What Are You Currently Playing?

[Leo]

The final stage of Ninja Gaiden and also Metroid for NES.

[Zero]

Well said. I was just playing some Donkey Kong earlier tonight on the WiiU's Virtual Console.

[TempestOne]

NT

[Kizyr]

Once I manage to beat those games, I'll pick up Ghosts N Goblins and Super Ghouls N Ghosts because I'm not just playing with old school games. I'm playing with my blood pressure.

I cracked up after reading this line.

I just finished my second play through of Mass Effect 3. I have one more character to play through it as (which should be short -- it's my "all the wrong decisions" game) then it's onto something else. Probably either Ys I & II Chronicles for PSP, or Grandia for Saturn. KF

[TempestOne]

NT

[Alunissage]

I recently started Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It's the first time I've played an Animal Crossing game. I got interested in it after hearing how much text was in the game, and after helping a friend "Lunarize" his town (which he named Meribia) by grabbing screenshots of Nall and Ruby from the SegaCD games for him to put on his town flag and putting in the beginning of the SSS Meribia music in for his town's tune. So I named mine Lyton because I could fit in the first four measures of the village music from TSS into the town tune constraints, though if I'd realized I'd have to have some coast in town I might've gone for Lann. I suppose I could change the tune to the beginning of the SSS Lyton music, but I don't care for that piece much.

I also did a freehand rendition of the Blue Star and Lunar from the EB title screen (minus the ribbon E) for the town flag. Hm, maybe I'll do some wallpaper with the icon of Ruby sleeping from the Herbal Breeze spell in EB, or other spell icons. I've kind of focused on cats thus far.

[Kaiya-Sky]

I recently started Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It's the first time I've played an Animal Crossing game. I got interested in it after hearing how much text was in the game, and after helping a friend "Lunarize" his town (which he named Meribia) by grabbing screenshots of Nall and Ruby from the SegaCD games for him to put on his town flag and putting in the beginning of the SSS Meribia music in for his town's tune. So I named mine Lyton because I could fit in the first four measures of the village music from TSS into the town tune constraints, though if I'd realized I'd have to have some coast in town I might've gone for Lann. I suppose I could change the tune to the beginning of the SSS Lyton music, but I don't care for that piece much.

I also did a freehand rendition of the Blue Star and Lunar from the EB title screen (minus the ribbon E) for the town flag. Hm, maybe I'll do some wallpaper with the icon of Ruby sleeping from the Herbal Breeze spell in EB, or other spell icons. I've kind of focused on cats thus far.

I now want to get that game just to "Lunarize" a town. My boyfriends a fan of animal crossing, i've watched him play it for the GC but i've never tried it out for myself

[TempestOne]

NT

[LunarRaptor]

Sweet Home, the mommy of the Survival Horror genre. I kept hearing about how every modern horror game owes its thanks to Sweet Home, and by damn, I am seeing how right those claims are.

[Alunissage]

Most of the way through Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. Which so far has been fun, but the number of typos is incredible. It's like someone made the rookie error of thinking that a spell checker is a substitute for a live working human brain evaluating language. This doesn't surprise me when it's some careless teenager (although it's still annoying), but come on, this is supposed to be someone's actual grownup paid job here. And it really is spellcheck-type errors, rather than misspellings (other than an instance of "calibur"). "Pour over the words." "If you think... you've got another thing coming." "For whom...for" and "to whom....to". Apostrophes in plurals. Transposed words. Missing words. Obvious errors like "instance" used in place of "instant", though that's a made-up example.

That isn't my only criticism -- I've also encountered two bugs, and a lot of the plot twists have been ludicrously predictable -- but it's the thing that sticks out the most. Seriously, what the heck?

[LunarRaptor]

I don't want to sound like Commander Contrarian here, but when have the plot twists for Ace Attorney NOT been predictable?

[Alunissage]

Never, but it's frustrating seeing one piece of evidence, immediately grasping the misinterpretation of it, and then having to slog through several minutes of of dialogue before the main characters catch on. I mean, obviously in a game like this it's the journey rather than the destination that's the entertainment, but sometimes you just want to knock their heads together for being dense.

[LunarRaptor]

Ah. Okay. That's understandable.

[TempestOne]

Hey, everyone!

Sorry I haven't been around as of late. I've been reorganizing, doing some organizing in my life... specifically my living quarters. Like, rearranging various things... items so they're more yin & yang. Basically just setting everything up for the winter storm. Making sure we have enough goods, etc. I set up all my video games perfectly... at least as perfectly as I can.

Just an update: I finished friggin' LUNAR Eternal Blue a while ago and I got to everything past the Epilogue. (That's common - I am sure that's common knowledge.) Then all of a sudden I literally began to feel faint and this usually always happens when I have too much fun doing anything. Like it's a sense of too much euphoria and I basically shut all communications down before I keel over. So... I turned the video game console off. I put it away for the time being because I think and feel it was a mix of it about to overheat & I did not want that to happen, of course, being that it's a newly acquired system for me. I loved the experience of running through LUNAR The Silver Star + LUNAR Eternal Blue so much I had to straightjacket my existence because I was wanting to start writing FAQs and walkthroughs for it. LOL I can pretty much live in it's lore; things like the character names, magic spells and music.

Got through another branch in Vanguard Bandits. Sadira's specifically. So cool that game. I really wish Jenny would moonlight as some sort of jazz singer at night.

Right now I am playing Arc the Lad Collection - so cool! I "mastered" I think is the new term for it now (I used to just say 100%) Arc the Lad I a long, long time ago when I was in my early, early teens or not even and stopped halfway through because the combination of the storyline + Gruga's character art scared me. *looks distant* I feel I am the littlest bit over halfway through Arc the Lad II and it's so much fun. I am so into it. I love the strategy guide companion component because it's just cool... Cool to own, cool to have. And cool to read. It's really well-manufactured. I am going to bring my Arc the Lad Collection watch (Tosh) to a repair shop, because it stopped ticking, sometime soon... this weekend. Hope everyone's having a merry holidays so far!

[Leo]

Jenny sang the boat song on Youtube by popular request. That was pretty great. I'm hoping she does the others too.

[TempestOne]

Yeah, I saw that. Pretty cool thing to do just for the fans.

It makes me wonder if she sang Shante's "Music Man" song in Arc the Lad II... which I am still trudging through, by the way.

[Alunissage]

No, that was Cara Jones IIRC (and is from the Japanese version; it wasn't re-recorded for the NA release).

[TempestOne]

You know, the inner childish person inside me wants to tell you not to ever spoil me again, but the adult in me doesn't really care. LOL I just thought it was kind of leaning towards spoiler information how you'd rattle stuff off but have at it...

I remember that name from Cowboy Bebop. She sang a few tracks like "Ocean's Sadness" or something. How random!

[Alunissage]

Sorry? I can't quite see identifying a singer as a spoiler. But if it helps, Jenny does sing the song in Arc III, "Way to the Earth." I'd almost forgotten about it, but actually, of the songs I've heard her sing, I think it's the best. (Then again, I'm not particularly fond of her renditions of most Lunar songs, so my taste is clearly not in line with that of other Lunar fans.)

[Zero]

Call me an old sentimental bastard on a foolish nostalgia rush, or just tell me that I have bad taste in videogames (who knows, you might be right), but I played a lot more of Knack today and I am thoroughly enjoying myself with it. This game is 110% PSX mascot platformer wrapped in a pretty, Saturday morning CGI cartoon package. Playing this game really takes me back, in a good way. Not sure if it reminds me of my more innocent gaming youth or if I just needed a change of pace back to a style of game that I've forgotten I liked so much. Nowadays, I couldn't play a game like this too often and feel satisfied but I suppose it had been long enough right now because the small charms of its simplistic but challenging gameplay have me pretty happy at the moment. I haven't beaten the game yet so it's hard to say if I'll find it as memorable of a gaming experience that I do other old games of its kind. Actually, that's probably something I won't be able to determine until looking back at it in retrospect much later. All I can say is that right now I'm having a lot of fun with it.

It should be noted, however, that I didn't actually pay for this game with my own money... and that I most certainly don't think it's worthy of a $60 price tag. This is one of those titles that should have been $39.99 right out of the gate. I'd almost say $29 but you can tell the game has a high production value. Speaking of which, I didn't realize until today that the lead concept artist for the game was Koji Hasegawa of Shadow of the Colossus fame; That explains why the backgrounds look so nice. There were actually a good few people with strong Japanese development backgrounds working on this, surprisingly. From a business perspective, though, I can also recognize that Sony knew they could pull decent sales for this game even at a full price point, given that it's one of their two first-party launch titles. I'm going to give Mark Cerny and company props for doing something like this as a 4th generation PlayStation launch title. In my opinion that took some balls.