What are you playing?

[AEmer]

Yeah, turn based strategy can be really, really good.

I find that it's only amazing when you're playing against other players, or when there's strong RPG elements and a cool theme to go with it. The main reason I didn't play armored princess was, doubtlessly, the theme.

My new favorite thing is games that eliminate chance completely. The game of thrones boardgame does that brilliantly, by instead using secrecy rules: There's an element of risk, which is crucial to the gaming experience, but it can always be attributed to player intelligence.

[kdawg88]

QuakeWorld: best multiplayer game period. This video about the game and the still-existant community (small and getting smaller) was just released. I really love this game and I wish more people would play it. Alas....

[EER]

Fifa 11, I am such a casual gamer now

[Jonas]

Since I haven't been playing Mass Effect 3, I've been playing a bit of L. A. Noire instead. It's not a bad game - I've heard so many bad things about it, I honestly didn't expect to find anything I'd like, but I'm enjoying it well enough. The face capture is definitely a flawed concept, but it's better than the old way of doing it, and you couldn't have done this gameplay without it - it's almost possible to consistently get the truth/doubt/lie prompts right based on the acting. Of course it helps that the acting is rather good.

Cole Phelps isn't as bad a protagonist as I'd been told. He was definitely taken in the less-personality direction, but I think they strike a decent balance - could just be I haven't got to the part where his character starts breaking down though. I think it's funny that these urban crime games all have to make their protagonist ex-soldiers to justify their ridiculous proficiency in the inevitable shooty bits (this game, Mafia 2, GTA 4).

I guess the main criticism of L. A. Noire was that the city wasn't used very well - it's almost like a movie set, you don't pay attention to the bits you go through to get to the important scenes. But I think it works all right. Having a bit of open-ness does introduce an element of "should I go apprehend the driver first and get his statement or should I start by interviewing the widow?" The order in which you visit places matters, or has the potential to matter, quite a bit, and tying all the locations together with an open world city is a better way to do it than just having a map with zones that you teleport between, especially when the occasional car chase happens.

In conclusion, probably the most enjoyable adventure game I've ever played, but then I was never a fan of the point-and-click genre in the first place. It's got flaws and it doesn't demonstrate a great mastery of its thematic genre (it isn't really very "noir" at all), but it's a very different game from what I usually play, and I'm enjoying it.

[gamer0004]

Bought Stacking and boy is it nice. I love it. Delightful little game. I can wholeheartedly recommend it! It's only €10 ATM.
It's got a fantastic soundtrack, is inspired by silent movies and has great, simple gameplay. It's casual, but in a very good way, because the interaction between the lovely scenery, soundtrack and gameplay make for an incredibly soothing and charming experience.

[Hassat Hunter]

Me?
I am playing the Grotesque Tactics serie and liking it a lot.
Wonder why so many seem inclined to hate the game... oh well...

[PlausibleSarge]

I'm playing BF3 lolololol.......its pretty average, but all my friends play it

I was up until recently playing Nuclear Dawn and Killing Floor - both excellent games, and pretty cheap too (on steam) with lots of free updates

[Jetsetlemming]

Wanted to show my girlfriend a game of artistic merit that wasn't about killing things, and ended up replaying The Void. I miss the "less difficult" fan patch I had last time I played this game. By default trees will stop sprouting color after three days (of steeply diminishing returns from when you first seed them), but deny getting reseeded for like FIVE. Couple this with the Brothers being able to ruin your farms if they enter them before you collect a day's harvest, and you've got a really, really easy system to fuck up on.
Still, I'm encountering game elements that I never picked up on before, like the big floaty enemies that suck you in, when killed, will drop color. None of the other enemies are worth killing unless you can't get rid of them in any other way. You can also use the donor glyph to drop color on the ground, luring fireflies towards it, and you can grab them for free color as well. Also I don't think I ever even noticed Violet's ability, "Inspiration", before, which applies a bonus to the color you seed into shrubs and trees, like a garden version of Gold's "Trust". It's pretty useful, especially when you're poor, which isn't uncommon in a game as unabashedly unforgiving as The Void.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

with LA Noire when Cole starts breaking down is when the game suddenly takes a turn for the worse- though the cases are still interesting, I feel like the character essentially becomes abandoned midway through the game. Whilst they could've done something really really deep, instead we're given "Cole just did this against your will". A bit of choice in the matter would've gone a long way and multiple endings would've helped as well (one where Cole actually becomes an all rounded good guy, and another where he becomes a hard living PI after loosing his job.. Now that would've been great).

I myself have never brought myself to finish the game because if I do, I know I'll hate the game, which I can't because I know a lot of people who's friends with people that are ex-team bondi.. I have to respect those people for they did something no Australian studio has really succeeded at before, produced a AAA budget title that sold pretty damn well. (the studio collapsed because of the unfairness of the industry in this country (no rights at all for workers) as well as the blatant exploitation from Rockstar).

But you're right Jonas, the face technology was pretty much a novelty and it doesn't work very well.. especially since we're already seeing stuff coming out of the Kinect SDK that can do stuff fairly similar- to me if the Kinect can really get a lot of PC backing to it, it'll become an amazing tool for producing cheap, easy and quick 3D animations and models (though obviously the models won't be game quality- the animation will be though).

In terms of adventure games however, I'm still in the mindset that Pandora Directive was a better game than LA Noire, it did pretty much exactly what LA Noire did but presented it in a non-linear fashion with established characters and a holywood cast. But for an Australian game, I was impressed with the work done even though I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

[Jaedar]

You can also use the donor glyph to drop color on the ground, luring fireflies towards it, and you can grab them for free color as well.

I am fairly certain they cover this in the "tutorial".

The Void is cool, perhaps I should also replay it one of these days.

[AEmer]

The Kinect has a fairly simple design. With the correct optical setup and some high quality parts, you could totally make a Kinect HD with all the same specifications except an insane improvement in visual fidelity.

It's all about software tailored to a specific platform, and if that gets good, Kinect++ for game development will probably become a reality...a 1000$ piece of kit put together by someone in China that lets you capture Kinect models off of reality at 10-100 times the visual fidelity?

It's gonna happen.

As for Noire, I really liked the game. I don't have any problems with the ending at all, either.
It's bittersweet, but the damn game has Noire in the title.

It's generally a great experience...and it's also pretty fun to be able to recognize a lot of the actors in the game.
I had my partner drive me everywhere though, so while the open world was a lot of fun for the thematics, it went mostly wasted on me.

[Jetsetlemming]

You can also use the donor glyph to drop color on the ground, luring fireflies towards it, and you can grab them for free color as well.

I am fairly certain they cover this in the "tutorial".

The Void is cool, perhaps I should also replay it one of these days.

It's entirely possible to miss parts of the tutorial though. The Brothers are introduced at a set time in the game's progression and anything that Eva hasn't taught you yet goes untaught.

[Massaca]

I was playing Touhou Koumakyou: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Danmaku shmup) last week and after 4 days of practising I finally managed to beat it on Normal without using any continues (the game is only 20-25 minutes long but took me a lot of practising and memorisation, just to 1cc Normal, and there are two more difficulties higher that are much harder).
Then proceeded to get destroyed on the Extra stage which is locked at the highest difficulty and is hella tough.

Now trying to 1cc Touhou Eiyashou: Imperishable Night on Normal with a couple different characters and it's proving to be harder. I refuse to play anything else until I do it or until Ninja Gaiden 3 comes out, so I've got like a week and a half



On the subject of Kinect, I'd been looking at a couple Miku Miku Dance vids made using Kinect (as I have both and wanted to see it in action) and almost all of the ones I saw were crappy (relative to non-Kinect MMD vids) and there is quite an issue with feet/leg movement but one or two weren't too bad (bare in mind this is a free program that wasn't designed for Kinect or any motion capture). At the very least I guess it could be used to get a (very) rough animation to work with. Apparently it can't do facial expressions and such though.

This is probably the best I've seen (which isn't saying much >_>) but according to the uploader uses some sort of motion averaging tool (which I assume is a plugin for MMD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 92Ng#t=25s
This one looks very raw so I assume it wasn't cleaned up afterwards so (ignoring skirt clipping) it gives an idea of what would be left to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7orcLiCSb7E
And this one is simple but fairly clean. Not sure if it was touched up but the finger movement seems decent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVxC3nnox6Q


Anyway, these are still terrible compared to proper animation but it would be really cool to see some properly good animation come from Kinect. Even more-so if the Kinect and MMD/Kinect capabilities or whatever were refined much more, could be great for doujin vids.

[Jaedar]

You can also use the donor glyph to drop color on the ground, luring fireflies towards it, and you can grab them for free color as well.

I am fairly certain they cover this in the "tutorial".

The Void is cool, perhaps I should also replay it one of these days.

It's entirely possible to miss parts of the tutorial though. The Brothers are introduced at a set time in the game's progression and anything that Eva hasn't taught you yet goes untaught.

First brother appears at cycle 5 iirc, fireflies appear at cycle 2. That's.... quite the window of opportunity imo.

[Paul1290]

I had to play The Void with a lower difficulty patch. The game is quite unforgiving and isn't afraid to let you slowly lose over a long period of time.

That said it is a really nice game. I should re-play it one of these days.