What Are You Playing? (Winter 2012)

[gameoverDude]

Skyrim: 4 hours into it so far, at Level 5.

Satazius: A hori shooter that's the latest from Astro Port.

Hard Corps: Uprising - It really does deserve the Contra name. It's that good.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

Lord of Arcana. This is just as shitty as monster hunter, if not more so. But I'm hooked. It's one of a few psp RPGs that is at GameStop for $10 new.

[dog$]

One of the gifts I received was a DC-PS2 converter, so I've been able to revisit some old shooters.

Giga Wing - Yikes, this hasn't exactly aged well. Graphic design is quite bad in some respects, for the backgrounds, and the control of the planes seems a little stiff. Also, how the fuck did I get some of the high scores which I earned all those years ago.

Giga Wing 2 - Better than GW, basically.

Border Down - This is still really neat. I wish the difficulty settings in Practice didn't change after dying. The game could use an additional mode or two to give it more longevity.

Mars Matrix - Still awesome. Controls great, stages are meaty and well designed, and the challenge is quite high. I wish the game didn't exit you to the title screen after Game Overs. I think I'm going to work on this for a while to see if something like a 1CC is even feasible for me.

Can't play Under Defeat or Ikaruga in Tate because my monitor doesn't flip the right way. I'll have to investigate something which I have been shown about it.

All this shit is ten years old? Man.

[Mzo]

I looooove Mars Matrix!

[GohanX]

I've been playing some more Resistance 3, and it's growing on me. I didn't like it much at first, but I picked up some more varied weapons so I can really play the game the way I want now, and the stages themselves are getting more interesting than the "hide behind cover and fire" that plagued the first few areas. I read some reviews, and most of them seemed to not care for the Move controls, and I think they are smoking crack. Maybe they didn't use a Sharpshooter, but I like the fact that I can use the Marksman, run backwards to evade fire from 3 baddies on my screen while headshotting all three within seconds, without using L1 to zoom in.

I've also been playing Time Crisis Razing Storm, the game (in arcade mode at least) is fucking awesome. From the moment you start the game your thrown into explosions, chaos, loud shitty music and a CO yelling at you as you are thrust in the midst of hundreds of suicidal bad guys and a machine gun with unlimited ammo. It reminds me of why I love arcade games so much, and I never even played this one in the arcade.

[Diff-chan]

Persona 3 Portable. It's awesome. ^_^ It got hard really fast though.

And Saints Row 3. It's okay.

[Mzo]

The number of gameplay improvements over FES are almost too numerous to list, and they're all handy.

I didn't like the presentation as much as the PS2 game, but it's still pretty awesome.

[Diff-chan]

I never played the PS2 games, but as I understand it, the top-down cursor in Portable replaced a more standard dude-running-around-in-the-city view.

I like it. It's very fast. I can go from my classroom to the town map in two button presses. There are no load times. No bullshit.

[Thief Silver]

Megaman X Collection - 1 down, 5 more to go. I look forward to 2 and 3, and to the rest; I still look forward to, if only to find out what's wrong with them.

Skyrim - Overrated as expected but still good.

Star Ocean 2 PSP - This game is a lot prettier on the PSP; probably the best of the SO games though I haven't played 1.

Dragon Quest IV - Neat game; even as old school as it is, the character stories are a nice change of pace from starting as one party and just growing; reminding me how awesome this game was back on the NES.

[Mzo]

The translation for X5 is so bad, get there so we can make fun of it.