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

[Foggle]

Wait, it's coming out tomorrow? I thought it got delayed 'til March! I can't afford it yet.

I got the Sly 4 demo off PSN and played it. Yeah, it's a Sly game.

[Spark Of Spirit]

The UK version is out at the end of March for some reason. This one is out tomorrow with Fire Emblem.

I already put 20 down, so I'm good for tomorrow! 

[gunswordfist]

Will get my brother to download that demo

[Spark Of Spirit]

I played up to the second episode of Sly 4 and here are my impressions after rescuing his second ancestor with some unavoidable spoilers:

• The hubs worlds are better than the ones from Sly 2 being that they are larger and have much more platforming opportunities. The treasures from Sly 2 return only now they're timed challenges tied to rewards meaning there's a point to them.
• Every time you enter a building you basically play a full fledged platforming level like the ones from Sly 1. These are the highlights of the game to me so far.
• I've played as Bentley and Murray for like a total of two missions per hub so far and they're okay. Bentley's had a steal RC Car segment (surprisingly cute) and a hacking minigame in the first world and a normal steal segment and a different hacking minigame in the second world. Murray's had a platforming segment in a cave which was good, and a rhythm game that was easy.
• Sly's ancestor's play exactly like him but with a twist. The first ancestor has the focus jump and his second ancestor has a gun to hit switches and snipe enemies. Otherwise they have much the same basic abilities.
• The clue bottle are in tricky places and are rather hard to find this time. The masks are also quite tricky to find, and are mostly in the platforming levels- there are no bottles in the platforming levels as far as I can see.
• The final mission in the first world involves every character storming the lair and playing a part to catch the boss before Sly fights them. It works really well to build tension.
• Structurally, the game is Sly 2 mixed with Sly 1. You have the over-world and missions, but the missions frequently involve traversing the hub world to take pictures or tail someone followed by breaking into a building a platforming your way through it.
• It feels like the type of game Suckerpunch always wanted to make in the series but never could.
• The level design is the best since Sly 1 as the hub worlds finally have good design and the platforming is a huge part of the game again.
• Unless it follows tradition and begins falling apart in world 3, this might be the best Sly game.

So yeah, it's a Sly game. The only difference is that so far there are no irritating issues to drag the experience down and the minigames are not pointlessly hard like in 1, obscure like 2, or all over the place like 3.

[Grave]

Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes
Beat it as Ieyasu, and as it still stand he is the character I enjoyed playing through the most so far. I'm currently playing as Maigoichi Saica. If Ieyasu's the best, then Maigoichi is the cheapest. Her guns do tons of damage, and while I usually hate fighting Tadakatsu, I actually didn't mind fighting him as her. I just had to play a little smarter, and he went down with ease.

Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition
I know. I said that I was going to be done with SSF4 for a little bit, but something you gotta understand with me and SSF4. If I had to compare it something it would be like boy/girlfriend stuff. On and off relationship type of stuff. It's definitely like that with me and SSF4. Like I said before, I really like this game, but my time is very limited. This time I'm going to approach a little differently. I'm returning to my roots; Playing as shoto characters. Originally I wanted to stay away from them since I've always played as them since SF2. When I got my hands on SSF4 I called myself trying to go to a more rushdown type of style, and while I understand the concept of what they do, I don't have the execution to apply that constant pressure, especially when I was playing on a regular ps3 controller. Hell, this hori commander pad thingy is not doing me any justice either. My thumbs take a beating trying to play this game on pad, so I decided to start fresh. Make the switch to stick, and start with a basic character, Ken.

I could've went with Ryu, I just find him too boring. Even though I want to learn to play the game correctly I gotta have fun doing so as well, so I'm choosing Ken. Even though he can be played similarly to Ryu, Ken is more of a rushdown character anyway. Another problem I had was trying to play too many characters instead of learning the game and focusing on just 1. Even though I'm focusing on Ken for now, I'm still going to be looking at other characters as sub, and at the moment Oni and Evil Ryu are solid candidates. They are kinda scaring me away as well since they have half-circle motions and I hate those just as much as I hate charge and 360 motions. A lot of their damaging combos involve the usage of those HC motions too, not to mention you gotta be on point with your execution, but on the plus side, they are extremely fun to use and produce tons of damage which is a plus for me. Another candidate is Cody. Cody was my main character at one point but that was while I was using the ps3 controller. And then there's Gouken and Cammy. My brother-in-law uses Ryu, Ken, and Akuma a lot and he just picked up Guile as well, so I gotta have shoto killers at my disposal as well. I might be thinking too far ahead though. Anyway, once again, this'll probably be the only game I'll be playing for quite some time (until I get my hands on Street Fighter X Tekken, and even then, SSF4 is the game I continously go back to).

[Spark Of Spirit]

You play as Sly and his ancestors way more than Bentley or Murray... and most Bentley and Murray sections are platforming aside from two RC car segments (that are easy) and one chopper segment (that's also easy) which is about 95% of the gameplay.

The only real minigames have been hacking related (which again, are easy), a training montage (which was clever), and a root beer tapper style game during a Sly mission. They're neither as obscure as the ones in Sly 2 (which, let's face it, got rather weird) nor as all over the place as the ones in Sly 3.

Adam Sessler was wrong is what I'm saying; this is not the worst Sly game.

[Foggle]

Sounds like the best one to me, easy. It seems like Adam Sessler's been losing it lately.

[Spark Of Spirit]

There's one Bentley and one Murray section per map, and the final mission in every episode involves using everyone together. I'm not exaggerating when I say the majority of the game is Sly gameplay unlike 3 and there's way more platforming than 2.

[Foggle]

Sounds like it might even have more platforming than the first one! Glad Sanzaru realizes that the mini-games are what killed Sly for people like me.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Well, there are minigames, they just are usually very easy and fast. The meat of the game comes from traditional jump n' run and stealth. There's also better checkpointing at bosses than Sly 1 and 2 in that you checkpoint at each section of the boss.

So no more irritating Mz Ruby-style shenanigans. (That boss almost killed Sly 1 for me)

[Pharass]

Finished chapter 1 of The Witcher. The end boss of the first chapter was kind of a pain, mostly because I had no idea that the villagers would lock themselves in their homes some time before I fought it, thus preventing me from stocking up on potions. Oh, and since the witch mentioned that the person who defeated the beast before drained it's power by answering a riddle, I was really expecting that to be an alternative to defeat it. No, such luck, though. Still, I prevailed and eventually, I slew the hound. Ah, satisfaction.

[Foggle]

The Witcher is pretty good from a story standpoint, but I'm not a huge fan of the gameplay mechanics and it just feels kind of wonky to me at times. Absolutely love the sequel though.

[No-Personality]

Just beat Donkey Kong Country. And I only started playing it about 4 days ago.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

A bit of Skyrim and New Vegas until I can order some new stuff off Amazon.

For some reason I've never had all that many problems with New Vegas when it comes to bugs, at least not any that effected me in a major way. I still greatly enjoy it.

I'm also considering selling my DS so I can upgrade to a 3DS.

[Foggle]

Yeah, to be honest, I've never really understood why people refer to Bethesda/Obsidian games as "horrendously buggy". I've never encountered a single bug in Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas (yes, really), and the only major problem I experienced in Oblivion was more the fault of my computer's audio drivers than anything to do with the actual game.

Fallout 3 was fucking broken for me, though. Couldn't even play that shit until 2 years after I bought it, and only because of fan patches.