What are you playing?

[TheLuckyOne]

Head said:

Seeing as how every major game company is unloading a majority of this year's most-awaited releases within the space of three months (argh, that's frustrating), it's kind of nuts keeping up with what's good out there.

Heard that. My "need to play" list in the coming months includes Silent Hill 4, the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, X-Men Legends, GTA: San Andreas, and the new Metal Gear Solid game. Plus I think Ace Combat 5 comes out soon, and I've barely even started Final Fantasy X-2.

Um... when's my next review due?

-D

[Al]

I'm verrryyyy sloowwwllyyyy working through Fable, which really is a whole lot of fun despite the backlash after it was released. I'm also chugging even more slowly through the Mega Man Anniversary Collection, up to MM3 and counting!

Al
-X-men Legends waits in the wings once I pay off college. Waitasec...

[PoolMan]

I was checking in on my in-laws' house while they're out of town when I stumbled across my bro-in-law's Super Nintendo in the basement.

My wife, bless her, let me take it home, as the bro has moved out of province.

All I have at the moment is Super Mario World, but that ALONE is enough to make me 16 again. Oh dear God, I think gaming was damn near perfection in the 16 bit era. I have to see if I can get a copy of Final Fantasy III somewhere.

Oh, I'm getting all giddy just thinking about it! ;D

[Hucklebubba]

I'm presently playing Breath of Fire 4, Front Mission 3, and various other PS1 titles with numbers in their names. Because I'm Retro Man. "Retro" sounds much cooler than "poor."

[i like gta your site scares me]

GTA SERIES OWNS :-)

[PoolMan]

I wish there was some way I could frame that last post.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

i like gta your site scares me is probably the best guest username I've seen thus far. Good work, mysterious stranger!

[Head Mutant]

MRFH: Not as good as Grand Theft Auto, but at least we scare you!

[PoolMan]

I honestly hope you've chronicles all our various "mottos" over the years, Justin. It would seem such a shame to waste them all.

[PoolMan]

Time to resurrect the What Are You Playing thread!

As for me, I went out and (eventually... the first EB I went to was only taking cash) bought The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. It only seemed right, seeing as I totally seem to want to see everything ever to do with the whole Riddick franchise right now.

I'll say this right away: it's probably the best movie-to-videogame translation since Goldeneye on the N64. It's honestly extremely good, even for a movie translation (well, more like a prequel... the game opens with Riddick going in the hands of Johns to the maximum "slam" called Butcher Bay).

The combat's a little tough to figure out initially, when you only have fists and shivs to count on in the prison. It works a little like Jedi Outcast. Hit the attack and a direction, and you do something different depending on what direction you're moving. The guns are initially off limits (even if you do kill a guard, you can't pick up his gun because they're all DNA encoded and it'll shock you), so you have to do a lot of slinking around in the shadows, avoiding cameras and respecting the guards. But after about an hour, you can finally get decent firearms AND you pick up the eye shine.

This is where it gets cool. After you get the shine, Riddick works unequivocably best in the dark. In pitch black, when you take the goggles off it may as well be daylight. All the lights are destructible, so you can actually create pockets of darkness in which to have the most freedom. The downside is that by doing so, the guards will usually start using flashlights, which make it brutally hard to land a shot on them (a guard's light in your face, even at a distance, will white out half your field of vision). All the little touches are awesome... if you see something really bright, you'll see the veins pulsing around the periphery of Riddick's vision. The ammo displays on the guns become extremely bright, almost hard to read. You can easily flip the goggles down again, which gives you normal sight, but then takes away all the advantages of the dark. I kept trying to fight guards in full light on normal vision and was getting just destroyed until I started learning to take the lights out and relying on the night vision... great strategy.

The game's extremely stylish, too. It feels like a good game when it needs to, but it feels like a full blown movie when it wants to. After the initial tutorial (a dream sequence where you get to break Johns' neck), the opening credits roll over the long walk (done in first person) through the front door of Butcher's Bay. You're free to move the camera, but you're on rails right from the landing pad to your cell, which looked so cool.

Anyways, this is obviously turning into a review. Just trust me, this is excellent FPS/stealth action. Way better than Metal Gear, in my opinion. Anybody else given it a shot yet?

[TheLuckyOne]

Better than Metal Gear?

You don't promise much, do ya, Poolie?


-D

[PoolMan]

I'm enjoying it much more than I ever enjoyed Metal Gear. Much better control, cooler character... the only thing is the inventory. There's about three guns. That's it. But whatever, I'll take it.

[spaceduk]

im playin hungry fish on my motorola v80 lol. not really ive actually just been arsin around on a few emulators on my pc.

ive been playin -
sonic 2,3 and knuckles (megadrive)
mario world (snes)
mario rpg (snes)
f-zero 2 (snes)
gundam wing: endless waltz (snes)

and more recently released games ive been playin are -
grand theft auto: san andreas
halo 2

[Landatauron]

I'm still playing World of Warcraft. The past few days I've had some friends over and we've been playing Mario Kart: Double Dash and Burnout 3: Takedown on the PS2.

[MarsNeedsTowels]

I've been playing Dawn of War lately, especially the awesome Daemonhunters mod, if you play Dawn of War pick up that mod! If it were more customizable it would be perfect, but it's still one of the best RTS's i've ever played.