[special blend]

finished last story

it's really awesome, a real rollercoaster ride

it's pretty much a new and good final fantasy, with some of that ff cheese thrown on top

lots of good moments/setpieces, and the final battles will have that classic uematsu metal pumpin through your veigns

try it
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[tiburon]

[GrimmSweeper]

Well I played an hour of it previously eight months back before my old graphics card black screened on me. I figured if I was going to install an 8 gig game once again (with Canadian's crappy bandwidth limits from the major providers), I'm damn well going to be finishing it.

[ChairTax]

Played through Syndicate (2012) on PC. Loved the sound design and mostly liked the cribbed, blue-for-yellow swapped Human Revolution environments.

The best part of the game is absolutely Starbreeze's secret Swedish immersion talents. I mean, those guys just rock the first-person perspective. I took something like 50 screenshots all evidencing their knack for body awareness and movement.

Here's a nicer (albeit bloomy) one from the first few minutes when the HUD isn't as crowded

[Loki Laufeyson]

bulk slash is really really good.
elan doree is pretty good too.
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[CubaLibre]

I dunno about that kind of stuff. I mean yeah, I agree in theory. But limb- and digit-perfect body awareness in an FPS actually always threatens to unimmerse you, because it's always beyond your control - they are tiny seamless cutscenes. I still think the best bodypresence FPS is Dark Messiah of Might & Magic: you have full control of each of your physical abilities and the canned animations (like the backstab) are completely consistent and reliable, so you control when they trigger. There's some general sense of weight and inertia and movement that translates almost 1:1 through kb/m control schemes that peaked in, say, Modern Warfare 1 and 2, but increasing detail is too baroque and you no longer feel as in control of your avatar.

diplo said something nice to this effect in the... I think it was the realistic FPS level design podcast, when we were talking about navigating simulated natural environments. His point was that walking through, say, a forest in real life is so engrossing because there's hundreds of tactile details being communicated to you: ground contours on the soles of your feet, brushing against shrubs as you walk past, grass on your shins, and whatever else. The upshot was that natural environments in videogames have to strive to some kind of grandiosity or uniqueness or weirdness because the impossibility of transmitting that information to the player through a screen and speakers means an atom-for-atom recreation of a real forest would be far more boring in the game than in reality. Syndicatesque "body presence" animations are an attempt to transmit more of this information but the artificiality and distance from control it creates takes me out of the game.
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[ChairTax]

You're definitely right that it's something that can very quickly unimmerse you. And given the fact that Syndicate relies very heavily on scripted, tap-f sequences that move slowly and that you can utterly break by, y'know, not tapping f, it's not something that works always. I'm willing to concede pretty much all points I quickly made about its immersive effects give what you said. It's something I've certainly been wrestling with over the few days I played it. That said, I found several of these sequences to work and to work very effectively. Perhaps I'm not even really thinking of immersion per se. Because it's not exactly bringing me into the game and/or causing me to have some sort of 1:1 mindmeld with the character. (In this case, Kilo.)

So yeah, for now I'd happily concede to you here. And regardless, there's an undeniable verve to way these body presence animations are done that I found really attractive. And, outside of the actual body presence animations (a nice term, I think), I love Starbreeze's active gun positioning and that's something that I've always enjoyed from them. It's less floaty in Syndicate than in Butcher Bay or Dark Athena (moving to The Darkness next) and they eke out some really great depth effects when appropriate. Their attention to detail with this is definitely something I find worth praising.

[Rud31]

Cuba have you messed around in Battlefield 3 at all? I'd say your body feels pretty good in that.
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[luckystrike]

I got a copy of Madden 13 for ps3 for Christmas. Anyone have that game and want to start an online coaching career league with me?

Also, what's with interceptions in this game? It's like every DB and Corner is Deion fucking Sanders or wearing glue-gloves or something. My first preseason game Vs. the Browns and there was like 7 INTs in the first half alone.

[thestage]

Played a couple hours of Crimson Shroud on my friend's 3DS. I would definitely buy this game if I had that system.

[Mikey]

I agree with Chairtax that Starbreeze are among the better developers in doing the body-presence thing.

[another god]

[tiburon]

[CubaLibre]

[A New Duck]

I finished Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days last night. I'm not very good at the game (partly owing to the fact it's actually my first third-person cover shooter, I'm sure), but I'm pretty amazed with it. What an ugly, beautiful game.
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3DS/PokéMagic Friendz Code: 1289-8272-6032

[elvis.shrugged]

My family gifted me DJ Hero (which I only asked for because you can play as Daft Punk and why not) and Mortal Kombat 9 for Christmas. Both are surprisingly great!
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[luckystrike]

[Mikey]

Oh hey, Dustforce is pretty tight.

[ChairTax]

Gonna retroactively give thanks to community here (since sycophant's reminding me) considering I played Dog Days for the first time about about three months ago and I've since played through it about 7 times. Twice by myself, once with my friend in Florida, another time with my friend in Boulder, again with a friend in Germany, and twice with a friend, his brother, and some beers. Had a really great time each time, but unfortunately burnt myself out on it trying to spread the love. I'm sure there are other excellent examples out there, but that game really excels at having all the incidental dialogue sync up with the action/your movement. It works especially well when you've got a friend who's willing to milk sequences by manipulating the camera for particular effects or by walking slower/not sprinting because it seems more appropriate. Was interesting watching all these different people react to the game.

Chief takeaway experience for me was the moment in my first playthrough that I started gunning down innocent civilians because I thought they might be armed and I felt like I was going insane.

[Rud31]

I didn't know Azel Panzer Dragoon RPG (Saga) had an Earthbound/D2/Contact/etc ending.

Still too many blue corridors.
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[Swarm]

Rudie did ya do all the sidequests?! The development of Azel is fascinating, like how one guy committed suicide because of devtime stress and that the game could have only been made on the Saturn as apposed to the PlayStation because the Saturn has a much cloudier, muddier color palette. I don't think I want to play it again, but man parts of that game are fantastic, especially the music and the animation of the dragon/petting your dragon.

[Rud31]

I did a few of the sidequests, but playing a game in a second language does lot towards NOT GOING TO DEAL WITH ANY BULLSHIT. Not saying the side quests are bullshit, but if some guy is a town is like "I want some baffomodads", You run right past that guy.
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[allensmithee]

i am playing thru Yakuza: Dead Souls. it is all i did today. i haven't done this since... Ever?

it feels surprisingly good to hunker down and waste an entire day. damn.

the shooting in this game is Fun and i will miss it when i'm done.
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[another god]

[L]

[The King]

Seems like they did.

Try and jump over a fully extended piranna plant from the ground the pipe is coming out of.
NES I can make it.
SNES I can't.

There's nothing drastically different, but there are little changes that make speeding through less fun.
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[Deets]

[cake]

I just accidently stayed up for 4 hours playing a game! By this metric, Saints Row the Third is about twice as good as APB: Reloaded.

Weird name tho'.

[Felix]

after failing to make much progress at all in La-Mulana after having never played the original and buying the remake on Day 1 (my crowning achievement up to now had been finding the Mine Cart boss and being unable to really scratch him), I looked up the location of the rolling shuriken, the holy grail, and the life orb from the mausoleum. Now I'm moving at a really good clip and enjoying myself! Shame I was this cowardly, though.

[GcDiaz]

[Felix]

we were talking about it when it came out! I eventually quit because I wasn't enjoying the invade-the-enemy-headquarters missions all that much (the shooting isn't quite compelling enough for that to be all you're doing), but outside of that it's pretty impressive just how much stylish dumb fun can be had. I really really hope it raises the bar for GTAV in terms of interaction with the game world, because my problem with those games has always been that moving around isn't interesting enough on its own unless you're in the middle of a car chase or something, and "moving around" is supposed to be 90% of the appeal, depending on how much you can appreciate a metropolis simulator for its own sake. a jetbike obviously helps with that.

to be honest, I wish they'd put more parkour stuff into GTA. between that and tightening up the shooting, there might finally be enough meat to it for me to enjoy the production (which I always do, up to a point).

[:cryface:]

uh, spec ops: da line is a pretty good shooter? i'm having fun blastin' dudes and issuing commands. i guess i'm supposed to be feeling bad but it's kind of hard when the subtlety makes it borderline parody. it'd probably be 10x better if they weren't constantly trying to brag about how they did these things that contribute to the thing.

awesome, the levels always have you going down, stop having party members yell it

[Mikey]

[parker]

I've tried but I just can't get past the dildonarrative dissonance
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[probably fine]

If anyone has the ability to make and email me a video file of the saints row iii auto tuned character saying (something along the lines of) "you philistine, what do you know about art?!", I will love you forever (but seriously, don't put yourself out).
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[Mr Mustache]

A friend gave me his old Xbox360, and I've been playing a bit of Red Dead Redemption. It's pretty, but awfully boring and never shuts up. Think I may be sick of the GTA formula.
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[luvcraft]

Played a bunch of King of Dragon Pass on a long car trip yesterday. Ragequit when I realized that success and failure on the most important events in the game (which you have to succeed to progress) is entirely random chance, and preparation is meaningless, and the only reliable way to get through them is to just keep reloading and redoing one until you roll success. Then a while later I came to terms with this realization and played some more and got a lot further. Overall I think it's a pretty bad game.

Also played some Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery. I played the first chapter a few months ago, and finally got around to playing the second chapter yesterday, and will probably get around to playing the next chapter in a few months, too.

EDIT: To expand on S:S&S, I have two problems with it:

1: it mixes chunky faux-8-bit graphics with vector graphics, which always makes me think of bad sprite-ripped Newgrounds games.

2: the whole "ironic" writing thing gets old really quick.

3: That one-hit-kill surprise shot at the end of the triforce fight was pretty lame. I guess that's 3 things.

Anyway, I'm gonna stop bitching about iOS games now and go play Miasmata.
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[elvis.shrugged]

[Teflon]

[Jigsaw]

I got my copy of Shin Hokuto Musou last night, and have been playing it a fair bit since. I'm really liking it a lot!

The tedious upgrade system of the first game has been completely done away with, and the stages in the Legend Mode are much short and snappier - no more grinding away at enemies for 30 minutes only to maybe be rewarded with a neat cutscene. In the sequel there are plenty of cutscenes (conventional fully animated ones as well as somewhat animated motion comic type deals) to break up the monotony, not to mention do an infinitely better job actually telling the story than the first game ever did. Another major change is that Legend Mode only has one single campaign, and the choice of playable character changes depending on the chapter - so no more replaying levels with Ken, Mamiya and Rei simply because the three of them happened to appear in it; now you just play it the once, using the character of your choice. I'm excited to check out the Dream Mode and online stuff (though the latter will likely have to wait until the game is out in Europe; my PS3 barely functions online as it is so I doubt I'll find many good connections in a Japan-only game), which seems to have been similarly overhauled. Not to mention the significant increase in playable characters, of course.

If you're a Hokuto fan there's a lot to like about this game, and frankly with a lot less caveats than last time. To put it succinctly the game is very similar to the last one in many regards, but they've removed, improved, or otherwise remedied essentially everything that I hated about its predecessor. If you like Hokuto no Ken and/or the first game I'm pretty sure you're going to enjoy it.


For those who are interested, I'm trying to stream as much as I can on my Twitch channel - http://twitch.tv/jiggeh - so please feel free to tune in. I will also be posting my playthrough of the Legend Mode on Youtube (first couple of videos are being uploaded as we speak).

[Dark Age Iron Savior]