What are you playing?

[turf]

It's been a big SNES Classic weekend!

I think I ought to play every game with a modern eye and do a little mini review of each one. 

The reason I say this is Super Mario Kart is way better though rose-colored glasses.  That game sucks now.  Star Fox?  Nearly unplayable.  Star Fox 2?  Not much better. 

Super Punch-Out!! is still fantastic.  Super Mario World is a masterpiece.  I haven't even dabbled into the RPGs. 

I'm glad I bought this little box.  It's caused me to play a lot of games I've been meaning to get around to playing.  And I'm still pretty damn good at Super Punch-Out!!

[kashell]

So, The Suffering is disturbing, visceral, and not for the faint of heart. It's clear the developers really wanted to deliver something that was frightening both aesthetically and psychologically. There is nothing pleasant in this game. There is blood, gore, bizarre monsters, disturbing imagery, and sound effects that will rattle your nerves. There are times when the main character, Torque, needs to make a choice. During these times, he'll hear voices. The voice of good sounds pleasant, but the voice of evil sounds so diabolical.

The combat is a bit rough and it's not always clear on where you need to go, but this is a damn fine game: perfect for Halloween.

[telly]

That sounds like a good game! I might add it to my wishlist

[kashell]

You should. I think you'd really enjoy it!

[kamikazekeeg]

A Hat in Time is finally out on PC.  This was my second game I backed on Kickstarter (First was Shovel Knight) and while I haven't delved deep yet, I can tell that this game is brimming with charm.  In all likelihood, it could turn out to be better than Yooka-Laylee (Which honestly wasn't great, but fun enough), which is super cool as this game is basically a love letter to what folks at Playtonics did back in the day with Rare.  Also more perfect Grant Kirkhope music.

[kamikazekeeg]

Star Wars Battlefront 2 Beta is up on PC (Maybe consoles? Don't know) and I'm enjoying it.  They've cleaned things up from what was already a pretty polished game before, but I'm liking the game more.  Bit less nade spam, jetpacks are special classes, so that everyone can't use them, and Galactic Assault is way better at least with this one map and having to use ion rockets that require you to get closer to use them and then having the rest of the map be multi-staged afterwards.  Good objective focus and if you stick with the objectives and your team, you get more BP, which is what you use to get vehicles, special classes, or Heroes/Villains.  It's kinda silly to say they streamlined things more as the first game was already pretty streamlined as shooters go, but everything is nailed down right. 

Not much into the space mode, I don't really love flying the spaceships around personally, but I like what is going on with the objectives and such.  I probably won't play that a ton.

Also there's a singleplayer Arcade mode, which will be basically challenges against AI to earn credits or do challenges to earn credits.  Each one has different difficulties, and while there's only two, the idea is fine.  Feels like an easy and simply way to add some extra content that is good.

Also I'm hoping that they stick with era specific heroes per maps as having Rey, Han Solo, and Boba Fett running around Naboo is weird lol

[burningdoom]

Far Cry 3 (XBox 360), nonstop. That game is freaking nuts! I almost got raped by a guy named Buck (who likes to...)

[doctorlaudanum]

So I've made a lot of progress in the White Day remake and have gone back to the original White Day for comparison. Consider this a mini review. Both are fantastic and the remake fixes a lot of the clunkiness of the original, but I think a few significant changes were made for the worse. My biggest problem is the remake's over-reliance on jumpscares. It has wonderful atmosphere and the janitors are definitely more threatening and dynamic than they were in the original game, but nearly every single ghost is reduced to a sudden loud noise. I'm not against jumpscares as a concept, but you have all these unique and well-designed enemies with genuinely interesting backstories, and all most of them ever do is appear suddenly in the dark and run shrieking at your face. That's not scary. That's annoying. For me, the scariest ghost in the game (the Fox Spirit) is the only one you never actually see. You're just walking around in a dark, cramped hallway, not even realizing that the hallway is looping until you see bloody clawmarks on the walls, and then the singing starts. I love that. There's some subtlety to it. And then the Haunted Head Ghost shows up to ruin everything by shoving a sPoOky .jpeg in your face. God, she is so much worse than she was in the original game. Also, can we please let QTE's die already? We'll never have the RE4 knife fight again. Stop shoving these into your boss battles.

Wow this came out so much more vitriolic than I meant it to. I really am enjoying the remake and plan to go for the platinum at some point (which involves getting every ending on every difficulty and beating Hell Mode ten times. I have a problem.), but I gotta say that there are some things the original game just does better. There are still some things I enjoyed in the remake:

• New content! Though the new character feels just a little too much like she started as the ~quirky~ anime waifu of someone on the development staff. She feels very out of place for most of the game.
• The art direction. Many of the textures are a little dated, but the presentation is fantastic. Love the setting and lighting effects. The sound design (barring the screaming jumpscares and one of the goofiest final boss themes I've ever heard) is top notch.
• The death scenes, the Doppelganger death being my favorite.
• The player character is much more expressive than he was in the original game. Yeah, he's still a silent protagonist, but there's actually a hint of personality to him.
• The one jumpscare I actually liked: the bathroom stall ghost. There's some proper build-up to her appearance, and hearing her check every stall before finally making her way to yours is genuinely tense. Plus her method of scaring you is pretty funny, in a morbid sort of way.
• The new version of the Ebony ending is so much more sinister than the original. I love it.

TL;DR I readily recommend the remake to fans of Asian horror and classic horror games, but I feel like a lot of the tension is undermined by stupid jumpscares and poorly conceived attempts at modernizing the mechanics.

So, The Suffering is disturbing, visceral, and not for the faint of heart. It's clear the developers really wanted to deliver something that was frightening both aesthetically and psychologically. There is nothing pleasant in this game. There is blood, gore, bizarre monsters, disturbing imagery, and sound effects that will rattle your nerves. There are times when the main character, Torque, needs to make a choice. During these times, he'll hear voices. The voice of good sounds pleasant, but the voice of evil sounds so diabolical.

The combat is a bit rough and it's not always clear on where you need to go, but this is a damn fine game: perfect for Halloween.

Definitely a unique horror game! Modern prisons seem like such a wonderful setting for survival horror, but The Suffering is the only game I can think of that actually uses one. Love the monster designs and oppressive atmosphere, even if it's a little more action-heavy than most horror games I'm used to. I'll need to check out the sequel one of these days, though I've heard it isn't as good.

[telly]

If The Suffering is anything like Toluca Prison in Silent Hill 2, then I'm all in

[xnblank]

Just finished Halo 4 from the Master Chief Collection and now I'm starting Halo 5 : Guardians.

help

[kamikazekeeg]

Anyone else playing the Battlefront 2 beta and knows what the clone trooper gunship's purpose is?  It's an auto-piloted airship that spins in circles for a bit, and as the gunner, you are trying to hit people.  The problem is, you are so high up, you can't actually see anyone, even zoomed, which only makes targeting worse, because your guns move so slow.  Even when hitting people with the laser, it feels like it barely does anything.  I don't think I've killed anyone with it.  It doesn't even harm the MTT when it's shields are down.  So it doesn't really feel like much of an infantry killing ship, but then it's also quite weak in the air, so it's not good against starships.  It seems mostly useless. 

The Trade Federations equivalent is way better, the guns on the MTT, as you can get a number of kills with it due to being able to see enemies and the guns being very easy to use with lots of splash damage.

[kashell]

White Day review.

You convinced me. I'm going to get this. I won't go for that platinum, though. I give you mad props for going for that!

If The Suffering is anything like Toluca Prison in Silent Hill 2, then I'm all in

Toluca Prison was a great setting. There is definitely some things in The Suffering that remind me of it.

[nexttheflex]

Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Manx TT Superbike - both games arę extremally tight. Really really dope titles.

[ignition365]

Not entirely sure what I'm going to jump into this week.  I was planning on jumping into Gravity Rush 2 last night, but my wife stayed up with me rather than letting me play games (I like playing games with the lights off and she was kind of reading a book), so she made me start playing Final Fantasy IX on the PS4, so she may very well make me play through the game, though I'll probably cheat like crazy because it's so easy to cheat, doesn't affect trophies, and I really don't feel like playing 2 RPGs at the same time (FF9 and DQ5).

Kind of want to finish Bourne Conspiracy, or jump into Nier.  Had a few other games I was thinking about as well.

[gibgirl]

Replaying Star Ocean: The Second Story on PS1, after acquiring a copy of it - I remembered loving it way back when I had it the first time, so have to give it another run through. I've also started on Deadly Premonition on the 360, feeling it'll fit well into the month. After I finish that, it'll be either Alien Isolation or a replay of Eternal Darkness.

I'm also slowly working my way through Burnout Revenge on the Xbox 360 and Thumper on the Xbox One for purposes of setting new records on Twin Galaxies. Just a couple more Traffic Attack events to go to have the record for all of them.