The "What are you playing?" topic.

[Xiahou]

I'd like to hear what you make of Muramasa. In the event it comes out on PAL shores I'd like to know if it's worth getting or not; I love the artwork and the premise sounds good.

I've spent an hour or so with it and it's pretty good. It probably surprises no one that the graphics are beautiful, but the game play has been interesting so far as well. It has many RPG style elements included, such as cooking, shopping, sword forging, inventory, ect. You can have up to 3 swords and an accessory equipped at any one time. The swords are a tad fragile, so managing them is an important part of combat. Using special attacks and blocking wear down the swords "life" (I forget what term they use for it) and if it runs out, the sword breaks forcing you to choose another. All swords, even broken ones heal when left in their scabbard- broken ones take a long time to heal and aren't usable again until they are fully repaired. There's a lot of running around, taking in scenery, and talking to people with a healthy dose of ambushes and fighting sprinkled in. The game world is mainly linear, but it has occasional branches that you can choose depending on what your destination is. Also some later areas are sealed by magic that you need more powerful swords to open- so I imagine I'll be doing a bit of backtracking later to open them.

The combat has more depth to it than I expected....
Your basic attack button is A, and your special attacks are B. If you crouch and attack, you do a low sweep-type attack that lets you hit downed enemies. If while crouching, you tap left or right, you do a doge. If you hold A, you block. If you hold A while crouching, when you release it you do a powerful flourish, that is good for breaking certain enemies' swords. If you are holding A and tap left or right, you do a dash attack in that direction- up to three of which can be strung together. A plus tapping up gives you a jumping upercut, while A and down does a ground smash attack. Also, holding A blocks, and well timed attacks can reflect enemy projectiles... All of these can be strung together to help you lay down the punishment... For example, you could do an uppercut attack, do a midair dash attack across the screen, and then do a smash on another enemy below you.

I started on the easier of the two skill levels and, so far, staying alive hasn't been a problem. In combat, my goal is to get the 'unscathed' experience bonus, rather than worrying about staying alive. You can change difficulty on the fly, so I may bump it up later but for now, I think I'll keep it fairly easy until I'm more comfortable with the various aspects of the game. I started out playing Momohime's storyline, so at the very least, I hope to be ready for the harder skill level by the time I'm ready to play as Kisuke. The game is supposed to change significantly on harder skill levels, and I've heard that there's a hidden super-hard mode in addition to different endings available for subsequent play-throughs, so hopefully it will have some replayability.

Whew, that was a longer post than I intended....

[al Roumi]

Mount and Blade Warband Beta! Choppy Choppy! Who wants Swadian kebab?

[johnhughthom]

What's your in-game name?

edit: nvm, spotted you putting a few bolts into peoples heads.

[Meneldil]

HoMM5, heroic difficulty. Just finished Agrael's campaign.

The missions are pretty straightforward, I barely noticed the increased difficulty (I used to play in normal). Took me longer to finish the 2 first campaigns than on normal, but I got the ultimate skill for both Isabel (ultimate retaliation is pretty bad) and for Agrael (Urgash Call makes everything trivial).
Things might change later on (I fear the end of Markhal's campaign, this one used to be a pain even in normal), and I heard the two addons are sometimes almost impossible on heroic.

Meh, we'll see. I might aswell drop halfway through. I have already completed the main game campaigns a few times, hopefully I'll reach HoF and ToE quickly.

[frogbeastegg]

I'm nearly done with Metroid Prime. One last session tomorrow should see me done; I acquired the last of the ability power ups this afternoon and all that's left now is the final sweep for the remaining artifacts and health/missile expansions, and then the final bosses. It's amazing how much easier the game is when you're not battling the controls. Aside from the aiming differences there's one wii specific change which has brought sunlight and rainbows to my experience. Enabling the morph ball to jump once without laying a bomb is a tiny change and yet it makes a massive difference to ease of use. Jumps which used to take me multiple attempts I now manage on my first go.

After that I have a choice. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Mini Ninjas or .... Batman: Arkham Asylum. The last's a totally unexpected entry on the list - I don't have any interest in batman whatsoever. Far too many people of taste saying far too much good about it for me to pass over the chance to try it out though. According to a wide bunch of assorted folk it has stealth like the Thief (!) games, exploration and powerups like the Metroid series, combat which is simple to pick up and has great depth like Ninja Gaiden, polish and love in spades, and a design which keeps the game flowing without bogging down or becoming overly repetitive. I'm adding a dumper truck's worth of salt to that gushing and expecting nothing much more than a good, varied game with polish.

Might go with Mini Ninjas. Short, easy, silly, and stylish as can be - a perfect flavour break. I wasn't intending to pick it up until later but Zavvi had it on sale for £17.95 for a couple of days so it would have been daft to pass it over only to wait for it to drop back down to that level.

[Paradox]

The last's a totally unexpected entry on the list - I don't have any interest in batman whatsoever. Far too many people of taste saying far too much good about it for me to pass over the chance to try it out though. According to a wide bunch of assorted folk it has stealth like the Thief (!) games, exploration and powerups like the Metroid series, combat which is simple to pick up and has great depth like Ninja Gaiden, polish and love in spades, and a design which keeps the game flowing without bogging down or becoming overly repetitive. I'm adding a dumper truck's worth of salt to that gushing and expecting nothing much more than a good, varied game with polish.

After finishing it, I'm inclined to say it is the game of the year so far. In fact, I think there has never been a superhero game as good-looking and inspiring as this one. The plot is straightforward, and pretty much stays faithful to the Batman comic book universe, you don't have to be a fan to notice this. The voice acting is terrific, they even brought Mark Hamill to voice The Joker. And finally, the thing I enjoyed the most, the extremely addicting Riddler Challenges and riddles. Despite the replay value deal, this game is great and it wouldn't be wise to pass it up, and a rental should do it if you're that uninterested.

This was a pretty boring year for me in terms of gaming, and this was the only non-casual game that forced me to wipe the dust off my 360.

[Monk]

Oh dear. What have I gotten myself into?

The AION beta passed and I must say that by the end of it I was very impressed with the game, overall. Strange DRM methods aside (not really intrusive, but very annoying for it to understand it's able to connect) I've not found a single fault with Aion, if you like MMOs definitely give this one a try. The only thing it has left to prove in my eyes is the high end pvp content, which I'll get my chance at after launch in a few days. I'm both looking forward to, and dreading, playing an MMO again.

EUIII has also gotten some attention from me. My plan to play a single game spanning EUIII and Vicky:rev has proven to be a project rather than a game, sucking up a lot of my free time from the last few days. The scary part is I'm only around 90 years into the game (out of a possible 500 if the converter ends up working) after 4 days of play in my free time. I'm having a lot of fun with it but I must wonder which will come first. The end of the game or death by old age?

My 360 has actually grown cold these last weeks. After a huge surge in use during the summer i've turned back to PC gaming. Among EUIII and waiting for AION, i've also begun to dabble in SW: KOTOR II once more. Getting this game to even work for me (being on vista and using an nvidia) was trouble in of itself, but once i did I was reminded why people considered this game to be so good, crippling bugs and all. If one of the major cut content mods ever get released maybe it'll be worth finishing rather than dabbling in (one is scheduled for next week, so fingers crossed).

[frogbeastegg]

100% completion for Metroid Prime in 14:02. All I can say is wow. What an experience. It feels great to have finally seen the ending all these years after I first got the original release of the game.

Prime was probably my favourite gamecube game. It's definitely my favourite wii game by a long stretch. I have no hesitations in calling it a classic, and one of the best games I've ever played. It's a must play game IMO for anyone with either a wii or a gamecube.

I definitely need to take a bit of a Metroid break before starting Echoes. Feels like I need to let the rush settle down before I can look at another in the series without risking becoming burned out or muddling it all into one sprawling mess in my mind.

After finishing it, I'm inclined to say it is the game of the year so far. In fact, I think there has never been a superhero game as good-looking and inspiring as this one. The plot is straightforward, and pretty much stays faithful to the Batman comic book universe, you don't have to be a fan to notice this. The voice acting is terrific, they even brought Mark Hamill to voice The Joker. And finally, the thing I enjoyed the most, the extremely addicting Riddler Challenges and riddles. Despite the replay value deal, this game is great and it wouldn't be wise to pass it up, and a rental should do it if you're that uninterested.

This was a pretty boring year for me in terms of gaming, and this was the only non-casual game that forced me to wipe the dust off my 360.

It's a few dozen statements like this which convinced me I needed to try the game even though I don't like batman or superheroes. Shopto were offering it at a decent price and I get discount with them because of who I work for, so I have a copy and I shall probably tackle it after Mini Ninjas. After Metroid Prime I feel the need for something simple and relatively easy; the final half of that game was pretty challenging.

[Fragony]

Personally I liked Echoes even better, even moodier, and the switching from dark to light makes for fantastic navigation puzzles. It's a bit hard at times, some bosses just too hard to be fun, especially the boost-guardian. When you finally beat them you are all OHYEAHDIEEEEEEEE but after 30 tries with 5 almossssssssssst got ya it takes a certain persistance.

[Husar]

Majesty 2, it's fun!

[frogbeastegg]

I've finished Mini Ninjas. You might be thinking that's a bit quick, especially for my standards. Rest assured it's not because the game is microscopically short or because I gave up on it in disgust: it's so darned addictive I played for some 8 hours straight yesterday! :feels like some sort of sad frog with no life: Another 3 hours this morning saw it finished. I'm missing 2 achievements and I intend to head back and collect them in a bit.

Each time I thought about quitting there was something else to play on for. Another beautiful view, another neat stealth bit, another item to pick up, another ninja to free and try out, another castle to infiltrate, another funny cutscene with the Evil Samurai Warlord, another area of water where I could go fishing. The demo does not do this game full justice. It's one of the early levels where you don't have so many options.

The game plays like a mix of Tenchu, Metal Gear Solid, Zelda and Ninja Gaiden. Most of the time the choice is often left you to: you can stealth your way along killing few enemies, stealth along and ambush, charge in head first and engage in slaughter, or - most often - a mix of all three. You might be a mini ninja but that does not hold you back from having the toolkit and abilities of a larger one. You can do the acrobatics you'd expect of a ninja: wall run, climb, wall jump etc. Aditionally you have items like smoke bombs, potions, shuriken, caltrops, various types of bombs, lots of magic spells, and 5 different melee weapons.

Lots of attention and love have gone into the Japanese setting, to the point of having Japanese voice actors provide the English dialogue with the correct accent (a la Shogun: TW (actually for that reason I kept expecting to hear how "The enemy general is running away like a whipped dog!")) and Japanese dialogue for the samurai enemies. Music is all Japanese too, and it's lovely. And the views! This game has some of the most gorgeous scenery I've witnessed in a game. The flooded village level in particular had some sights I'd love to snapshot and use as a background.

Played on hard mode the difficulty was perfect for a relaxing ramble. It was possible to die very quickly if a mistake was made, yet most of the time it was easy to avoid making fatal mistakes with a bit of thought and care. Those times when I did die another attempt or two with different tactics saw me successful.

Definitely one of those 'pure joy' type games. I'd gladly have paid twice as much for it if I'd known what lay ahead.

[naut]

Fable II. Pretty good. I like the story, the gameplay is pretty straight-forward, dialogue is quaint. I absolutely love the humour, especially in the item info and easter-eggs.

[SwordsMaster]

Fable II. Pretty good. I like the story, the gameplay is pretty straight-forward, dialogue is quaint. I absolutely love the humour, especially in the item info and easter-eggs.

Was that ever released for PC?

[naut]

Was that ever released for PC?

Unfortunately no. Xbox 360 only.

[SwordsMaster]

Unfortunately no. Xbox 360 only.

Pity. I liked the first one...

[naut]

Pity. I liked the first one...

Same. But, I always thought the PC controls were irritating; on Xbox it is a lot cleaner, simpler and intuitive.

[Jolt]

Woot! Finished Final Fantasy 8 for the first time in 10 years, and I even defeated Omega Weapon, all this while I was coming back on the train to my hometown! I was happy for the ending, it was pretty cool.

I must say that in my major game several years ago, I had got stuck in Adel. Now, with my entire team, GFs and Abilities levelled, I must say it was surprisingly easy to plow through Adel and the rest of the game (With the obvious exception of Omega Weapon, which killed me some 10 times), the final bosses in Ultimecia's castle usually went down after a minute of fighting and Ultimecia herself and her GF and the final transformation were so easy it just seemed like battling a normal boss.

Omega Weapon was a very different thing. Its attacks were immensely crippling, and half the time I had all three members each with Triple using Support Magic on themselves. Used my two "Hero"'s on that battle as well as practically every Megaelixir. I suppose it was major bad luck I only connected one Lion Heart limit break throughout the entire battle with Omega, otherwise he'd have gone down much faster as well, but Irvine's Limit Break with Armor Piercing ammunition also helped immensely (In total of those limit breaks, he dealt an unbelievable amount of damage).

I enjoyed the last song "Eyes on Me" as well as the final scene where Squall and Rinoa finally kissed (I was thinking they were never gonna do anything more than hugging each other.

Ever since I played it, I always considered it my favorite Final Fantasy of all series. The end didn't change my opinion one bit.

[Samurai Waki]

Surprisingly, I'm actually playing ETW, 1.4 Patch actually fixes a few things that were real game breakers for me. Now if only they could have addressed most of these things before release.

[frogbeastegg]

Things I dislike about Star Ocean: The Last Hope

1. Difficulty spikes. One area you're winning battles with your eyes closed, the next all enemies have 6 times as much health and do loads of damage.
   
2. Lymle. She looks and behaves like a particularly bratty 6 year old yet is supposed to be 15. She talks in a droning monotone which could bore the hind leg off an elephant. She says "'kay" at least once per sentence, 'kay, sometimes more, 'kay. She's rubbish in battles. She's nasty towards one of the few tolerable characters for no reason and we're supposed to find this cute.
   
3. The way the AI targets whatever character I'm using in battle 95% of the time.
   
4. Lymle.
   
5. The way most enemies now have attacks which stun lock my character until I've lost half my health.
   
6. The ridiculously low limit on stackable items in your inventory. 20 of each. 20 where most games allow 99. 20 - so I'm constantly having to throw away perfectly good items in order to open treasure chests. Which links to below:
   
7. The way you cannot open a treasure chest if your inventory is full of one of the items it contains.
   
8. Lymle.
   
9. Bosses where you cannot tell how much damage you are doing or if you are damaging them at all until they drop dead.
   
10. The way the camera is set too low, around waist level instead of shoulder level.
    
11. The way moving the camera up so you can see where you are going also zooms it out so you can't see anything.
    
12. The way Edge runs so slowly when in large areas.
    
13. The fact that they expect you to hammer X in order to make Edge dash when on the world map. The way dashing makes me feel motion sick, and makes Edge hard to control.
    
14. Lymle.
    
15. The way Edge is so clumsy to move. Analogue controls my right foot; it feels like I'm using a D-pad style set up. Either you're stationary or you are running. You won't move at all if Edge can't take a full step. If you're in a smaller area Edge will walk - slowly. Very slowly. Unless you push a button to make him run. Why?! What happened to pushing the stick further to move faster? And why is lining up to open chests one of the hardest things in the game?
    
16. The long cutscenes where characters repeat what other characters have already said. You mean that they repeat things that characters have already said? Yes, they do repeat things that characters have already said.
    
17. The fact Edge fell for the world's most obvious trap and now will not stop moping, whining and being emo about it.
    
18. Lymle.
    
19. The fact that the game keeps on making areas and quests permanently inaccessable with no warning. If you don't follow a guide you're stuffed.
    
20. The fact that the next area wants me to ride on giant pink bunny rabbits without thinking this strange and/or twee.
    
21. Needing to run across massive areas in order to get back to my ship to do item creation, only to then run all the way back in order to hand the item over to a quest giver.
    
22. Lymle.
    
23. The way the battles seem to be expecting me to let my party use skills and spells all of the time, when either they do less damage than my ordinary attacks or cost so much I run out of MP and MP refill items.
    
24. The fact that every now and then it's good so I never feel able to shelve it as a bad game and walk away!!

I'm about halfway through the story now. It's taken me 3 months to put in the 23 1/2 hours.

[Beskar]

Things I dislike about Star Ocean: The Last Hope

1. Lymle. She looks and behaves like a particularly bratty 6 year old yet is supposed to be 15. She talks in a droning monotone which could bore the hind leg off an elephant. She says "'kay" at least once per sentence, 'kay, sometimes more, 'kay. She's rubbish in battles. She's nasty towards one of the few tolerable characters for no reason and we're supposed to find this cute.
   
2. Lymle.
   
3. Lymle.
   
4. Lymle.
   
5. Lymle.
   
6. Lymle.

I'm about halfway through the story now. It's taken me 3 months to put in the 23 1/2 hours.

[frogbeastegg]

Behold the horror. Watch that and shudder. Then remember she's meant to be 15 and experience the full agony. Then consider that I'll have spent hours watching garbage like that by the time I reach the end of the game, and tens of hours having to listen to her droning "'kay" ridden dialogue.

[Husar]

Behold the horror.

Ahahaha.

She also doesn't look like she 's 15.

[johnhughthom]

Is there a particular reason she looks and acts like a six year old?

[Tratorix]

Is there a particular reason she looks and acts like a six year old?

Terminal JRPG syndrome. Fortunately, there is no cure.

I've been playing Heroes of Might and Magic II lately. Which I unfortunately suck at.

[Prussian to the Iron]

Behold the horror

jesus, thats horrible.

shes supposed to be 15??!!?? are you positive? she sounds like a 6 year old who had too much pot (don't ask)


and wtf? 'nappy time'? is she trying to be 5?

she looks like a 6 year old. i dont know how those crappy japanese game designers do such a horrible job sometimes.

not that no other game designer screws up, but japanese games are almost always have that weird anime look that just totally annoys me and makes me wanna smash the game into a million pieces.

[Greyblades]

Thats an pretty big overeaction.
Hmm wikipedia seems to imply that she was traumatised resulting in acting like a child.

[frogbeastegg]

She's 15. The manual says so, as does the in-game encyclopaedia. All of the other characters look and act their age. Which is to say they are a bunch of teenagers out to save the universe complete with their own old-aged (he's like, 35!!!1!) cyborg super scientist 'alien' friend. :sigh: Reimi and Feize aren't bad and Meracle the cat-girl-thing manages to be both funny and likeable. Anyone who considers the obligatory sappy angel type to be a giant chicken, and stalks her with a knife, fork and bib is alright by me. I'm so going to make those two share a room on my spaceship when the sappy angel type formally joins up.

At no point at all (so far; I'm about midway through the story now) does it bother to explain to you why Lymle is like she is, not so much as a hint. You have to go look her up in the encyclopaedia, at which point you're told that when she was 6 she opened a portal to a demonic realm and did some crazy magic on herself in order to stop herself feeling or growing because if she hadn't she would have gone insane. I only saw the explanation because I was searching for something else; until then I believed the manual had a typo and she was intended to be 5.

On the plus side the game's finally given me another massive planet to explore with loads of side quests and goodies, and enemies which are reasonable to fight. So at the moment it's enjoyable.

[Beskar]

It is 15, so all the paedophiles/lolicon lovers, can fap and say "come on, she is 15!"

[frogbeastegg]

I admit that was one of the first thoughts which came to my mind, right in line after "Oh goodie, here comes the obligatory twee child type.", "What were they thinking with that voice!?", and "I'm stuck with this for the next 60 hours? Noooo!". She wears white ankle-length bloomers under her dress so shots up her skirt are 'safe'.

We also have the mostly naked ultra jumbo-breasted female mage. Her breasts are individually animated and naturally they exert a force on the camera similar to a tractor beam. She's been on my team for 1 whole cutscene and already she's making suggestive remarks and double entendres. The cat-girl-thing is also mostly naked. Neither of them would be org-safe to post a picture. Each time Reimi wins a battle the camera zooms around to give you a glimpse of her space shorts.

Meanwhile on the male side of the cast we have the "So girly looking you won't know I'm a man unless I talk!" Edge, the effeminate Feize, the walking lump of metal Bacchus, and the "Yay I have a scar and wear my shirt undone so you can see my famine victim styled super scrawny ribs!" Arumat. The only sexual innuendo levelled at them involves hints of threesomes with the boobtastic mage or Edge spying on Reimi in the shower.

Sometimes being a female gamer is a distinctly uncomfortable experience.

[Beskar]

I know many female gamers who are into that whole femine males/yaoi stuff. (Also cat girls too?)

So I guess it is just all preferences.

Edit: asked 4chan, they all said Meracle was their favourite. (the cat girl)