What are you playing, stupid?

[MadeManG74]

Well, I can get El Shaddai for about $25, so I might pick it up at some point. I have an absolute glut of unplayed games at the moment though, so not right away.

Currently playing Fall of The Samurai and Dead Souls.

FOTS is awesome, really loving it so far, even though I've only just started. Hugely different from Shogun 2 Vanilla and RotS, it plays more like Empire, but I like it much better than Empire. The new importance of Naval units being able to bombard units and settlements from the shoreline is great and works really well. Looking forward to exploring this game deeper.

Dead Souls I'm kind of on the fence on so far. It's good but it's still early days, and a lot of the stuff I love about the Yakuza games is absent. I think I'll still enjoy it, but it's not going to be another Yakuza 3 or 4 I think.

[Aki-at]

Get Binary Domain first dammit! You owe it to Nagoshi Mang!

[MadeManG74]

I dunno i've started to cool on Binary now. Everyone on the front page was saying it was pretty bog standard, and my boss at work said it was 'B Grade'. I do want to play it obviously, but I want to play Dead Souls first. I will still get it Aki-at, don't worry!

[Aki-at]

I dunno i've started to cool on Binary now. Everyone on the front page was saying it was pretty bog standard, and my boss at work said it was 'B Grade'. I do want to play it obviously, but I want to play Dead Souls first. I will still get it Aki-at, don't worry!

People who said it was bog standard on the front page only played the demo or just saw the screenshots from what I gathered, they really did just throw in how most saw it without giving a chance. The game itself probably has some of the best pacing and boss battles this generation (The pacing itself feels like an action film from the 90s) The people who completed loved it, like George, Sanus, Pao etc and it seems to show with fan reception being a lot higher than critical.

Did I mention there are bosses bigger than the spider boss?

As far as the games go, it would probably be in your best interest to try out Dead Souls before Binary Domain though since well, outside of music, Binary Domain is better than Dead Souls in everyway.

[max_cady]

Played a couple of extra stages of Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg (PC version).

[MadeManG74]

People who said it was bog standard on the front page only played the demo or just saw the screenshots from what I gathered, they really did just throw in how most saw it without giving a chance. The game itself probably has some of the best pacing and boss battles this generation (The pacing itself feels like an action film from the 90s) The people who completed loved it, like George, Sanus, Pao etc and it seems to show with fan reception being a lot higher than critical.

Did I mention there are bosses bigger than the spider boss?

As far as the games go, it would probably be in your best interest to try out Dead Souls before Binary Domain though since well, outside of music, Binary Domain is better than Dead Souls in everyway.

Yeah, like I said I will still get it, but my enthusiasm did die a bit from the bland responses it's been getting. I know I'll still enjoy it though. And yeah, I figured it would be better than Dead Souls, although I'm starting to get into it a bit more now.

On the other hand, Fall of the Samurai is brilliant, played it until 4 AM this morning (this probably also had to do with my Jet-lag though).

[SOUP]

If you're a castlevania fan, i'm sure you are going to love what's gonna be unlocked once finishing that boss (lol hope this motivates you more).

I managed to beat Dawn of Souls, and you're right. The bonus is pretty sweet :D.
It's only the second Castlevania game that I've ever beaten, but I'm looking forward to playing Portrait of Ruin.

I've also been making more progress in Final Fantasy XII.

[CosmicCastaway]

I'm making my way through Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland. I seriously love this RPG and Atelier Rorona (the previous installment.) They are the most enjoyable RPGs I've played this generation since Valkyria Chronicles I & II. I'm also playing Xenoblade which is super-fun! It's made by Monolith Soft the creators of Xenosaga so I wouldn't have missed it for the world! ^_^

[max_cady]

Now that I got my 360 back... I decided to go back to one game in particular: Star Ocean: The Last Hope... To beat one boss in particular.



This... ***hole. THIS F***ING ***HOLE right here. This boss is relentless. He's not like other bosses in which they at the very least stand still while you're hitting him, nope. Rush mode or not, makes no difference. It's pretty hard. But, man does it feel good to see that boss go down.

[Aki-at]

Yeah, like I said I will still get it, but my enthusiasm did die a bit from the bland responses it's been getting. I know I'll still enjoy it though. And yeah, I figured it would be better than Dead Souls, although I'm starting to get into it a bit more now.

Problem is, the bland responses from the front page come from either people who only played the demo or are just judging the game from the screenshots. I think it shows considering how its regarded from people who completed to people who are under the belief "PFFFFT SEGA LOSING ITS IDENTITY AND MAKING A GEARS RIPOFF" which a lot of people on the front page have a mentality of.

[Barry the Nomad]

Playing Binary Domain, picked it up for $40 over the weekend.

I'll admit, I'm not a FPS fan. Not that I hate the genre like some bitter internet nerds. It's just not a genre I seek out, nor do I think I'm that good at it. So I came into BD with some hesitation.

But goddamn was I wrong! I set it to easy, jumped in, and am 2.5 hours in. It's so true, the demo doesn't do it justice. The game is really well paced, it's far more than area after area of enemies. I'm loving all the little "mini-game" moments, like the crane controls, sliding down a huge waterslide and evading a giant robot while it destroys buildings. The story is pretty great too, and there are a lot of funny character moments. Can't wait to finish the game.

[max_cady]

Played a lot of Star Ocean: The Last Hope lately. I did a few extra side missions and I started plowing my way through the Wandering Dungeon. This is the last secret dungeon, it can only be accessed after you go through the Cave of Seven Stars, which is a massive undertaking in and of itself (added 20+ hours or so), it's 7 huge levels which very powerful bosses, each of them very difficult to kill.

The Wandering Dungeon is another beast entirely. This one has a huge number of floors, but there's a catch. There are no Save Points, no Restore Point where I can have my characters get their health back. The dungeon layout is the same, there's only one way to move on. You have to find a pillar and it can tell you do something in the dungeon:

-Fight a number of random encounters;
-Destroy a number of crystal in each and every room;
-Get an item from a boss character;
-Collect x amount of item from enemy encounters;

Each of these is randomly asked of you in each of the floors.

The levels are not numbered, ussually the floors with even numbers have boss characters in them. You can leave the dungeon at any point, but you have to start over.
It's pretty rough. The good thing about it, is that you level up pretty fast. Even moreso than in the CoT7S dungeon. If you can fight three enemy encounters in a row, you can level up twice in one go.

But quite honestly, I'm going to stop. I mean, the characters I have right now, I can literally go up to the final boss (all my characters, save for Lym and that huge Robot guy are level 160+)  and put the controller down and they can finish him in less than 3 minutes. So, I'm gonna take a break.

I've also started Batman: Arkham City. The start of the game is pretty epic.

[SOUP]

I spent a gooc chunk of my days off playing Final Fantasy XII.  After about 10 hours on hunting missions, I'm finally getting back to the main story.

[max_cady]

I've been playing LA Noire for a while.

I completed a ton of story missions. It's getting pretty hard. And at the same time, it's also getting a tad boring. Namely this Drug operation bust. Because after 7 or so missions, you pretty much do the same.

Get the opening cutscene for the crime, drive to the crime stop, check clues, start questioning people and after that you gotta put it all together and finger a crook.

I've gone from Traffic to Homicide(clearly the most disturbing part) to Ad Vice, which is boring as hell.

[MadeManG74]

I started LA Noire a while back, and thought it looked really good but didn't get into it. I can't remember what was out at the time, but I was probably playing Yakuza 4 or something instead. It's on my list to get to eventually though.

Recently though I've been playing Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai. I'm gonna have to say this is one of my favourite Total War games yet, it's just so good. I have issues with the unit variety again (like the other Shogun 2 games) as every faction has pretty much the same armies available (compared to stuff like Rome and Med. where it was exciting to see what you could recruit with different factions), but apart from that everything is so good. The skill trees for the different characters are cool, the tech tree has some cool techs that can really make a difference and lead to real dilemmas about what to focus on. The gunpowder based combat had me worried since I didn't like it much in Empire but it's so much better now i feel. I love that they removed the "Realm Divide" bullshit from the previous two Shogun games and replaced it with the Faction Split where everyone has to choose between two sides (or if you really are confident you can try to make yourself Emperor and EVERYONE lines up to stick Katana's up your arse) and you end up with two big alliances having a civil war.

New features like Naval Bombardment were implemented so well too, I really think that they implemented a lot of new features with a lot of success in this game. I genuinely can't wait to find out what's next for Total War!