What are you playing?

[tSwitch]

Just got Red Dead Redemption GOTY and Heavy Rain: Director's Cut.

HOARS RAYSIN

[Moss.]

Chrono Trigger for the first time .-.

I'd be interested to know if you get anything out of it.

It took me a bit to get into and it kind of annoys me that even though I'm playing on PS3 it takes 10 seconds to go to the menu or start a battle, but I'm really really enjoying it so far. Just got back from the future for the first time and now I'm back in the middle ages.

Yeah, man, that PSOne remake was kind of awful. If you aren't too invested in it yet, I'd suggest switching out to a SNES ROM, or the DS version instead.

[strike]

disk load times kill ct for psx same goes for ff6 on the double disk

[Tezuka]

disk load times kill ct for psx same goes for ff6 on the double disk

Oh god I remember Final Fantasy V on PSX, holy crap Faris's pirate talk.

[Jules]

My play time is very limited, but when I do: The Binding of Isaac 


<3  <3 <3

[Dwarra?]

Isaac is fun, can be really frustrating though.

I just picked up Nier to tide me over until Guild Wars 2 comes out.

[tSwitch]

SOON.

[SirJackRex]

FINALLY.

Guild Wars 2, and so much of it.
Dark Souls Prepare To Die, it's very good but I'm dying quiet often. Been stuck on the Taurus demon are for an hour or so.

[Zylos]

Haven't had much time for gaming, but I've been getting into playing ShellShock Live with my mate when I've got a chance to during the evenings.

[Moss.]

Playing some Dead Island, and Persona 3 Portable. I have Xenoblade sitting in my Wii, but I haven't played it much yet.

Also, I finally beat Xenogears. Seriously, absolutely nothing even comes remotely close to having such a ridiculously complex and amazing story. Okay, maybe Mother 3, but the revelations in Xenogears are just jaw-dropping. I thought I couldn't be surprised by a story anymore, that I'd seen/heard it all, and that everything was a cliche by now.

I was fucking wrong.

[tSwitch]

Yeah, man, Xenogears is one of the best games evar.

[Arrow]

Dark Souls, friendly black fellows.

Started new game plus and reached level 100.

[Moss.]

Xenoblade Chronicles is seriously good, guys. Music is great, voice acting is phenomenal (and British!), the story is interesting and highly emotional WITHOUT BEING ALL JRPG-GAY-EMOTIONAL. Also, it's unexpectedly mature and dark. I'm 6 hours in, and they just killed off a character I thought was going to be a long-time party member. Seriously, I didn't see it coming, not even until the very last moment. I kept thinking "they'll save this person in time, they always do." And then BAM. Dead. But it was AWESOME.

The only thing you have to get past is the graphics, which really aren't that bad (think Final Fantasy XII), and the fact that party members are a little too chatty in battle.

But if that's enough to turn you away, then you suck, and who cares about your opinions.


And did I mention the battle system? It's a goddamn masterpiece. No random encounters, a brilliant combination of turn-based combat and tactical RPG combat (back attacks deal more damage, buffing/debuffing, etc).

Play this game.

[modern algebra]

Yeah, I loved Xenoblade! Best JRPG I've played in at least ten years.

I am playing Last Story now, which is also pretty good.

[Zylos]

What exactly is Xenoblade? Would you say it's closer to the Xenogears game or the Xenosaga series?

[Moss.]

Last Story is absolutely next on my list, I've heard amazing things about it as well.





Bayard, Xenoblade is directed by Tetsuya Takahashi, and developed by his studio, Monolith Soft.
Tetsuya Takahashi also directed Xenogears, and Xenosaga. He's the man behind the entire storyline, all the characters, and all that happens in Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade. He's the author, so to speak, but he also does a lot more. He's very talented. (Fun fact, he also did the graphic design for Final Fantasy V and VI, and Chrono Trigger.) And since I just beat Xenogeras, and how I'm playing Xenoblade, I'm in love with the guy.

That doesn't answer your question, huh?

Xenoblade is similar to both Xenogears and Xenosaga in that there's a lot of mystery, and a lot you don't know about the world you're in. There's a lot of forshadowing, hinting that tremendous and mind-bending things are going to happen (like in Xenogears and Xenosaga). You can tell it all came from the same director/studio simply because it's his style, not because of reused ideas. The storytelling is more like Xenosaga, I suppose, but only because now we have voice acting and better animation technology than Xenogears had to work with. I'm sure if Xenogears was remade, it would be more like Xenosaga, and Xenoblade. Oh, and by the way, the entire voice acting cast in British, and they're goddamn phenomenal. Very believable, especially when they emotional.

The art style is a bit more mature, though. Not as plasticky and HUGE EYES as Xenosaga I was. It IS a bit limited by the Wii hardware, though, but I honestly don't mind it's still very pretty to me.

The gameplay is a very interesting mix of common western AND eastern RPG ideas.
Battle System:
Turn based. Characters auto-attack at certain intervals. You control only one character at a time, but can switch outside of battle.
Characters have unique skills that can be used at any time, but have cool-down times until they can be used again.
Certain attacks cause "break," which stagger enemies for a few seconds. Enemies that have "break" status can be attacked with a "topple" attack, which knocks enemies over for a longer period of time. A final attack causes "daze," which renders an enemy unable to move/attack, but can only be effective if they're already toppled. No character has all three of these attacks, so you must coordinate.
The character you control can move around freely in battle. Certain skills must be used from certain angles to do more damage (i.e. side attacks, and back attacks).
Certain characters are made to draw aggro from enemies, allowing teammates to get behind and back attack.
The ally AI is pretty solid, I haven't had any real complaints.

No random encounters. Some enemies are docile, some will come attack YOU.



There are fetch quests, but none require you to actually return to the quest-giver, which saves you a lot of time. Also, they're 100% optional.
There is fast travel. Even within one map. Like, within one town. Fast travel to the commercial district, or to the military district. To save you time.
NPC's (and some enemies) have schedules based on what time it is. You can change what time it is whenever you want. To save you time.
NPC's (and your allies) have affinities. You help them, they help you. I've yet to see what kind of bonuses this will bring.
You can (choose) to cheer on your allies in battle, which raises their affinity.
Raising affinities with your allies allows for "heart to heart" moments, which tells more about the relationship between characters, and it just great to see.
There's tons of equipment/armor, and it all actually changes the appearance of your character. So if you get 1 "huge ass metal helmet" and equip it on your guy, he actually runs around with a huge metal helmet on his head (and in all the cutscenes!).


A little ranty, yeah? I'm loving this game, though.

[SirJackRex]

It's like a JRPG with western MMO features, and it's really good. I should continue it, but my Wii's disc drive has been acting up lately. I think I have it installed to a HDD...thank god for homebrew, really.

[chewey]

I ended up passing the controller to Rasse about 10 hours into the game and didn't end up playing it again. He played through so much that I didn't feel like getting back into it and learning all the new characters, so I just watched the rest of the game. It's pretty good. It's pretty similar to FF12, which I had finished for the first time right before Xenoblade came out in EU/Australia. The sidequests aren't so hot, I thought, since there are about a million of them.

[Moss.]

Yeah, the sidequests are really just "get X amount of this item" or "kill X amount of this monster" or "kill this super-powered version of this common monster," so they are pretty boring. BUT. If you're smart, you'll accept a ton of them before you move on with the story. Because most of them involve simply killing monsters that are on the way to the next area, which you're going to have to do anyway in order to move on with the story. It's especially nice since you never actually have to run back to the sidequest-giver when you complete it. So in other words, you get more cash and items, and it's not even out of your way.

Not that it would matter if it was out of your way, with fast travel.

[Zylos]

I want to play that really badly now. ._.

[Irock]

Like LadyJ, I've been playing Binding of Isaac too! I played it before but now I'm playing it every day. It's REALLY challenging. I just now made it to the The Depths after playing for a few days.

EDIT: I just reached and defeated Mom. B]!!!!

[strike]

Been playin id's Rage on xbox. I remember this game getting a lot of flack when it came out. I think it was like hypebullshit because I think it's pretty good and I never really paid attention to the hype in the firstplace.

why so much rage about rage is my question.

I heard it was short but it's still longer than say, call of shooty or most other shooters in the last 3 years. maybe people were just rushing through it or something

[tSwitch]

It's sorta short, and people were expecting it to be like fallout or borderlands, but since it's more shooter than RPG, they were disappoint.  It doesn't necessarily do anything 'badly' imo.

[SirJackRex]

I think I played it for over 15 hours. The last level was disappointing (it was definitelycut short) but the shooting was my probably favorite of any FPS this generation. enemies are really satisfying to kill and the weapon feedback is so good.

yeah basically don't do yourself a disservice and expect it to be like borderlands or fallout because it's not. it has some faltering hints of being an rpg but it's so obviously a pure shooter.

[EvilM00s]

I recently rediscovered this old PS game called Darkstone. I honestly don't know why I enjoy it so much, it's a blatant Diablo clone only with crappier graphics and some French-Canadian chick that they suckered into singing an in-game song because she didn't realize the english lyrics were so corny.

The controls are clunky and counter-intuitive and the quests are repetetive and formulaic. It has little replay value unless you want to  do all the menial quests and it's a pain in the ass to figure out what equipment is really good for you, especially after the first playthrough....

...and I love it.