What are you playing?

[pierrot]

I've been playing Rockman Dash 2 on the Playstation, and last night I finished the dungeons on Manda-tou. I also spent an unreasonable amount of time in the village chief's hut doing her Kanken kanji tests. Mostly I spent time getting all the bonus items from the training quizzes her disciples give. I haven't been able to get more than two (out of ten) of the chief's questions right, so far, and I have to pay (it's supposed to be a donation for funding the rebuilding of the village) each time I try to take her test. I think it might be using questions for the jun-2-kyu test, which corresponds with about a high school level of proficiency, but I'm pretty garbage with most four-character idioms, and the names of character components.

It was pretty surreal seeing the official logo for the kanji exams hanging up in this hut when I first got to the island though. I'm really curious now what they replaced this with in Megaman Legends 2.

It actually just occurred to me that I could cheat the exams with the help of the internet--. To hell with that, though. I think I'd rather just brute force it, if I have to.

[Exhuminator]

I've been playing Rockman Dash 2 on the Playstation

Nice! I loved that one, but I never beat it. The final boss is... yeesh. Great game overall though, I will someday go back and actually beat MML2 (I was playing it circa 2001). Looking forward to your review.

[Xeogred]

If you do some side quests, like buy the fridge (Roll will make sandwiches that fully restore your health), and get some extra healing items... then spend all your last bunch of zenny on health and E-tank healing, the final boss isn't too hard. The worst part for me was having to backtrack through the final dungeon from the last save point to get back to the main world map to buy all this stuff, literally takes like 20 minutes both ways.

[ElkinFencer10]

I reckon I'm about halfway through Phantasy Star Portable, and I'm fixing to start Shadow of War tonight or tomorrow. I got a shit ton of games in December that I want to play, so it's going to be hard for me to decide what to play in January. X_x

[pierrot]

I've been playing Rockman Dash 2 on the Playstation

Nice! I loved that one, but I never beat it. The final boss is... yeesh. Great game overall though, I will someday go back and actually beat MML2 (I was playing it circa 2001). Looking forward to your review.

I was enjoying it, until they decided to suck all the fun out of the game with the second key dungeon. It's like they said, 'Hey, you know that Water Temple in OoT? That place sucks, right? I think we can make a water dungeon that sucks even more,' and they succeeded. Oh my, did they ever succeed.

I intend to keep playing, because surely they won't put me back under water--and if they do, I'm going to end it all, right there. I will never revisit the game after I finish it, though, and it is purely because I never want to go back into that friggin' water dungeon. It was bad enough having to go back in with the drill arm, but I can not even begin to describe how grateful I am that I had gotten the aqua shoes before starting the dungeon, so that I was actually able to collect all the treasure on that second pass through.

Seriously, what the hell were they thinking?

[Exhuminator]

Seriously, what the hell were they thinking?

"Let's troll the people who didn't get the aqua shoes."

[noiseredux]

I've been dabbling a bit in Killer Instinct (the new one) and I can't really say it's sucking me in. I think it looks great, but gameplay wise it just feels so button-mashy to me. I'm sure it's because I don't really know how to play it right (which you could say about the KI series as a whole). But I don't know... maybe the whole c-c-combo thing just isn't my preferred fighting game sub-genre. I'm not saying that it's not fun - not exactly. But I do find myself wanting to play something else fairly quickly.

[Fragems]

Against my better judgement I got a copy of Battlefront 2. It's basically the only game my friends are playing so I had been nagged into it (that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it).

Mostly just played online. It's a pretty poor game to be honest. Nothing really stands out as good atm: the shooting feels loose and lacks punch, the vehicles usefulness is restricted by narrow map design, space combat is a turkey shoot, heroes vs villains can be fun but is most often less about skill and who has the best star cards.

It's a mess really and the xbox version I am playing is not very well optimized suffers from long loading times and bad lag online. It's a really good looking game but there isn't actually as much going than in a similar shooter like Battlefield 1 or Titanfall.

It lacks the depth of those two titles as well. There is a distinct lack of any metagame despite the increased variety of vehicles and hero characters. The star cards come closest but they are so incredibly unbalanced it's stupid. My friend (who is a SW fanboy and a bit of an apologist for the game) likened it to the weapon unlocks in Battlefield reasoning that as you progress you unlock better weapons and therefore an advantage.

I strongly disagree. The star cards are more like loot in a MMO, massively increasing the effectivness of various abilities and confering massive advantages regardless of skill. A better weapon in Battlefield will not make instantly turn me into a killing machine but a few rare rated star cards will seriously overpower your opponent. To make matters worse, and in an ironic twist, there is now a gulf between those players who bought loads of loot crates before they were switched off and us plebs who have to grind away. Truly this game is the epitome of grasping corporate greed and the end point of all the shit F2P, mobile game styled, microtransaction filled blockbuster releases.

Still I bought it so I'm the tosspot who keeps this shit going. Nice graphics tho.

Got it free with the PS4 Pro Christmas bundle I picked up and I just started playing it yesterday. So far I've only been playing the campaign and I have to say it's garbage. The plot sucks, the game has some annoying bugs I clip through/into stuff all the time, and the gameplay is pretty bland especially the guns. The guns once again have no recoil and basically all feel and sound exactly the same. There is also little to no difficulty the AI just charges straight at you with very little in the way of tactics and you have so much health that also regenerates insanely fast that you can just charge in guns blazing to almost any scenario. They also shoe horn in alot of hero missions into the game and they are all pretty bad.

[Xeogred]

I've been dabbling a bit in Killer Instinct (the new one) and I can't really say it's sucking me in. I think it looks great, but gameplay wise it just feels so button-mashy to me. I'm sure it's because I don't really know how to play it right (which you could say about the KI series as a whole). But I don't know... maybe the whole c-c-combo thing just isn't my preferred fighting game sub-genre. I'm not saying that it's not fun - not exactly. But I do find myself wanting to play something else fairly quickly.

My friends and I really enjoyed it for a good year or more. It's all about combo strings, inputting them ahead of time and keeping the chains going.

But my friends and I recently joked, that despite being a little excited to see it finally on Steam thesedays, we think its time has passed. Tekken 7 is just way too damn good in comparison and next year is Dragon Ball FighterZ and Soul Caliber 6. Tekken 3 and Tag 1 were my favorite 3D fighters alongside Soul Caliber 1-2, and after Tekken 7 I think Namco is going to keep the steam going with Soul Caliber 6 being the perfect return to form. My two favorite 3D fighters by far, I'm so damn stoked.

[Segata]

Played a couple hours of Puyo Puyo Tetris on Switch. First time playing Puyo Puyo. I never liked Tetris much. Puyo is pretty fun. I really love the bright crisp simple visuals. What I love most is the very PS1/N64/SS era music. The main menu music sounds like something straight from the N64 Mario Party games and I love it.