What are you playing?

[insektmute]

IIRC, whatever the edition was that I got of XIII-2...it came with a 4-disc cd set of the OST.

I now have reason and motivation to dig them up & give 'em a listen; thanks Erik 

No prob. First game in awhile that made me stop and think, "Man, I should get the soundtrack for this..." I think the last one was probably Shadow Hearts: Covenant, which as we both know, is really a fine piece of composition.

[kamikazekeeg]

Rented the new Call of Duty on PS3 and so far the campaign has been alright, better than I expected, but still very much your standard shooter fare.  They try and sugar coat with the new tech stuff, but you are still just going through the narrow corridors, taking out the bland AI, but saying that, some of the new tech is neat, but some of it I have to imagine is overpowered as shit in multiplayer.  Not that it matters too much as I'm going to mostly just ignore the multiplayer.

[bobster]

Continuing on my exploration of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, I'm now onto Lightning Returns. Man, so many conflicting feelings about this game so far. The plot, narrative, and character dialog is a huge step above the previous two games, the combat is an interesting attempt at making the Paradigm system more real-time, and the game is absolutely gorgeous. It's also an incredibly frustrating, almost stressful game to play due to the strict time limit that dominates everything you do, almost complete lack of guidance early on, often unclear objectives, obnoxious nagging dialog from Hope, and massive jumps in difficulty and resource scarcity.

I'm on day 3 of 6 so far in-game so far. You can apparently increase the time limit by completing quests, but nothing I've done so far seems to have had any tangible impact. I feel heavily underpowered against a lot of the monsters I'm running across, and every battle loss causes you to lose an in-game hour. I'm honestly torn between soldiering ahead and taking the chance that I'll get a "Sorry, you failed at everything, start over." result or just grabbing a walkthrough and following it to the letter. The game almost feels explicitly designed to require one because unless you know exactly where to go and what to do, you'll waste too much time trying to figure out what you should be doing.

Eeeeek.

I felt much the same as you with the game. I stopped playing and bought the guide not too far in to the game. I haven't sat down yet to pick it back up with the guide yet.

[insektmute]

I felt much the same as you with the game. I stopped playing and bought the guide not too far in to the game. I haven't sat down yet to pick it back up with the guide yet.

Glad that it's not just me. I've stuck with it, but did eventually sink down and use a walkthrough. The trick seems to be that you have to jump between all 4 locales and keep the questlines evenly balanced - i.e. get up to quest 1.2 in the first city, move to another area and work up to 1.2, then move to the next and get to 1.2, and so on.

This also allows you to obtain and finish more side-quests as you go, so you're able to level up more quickly, fight more encounters instead of avoiding them, and build up EP so you can spam Chronostasis. Once you get a good rhythm going, you can breathe a little more easily instead of panicking over every passing hour.

The time limit really does hinder the experience, though. Love the combat and Schemata systems, the story is great, the side-quests are fulfilling in an a sort of Diablo-esque way, and Lightning's dry sarcasm is entertaining as hell, but it's a shame that the developers felt it necessary to complicate things beyond that.

[bobster]

I felt much the same as you with the game. I stopped playing and bought the guide not too far in to the game. I haven't sat down yet to pick it back up with the guide yet.

Glad that it's not just me. I've stuck with it, but did eventually sink down and use a walkthrough. The trick seems to be that you have to jump between all 4 locales and keep the questlines evenly balanced - i.e. get up to quest 1.2 in the first city, move to another area and work up to 1.2, then move to the next and get to 1.2, and so on.

This also allows you to obtain and finish more side-quests as you go, so you're able to level up more quickly, fight more encounters instead of avoiding them, and build up EP so you can spam Chronostasis. Once you get a good rhythm going, you can breathe a little more easily instead of panicking over every passing hour.

The time limit really does hinder the experience, though. Love the combat and Schemata systems, the story is great, the side-quests are fulfilling in an a sort of Diablo-esque way, and Lightning's dry sarcasm is entertaining as hell, but it's a shame that the developers felt it necessary to complicate things beyond that.

Hmmm glad to hear it gets easier if you think things out. I'll have to pick it up again when I get a chance. For the time being, my copy is with my girlfriend's brother so hopefully he's having a nice time of it.

[dashv]

Finally started ICO the HD remastered version on PS3. It's rather interesting to play a game where you save the girl 5 minutes in and play the rest of the game trying to keep her alive.

[koemo1]

Mario Kart 8  ONLINE Yeahhh!!!

[tripredacus]

I played some more Far Cry 3. I can say that I do enjoy this game but I can't stand when the game forces you to do things. First of all, it is a lazy port to PC and you can tell the game was designed to be a console game, unlike the previous ones in the series. Many people already hate how console games have those "Press X or die" moments where the game goes from its regular mode (in this case, FPS) into some Guitar Hero type thing. I can tell you it doesn't translate well to PC. I've played the game enough to know when this type of mode is about to kick in... but unlike a console controller where you may have 4 buttons to worry about, it turns into OMG THERE'S A MODE CHANGE COMING UP, OMG WHAT KEYS DO I NEED TO USE? It isn't the same every time either. Sometimes it is Space, sometimes its is a mouse button and SOMETIMES its a key you don't even have mapped.

Does the game really need to force me into some random button pressing to stab a guy with his own knife when I just shoot him with the machine gun I have? Do I really need to "mash" the space bar to get this accomplished?

And this is a game where you can go the stealth route OR just shoot everyone. Because the AI is so aware, the stealth aspect doesn't really work. The AI is close to Elder Scrolls Oblivion where (if you remember) the guards can know if you steal something even if you are in a house all by yourself. There is no "confusion" period here, where I can be sitting on a hilltop and shoot someone with the sniper rifle, all the enemies know exactly where I am and head on over.

In the beginning of the game, you need to get out of where you are without alerting anyone and it serves as a good stealth tutorial. Unlike later in the game, you don't have any weapons so it is also a good reason not to alert anyone. Now, I am stuck in a part of the game where it forces you to do a stealth mission AND not kill anyone. Even a silent take-down will cause the mission to fail. It is totally unnecessary to have this in the game at this point. It isn't like those other parts where your stuff gets taken from you. You have all your stuff and you CAN use it, but it will cause a fail.

[burningdoom]

^ In Elder Scrolls, guards don't know if you stole something if you're in a house by yourself. You have to be seen by someone in order to be caught.

[kamikazekeeg]

Kinda back into World of Warcraft.  I use to play back in the original days before the big expansions, then kinda didn't care for the end game of dungeon grinding, so fell off and then basically got in one or twice during the releases of Burning Crusade and Lich King.  I've been sorta wanting a good grinder game, something I can play, but I can also just pop on a podcast or show along with.  So not having my original stuff, I started up in WoW, which gives you 50% off the game, so only ten bucks and a free month to get back into WoW, which includes all the expansions other than the new Draenor one.  I'll probably grab that once I get 90 which will be a good while.

Also realized I was given access to the Heroes of the Storm alpha.  Generally liking it so far.  It's much like League of Legends of course, but the maps all have unique things to do in them which is great, there's no gear to worry about, and leveling is a team thing, not an individual, so people aren't left behind if they aren't able to level properly. I'm generally enjoying it, just wish I was able to try out more characters.  Not being able to preview a character is pretty dumb.

[tripredacus]

^ In Elder Scrolls, guards don't know if you stole something if you're in a house by yourself. You have to be seen by someone in order to be caught.

Not so with Oblivion, it was fixed by mods. Just go look up psychic guards in Oblivion. The guard AI would know if you killed any NPC outside of a quest, broke into a building or stole something while not in sneak mode.

[burningdoom]

^ In Elder Scrolls, guards don't know if you stole something if you're in a house by yourself. You have to be seen by someone in order to be caught.

Not so with Oblivion, it was fixed by mods. Just go look up psychic guards in Oblivion. The guard AI would know if you killed any NPC outside of a quest, broke into a building or stole something while not in sneak mode.

Yes so in Oblivion. I have 100% achievements on it. Half my gear is stolen. All guards will know if you've done it, but only if you've been caught by someone. Otherwise the entire thieves guild and assassin's guild questlines would be pointless.

[koemo1]

Parasite Eve II ^^

[insektmute]

Parasite Eve II ^^

I absolutely love that game. It's a bit more Resident Evil than Parasite Eve, but in a lot of ways, I actually liked it more than PE1.

[bobster]

I started playing Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag last night. I'm digging the atmosphere so far. We'll see how it plays out.