What Video Games Are You Playing?

[lester1/2jr]

try copyright 1986 baby https://segadoes.com/2014/10/05/the-castle/ been playing this "The Castle" it's pretty fun. I beat Rastan Saga

[ER]

Dark Souls. Because some games are just as great six years later.

[lester1/2jr]

Castle is insane. I'm pretty sure it would take a good 4 hours to win. You can play for a very long time, take a wrong turn and you're just stuck and have to turn it off.

[ER]

We've been halfassedly messing around with No Man's Sky again since the latest update, which included:

A graphics upgrade for PS4, which did improve visuals, making the planets look less cartoon-ish and more...not quite realistic but more detailed.

A new merciless playable mode that gives you one life and one life only, and if you die for any reason, be it creature attack, accident, pirates, you begin from scratch and your quest to reach the center of the galaxy starts over. Basically it changes NMS from a video game to a simulation of real life.

The ability to construct, mod-out, and update planet rovers and dune buggies. Cool but....isn't that like driving over what you've been flying above for the last half year?

All in all No Man's Sky didn't deserve the snowballing hate it received last year, but it is not and never can be made to be what it was originally sold as being, and what everyone who bought it wishes it was, which is a universe simulator. It is hamstrung by limitations in software in this age, or at least hamstrung by what a designer can give you for the price. A program let loose to throw together planets from random code cannot generate a world that matches what the human brain could engender. Species encountered wind up looking like they were pieced together from loose collections of spare parts, rather like the old Cootie game, or this frankly awesome old art toy I found at a yard sale as a kid called The Mighty Man & Monster Maker. A tusk here, an insect leg there, the body of a deer, the scales of a snake, spider eyes and an antler on the back, and voila, that's life form 5,660.

Planets also have one climate pole to pole, no equatorial and polar variations. There is no snow, no waterfalls or running rivers, no sand dunes, no fruit trees, no coral reefs, no tides, no tundra, no morning dew, no rainbows, no icicles or glaciers or blizzards, just one single temperature/biome planetwide, and that temperature is procedurally generated, and sometimes becomes absurd when you see woolly life forms on a planet where it is eighty degrees centigrade, or blooming lush tropical flowers on a world where the ambient temps are minus forty Celsius.

What NMS does do well is....well, quite a few things. It gets horizons right, and traveling above a small moon can make it seem like you can reach out and touch the horizon's edge. It provides simulations of lovely sunrises and sunsets. Every so often it throws together enough elements "just right" to make a planet that's interesting and not just a dead stone surface floating in space. We have been to worlds that resembled Hawaii, Scotland, Norway...but these pop up about 1/2 of 1% of the time.

Likewise the roll of the dice has let us encounter what seemed a variation of T-Rexes, these interesting flying fish, some herd animals, and in a few cases towering mushrooms the size of stadiums have made appearances.

Mainly, though, this game is a big empty zone of space filled with dead planets and moons, repeating asteroid belts, and species that you've seen near clones of before. You are utterly, utterly alone, repeating the same Minecraft-like tasks in order to reach the next planet, where you mine more raw materials to get you to the next location to mine materials to get you to the next location, to mine materials to get you to the next location, to....

This game is a slightly attractive sow's ear.

[AoTFan]

Currently on Just Cause 3, and boy am I in a world of trouble. See, I am a terrible at shooting and Just Cause 3 is shooting with Michael Bay thrown into the mix. Gonna be interesting to say the least.

Hehe.. remember a quote from Honest Trailers about that one... "The game that tells realistic physics to go %#$ itself!"

[AoTFan]

Let's see, me, often I bounce around a lot on video games, that or I'll become SUPER obsessed with one game, play it for weeks non-stop, then toss it away, never to play again until months (years) later.. if at all.  GOG (Good Old Games) had a sale, so with some pocket change I had I snagged The Complete Ultima 7, Startopia, Saint's Row the Third and Dead Space, all for just a little over $12!  

For the most part, I've been obsessive over Saint's Row the Third.  Holy crap, that game is NUTTY!  It's just like the critics say, you basically take GTA and turn up the "WTF" meter to "off the scale".  There's a scene early in the film that recreates the "free fall" scene from Shoot 'Em Up, where the main character is falling through the sky, dodging cargo from the plane we just escaped from, shooting at bad guys, all the while trying to catch up with and save Shaundi, his second (third?) in command.  He even lampshades how ridiculous part of the situation is by going, "How much s**t was on that plane??!?"

Then for the next mission, I get a freaking drone that can call down MISSILE STRIKES on my enemies.  And this is like, only fifteen or so minutes into the game.  

Also played Dead Space for a bit too, but I dunno, I gotta say, so it wasn't exactly that scary to me.  When the creatures first attacked my character I was more p**sed off than scared.  I mean, at this point I didn't have a weapon, so I had to run (which the computer helpfully telling me "Press shift to run") but even this guy's "run" speed felt like he was moving through syrup.  It's like, "WTF guy???  Move your ass!!"  Still, didn't get too far in that one until I flipped over to SR3... I'll probably come back to it later.

[Leah]

Let's see, me, often I bounce around a lot on video games, that or I'll become SUPER obsessed with one game, play it for weeks non-stop, then toss it away, never to play again until months (years) later.. if at all.  GOG (Good Old Games) had a sale, so with some pocket change I had I snagged The Complete Ultima 7, Startopia, Saint's Row the Third and Dead Space, all for just a little over $12! 

For the most part, I've been obsessive over Saint's Row the Third.  Holy crap, that game is NUTTY!  It's just like the critics say, you basically take GTA and turn up the "WTF" meter to "off the scale".  There's a scene early in the film that recreates the "free fall" scene from Shoot 'Em Up, where the main character is falling through the sky, dodging cargo from the plant we just escape from, shooting at bad guys, all the while trying to catch up with and save Shaundi, his second (third?) in command.  He even lampshades how ridiculous part of the situation is by going, "How much s**t was on that plane??!?"

Then for the next mission, I get a freaking drone that can call down MISSILE STRIKES on my enemies.  And this is like, only fifteen or so minutes into the game. 

Go and play Saints Row 2, I find it much more funnier and better than Saints Row the Third.

[Zapranoth]

Some Nethack...  learning to play Endless Sky, that's been fun.  (Remember Escape Velocity, anyone?)

Some Warcraft III and Starcraft 2...

Have several other games to choose from to play, including Pillars of Eternity, Aquaria (never did finish it, only got a little ways in, should play that one it was so pretty and well done), would like to play Forgotten Worlds again too (need a proper controller to play it though!).... umm....

[Alex]

Found myself starting up X-Com 2 again. Time to name lots of troopers after people I know and watch them get gunned down in a hail of green plasma fire I guess while they in return can't hit the broad side of a barn. While they are standing inside the barn.

Kristi has gotten used to hearing my cries of anguish as my perfectly laid out ambushes miss the alien patrols completely.

[Olivia Bauer]

[WingedSerpent]

My ps2 is still working but the HDMI port for my ps3 is apparently broken.  So while I look for some place to get it fixed I've decided to try a few PS2 games I missed and aren't on the playstation store.

Right now, I'm playing Dark Cloud.  Its a fun mix of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Tim and Sim City.  

[Pacman000]

Sneaky Snakes, a frustrating platformer for the GameBoy, sort of a sequel to the NES game Snake Rattle and Roll.

Faceball 2000, a GameBoy port of MIDI Maze, an early 3D game.

[Leah]

Hollow Knight, a metroidvania game that's hard as Shovel Knight, but with different elements.

[AoTFan]

For the most part, I've been obsessive over Saint's Row the Third.  Holy crap, that game is NUTTY!  It's just like the critics say, you basically take GTA and turn up the "WTF" meter to "off the scale".  There's a scene early in the film that recreates the "free fall" scene from Shoot 'Em Up, where the main character is falling through the sky, dodging cargo from the plant we just escape from, shooting at bad guys, all the while trying to catch up with and save Shaundi, his second (third?) in command.  He even lampshades how ridiculous part of the situation is by going, "How much s**t was on that plane??!?"

Then for the next mission, I get a freaking drone that can call down MISSILE STRIKES on my enemies.  And this is like, only fifteen or so minutes into the game. 

Go and play Saints Row 2, I find it much more funnier and better than Saints Row the Third.

You know, I've heard that from several people.  I guess SR3 has a bit of a broken fanbase in that regards. 

Actually, I DID download SR2 but I can't get the damn to work right.  For some reason my character will not climb which makes escaping from the prison in the first damn mission impossible.  I installed a mod that was supposed to fix it, but no go.   Luckily, I got the game for free (and, yes, legally nonetheless!) so I'm not too upset about it.

[kakihara]

I have finished Legend of Zelda!!! It only took me 30 years! Yes, the nes version, go ahead and laugh. Ive made many attemps throughout my life but i just dont have the patients or time or attention span. Ive bought several copies of this gold plated 8-bit cartridge, and they never worked. Nes cartridges can be finnicky, especially zelda. Every now and then i would pop in zelda to see if it worked. Often, i would just get solid red or green screnn, sometimes a pixelated mess that would drone the first note of the title song like an accordian being sat on. Sometimes i would get a pixelated mess and could hear the theme song perfectly. So i would curse the game and throw it back back in the box. Arrrgh! Then...one day.....it actually worked! I squeeled with joy! So i ended up playing thru this game and beat it! I finally have some closure. I will admit the ending left something to be desired, but i finally beat the damn thing!