What are you currently playing? 4.0

[gunswordfist]

Me and my baby brother finally beat Little Big Planet early this morning. Blah blah too floaty, blah blah too kiddy. I don't care what anyone says, it's a good game. Now I just need to beat Infamous.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been playing Halo Anniversary today. People can say what they want about the franchise and how overrated it is, and PC gamers can loathe its existence, but as far as I'm concerned this game proves to me that the first Halo game has aged really well.   Even after having played so many modern shooters, I do still feel that this particular Halo game has a unique charm to it that was never really emulated in any other FPS game that I have ever played, including the Halo series' own sequels and spin-offs, so in that regard its still feels fresh to me after coming back to it since the last time I played it, which was a few years ago.

To be fair, I do think it shows its age in a number of ways, but none of them are significant enough to hamper my enjoyment of the game as a whole. One thing that I did notice was that this game is A LOT easier on Normal mode than I remember it being. Like I said, though, its been years since I've played it and I feel that, while I'm certainly not great at the FPS genre, I've played enough of the Halo sequels to be above average at Halo games in general, so I do feel that I'm genuinely good at Halo's single-player, which is why Normal no longer poses any real challenge to me. I may just go ahead and switch to Heroic later on, but even on Normal the game is still enjoyable.

[gunswordfist]

My brother sent me:

Mafia II

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed II (Yay!)

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Call of Juarez Bound By Blood

Army of Two The 40th Day

Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions

Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions

I'm the most excited about AC2 and Spider-Man. I never played the Assassin Creedgames but i hear the 1st is repeatitive and the 2nd is great so I started with the first to get it out of the way

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been switching between 3 games: Gears of War 3, Halo Anniversary, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Gears of War 3 is basically more of the same from the first 2 games, so if you at least casually enjoyed those like I did, its pretty fun, but its also just as short as I'm already at the end of Act IV and have only played for about 5-6 hours so far.

Halo Anniversary is both a nostalgic and fresh experience in many ways. I do occasionally flip on classic mode to relive some of the nostalgia, but I must admit that the redone graphics are great and I much prefer to play the game with the updated look on as the better lighting makes for MUCH more clarity (with the original graphics being a lot darker than I remember them being), and it does make the game easier but in a good way that makes sense (thanks to actually being able to see your enemies more clearly with the better lighting effects). The enemy AI is still pretty impressive even to this day, and even if its10 years old it still has better enemy AI than most FPS games these days aside from F.E.A.R. and maybe a couple of other noteworthy titles. Admittedly, the one area where the game clearly shows its age is with the environments. I don't mind the level design because I like navigating levels even if I get lost a little bit, and in that regard it reminds me of more open shooters like DOOM and Duke Nukem, but what ticks me off is how repetitive the environments are. Back in the day I could tolerate it because Halo was one of the first FPS games that I had ever really played a lot of and I didn't have much to compare it to, but looking back at it now it does come off as extremely lazy design on Bungie's part. Its probably one of the few things that I prefer from the sequels since they didn't repeat environments and rooms nearly as much as the first game did.

I should mention that my mom bought my 7-year old little sister a Wii for Christmas, which officially makes it her very first gaming console (and that's a pretty awesome console to start out on, though I'm still glad that I started with the Super Nintendo, myself). Its not something I can really use to play games that I want on the Wii, since I don't really live with my mom and step-dad (though I do visit them a lot when I'm not in college), but it'll still be nice to get to play some games that my sister may end up getting if they interest me enough (I'm trying to get her raised on classic Nintendo characters, though I doubt that I'll be able to get her into Zelda ). Anwyays, she got a 2nd controller with her Wii, and it came with NSMBW to boot!

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is an interesting experience since I'm playing it with my little sister, being that she's really only just getting started with video games, and its really cool to be playing Mario together with her while fondly remembering back when I was just starting to play video games, with Mario being one of the earliest games that I remember playing. Being able to play with her is great and even though she's not very good being that this is her first time playing a real game in general, she's surprisingly a pretty quick learner and can competently make her way through the less challenging platforming obstacles and most of the moderately challenging ones. We didn't get very far in the game, but we did manage to play up to the first castle of the 2nd world, which we haven't really gotten around to beating just yet.

[gunswordfist]

Streets Of Rage Remake V. 5. I just said fuck it and start playing the game after it finally got done downloading it. Adam was the first person I picked and he plays great. I was spamming the hell out of his flying kick. Didn't lose any continues until said strategy failed on those two flame blowing fat asses. Then, for the next continue, as Axel I....ran forward at them and did bareknuckle. It was not as dumb as it sounds. I timed the uppercuts perfectly as many times as I could which ducks under the flames and hits them. Very nice.

Also, thank good for the auto saves. I accidently pressed something and made the game go off but when I restarted it, it began at the last section I was on.

[gunswordfist]

I decided to make Cave Story the first game I play for the new year, so that's what I've been doing for a few hours up until the last hour. I'm trying to find all the bg secrets in this, my 2nd playthrough since I missed all of them when I first beat the game awhile ago. Very early I already figured out one of them. It's going to be forever until I'm able to do anything about that though. then I'm going use my vague knowledge to try and get as many secrets as possible. And please don't tell me anything. I like doing this by myself. If I don't get it all this time around, then I might play it again with a guide or whatever before I move onto Cave Story +.

[gunswordfist]

I played more of Assassin's Creed last night.I feel stupid for spending like an hour slowly following someone to pickpocket them. It's not my fault that the first pickpocket/tutorial didn't really help me for this one because it sucked. Anyway, I said fuck it and damn near sprinted to pickpocket him within seconds of my umpteenth time after having to run away from guards so many times due to failure.

I was surprised when I first saw a guard climb up a building. I had no clue they could do that. Best platforming I've ever seen from enemies.

Last, I did my first major assassination. I can't remember the last time I wanted to kill someone so badly. I was like "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WY PEOPLE". Then when I finally killed him by spamming the strong attack button. Nice little conversation they had.

[gunswordfist]

Played Cave Story for a few more hours. It pays to pay attention. Figured out how to get the Bubbler all on my own. Will keep more Jellyfish Juice with me just in case. I was last teleported to the start of Labrinth

[gunswordfist]

Goddammit. I'm stuck on the Labrinth machine boss as much as I hate to admit it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I ended up caving in and using my $50 gift card to get Sonic Generations. I could have used it to get Vanquish and either Rayman Origins or Super Street Fighter IV which would have given me more content than one game, but the fact that I could finally play a good 3D Sonic game for the first time since SA2 was just too damn tempting and I ended up using it all up on Sonic Generations. For what its worth once I actually got into playing the game I didn't regret my purchase. While I'm sure that those other games are also awesome, its just so great to have a really good platformer to play and the fact that its a great Sonic game just makes it all the better for me. I played all of the way up through the first 6 zones, and currently I'm up to Crisis City.

If I had one thing to critique the game for, its that its probably a bit too easy. I mean, classic Sonic games haven't been known for their difficulty but the challenge was still there in the later stages, to the point where I at least saw the game over screen a couple of times before I managed to beat the game. The 3D Sonic games had some really difficult stages but that was due more to bad design and cheap deaths rather than proper challenge, so at the very least this game isn't aggravating or frustrating to play. And there is a good sense of challenge in trying to get to some of the alternate paths that are more obscured by difficult obstacles. So overall the challenge factor is still there in its own form.

Out of the 3 titles from 2011 that I've played, this is easily the best one by far.

[gunswordfist]

I just heard someone else say that Sonic Generations is easy hmmm...

Anyway, more Cave Story and Assassin's Creed for me.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yep, the game's pretty easy for the most part, though Rooftop Run and Planet Wisp are kind of a jump in difficulty and the bosses are way more fun in hard mode (which isn't really much harder, just not so easy). most of the challenge comes from just getting a perfect run and finding the best path through.

I kind of wish they kept the scoring the same as Colors, which would sort of force people to follow the best path to get the best score as the Red Rings would give massive points.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, I'm kind of disappointed in how easy it is to get an A or S rank (with really the only major qualification for getting an S rank being just not dying at all within the stage). I wish it would go stricter on the scoring to encourage more skillful runs, because there have been runs where I have lost a lot of rings and taken a lot longer than I should and yet I still come out with an A, which just doesn't feel right. I suppose they did this to make the kids playing the game feel better about themselves, but I'm willing to bet that even kids wouldn't mind having a stricter scoring system, as when I was a kid I'd consider it rewarding to do good enough to get a high score, and wouldn't mind getting low scores on my first time through the game if I was just aiming to beat it first and then get good at it after that.

As for boss fights, I actually did find the Egg Dragoon boss to be fairly challenging (I did die on him a few times), but that may just be because I'm not very familiar with how to properly utilize modern sonic's skills since this is the first 3D Sonic game that I've played since SA2 (well I did also play bits and pieces of Heroes, but I barely remember any of that game, to be honest).

Anyways, I have all 7 chaos emeralds so all that's left for me to do is to fight the last boss and I'll have completed my first run through the game. That said there are still plenty of challenges left for me to complete so I still have my work cut out for me after I'm done with the final boss.

Oh, BTW I really liked Planet Wisp. It was easily the longest level in the entire game for both acts (classic and modern Sonic), and it was also the most challenging, not to say that it was necessarily hard but I did have my fair share of deaths and the good thing is that they weren't really cheap deaths (though some of them were really stupid fuck-ups on my part since I'm still not very good and controlling modern Sonic). I think I'd love to play Colors sometime in the future. The Wisps make for an interesting gameplay mechanic, though I do wish that the Planet Wisp level in Generations gave you more than one Wisp-type to use per act, since it felt a little too limiting to only have the spike power to use for classic Sonic and the rocket power for modern Sonic. Still, its a pretty cool and creative stage. Rooftop run from Sonic Unleashed was also a pretty good stage, and I love the music for that one, too.

Anyways, on a side note I downloaded and played the Rayman Origins demo. I thought it was great. That's definitely one of the next games I plan on getting. It'll be good to have 2 great platformers among my personal gaming library for the XBOX360, and from what I hear the game has great replay value, much like Sonic Generations, so that should also keep me busy for a while.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Planet Wisp in Generations is sort of like Scrap Brain meets Metallic Madness for Classic Sonic. It's vicious. It took me almost ten minutes to beat it my first time through, and my record still stands at like 4:26. Oddly enough, I don't even think there are any pit deaths in the stage, it's just that hard. The Modern version is a sweet level for all the alternate paths and even though they kind of changed the Rocket wisp a bit by making it more for specialized shortcuts than how Colors did it, by using it for exploration, it was still fun to use.

So final boss notwithstanding, how would you compare it to other 3D Sonic games? Honestly, other than Green Hill sort of playing like Unleashed without cheap deaths, almost every level is excellent. Sky Sanctuary, Speed Highway, and Seaside Hill are just too great.

Not to say anything of the 2D levels, as those were pretty much guaranteed to be great. Speed Highway Classic could have been in Sonic 3.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, being that the only other 3D Sonic games that I completed (and played significant amounts of at all, for that matter), are the Adventure games, and I haven't played those in ages, I can't really say how they compare since I don't really remember them well enough to compare their high points and flaws to those of Generations. That said I can say that I like Generations better on the whole because it completely focused on Sonic whereas the Adventure games split up their focus to feature other playable characters. If we were just comparing Sonic, though, I'd have to play all of his Adventure stages again to see how they hold up after having played as modern Sonic in Generations.