What Are You Playing (Summer 2011)

[YellerDog]

Tobe's Vertical Adventure (Steam) - The wall jumping is super - weak.

With tighter controls, better enemies, fewer checkpoints, and tougher difficulty, this would be good! It would also be a completely different game! Spelunky and Super Meat Boy are leaps and bounds beyond it.

Speaking of...
Super Meat Boy (Steam) - Just finished the main game again, working on achievements, leaderboard times and Cotton Alley.

It's funny how quick you can blast through The End once you have done it before! Might tackle The Guy levels again later today.

[GohanX]

I started playing the retranslated ActRaiser last night, and holy balls is this game's action stages hard. I really like the retranslation though, which reinserts the religious speak that was missing from the US version.

[Yoshi]

Was the Japanese version harder, or have your skills just atrophied in your old age?

[Diff-chan]

Dragon Age - putting this down for a bit. I could've beaten a good game or two in the time it took me to get through Orzammer.
SSF4 - now on the 3DS too!

I don't know what else - maybe I'll finally get through Splosion Man.

[GohanX]

Was the Japanese version harder, or have your skills just atrophied in your old age?

It's considerably harder. This is the description of the translation:

Shame on you if you’ve never played Actraiser before! This version, other than having an amazingly badass logo, is actually a lot harder than the US release of the game. Even in Fillmore 1, there are more brambles, more monsters, more everything. It’s crazy great. Ian Kelley wanted to retranslate the game, so here it is! Far be it from me to deprive one of my star translators from an awesome request or two!

Surprisingly, I'm actually better at this type of game than I was back in the day. I never could beat ActRaiser 2 back then, but I made it my bitch a few months ago.

[Nash]

Torchlight (Xbox Live Arcade)

I bought this when it was on sale for $10, but haven't had the chance to play it. With some surprising free time last night, I decided to give it a shot. It reminded me of how much I enjoy dungeon crawlers. The combination of exploring, looting, customization, powering up, and upgrading can keep me playing for hours. The graphics aren't great and the character designs could be better, but overall the game has a nice charm to it. The frame-rate drops every now and then is a bit disappointing, though.

[Frogacuda]

Vanquish

This might be the first attempt by the Japanese to make an overtly Western-style game this gen that actually feels sincere to me. By that, I mean that the people making it actually like the genre and aren't just trying to pander to foreign tastes they don't entirely understand.

Not only that, but it still retains its Japanese spirit with the over the top animation, giant bosses, and visual style. It's a game that only a Japanese developer could make, and yet it's not dated and out of touch with modern control and gameplay conventions. Even though it wasn't really a big hit, I feel like if more Japanese devs were able to think about games this way; about how they can incorporate what works about our games and add something to them, that the Japanese game industry would be in better shape right now.

[FuryFox]

I've been playing a lot of League of Legends lately (whee alliteration). If you want to be a good person you could try through my referral link. It's a free-to-play DotA (Defenders of the Ancients Warcraft 3 mod) clone, but less strictly adherent to those particulars like Heroes of Newerth. I never played DotA, but these games are easy to pick up. Great fun with a team of friends on Ventrilo (or w/e), but can be pretty frustrating with dumbass randoms like any multiplayer game.

Playing it, I get a certain "playing with action figures as a kid" vibe, especially at the point when your best friend disputes one guy's merits over another (i. e. whether Storm Shadow can beat Snake Eyes). It can be pretty dumb, but you can pull some serious strategy out and it's extremely satisfying to mind-game your way into a kill. I like that each match is around 45 minutes, so it's easy to play in chunks, although the addictive quality of the game somewhat evens out that positive.

It's entirely free with a micro-transaction model, but nothing you need cash for has any gameplay advantage. You can unlock new heroes with in-game currency and every week they have a new rotation of 10 heroes to try.

[Tain]

just bought fuckin GIGANTIC ARMY



I've been kinda looking at this game since its release last year. Was reminded of it today, looked up the game's official site, and saw that you can get it internationally via digital download through the embarrassing DLSite.com. The weird ghetto Japanese website purchase went smoothly, the game seems awesome.

I'm also about to be playing Mario 3. Never beat it as a kid, since our babysitter borrowed and lost it, lol.

[epmode]

Now that I finally have a newish videocard/CPU, I looked into PS2 emulation. I started a game of Final Fantasy 12 International and I JUST CAN"T STOP PLAYING. Such a shame that we never got that one over here.