So, what're you playing?

[Quinton]

Ni No Kuni.

Getting my JRPG fix with a side of Ghibli-style Pokemon-esque cel-shaded critter goodness.

[Rendakor]

Path of Exile as a fire witch. Also the Fire Emblem demo over and over, because why isn't it February 5th yet!?

[Ingmar]

BLOOD BOWL

Also some other miscellaneous stuff.

SIGN UP FOR BLOOD BOWL

[MisterNoisy]

Found the first Skylanders game (portal + doods and game) for $30 at Target, and playing it out of curiosity.  It's cute, harmless fun and basically a perfect example of 'brain-off' gaming.  Anyone with kids might want to take a look.  Also finally 100%'d the Forza Horizon single-player, yet I find myself still going back to dork around in fake-Colorado.

Part of me really wants to buy Euro Truck Simulator 2 after watching the Giant Bomb quicklook (warning!  2+ hours).

[Rendakor]

I'd warn people with kids against Skylanders unless they've got cash to burn; those figures are expensive and some are quite rare.

[Hawkbit]

My 7yr old got the first one last year and we dumped maybe $150 into the xpacs and more figures.  Ultimately, she got tired of the game because it lacks depth.  She was mildly interested in the latest version, but I found out that it is actually shorter than the first one and told her that we'll wait till its on sale. 

It's really a neat product, but the game should have been much better to support the cool idea.

We have Ni No Kuni on the way, should be here Monday.  The kid has played that demo about 50 times so far.

[koro]

Skylanders can be fucking dangerous.  Two of my friends got into it due to their kids' interest, got super hooked, and managed to get two more kid-less ones into it as well.

Between the four of them, they've sunk at least  $3000 into it.

[Sky]

Sleeping Dogs is $10 right now.

You should buy it. Really strong open world game.

[Yegolev]

Skylanders is all about the characters.  For what it is, the figures are good quality.  The first game was probably too long, and since kids really just want to collect the figures it doesn't make sense to have a huge game.  I don't know offhand what the Giants are selling for, but the originals were retailing for $8 each.

I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning with four nine-year-olds in the house.  Once they were all gone Saturday evening, the wife and I played Lego LotR until bedtime.  Sunday morning she said she had said I could play Dark Souls (I don't remember that but whatever) and so she was doing something with The Sims 3 (perhaps playing it, perhaps reading forums in order to make it work) while I twiddled around in Sen's Fortress.  I spent most of the day playing it with her beside me, and I got into Anor Londo and learned how to take down those huge guards, so I feel like I accomplished something even if she's pissed off (?) that I didn't clean the windows today.  She saw me sitting on my ass all day, except when I got her coffee and made her a sandwich, so I'm not sure why she was so angry.  Oh well, I managed to get the Gargoyle Tail Axe and I'll do the windows later.

[Fabricated]

Sleeping Dogs is $10 right now.

You should buy it. Really strong open world game.

It's like a GTA game only the driving is pretty decent, the shooting doesn't suck, the melee combat is great, and there's some actual likable/interesting characters. There's a bunch of minigame shit but it's WAY less irritating than any of the stupid shit you did in San Andreas or GTA4.

It is however fairly short. There's a shitload of DLC but 80% of it is costumes and free ingame money/rep upgrades which is hilariously dumb since it's really easy to max those out. There's 2 content related DLCs; a sorta half-comedy thriller thing with ghosts/vampires/etc, and an over the top marital arts tournament.

[Rasix]

Heh, I'm still happy I got that for $4.50.    I probably won't play it for a while, since I'm hip deep in Skyrim still.

This game.  Why didn't I go crazy for this sooner?  I now have a kid and am foolishly trying to max smithing for some reason.  Completed thieves' guild, mage college, and am eying companions or dawnguard next.  I'm assuming I can just finish this sucker and still play right?  Although usually when I finish a game, it kills my will to keep playing, even if it's possible.

LoL's been put on minor hiatus.  Too much reading and Skyrim to fit in 50 minutes of frustration/possible fun.

[Paelos]

Skyrim has things that can keep you going for a while.

Companions, Thieves, Dark Brotherhood, Mages, and a small side faction with the Bards.

Then you have getting to be a Thane in every hold and owning property in every city.

Then you have finding all the stones of Barazniah or whatever it's called (there are 24).

Then you have the vampire/dawnguard stuff.

Then you have the exploring stuff where you get all the shouts.

Then you have killing a legendary dragon.

Then you have finding the hidden treasure maps and their treasures.

Then you can get all the Daedric Artifacts

[Merusk]

I don't think you ever "Finish" Skyrim.  It's like a bastard MMO without the cockblocks on gear. Hell you haven't even touched the main questline yet.

Though I think you can only do the vampire OR the Companions, since Companions are Werewolves. 

The Werewolf thing stopped me from getting the Hunter chick who would be a far better companion for my character than Lydia.   I have no desire to be a werewolf, I'm a stealth archer not some melee fool dependent on the moon.

You also don't have a wife/ husband.  I wasn't going to do that until I found out they'll give you 100 gold/ day and if you marry your follower, you get something like a 15% bonus to skill gain whenever and wherever you sleep.

[Fabricated]

And this is all before you ever mod it, if you're playing the PC version.

I don't really use mods since they have a habit of rendering you saves unusable whenever Bethesda drops major DLC or patches and inevitably break whatever the mod is.

The "Unofficial Skyrim Patch" is great but gets broken every time Bethesda touches the game, because it's literally made like a Bethesda patch- it's not intended to add any new content or assets, it's literally just a fuckton of bugfixes. Bethesda really fucked up a bunch of little stuff in this game and don't seem intent to fix it.

For example:
-Guards and many NPCs have a SHITLOAD of passive dialog they don't say due to Bethesda's broken scripting; and most of it is really nice world-building stuff like their reactions to you ranking up in the companions or doing certain stuff.

-Every weapon/armor in the game you can use is supposed to be upgradable with smithing, but tons of them randomly are not because someone literally forgot to check a box in the item properties editor. This means a lot of the neat sounding daedric toys are nearly useless.

-Lots of AI/NPC scripting is broke so their behaviors don't work right. Lydia forever sitting in your bedroom, creepily leering at you is one of these.

-Bethesda attempted to fix this but many of the houses you can get outside of Breezehome like to eat your goddamn items.

-There's like a gajillion pop-up and side quests that are/can be broken beyond repair that can be fixed with almost no effort with some script changes.

That's the kind of shit it fixes.

[Merusk]

-Lots of AI/NPC scripting is broke so their behaviors don't work right. Lydia forever sitting in your bedroom, creepily leering at you is one of these.

Yeah, I found this one really weird.  She was always sitting there, eating a loaf of bread, staring at me.

I figured she just wanted me so I married her.  She doesn't sit in the bedroom - or go anywhere near it - when I'm in the house now.   

[Lantyssa]

OMG, it's just like a real marriage!

[Merusk]

So I hear. I still haven't experienced this phenomenon.

[Rasix]

We know.

I got tired of Lydia staring at me, so I stuck Illia in Lakeside Manor as my steward and let Lydia follow me around. Now she just gives me the same face and complains at my thieving ways.  Toward the end of the thieves' guild quests, I just made her wait outside.   Now with a dwarven helm, I can't see her glower.  Win.  She seems pretty pointless, but somewhat useful in a Kick-Ass sort of way in that she can take a bit of a kicking before going down.

Ni No Kuni.

Getting my JRPG fix with a side of Ghibli-style Pokemon-esque cel-shaded critter goodness.

This fun? Contemplating getting this next. I haven't played a JRPG in a while.  Are the mechanics interesting enough not to get stale?  The one review I watch didn't linger on them much.

[Ingmar]

I don't think you ever "Finish" Skyrim.  It's like a bastard MMO without the cockblocks on gear. Hell you haven't even touched the main questline yet.

Though I think you can only do the vampire OR the Companions, since Companions are Werewolves.  

The Werewolf thing stopped me from getting the Hunter chick who would be a far better companion for my character than Lydia.   I have no desire to be a werewolf, I'm a stealth archer not some melee fool dependent on the moon.

You also don't have a wife/ husband.  I wasn't going to do that until I found out they'll give you 100 gold/ day and if you marry your follower, you get something like a 15% bonus to skill gain whenever and wherever you sleep.

I was a werewolf as a stealth archer, it's worth doing for the disease immunity alone, as long as you don't want to be a vampire.

EDIT:

In other news the Monster Kingdom expansion for Majesty 2 is... pretty sloppy. The translations are messy, the text doesn't match the narration in a lot of places, hero abilities are criminally underdescribed, and quest objectives are often very unclear. Close to declaring this one 'done' as part of the 10 games as I'm not particularly enjoying it.

[Trippy]

Ni No Kuni.

Getting my JRPG fix with a side of Ghibli-style Pokemon-esque cel-shaded critter goodness.

This fun? Contemplating getting this next. I haven't played a JRPG in a while.  Are the mechanics interesting enough not to get stale?  The one review I watch didn't linger on them much.

The presentation is top notch. The game play, however, is only okay.

Combat is order driven but happens in real-time so it's a bit tricky to do some things like defend or evade a mob's special move (you normally have to cancel your existing order, move the command menu to defend or evade, select that and hope that goes off before the special move does*). At the moment combat is pretty easy so there's not a lot of depth to it and I'm just letting my Pokémon familiars beat on the mobs without using special abilities. I can see later on how you'll need to juggle your familiars abilities to heal or cure conditions or counter an enemy's attack, take advantage of sign and elements advantages and so on but it's a lot of extra busy work since you'll be constantly switching among your familiars (e.g. switching to one to cure a condition and then switching back to your main attacker). Mana which is used to power your special abilities feels like it's short supply right now so I'm not sure even later on in the game how much you'll be using special abilities unless you happen to be camped near a save/restore point (works just like the classic FF games where it restores all your HP and mana). So essentially combat to me feels like a busier version of an FF game (not counting the XIIIs which have the Paradigm Shift stuff so are twitchier than the earlier ones) combined with the Pokémon pet switching mechanic.

There's also a ton of annoying backtracking in the game if you are doing stuff besides the main story and there's not a lot of "convenience" features like teleports to locations you've already visited so there's a lot of traveling and fighting through now weak monsters. Leveling up your familiars is also a grind since only 3 of them at a time for each character get experience during combat and familiar management I can already see being a pain in a butt since there are only designated places where you can manage which familiars you have with you and which are in "storage" (it's 3 familiars per character plus 3 in reserve that are with you, the rest go into a special storage place).

* supposedly it gets easier to do this later on the game but I haven't gotten to that point yet

[Quinton]

I'm enjoying it a bunch, but it definitely is Classic JRPG in some of the lack-of-convenience stuff.  Reports about if it gets very difficult/grindy later on are mixed.

[Rendakor]

I'm glad to hear it's only okay. The art style is a major turn off but I was debating it since I need a JRPG fix; however I'll just wait for the 3DS games coming out next month.

[Fabricated]

Beat Sleeping Dogs; really great game but sadly pretty short due to tons of obvious shit that had to be cut. I imagine the main storyline was supposed to be at least twice as long since characters are introduced, made to be a big deal, then disappear one way or the other in the same mission. I would have liked to seen it developed more but in the end it actually comes off like an above average popcorn action/thriller gangster movie; just long enough to get in, get the point across, and get out while you're satisfied.

Even the edits/cuts make it feel that way.

[Yegolev]

I got tired of Lydia staring at me, so I stuck Illia in Lakeside Manor as my steward and let Lydia follow me around. Now she just gives me the same face and complains at my thieving ways.  Toward the end of the thieves' guild quests, I just made her wait outside.   Now with a dwarven helm, I can't see her glower.  Win.  She seems pretty pointless, but somewhat useful in a Kick-Ass sort of way in that she can take a bit of a kicking before going down.

Had her killed.  No more bitching, breaking stealth, or eating while I sleep.

[Sky]

. I would have liked to seen it developed more but in the end it actually comes off like an above average popcorn action/thriller gangster movie; just long enough to get in, get the point across, and get out while you're satisfied.

I'm not done with it yet, but so far I agree. I feel like there was a lot more rpg in it with the cop/triad dual progression with two story paths that kind of just got merged at some point in development. Let's hope the success lets them build on that in the second one. Took Saint's Row and GTA a while to get going, too.

[koro]

Been playing World of Xeen for some strange reason. Haven't played it in years and I'm constantly surprised by the stuff in Xeen that (to my knowledge) was so uncommon at the time, like an auto-updated quest log and the auto-updated landmark system for telling you exactly where stuff you found in the overworld was. Of course, some of the other convenience things like the cheesy teleport mirrors and buff wells everywhere make the Clouds of Xeen difficulty kind of a joke, but it's a nice gesture.

[Fabricated]

Ordered Ni No Kuni and it came in early. Very long and hand-holdy tutorial but cool so far.

[Cyrrex]

Ordered Ni No Kuni and it came in early. Very long and hand-holdy tutorial but cool so far.

I was just about to come here and ask about this game.  It looks fantastic.  What's the general consensus?

[Fabricated]

I'm not far enough in to really judge but it's pretty much a playable Ghibli film...combat is kind of an odd bird. You see enemies in the field and they work like they did in Earthbound, but when you transition to the battle it's kinda like Pokemon meets FF12.

[Yegolev]

Was playing games with the stray demon in Dark Souls last night.  Forgot what happens when you join a XBL party (thanks From!) and spent the rest of the evening playing Minecraft.  God I hate Minecraft.

Have not gotten very far into Crimson Shroud, but I'm in love with the tiny text and inscrutable attributes on everything.  Also the lack of levels, that's neat.

I suffered a surprise attack by Path of Exile, and it was super effective.  I will log in for 15 minutes and kill shit just because I can.  I'm just mentally relabeling it Diablo 3, because this game is pretty much what my fevered dreams had implied D3 would be.  Sorry Runic.  You guys still have the Diablo music, so there's that.  Although the online aspect is a pain, I wouldn't change anything else about the core design.  The UI needs some features added, such as item comparisons, but I can't see that as being difficult to do.

My son has been home sick all week.  Some games I have seen him playing include Beautiful Katamari, Viva Pinata, NSMBU, and Minecraft.  He's made great strides as a Mario player, and I'm thinking I might be able to ease him into RPGs this year so I ordered Ni No Kuni.

Wife playing The Sims 3.  Nothing to see here folks, keep it moving.

I think we are about done with Lego LotR.  Huge amounts of things are left undone in that one.

[Ingmar]

Finally getting around to doing a ME3 + new ending + DLC runthrough. The multiplayer in this game is still a shitload of fun. Easily worth half the box price on its own.

[Trippy]

Ordered Ni No Kuni and it came in early. Very long and hand-holdy tutorial but cool so far.

I was just about to come here and ask about this game.  It looks fantastic.  What's the general consensus?

Scroll up a few posts.

[Sky]

Started up a little HoMaM 6 to have something with soothinger music when the old lady is napping. Still playing Sleeping Dogs mostly. Nabbed Risen 2 on sale but I want to finish SD first, I know I'll get sucked completely into Risen 2 once I start. Love those games.

Mostly painting more, gaming less.

[Ssath]

The UI needs some features added, such as item comparisons, but I can't see that as being difficult to do.

Hold Alt while mousing over the new gear to bring up the gear you have equipped for a side-to-side comparison.

[Yegolev]

Jolly cooperation!