next »

[Tanner]

I'm working my way through Layton vs. Wright and taking breaks with Happy Home Designer right now. Layton vs. Wright is really melodramatic and great fun, though it's definitely more of a Layton game. Happy Home Designer is, even more so than mainline Animal Crossing, a game where you get as much out of it as you put in. If the thought of endlessly designing spaces in Animal Crossing homes doesn't appeal to you, you're going to hate it. There's no fail states and the clients will always be pleased with what you do. Normally I'd consider these faults, but I'm having fun just expressing myself on this new canvas. I think it would be a much easier sell if there was a demo and if it wasn't a full-price release. $30 would be a lot more appealing.

Also, the New 3DS owns. I'm glad I held out for a regular-sized one. My imported Kyary faceplates should be coming in soon.

[starsrift]

Picked up Elite: Dangerous while it was on Steam sale.

I dunno. There's a lot of interesting universe in there. Logged I think 20 hours so far, might give it another 20.
The pacing really sucks in it. There's four speeds of travel - jump drive, superluminal in-system drive, local drive, and then finally local drive halved (with landing gear down).

It does a great job of conveying the vastness of space, but you spend too much time fiddling with the throttle to correctly drop out of FTL system space to 'normal' space, and it wrecks the pacing of everything else. Honestly, landing is easier than dropping from FTL to normal space. If it wasn't for that, I think I could spend a lot more time in it, it does all things sandbox spaceship captain-y.

/ and the gear system is a little hard to get into

[s0]

i wish elite dangerous wasn't a MMO

[starsrift]

I actually haven't seen another human being in the game since I left the starting system, though I've been doing exploration stuff and alternately trading, on the edges of civilization instead of in the core systems. I don't really see any MMO-like systems or grinds in place.


/ Also, Renowned Explorers: International Society is a pretty neat RPG rougelike.

[TamaraRyan]

I recently started playing Flame in the Flood. It's great!

Flame in the Flood is still in early access, but so far I'm really loving it. It's kind of like Don't Starve in that you have to survive as long as you can and try to beat your previous score. The style is much different though and things can get pretty brutal early on. For example, I crashed my raft and broke my leg. I docked on an island to try and heal up, but then it started raining. Now I'm wet, hungry, tired and I can't light a fire because of the rain. I'm hobbling around the island trying to find shelter, and then a boar shows up and rams me. I hobble off to escape when I collapse from exhaustion. I crawl towards a mulberryy bush to try and get some food, but then I simply die. Brutal man, brutal.....

[yeahjim]

i wish elite dangerous wasn't a MMO

+1

People ruin everything. I like the slow, meditative experience of space exploration, trading... the building dread of watching those little red dots on your radar get closer and closer.

One thing I don't like is hanging around with large groups of angry young men.

[s0]

i finally got the mountains of madness expansion for eldritch horror and can't wait to test it solo. seems like a super meaty expansion which is great but im a little worried about all the new special rules it introduces that only apply to certain ancient ones. i hope eldritch horror doesn't end up suffering from rule bloat the same way its big cousin arkham horror does. one of the reasons i like EH is precisely its streamlined rules and focus on quality over quantity compared to AH. but we'll see.

[Nillo]

i finally got the mountains of madness expansion for eldritch horror and can't wait to test it solo. seems like a super meaty expansion which is great but im a little worried about all the new special rules it introduces that only apply to certain ancient ones. i hope eldritch horror doesn't end up suffering from rule bloat the same way its big cousin arkham horror does. one of the reasons i like EH is precisely its streamlined rules and focus on quality over quantity compared to AH. but we'll see.

I just got the Strange Remnants box. One step ahead of you

I think *mostly* the game is designed in such a way that bloat will not be as much of an issue compared to Arkham. For example, look at how the adventures, preludes and sideboard are done in Mountains of Madness - they're all designed to be increased with future expansions. FFG can just make another big box with a new sideboard + adventures related to that sideboard + a prelude that dictates how the new board is set up for a particular game. Anything that has to do with Antarctica can be put back in the MoM box until it's needed again.

Personally I'm the most worried about the conditions deck. The problem is, they're meant to all be shuffled together, but very often you have to search for a specific condition. It's already getting unwieldy after three expansions and I shudder to think what will happen when they add even more conditions to the deck in the future.

Also since every expansion needs Focus tokens now they've kinda painted themselves into a corner where it's necessary for them to include another set of Focus tokens in every box they release. Because of this you will certainly collect more Focus tokens than you'll ever need.

[gamer_K]

I'm playing a tycoon game Virtonomics. I'm building my chocolate factory at the moment

[Mariofan0]

In the middle of an epic grind in Disgaea D2, Finally managed to unlock the Cave Of Ordeals 6 and start using it to grind my way to level 9,999 with my characters. Also managed to defeat Valvatorez, & Fenrich unlocking them as playable characters, and adding more CP for me to allocate in the Cheat Shop.

I plan to take on the next Post Game event once I've got stronger characters, as even with my level 9'999 Laharl I got beaten bad on my last attempt.

[Mittens]

I just finished 'The Beginners Guide'
It's a real trip, had me incredibly confused and disturbed until it all sudenly makes sense

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Marvel vs Capcom 3 is sooooooo good now that I've finally hit my stride. Only took about 300 hours to become barely competent in this game.

[Ariedhan]

Hey there!

After playing Ark I went back to Monster Hunter Ultimate 4 and Im enjoying it again. Finally got to G rank and now Im having that angst to get a new armour and new weapons.

Dunno how much it'll last, but Im enjoying it a lot

[ThemsAllTook]

I 100%ed Offspring Fling tonight. Super cool game. I was impressed by how deep the mechanics went, being as simple as they were - even at the very end of the game, I was still learning new moves. The ghost replays were a pretty interesting mechanic, and I'm surprised more games don't include something like that...though I guess most non-racing games aren't quite as focused on speed as this one.

[s0]

i finally got the mountains of madness expansion for eldritch horror and can't wait to test it solo. seems like a super meaty expansion which is great but im a little worried about all the new special rules it introduces that only apply to certain ancient ones. i hope eldritch horror doesn't end up suffering from rule bloat the same way its big cousin arkham horror does. one of the reasons i like EH is precisely its streamlined rules and focus on quality over quantity compared to AH. but we'll see.

I just got the Strange Remnants box. One step ahead of you

I think *mostly* the game is designed in such a way that bloat will not be as much of an issue compared to Arkham. For example, look at how the adventures, preludes and sideboard are done in Mountains of Madness - they're all designed to be increased with future expansions. FFG can just make another big box with a new sideboard + adventures related to that sideboard + a prelude that dictates how the new board is set up for a particular game. Anything that has to do with Antarctica can be put back in the MoM box until it's needed again.

Personally I'm the most worried about the conditions deck. The problem is, they're meant to all be shuffled together, but very often you have to search for a specific condition. It's already getting unwieldy after three expansions and I shudder to think what will happen when they add even more conditions to the deck in the future.

Also since every expansion needs Focus tokens now they've kinda painted themselves into a corner where it's necessary for them to include another set of Focus tokens in every box they release. Because of this you will certainly collect more Focus tokens than you'll ever need.

oh yeah i tested it the other day and i have to say my worries were really unfounded. it's easy enough to leave out the expansion content and it's very "modular" in that way. there aren't actually that many rule additions other than focus and preludes either, both of which are simple mechanics.

my only gripe is that it takes up even more table space now with the side board

[JWK5]

I'd bought Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires the other day and while I really wasn't expecting much given the series' stigma but somehow it turned it to be one of the best games I've played in a while and prompted me to buy Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, which I am enjoying even more.

I did get lucky in that I bought the "Empires" version of Dynasty Warriors 6, I have a feeling if I'd just got Dynasty Warriors 6 or Dynasty Warriors 6: Xtreme Legends (which is just basically added characters, stages, etc.) I probably wouldn't have liked the game as much if at all.

The "Empires" version of the Dynasty Warriors games basically adds in streamlined kingdom management elements along the lines of Nobunaga's Ambition or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games but paired down enough to allow for much faster play. The way the action gameplay and kingdom management aspects intertwine is pretty awesome and keeps the battles from breaking down into mindless mashing.

I like that you can create your own character and you start of as just a wanderer taking odd jobs or jumping into wars as a mercenary but you can form a troupe of mercenaries, join another kingdom as an officer serving it, have your troupe take over a territory and form a kingdom, etc. and with each option you do not have to go beyond it, if for example you want to stay a solo mercenary you can, if you just want to stay an officer serving a lord you can, etc.

There is a lot to do between the conflicts. You are juggling relationships with other characters (improving friendships, forming pacts, getting married, having a child, etc.), managing the happiness of the populace, building various facilities (to get access to different items, weapons, tactical actions, etc.), negotiating, forming alliances, sabotaging, etc.

I am on my 3rd run through the Empires mode (each run is completed when 50 game years has passed or all the territories are united), this time around I am attempting a win strictly through negotiation, threat, and deception (i.e. without any actual conflict). It is pretty crazy that you can do that given it is a DW game (rather than a RotTK game), and the way the game rewards your character with titles (that add up to a final title that impacts the character's AI) for the different feats you accomplish makes trying different play styles feel pretty rewarding.

The online play is a mixed bag, it is a bit roundabout but I like that you can pick and choose which battles you want other players to be able to drop into (as a mercenary on your side). I also like that (optionally) random create-a-characters that you or other people have made can appear all throughout the kingdoms, sometimes as mercenaries and sometimes forming their own kingdoms (crushing a rebellion of CAW mutants is pretty amusing). When you have a child, your child's looks are a fusion of the two characters it descends from and at the end of the "game" you can save it as a create-a-character too so that it can live on in other games.

All in all, as rough as the DW games can be quality-wise I am pretty satisfied with DW6:E and especially DW8:E. I was definitely pleasantly surprised.

[baconman]

Marvel vs Capcom 3 is sooooooo good now that I've finally hit my stride. Only took about 300 hours to become barely competent in this game.

Someone learned to OTG, finally?

[Tanner]

damn, now i need to try dynasty warriors. i would totally buy that if it goes on sale.

i just beat layton vs wright a couple days ago. what a goofy game. classic layton "logical" ending out of fucking nowhere. the witch trials are a ton of fun, though. i'm sad that it's mostly a layton game because those parts aren't as good as the other layton games, but the few trials are genuinely a ton of fun and way better than dual destinies.

[JWK5]

damn, now i need to try dynasty warriors. i would totally buy that if it goes on sale.

If you do, make sure it is one of the "Empires" versions not the regular or "Xtreme Legends" (unless you're wanting to trade the kingdom-building elements for the story circuit and enjoy doing the same thing over and over).

I am not sure what price range you're working with, but got DW6:E for $20 on the PSN, and DW8:E (the newest one) for $40 on the PSN. DW8:E does have a free version on the PS3 and XBOX for download called "Dynasty Warriors 8: Free Alliances" which let's you create characters play certain modes of the game (and all modes if you have PS Plus).

[s0]

the story in dynasty warriors is completely incomprehensible if youre not familiar with romance of the 3 kingdoms btw