So, what're you playing?

[stray]

I think I'm gonna give FFXII another shot myself. Still have a saved game on the machine..

[Strazos]

I'd have to disagree on P4s VA work; I thought both the writing and actual voice work were superior.

[HaemishM]

Baroque and Rune Factory are not JRPGs.  That said, Baroque is cool if you get into it.

I wanted to get into Baroque. The concept seemed very interesting. But after dying like 6 times in the first room or two and not really liking the interface, I decided there were better games to play.

[Yegolev]

Oh, well... you are supposed to die in Baroque.  A lot.  It progresses the story, I am pretty sure... I managed to not die to monsters at first and, well, the plot killed me.  I figured it out pretty quickly after that, but if you are killed by monsters then you might not realize it.  I recall that you get stronger after each death, too, although it's not immediately noticeable; really it's like Demon's Souls in that you, the player, have to get better at playing.  On the other hand, combat isn't terribly compelling and until you can brand some items to persist after death, the itemization takes some getting used to.  The item strategy, in fact, is the Real Game here, knowing what to keep and what to throw away, what to transform, what to brand with what, etc.  Like Nethack, not coincidentally.  Besides all that, it's kinda fucking weird.  I like weird shit, but YMMV.

Animal Crossing: City Folk.  The foreign fruit orchard is almost set up where I am happy with it, and with 800,000 bells in the bank, I may be losing interest soon.

I started playing The Ballad of Gay Tony.  Not much to add, it's kind of a subgame of GTAIV in that I can't buy clothes and perhaps other limitations.  Also, incredibly shitty VO for the playable guy, but at least he doesn't sound like Boris Badenoff.  I suppose it doesn't matter since I really just run people down until the cops defeat me.

I probably should not admit this, but I was playing the Bakugan Wii game.  I'll blame the boy for this.  Bakugan itself doesn't seem to be an awesome game, at least at first crack from someone who played M:TG in a tournament-rules town.  The boy is primarily interested in collecting the Bakugan themselves, which might be the best angle here.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is pretty damn fun, if you like 2D Mario games.  Minor use of waggle but it manages to not be disruptive, which is all I really ask for these days.  Added points for using the sideways wiimote scheme.

[Margalis]

Is there someone on earth who doesn't like 2D Mario games?

What's a Bakugan?

[jakonovski]

Is there someone on earth who doesn't like 2D Mario games?

I have a friend who bought a Wii but adamantly refuses to buy any Mario games for it.

[Hawkbit]

SMB Wii has been worth the money so far, and we're only on stage 1-5.  I'm only playing it when my 4yr old daughter gets to play, so it's been slow going.  I've got to carry her through some areas, but overall she playing impressively. 

It's not a 100% game but it's pretty solid.  Like Yegolev said, bonus points for the sideways controls and minimal waggle. 

[Yegolev]

Is there someone on earth who doesn't like 2D Mario games?

Terrists.

What's a Bakugan?

Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C

EDIT: I noticed that my initial Bakugan commentary was vague.  The Bakugan references after the first are all toward the card game, not the Wii game.  This doesn't really matter in the final analysis.

[stray]

Bakugan is the new popular kids show like Yu-Gi-Oh etc.. I'd say it's like Pokemon, but nothing is Pokemon.

[HaemishM]

Is there someone on earth who doesn't like 2D Mario games?

Not a big fan myself. Not a big fan of platformers in general, though. I like Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, but it wasn't the kind of game I spend money on.

[Rasix]

Pretty much in the same boat.  I only really played and beat the 2D Marios back in the day because there wasn't a whole lot of competition for my attention.  I end up buying the 3D Marios more out of lack of good Nintendo games than any fondness for platformers.

[HaemishM]

Didn't have much time to play anything last night so I decided to see if the other two discs I got from Blockbuster worked. Front Mission 4 looks to be good, solid, turn-based mech fun. I think that's one I'm going to savor. Also, it suffers from lack of anti-aliasing worse than about any other PS2 game I've seen, especially on a good HDTV. Fuck me, the jaggies are bad.

Unlimited Saga got about 20 minutes of WTF from me. I have to get back into it - what I saw cannot really be the main interface of the game, can it? The spinning slot machine wheel for dice rolls is sort of acceptable, though goofy as fuck. The 2D flat SNES era cinematics and the GIANT PIXEL AVATARS on the main traveling map are not. Is that really all this game is?

[Ingmar]

I'm also in the 'doesn't really like 2D Mario games' category. I liked Super Mario 64 pretty well though.

Blood Bowl is back in the rotation this week.

[Montague]

Picked up X3: Terran Conflict off Steam. Probably the first game I've bought where I'm almost too intimidated to play it after reading the manual. And I used to play the shit out of Europa Universalis games.

[Sir T]

I'm playing Section 8 right now for 'run around and shoot stuff' fun. Nothing terribly revolutionary but its still a good game, and the instant action maps are a blast even in single player.

[caladein]

WoW and NHL 10 mostly.

Played a bit of King Arthur (The Role-playing Wargame, natch) early today and fell in love with it.  And then I had back-to-back CTDs after a decently long battle and called it a day.

[Malakili]

New Super Mario Bros. Wii came in the mail today.  Enjoying it a lot so far, playing 2 player with my girlfriend, nice to have a good game to play together again.

[MuffinMan]

Played about 8 hours into Darksiders today for the 360. It's a great mix of God of War and Zelda types, I'm really digging it. It doesn't really bring anything new but what it does do is perfect. Definitely worth the $60 and I don't think that about many games anymore.

[Sky]

Installed Batman:AA and played a bit last night. Textures are so nice, sucks to have to spend so much time in detective mode Plays great with the 360 controller. Crashed after an hour, locked up the computer. That happened once in Burnout, too. I'm hoping old Bessy doesn't have some major issue lurking, I don't really have money for a new pc and won't for a few years (this isn't going to end well).

Also installed X3, but...man. I remember the learning curve from X2, I didn't surmount it. But it's something to chew on.

Slowly getting some of the xmas dump installed. Also downloaded HoMaM V and got the campaign started.

[naum]

Civilization.

Shelved it soon after purchasing a few years back, bothered by the presentation graphics and zoom mechanics, plus wasn't enamored with some of the changes.

But last week picked up expansion pack (Beyond the Sword) and just like with Civ3, didn't appreciate until a few years and a few gameplay patches later…

[Sky]

BtS really improved the vanilla game. You have downloaded FFH2, right? It's probably not up to what you're used to with Dominions or whatever that game you talked about was, but it's a great mod for Civ4.

[raydeen]

Got Taito Legends on the PC for Christmas. Love me some Rastan! 

[WayAbvPar]

BtS really improved the vanilla game. You have downloaded FFH2, right? It's probably not up to what you're used to with Dominions or whatever that game you talked about was, but it's a great mod for Civ4.

How do user-made mods work with Steam? I would like to try it out at some point. Trotski sent me the Civ IV pack for the holidays when it went dirt cheap and I have spent quite a few hours re-acquainting myself with the vanilla game (and a bit of BtS).

[Yegolev]

I have the Steam version and FFH2 works as per the instructions.  No issues, unless you can't find your game dir or something, but that's a user error.

[WayAbvPar]

Heh. I assumed it was easy enough, just wasn't sure if Steam did any compatibility checks or something strange.

[Yegolev]

I don't think so, but in any case it goes in a mod directory.

[naum]

BtS really improved the vanilla game. You have downloaded FFH2, right? It's probably not up to what you're used to with Dominions or whatever that game you talked about was, but it's a great mod for Civ4.

No, haven't tinkered around with mods yet, other than some of the ones that came with BtS (and FFH Ice Age is one of them)… …actually, still coming to grips with some Civ 4 concepts like religion & great people, as I still have Civ2/Civ3/FreeCiv modal brain…

[Sky]

FFH Ice Age

!=FFH2 :)

http://kael.civfanatics.net/index.shtml

[Azazel]

Not a Mario fan here, either, but then I had a C64 and later Amiga instead of an NES, so my nostalgic early-gaming love is different to a lot of people's.

Playing:
Went back to Viking (360) untilI got to the last frustrating boss battle.
Started The Darkness (360) which I'm not sure if I like yet. It's checkpoint system is annoying, that's for sure.
More LotRO (PC) with friends.

[Yegolev]

Darksiders, PS3.  God of War in edgy-Warcraft art style.  Pretty much.  Fun so far.

Before that, I started up Rogue Galaxy again after something like 3 years.  It was only a few minutes before my PS3 controller locked up and would not resync.  Normally this does not happen so I'm thinking the PS2 emulator or RG itself.  I don't think I have played any PS2 games since the last firmware update, so I'm not sure.

[jakonovski]

*squee*

After three weeks of being lost in the mail, Avatar the Game for PC arrived today. I'm James Cameron's bitch, but it remains to be seen if the game can break my resurgent Fallout 3 addiction.

[Sky]

Not a Mario fan here, either, but then I had a C64 and later Amiga instead of an NES, so my nostalgic early-gaming love is different to a lot of people's.

Ditto. Big infocom fan because I started gaming on a mainframe playing ADVENT.

[schild]

Darksiders, PS3.  God of War in edgy-Warcraft art style.  Pretty much.  Fun so far.

Before that, I started up Rogue Galaxy again after something like 3 years.  It was only a few minutes before my PS3 controller locked up and would not resync.  Normally this does not happen so I'm thinking the PS2 emulator or RG itself.  I don't think I have played any PS2 games since the last firmware update, so I'm not sure.

I played through Rogue Galaxy on the PS3 the first time through. It's probably due to firmware updates.

[Yegolev]

Darksiders, PS3.  God of War in edgy-Warcraft art style.  Pretty much.  Fun so far.

Before that, I started up Rogue Galaxy again after something like 3 years.  It was only a few minutes before my PS3 controller locked up and would not resync.  Normally this does not happen so I'm thinking the PS2 emulator or RG itself.  I don't think I have played any PS2 games since the last firmware update, so I'm not sure.

I played through Rogue Galaxy on the PS3 the first time through. It's probably due to firmware updates.

I don't recall having this issue before, so I agree.  Previously I had the one where the Sixaxis would just stop but I was able to bring it back.  In this case the four LEDs were flashing and even connecting to USB did not resync it.  Another controller synced just fine, though, so I guess I could play it... if I wanted to.

[schild]

I agree. Great game, but no reason to play it with White Knight Chronicles out in a month.