What Are You Playing (Winter 2012-2013 / Postapocalypse)?

[GohanX]

Some call it TNL.

Motherfucking zing!

[Finch]

The meat of Persona 4 is the same as Persona 3 and just about every SMT game post-Nocturne. It's like a dark gothic version of fantasy football. You collect and merge demons in an effort to create the best, most unassailable lineup of demons/personas. This requires a lot of careful planning, experimentation, and poring over charts. The most modern SMT games, Persona 4 Golden and Devil Survivor 2, streamline this a great deal. But it's the same "dark gothic fantasy football" concept.

The day-to-day school stuff is no worse than trudging through your average RPG town. It's much better in fact. Like Mzo says, you don't need to worry about doing everything (especially in P4G). The game gives you A TON of hints when a unique event occurs. One perfect example is the TV mail-order program on Sundays. In P3 you could buy some unique items through the mail-order program but it was really easy to forget about it. In P4G it reminds you every single time.

Collecting and fusing demons is what you do in the whole series, like since the first Famicom Megami Tensei. DDS is an exception. Going on pretend dates with generic anime high school kids and crawling through the dullest randomly generated dungeons ever is unique to P3 and 4, though. The best description of P3 and P4 is that they're uninspired anime high school simulation games with uninspired SMT gameplay.

[gameoverDude]

Legend of Grimrock: This one reminds me of Brandish with its mix of grid based movement and realtime combat, only with the FPP dungeon viewpoint similar to the first Phantasy Star- and a 4-person party. Very good stuff.

[bVork]

I guess you never played Eye of the Beholder, then. Or Dungeon Master.

[Korly]

I'm finally at the end of Mass Effect 3 and now I guess I have to play a bunch of multiplayer so I can beat the game?

[AaronChance]

Ridge Racer Unbounded -- Glad I paid for the bonus cars since the Ridge Racer one is my favorite so far. Pretty cool game, but you get turned around way too easily, and when that happens you might as well start over.

[MechDeus]

Torchlight II - Finished up my first run and installed a few mods for the last few levels. Made the passive buffs last for five minutes instead of 30-60 seconds because playing like a 2004 paladin sucks ass, boosted the inventory size because I like to horde cool stuff, and installed the Synergies mod that turns Torchlight II into a good game. It made me have to actually pay attention to gemming, got to fight elite and rare monsters, prioritize kill orders, and all sorts of good stuff that's missing from the regular game. Now to decide whether I want run loot maps or new game+.

Borderlands 2 - Still awesome. So much awesome.

[PKBMax]

Just finished ZombiU, which was pretty damn awesome.

Trying to finally complete my play through of Dragon Age: Origins.

Started Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward today. The story already has me hooked. Can't wait to play more.

[gameoverDude]

I guess you never played Eye of the Beholder, then. Or Dungeon Master.

Right. Probably because during the 16-bit era 93% of what I played was shooters, fighters, Shinobi/Strider type platformers, or the latest SoR. RPGs came up less often in my rotation then.

As for EotB, I'll look up the Sega CD port- with its Yuzo Koshiro ST. Dungeon Master I'll check out on FM-Towns sometime- it looks better than the SNES cart (actually 100% like the Amiga version) and adds some BGM. Sure looks like DM & EotB are key influences on certain titles.






Now, some Genesis stuff:
- Steel Empire: Great hori steampunk STG with nice smoking wreckage effects as larger enemies take damage and go down.
- Alisia Dragoon: It seems the boomerang throwing lizard is the best partner a lot of the time.
- Jewel Master: The ring-switching gimmick works very well in this platformer.

[bVork]

Man, Sega CD Beholder looks UNPLAYABLE. How can you do the two-step with that interface and cursor speed?!