Hunting a Lagombi from the Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate demo. It looks like a giant monster bunny living in a winter climate.
Happy Wednesday everyone!
- What games are you playing this week?
- Would you recommend those games to other Border House readers?
- What games have you ranting?
- Are any of those games listed ones that you want to see covered on the site?
I have still been playing Fire Emblem: Awakening and I have been loving it so far. I just started Chapter 10. Otherwise, I played the demo of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and I am really excited to play that game once it comes out.
So, what have you all been playing?
This week, I played:
- Little Inferno. Really neat game that mostly centers around burning various objects in a fireplace. Has an interesting story presented primarily through mailed letters from a few different characters. Took about seven hours from start to finish, including discovering and burning all of the special combos. Loved it!
- Aliens: Colonial Marines. Managed to finish this quite mediocre FPS game, co-op with my brother. We generally had fun, mostly because we were playing a game together and laughing at some of the ridiculous gameplay bugs and silly plot elements. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone, though
- Rayman Jungle Run. Played through this all within a few days and collected all of the teeth. Super fun auto-running 2D platformer with great controls and fun level design.
- God of Blades. A generally fun, sometimes frustrating melee combat game that’s sort of like a side-scroller version of Infinity Blade (in terms of how the combat works… swiping in various ways to swing/block/parry). The way the story is presented was pleasing, making use of some cool fantasy-space-themed backgrounds and poetic writing. It was sometimes difficult to time attacking/defending properly against some of the bosses, but overall didn’t take too long to complete.
Other stuff I played:
- Bricks of Camelot. Played tons of this fairly standard but high quality brick-breaking game. Lots of levels and solid mechanics… definitely one of my main go-to games for now when I don’t know how long I’ll be able to play.
). It’s fun and quite satisfying to complete each level, but it’s also frustrating at times. Exactly my kind of game XD
- Bitless. A rather difficult auto-running 2D platformer, usually requiring absolutely precise timing (and the game usually makes fun of you when you mess up and die
- The Unfinished Swan. Have played only chapter one so far but it is quite intriguing. Really enjoyed searching around and discovering the shape of the world by painting it all black. Looking forward to seeing how the sort of fairy-tale-like story unfolds.
- Borderlands. My brother and I decided to go ahead and play this, from the beginning. We never beat it before because he lost his save file, and he never wanted to start over until this week. Really fun FPS-RPG, especially when played cooperatively.
- Dungeon Raid. Extremely fun and addictive puzzle-RPG game, with gameplay sort of like Puzzle Quest but in roguelike fashion. Lots of classes to unlock and lots of stats/equipment upgrades/skill combinations to try to see how far you can get. Has virtually no story, but the gameplay is stellar.
More random stuff I played a fair amount:
Repulze, The Heist, Plague Inc., Zombies & Trains, Pizza Boy, League of Evil 2. All pretty fun, especially Repulze (a single-player WipEout-like game) and League of Evil 2 (a 2D platformer with very short levels… encourages speedruns).
It’s been a very fun and satisfying month of gaming for me, and I hope everyone else had some great times this month as well. Let us hope to discover and play many more amazing games in March!
This is impressive, Llamaentity. Borderlands should wash the taste of Aliens: Colonial Marines out of your gaming palate.
I (re)finished Final Fantasy II on the PSP for the “(re)play all the FFs” project I’m doing with a friend. (On Friday, we start FF3!)
I also did some more in Magical Diary, where I am nearly done with the school year and will actually be done as soon as I put butt in chair with longer than ten minutes to spend.
I got utterly wrecked in my playthrough of FF8 (which is for my significant others to watch the plot) by being way too low level to take on Bahamut, so I KOed Squall and spent some time level grinding. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that and I can’t believe that I never tried it before! So useful!
And finally I put some more time into Kingdoms of Amalur, which I am really enjoying as a dokkalfar mage. I made it to the Webwood (why why why why why do games insist on giant spiders, gaming is not kind to arachnophobes!) and I am doing Every Sidequest because obviously plot is ridiculous and unnecessary.
I hear you about the spiders! It’s such a pain, especially in first-person perspective games. It’s also one reason why I never played Thief, and only managed to tackle System Shock II when I found a mod that removed the spiders. Bleh.
Kingdoms of Amalur was a game that I was sort-of looking forward to, but never ended up getting — I was waiting for a patch first, and that never came. The demo was rather fun though. What are you playing as?
I really need to get around to installing the spiders-into-mabari mod for Dragon Age, especially since I’m about to revisit Orzammar. do. not. want.
I am playing as a dokkalfar mage, who is mostly the nicest ever (I keep trying to find ways around violence, and use trickery in lieu of brute force) – high on persuasion and Detect Hidden. I’ve done the prelim quests for the House of Ballads and the Warsworn and am having a grand time with both. In terms of fighting style, I’m all about sceptres and chakrams because they’re fast, and blowing up all the things with balls of lightning because it was the first spell they gave me and it’s PRETTY.
The spiders in DA:O were managable for me as long as I stayed well zoomed out and focused on the fighting — but I still winced every time one of them abseiled seemingly out of nowhere.
We need more (fantasy) RPGs without bloody spiders. Morrowind didn’t have them, and I hear neither does Dark Souls, but I can’t think of any others.
Chakrams were what I fell in love with in the KoA demo, too. That, and my traditional trusty longsword. Have fun with your sidequest-happy mage!
Let’s see, what did I play this week..
Mostly I played Star Ocean: Second Evolution (PSP). The game isn’t much different from the original SO2, but I like Welch, the returning optional character from SO: First Departure. This game’s story is not as unbalanced / abruptly ended as that from SO1, but from Nede on I felt like everything was focused on preparation for the final battle. I hope the third SO game makes it to a handheld system some day. Maybe the creators get the story balance right in that one.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of my pre-order of Etrian Odyssey IV (3DS), but alas, still no DHL delivery.
I played through Lume (Steam/Linux) too. It was indeed short, but some of the puzzles were too hard to figure out without hints. The art was nice though.
I also bought Waking Mars on Steam, but haven’t started it yet. I’m not sure of Kentucky Route Zero. The title makes it seem very USAian. Will it be as great as it’s said to be for European players?
And then last night I got caught on the PSN Store while updating the Vita’s Twitter app and downloaded some free games/demos from there. Treasures Of Montezuma Blitz seems a little iffy on the cultural appropriation front, but I have a weakness for Bejeweled-like games, so I spent half the night playing it.
I am slightly embarrassed to talk about what I am playing this week, but it’s EverQuest 1 and EverQuest 2. I also logged in a couple hours in Guild Wars 2 with a new character. Mostly, I’m feeling some need to play an MMO and so I’m kind of poking my head in various ones that I have installed.
I also installed Tera last night and played for 10 minutes or so now that it is free to play. Holy, boobs. Not sure I’ll continue with the game at all, but it was interesting to check out the action-y combat.
I’ve been playing a little bit of The Longest Journey, up until the beginning of the 4th chapter. I had to use a guide a couple of times, which was frustrating, but the game is still good enough to keep me engaged. I also played a little of the original Borderlands, trying to level up my Siren a little since I had problems getting through one of the DLC:s. And I tried out the Mass Effect multiplayer DLC; Reckoning, where I tried out the female Turian vanguard. Lots of fun, but her playing style takes a bit getting used to.
With tomorrow being the end of the month, I have to say that I failed the 4 in February initiative. I am glad to see others like Llamaentity slam out games. Work and life have totally taken over my life at the moment, so my gaming habit has been on pause.
Now, not all is dreary. On Sunday night, a bunch of my fellow queers came over to game it up. We played Black Ops 2 Tranzit mode and Rayman Origins cooperatively. After awhile, people got frustrated with co-oping so we played Mortal Kombat to vent those frustrations in the form of sick combos and satisfying fatalities.
I hope to ramp up my gaming next month. Maybe 4 in March? I do know that I want to play Bioshock 2 before the third entry comes out. I am also excited by the upcoming DLC for PlayStation All-Stars. I look forward to going crazy with Isaac Clarke.
Sucks that work is getting in the way, but it’s cool that you’ve been able to do some local multiplayer gaming. I’ve always enjoyed fighting games but haven’t had any irl friends to play them with for years. PS All-Stars looks really neat, in particular.
Rayman Origins is an excellent game, but yeah, I could see it getting frustrating at times in a group environment.
I have also been meaning to play Bioshock 2! I really enjoyed part one and just never tried the sequel for some reason :c
I enjoy local multiplayer gaming. It is a shame that the industry is moving away from that feature. I enjoy online multiplayer, but local gaming allows for more personal bonding.
PS All-Stars is great, especially when you only time for bite size gaming. I have also spent many hours on a Saturday on that game. I haven’t gotten a chance to play the current Kat and Emmett DLC, but the Fearless stage is fun.
Rayman Origins is a great game with a creative art style. Plus, nothing beats slapping the characters across the screen.
It will be great to go back to Rapture for many craziness. Bioshock 2 has a multiplayer mode, right?
You’re not alone! I completely failed 4 in Feb as well. A couple friends and I are doing 3 in March also, feel free to join in
Sounds like a plan.
Started Little Inferno last night… Wishing I could be playing right now instead of working.
I have been playing Final Fantasy Dimensions on my phone for the past few weeks. Its quite a fun job system, similar to FFV. While I wish the characters had a bit more depth, I have still been enjoying the SNES era sprite graphics. Also all of the names of towns, NPCs ect are from older FF games which reminds me of my childhood
ps. Hi! First time posting here, I really like this blog and have been lurking for awhile now
Glad to see you de-lurk. Welcome
Welcome!
I loved FF Dimensions – I feel like many of the characters (specifically, Sarah, Nacht, Dusk, Alba, and Diana) get a lot more interesting as you get to chapters 3 and 4. The nostalgia factor was a huge delight for me as well.
Welcome!
I’ve been wanting to try out Final Fantasy Dimensions, so keep us posted on your progress and impressions! I know that a few others around here have really liked it ^.^
I finally got around to starting Mass Effect 3 this week. Was disappointed to learn multiplayer is pretty crucial to getting the best ending. I’ve never done online multiplayer before on any game partially because I’m afraid of hate-spewing chat channels. Anyone here playing ME3 right now interested in co-oping with a newb?
I’m happy to help if you’re on Xbox (can’t assist with other platforms :[ ) and we can manage to be on at the same time. Same username on XBL. Send me a message letting me know it's you! I have a mic and can provide gameplay advice, enemy slaying, yelps and squeals, etc.
I actually prefer the multiplayer to the singleplayer, ME3's story really felt rushed to me. Toward the end it becomes very obvious they ran out of money and just wanted to release... IMO at least. But the multiplayer has been the biggest surprise of this console generation, for me. I usually only play offline multiplayer, this game is the exception.
Also, I think they reduced the necessary amount of war readiness to get the best ending...? So you might not have to play a lot of MP. (Plus the endings aren't that different; when I played through the SP I didn't do any MP and still got a nice ending, I did all the sidequests I could find though. Then I played MP to get my war readiness to max and see what would happen, disappointingly little happened :[ )
FWIW I've been playing ME MP regularly (multiple times a week) for a very long time now, and I got hateful comments only once. People are either silent or friendly. (That one time it was a random dude screaming "N***R" at me in the lobby. I just quit the lobby and joined another one. I still wonder, was that my accent, or does he just like to scream the N-word at random people? I have a rather confusing accent, but it's not particularly African American.)
But we can just play private games, no worries :]
You can also get readiness from other single-player DLC, or possibly the smartphone apps (ME3 Datapad was free, and I think having it to read Codex entries is kind of neat).
Been playing Minecraft as a vegetarian. It’s actually quite easy to play Survivor without eating meat or killing animals at all – I can’t make arrows or books, but I found enough of them or alternatives for enchanting to not worry about it. I’m not fully vegetarian IRL, but I thought it was a fun extra challenge.
Is anyone else looking forward to Tomb Raider? Despite the early controversy that made me uninterested, the reviews, trailer, and fact Terry Pratchett’s daughter is involved have my wife and I kind of excited now. And trust me, it feels really weird to say I’m excited about a Tomb Raider game.
I dislike Rhianna Pratchett’s writing, so that’s a minus for me, but I’m interested in the new Tomb Raider too. Not preorder or day one purchase interested, but still interested :]
I didn’t expect to be this excited about Tomb Raider, either, but I am XD Went ahead and pre-ordered it c:
it looks like a good game. After being burned by Aliens: Colonial Marines, I am hesitant to preorder games now.
I’ve fallen head over heels for Tales of Maj’Eyal 4, which I’d been curious about for a while. Plus, I had a need-a-new-roguelike itch that wouldn’t go away. ToME has a few aspects I don’t like — UI issues, mainly — but all in all I’m having a blast. My first character was a Thalore Berserker, who’s on her last life (I play adventure mode, not classic roguelike mode) at level 25. I think I’ll let her keep that last life and consider her “retired with honors” in her fortress, as the character who taught me the basics and unlocked a bunch of stuff for me.
Then I made a Thalore Wyrmic — and fell in love. Sword & board Wyrmic going Antimagic feels like it was designed with me in mind: she’s ridiculously tough as well as being versatile and kickass. There’s nothing I enjoy playing more than the tanky melee type with a supernatural, especially nature-based, touch. I finished the western continent with her, and so far she hasn’t died once, though a few close calls remind me not to get careless.
I also have a Dwarf Alchemist almost ready to go east, though she doesn’t have a clean slate: a ridiculously tough random elite cornered her in the Sandworm Lair when I stupidly insisted on fighting it instead of running away. I swear the randoms in this game are often harder than the bosses. Alchemist is fun too for the hilarious AoE potential, but compared to the Wyrmic she’s a bit of a one-trick pony.
There are other classes I tried, but I think I should stop giving in to altitis and just go east with the Wyrmic already.
One feature that I really love is that it does not have the traditional consumables (one-shot items like potions or wands with limited charges), because I’m a terrible packrat who hesitates to use these things “in case I need them later”. With ToME’s runes/infusions and charms, you don’t have to worry about running out, but you can’t spam them either because they go on cooldown which makes their use a bit more tactical than chain-chugging healing potions.
I got my first character (elementalist) to 80 in Guild Wars 2!! Wooooo! Looking forward to catching up on dungeons and the story and fractals and getting exotic armor and so on. Also started leveling my norn thief for real. Thief is so different and I’m really liking it so far!
Still playing Tales of Graces f with my brother (all JRPGs should have co-op battles) and Mass Effect multiplayer on my own when I can. Yay I just got a female turian vanguard! Have yet to try her out though. Actually right now I have a million things I want to try out in ME MP (like the melee volus build
) and little time… but I’m going to have surgery soon and I expect to play a lot of ME MP while I recuperate, it’s great at getting my mind away from pain. (Only minor surgery, but I’m told it involves a lot of pain afterward… X[ )
Tales of Graces f is still fun, but I suspect it’d be less interesting to play it alone, a lot of the fun comes from our comments on the characters’ banter.
I know the feeling, regarding co-op gaming. My spouse and I or my brother and I always seem to enjoy any video game campaign more if it allows co-op. Just being able to experience it all and joke around about stuff makes games more enjoyable ^.^
This past week marks possibly the first time I’ve been able to kill a cyberdemon in my own Doom mod without cheating. Map01, Evilution, co-op monster spawns, took him out with the semiauto rifle (ostensibly the humblest “primary” weapon in the mod).
Then played Plutonia Map01, co-op spawns and 3 lives per level, and barely escaped by the skin of my teeth – only after I died on Map02 did I learn I was playing on “girlfriend mode” difficulty which was why all the machine gunners were reflexively shooting me on sight.
Kinda got me wondering if using that name for the extra-hard difficulty actually had the intended effect – it could be read as a reference to an abusive partner, or just “you will die and be able to quit faster because we all know your girlfriend doesn’t game”. (as it happens mine does not – come to think of it I might well have killed that cyberdemon shortly after she cancelled our date when she learned at the last minute there was family coming in from out of town – but that’s another matter entirely.)
And tonight I did, in fact, charge blindly into heavily armed opposition in Inishie Dungeon so I could get killed quickly, leave the office (this is after hours, I had to lock up and I’m not legally entitled to overtime pay anyway, not gaming when there’s actual work to be done!) and go home so I could charge my phone battery and call the gf. -_-
Inishie is awesome nonetheless.
Last week I finished as much as I am likely to of Muramasa the Demon Blade. I played through one character’s story (sorry, blanking on the names) and started the second, but I’m not sure I’ll play through to the end. I did actually mainly enjoy it and the art style is gorgeous (although I’ll admit I never really followed what the plot was about!) but in the end found it rather repetitive; there’s really not enough variety in the battles and there’s nothing to do apart from the battles.
Since then, I’ve downloaded the HD remake of the first Sly Cooper game, which I completely missed first time around, and I’ve nearly finished it. It’s a mixed bag. I liked the mechanics on the whole and the animation is great, but it suffers from some really uncomfortable racial stereotyping of the bad guys. Oh, and it has my personal gaming bugbear (which I’m sure I’ve moaned about here before): the 3-part boss fight where if you fail one part of the fight it puts you right back to the beginning again. I spent an hour last night trying to finish the final battle and got really, really close before losing and having to go back to the beginning again (and given this is a game primarily aimed at a younger audience, all I can say is kids have got much better hand-eye coordination than I have – those *&%%$ electrical rings that the final boss fires at you are a nightmare!) Putting this one aside to finish when I’m in a better mood!
Next up: well Ni No Kuni is in the post, so it may well be that!
I haven’t been in much of a gaming mood lately, other than doodling around with the Etrian Odyssey IV demo. I’m torn– I’ve never played a game like this, and it’s kind of fascinating. Especially the whole “make your own map” part, which I thought would be annoying but actually really heightens the feeling that you’re exploring.
It’s so hard, though! I have it set on Easy, and the game’s still curb-stomping me on the first dungeon. It’s less of a learning curve than a learning cliff. So I don’t know if I want to buy it or not. It’s interesting, but the last thing I need is yet another game that I’ll never finish due to frustration.
So far, we’ve only played Skyward Sword this week. The Lanaryu temple is kicking our butts. I don’t know if we just suck that bad, but I always wonder about those people that say LoZ games just aren’t difficult anymore (I actually felt like I had an easier time from the start in some of the OoT temples, but MM was trollish and difficult). We’re really excited about continuing through the game though, and we’re trying to figure out how we want to play through the timeline afterwards, since my boyfriend hasn’t played through much (almost any) of the series.
Otherwise, I meant to get back to Style Savvy, but I haven’t yet (and I really want FE:A)! We’ll probably return to Ni no Kuni some time today or tomorrow though. I think we’re close to the twist/surprise in the story, and I’m kind of anxious about it (and I want to see if a particular pairing really is being hinted at as strongly as I thought).
Also, after watching my friend play through Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, I can’t wait to pick it up myself and start. It just looked so fun, and the action looked great. It’s making me really excited for Bayonetta 2~.
I’ve been playing the DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, and started a game of Fallout 3 (which I hadn’t played before). I found FO3 to be far more heteronormative and male-character-oriented than NV, to my disappointment. I’m only level 5 and characters have referred to me as male twice now, while the only time it happened to me in NV has been Old World Blues. Plus, the first possible companion I run into in FO3 is Jericho. Avoiding spoilers, I’ll just say that I read on Moriarty’s terminal what he did. (And yet I can’t bring it up to anyone.)