Topic: What Games Are We Playing

[JonLeung]

I just recently finished Tomb Raider (PC) with 100%.  I liked it, though the "survivalist" aspect that was so promoted (i.e. finding shelter, hunting for food, etc.) only happens as isolated events mostly just at the beginning for the sake of the story and is not a constant feature of the game.  It's certainly different, and I have no problem with this version of Lara Croft, but then again I didn't have a problem with the second version of the Tomb Raider series (Legend/Anniversary/Underworld).

Just started BioShock Infinite (PC) last night, enjoying it so far, but I'm barely in it, and only just received the "Murder of Crows" Vigor.  It seems more satisfying to shoot bad guys when you know they're racist...

I'm trying to get these PC games out of the way, because judging by last week's E3, I'll have lots to do on the Wii U this year!  Also the 3DS - I'm playing some Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) as well.

[Peardian]

My 32 GB SD Card came a day early, so I've been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf all day! So far, I haven't been able to do much in the town of Delfino, but I'm loving it. Isabelle is just so cute!

Also, I played Mighty Switch Force! for the first time and kinda beat it in one sitting. I still have the bonus levels to do, but still. Fun game!


I've been playing more of Mario and Donkey Kong, and I have to revise my earlier assessment. Despite the early ones being easy, it soon gets to be difficult. A lot more difficult. I can't remember the last time I have been this frustrated at a game.Some of the levels in the main section have short time limits, and it's easy to lose track of time. There have been times where I'm not even halfway through a course before the 10 second countdown begins. And the terrifying buzzes it makes as it counts down makes it worse. That's why I'm sticking to the puzzle stages, which don't time you.

[JonLeung]

Just finished BioShock Infinite (PC).  Whoooooaaaaa...pretty trippy ending!

Three PC games down in a row.  I'm contemplating maybe Resident Evil: Revelations (again, for the PC).  I hear it's more in the traditional vein of the series (0, original, 2, 3, Code: Veronica).

But I guess I should finish catching stuff in June including the char, which won't be around in July, in Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS).  Unfortunately my brother is playing as the mayor, so other than contributing Bells to some of the projects he's chosen, I don't get to experience much of the new stuff this game has to offer, so it's pretty much like any other Animal Crossing game...ah well.

[TerraEsperZ]

Just finished playing through Kairo, a very atmospheric 3D adventure/puzzle game that I enjoyed very much. I had to resort to a walkthrough for the more obscure puzzles because, heck, I was never going to complete those otherwise. Most people would probably judge the game harshly based on the rather primitive graphics but that's not what got me interested into the game. It's rather the mystery of where you are and what's the meaning behind all the weird rooms you're in and what you see in them, and how the game never quite tells you what's going on explicitly, even though you get the gist of it by the end. In short, I fell a bit in love with the experience.

GOG.com got me with their no-DRM summer sale but thankfully, I managed to restrain myself from buying anything I wasn't interested in even though I might have saved more than I did. I'm just a bit angry at myself for adding a dozen more games on top the existing pile but at least for some of them, I *know* I'll enjoy myself based on similar games from the same developers.

[TerraEsperZ]

I've just finished Machinarium: Collector's Edition, one of my most recent acquisition from GOG.com and one of the prettiest looking and sounding game I've played in a very long time. It's basically a puzzle/adventure game taking place in a world of robots with a very unique style, which isn't surprising given that the company that made it is Czech. In fact, most of their stuff so far reminds me a lot of foreign animated shorts they would regularly show on TV when I was a kid (in the 80s). Some puzzle were too obscure for me but thankfully, there's a built-in hint book with hand-drawn images that you can access at any time by playing through a little shoot-em-up. In any case, the game's style more than makes up for the game's shortcomings and I enjoyed the game's world so much that I went against my decision to avoid any mapping during my vacation and mapped the whole thing while playing. I just have to assemble the whole thing but that shouldn't take long so expect a finished map this weekend.

Can't wait to play their next game (which I also bought) called Botanicula.

[Revned]

Definitely looking forward to seeing those maps. Amanita's games are beautiful and very unique.

I'm playing Fallout 2 now. I played a lot of 3 and NV, but I had previously only played an hour or two of the earlier games. It's very good, as expected. It's also nice to see that the Fallout Wikia has complete maps for the first two games.

[JonLeung]

I just finished Resident Evil: Revelations (PC).  Sad to say it wasn't very revelatory, as the title suggests.  It was also short and mostly unmemorable in the grand storyline of Resident Evil.  What I did like is the "Previously, on Resident Evil: Revelations" recaps at the start of each chapter or when you load up the game.  It's handy to remember what story there is when returning to the game a few days later - more games should have that.  I think that, plus the short chapters, are both a byproduct of the game originally being for the 3DS, where shorter play sessions might make it ideal if playing while commuting.  I think I was disappointed because of expectations - it gained such high praise on the 3DS, but on the PC it's a different feeling, especially shortly after playing Resident Evil 6 (which inversely, most people hated even though I loved it - at least as an action game, not horror at all), Revelations felt like a lesser experience.  I was looking forward to more "traditional" Resident Evil (along the lines of 0, original/remake, 2, 3, Code: Veronica), but I guess I was misled in that sense.

The recent PC games I meant to play are now caught up on...I don't know if I should finish transferring my Pokémon from SoulSilver and Black to Black 2 before X/Y come out - which is quite a task on its own, or catch up on 3DS games.  I am playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) daily but I am debating if I want to pick up Project X Zone (3DS), or games I somehow missed earlier, like Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS).  On the Wii U front I'm waiting for the disc version of New Super Luigi U (Wii U) instead of the downloadable version which is already available, but in the meantime maybe I could revisit Injustice: Gods Among Us (Wii U) and get more endings and check out some more DLC other than Scorpion (guest appearance, originally from Mortal Kombat) which I already downloaded (who I can consistently defeat my brother with, he's hard to defend against without a dedicated block button, especially when spamming his teleport, bwahaha).

[GHS]

I was playing Wander Wonder for PC but got stuck for quite some time and cant figure it out.
Anyone know the game?

[JonLeung]

I know what I'm playing on my Wii U as soon as I get home:

DuckTales Remastered (Wii U) is of course something easy for my "generation" to get hyped up about.  It's kind of interesting to see which games get remade and how.  I know they're making Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (no "-ed", but "Remaster/ed" must be the word of the day) for the PS3 and Vita (not PS4?) for its tenth anniversary, but do you think we'll reach a point where remakes just won't be popular anymore?  Games from twenty years ago makes sense...visual and audio fidelity and all...ten, maybe, but there's less of a difference, and as we move more into the future, I don't know if there will be as big of a gap that a remake would look and sound that much better.  With downloadable services making old games available, people might be happy enough to download the original.  Though I suppose if one were to redesign a game as a whole new experience (new interfaces, holograms?) and add new scenarios, there might always be room for at least some remakes.  Though there's something to be said about totally new stories and experiences, of course.  I like that they added a narrative to DuckTales Remastered...some of those NES games were lacking in the story department, perhaps due to technical limitations (though games like Ninja Gaiden still figured it out).

But I always wonder if younger gamers these days love their games as much as us older gamers do.  With so many more choices, incuding increased competition and more platforms (including smartphones and tablets and browsers and all the free/inexpensive games on those), it's easy enough to plow through a bunch of forgettable games, whereas in my generation, almost everyone I know has played most of the good NES / Super NES game library because we spent a lot of time on each.  You'd get a few great games a year, not this barrage of games every month, like nowadays.  Am I just old and jaded?

[TerraEsperZ]

I bought the game as soon as I got home . It's funny because as a kid, I only had a couple of games, DuckTales being one of them and although I loved it, I never got the idea from other kids my age that it was a much beloved game. Hearing about the remake a few months back made me realize just how popular it really was.

The funny thing is that back when I first got the game for my birthday, I managed to finish all five stages in somewhat short order. But since I couldn't understand much English at that age, I didn't understand why the game then sent you back to Transylvania, thinking it was some sort of attempt to make you play through the game again after being so cheap as to not even give you an "ending" screen. So I'd just always turn it off afterward, thinking that was that. Then one day, I let a friend borrow it and a few days later, he call me back after having found out that I kept turning the game off before I had even finished it and mean did I feel stupid...

Anyway, I've already played through the Amazon and Transylvania stages and it was really fun. It features enough change that I didn't mind that they hadn't really upgraded the controls beyond using the DuckTales 2 pogo control scheme. But man, are the boss fights so much tougher than before.

(I'm playing on Medium difficulty by the way)

*EDIT*

I've almost finished the game but the final boss is really kicking my ass. Oh, and have I said how much I love the remade soundtrack? I have? Well, let me say it again because I'm just a big fan of Jake Kaufman's videogame work. Some of you might remember him as 'Virt' when he used to make fan remix/remake of game tunes over a decade ago.

[JonLeung]

Slowly transferring 30 Pokémon a day from my Pokémon: Black Version (DS) to Pokémon: Black Version 2 (DS).  I'm at 360 so far, only 289 more to go!  Kind of feels like a task if I don't make it part of a routine...

Speaking of daily plays, I'm playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS).  Not really focussed on completing the catalogue just yet, I usually just focus on the bugs and fish.  80% encyclopedia completion already, thanks to the game coming out in June with the majority of fish and bugs catchable in the summer and/or the island.  I recently maxed out my house upgrades, but I haven't done anything at all with the three side rooms on the main floor.

Also playing a bit of DuckTales Remastered (Wii U) here and there to eventually be able to buy all the extras.

Started playing New Super Luigi U (Wii U), only cleared World 2 so far...my gosh, this game is so challenging, mostly because I'm still not comfortable with Luigi's flutteriness and slipperiness.

Didn't realize the Mortal Kombat (PC) reboot-of-sorts was quietly released for PC last month, so I got that and started a bit of the Challenge Tower.

This morning alone, I hit milestones in every game in StreetPass Mii Plaza (3DS)!  (Well, except for Monster Manor, and I've long been done Find Mii/Find Mii II...)  I got the last two puzzle pieces I needed for The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword puzzle, so now I have every puzzle complete.  I got the 120th and final rank in Mii Force, the Platinum-Tier...something.  I got my 500th garden visitor in Flower Town.  And I now have an army over 300,000 strong in Warrior's Way.  I really enjoy StreetPass tagging...it can be surprising where I get them, I hope the release of Pokémon: X and Y Versions will increase the likelihood of 3DSes (and 3DS XLs and the recently announced 2DSes), but I am doing okay (I think) so far...

[SoraTanuki]

Having just recently reacquired all of my gaming equipment from the packing boxes, I'm slowly going through all the games in my collection again for 100% completion and for the sheer fun of it! I'll admit, though, Star Wars: The Old Republic(PC: MMORPG) has most of my attention, but I'm still finding time to go through one of my favorites: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages(GBC). So many awesome memories! It's really too bad that the creators of this set of Zelda games didn't go through with a storyline focused around Farore.

Sadly, I'm not quite "up to date" with my consoles. I briefly had access to the Wii U, which was a very strange experience to say the least. I've been saving up for the 3DS. It would be just my luck that by the time I get to the point every other gamer is, there'll be a brand new console out. For what I do have though, I'm playing through Trace Memory(DS) in addition to the others listed above. 

[TerraEsperZ]

Last weekend, I finally played through Portal 2's coop campaign all by myself.

At first, I was just nostalgic about the game's amazing sense of location after listening to the soundtrack and I started moving around the various maps in no clip mode just to try and get a sense of how everything was designed. After going through all the single player maps, I searched for the names of the coop maps online to try and access those and I eventually found a site explaining how you could play through the coop campaign in splitscreen by yourself, using a key bind to switch controls between the two robots. I know everyone says you should play it with someone else first, but I just couldn't resist the challenge right there and then knowing it was possible.

It turns out the whole game (including the Peer Review DLC) can pretty much be done that way and I did it almost entirely legitimately. I only had to use no clip mode on three occasions where I knew exactly what to do but couldn't get the execution right on account of having to do complicated sequences of moves with both characters almost simultaneously.

I really liked how the coop campaign pretty much took you through every type of environment you visited in the single player campaign. You start with the newer and entirely enclosed test chambers, then the old abandoned ones, then open chambers with no floors like those made by Wheatly, followed by the old enrichment spheres and finally, in the DLC, these weird new chambers that felt like a mix of all the other types, being newer in style but with lots of holes in the walls and ceilings showing that each one is contained inside a huge, hangar size room with water/acid at the bottom. And of course, I have to mentioned the various maps that are located outside the official testing tracks that showed even more of the Enrichment Center facility itself. In short, I had a blast.

I'm just in love with the Portal franchise, and more so with the game's environment than simply with the gameplay, story and humour. To me, both versions of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center (they felt significantly different in terms of atmosphere between both games) feel as much as characters in their own right as, say, the starship Enterprise does in Star Trek. In fact, one of my life long dream would be to have the skills to extract the 3D data of every map in both Portal games, import those in a 3D rendering program and present the content of both games as a series of expertly-made isometric maps, with all the right things made visible or transparent as needed for clarity. It will never happen since I really suck at 3D modeling (I never did managed to texture that small village model from the Lost Village area of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow) but I can dream, can't I?

[Rew]

So I've recently finished New Super Mario Bros. U, and sometime in the next couple weeks I plan to take on New Super Luigi U. After that will be The Wind Waker HD, which I imagine will take me past or near enough to November 22. So after those two games, I'll have A Between Worlds and Super Mario 3D World added to my to-play list, and I imagine I'll get to them shortly afterward.

Assuming I finish all four games by Christmas break, that leaves me with an interesting decision. I will play either Super Mario RPG, the Wario Land series, or Kid Icarus: Uprising.

So in sum, here's what's to come:
- New Super Luigi U
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
- Super Mario 3D World
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

After that, it's a toss-up between these three:
- Super Mario RPG
- Wario Land series
- Kid Icarus: Uprising.

Which one of those three do you think should be priority for me? (And damn, I forgot about DuckTales Remastered, haha. The NES original was such a part of my childhood!)

[JonLeung]

I agree.  Super Mario 3D World (Wii U) and The Legend Of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS) are looking to be must-plays.  A sequel to my favourite Zelda game?  YES PLEASE!  But despite being a Zelda fan, I did not pick up Wind Waker HD, or at least not yet.  I thoroughly enjoyed the original on the GameCube, and this one has some revisions but very few actual additions.  Not to say I won't ever play it, but right now I am playing too much and foreseeing more games on the horizon that to essentially replay a game is not really priority.

As for the decision you are making, Rew, I recommend Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars.  Of those three, that seems the most like a must-play.  (Surprising that you haven't played it already!)  I enjoyed Kid Icarus: Uprising, and it was longer than I expected, but I didn't ever get serious about the multiplayer.  And speaking of Wario, I started Wario Land 4 (GBA) a number of times but never finished it, or even got very far.  I'm now close to doing so, having played it on the 3DS on boring commutes (thanks to it being one of the "3DS Ambassador" free games) - I have collected all the CDs and pretty much just have to defeat the final boss, but I've lost a few times...it's been a pain because for whatever reason I have been having trouble with all the bosses in this game.  I only used items to help against one of the bosses so far (I think) and just saving up enough points to get an item is a pain too (silly mini-games, sigh).  But thanks for reminding me that I should probably finish that, too.  And back to speaking of Mario RPGs not played...somehow Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS) and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (3DS) slipped by me, oops.  And I've enjoyed every Mario RPG so far.  Does anyone recommend that I should play either one before the other?  I feel like I might get muddled up if I play two RPGs concurrently, especially featuring similar characters despite being different continuities.

Meanwhile, my main focus right now is Pokémon Y (3DS) - I think I'm about halfway through the story, and my brother is playing X, working on mastering my Level 6 Infinity Blade in Infinity Blade III (iOS) - funny how I got into all three Infinity Blade games so seriously when not that long ago I thought any app games were silly >_> - oh yeah and I have gotten all but two of the objectives in Temple Run 2 (iOS) >_>...  Forgot that I'm only halfway through Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition (PC)...should get back to that too.

Anyone with a 3DS should get all those StreetPass Mii Plaza (3DS) games...so addicting.  I'm far (well, compared to most people) in all four games in that.  Thankfully besides my brother and a co-worker there are usually also people I StreetPass tag on the commute to and from work.

Soon, there are those Wii U and 3DS games I'm looking forward to, already mentioned.  Also the upcoming Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (3DS) and Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (3DS)...I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting that I'm playing or looking forward to.  Oh yes, Just Dance 2014 (Wii U) - don't laugh - is good for daily cardio.  Makes me contemplate if Wii Fit U (Wii U) is worth dusting off the old Balance Board for.  I'm not fat but it wouldn't hurt to lose a few pounds or be a little more fit. 

Ah yes, and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (Wii U/PC) comes out next week...aagh, always too much to play.