What Are You Playing? (Winter 2010-2011)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MechDeus

Surprisingly so, really.

---

Indeed. Playing Dissidia, too. The UI and general polish in these games is off the charts. I don't even care if they're actually fun; I just want to bask in the glistening menus.

Crazy how they crammed a whole Culdcept-ish mini-game into BBS. I believe the skill leveling visual and sound effects were lifted straight from post-mingle mode in the DS's best game...

Speaking of which, somewhere along the line S-E realized the addictive qualities of goals. That is, giving anything and everything the potential to earn points/level up with a clearly delineated end-point. Tracking this progress, and in BBS's case, deciding which skills to equip to max out next, and then earning those lovely little crowns upon doing so is incredibly satisfying. I loved how even the shops would level in TWEWY. Why haven't I finished that game...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MechDeus

Rift - It's like vanilla World of Warcraft design with WOTLK abilities. The questing areas seem to be getting worse and worse in design as they go on, as I've now reached an area where I'm getting ambushed by multiple stun-locking stealthed NPCs that will kill me before I'm allowed to do anything. Still, it's really stable, most of the updates are just making things nicer, and the custom class design is pretty cool so it's not all bad. There's also multiple ways to level so I may just sit out this current area and see how the next one goes.Surprisingly so, really.

---

How does it run?

Runs great. My video card is kinda shitty for current games (9800GT) so Rift is like 30fps all the time, but it's a more technically demanding game than WoW so I expected that. Still pretty nice considering that there are drop-in/drop-out world raids going on all the time, so I can randomly end up in a 20 person raid fighting a world boss while another raid from the opposing faction tries to fight the boss and us at the same time.

Their servers also have a fantastic connection for me, I'm generally downloading patches at 1MB/sec and around 50ms ping while playing. Normally my download speeds are like 200-400k and WoW usually gives me like 150ms.

Got Nier for $20 for the hell of it. It's basically the Donnie Darko of vijidagames.

Hard mode only, skip all sidequests, get over the "omfg the graphics suck" crap. Nier goes somewhere on my top games of all time list. Hoooly shit that was crazy-nuts-difficult.

For some reason, I have been playing the original Fatal Fury lately. I've had the game forever and only played it a few times for nostalgia's sake, but I have actually been playing it a LOT, despite having much better games sitting right next to the Neo Geo. Also, the last boss of Nam 1975 is giving me nightmares.

Playing through Bioshock 2 - excellent game, and unambiguously better than the first once you get past the novelty factor of the original. Even the multiplayer is pretty fun, especially if you can get the Big Daddy suit.

After this, I don't know. I have too many unfinished games.

Bioshock 2 was excellent, but I have a hard time choosing between it and the original. The sequel played very well and got creative at the end, but the first (in addition to the novelty factor) had that mindfuck at the halfway point. A tough call, to be sure.

Landstalker (GEN)

Fuck this game's platforming in its isometric asshole. Everything else about it is awesome, though.

Well, I take that back; I don't like the fact that all the characters are fucking furries. But aside from that, great game!

I pray that my save file doesn't get wiped, as it supposedly does to certain copies of the game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DJ Incompetent

Got Nier for $20 for the hell of it. It's basically the Donnie Darko of vijidagames.

---

It sure is.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DJ Incompetent

Got Nier for $20 for the hell of it. It's basically the Donnie Darko of vijidagames.

---

So it's pretentious and it sucks?