Now Playing

[Eric]

Oh yeah well...I won the lottery....f u Anarky! :p

[Anarky]

Well... I'll see if I get extra codes.

[SineSwiper]

Now, I'm playing One Finger Death Punch. Indie game from XBLA.

Normally, I really dislike the short 5 minute trial period. In this case, I was committed to buying the game within 90 seconds. By the time the 5 minute trial was over, I was angry at my Xbox for not buying the game for me. I mean, you have to be a fucking moron not to buy this game. It's only $1 and you get:

Intense kung-fu action
An innovative and unique combat mechanic
Challenging (but automatically scalable) gameplay
Cool music
Multiple kung-fu styles
Weapon usage, including a goddamn lightsaber!

How the game works may be simple, but mastering it is still a challenge. And it's soooo satisfying when you get into the zone and everything is working in your favor.

[Julius Seeker]

Playing a ton right now:
* Animal Crossing New Leaf - SOOO addictive, especially with the 4-player features.
* Civ 5: Brave New World
* The 4 new 3DS Street Pass games
* Shin Megami Tensei 4
* Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
* Scrolls

[Julius Seeker]

Scratch all that: Earthbound!

[Shrinweck]

I bought Gemini Rue during one of the last two Steam sales and finally got around to playing it. A fairly strong adventure game. The controls are a little annoying but you get over that. The combat is surprisingly fun but would have gotten old if they overly used it. Luckily it's pretty rare. Fairly short game at ~4 hours long, for some reason I was expecting twice that. Dark sci-fi story pulls you in and the twist near the end is well hidden and I certainly wasn't anywhere near guessing at it until they were moments away from letting the cat out of the bag.

I liked how the dialog is voiced - I don't think I would have enjoyed the game without voice acting.

I'd say there's only two annoying puzzles so it has that going for it too. Decent little gem of a game.

[SineSwiper]

As I'm out and about, I'm playing with my DS again. Old school nowadays, I know. But, I am having fun with Henry Hatsworth. (Dialogue sounds FTW.)

Also just started playing Infinite Space. Pretty good "space RPG" from Platinum Games. Lots of customizability, and the combat, while somewhat simple, still has some hidden complexities. The game is also fairly difficult. You MUST turn on the auto-save feature, else you'll get caught dying an hour behind your last save. (No idea why this isn't turned on by default.)

[Chris]

right now it's all Shin Megami Tensei IV. Great damn game. also fucking Dynasty Warriors 8 which is the first time in a while I've truly like been obsessed with a DW game. Also a bit of Tales of Xillia which is great as long as you don't play Milla's story...oh yeah and a lot of Rogue Legacy because fuck that game I hate it and I love it

[SineSwiper]

oh yeah and a lot of Rogue Legacy because fuck that game I hate it and I love it

Yeah, me, too, and about a good portion of the gaming public. Honestly, I don't know why I really like it, considering it's made to be grindy. Though, I put in waaay too much time into Binding of Isaac, too.

[Shrinweck]

I just can't get into Rogue Legacy but I mainly fault my mood more than the mechanics of the game.

[Chris]

yeah it's hard to really get sucked in but I usually hope on go for a generation or 2 and then move on to other projects. I just love the style and the way it plays I'm totally down with it and damn it's great. also now Tales of Xillia is probably the closest a Tales game has come to Abyss when it comes to a story and characters that I like. It's been a long time since I've felt this way with a tales game.
that and I finally have all my shit set up so I can finish Suikoden 2 and move on to three again in my annual playthrough.
and Dynasty Warriors 8. Still playing a lot of dynasty warriors because fuck yeah x- x- x- x- x- y

[SineSwiper]

oh yeah and a lot of Rogue Legacy because fuck that game I hate it and I love it

Yeah, me, too, and about a good portion of the gaming public. Honestly, I don't know why I really like it, considering it's made to be grindy. Though, I put in waaay too much time into Binding of Isaac, too.

I have to say that I really really like the first castle music. All of those hours of dying, and this song still doesn't get old:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBphGQqqQTU

[Julius Seeker]

right now it's all Shin Megami Tensei IV. Great damn game.

I just started that one myself. Liking it so far although I haven't played enough to give any very informed impressions.

[Anarky]

Replaying Xenogears on my Vita. Dear god I forgot how much dialogue there was in this game, wish they had included some means to skip it. I also forgot how much of a pain it could be to navigate maps with the camera.

[Julius Seeker]

Xenogears is certainly not for people who don't like reading

[Anarky]

Xenogears is certainly not for people who don't like reading

Didn't someone have a rom hack or a gameshark code at some point to skip/speedup dialogue?

[SineSwiper]

Xenogears is a game with great story and decent gameplay. Of course, this is after you stop going "OMGWTFBBQ, holy fuck, there are COMBOS in this game", as the combos lose its charm. Because hey... combos are awesome. (Heh, the best part about the demo was that they gave you all of Fei's combos.)

And it was hugely disappointing that you get these crappy combos for the actual gears.

Overall, Xenosaga was just a better series in both story and gameplay. Xenosaga 2 had the most fun gameplay IMO.

[SineSwiper]

I'm playing a ton of indie games here lately, partly due to the Steam Greenlight sale they had a few weeks ago:

FTL: Faster Than Light - I'm not sure what my opinion is on this one. It's a remarkably difficult game, and most of it boils down to random chance. I was forced to play it on Easy mode most of the time, and even then, there's a lot of luck involved into whether you could defeat the boss or not. And after you beat it, there's not a lot of directions to go. Getting more than the standard 3 ships is very difficult.

Though, I put a lot of time into this game, so I can't say I didn't get my money's worth. I just wish it had a better payoff. (Even the ship you get seems inferior to the Engi one with Ion Blast.)

Thomas Was Alone - Good for its money. The big selling point is probably the story and neat Bastion-like narration. The puzzles are fun enough to make you progress.

Gunpoint - Pretty fun and intriguing, even for a film-noir type game. Though, it has a slightly futuristic slant that gives it a better appeal. The gameplay is pretty fun, too.

McPixel - Shut up. I bought this for a buck. I think it was more than worth it for some of the funny gags in this game. A lot of dick and fart jokes, but whatever. Lots of cool references in the special levels.

Hotline Miami - Great game with a nice balance of story, gameplay, and music. The story could have been less inferred, but overall, worth playing. The gameplay can be frustratingly hard, but that's partially because of the perfectionist gameplay that this game drives you towards. Granted, you'll still die a lot of times trying to push past a room, but sometimes that's because you want to get some longer combos out of your kills. I also like how they used pre-existing work for many of the songs.

FLY'N and Obulis - Haven't played these yet.

[Julius Seeker]

Played Wii Sports last night at a bachelor party. I forgot how much fun this game is with the right crowd. Also how much it sucks to play Smash when intoxicated.

I've been continuing my playing of Animal Crossing, there are lots of fantastic looking towns being built by really creative people. The Japanese seem to favour towns that are pure pavement an concrete. The latest game has a feature where you can upload your town online, you can randomly visit towns in the dream world - doing anything you want without effecting their actual existence, and you can visit specific towns if you know their ID.

[Julius Seeker]

The newly released Rune Factory 4, and it's awesome!

I was a huge fan of the other games, my favourite until now has been Rune Factory Frontier. This one so far is the most advanced, and it's a lot of fun.

[Chris]

I'm with seek. The new run factory is fantastic. I absolutely love this series outside of the last console release. It seems way more lively as people actually interact with each other as they move through town and multiple people in the same area will joke with each other and whatnot. Really great. Played a bunch of GTA online but I'm going to hold off for a bit. Still races and whatnot are super fun. deathmatches I don't really care but GTA races and the missions and stuff are super fun. Sriously though. GTA Race, Motorcycles, wanted level on is a ridiculous amount of fun

[Shrinweck]

Bought a few new cheap games that nearly all probably deserve their owns threads but for the sake of laziness:

Papers Please: This game is good. It looks like a boring border crossing game.. and it isn't boring. Every day you have enough time to check something like a dozen passports and it's actually up to you in certain ways how to change the destiny of your hell hole of a country. On a minimal level you can help reunite lovers or aid a father avenging his child's murderer. On a bigger scale, you can help a shadowy organization kill and create chaos. Or you can just accept bribes and work within the confines of what the government offers you. The game does a good job of ramping up in complexity and right when you find yourself getting complacent with current passport standards the government will shuffle what they want once again. Catching discrepancies in information gives a certain amount of satisfaction. As someone who used to work the door at a bar whose main job was checking IDs this game hits a little too close to home at times.

Audiosurf 2: Does not deserve its own thread in its current state. I bought it in Steam's Early Access mode and kind of regret it. I'm sure it'll shape up to something nice but as it is, it's pretty crappy.

Soundodger+: A kind of bullet hell, music avoid-em-up. The levels it comes with are nearly all beautifully done and definitely a lot of fun. You can play some of this for free at the Adult Swim website. Warning: This game might actually give you moments where you appreciate dubstep wub wub wubs. It comes with an auto-generator for music but it kind of blows. It also comes with the suite that I imagine the developers use to make the levels but I imagine it takes an awful lot of time to master. Hoping this game gets big enough that people create a lot of content for music I actually enjoy as opposed to obscure techno.

Race the Sun: Not yet on Steam but a very cool game where you run a solar powered vehicle through daily generated regions that everyone else that day is playing. Beautiful, inspired game. Completing random objectives levels you, opening up new options to play the game with. Avoiding shadows while literally racing a setting sun is fun.

Thirty Flights of Loving is something I've been wanting to check out but since I heard it's REALLY short I've been avoiding it. $2 seemed like as good a price as any to finally bite the bullet. Haven't given it a go yet.

[Julius Seeker]

A few new games since Rune Factory:

1. Wii Fit U - This installment adds new activities to the classic categories, but also adds an entirely new "Dance" category, which I am finding to be far more effective than the aerobics category for working up a sweat. A really brutal workout is alternating between dance and strength exercises and dance exercises; that's the main thrust of my workout, with the warmup consisting of aerobics exercises, and the cool down consisting of balance exercises. Using the "My Routines" can set up a custom workout routine using any exercises. There is a Personal trainer feature will do everything for you based on the parameters you enter, but I prefer my own judgement. You can also set up your own Gyms, adding other people from across the Internet, and you gain your own community within the Miiverse to go along with it.

Another interesting feature is the Wii Fit Meter, a small device that you attatch to your belt or pants, it tracks steps, distance, altitude, temperatures, rate, and uses this to calculate METs which in turn is used to calculate the calories burned; you can then import this with an NFC connection right into the Wii U, which now acts somewhat of a central database for everything.

There is, of course, extensive stat tracking which utilizes a calendar, and this has been expanded from previous versions to include stats tracked by the Wii Fit Meter. There're also stats that show which muscle groups have been targeted, and then it assesses what type of exercises you are - I am currently a power based with Legs being my heaviest focus.

This is the game I have been playing the most, I am putting in two 45 minute workouts a day, so far without fail since its release just over a week ago. If you include walking, I am doing about 10-15 kilometers on week days; and that is measured into it. I am doing it for the benefit of my calorie burn calendar =P

One last thing, many of the new games require two Wii Remote+'s, one for each arm. For example, the rock climbing needs to track arm movement using two +'s while the Balance board tracks leg movement.

2. Assassin's Creed 4 - A lot of you are no doubt playing this one, so there isn't much I need to say. I am only a few hours in, but am so far enjoying it. I just really hope Nintendo, Aonuma in particular, is paying attention to games like Assassin's Creed and probably more so Xenoblade, when he is deciding the direction of the 2015 Wii U Zelda title. Zelda style gameplay eventually led to Prince of Persia and then Assassin's Creed; but recent Zelda games have failed to keep up with even other games developed by Nintendo - Xenoblade was WAY better than Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword, for example. If the pirate's life's for you, then this game is for you.

On the Wii U version of this game, you can play with the entire game on the TV, and your choice of controller. You can play with stats and UI elements on the gamepad - any text presentations will appear on both the TV screen and the Gamepad, or you can play the entire experience contained on the Gamepad only.


3. Ace Attorney 5 - We have a separate thread on this. I am playing through this one slowly, and savouring it. It is very good, and exactly what any fan of the series would hope for the next 3DS evolution. Without spoiling much, Phoenix Wright is back in the main role, but the Apollo Justice story hasn't just been thrown out the window either. It's called dual-destinies for a reason.

4. Pokemon Y - The game is very solid, but unfortunately I haven't had much time to play. About 15 or so of my co-workers have the game, and all of them are way further than I am. I gave up trying to keep up when a few of them managed to get 100 hours in under two weeks - Pokemon players are insane! I am comfortable playing 1-3 hours a week thankyou very much

5. Wii Sports Club - Essentially Wii Sports with a focus on online competitions and leagues. There are minigames included with leader boards, and the graphics have been updated from the original version. This is actually a fairly good game, I wish Nintendo would have included this as a part of the initial package. While Nintendo Land does demonstrate a lof of what the Wii U can do, it is also lacks the accessibility and activity based gaming that made Wii Fit so appealing. While this is essentially just the original game with updates, that's all any sort of sports game really requires - this comes with additional play modes, and perhaps in the future, additional activities. The first batch are all from the original Wii Sports title. The handling is definitely different this time around though, as they now require Wii Motion+ controllers.



The games for the remainder of the year I am looking forward to, for now, are Bravely Default (If it is a December launch, there is conflicting info on the NA launch, is it December 3rd or February 2014? The Euro launch is December 5th), Zelda: A Link Between World (Link to the Past 2), and Super Mario 3D World. I am expecting a lot out of 3D world at this point, it looks like a lot of fun.

[SineSwiper]

The Stanley Parable is fun and original. Extremely meta, but that's part of its charm.

[Julius Seeker]

I've also been playing Clash of Clans for a few months now, very interesting iOS game with a 1-3 minute play session.

[Shrinweck]

Been going at Battlefield 4 pretty hard the last couple days. Been a couple years since I played a real shooter seriously. Forgot how fun it could be. It's also a nice reminder where a great deal of the assholes reside in gaming. The commander mode is kind of fun but if the squad leaders don't bother accepting your orders then it's a 3+ times more efficient to score points on the ground with your own two hands. I kind of preferred the commander mode in Battlefield 2. The artillery barrage was much more satisfying then what they give you this go around.

[bovine]

Been going at Battlefield 4 pretty hard the last couple days. Been a couple years since I played a real shooter seriously. Forgot how fun it could be. It's also a nice reminder where a great deal of the assholes reside in gaming. The commander mode is kind of fun but if the squad leaders don't bother accepting your orders then it's a 3+ times more efficient to score points on the ground with your own two hands. I kind of preferred the commander mode in Battlefield 2. The artillery barrage was much more satisfying then what they give you this go around.

What are you playing it on?

[Shrinweck]

PC

[bovine]

PC

Laaaaaaaaame.

I've been playing it on 360 and xbox one. I had HUGE issues with crashing on the 360 (1/4 of the matches would just freeze my system), but the xbox one version has been a great experience.

[Julius Seeker]

I've gone on an 8-bit kick with some early 16-bit titles included.

1. Streets of Rage 1 - finished
2. Double Dragon - finished
3. Sonic 1 - finished, twice
4. Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest - in progress
5. Link to the Past - to play

[Eric]

If you like Streets of Rage Seek check out this gem. http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/8043265/ ... nlocked%5D

[Shrinweck]

I'm playing Star Trek Online and Path of Exile. Both F2P games that I find myself spending money on like an idiot. They're fun though and I don't see anything of consequence coming onto the PC for 2+ months.

I got involved in a guild in Star Trek Online like an idiot and I ended up liking some of them so its breathed some new life into a game I probably would have stopped playing a month or so ago. Although I'd probably drop them and the game in a second if Wildstar released tomorrow.

Saints Row 4 was a pleasant diversion, but barely lasted a week. Still find myself dropping time into Marvel Puzzle quest here and there but most days I find myself only completing the daily action required to keep the streak going.

[Julius Seeker]

If you like Streets of Rage Seek check out this gem. http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/8043265/ ... nlocked%5D

Haha, will do, when I have time. I don't right now due to a game called Gnomoria, which is like SimCity meets Minecraft. It kind of reminds of Sim Ant with Minecraft, except you have a lot more indirect control over what the ants do, and the ants are Gnomes.

Also coming out is Bravely Default, that comes out on the 7th. In 2014, I almost feel like a teenager again, at least on weekend mornings =P

[Shrinweck]

I can't even manage the enthusiasm to create a new thread for Elder Scrolls Online, which dropped its NDA recently. I got into a beta event a few months back and just found this to be the most formulaic MMORPG to grace my PC in the last several years. This is the kind of game you'd have expected several years ago before the industry started introducing new ideas. The weapon abilities are about as limiting as they are boring. The very nature of the game is just by-the-books in a way that doesn't bear me giving it another chance.

So the combat is boring, how about the exploration? It doesn't have the same feeling of openness as the single player iterations, which is understandable, but the only reason why someone would even want to buy an Elder Scrolls flavored MMO. Without rich exploration it's vanilla fantasy at its least flavorful.

The only interesting thing, on paper, that this game had was its class customization/mixing/openness but even that was pretty bland.

To put it simply, I wouldn't reinstall the game even if they released it F2P, but $50-60 with a monthly fee is just a damned joke. The problems I had with the game aren't the "It's beta.. they'll sort it out" variety.. It's just a fundamentally disappointing game.

[Julius Seeker]

Just picked up a Vita.

Mostly because I wanted to play Xenogears again and I didn't want to play it off of a TV screen. 3DS/DS, iOS, and Wii U have really spoiled me over the last few years.

I haven't had it long enough to have any real impressions. There was a lot of hype around its OLED screen, so I was a little disappointed to see my old iPhone 4S actually had a much nicer screen. It's not a bad screen, but even with this old phone, the Vita's brightest setting is about 35-40% that of the iPhone 4S's screen. Looking at this forum, on the Vita's screen the text looks smudged and runs together a little unless you zoom in. While on the phone it is without any issues at much smaller sizes. In other words, it won't be replacing my phone as my primary Internet browser - but that's a trivial issue really since I only bought it for games.


So I noticed the PS3 remote play as well. Does this mean I can remotely play PSX games playing on my PS3 like Suikoden 1 & 2, Lunar 2, etc?

I am just wondering before I lug the PS3 back out of my basement.

[Julius Seeker]

The main game I am playing is Xenogears on Vita - I am in the Aquvy section currently, which is kind of like Chapter 2 of 5 (1. Ignas, 2. Aquvy, 3. Shevat, 4. Solaris, 5. the Apocalypse on Disk 2) and am on my way down to the sunken Zeboim civilization for the first time - this is one of the coolest and most interesting portions of the game.

The other game I'm starting today is Super Mario Bros 3 for only a dollar on the Wii U E-Shop, another one of my alltime favourite games.

[Eric]

I was playing Infamous: Second Son on my Vita at work the other day via PS4 remote play, I was goddamn amazed at how smooth it was playing this game in all of it's glory was on my Vita, solid 30 FPS, resolution was downsized to my vita obviously, but it still looked bloody amazing. The controls were very responsive, I never found myself getting frustrated with accuracy or any extremely noticeable lag. Only downside is that the vita doesn't have L2 & R2 buttons, so they were mapped to the touch screen which can be awkward to use while aiming in-game.

This is the first game I've gotten a Platinum trophy for on any Playstation system heh.

[Julius Seeker]

Yeah, I missed the L2&R2 thing during the Nortune great battles. Still, not a huge deal since those are easy to win with blocking or fire blasts.

Speaking of remote play. Can you do remote play from a PSX disk in a PS3? I would like to play the Suikodens on Vita if possible. What about with a PS4?

I don't have a PS4, but I have given a few away as gifts =P - so it's not like I won't get one if I need one.

[Eric]

Uhh like, install it on your PS3 then stream the game from your PS3 to your Vita? I....don't know, I've never tried it. :o

[Julius Seeker]

More than two months later and I am STILL playing Xenogears. I have been playing it almost daily in relatively short play sessions, only a few for more than half an hour or so.

Currently I am on disk 2. I'm past the giant Kislev transformer vs. the Solaris Mobile weapon scene, and after some story sequences and teasing about the really cool location of the Soylent System on the ground - we passed through one of them in Solaris earlier - and killing the giant Wels that was created. The next portion focuses on the Anima relics, used to upgrade Gears into Omnigears. I have been using primarily the team of Fei, Elly, and Emeralda. Emeralda, even in her child phase, is easily the most powerful character due to her speed - and she gets 20% more powerful when we get to the Zeboim city ruins later on in the game, but that part is so close to the end of the game that it is almost a trivial upgrade.

Back to Solaris,

I always find this location fascinating, it's like Brave New World on a massive metropolis scale Space station.

The third class - are placed in certain ghettos, where they are forced to work under martial law. This is where Fei starts out, meeting up with Elly, and then making their way up through the vents into the second class area.

The second class - these are your typical consumer class, apparently everyone has a convertible, and they drive around on highway sections lower down to locations that the user is not able to reach - it leaves a lot to the imagination. The Solaris middle class location is actually very small, even smaller than the two major town locations in Shevat; but due to what's left to the imagination, my memory of the location is always something much more vast.

Later on, Fei and Elly are discovered during a press event held by the Emperor of Solaris and Krelian, they escape through the equivalent Solarian sewers into the upper class area.

The First class - Even though the user has access to one house, again, this area has the illusion of being vast. The Fei and Elly scenes here are among my very favourite in the whole game; particularly the shower scene, it is a short break to simplicity and a worry free time period, before jumping back into the craziness - Tolkien would use this sort of technique in his books, and I always found them charming. As well, there's a LOT of character development for Elly here in a very short period of time, particularly in her back story.

Fei and Elly narrowly escape the military police of Solaris, who raid her house. They meet up with Citan who begins leading the two towards the Royal palace, but the road is a long one, and Elly is a bit suspicious... Worse yet, he allows Fei and Elly to eat zombie meat! Through the Soylent system, and then into this dark area where you see the Omnigear of Solaris.

Krelian's lab - this is an interesting area, very high tech seeming, and it is really here that Krelian - the one of the major villain of the later game - gets his proper introduction. It is also during this time when Fei is captured and the revelation of Id's identity; if you didn't piece together the 700 clues throughout the earlier portions of the game. Citan has a chat with Id, then the whole group escapes Solaris, and Id demolishes it in minutes.

Solaris overall, might just be the most interesting location I have come across in an RPG. The only places I can think of that compare are Esthar in Final Fantasy 8, and the Kingdom of Zeal in Chrono Trigger.

[Julius Seeker]

I recently purchased Child of Light, from Ubisoft for the Wii U, due to the high praise of the game, receiving very high scores in the 90's from various game review sites - but personally, I am very unimpressed. The game does have beautiful backgrounds, but that's about the only good thing I can say about it so far. To describe the type of game in short, it's an RPG combined with a puzzle style game similar to Trine 2; although it is a poor example of both styles.

Story - very uninspired so far. The dialogue is terrible poetry presented on very ugly font with a very ugly background; it's annoying to read - and reminds me of some really bad PC indie games from the 1980's; because even in the 90's the console gaming industry would do better than this at its worst. The story itself is just uneeded and unwanted text that is burdensome to get through - it doesn't really add to the experience other than interrupting the gameplay and providing a weak context of what is going on via amateurish writing - it seems like standin text with standin font on a standin background. When the voice acting occurs, it reminds me of the sort of dialogue you'd hear on a PC game from 1992.

For combat, the game uses a version of the ATB system established by Final Fantasy 4. This may sound like a good thing, but Child of Light's take on the ATB is the worst and cheapest example I have ever come across. Aside from its cheap feeling, it's filled with a lot of unwanted additional interaction that feels tacked on. In other words, the battle system a cheap looking ATB bar plagued with intrusive gimmicks. This ATB system feels like a prototype.

When it comes to the Trine style puzzles and side scrolling gameplay - Child of Light just falls incredibly short. Although I am not that far in, the hour or so that I have played doesn't seem promising - everything is really straight forward, and it's just a matter of doing it. This game is NO Trine in that regards - and a far far cry from much more excellent puzzle games like Professor Layton.

IGN gives it a 93. Leave it up to IGN to score a game highly based on pretty backgrounds. I don't know what they were thinking otherwise. Gamespot gave it an 8.0 - probably for no other reason other than because it's by Ubisoft.

[Eric]

I really liked Child of Light, beautiful game, fun story, and the combat was actually a fun twist on the ATB, did you play it on normal or hard? I found the battles and boss battles in particular far more rewarding on the higher difficulty. The soundtrack is also goddamn awesome.

[Don]

I heard Child of Light is like Grandia, but Grandia 3 is like the only incarnation that ever got the system it invented right and even there you usually need the hint enabled to know whether you can block or cancel something on time. It's not an easy system to get right.

[Shrinweck]

Child of Light looked interesting enough for me to buy, but it also looked like the kind of game that Steam will have on sale for $5 before the end of the year, so I'll hold out.

[Julius Seeker]

I wanted to enjoy the game. I was actually really excited by its concept.

After a bit of reflection on Child of Light's battle system and why I find it poorly designed. The tacked on elements add complexity to the interactions just for the purpose of adding complexity; I see no real purpose to them since they don't add to the variety or to the enjoyment. There is a greater requirement for variety in the battle strategies of the nearly 30 year old Dragon Warrior 1 than there is in Child of Light.

A simplistic battle system, like NES's Dragon Warrior 1, is just FAR more tolerable. I don't have to manage 2-3 extra things while I attack. For the first few battles the extra gimmicks may seem interesting, but when the novelty quickly wears off you're stuck with unwanted chores that need to be done every single battle - there is no option to automate the process as there is in other RPGs (like timing Squall's sword slash in FF8, once you get tired of doing that, you can put it on auto and then not worry about it ever again).

[Julius Seeker]

Mario Kart 8,

That's what I am playing - while the last time battle mode has been good was Mario Kart 64 - this game clearly is the top of the line when it comes to racing. It's never felt so smooth and perfect thanks to the addition of hover-mode in combination with all of the Mario Kart 7 additions.

[Julius Seeker]

Add 3DS's Tomodachi Life to the list. This is a great example of a casual game that is not hooked up to some online environment forcing you to play at least X times daily or lose.

The game allows you to play at your own pace, and at the same time inspires you to login fairly frequently throughout the day typically for 1-3 minute spurts. In short, it takes a lot of elements from games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, and puts them into a more casual framework.

While Animal Crossing can be considered casual game elements due to its day to day login incentive, and the fact that play sessions are typically shorter, it is still not entirely ideal as a casual game due to longer play sessions that typically a minimum of about 10 minutes in order to achieve the tasks available. Casual game sessions are ideally quite a bit shorter.

Tomodachi Life is difficult to explain since there are a huge amount of possibilities in the game. Consider it a social interaction type game, it is less of a simulation than Animal Crossing, and more like the Sims where the Sims actually speak to you and ask you to play small brain teasers and minigames, or ask you to perform small tasks and such. There are events all over the place, one of them is an arcade minigame where you play something along the lines of a mini-scenario in Dragon Quest 4 with your Mii characters complete in 8-bit graphics. There are lots of sales and collection type things - your Miis can be happy/unhappy, start relationships and such.

Unlike Animal Crossing, characters speak English, their voices can be adjusted using sliders. This makes things a lot more interesting in some ways. Like the Sims, you can customize a character's personality.

Anyway, it's addictive. There's nothing quite like it from what I have played. It is sufficiently unique from other games of similar genres.

[Julius Seeker]

Shovel Knight is fantastic! It is one of the best games I have ever played.

Take Megaman 2, Zelda 2, River City Ransom, Ducktales, and Super Mario Brothers 3, and combine elements of them - and you get this really awesome game! They did a really fantastic job of it. It kind of reminds me of Faxanadu on steroids so far.

I got the Wii U version, but I think my next playthrough will be on the 3DS version.

[Julius Seeker]

I played a lot of Dwarf Fortress over the last little bit before the release of the next version of it. The invasions mode I believe is next on the schedule according to the site - that means taking an army from your site and invading another site. This could make things very interesting as you'll now be able to have a much larger impact on the overall history of the world.

[Don]

Playing Touhou: Riverbed Soul Saver while waiting for the new DOTP and Civ. Can download it here http://th-jss.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/20 ... -769f.html for the link to 1.00a and the 1.00b patch but you may have some dubious ads to navigate through. This isn't one of the official games but it's probably better designed than the official ones. I can't get past stage 2 on easy before the game errors out so maybe the patch fixes it, though you can just play it on normal instead. The regular stages are way too dependent on suppressing enemies before they fire but the bosses are actually quite interesting. The control is standard shift to slow down, Z to shoot, X for bomb, but hold down X when gauge is full and you still have a bomb to go to hyper mode where everything dies instantly.

And if you know your Japanese imperial mythology from King of Fighters or Naruto, there's a lot of fun stuff related to that since the theme of this game is imperial mythlogy.

Speaking of which, the new DOTP says you can build your own deck. I wonder how that'll work out. Will this actually be like more flexible version of Magic Online?