What Are You Playing?

[Shadow]

I am way behind on my PS+ games since I haven't played a lot of them.  I am currently working on getting a platinum on Kingdoms of Amalur.  I have enjoyed this way more than I thought I would.  I feel like the only limitation is that I feel like they could have included more moves for you to execute.  I guess they figure you can change weapons to freshen it up but man I really enjoy faeblades.  If you spend any type of time leveling up your crafting you can make the game a joke by adding health on hit modifiers.  At some point I'll get into Dragon's Dogma but I am in no hurry.  

[Super Ape]

Finally got to learning the Crystarium system I FFXIII. When I get a new game like this, my first instinct is to study the system and see if there's anyway I can minmax it. Final Fantasy games don't generally provide much deviation in character growth (except VIII, which you can make absurdly easy in a few hours once you twig to how the Junction system works), but I was wondering if there was anyway to do it with XIII and it's system with a grand total of THREE STATS.

[Big Fresh]

Would any 360 players be willing to buy and play Worms Revolution for $10? I wanna get into it, but it looks like the kinda game that's a million times more fun with friends. I'm looking at you, J.T., Rippa, and El Dragon...

[JLSigman]

Finished up the main quest in Skyrim. The ending is a touch anti-climatic, but I will definitely sink hundreds more hours into it just doing everything else.

 

Been noodling around with Path of Exile, which has a fairly steep learning curve. Once you get past that, however, it's not too bad.

 

Lord of the Rings: Online drops the Helms Deep expansion Monday, and having been in the beta... well, this will alienate a lot of people, and make or break the game I think. All the classes are going though major changes. The story continues to be incredible, however, so I'll be sticking around.

[Raziel]

Finally got to learning the Crystarium system I FFXIII. When I get a new game like this, my first instinct is to study the system and see if there's anyway I can minmax it. Final Fantasy games don't generally provide much deviation in character growth (except VIII, which you can make absurdly easy in a few hours once you twig to how the Junction system works), but I was wondering if there was anyway to do it with XIII and it's system with a grand total of THREE STATS.

Like any of the FF games, its all about figuring out how to manipulate the system.  The Crystarium system caps each Chapter, so you can really never grind far ahead of where you're supposed to be.  You're ok leveling the system so long as you basically fight everything you come across (not including respawns).  The trick to the game is manipulating stat bonuses through leveling your equipment (when it opens up), taking the right teams into the right fights, and working the Pardigim system to knock your enemy into stagger then rack up the juggle combo multiplier.  

 

Its the most timing based combat system in a JRPG that I played since Grandia II.  The plus side is the first half of the game basically holds your hand to learn the system and what characters are best at what jobs that by the time you hit midgame and you can choose your own lineups and set your own Pardigim choices you're pretty set.  Your only grind at that point is to get EQ level fodder to stat boost and get the higher tier weapons (All the top teir weapons, if I recall, require specific weapons to be leveled competely).

 

The system isn't as easy to game as 7's Materia or 8's Junction, but a damn spot easier to boost yourself early game than 10's Sphere Grid or 12's Cards were.

[Big Fresh]

I did end up buying Worms Revolution, if anyone's interested. It's lots of fun.

[Andrew POE!]

Four trophies away from a Platinum in Darksiders.

[Salads]

Finished Darksiders this morning. After playing that and Red Faction Armageddon from the THQ humble bundle close to back to back I'm not shedding any tears for the company going under.

[Andrew POE!]

Finally got a 14th Platinum trophy in Darksiders. And yeah, it's hard to miss THQ after seeing what they have done in the last several years (why anyone there thought uDraw was a great idea I don't know).

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

TERRARIA- Burned out on it harder than I ever did with Minecraft. I think what it gets wrong is that it feels more insistant on the idea of a "right way to play," and all the hours of Minecraft you can manage before you give up and find the wiki are pretty magical. I lasted about fifteen minutes in Terraria before I went to look stuff up.

 

PINBALL ARCADE- i am terrible at pinball, and also i wish i could turn down the volume in the menus

 

PAYDAY 2- I have no idea if this game is any good. I'm enjoying my time with it, but I might just be enjoying hanging out with my friends and doing things. I mean, heist movies are my favorite style of action film and paying full price for GTAV despite being uncertain about it proves I am willing to go to some weird lengths to be able to play a good heist game. So as far as a heist game goes, this is the Yang of Mass Effect 2's Yin: Where ME2 was epic build for only one heist, Payday 2 is next to no build for infinite heists.

 

I also bought the Age Of Empires II HD expansion because haha what, but I haven't played it yet.

[twiztor]

finally broke down and bought a Wii-U.

had some friends over to play it last night, had a blast. Mostly played Super Mario Bros. U (this and the Luigi U game came with the system) but also played a bunch of NintendoLand minigames.

 

can't wait for Friday and Mario 3D World!

[ultimoDANK]

Got Super Mario 3D World yesterday (stupid Dell) and wow it's fantastic. I'm almost through world 1 and some of these levels are just beautiful. Can't wait to get a little deeper and see some of the more inventive stages.

Oh and the catsuit is adorable, even if it does make the game kinda easy.

[Andrew POE!]

finally broke down and bought a Wii-U.

had some friends over to play it last night, had a blast. Mostly played Super Mario Bros. U (this and the Luigi U game came with the system) but also played a bunch of NintendoLand minigames.

 

can't wait for Friday and Mario 3D World!

 

This Friday will be insane.

 

Tearaway on PSVita

Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on 3DS

Mario 3D World

 

and the Xbox One launch.

[Super Ape]

Finally beat MGS4 on Liquid Easy. 200+ kills, 4 continues, about 15 hours of play. ALL HAIL, YOU PEONS.

[Red is Dead]

Still going through bl2 - but on the iphone I'm enjoying the hell out of "the silent age".

[Neil Koch]

On my phone, I broke down and paid the $5 to unlock all of FIFA 14.  The free Ultimate Team mode is good, but I hit a wall where my players' contracts were constantly running out, so I was spending all the FIFA cash to buy them out instead of getting better players.  The game is really full featured for a phone version.  It's a great time killer on the bus as I usually have enough time to play 1 or 2 matches on my commute.

[Tabe]

I've been playing:

 

Tomb Raider - I'm maybe a third of the way into this and really enjoying it.  The first hour is kind of annoying - 90% of Lara's dialogue consists ot basically sexual grunts, cries, and moans as she gets beat up, which is a lot of the time.  And the camerawork does a lot of really obvious stuff to focus on her boobs or looking down her shirt or whatever.  That stuff goes away after the first hour and you're left with a very good Uncharted clone.  Nothing wrong with that, given how good the Uncharted series is.

 

Rocksmith 2014 - Pretty much all the changes in this version are positive.  It's way faster, it's easier to get around in the menus and so on.  Drawbacks?  The song selection this time around is a lot weaker, IMHO.  They used a crappy version of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" instead of the awesome original.  There's no way to tell what all missions or recommendations the game has for you.  And when you import all the tracks from the original game, you lose the arrangements from that game, so all the ones that had "single note" arrangements before are now changed into Lead or Rhythm.  Yeah, that's more accurate for performing in a band or whatever but it's less interesting for some songs.

[assfax]

Okay I knew this new Zelda was going to let you use any item right from the start. I did not know that you can just rent all the items and unfurl. This game ain't fucking around. No bullshit wallet limit neither. Once you do the first dungeon to get the wall painting ability you can do whatever the fuck you really want. Energy meter makes it so you never are out of bombs or arrows. Fucking game just lets you get on with playing it.

New Mario is good too but this Zelda is a fucking madman.

[Joe Lucia]

Resident Evil: Revelations for the 360. I had it on my Amazon wishlist, and I saw the download drop to $19.99...considering I had a balance in my Live account, I figured I had to jump on it. You know, I quit playing 5 halfway through and haven't even sniffed 6 yet, so expectations were low for Revelations. It plays a lot like RE4 (one of the best games I've ever played), and keeps a relatively limited playing area fresh by continually switching out the characters. My only gripe? Seems a little short. I just finished sequence six, and I think I've logged about three or four hours of playing time.

 

This is just kind of a time killer until I pick up AC4 from Amazon when it goes on sale, because I'm so fucking sick of AC3 so far and want to burn the whole thing down. The storyline is fine, but by god is the gaming tedious.

[Hail Sabin]

Playing Saints Row the Third I'm wondering if they is a difference in the story depending on if you decide to blow up the morningstar HQ or disarm the bomb.

[Tabe]

AC4 will be on sale on Black Friday for $34.

[twiztor]

i'm rocking out with Super Mario 3D World. this catsuit is unfuckwithable.

[Brisco]

I have had another gaming experience like I recently went through with Batman AA this time with Borderlands. I had not played much of the original Borderlands since just before the 2nd game came out. I think it was another case of getting stuck on a boss and I ended up moving on. I decided to pop in Borderlands again and after taking down Mad Mel I was off and running and cannot put this game down. It truly is a classic game and does not feel as if it has aged at all. Some of this may be attributed to the game being in a world that has no resemblance to our own. I believe I am close to beating the game (just finished off the story quest in Old Haven) but am looking to finish the DLC as well. I would like to plat the game but will have to find some co-op help since I am missing a few of those trophies.

[Red is Dead]

I'm at the opposite point at the moment brisco - I'm on the penultimate mission, and I'm getting my arse handed to me by the constructors at the data plant - spent about an hour spawning, getting it down to half strength then getting bollocksed by the nukes or missiles. theres no hiding place.

 

infuriating. Need to find a corrosive weapon from somewhere.

[Cliff Hanger]

Got the Zelda 3DSXL bundle waiting for me at Best Buy.  Hurray.