The Official WTF are YOU playing right now thread

[CIT Seven Force]

Now that Rockman 9 and 10 have been released on disc (formerly digital only games), Hard Corps: Uprising is the next I would like a physical copy of. Maybe as a compilation with other digital-only Konami games (Akumajou Dracula: Rebirth/Harmony of Despair, Gradius Rebirth etc)?

"Konami" is the operative word here.

I don't think it's gonna happen.

[zinger]

Late to the party as usual, but: Dark Souls, got damn! So satisfying on so many different levels! Especially during the beginning of the game, when you're still low-level, have shit gear, and are still trying to figure out the mechanics; the world just feels so vast and wonderfully dangerous! Art direction and atmosphere is spot on. I'm usually quick to dismiss a game as soon as I can smell exploitable farming/level grinding, but Dark Souls is a no-nonsense hardcore title no doubt! (To call it "very difficult" would be an exaggeration though, I'd say "challenging" at most) What an amazing game. I'd love to know how it compares to Demon's Souls.

I actually got Dark Souls 2 immediately after beating DS, which seems to be mediocre in comparison, so I won't bother with it any more. Although they obviously messed up a bunch of things quite badly, part of the reason I was disappointed with / couldn't get into it because was probably beacause the novelty factor had worn off. I'm really hoping Bloodborne is distinct and well-designed enough (or that future From titles will be) to properly engage me.

[RadiantSvgun]

Demon souls- played though this again before the shut down the servers, it still stands as the best in the series to me.

Dimahoo- I have been on a Raizing kick lately and I seem to be better just dropping a cold credit. Finally broke 1mill.

Armed Police Batrider- hitting a few extends but still need more practice as I’ve been getting torn up on the sky high stage.

[zinger]

Nice picks. Also, do the online features do much for the games? I played DkS offline, but only because I don't have a Gold membership (or whatever it's called).

I've been playing DDP DFK quite a lot lately. It's fun, but damn... the loli voice-overs are so annoying!

Also beat Ninja Gaiden Black on Hard and Very Hard mode a while back, which forced me to learn some more advanced techniques, and study enemy behaviour better. Very much worthwhile! I doubt I'll go for a Master Ninja mode clear though... First stage is brutal (although probably also the hardest, due to the lack of upgrades, guillotine throw etc)! I went back and compared it to NG2 afterwards, and there's no doubt in me now that NGB is the superior game... by far!

[schadenfreude]

Very nice. I beat Ninja Gaiden Black on Hard on my first playthrough (haven't tried non-Black NG yet), and it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I remember it being very painful in the beginning because I hadn't figured out the game yet, but past getting stuck for a bit at a few bosses (I can't remember the name, but there's that floating chick in the church that took me ages to beat), the rest of the game was reasonable. I'd like to play Black or the original again someday because I had such a good time with it.

On my end, I've been playing some random arcade games and at home I've been working through Super Mario RPG, mostly for Japanese practice. I'm maybe halfway through it and already getting a little bored, but I'll probably stick it out because the game isn't too long.

[Gaijin Punch]

Is Ninja Gaiden Black the same caliber of difficulty as Shinobi on the PS2? That was a bit of a whore.

[schadenfreude]

Yeah, I've seen your other posts on the forum mentioning the difficulty. I haven't played that one yet, so I am not sure how it compares. What difficulty did you play it on? I'm pretty sure if you play NG on Normal and remember to block, most of the game's difficulty is reasonable, if not a tad easy. I think a lot of the "mainstream" complaints about the difficulty come from newbs who don't bother to block or dodge attacks and attack by button-mashing. Can you get away with this kind of behavior when playing Shinobi on Normal — or any difficulty for that matter?

[zinger]

I haven't played Shinobi either, except for maybe 20 minutes at a friend's house back when it got released, so I couldn't say. I agree about NG being painful in the beginning, but perfectly doable once you've gripped the basics. The doppelgangers and new boss rush at the end of Very Hard in NGB felt shockingly hard for me at first, but once you've figured out their behaviours and worked out some decent strategies they're not so bad. I even managed to clear the last couple of doppelgangers on VH without taking any damage.

[Gaijin Punch]

Shinobi on normal is pretty fucking hard. Not arcade hard, as you get save points and unlimited continues, but still controller-breaking shit all over the place. The thing is to really kill the bosses you have to grasp (and be good at) the chaining concept which us shooting nerds would welcome.

I forgot about some aspects of the game and did some googling around. The sword starts to kill you after it's been dormant a while, so that should give you an idea of what to expect. IE, no dicking around collecting crap. Not doing it for hours on end anyway.

[Iwazaru]

I love both Shinobi and Nightshade. Though Shinobi balanced better but Nightshade had expanded moveset. Finishing Shinobi on "normal" , perhaps, was my first "hard game" completion (as Devil May Cry 3 and Dark Souls 1-2 stay at "medium" spectrum of challenge? i dunno, and before getting interested in arcade/shmup/etc. games i preferred story-oriented games like Silent Hill series (and before that i mostly played 90s/00s pc exclusives); btw i adore Forbidden Siren 2 and need to continue first one...), followed by Armored Core: Last Raven.


I was playing Dragon's Dogma, but i took an arrow in the knee (i'm not ashamed of enjoying Skyrim in the past :p ) and since then i'm attempting DaiOuJou (currently can get to middle of 1-3) while randomly launching other stuff.

[schadenfreude]

I've been playing through some SFC games the past few weeks. The first one to note is Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima, which I would summarize as a poor man's Zelda: it has similar graphics, design, and I believe the same engine as Kamigami no Triforce, but it's not nearly as compelling. You're a group of three boys doing basically a treasure hunt on an island with other groups of children, and each boy has his own set of powers and equipment he gains as the game proceeds, all of which allow you to gain new items and open up near areas and whatnot. It's like your typical Metroidvania-Zelda style, but the main issue I have with it is that it's so linear. In a typical Zelda, you could wander around to areas you're not ready to tackle yet, but here the game unfolds in a very predictable and linear manner as you gain new items and techniques. And despite being able to split up your group of 3 to solve puzzles and help each other out from afar or whatnot, the puzzles are easy and tedious, easily the worst kind. Beyond the pretty graphics, I couldn't find much of a reason to keep playing past the first chapter. I assume the game gets harder later on, but every time I try to go back to it, I just feel disgusted.

I also played a bit of Dracula XX after beating the amazing Akumajou Dracula on SFC. Does anyone know the story behind why Konami sent a bizarre mashup remix port thing of Dracula X to the SFC? My guess is that they had a team of college interns for a few months and wanted to give them something to do, so they gave them the assets from Dracula X and told them to slap something together for the SFC crowd. A better theory is that Konami wanted to do a quick cash-in on the presumably more profitable SFC consumer base, so they decided to port a different take on Dracula X there to get new buyers as well as fans of the original involved.

Recently I started playing through Chrono Trigger to relive the nostalgia as well as practice Japanese. I don't have much stomach for JRPGs anymore, so we'll see how long this lasts.

[CTN]

On GameBoy I was finally playing 6 Golden Coins and it was a underwhelming experience. Super Mario Land is the stronger game and its linear structure lends it a better longterm appeal. The other game is Gradius 3 on SFC, which i also haven't played before. Yes, there is slowdown, but It is not the dealbreaker that some people make it. I quite like it.

Also the Super Donkey Kong series. I honestly like the art direction, especially of the first game, but maybe it's just nostalgia for the 90s

[schadenfreude]

6 Golden Coins is like Nintendo's attempt to port Super Mario World to the Game Boy but with really boring level design and characters. And monochrome graphics, viewed on a green vomit screen. I also prefer Super Mario Land, but they're both decent games for that crappy platform.

I think the SFC Donkey Kongs are the only "computer-rendered" 2D games whose graphics I like, much better than Mortal Kombat or Shinobi X or anything else I can think of. Maybe because the characters aren't human?

[zinger]

I like how the SFC Donkey Kong games look too! I also always had a soft spot for some of the games with sprites using pre-rendered graphics on the Neo Geo, such as Pulstar and Blazing Star. Again, not humans though.

Speaking of Chrono Trigger, I think that's the only JRPG I've actually finished. I remember being very annoyed because of how the battle music kept interfering with the atmosphere, and that insanely stupid racing mini game... But otherwise, pretty cool, no?

I've taken a pretty long break from gaming (over six months). For the past few weeks though, I've been playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. Gotta love Japanese developers doing Western fantasy aesthetics! Enemies and bosses in this game are rehashed a lot, much of the environment feels samey, and although the combat is cool it's also pretty simple, so it gets pretty monotonous after a while. The atmosphere is great, anyway, and I still very much enjoyed exploring all the different parts of Gransys. As a role-playing game, the characters, writing and storyline are pretty bad, so I wish they had worked harder on making the combat more interesting.

[schadenfreude]

Continuing my love for the Makaimura series, I recently one-credited the first loop of both Daimakaimura and Choumakaimura. I tried a bit to go for the 2-ALL on Daimakaimura, but I always died at the penultimate boss and thus unfortunately never got to see the final boss for myself. As for Chou, the game's a console exclusive, and it shows: way too many slow and meandering parts that never appeared in the arcade predecessors. That and the irritating but typical SFC slowdown made me stop playing the game immediately after clearing the first loop (though I kept playing to see how far I'd get; I think I got about halfway through). It's still an awesome game, but the slowdown and plodding design make me prefer the first two games.

I've confirmed that Chou's slowdown still exists in the PlayStation and Saturn ports, but has anyone tried the PS2 port in that Capcom collection, whatever it's called? I've read that it might be the only version of the game that removes the slowdown, possibly making it the definitive version.

I really want to get on with Gokumakaimura, but I don't have my PSP with me at the moment. Though I plan to play it on the big screen with the PSP dock and PS3 controller, so maybe emulation would work as a good alternative.

[CTN]

Been playing Dino Crisis 2, and honestly I like it. Should have been a Dreamcast game though.

[zinger]

I can barely remember anything from the little I played of Dino Crisis back when it was released. I love the Biohazard series, I love Shinji Mikami games, and I love dinosaurs, so I guess it must be a pretty good match for me... then again, every time I look up videos or screenshots from the series, it just looks so drab? And ugly? But like I said, I've barely played it at all, and that was almost 20 years ago. What is it that you like about it, CTN?

I've played a bunch of stuff over the past months, and speaking of Biohazard, I finally gave Biohazard 0 a try, which was the only game from the classic series I hadn't tried (and the single one I haven't beaten). Not impressed, but I gave up fairly quickly. Maybe I'm just fed-up with the formula, having played so many of them. It looks pretty good overall, but the characters are ugly and annoying, and the plot and setting weren't very intriguing either. Another important factor for why I don't care much for it is probably that the only innovation it brings is the dual-character system, which feels gimmicky, annoying, and breaks the immersion.

Red Seeds Profile: I call bullshit on this game. It's actually not all bad, but it's definitely not "so bad it's good, it's bad, it's amazing" or whatever its fanbase want you to believe, lol. The idea of a Twin Peaks-inspired version of Shenmue (with more focus on action and driving) is interesting of course, but I absolutely hated the "regular" action segments of the game, and you have to endure countless hours of them if you want to play through the entire game. Also, I'm a huge fan of Twin Peaks (especially the final third season), but mostly, RSP just feels like a cheap imitator of the series. I really didn't fall in love with any of the characters or environments in the game (the atmosphere in Silent Hill and Biohazard is so much cooler), although the actual story is pretty good for game I guess. The one thing I absolutely loved about the game though, strangely, was the QTE segments. I normally dislike QTE stuff, but in RSP they are absolutely incredible, and have to be experienced in order to be believed. Some of the most nerve-wrecking, exciting experiences I've had in a game for a while! So bottom line: drab game overall, with a couple of amazing segments that account for maybe 1% of the total play-time.

Sine-Mora: shitty euro-shooter. Looks good, but terrible in all other respects. Omega Five: pretty damn solid horizontal STG from Natsume on the 360. Looks good, amazing soundtrack, solid mechanics and top-notch stage design. It's very short and very easy, but very much worthwhile regardless. Nin2-Jump: this is a bit more like what I had hoped Dynamite Headdy would be like, in terms of how it allows you to get much more creative with the grappling mechanics. Too bad there are so few stages. Too bad the stages are so short. And too bad the graphics are so simple and unvaried. Feels like a mini-game in the end, but a pretty solid one no doubt.

I also started playing the La-Mulana remake which is super-cool, but... I had to take a break, because I'm stuck, and it's pretty much driving me insane. Love everything about this game, except that the puzzles are perhaps a bit too hard. I'm guessing I'm roughly half-way through the game, and I have absolutely no idea how to progress from there. I think mapping out every single room including all their clues and murals and so on with regular pen and paper might be helpful (I did that in order to solve one of the puzzles), but I wish I had done so from the start, because I've already done a ton of exploring, and the world has grown pretty large.

[CTN]

Dino Crisis 2 really benefits from it combo system and very fast paced gameplay.
It's an action shooter and no survival horror game. The visuals are quite good but of course it will always be a PSX game.
Forrest stages are dominated by greens and browns, but that should be expected. The game also won't change the fact that concrete is grey. So the choice of colours comes with the environment. Metal Gear Solid didn't have much colours either.

Dino Crisis 2 is a highly polished late PSX game when better systems where already available or just around the corner, so it wasn't that successful. Dino Crisis 2 almost made it action game of the year in Germany only beaten by Metal Slug 3 (NG) and Silent Bomber (PSX).
I would love to see a successor on a more modern console.

It's about 3$ on eBay, imo worth a try.