What Are You Playing? (Spring, 2014)

[A Robot Bit Me]

I hooked up my Genesis to test my Sega CD memory cart thing before selling it. Ended up playing Contra Hard Corps and Castlevania Bloodlines. It doesn't even make sense how good these games are.

[GohanX]

I kinda hated both back in the day, but I absolutely love them now. I still can't beat Hard Corp, but I'm working on it.

[Yoshi]

I hooked up my Genesis to test my Sega CD memory cart thing before selling it. Ended up playing Contra Hard Corps and Castlevania Bloodlines. It doesn't even make sense how good these games are.

<3 <3 <3

[YellerDog]

p.s. There's still too many damn Riddler items. I will continue my series tradition of not collecting all that shit.

You know what's good about that trash? YouTube. Anything you could *possibly* get from collecting them all can be seen in two seconds nowadays.

[MechDeus]

I like exploring the world and finding things but this one got especially ridiculous with: Unlock the seven or whatever towers to unlock 10 items in each area to unlock a few people in each area to unlock an additional 10 items in each area to then unlock whatever else holy shit stop using things I'm unlocking to just unlock more things to unlock unlock unlock unlock

It is better than the previous point blank We Shit 100 Items All Over The City but they could've stopped a couple steps in and it would've been fine.

[YellerDog]

"Achievement" based game mechanics are cute, but there's an upper limit.

[Rumpy]

They don't unlock, they just tell you where they are on the map (most of them anyway). Still, there's a ridiculous amount of stuff to collect in Origins.

[MechDeus]

One thing that is greatly improved are the detective aspects. I like the crime scene stuff and exploring to find the clues, even if it is still fairly basic. I thought they did a great job especially with the tracking people down leading up to the investigation of the Black Mask's girlfriend and then putting all that together a little bit later.

However, everything being an extended QTE is really starting to wear on me. I probably shouldn't be playing this on hard, because every boss fight gets dragged out with too many events of mashing A or X. I think the other games are just as guilty but it's been a while since I've played them. The new one will probably be the first time I'll try out normal, which will probably make everything feel too easy but at least I won't be hating life every time I have to restart a boss and mash X fifteen million times during five QTEs.

[Changeling]

I hit that point in Fire Emblem Awakening when, if your good characters haven't died, a Fire Emblem game goes from difficult to nicely-balanced to cakewalk. The second generation characters are pretty nuts, especially Chrom's babbies.

Got the same thing going on. Got bored of it as my guys got over-powered.

[MechDeus]

Finished the main plot of Arkham Origins. There were like four times when I thought they were going to drop off certain plot lines to just leave them open as unmentioned future threads but then got dragged back in for more padding. Enigma escaped, so to speak, as did Shiva which was fine but then Black Mask dragged himself back in for no reason with a lame fight, the whole Joker being part of the Blackgate Prison takeover was pretty pointless (even if I did enjoy him), etc. A couple of the bosses also got really shoehorned in there, like they wrote a story about 3-4 villains and then decided to just ram a couple extra people in there and had no idea what to do with them. Firefly and Deadshot were awkwardly inserted and went nowhere, even if they tried to make the former relevant by having it be the start of Gordon and Batman's relationship. Would've been a lot better just incorporating the bombs into something with Bane.

Still, I liked it overall and it would've been very impressive had this been my first Arkham game. As per usual the upgrades made the game baby easy by the end, and snipers are still annoying.

Tried out some Amazing Spider-Man and it's basically like playing an alpha/beta version of an Arkham game. The controls are really exactly the same right down to having the right bumper grapple with the only non-webslinging difference I noticed right off is using the Y button instead of A to interact. The combat is the same and the stealth is the same, but it's loose and sloppy where the Arkham games are solid and feels like there's weight to things. Almost like someone just made a Spider-Man fan mod for Arkham but cranked up the sensitivity on everything a bit too much.

The intro is also just a reskinned version of the Deus Ex:HR opening, so at least they have good ideas about who to copy even if it's not up to quality of their inspirations. Flipping around the city is pretty cool so far, I really like the way he runs up buildings.