What are you currently playing?

[Panfoot]

Dead Rising 3: Apocalypse Edition - I was a huge fan of the original game when it released on 360 and I thought Dead Rising 2(along with it's 360 exclusive prologue and epilogue DLCs, Case Zero and Case West respectively) was a great follow up, but I never got around to 3 since I didn't get an Xbox One and even after it just looked a bit more bland then the previous games and put off getting even after the steam release. Cut to now with the just ended steam sale and the release of Dead Rising 4, I finally got around to it given that I want to try 4 at some point after the steam release and figured I might as well(though also because it seems be comparison 4 might be even more of a generic open world game unfortunately). It was...an okay game. While the natural progression of the combo system, being able to make combo weapons on the fly without the need of a work bench is nice, it's come at the expense of the combo weapons being *the* weapons to use. While you always wanted to have a nail bat or a fire axe/sledgehammer combo with you in Dead Rising 2, the weapons by themselves still felt worth using if you wanted to, with 3 I find most of them to just be complete junk, and not just the novelty ones either. The world is certainly bigger than Fortune City or the Willemette mall, but no parts of it are really as fun to explore as any bit of the old locations. The story itself was fine, following up on Case West pretty well. Overall I guess I would have to say one step forward two steps back, glad I played it but it's lost the uniqueness of the series.

ABZU - Don't have much to say about this, very pretty but not much to it.

Steep - Still have the same problems with the full version that I did with the beta, but I do enjoy booting it up for an hour or so and just exploring and trying a few challenges here and there.

[Orujo-man]

I'm currently playing FFIX again. In my opinion one the best FF (The best of PSX, above FFVII) and sadly not very valued.

[MikeP]

Witcher 3. Despite being a huge fan of Witcher 1 and 2, I was nervous about playing this one due to the massively good feedback. I've had that kind of hype effect my feelings for a game, despite trying to not let it.

Well I'm only a few hours in and I'm just gobsmacked by the level of detail and sheer atmosphere put in this game. As much as I love Skyrim, this game manages to top it in nearly every aspect. So far, its living up to the hype.

[KCJ506]

Hitman Blood Money.

[JCAll]

Currently playing Muramasa: Rebirth. A 2d hack and slash on the Vita, the game is absolutely gorgeous and has some of the smoothest combat I've seen in years. I've already finished the main campaign enough to see all 6 endings, which were quite satisfying, and have started on the DLC. If there's any complaints it's that the environments get kind of samey after passing through them the umpteenth time, and the endgame combat is just spamming the best special attacks to be invincible. It also has the most annoying tool tips I've ever seen, and there's no option to turn them off. I can SEE that my health is low, you don't need to bring up a message covering the entire bottom of the screen to tell me that. You don't need to bring up a text box covering the WHOLE SCREEN every 5 minutes telling me why I'm going to my next objective. I'm on my way, leave me alone!

I'll probably stick with it to complete the DLC, but I doubt I'll stay around for the Platinum. Which apparently require beating the entire game again, all 6 endings, on 1HP mode. Ha ha, @#$% that!

[Panfoot]

Spent the week playing through Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and I'm conflicted on this one. I enjoyed my time with it, but the incredibly abrupt ending really left a bad taste in my mouth(I'd compare it to something like KOTOR 2 or MGS5, where the game doesn't really end so much as just stops), and probably the most interesting plot line was introduced at the start with a small bit of followup near the end that just leaves more questions.

[Troian]

Replaying Last Of Us.

[CJStriker]

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3!!!


I am a Fan of the Anime and as soon as I bought my PS4 at the end of 2016 this was one of the 1st games I bought! It is fun, it gets repetitive but it is fun to play the story based game with how unique each hero is to play as!

[comicstar100]

Just started playing Final Fantasy 15 and Pokémon Moon

[CraigTheCylon]

Went through a Call of Duty hat-trick this past couple weeks so now I'm all caught up.

Black Ops 3: This one is so very nearly excellent. I said before that I'm usually more drawn to the Blops games than the other CODs, but even beyond that Black Ops 3 very quickly felt like a direct response to my main issues with Advanced Warfare. While the previous game draped future tech over its tired PMC plot to affect a disguise, this one embraces its sci-fi premise right from the start, with human augmentation, virtual reality flashbacks and talk of the nature of life and death in a world where consciousness can exist digitally. Black Ops 3 also brings back the option to completely customize your loadout before each mission - which for me means bringing an LMG to every fight no matter the conditions - here expanded with a little walk-around hub area (pretty pointless, but I kinda dig it) and your superpowers. The various gimmicks you can equip still don't factor into gameplay in any critical way - it's quite possible to blast through the whole campaign ignoring every single one - but there's a far greater selection than in Advanced Warfare and some are funny if nothing else. My favourite is the one that freezes an enemy's exo-skeleton to lock them in place, and its upgraded version which makes the joints bend in the wrong directions, snapping their bones. Mmmm lovely lovely violence. But yeah, the campaign is exciting, decently lengthy (by COD standards anyway), and dips its feet into some pretty imaginative, surreal imagery in the back half that really livens things up...unfortunately, that's where the story kinda collapses on itself. It's sad to say that, since the Black Ops subseries has previously done very well with its stories, and you can tell the Treyarch boys were trying to put together something clever here, maybe make some profound statement on the human condition, but ultimately the game doesn't really have anything to say inbetween reloads, and all the weird visual metaphors amount to nothing. Like they tried to make a COD version of Ghost in the Shell and wound up with Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence instead. Blargh. Still good overall, but it hurts to see it fumble the ball so close to the finish line.

Infinite Warfare: COD! IN! SPAAAAAAACE! Despite the setting, Infinite Warfare feels more grounded in reality than Black Ops 3. Your powers and gadgets have been scaled back down again, and while you are certainly spending a lot of time on an honest-to-goodness spaceship, Infinity Ward (and Raven, and the assorted murderers' row of devs who worked on this) took the same approach as Battlestar Galactica and treat it as basically an aircraft carrier or similar real-world naval vessel, just floating in vacuum rather than on water. The approach works, although I do wish I could freely walk around more of the ship than just the bridge and my office in-between missions. The action is still in the Modern Warfare mould, so it's fast, twitchy and chaotic, albeit now spiced up with robotic enemies requiring a slightly different approach to killing (mostly meaning, 'remember to bring shock grenades'), and new aerial dogfighting sections. Unlike most COD vehicle excursions, the sorties in your Jackal space-F22 thing occur regularly enough to count as part of the game's spine proper, and they're...alright. The pace is frenetic to a fault, and I hate not having an optional 3rd-person view for things like this, but the difficulty is scaled generously to not upset you, and the controls are arcade-simple and responsive enough. And hey, it's never not fun watching a bigger craft wilt under your prolonged fire and explode in a retina-scorching fireball. There are plenty of missions in the campaign but most are optional, though they do offer perks and upgrades to make your life easier, plus most of the boarding-enemy-ship missions are well-planned and switch up the pace in interesting ways. If you were to focus solely on critical missions, the campaign would barely edge past 3 hours, but on the plus side, it uses that time well. As you guide one of the few remaining Earth-loyal battleships on a guerrilla war against the superior Mars-native SDF led by Admiral Jon Snow (I jest, Kit Harington is good here and doesn't just echo his most famous role), you spend enough face time with the dozen-plus main members of your crew to feel like you know them, which of course is just setting up the ninepins for later hardships, especially with the game's favourite theme being how war isn't clean and leaders can't always afford to keep their subordinates safe. It's probably the most successful overall COD story since Black Ops 2, and the last couple of missions - wherein the good guys make a plan, it falls apart immediately as expected, they improvise a second way to win only to watch THAT fall apart too - are real edge-of-the-seat stuff. Oh, and there's Ethan, your friendly robot soldier. Apart from being the funniest chap in the game, I really love how nobody seems bothered about working with a machine that talks like a man. It shows that this is actually one of the good sci-fi futures, where technological leaps are meant to be celebrated, not fretted over. Nobody ever suspects Ethan will turn Skynet and he never does. It's a small touch but I appreciate it.

Modern Warfare Remastered: Because of course I spent an extra £20 or so on Infinite Warfare to get a shinier version of a game I've owned for years. Seriously, though...what is there to say? It's Modern Warfare, the game that turned COD from a Medal of Honor also-ran to the world's most popular FPS series practically overnight. The remaster doesn't shake things up because it doesn't have to: even today the game still plays smooth and fast like a shaved cheetah. I was curious to see if the campaign still held up after so many years of seeing its every trick and innovation copied by damn near every other FPS out there - and it does. The 'tricks' may be old hat now, but the pace of the game and the two-note beats of quiet mission, loud mission, quiet again etc. still get the pulse up like few others. What has changed are the visuals. Modern Warfare was never that nice to look at; it sacrificed up-close detail for scope and a steady framerate, which admittedly was a wise choice. But today's tech means we can have both. The textures are sharper - so crawling on your belly through the grass in your ghillie suit actually looks like moving through grass, not moving through a poorly-cropped drawing of grass - the water looks like actual water now, and there are a bunch of new animations added that likely weren't necessary but do keep things moving more naturally. But the real stand-out is the lighting. The soft glow from street lamps, the flash of lightning, the harsh bloom that nearly swallows you when you dash through a burning building...it just adds so much to the faux reality of the world. This one would get an easy recommendation...if you could buy it separately. But of course Activision felt like being dicks about it. I mean, Infinite Warfare is good too, but the combined package price tag is hurtful and of course if you buy pre-owned the Modern Warfare store code will have already been used...

[JCAll]

Currently playing Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney 6: Spirit of Justice. I've only just started, but so far so good. It has by far the best first case in the whole series. I hope it can keep up this momentum the whole way though. It's got quite a bit more DLC than the last game though, I'll have to check and see if that's any good. I will say this though, Ace Attorney has the best deals on DLC costumes. Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice both had 3 costumes for a dollar, some games I know charge upwards of 5 dollars per costume and have a dozen costumes to buy.

[Speed Force League Unlimited]

Final Fantasy II (GBA)
It's tedious to upgrade, but I had fun with it.
Upgrading magic stats by using them is one thing I find to be more pleasant than having to buy the next level of that spell, this is one thing I appreciate in this more than any other RPG to be honest.
Took me close to 30 minutes to defeat the emperor of Hell, without giving my characters as high status abilities as I wanted to do so.
This makes it one of two games in the series I successfully completed, and the fifth Japanese Role Playing Game. Not a bad time for someone who never played the game before, and didn't use cheats.

Speaking of cheats, I decided to use gameshark for all items, because stripping Ricard of all equipment before his demise was a bad move to make, I need blood sword and his spear to progress smoothly.

[Midvillian1322]

Darksiders remastered, still thoroughly enjoy this game. Is that mark Mark Hamil doing his joker voice as the watcher?

[CraigTheCylon]

Another 3 added to the 'done' pile.

Star Wars Republic Commando: I feel like I've been chipping away at this one for a whole year. Republic Commando is a curious beast: it introduces itself as a tactical shooter a la Rainbow Six, but doesn't ultimately have the patience or courage to support that approach. You've got a squad backing you up at nearly all times, and you have some capacity to boss them around, but for the most part your interactions are heavily context-sensitive (i.e. you can tell someone to go take up a sniping position, but only at specific points) or kinda poorly-defined. Even without direction, Sev, Fixer and Scorch will plough onwards to the next objective and attack enemies along the way, and while you can make them form up there's no command to make them hold position or take cover, just options for more directed attacking. That sounds maddening, and sometimes it is, but the game overall kinda gets away with it. For one thing, the squad AI is decent enough to keep them alive, and it's never a chore to help one that falls (they'll actually help each other if they're not busy, which is nice). More importantly, the player character is tough and well-equipped enough to handle many situations solo, even if I did find myself running out of rifle ammo a lot. Most weapons have a good deal of punch and the intra-squad chatter is nice. The story is...forgettable, as it's built on your team just going on missions without complaint, but the way the art direction has successfully captured the Star Wars vibe while also doing its own thing visually makes up for narrative shortcomings. It's grimier and darker than any movie, Rogue One included, and is a particular contrast to the Prequels it's ostensibly set during. The last missions on Kashyyyk, where all the Wookiees have apparently been benching trucks 'cause they're MASSIVE in this, drag on too far for my liking, but the mid-game stretch set on an abandoned Republic cruiser have incredible atmosphere, and overall the thing has a pleasantly chunky feel. Still holds up.

Battlefield 4: At this point, I think I'll just have to concede that the Battlefield series just doesn't work for me. And it's especially irritating that my primary reason is "it's too hard", which sounds pathetic. On the one hand, Battlefield and Call of Duty share enough DNA that there shouldn't be a jarring difference; both basically insist you fight by hugging cover and popping up into ADS to make sure your bullets actually hit things. But on the other, COD cheats a bunch by making you just fast enough and tough enough that you can channel Rambo and just charge into the thick of it, taking potshots as you go and knifing anyone in arm's reach. Battlefield, though? Battlefield HATES IT when anyone tries to be brave. Step out of cover in Battlefield 4 and you will die inside of a second. The only safe movement is cover-to-cover-to-more-cover, and you'll be doing it a lot because cover disintegrates in real-time which, given how fragile you are even on the lowest difficulty, feels like a cruel joke. As to the campaign specifically, well, there's a story in there somewhere but it never really gels. I had the same issue with Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2 - it's like the level designers all paired off and made stand-alone missions based on whatever they thought would be cool ("how about making an aquatic infiltration on a beached aircraft carrier?" "wouldn't it be neat to try and approach a besieged fort THROUGH the enemy's siege force?"), then dumped it all in front of a scriptwriter with 2 weeks before launch. Said writer then cried a lot, and proceeded to try and tie it all together, but you can still see the joints from outer space. Actions are determined not by character agency or character conflict, but by exposition and THAT'S A DIRECT ORDER, SON. The game also has an annoying tendency to put you in situations where stealth is clearly the best option, yet never once provides you with suppressed weaponry (and Battlefield NPCs have the eyes of a hawk, so sneaking up on dudes to stab them is dicey as hell). On the plus side, it sure looks pretty!

Serious Sam 2: ...ehhhhh. After reminding myself how great the first 2 Sams were, and even enjoying Next Encounter far more than expected, Sam 2 left me disappointed. There's still a good, solid foundation inside it somewhere, but Croteam lost their way during development and seem to have become obsessed with stuff that doesn't matter. For example: cutscenes. Cutscenes book-end every stage (and sometimes interrupt them in the middle), and every one is amateurishly animated, 'blessed' with diabolical voice acting, and didn't need to exist. The same amount of story was handled by text windows in previous games without issue. Speaking of which, what happened to my Netricsa data log? Apparently giving Netricsa a voice took up so much memory she can't offer any flavour text for weapons or enemies, so I don't know what to call most of the new ones (and just about every damn enemy is new here). The guns were remodelled and largely for the worse - especially the basic shotgun, which is now some bizarre revolver contraption. There are vehicles and turret sections, neither of which handle well, yet both of which you will be stuck with despite their appearing optional at first. Oh, and while it's nice to have a Sam game leaving Earth behind at last, the level selection leaves much to be desired. Your first world is the planet of the Pacific Islander stereotypes, and the third is Planet of the Chinese Stereotypes. The second is meant to be Planet Honey I've Shrunk The Player, but only the last few levels take advantage of that, after a prolonged, boring excursion through an Ewok village knockoff. Still, the Kleer homeworld is a welcome, heavy metal-themed diversion, and we do get to see Sirius in this one. And that last stage, running the final gauntlet before the Mental Institution? Near-perfect. It's just a lot of work to get to those good bits.

New additions to the lineup: Unreal 2: The Awakening on Xbox, and Battlefield Hardline (maybe this time I'll 'get' it?) on PS4.

[gearsofcrabs]

Played through both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, so I'm Batmanned out for now. Started Castlevania Lords of Shadow, but it's pretty meh, think I'm gonna give Dishonored 2 a spin today.

Darksiders remastered, still thoroughly enjoy this game. Is that mark Mark Hamil doing his joker voice as the watcher?

Yes it is.