What Are You Playing (Summer 2013)?

[YellerDog]

I feel... obligated? to like Fez for some reason. Not happening. It's like a Cave Story where nothing happens.

[gameoverDude]

Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label- Both the original and Ketsupachi modes.
Dodonpachi Saidaioujou- 360 mode.
Neo Turf Masters- Trying some of the other golfers besides George Spiner. It's fun playing as Fernando Almeida the power golfer and cranking out 300-yard drives, but he's a harder character to use. Sticking with Toyoshige "Putt Master" Takeno for now. I'm not much of a real golf fan but I can get quite hooked on this one.

[No One]

After putting it off for years, I'm finally digging into Mother 3. Pretty excited!

[GohanX]

Gameoverdude and No one just gave me a boner.

[Joust Williams]

Darksiders II is long as hell...I am finally able to beat the game but there's tons of side stuff and collectibles (100 waves of the Crucible in a row? Wtf)

Not sure if I should just win the game or not.

[bVork]

Yakuza
This summer, I'm going to try to make it through the whole series. I never finished this one or the second one, and haven't even touched 3, 4, and Dead Souls. Time to rectify that!

I tried to load my old save but realized I was totally lost because of all the characters and plotlines that I had forgotten. So I started from the beginning and am just over three hours in on a fresh save. For a PS2 game, this still looks pretty amazing. I tried playing it via PCSX2, where it often looks even better, but the game is funky enough that no setting looks quite right. The configuration that will make one scene look perfect will result in the next scene being a white screen. But what I did see makes me really wish Yakuza 1 & 2 HD would come out here. The texture resolution and level of detail is astonishing. I can put up with technical issues like the hitch when you change scenes, background characters that suddenly pop into existence, and the very frequent and sometimes mid-cutscene loads thanks to how much this game is pushing. And the detail really matters. It actually feels pretty liberating to play a game that I know I cannot possibly 100%. I'm content to do the side-missions and minigames that I directly come across, but I'm not going to bother looking up an FAQ or wandering around to find stuff that's tucked out of the way.

[Andrew]

A summer Yakuza marathon sounds wonderful. A US release date for Yakuza 5 would be wonderful, too.

I'm playing The Last Story. The soundtrack is classic Uematsu, the voice acting sufficiently British, the characters are engaging, the plot is interesting. But fucking hell, is it ever awful to look at. Even grading on the Wii curve, it's atrocious. I've seen N64 games with better textures. Yuck.

[AaronChance]

Resident Evil 6 - IT'S TERRIBLE! OH MY GOD. IT MAKES RESI 5 SEEM LIKE THE GODDAMN MONA LISA.

I'm astounded how bad it is. The endless QTEs, the terrible story, the really really bad textures, and the best part of the gameplay is sliding across desks. How could Capcom pour so much resources into this game, and manage to make any aspect of it fun? It's almost an accomplishment.

[Rumpy]

I've been playing nothing but Starcraft II pretty much. Going for achievements I missed in the story while trying to get better at multi to the point where I'm not a complete embarassment. I actually watch more SC2 than play it, it's kinda weird.

Been trying to get the last possible achievement I can get in Rock Band Blitz, but I don't think I can do it. 5 gold stars an all the tracks that come with the game, I'm down to 4 and no matter what I do I'm still around 25k or more from doing it on each song.

Candy Crush Saga for some stupid reason. I've been on level 147 for 2 weeks and I just can't clear it. It's like beating my head against the wall 20x a day. I refuse to buy any of the items because that's bullshit.

I've been thinking about beating Beyond Good and Evil HD and Batman City on Hard by the time summer is over.

[MechDeus]

MK - Finished story mode and screwed around with some challenges. There's a ton of kontent in here but the gameplay is so stilted I probably won't play too much more of it, although the minigames are really entertaining.

Phoenix Wright - Started this on iOS. The graphics are ugly if I go landscape but staying vertical means they're small enough that the flaws aren't nearly as apparent. It's certainly entertaining and charming most of the time, although the Baby's First Book text speed is killing me. I might just hunt down the movie and watch that instead of finishing the first game.