activate the wrong power instead.

I'm also torn about the whole style. I'm not sure if I just don't get the joke or if the game is essentially borderline racist.

[Merusk]

Been playing a lot of Master of Magic recently.  I wish the modern "spiritual successors" to it were anywhere near as diverse as the original.  FFH is dead, Warlock is kind of shallow.  I haven't played Elemental/Fallen Enchantress yet, I suppose I may as well give it a shot given it's on sale today.

Agreed, as this is my frequent lament.  Elemental/ Fallen Enchantress failed (beyond the well-documented 'fuck this game doesn't even run) for me in that they tied Magic Research in to the tech/ civil research lines, which take FOREVER.

The magic is also as uninspiring as "Damage skill ice"  "Damage Skill Fire" "Damage Fire 2".  Nothing awesome like Warp Creature or game-changing like Zombie Mastery.  The perks are also terribly bland.

Too many designers wrapped-up in 'balance' worries these days instead of fun, IMO.  The unfortunate legacy of multiplayer-in-everything and MMO infiltrating the rest.

[murdoc]

Guild Wars 2 - probably enjoying it more now than when it first came out last year.

[Samwise]

I just tried Sir, You Are Being Hunted.  I'm not sure yet how much I like it.  After my first death I felt a little too freaked out to go back in and try again right away, which probably speaks well for it.  It's at the exact intersection of Amnesia and Don't Starve.

[schild]

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a weird one for me. Jury is still out on it. It's certainly not BAD.

[Jeff Kelly]

Sorry for being spammy but a last thing about Guacamelee.

Of course as it nearly always is with that kind of game the difficulty is a bit all over the place at times and of course there's also always the one ridiculous boss fight or encounter that is far more difficult and infuriating than any other encounter in that particular kind of game both prior to and after that fight. The kind of encounter that elicits the "I beat it on the first try with one hand behind my back while being blindfolded and tickled" kind of forum reply that is usually followed by a comment about how gamers today simply aren't used to real difficulty anymore. The kind of encounter where Google already knows what you are trying to look for when you type in the name of the game and where there's a whole lot of guides and how to's that tell you how to beat it legitimately or how to cheat and scum the encounter if you don't want to. The kind of encounter where the game itself offers you a DLC item that is clearly in there for the sole purpose of making that particular encounter easier.

Some games are hard maybe even ridiculously so but you get the sense that they are being fair about it, that you're in control and that you could beat that encounter if you simply tried it often enough or got better at it. The ones where you gladly repeat the same part of the game 300 times until you finally do it. The last game for me in that vein was the new Rayman where the later stages could really be fucking difficult (less so than origins) but you'd always had the feeling that they could be beaten given enough time (and where I eventually did beat them) and even though I don't care for it Demon Souls or Dark Souls is in a similar spirit. Super Meat boy while being fiendishly difficult is also that type of game.

Guacamelee unfortunately is not that type of game and so you eventually get to a boss with a random attack pattern, uninterruptible animations and powerful attacks that can stunlock you to death.

[trias_e]

With all of the recent Earthbound hype, I was reminded that I never finished Mother 3.  So I'm playing it now.  There is a full English patch for it these days, and the translation seems to have the spirit of the series.  The game starts out surprisingly dark, especially compared to Earthbound, but still retains its charm and silliness.  It's good.

[schild]

I'm too scared to buy Out Last. If someone gifted me it, however, I might stream it this weekend or something. And just be straight terrified the whole time.

Edit: I'm actually kidding, don't gift it to me. It might melt my computer and I'm pretty sure it doesn't come with a new graphics card. Most games don't.

[Fabricated]

With all of the recent Earthbound hype, I was reminded that I never finished Mother 3.  So I'm playing it now.  There is a full English patch for it these days, and the translation seems to have the spirit of the series.  The game starts out surprisingly dark, especially compared to Earthbound, but still retains its charm and silliness.  It's good.

If you think it starts dark...

[ezrast]

I just bought Antichamber (it's the midweek sale on Steam) and played through it in one sitting. It plays similarly to a somewhat more aggravating, very very much more indie Portal. Nowhere near the personality of that game, of course, but the levels do a pretty good job of creatively trolling you all by themselves. To be honest at the end of it all I'm not left with any super-strong feelings about it but I enjoyed myself and it did just murder the shit out of seven consecutive hours so I guess that means it has my stamp of approval.

[Ironwood]

Replaying Warcraft III with the daughter.  She's loving it and I was surprised how quick the install and patching was.  Enjoying it myself.

Also reinstalled Starcraft II and, after 3 days patching (no joke), I played one game and remembered how fucking sore my hand got and gave up.  The campaign had 'Cloud Saved' so I couldn't even be arsed to go back and complete it, because all my completion was already there.

Strange.

[apocrypha]

When it's too light to play Metro:Last Light I'm playing Far Cry 3.

Mostly a good game, but with some terrible design decisions. Like the pop-up notifications that pop up in the middle of a firefight right in the middle of your screen. And the stupid locking of most of the weapons and skills so late into the game with no NG+ to get to appreciate them. And the appalling voice acting and bland, stereotypical characters. And fucking uPlay, flaky piece of crap that is.

OK, so it's partly a good game.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm finished with Guacamelee.

There's a great game in there but the way it is designed means you can't really appreciate it.

First of all if you finish the game normally you only get the 'bad' ending. You only get to the 'good' ending if you do most things needed to achieve 100% completion which includes a number of very difficult trial levels that you need to complete. This is one aspect of the game I really hated because in my mind precluding people from experiencing all of your story content is something you simply don't do. They also don't tell you that any of this stuff is basically required to experience all of the game story. If I hadn't googled what those orbs are supposed to be for I wouldn't even know what I'd need to do to get to the 'alternatve ending'.

So if you simply don't want to do the hardcore difficulty trials or are not skilled enough to do them you won't see part of the game story, ever. I consider that to be bad design.

This wouldn't even matter all that much if the controls and game mechanics weren't as poorly designed and executed as they are. The designers of Guacamelee wanted to do a very challenging game, they unfortunately only managed to do a very hard game instead. The controls are by no means tight or fluid enough for the game they had in mind instead you always tend to fight the controls rather than the opponents or obstacles when shit gets really difficult.

The gameplay gets most of its difficulty from your opponents being very very fast and it all being 'twitchy' or from the complex obstacle courses. This means that you need to be able to execute a complex series of moves perfectly in order to get to the right combos or to traverse a level 'super meatboy style'. I've finally given up on getting to the 'good' end on my second playthrough after I had been stuck on one particular obstacle course for more than three hours simply because the control scheme had fucked up most of my tries before my own lack of skill had a chance to do it. With the control scheme of Guacamelee you never feel any kind of flow or that you are "in the zone" as you do with other games of that ilk. Sionce I've played Guacamelee right after finishing Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends the contrast between both control schemes and what that means for the enjoyment of a game was stark.

Then there's the general game mechanics. You can dodge (inconveniently placed on the left trigger), punch enemies or execute special moves you get throughout the game. Chaining those moves together in increasingly complex ways gets you to do a series of more or less powerful combos that deal additional damage. Later in the game enemies get colored shields which means that you need a certain special attack to land in order to break the shield before you can do any real damage and if you wait to long the shield regenerates.

Jump is "X", Punch is "Square" and specials are executed by using "Circle" and either pushing up, down, left, right or no direction at all. Left trigger is dodge, right trigger switches dimensions (required for certain puzzles or to switch to enemies that have dimensionally shifted). Enemies that are dimensionally shifted can hit you but you can't hit them until you shift to their dimension instead and groups of enemies can include enemies that are shifted to either dimension. Also bosses can shift dimensions during the fight at will.

Firstly with the amount of opponents on screen at times this means that you are frantically shifting dimensions, dodging, running from or punching things to not die. Unfortunately a very important special move (headbutt) required to break certain shields can only be done if you stand perfectly still in front of the enemy you need to hit or you acidentally do another but wrong special move. The timeout until the game detects that the analog stick has been released is too high so it regularly happens that you execute another special move because you've come to a stand still, have released the stick already and then executed the move only for the game to still think that you pushed a direction and giving you the wrong one. Also placing dodge and dimensional shift on the triggers is really really bad design since it takes significantly longer to press those than regular buttons and makes execution of certain things with millisecond accuracy even harder to do.

These aspects are also responsible for regularly fucking up the flow on the obstacle courses since the game regularly detects the wrong move.

Then there's the combat animation and mechanical stuff. Enemies have short combat animations and can switch between attacks very very quickly. You can't cancel enemy animations with attacks or special moves not even during the first few frames. This means that if the computer has triggered an animation at the same time that you executed a move you will always get hit. You can't even break combos by successfully hitting enemies so not only will the enemy always hit you when its animation was triggered at the same time that you hit him, he will also be able to execute the combos at his disposal. You get a certain number of 'invincibility frames' after you've been hit but the time a certain move has stunned you or taken control from you is usually longer.

Combine all of that and you get enemies or groups of enemies that can perpetually stunlock you with no way for you to break it if you fuck up a single attack. There is one boss fight where there's the real possibility for the boss to kill you from full health with no means to recover from it just because you fucked up one attack and are then trapped in an attack sequence of his that just perpetually keeps you stunned or disabled for longer than it takes the boss to execute his next combat move.

The game itself, the soundtrack, design and animation work is usually good enough or interesting enough to keep you going on despite the flaws but when you get to the real challenging parts then this no longer hold up at least for me it didn't.

[jakonovski]

So if you simply don't want to do the hardcore difficulty trials or are not skilled enough to do them you won't see part of the game story, ever. I consider that to be bad design.

I don't know if Guacamelee is any good, but on a general level I disagree strongly. Developers making sure that everyone sees everything in one playthrough is one of the reasons why games feel restricted and have no replay value. It's a game, not a movie.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm not talking about game content. I'm perfectly fine if I'm not seeing all of the game content after the first playthrough or indeed ever. That's what NG+ is for (btw a feature Guacamelee doesn't even offer). I'm also not talking about a minor story arc or a side story that's only revealed in a NG+ or during some side quest or trials.

In case of Guacamelee it is a significant part of the main story that is only revealed if you basically have achieved 100% completion and it is not only a major plot point but also one of the main reasons that drives the story and why your character does all of those things. The only thing I'd consider to be worse than that is if they'd actually charged you additional money to see the real end.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm also not entirely sold on that whole concept of 'replay value'. This is usually limited to the concept of 'see some other stuff we made while 90% of the time doing the exact same stuff you already did the first time around including our one hour + mandatory tutorial and that mission you totally despise'. I've replayed all of the games in the Mass Effect series countless times for example but if I consider just how little of the story actually changes due to the different decisions I made and how little that all changes the overarching story over those three games (or indeed how little it matters in the end) then I feel very silly that I did that and didn't invest the time in other games that I didn't have the chance of playing yet.

Overall I've probably spent a few hundred hours in total with Mass Effect alone just so I could experience additional story snippets or game content that would take you probably less than half an hour to watch on youtube if there was a supercut of it. That's insane come to think of it.

I bought the game so I could experience a story and to get entertainment out of the gameplay for as long as I like. Replaying a 20 or 50+ hours game just to experience 20 minutes of new content that is inconsequential anyway is not something I'm willing to do anymore. Not when there is a truckload of other games out there I still haven't played yet. A game has replay value when I want to replay it no matter if there's anything new or not and not when it basically blackmails me into doing it all again just to see something it withheld from me the first time. While kicking me in the gonads all the time I'm replaying it.

I could soend an additional 10 hours to replay Guacamelee just to see a different 20 second clip at the end telling me the 'real' end of the story or I could spend the time and play something else like the countless other games that have been released just in the last four weeks.

[schild]

Watching Let's Plays of Outlast. This fucking game man. Holy shit.

[Soulflame]

I don't think watching Let's Plays counts as what're you playing.

[schild]

I don't see why not.

[Paelos]

Same reason why watching porn doesn't count as fucking.

[schild]

Well then. I'm playing the 2004 smash hit, Youtube.

[Merusk]

Same reason why watching porn doesn't count as fucking.

To be fair, with all the QTE and Cutscenes  a lot of console games are getting these days, watching YouTube is getting dangerously close to playing the game.  Push button, watch and wait.