What games are you currently into?

[Amy Rose]

Because I think it would be interesting to deviate from all the Sonic themed topics in this forum. =P

What have you been playing lately? Would you care to give us a little information about it? And would you recommend it or not?

I haven't been playing any myself. The last game I played though was over break and it was Donkey Kong 64, since I never got the chance to play through and beat it when it first came out. My parents didn't want to spend the money for an N64.

It's your regular 'Kong game in terms of plenty of goofy critters to fight, although the extra tid bits help keep it interesting. I found it pretty easy though overall. But I was still amused enough to play it through. Still not finished with it though. Maybe I'll hit it up over Spring break.

So, what of you?

[Jack-the-Hedgie]

I just got into the online shooter S4 League the other day. It's a third person shooter, similar to Gunz, only with a more bright and colorful appearance, and a less idiotic fanbase.* I haven't gotten too far into the game, as I'm still playing on the rookie servers, so I don't know if it gets any better then it is now. Still, I'm enjoying myself

For those of you decide to pick the game up, or happen to already play it, you can find me on there as TeotheOtter

*(not that everyone who plays Gunz is an idiot, for those of you here who enjoy it. It's just the idea of a bunch of people who dare to look down their nose at you because you don't feel like putting aside your guns to learn how to abuse some bug with a katana makes me an angry hedgie.)

[Dan Dark]

Heh... this could be fun. ^^

Normally, it shouldn't be too hard to tell what I'm into at the moment; I seem to always have something gaming related in my signature. It used to be a customized version of the Xfire mini-sig while I was still playing PC games a lot; since I picked up an Xbox 360 a couple months back, though, and the laptop is, at this point, sadly out of date to the point it can't play most of the games I'd like to play, I've mainly switched to the 360... hence why my Xbox Live GamerTag has snuck into my signature. ^^U

But yes. Fallout 3 has been.. consuming much of life off and on the past couple months now. I had stopped playing it for a while a month or two back, and picked up Midnight Club: LA, since I'd been in the mood for a good racing game.. and I won't touch Forza - realism is nice and all, sure, but if every time I try to turn, I instead just keep going in a straight line, right into the wall..? That gets old pretty fast. Not to mention I prefer street racing to circuit tracks. But, I digress. MC:LA - it's fun, and coming from Rockstar, they actually know how to make an open-world setting work.. well enough.. though the customization features felt a little lacking, and the difficulty gets insane as you get further into the game - it doesn't matter what you're driving, they can keep up with you, they almost never crash, and they know ever shortcut. >>

So... I had been getting a little frustrated with that... and then Operation: Anchorage, the first addon download for Fallout 3 went live. And... I had to have it. So... ^^U... I got that, played through it, and it rekindled my interest in playing the game. (The Chinese Stealth Armor is absolutely awesome~. And I love the sniper rifle I tricked the game into letting me keep from the simulation. ^^;

...but yeah. In short: I have been playing Fallout 3. (Though.. I might put it on hold for a bit come Thursday, when the GTAIV addon finally comes out.)

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention: I recently started using the program Raptr - think.. twitter, or something like that.. but for video games. (My profile is Rogue_Kitsune, should any care to look, add me as a friend, or whatever.)

[Nail Strafer]

Quote:it doesn't matter what you're driving, they can keep up with you, they almost never crash, and they know ever shortcut. >>

Believe it or not, MCLA doesn't have rubberband AI. The problem is that they always drive vehicles that are slightly higher level than what you've got (ex. if you have a D class vehicle, they always have C class). That's why it seems like you can never get away. So the only solution is to suffer until you get the best cars in the game, and then buy them and always drive them. That way they're forced to compete on a level playing field, and you'll finally notice yourself actually leaving the AI behind.

Also, do pay attention to what the CPU does. Like you said, they often know the best routes already. So it's a good idea to watch what they do and learn from them. Learning the city has always been half the challenge in Midnight Club games, and doing this makes it much easier.

I am playing House of the Dead Overkill right now, for the Wii. I was attracted to it because it made me think of the comedic tone of God Hand. But instead of parodying random elements of Japanese and American culture, Overkill parodies grindhouse films, 70s zombie films, and buddy cop films...and like past House of the Dead games its an on-rails light gun shooter with zombies as the enemy.

Your two main characters are Detective Washington...a Samuel L. Jackson-like character who probably helped the game achieve the title of "most times the f-bomb is dropped in a video game." He cannot stop saying that word every two seconds in some cutscenes. The other character is Agent G, a mysterious agent from the AMS on his very first mission. He's the other half of the buddy cop pair, considering he's got the nice suit and the sunglasses, and he's always cool, calm, and collected.

The game is split up into about seven or so episodes, and the intro and ending cutscenes for each one are meant to be like movie trailers, complete with a dead ringer for the Movie Trailer Guy talking about what's happening. "Tonight...you have been admitted to Bayou City General...your symptoms...cold sweat...racing heart...the horror is like a scalpel straight to the heart! The only cure is a white hot bullet to the head! BALLISTIC TRAUMA! Collect your point blank prescription!" As you can see, every episode has a really cheesy title and a movie poster even.

The game has a lot of style, but personally I think it's way too easy. It can be pretty difficult at first when all you've got is the default pistol...but you earn cash every time you finish a mission, and you can use this to buy and upgrade new guns, just like in Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles. Anyway, once you get one of the shotguns...you've pretty much morphed into an unstoppable zombie killing machine. Even when not upgraded, the shotguns have a very wide spread and they do serious damage, even at long range.

And the more things you hit in a row (easy with the shotgun) the bigger your combo bonus, which means more cash, which means you can afford to upgrade your shotguns even faster than before until they're rated gold in every category. And now, you've gone from being the T1000 for zombies to the TX.

But admittedly the game is very fun to play...between Detective Washington's wisecracks, the various places you battle through (a hospital, a train, a prison, a carnival, etc.), and the funky 70's style music.

[Sonic]

I still have to finish Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn since I just sort of stopped in the mid-beginning after I picked up Persona 4. I only just beat the real last boss of that yesterday since I didn't get the real ending on my first go. Stupid no-wrong-answers-allowed conversation tree with no real way to know what's right... XD

[Nokame]

Well, its been on and off really.

pop'n music 7-14, IIDX 15 TROOPERS
though sometimes i play Pokemon Pearl, or try Prinny I can be the HEro when my friend brings over his PSP.

I'd like to play Persona 4 though..

[Blitzkrieg]

I've been really into fps lately for the first time in my life, ever since I got my first Valve games. I never owned any kind of ps or xbox, only a Gamecube and a Wii, so I've never been big on fps. I'd play it at my friend's house on his systems sometimes, and I do still enjoy duking it out with my buds on Halo 3 and Gears 2, but I must say that Valve has managed to completely addict me. I still don't own an xbox or ps, but my computer works just fine. And for those of you who've never played Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead, you don't know what you're missing. (For those of you who have, my steam is blitzxd1. Add me!)

For those of you who don't know, Team Fortress 2 is a spectacular class-based shooter with comical cartoonish graphics and a plethora of hilarious characters, such as a sniper from the Australian outback, a gun-obsessed russian with a comically thick accent, and an angry one-eyed black scotsman. The gameplay is brilliantly intense, but unlike most shooters it isn't just a matter of shooting first. It's full of strategy and tactics, and the game will swing drastically depending on how each team reacts to a given situation. For example, if one team has a bunch of Engineers, who are capable of building devastating Sentry turrets equipped with twin gattling cannons and a rocket launcher, then the other team will want to switch a number of their members to Spys, who can turn invisible and drain the power out of Engineer-built machines, and/or Demomen, who use two kinds of grenades to blow everything up. In response the first team will want more pyros, who's flamethrowers can set fire to invisible Spys and can also fire a compressed air blast that can knock back Demomen's grenades. This isn't even counting map features, easily defendable points, Snipers wreaking havoc, etc. The tactical possiblilities are nearly endless, making it an ever-changing and intense shooter. Not to mention the characters are hilarious. The Heavy, for example, get's a sandwich item called the Sandvich that heals him for 120 health, nearly half his total. As he eats it he makes hearty eating noises (OMNOMNOMNOM) that are hilarious to listen to, especially amongst the chaos of explosions and machine gun fire. The scout is a vulgar baseball fan from Boston, and his witty one-liners are some of my favorites. For example, when you capture the enemy intelligence in a ctf map, he'll often boldly declare something along the lines of "Say goodbye to your secret crap, dumbass!" The Soldier is somewhere very near being clinically retarded, and the Demoman is a drunkard teetering on the brink of insanity, all of which is reflected in their various in-battle taunts and one liners, as well as their theatrical taunts, and this combined with the comical graphics gives the game a feel like no other.

I have a lot less to say about Left 4 Dead, but it is a spectacular zombie survival fps. The entire game takes place in one of four campaigns, each of which is set up like a movie, complete with movie poster during the loading sequence. In these campaigns you and your three teammates cooperate to get from safehouse to safehouse, fighting of enormous and super-fast zombie hordes attacking you from all sides at almost all times. You can get a number or different weapons, such as automatic shotguns, assault rifles, pipe bombs that pull in almost all the zombies in the area, and molotov cocktails, among a few others. You'll come up against terrifying specialized zombie enemies, like the bloated Boomers whos vomit attracts hordes and who explode violently upon death, Smokers with their mega-long tounges that they use to pull in and constrict their victims, Hunters that pounce upon their enemies before clawing their faces off, terrifying Witches with un-outrunnable speed that can kill a survivor in only a couple of hits, and gargantuan Tanks that smash through friend and foe alike, nearly unstoppable if they aren't attacked in a strong, coordinated effort. Teamwork is a must to survive, and if you don't have good teamwork you will die, and quickly. Also, like TF2, the characters practically make the game, with the four survivors consisting of a college dropout in love with zombie flicks, a black office worker who was laughed at for going to shooting range during his lunchbreaks, an old war vet who got an honorable discharge and for the past ten years had just wanted another war, and a rough-and-tumble biker thug who hates everything but his vest (and he says so too, in game). They often exchange hilarious banter in between the horde attacks, and sometimes during them too. One of my favorite quotes is by Bill, the war vet. Certain cars with flashing windows have car alarms, and if you shoot them it summons a horde. I cracked up when one of my teammates shot the car and Bill said "Ah hell, who hit the horde button?" Francis, the biker thug and ever only semi-intelligent, sometimes says "God damnit, I'm gonna kill every one of those damned vampires if I have to..." only to be interrupted by Bill saying "They're zombies, Francis." Overall the game is excellent, and, like TF2 (and pretty much all Valve games, now that I think about it) it has an amazing feel unlike any other game in the genre. I highly recommend both games.

[Dan Dark]

Ah yes... both of those are certainly great. XD I haven't actually played much of TF2 myself, even though I bought the Orange Box; I played Half-Life 2, and Episodes One and Two, as well as good ol' Portal (which, if by some strange chance you haven't played yet, go do so. Right now. ...Seriously. Go. Now. XP), but I never really got into Team Fortress 2 or CounterStrike: Source. Mainly because I remembered attempting to play CS before.. and dying within a few seconds of the round starting, with absolutely no clue as to what had happened. Or... I'm not bad... but when it comes to PC games, FPS's in particular, people online always seem to be ridiculously good at it. Although, even without playing it, Team Fortress 2 is hilarious in some ways, such as the Sandvich you mentioned. XD That said, all of the "Meet the" videos are quite entertaining. ^^

Left 4 Dead, then.. definitely a fun game. ^^ I don't own a copy myself, yet - to me, it seems like it is best played with at least one other person, if not a full group, and as such, I don't know how much I'd ever actually play it in single player, and so, I don't want to spend that much on it. I have played it a fair bit on the 360 at friends', though, and if it ever goes down in price, I'm very likely to pick it up sometime.

Oh, as for currently... I've started playing GTA IV again; I got The Lost and Damned the day it came out, and have been playing it off and on since. It's a bit pricey.. 1600 MS points, or $20 US, but there's actually quite a bit to it, unlike most DLC add-ons. I mean, like I said.. I'm still playing it.

[Blitzkrieg]

Ah, that's because CS:S is notorious for being the most cheated and hacked fps of all time. You probably died because somebody shot through the walls, as they so love doing. I'd be cold and dead before you'd catch me playing CS:S. TF2 has very strict anti-cheating rules and detectors, and you can actually be banned from steam entirely for cheating on it. It's totally safe, and it's pathetically easy to learn. I've only been playing for about a month and I'm already epic. (and yes, I have played, and beaten, Portal. It is epicz.) Anyway, start playing TF2. I guarantee you'll at least like it, if you aren't instantly addicted.

As for Left 4 Dead, the single player sucks, but thanks to the beauty of Steam there is always multiplayer available. There are always multiplayer games going that you can join, or you can start a lobby and have a game going in minutes. Finding players is really no issue for any Steam game. It was on sale on Steam for 75% off a while ago, but you missed it, I think. Sorry.

Anyway, if you do get into TF2, add me to your friends list and we can blow each other into small bloody chunks some time.

[Kitty O'Brien]

I just bought the DS re-release of Chrono Trigger (I never played the original). Apparently that game was one of the shining stars of its time, though I still have yet to figure out why. I mean, I can't stop playing it, but I'm always like that when I get a new video game.