What Are You Playing (Spring 2013)?

Daylights savings time has started, my dogwood and pear trees are blooming, and Opening Day is but 11 days away!

Here is what I am playing on the Vernal Equinox:

Plants vs Zombies (PSV) - I am not sure how any times I will find this campaign and these minigames compelling, but that number is greater than or equal to four now. Other than the iPad or other tablets, the Vita might be the best fit for the game, simply because the touch screen is a huge benefit, and its size matters. I did read that some of the later levels and more demanding minigames have performance issues on the Vita, though I have no experienced that yet. That would be disappointing, because a lot of the game's extended life is in the form of endless modes, which are very likely the ones to make hardware choke.

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PS3/PSV) - The good news with this one is that through about 30% of the game, there are more Cooper jobs than Bentley and Murray jobs by a wide margin. Sly has a lot himself, and you also get to play as his ancestors, which so far play more similarly to Sly than the annoying sidekicks. The bad news is that the Bentley jobs seem to be more annoying than in past games. For example, one minigame has you moving a ball around a maze by tilting the damn controller. Murray is Murray for better or worse. I like the concept and execution of both the Cross Buy and Cross Play with this title. As mentioned in the game's thread, the Vita can be used to aid in locating collectibles while playing the PS3 version. You can also upload your save to the cloud and switch between playing the main game on the PS3 and Vita.

Wizardry Online (PC) - MechDeus made me aware of this. It's a F2P MMO that was released roughly two months ago. However, it seems to be more smooth than many full price and subscription MMOs I have played near launch. The game's claim to fame and what piqued my interest is that it's very hard. If you die, you have to find a statue and make an offering. Depending on the offering, your odds of resurrection change. If the roll fails, your character is done. You can continue with the story at the same place with a new character. Even if you win the roll, other players may have pillaged your corpse for valuables. Thus, I am being very careful with my female gnome priest, Gnoma'am.

Yeah, Wizardry Online gets pretty tense with the knowledge that you could die at any point from monsters or just because someone else felt like it. I got deep into that first dungeon (I think I was near the end), but my equipment's durability started getting low and I was getting paranoid about all the groups of players that kept showing up from behind so I booked it out real fast through the shortcut.

Warframe - This just went somewhat open beta and they completely revamped the entire upgrade system, which I think is for the better but it was a very jarring and sudden shift that threw a ton of player progress out the window so it's kind of hard to be objective about it. The F2P elements are closer to an iOS game than most other similar PC games (i.e. crafting an item can take 12 hours or you can pay real money to have it done right away), but the gameplay is solid enough to make up for that. I think the main thing this game is missing to sidestep most of the IAP offensiveness is a player economy, something I hope they plan on adding.

I also found out that controller support natively works in battles and reinforces that ME3 feel, but I think I'm just too used to mouse-aiming in this game at this point to use it much. Kind of a shame because it makes the rest of the controls much nicer.

Kid Icarus: Uprising - I desperately need one of those bendy styluses, as there's a good game hiding in here provided it wasn't using the most awkward control scheme known to man. I did find that wrapping an elastic hair tie around the end of my thumb works but it starts to hurt after a couple minutes so I still can't play for very long. Can't wait for some way to play this game that doesn't involve physically hurting me in some way.

You grabbed Secret World when it was cheap, right? Do you play that at all?

A much longer list for me is the games I wish I had even a little bit of time to play but do not. Anyway, at this moment...

Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus - I'm gonna finish this off soon and I totally get why this game gets so much love. It's truly awesome. I love it. I want to try another game of this style after, whether its NG2, Vanquish, or Bayonetta. I'd also like to get through Uncharted Golden Shower.

Resident Evil 6 - I am on Jake's campaign and I totally do not get why this game got hated on. It's a great third person action game. Chris' campaign was actually really well done! The mechanics are sharp as hell. The enemy variety is excellent. The graphics are extraordinary. It has a ton of content and extra modes. Usually I am confused because poor games get great reviews, but this is the exact opposite.

Hotline Miami - I want to hug this game, but I am afraid it will hit me in the head with a lead pipe. It's insanely good.

Tomb Raider. I rented it and, while I still think the original was the best, this new-fangled Lara Croft isn't bad at all. I'm enjoying it.

Otherwise, I'm all about Ridiculous Fishing. Best iOS game I've ever played and the only one I've completed entirely.

I'm excited to finally play RE6 beyond the demo on Friday. Setting aside the controls for the vanilla versions of 4 and 5 that were later fixed, there has not been a bad game in the main series, and I enjoyed the demo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

You grabbed Secret World when it was cheap, right? Do you play that at all?

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I played for a while but the combat is so bad and some of the design decisions are terrible enough that I ended up moving on to other stuff. I still wouldn't mind going back and doing more story one day, but I reached a part where I think I need to grind out repeatable quests in order to be strong enough to continue and just said fuck it.

Damn. My temptation for that remains high, and it's on sale multiple places again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

I'm excited to finally play RE6 beyond the demo on Friday. Setting aside the controls for the vanilla versions of 4 and 5 that were later fixed, there has not been a bad game in the main series, and I enjoyed the demo.

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I played through Gears 3, which got great reviews. I would honestly say that RE6 is better in every way. I just don't know why it got killed the way it did.

edit; i said gears 3 came out at around the same time as re6, which is my old age catching up to me.

Doom 64...it's a very good game, worse than the originals over all but every game is so that is OK
Super House of Dead Ninjas...best game this year so far
NFS: MW...there were things that annoyed me about the game but I am having fun replaying it on PC. I am skipping every Ambush level so far though. Also lame that while you can see the cross-platform Points (meaningless) in the game and the cross-platform race times (very meaningful) on the web, you can't see the cross-platform times in the game, wtf
Diablo 3...this is great loot game so far. I can see myself replaying this at the higher difficulties (they have those, right?)

Ever since I got the PC I have been going apeshit with buying and playing games, although buying is still out of control. Also going to pick up Gears today and dust off the 360.