Currently playing...

[venusian]

Getting going on Freeze Me. Playing on PC but it's coming to WiiU shortly too.

It's a 3D collect-em-up. It has elements of Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Galaxy but also some neat tricks of its own. Now it's not quite got that super-polished Nintendo feel but it's pretty darn good and there's a good deal of content for the price.

Barring the egg mechanic it feels to me a bit like Billy Hatcher; if Sega has made a Super Mario 64-esque game for the Dreamcast this is what it would have been like.

[Chirpychicken]

Having a rest from Fallout 4 and gone back to vanilla destiny (until my Taken King delivery arrives from amazon - damn it amazon where is it).

Had a visit to Xur and had a play with his new 3 of Coins for increased chance of exotics dropping from Strike bosses.

It took me 4 strikes to drop a new exotic - the Gravitron Forfeit Helmet for Hunters and used 8 x 3 of coins over the 4 strikes - not too bad as it was only the easy level strikes.

Really looking forward to trying The Taken King out

[funkstar]

I've been playing rather a lot of the hard-as-nails platformer 1001 Spikes. Rage-quit inducingly difficult, but quite excellent. Each level is usually not much more than about a minute long, but finally getting through one after 30-40 tries is sooooo satisfying. Unlike what I wrote about Mushroom 11, every death here is very much your own fault. Yes, there are traps bloody everywhere, and you will need to memorize many of the levels using some amount of trial and error, but you never fail because of a lack of control, or because of it being unclear what will happen. Each try will get you just that little bit further because you are improving in some sense or other.

[funkstar]

So, 1001 Spikes rolled its credits at me:

Spoiler: show

There is an entire half of the game hidden behind it. The Antarctica set of levels looks to be about the same size as Ukampa. Not an epilogue, or some extra challenge levels: Half. The. Game.

I thought I was doing pretty well with 800+ lives left over. Given that the last couple of level had me trying 50-100 times per level, I'm not so sure anymore.

This game, man.

I also took another stab at Rage and, well, I won't be taking another. I just spent half an hour being sent on a chain of errands to let me finally get to a shooting section that lasted all of a minute. That's not what I signed up for.

It's interesting to be playing these late-2000's AAA titles now that the novelty has definitely worn off (and my tastes have changed) - it feels a little bit like the developers had realised that graphics aren't significantly improving with each game anymore, and were desperately searching for something to distinguish their games with to fill the (mostly imagined) lack of progress. In a panic, the developers grab hold of the nearest vaguely related concept and squeeze it into their game. In the case of Rage this means adopting a vaguely open-world RPG-ish structure. However, failing to realise that this requires actual hard design, they choose consistently poor implementations, and your run ends up looking like this: Here's your mission: kill those baddies across the street, but to do that you need a Doodad, from a guy who wants a Macguffin to sell it to you, and the shopkeeper is fresh out but you can get one from his sister, who's shacked up with Placeholder Goodfornothin who's in trouble with the law, so you have to provide Sheriff Wotsisface with 7 racoon pelts to get him out of lockup, but that means ya needs t'upgrade yer pickup with a raccoon scoop, which you do by collecting stars in the magical forest, but that's guarded by a sparkly unicorn who you can only pass by feeding him True Love's Tears, and fucking et cetera ad nauseam. That's 80's RPG design, people, tacked on to 2000's shooter, and -spoiler - it's busywork and it sucks. Which is a shame, because, really, it absolutely shines in other areas: the voice work and sound design are extremely well done, it's beautiful to look at, and the shooting is satisfyingly messy.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a physical copy* of Bulletstorm, which looks to be more like what Rage should have been. Now, it looks like great fun, but the installation process was excruciating, and a painful reminder of why DRM absolutely has to go. To even play the single-player campaign I had to sign up for a service I don't want (GFWL, now just Windows Live, I think) used to enable another service I don't want (online multiplayer). Among other things, this absolutely required me to force quit the game 5 or 6 times: to sign in to Windows Live, the plugin needs an update, and to update you need to quit the game, and you cannot fucking quit the game normally without already being signed into Windows Live. Seriously. Also fun: figuring out that while the web signup form allowed 16+ characters in the password, the game interface only takes 16 characters or less, and while you thought you just logged in by pressing login and proceeding to the activation screen for the game, you actually didn't - oh, and thus still cannot quit the game normally. The game better be good after this shit...

*I checked online, first: physical copies register on Origin - I don't have an optical drive any longer...

[Jonesey]

Bulletstorm is literally one of the best games no one's ever played.

Played the 360 version to death on its release. For maximum fun it's worth researching some of the more creative skills that kill.

[Marius]

Holy crap that game was awesome, loved every second of it

After finishing Fallout 4 I'm back playing Xenoblade Chronicles X, with The Witness and Twilight Princess HD on the side.

[Baggypants]

I've been carting around a massive old GB. Despite the lack of backlight and heugeness it's very satisfying to play on.

[funkstar]

Nuclear Throne - rogue-like bullet-hell twin-stick shooter, from Vlaambeer. 'S great. I'm nowhere near consistent enough yet to get more than a few levels on most runs. Unlike, say, Teleglitch, I'm never tempted to blame the game for my failures, though, and Steam says it's swallowed 4 hours of playtime, despite it not feeling like I've had any prolonged sessions.

[Mark]

Nuclear Throne's very good, but has a few issues that stop it from being properly brilliant IMO. I can't help but think it's been over-designed for one thing - it's fine if you just want to blow some stuff up, but if you actually want to achieve many of the things the game has set up for you you're best off taking a long hard look at a Wiki, and even then trying to achieve many of them feels more down to luck than how you play at times. Actually trying to reach the nuclear throne (something I suspect I never got close to despite having seen an awful lot of the game) feels more like a well-hidden tricky secret bonus route than a default game objective. The difference between a long game and a short one also doesn't entirely seem down to how well I play a lot of the time, with abrupt deaths being very common.

[funkstar]

I recognize the abrupt deaths, but I'm very often able to attribute them to myself, rather than the game. (Of course I should have shot that robot from afar - they explode, and I know this.)

The unlocks, though, are pure Wiki material.

Spoiler: show

So, unlocking Y.V., and subsequently the golden weapons, is done by carrying a screwdriver across several levels, and then hitting a car wreck with golden trim? Yeah, no, never going to happen with my playstyle, which disfavours melee weapons, and why on earth would I know to try a melee weapon against an object which explodes if shot?!?

They did a much better job of showing how to get crowns during runs.

I can't shake the feeling that most of the unlocks would actually have been better served as declared open goals, as, god knows, they're difficult enough even if you know what to do.

[Mark]

I recognize the abrupt deaths, but I'm very often able to attribute them to myself, rather than the game. (Of course I should have shot that robot from afar - they explode, and I know this.)

I'm fine with being killed abruptly when I know I deserved it. I feel NT crosses the line a tad. I can almost always work backwards and work out why I died when I did, but I'm not sure I could have avoided dying at the time. There's a thin line here I think, but the smackdown is often more than I think I deserved. I like games that chew me up and spit me out, but I want it to feel right. This doesn't feel right.

I've got YV unlocked, and have golden weapons for several characters (carrying the screwdriver isn't usually too tricky - getting it in the first place is purely random though). The fact that I have no idea how close I've ever been to finishing the game is part of my problem here. It's easier to do the side-stuff that should be auxiliary than it is to actually further your progress through the game.

[Chirpychicken]

Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the first sin - slowly getting through this its pretty brutal even compared to Dark Souls 2 with the DLC.

Just made it to Brume Tower from the first DLC I'm currently a Hexer with a +10 Bandit Axe, +5 Sunset Staff and +10 Pyro Flame

I've not found any Chime spells worth messing with yet I find Dark Orb with 50+ uses and a bunch of Pyromancies (Warmth is a favorite) are seeing me through.

I also have a +10 Halbert for reach and damage if I need to switch out for a different style of weapon.

(I also have a +6 Short Bow for when I need to cheese my way through but I don't like to talk about that )

[k345y]

Heavily into Red Orchestra 2 , again.

[venusian]

Mirror's Edge Catalyst on PC. The reviews have got it about right - it's a curates eggs but I'm enjoying it. The user reviews on Metacritic seem to have got GG disease though. The main characters are a bit vanilla but Plastic and her AI sidekick are brilliant creations.

[Baggypants]

Sands of Time OMFG dat camera!