The "What'cha Been Playin'?" Thread

[Neo Yi]

I jut finished Final Fantasy IX. This is probably my sixth playthrough in total, more than any other FF games. I love FFIX, it's still my favorite of the series. Having replayed it after so long, I have an even better appreciation for it then I did before. I think the story really craps up during Disc 3, but as an overall package, I feel like the creators poured a lot of heart and soul into this game. The pre-rendered backgrounds are some of the most gorgeous environments I've seen in a PS1 game and the characters are all lovable and charming in their own ways. It was fun to revisit it. Vivi is still the best FF character, period.

 

[PC!]

Finally beat that darned Champion's Road in Super Mario 3D Land. Snatching up the last few red star rings in Sonic Lost World should be cake compared to THAT nightmare.

After that, I have my eyes on finally finishing up the original Shantae.and finally clearing out my backlog.

 

[LugofilmLtd]

I started playing Duke Nukem Forever. I'd heard all the bad reviews, but my thought was that we should be glad it was finished and released at all. How bad could it possibly be, right? Well, I can see why it got criticized so much, but I kinda like it. It's satisfying in a blow-the-hell-out-of-everything kind of way and sometimes, that's exactly what you're in the mood for. Hail To The King, baby.

 

[Gatordragon]

This week on my iPad, I've been playing mainly Clash of Clans, Puddle, Hopeless: The Dark Cave, Candy Crush Saga, and Dungeon Keeper.

In Clash of Clans, I redesigned my fortress to make it more defendable, but I don't have enough walls to surround it and I can't get more until I upgrade my town center. I got lucky on one raid; I took down a fort that had over 100,000 gold in storage. That will go right to my upgrading my town center.

Hopeless: The Dark Cave is a horror game that's rather unique. You start off as a blob creature armed with a pistol surrounded by darkness. The pistol is for keeping the giant hairy monsters lurking in the dark at bay. Sometimes another blob will come out of the darkness and join you, giving you more firepower. Don't confuse it for an enemy and shoot it because not only do you lose a potential ally, it causes your blobs' anxiety to go up. Blobs get more anxious if they shoot a friendly, shoot too much, or if one of them gets taken by a monster. If a blob gets too anxious, it will turn its gun on itself. The game doesn't end until you lose all your blobs. You also gotta watch out when the monsters decide to attack en masse. Better have fast fingers if you want to survive.

Dungeon Keeper is a remake of an old game by EA. It was free (well, free-to-play) so I thought I might as well get it. It plays somewhat like Clash of Clans, but I like Clash of Clans more. I'll see how much mileage I can get out of this game.

 

[Magus]

Warriors Orochi 3
I started doing missions that have 3 stars, and the character I've been using the most so far is Zhou Tai. I'm just trudging along until I unlock Ryu.

Mass Effect
Not much progress. I get sidetracked and end up turning the game off for either WO3 or to get on the computer.

Street Fighter x Tekken
Again, not much progress. I just recently decided to get back into it after trying to decide on if I want to make this the main fighting game (along with SF3) or go back to playing SSF4:AE2012, and unfortunately, much like Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, SSF4:AE2012 has fallen into the likes of me only being able to watch it instead of play it. Anyway, I'm still going with Jin and Hworang as my main characters/team, and I've added Asuka to the mix as well. I was juggling between Asuka, Ken and Dudley, but I figured let's get a female character in my stash of characters. I probably won't go any higher than 4 characters so now all that's left is Dudley or Ken. Also, originally I was going to drop Hworang for Asuka instead and have my line-up of characters be Ken, Jin, and Asuka mainly because all 3 of them have an alternate costume where they are wearing a suit, but I couldn't bring myself to drop Hworang due to the fact that he's probably my #1 favorite fighting game character (Tied with Jin). We'll see.

Edit:

So I ended up dropping Jin in the end to pick up both Camm and Lars mainly because they are fairly easy to use.

 

[Gatordragon]

Well Dungeon Keeper stunk hard and I deleted it in two days. There wasn't much creativity with the construction and the combat was lame. And judging by other players and reviewers, my opinion of the game is in the vast majority. Even the creator of the original Dungeon Keeper said the remake was a disgrace.

Anyway, on my iPad, I've been playing Clash of Clans, Punch Quest, Spell Quest, and The Room 2.

In Clash of Clans, I accumulated enough gold and elixir to do some much needed upgrading. I upgraded my cannons, built and upgraded another mortar, upgraded my spell maker, and upgraded my barracks so now I can train healers. Healers are a big game changer and now I feel confident in raiding bigger fortresses.

Punch Quest is a fast paced action runner that I have had since 2012. I think it's one of the best free iOS games out there. There's only two controls, dash punch and uppercut, but you can do so much with them. Whenever I want blow off steam, I play this game so I can run through a fortress punching everything in my way, whether it be an orc, imp, haunted megaskull, cyclops, or gnome. The boss battles, power-ups, and special moves just add to the fun.

Spell Quest is like Scrabble mixed with an RPG. You go through dungeons and defeat monsters by forming words with the letters you're given. The bigger the word, the more damage it will do. Sometimes, you'll get letters with special properties, requiring you to be careful which letters you use. It's a nice free game, not the best, but definitely not the worst.

The Room 2 is the sequel to The Room, a game I talked about here in an earlier post. The first one was great and the sequel does not disappoint. Deciphering the puzzles are more interesting now that the rooms are bigger with more than one puzzle in them. The puzzles even require parts and clues from each other.

 

[El-Hazard]

I've finished Fable III, Ratchet & Clank: Crack in Time, and the normal stages in Super Mario 3D Land. But since then, I've been kinda slacking.
Here's everything I'm playing now.

BioShock Infinite-
Finished the boss fight with the

Spoiler

ghost

The Last of Us-
In Pittsburg's financial district.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2nd playthrough)-
Just finished the boss fight against Legion.

Kingdom Hearts II (3rd playthrough)-
Finished Olympus and going into Disney Castle.

[strike]Dissidia: Final Fantasy[/strike]
Got all the way up to the Chaos boss fight,
but I must be hideously underleveled, 'cuz I kept getting annihilated by him.
And I hear there's multiple phases, and I can't even get past the first one...
...yeah, I put this game down quite a while ago because of it.

I'm also checking in on my Animal Crossing: New Leaf town every day,
and I'm working on the demo of Bravely Default, despite now owning the full game.

 

[Magus]

Mass Effect 1
Just a bit of an update. I just got Liara to join my crew, and am currently tackling some side missions before I head off to Feros. Next playthrough (If I don't jump straight into ME2) I'll try going to Noveria first.

 

[Luna]

Right now,I'm playing...

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)...It's a sequel to A Link to the Past (My favorite LOZ game),and it plays out alot like that game...I just got Link's Master Sword,and am working on upgrading Link's other weapons and looking for hidden items and treasures...


Kingdom Hearts Final Mix (PS3)...I'm currently up to the Agrabah (Aladdin) world....

 

[Neo Yi]

I got The Last of Us: Left Behind DLC. So far, so good. I admit there's a lot of exploring and not enough action or much artifacts to pick up in-between just for the sake of seeking out any potential secrets, but it's great to play as Ellie again.

 

[Light Lucario]

I've been playing a lot of Sonic Lost World lately. It's a really fun game with good graphics, fun levels to explore and a good storyline to play through. The parts where I need to move my 3DS are kind of annoying, especially when I have to stand up in order to move around well enough in the game, and there are some really frustrating moments where I keep losing lives, but it's mostly pretty fun in spite of all of that.

 

[dumbfoolkid5]

Been playing Saint Seiya Brave Soldiers, Soul Caliber V, and was playing Warriors Orochi 3, and that's all for now.

 

[Gatordragon]

On my iPad, I've been playing The Room 2, Puddle, Plants vs Zombies 2, and Colossatron.

I finished The Room 2 and I didn't even have to look up a walkthrough. The puzzles were clever and made me think outside the box. I don't think there will be a The Room 3, but I might get it if it happens.

I finally got past this frustrating level in Puddle. It took place in the human circulatory system and I was this liquid that moved through the blood vessels by pumping the heart. The hard part comes from the dissolving agents in the vessels; if the liquid even grazes them, it dissolves. Also, because of the game's constant crashing, I'm going to delete it when I finish it.

An update finally brought boss battles to Plants vs Zombies 2, namely Dr. Zomboss, the boss of the first game. He's in the ancient Egypt world and is one tough boss. His mech is much smaller than the colossal one from the first game, but it is just as tough. It can teleport zombies, shoot missiles, and can kill two lanes worth of plants by charging into them. At least it can be stunned when it's about to charge.

Colossatron is a game where you play as a giant mechanical snake monster from space is bent on destroying cities. You don't control Colossatron itself, but you supply it with segments called power cores to keep it armed and lengthy while it destroys cities and fights the military. There's three basic colors the cores come in: red, blue and yellow, but they can be combined to make purple, orange, and green cores. The power cores have different powers and weapons depending on color and change powers daily, so you have a different combination of powers each day.

Here's a trailer for Colossatron.
[video=youtube;JoNqnn_goFE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoNqnn_goFE[/video]

 

[El-Hazard]

Finished BioShock Infinite.

The Last of Us- The hydroelectric dam.
Kingdom Hearts II- Timeless River
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze- Bright Savannah

 

[Magus]

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
I think I left off on getting on a ship with Captain Keyes flying everyone out (I want to say the 4th mission or something like that). One thing I didn't know until I played Reach was that the needle gun could be so effective against the hunters. I always thought that needle gun was weak, but next to the shotgun it's one of my favorite guns in the series.

SSF4: AE2012
Back at this game and still stuck in my character crisis. Ryu, Ken, Evil Ryu, Yun and Yang are who I'm debating between at the moment. My goodness, I've had this game for at least 2 years and I still haven't been able to settle with 1 character to really learn how to play the game with. I got the general basics of the game and some simple bread and butter combos, but that's about as far as I get and then I flop to another character, especially when it comes to watching tournaments of Japanese players playing characters who I like at a high level making them look so fun to the point where I want to learn that same character. I know the solution, but it's gonna be hard since when I'm on the computer I'm always watching videos leaving myself with little to no time to try it out in training mode. Anyway I may settle on Ryu and Yun for the time being.

GGXXAC+R
The update finally hit PS3 and I finally got my copy. Tinkering between Sol, Order Sol, and Johnny.

Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Always playing this game these days. Ken and Dudley all the way. May eventually add Yun, Yang and Makoto to the mix too.

 

[Gatordragon]

I decided to get a Steam account for my laptop when I heard about a game going free there. I was surprised to find that there are quite a few free-to-play games on Steam. I'm pretty cautious when it comes to buying games, but I'm all for it if a game is free. So I downloaded several free games (and bought one that was on sale for a dollar) so I can compensate for the lack of Xbox 360 on my campus.

This week on my laptop, I've been playing Team Fortress 2, Orion: Dino Horde, and Rift.

On my iPad, I've been playing Ski Safari: Adventure Time, Puddle, and Clash of Clans.

I was already familiar with Team Fortress 2 because I used to play it on Xbox 360 as part of the Orange Box. The PC version is so different now because of all the updates it has. I'm getting the hang of the classes; mainly the Soldier, the Scout, and the Pyro. I really enjoy this game mostly because of the competitive team-based multiplayer gameplay. I take extra enjoyment in beating my enemies when I know there is another human controlling them.

Orion: Dino Horde is an indie multiplayer FPS which pits humans against dinosaurs. In most modes, it's human-controlled humans versus computer-controlled dinosaurs. However, there is one mode where the players get to play as the dinosaurs (which is surprisingly not that popular). The bosses of the game are large dinos such as the T. Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and Deinosuchus (a large ancient alligator). I'm not gonna lie, this game is pretty drab and bare bones. Fortunately I was able to get this on sale for a dollar, so I think I'm getting my money's worth.

Rift is the first MMORPG that I've played in a long time. I've just started out, so I can't say much other than I like it so far.

Ski Safari: Adventure Time is an endless distance game that is about trying to outski an avalanche for as long as you can. This game was also on sale for a dollar. To gain speed, you must successfully do flips. The more you do, the faster you get. If you screw up a flip, you have you recover before the avalanche hits you. There's also plenty of power-ups and mounts to spice things up. Overall this is a pretty good game, especially if you want to kill some time.

I finally beat the human body series of levels in Puddle. Now I'm in the rocket level playing as liquid propellant. In this level, it's all about keeping the propellant on the screen as it moves downward while also avoiding the flames that will burn up the propellant. The trick is that the propellant is very compact and sometimes it's like moving a rock.

I'm taking a new approach in Clash of Clans. I'm using all my resources to upgrade my walls in order to make my fort look imposing. Then I'll be constantly raiding other forts to get the extra resources I need to upgrade my town center; giving me access to better stuff. So far it's working, as the frequency of my fort getting raided has drastically dropped. I've also been succeeding in defending my fort more often as well.

 

[Nel_Annette]

Finally getting back to Tales Of Xillia, and I'm warming up to it. Environments are beautiful, combat feels more fluid than it did in previous games, and I actually quite like the shop expansion system. The hexagon/grid/whatever system for upgrading isn't really to my liking, but hopefully I'll figure it out. I still need to see if the title system works like it did in Graces as well.


*sigh* I need to get back into Xenoblade Chronicles too.

 

[CyclonatorZ]

Team Fortress, Team Fortress, Team Fortress. I would have never guessed five years ago that I would have sunk so much time into an online multiplayer-only FPS, when none of those words defined my rather specific tastes in gaming for most of my life. Maybe it's the complete lack of seriousness, or maybe is the fact that I don't have to spend all my time jumping around cramped maps killing people without any additional objective. Whatever the case, it's definitely helped to ease some of the boredom I've had in recent months (joblessness is a real drag). And even if actual new content has slowed to a crawl, the core game is so beefy and varied that I never have the same experience twice. It's definitely one of the top reasons Valve is my current favorite video game company.

 

[Gatomon41]

With the fading of my GBA, I decided to upgrade to a GB DS Lite. Though I'm unable to play the Game Boy Color games (I'll have to look for a replacement), the GBA games can still work!

That said, now I can play DS games

My first choice was to grab Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. It plays much like the Advance game, except the Judge system isn't as harsh. So faar, I'm loving it

 

[Wonderwall]

I was playing the Walking Dead season 2's first 2 episodes since buying the season pass. I still want to playthrough it again since I had two different save files from season 1. Also went through the Left Behind DLC for the Last of Us. That was a really nice piece ND did for their first story DLC. I'll be going through it a few more times at some point.

Today I started a game that came out roughly 20 years ago for the first time. Chrono Trigger. It's fun and its always a kick to have to relearn old RPG tropes( like how save points don't heal you automatically ) and 16 bit graphics.