What Are You Currently Playing? 5.05: You Are (Not) A Gamer

[Spark Of Spirit]

Either way, I like this series more than Sly. It's WAY more consistent. Ratchet is the best of the three, however.

We seem to be on the same page now.

Can't wait for Thieves In Time, though. Looks like it could easily be the best in the series!

I hope for it to be really good, since a mix of 1's action with 2's open world could be a really good mix.

Especially if it gives them a chance to make a J&D game next!

[Foggle]

A few more comments about Black Mesa...

1) WOW this thing gets fucking hard. Normal difficulty is probably about on par with hard mode from the original game. If you aren't good at mixing tactical cover shooting and run n gun blasting on the fly then you will die early and often (like me ). It's been ages since I last played an FPS that was actually challenging without being unfair.

2) The setpiece battle near the end of Questionable Ethics is better than any similar moment in any modern shooter.

3) Surface Tension is literally jaw-dropping. Looks so good.

[Foggle]

Oh my god Lambda Core in Black Mesa. Looks like something straight out of Portal 2.

Seriously guys, DOWNLOAD THIS FUCKING MOD. It's completely free, as you don't even need Half-Life 2 to play it; all you need is Steam with the free Source SDK Base 2007 installed (from the Library > Tools menu). http://release.blackmesasource.com/

I recommend playing on Normal difficulty with auto-aim, head bob, and view roll disabled from the Black Mesa settings tab. Unfortunately, it doesn't save your mod-specific settings, so you'll have to change them every time you launch the game, but that takes like 15 seconds or less.

[gunswordfist]

I got a 20 bucks Ms points card today and brought Spelunky. My baby brother and me are playing it now. Loved the look on his face when he saw that I unlocked it. Probably will use the rest of the points to get Doom. Spelunky is expensive.

[gunswordfist]

OK, yesterday on Sonic Generations I finally got past annoying ass Modern Crisis City and then Modern Rooftop what's it's name and Planet Wisp. Planet Wisp was way too long of a level. Anyway, I also beat a challenge in each of them and fought Silver The Hedgehog. It was fun and I personally thought it was better than pretty much any classic Sonic boss fight but again it was a boss battle that was way too repetitive and too long. After all of that I got up to Egg Dragon. After I bunch of tries I had to stop. This one is going take forever.

Today I got up to stage 2-4 (Jungles) on Spelunky with my baby brother.

Then I went on and brought Doom. I haven't played the 2nd or so levels in the first episode in forever. I completely forgot about the surprise attack moments. Now that's how you do it. How modern games script their shit makes me sick. Anyway, at one time in a level, one of the demons (the normal fireball one) apparently accidentally hit one of the black shirt shotgun guys in the back and then the shotgun guy turned around and started shooting him and then I blew them both away with my shotgun. It was beautiful. Another favorite moment was in I believe stage 2 with all the flickering light "hallways" and how I kept on turning corners fast not knowing where enemies will be at nor how many or what type I will encounter. That was a fun and intense few minutes.

I touched on this before but Doom has the perfect template for FPSs of its ilk. All the extra features that came years later are pretty much just extra dressing on what Doom has already made great about the genre. I'm going to be obsessed with this game for some time. I love how I past some parts and knew one day I'll come back and try to find secret areas I bypass. That plus split-screen co-op and two more difficulty settings that I want to try has the replay value through the roof for me. There's little more that I could ask for.

After I died the first time in Doom and had to start over the level with just my pistol, I decided to play some more Splinter Cell Conviction. I hate how the game goes black and white when you are in enough darkness. I just keep on thinking my tv is messing up. Also, the game doesn't really seem to encourage stealth so I always end up just shooting everyone in the area. The last part  I got past was some war flashback that was pretty fun. The voice of a certain character made the 'twist' in the mission or whatever pretty obvious though.

[Foggle]

Conviction doesn't force stealth on you like the other games do, but sneaking is by far the most fun way to play it IMO.

Just finished the public Resident Evil 6 demo. Took me about an hour, but I did dick around a lot in Leon's section. Really enjoyed Leon's and Chris' campaigns; still not sold on Jake's, though.

[Nel_Annette]

Having realized that I haven't played my PSP since April 2011, I decided to (once again) skip out on continuing Etrian Odyssey and start up Lunar: Silver Star Harmony. Can't wait to see what all the hubbub is about.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Just a warning- it's not a very good remake. But I'm also of the opinion that Lunar hasn't aged all that well as a whole and that they keep changing random things in every remake to make it worse certainly doesn't help.

My PSP playtime was mostly kept to VC2 and the Ys games.

[Nel_Annette]

Ah, really? That sucks.  Well, hopefully going in blind, I won't notice any of the bad changes. I don't know anything about the series; I originally bought it just to support XSeed and because two of my friends claim it's their favorite RPG of all time.

I can say that the only thing really bugging me right now is how the music comes to a halt every time you move from screen to screen.

[gunswordfist]

Didn't even know the RE6 demo was out. Looks like I'll be playing a demo for another day.

[Foggle]

Started playing Borderlands 2.

Holy.

Fuck.

Ing.

Damn.

A MASSIVE improvement over the original in every conceivable way. From the newfound creativity in weapon design, to the far better gun handling, to the beautiful graphics, to the actually interesting plot and barrage of well-written comedy, the jump from the original BL to this sequel is like the jump from Portal to Portal 2. I haven't marveled at an FPS' mechanics or laughed this hard at a video game in a long time.

[gunswordfist]

Loving Doom's music.

[gunswordfist]

Oh yeah, and I defeated Egg Dragoon on Sonic Generations before I started playing Doom today. I already got all the Chaos Emeralds because, let's be real, that shit is easy and I didn't even really realize I had them all. Annnnnnndddd now I'm at an even more annoying boss.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Oh yeah, and I defeated Egg Dragoon on Sonic Generations before I started playing Doom today. I already got all the Chaos Emeralds because, let's be real, that shit is easy and I didn't even really realize I had them all. Annnnnnndddd now I'm at an even more annoying boss.

The last boss in Generations is garbage. Literally the worst part of the whole game next to the Vector missions, it's a real blemish on an otherwise great game.

[gunswordfist]

On Doom, one mission it took me almost an hour to figure out where to go and finally beat the level. Anyway, I beat episode 1 of Doom today. I haven't done that since I was a kid. Such good memories. I love how intimidating the beginning is and of course the end of the mission goes without saying. I never saw past episode 1 so starting episode 2 was a thrill. Interesting how demonic the decor of the levels are. I like noticeable changes.