[Broco]

Okay, let's get the ball rolling on this one. For anyone who doesn't know, this is the thread where we idly chat about games we've played lately but aren't really worth a new thread of their own.

In other words, this is the thread without end, which much like my snazzy new avatar, goes on and on and on, in defiance of both Godwin's Law and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Let's try to get this above 50 pages again, folks!

[Broco]

I've been playing Digidrive again lately. Although it took me a while to "get" it initially, now it's the one I keep going back to -- it's the richest game in the Bit Generations series.

One of the many unusual things about Digidrive is there's no visible guideline whatsoever to what constitutes a "good" meterage, even though the central goal of the game is to maximize that number. You only get unexpected prizes after beating a limit. When I started playing, I felt I'd gone sky-high if I achieved 500m; but two weeks later I felt a game was an abject failure if I got less than 10km. So I can never feel "done" with Digidrive.

In some ways this a throwback to score in early 80s arcade games, but it feels very modern. Instead of score we have "meters", to fit with Digidrive's metaphor (if I'm allowed to use that word in the context of the most senseless and abstract game I've ever played). Where score in old arcade games generally went up linearly, rewarding you for patience and survival, Digidrive's meterage goes up exponentially relative to how long you "wound the drive" before "releasing" it. So there is this pokerlike dynamic, where if you play conservatively your meterage steadily goes up but very slowly, whereas if you take big risks you can very quickly reach stratospheric heights but risk losing all.

I keep beating my old records by large margins and now I'm thinking there's really no limit to how high you can go if you play well enough. Right now my record is about 33km -- my games keep collapsing around the 25km mark for some reason -- but I know I can easily get up to 100km if I keep up a doubling streak for 10 minutes or so without screwing up. I'm wondering if there's a prize for 100km, or if the developers figured nobody would get that high and didn't bother. I also believe a million meters is possible and perhaps has already been done, though unfortunately there isn't much an Internet community to compare performances with.

[schild]

[dongle]

Trauma Center: Second Opinion

The 6th episode is pretty hard.

[stotelheim]

How's resistance? Does the new Dualshock work for FPS games?

[GcDiaz]

Finally put down GoW and have been finishing up FFXII. Well, "finishing" doesn't nearly cover how much shit I have left to do, but I'm back on track at least.

Today I went into my Start menu for some reason and I caught sight of all the PC games I haven't touched in months. Good, wholesome games in need of some attention. Don't worry babies, daddy's coming home soon!
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Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[unhappy days]

i've been playing kirby's pinball land on my gameboy, and it isn't very fun.

[duomo]

icwolf

ALSO: kirby's pinball land was pretty fun at the time!

[Iammadmak]

I played a lot of Burnout Revenge with my future roomate

[BalbanesBeoulve]

I'm playing Yggdra Union. Fuck this game. It's good for 2 or 3 fights. But then it pulls some fucking bull shit where it makes the enemies invincible, and you have to take a morale loss. Which is fucking a big deal because you are very limited in how many morale healing items you get.

Seriously, i'm so fucking pissed. Fuck you sting.

[GrimmSweeper]

Just wait until you fight the two Roses. Due to how it's set out, at least one of your units will be taking unavoidable morale loss in the second part of the battle. In fairly large chunks, too.

I'm stalled on this part.

[BotageL]

Fuck you, Balbanes. You don't know what Yggdra Union-related pain is. Heck, you probably don't have Unions or Skills or anything available to you yet. Now, battlefield 16 - that's where the hurt is.

You need to take out the magician guarding the cannon with a flying axe unit (and only that unit can reach the magician!) while advancing your troops against armored cavalry who are on their favored turf (Road) so they get Holy Jesus God Defense and are basically unkillable, then make you feel like a complete tool by unleashing their special attack which cuts your troops down to the same number as theirs (i.e. 1) so they can crush you easier because 1 super-powered cavalry leader is worth an entire fucking unit of anything else.

I love this game.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[professor_scissors]

After my first loss at Yggdra Union, I was smart enough to BAIL OUT.

[Intentionally Wrong]

Sneak King's actually better than I expected it to be.
I just finished Knytt's main objective; now I'm playing around with extras like the hang glider.
Later tonight I'll be trying Cortex Command with my wired Xbox 360 controller.
Tomorrow morning I get to redeem my raincheck for a Wii from Wal-Mart, and I can finally use this Zelda disc I have lying around.
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JSNLV is frequently and intentionally wrong.

[dmauro]

I've been playing the hard campaign on Advance Wars II on the subway. It's good to get back to AWII after having played through AW:DS. The double CO thing could get pretty annoying.

I got home and played some Knytt, which is awesome so far. And then I got my roommate playing DK Jungle Beat. He was pretty incredulous at first, but I was able to get him to play by leaving the room and he didn't want to put it down after that.

I also played a bit of Under Defeat, mostly practicing on the 1-3 boss, but I didn't even make it there when I tried playing through. I recently picked up a VGA box for my DC because I was't able to play UD since there was too much lag on the DLP HDTV with a 480i signal, so it was good to be able to get back into it and with much cleaner graphics.
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[Wall of Beef]

I played Boppin' today. Awful old Bust-A-Move/Snood type of game with awful controls, and some awful character designs. Its made famous because when your character screws up it kills itself. Look to Dongles avatar to see what I am talking about.
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[BalbanesBeoulve]

[yellowoystercult]

[Mr. Business]

I decided to start up an AHL server to explore some of its more amusing maps, and someone joined my server out of the blue. He was possibly the only other AHL player on steam. We played a round in the skylounge. Man, it was fun. Anyone wanna play some AHL with me?
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Taking a break.

[Lasakon]

December is first person shooting month.
Rainbow Six: Vegas is a lot of fun online (and off).
Mr. Business, I would be down for AHL. I've always enjoyed it more than The Specialists.

[Kipple]

I rented Call of Duty 3 for the Wii.

I really want to play a good first-person shooter on the Wii, because I believe the controls, if done right, could make the experience transcendently immersive.

Call of Duty 3 is not like that. Call of Duty 3 has a million little annoying minigames buried within it (planting bombs, using a crane, fighting a dude hand-to-hand, driving a truck) where you use the remote in some wacky way. They suck, and tear you out of the experience—the actions almost never mirror what you see on the screen, and in my experience the game fails to correctly register your motions (especially motions made with the nunchuk) almost 75% of the time. I have to play something else now, to reassure myself that the Wii controllers actually do work, that it's just the shitty game and not the system.

The shooting itself is fun and all, but everything else sucks. The FPS minigame in Super Monkey Ball: BB is better.

[Ayumi]

Games I've been playing:


Zelda: TP
Wii Sports
Sneak King/Big Bumpin' (STFU)
Pinky: St Kira Kira Music Hour
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[Drem]

I recently started FXII. I decided to take on the Nidhogg mark in Bhujerba, and it forced me to learn my first quicken mid-battle because it knocked me down to only one character left, who was also close to death. The 1-combo quicken killed the thing, and I figured it pretty useful in tight situations, so I spent the next few hours building other characters towards getting quickens so I could try combos. Last night, I got to a boss battle against some bird thing in the Yensa Sandsea, and I decided to the try my newly acquired quickens and pulled a 5-hit combo. The boss died instantly. I promptly turned off the game and decided never to use quickens again.

[boojiboy7]

[Brock]

In what little time I have for games, I've been playing A Link to the Past again.

I'm at the, uh, water temple, I guess. I forgot how much it sucks to take so much damage once you get to the Dark World.

[firenze]

[Gironika]

[Clueless Gamer]

Scurge: Hive. I'm in excerpt 3. Fast and funny game. I wish for a sequel.

And I'm playing Knytt right now. I'm not even looking for the lost items. I'm just wandering around, and it's sort of a relaxing experience.
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[kerobaros]

At work yesterday, I did some Knytt, like everyone else seems to be. The ambience sounds and the music make it quite pretty; especially when I wandered into an underground area with some waterfalls? I was compelled to just sit there for a few minutes, being happy. It is a rare feeling, but good.

Last night, while on the phone with a friend, I fired up some Super Star Soldier, some Soldier Blade, some Final Soldier, and such. I haven't tranced into a shooter for a while, so it was pretty pleasant as well! Then, Devil's Crush, 'cause pinball is win.

[HermanBloom]

Been playing FFXII when I get a chance. Need to finish that before Zelda gets here, but I'm slowly losing interest in it. Got to some city of pirates and can't be bothered with wondering around it. Will hopefully crack on with it this weekend though.

[HermanBloom]

Wow, I need an Avatar.

[jachbla]

Picked up Polarium Advance the other day. It makes my brain hurt but it's fun!

Also, Sneak King. Freaky and shallow.

Lego StarWars II. Great fun for my wife and I in co-op. Honestly, I can't see this being a fun solo game.

I bought Sonic 360 and it depresses the shit out of me.

[showka]

[kthorjensen]

Still inching my way through God Hand. I have to fight the temptation to restart the game all of the time - I already did it once (after finishing the first set of levels and learning you get better rewards if you don't continue as much) but because some part of me believes I'm so much better now that I could whip through it and get even more cash this time around - but I can't. I gotta finish it. The wife needs the TV for Gilmore Girls.

It's a great game.
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Go to this website, you (person who is loved)

[Clueless Gamer]

[BalbanesBeoulve]

[DaleNixon]

Doom RPG is surprisingly good!

[GrimmSweeper]

Deffo! Apparently there's a chance to fight a secret boss after the normal "kill the Cyberdemon" battle at dlevel 20. If you don't mind being spoiled, you fight one of the creator's of Doom.

I played it two or three years ago, finished off the Cyberdemon and forgot about it until about two weeks back. Reading up on the development makes me interested enough to try my hand again!

And promptly suck me back into rogue-likes. Good thing for the holidays.

[Deets]

I tried out Juka via emulation when it first got released in Europe. My impressions were that it had damn nice music (obviously), but kind of a really not-so-great everything else. You have to make potions, for example, in order to do just about anything. You do this by running up to various plants scattered around the map, holding a button and pressing left and right to shake elements free. The elements vary according to the plant you gathered them from, and you need x of each element in order to make a potion, so this takes a while and isn't interesting at all, depending on the situation. To make matters worse, the interface is woefully inept as far as allowing the player to quickly reference how to make each potion. First you have to open up one screen to check what you need, then go into the potion making screen, which requires a bunch of other button presses to get to. I was surprised by how little thought seemed to have gone into such an important part of the game. Also apparently the European version was unfinishable due to a bug or something?

[rabite gets whacked!]

I have this theory that Juka wants to be played in an entirely different frame of mind. I have not been able to compell myself to do this yet, but I'd like to someday.

[tacotaskforce]

Guilty Gear X Advance is surprisingly competant. I was expecting a GBA release of the GG Petite games, but it's an exact port of GGX only with smaller sprites. The game would be really stellar if the DS let you map L and R to the X and Y buttons, but it doesn't, because Nintendo is staffed by cunts.