What Are You Playing? (Spring, 2014)

[GohanX]

Yes, that part of the game is sadistic, the Dralthi dies if a heavier ship even looks at it.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Steambot Chronicles: A delicious jank buffet. I love how the mechs are a part of everyday life and the characters are just reg'lar dudes running bakeries and real estate agencies. The world and the people in it are delightfully boring. I almost forgot that anime games have only been about punching the clothes off of young ladies and being wet "down there" for only a few years. Seems like it's been that way forever...

"If Hayao Miyazaki made a sandbox game, it would probably look at lot like this," says the back of the box on behalf of Hardcore Gamer Magazine. It's more like "If Yasujiro Ozu made Virtual On Marz."

This game is awesome even when it's terrible.

[Finch]

The world and the people in it are delightfully boring. I almost forgot that anime games have only been about punching the clothes off of young ladies and being wet "down there" for only a few years. Seems like it's been that way forever...

It was the rise of the MoeMoe as described in the book of Neptunia. Battleship girls and OS-tans were great until they were everything.

[MechDeus]

Assassin's Creed Liberation - The opening moments of the game, much like most every title in the series, begins with the display of the virtual world being constructed in front of the player. As soon as the first civilian is rendered he immediately walks into a giant wooden pole right in front of him, stumbling back slightly and then tries to figure out how to walk around it. I'd say this sets the stage for the rest of the game pretty well.

While not as pointless and forgettable as Brotherhood's campaign, I'm over halfway through and can confidently say I'm glad I skipped the Vita version because even with the improvements it's still a glitchy, boring game. I've fallen into bottomless pits and just landed on my feet to walk around down there, I've had missions break thanks to AI groups that were supposed to stay together who then split up because they got caught on each other and couldn't walk forward, I've had the battle icons just vanish entirely making counterattacks and such literally impossible, there's typos in the text, and so on. It's nowhere near the mess that ACIII was at launch but even overhauled it's still pretty janky. The three guises that can be donned are probably the most interesting part, although it feels almost completely ignored as a gameplay element for most of the missions.

Probably the weirdest thing is that it's all about how you can play as a woman of color, but then they make her a free woman who's part of an incredibly nice white household who are very rich people. So aside from being able to disguise herself as a slave and flirt with guys there's functionally and writing-wise been almost no difference so far between her and a white man. Strikes me as odd considering that even in ACIII there was discussion over Conner integrating with white society, and this takes place earlier and basically throws out the chance to have a playable character be racially and sexually discriminated against. Everyone just accepts her and lets her immediately run her own businesses when she feels like it and so on.

Master Reboot - Really nice art style but the gameplay is kind of bland. The puzzles are simple and integrated well into the environment, but some of the areas feel like a bit much with very little going on. This probably should've been a movie instead.

Lichdom - The crafting and UI still need a lot of work because it's a little clumsy for me to figure out what's going on in those menus and what goes where and uses what, but for what's basically a slow FPS with highly customizable weapons it's pretty fun. I rather enjoy that they included a parry, but I wish spell combos were a little easier to pull off. I feel like the abilities are very separate even though they're meant to be used together, and there should be some kind of skill bonus like faster charge-up with properly linked charge spells or something.

Saints Row IV - This is fun but not as much as I remember SR3 being. I think they might've gone a little too over the top here and it kind of dulls the feeling a bit. But it's still good times and the super sprint and jump is great, and the sprinting super strength attacks are pretty fucking awesome. Now if I could just find some way to make my guy shut the fuck up with his horrible Mario "WOOHOO" every time he picks up a cluster I'd be a lot happier.

[GohanX]

Stupid goddamn motherfucking diseased cunt of PC gaming! Why can't it be easy? Yet, my favorite game series has many PC exclusive entries, so it's a necessary evil. But in the end, I've got Wing Commander 2 running on my gigantic TV, through the awesome sound system, with a Xbox 360 controller (my sticks are in storage still.) And with all the tweaking, it actually works better on my Windows 7 laptop than it ever did on my old DOS or Win 98 PCs.

[MechDeus]

Noir Syndrome - Picked this up on a whim during a flash sale, it's a neat little randomized murder mystery game. Each round only takes a couple minutes and the achievements are built in as badges that help improve the character's starting materials. On the downside there's way too many locations considering that 75% of them are useless every round and the hunger mechanic is tacked on and completely pointless, especially since the rounds are already timed anyway.

Hitman: Absolution - A couple missions in and it's pretty decent so far, although that intro is hilarious. Let's watch a woman in the shower and then pick up a schoolgirl in uniform and drop her off the nunnery to check out some prostitutes outside, where a totally legit ad for apartments to rent is posted. It plays out like a rejected script for Transporter 4.

That aside, their crowd density is damn nice and all the various things they've stolen from Assassin's Creed work well here. Eagle vision, the minimap and markers, the yellow UI suspicion arrows that fill up to red, the ledge pulls, etc. Unfortunately, it seems like they didn't steal all the useful tools and there's no whistling, and for some mysterious reason Agent 47 can't pick back up objects he dropped on the ground. Three second rule I guess.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - This was good. Excellent soundtrack.

Two Brothers - Tried to play it but something went horribly wrong and the game just shat out a bunch of jumbled tiles in the first level and I had the ability to walk anywhere I wanted to, including out of bounds of the game world and screen. Not a pleasant start.

[Melf]

I've started playing Batman: Arkham Origins, and I'm liking it a lot. It's more of the same, but the same is just so damn awesome! I like the story, but I really would have preferred that the Joker not be in this one. There are other Batman villains, you know. I'd have liked to see someone else test Bats. It's like the developers think that the only bad guy who can last at all against him is the Joker.

[Josh]

I'm playing the free ps3 Batman off and on. Is that the same one? It's pretty fun.

[Melf]

It's the last one they released. It's pretty cool, considering it's not the same developer.