Gomez, the fez hat wearing protagonist, standing in the pixel art inspired world of Fez.
It is question time, fellow Border House people:
- What games have you been playing lately?
- Are there any you would recommend to other Border House readers?
- Are there games that have you ranting or raving?
- Are there any games that you played and want to see covered on the site?
I am busy this week so I have not been able to play many games, but I did fit in a bit of Iron Brigade with a friend. We are both relatively new to it so we just ran through the first 3 maps together.
I also started Fez. I am enjoying the simple control scheme and the mix of 2D art with 3D puzzles.
What games have you been playing?
Finished the good side of inFamous 2. I loved the twist at the end.
Now, onto Mass Effect 2. My Male Shep will be good and wait to romance Kaiden (sp?) in the third game. Though I look forward to playing as dbag Male Shep sleeping and killing everyone.
Just found out that I can change the color of my armor. Hot pink bad###ery is happening right now.
I recently got back into League of Legends and I’m looking for some gaming friends to play with! It’d be awesome to gather at the very least a group of five (not really looking to play ranked, just normals for fun at this point). It’d be even better to gather a larger group for some 5v5 games! Is anyone interested?
I stayed up way too long last night in an attempt to beat Dungeons of Dredmor for the first time (on Dwarvish Moderation with permadeath). Since my best character so far had only reached dungeon level 5 out of 10, I didn’t know what to expect for half of the game which made for a lovely mix of excitement and apprehension.
My character had Alchemy/Astrology/Burglary/Promethean/Psionics/Ley Walker/Mathemagic so she was super-squishy — but that didn’t prevent me from trying to finish nasties in melee until DL7 where I had such a super-close call that I decided to stop messing around. Still had a couple near-deaths, though, that’s roguelikes for you (and not paying 100% attention).
So, yeah, Dredmor went down primarily to me setting his bony arse on fire (Gog’s Tactical Pyre rocks) while repeatedly stuffing summoned wyrmlings in his face to distract him, which didn’t stop him from hitting me with some nasty spells that required teleporting the hell outta Dodge to heal up. I’d saved up a truckload of consumeables for that fight but, predictably, only used a fraction of them. Gotta stop being such a hopeless packrat.
Next plan: beat him with a melee character, which I expect will be a lot harder.
I also downloaded a Helm’s Deep map for L4D2′s Survival mode, and am dying to try it with friends ASAP. Oh yes, we will die so much …
My girlfriend and I are working our way through Rayman Origins together, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun – probably the most fun we’ve have co-op gaming together so far (though we can only count 4-5 games where we’ve played together in the first place). The art style and music are amazing, the controls are slick, and the gameplay is simple yet endlessly playable.
Otherwise, I’m really getting into Worms Reloaded. I used to play Worms games with my father and sister all the time; for some reason the new 3D Worms games are really sluggish on my PC, but Worms Reloaded works like a charm! Some of the puzzle levels require far too much precision for my liking, though, but otherwise it’s a fun game. For some reason, I really like the fire graphics.
Not much else; working on my Bachelor’s thesis (about subjecting decisions made by players inside videogames to ethical standards!), doing lots of reading and research for classes, coding, and cooking lots as well. I don’t really like June all that much, there’s always so much to do. I can’t wait for the holidays!
I’m replaying Lost Odyssey for Xbox 360, this time to get all of the achievements, hopefully. Man, that was a good game, even though it’s chock full of cleavage.
This is my first time responding to a WaYPW post, so I apologize if card games aren’t necessarily included here.
I have been playing a lot of Magic the Gathering lately, in addition to my weekly raiding schedule (currently at one day a week) in World of Warcraft.
I would recommend Magic to readers on the site. I think the community behind the game is making great strides to be more inclusive to women and that there is a lot of ground to break there and trails that need to be blazed. It’s been such a joy to see how far the community has come, from when I first started playing the game in 1995 to where it’s at now in 2012.
A fellow Magic player! Do you have a MTGO account?
So, I got motivated to dig up my old copies of the “Homeworld” series. I still am floored at how atmospheric and beautiful the narrative in these games were. Then I remembered how damn hard they were.
There’s a segment early in the first game which is a total gut-punch. How they managed to tell such a good story without really showing characters, just the exteriors of ships in space is inspiring.
I am currently playing Bionic Otter Warrior Libuse http://drjavi.deviantart.com/art/Bionic-Otter-Warrior-Libuse-307092733 – a good game and Libuse is the intentional antithesis of an objectified female video game character. http://drjavi.deviantart.com/art/Women-I-hate-286174766
The first level may not seem much, but the game gets better and better as you progress.
(Strategy tip – buy health upgrades first, then focus on getting the second upgrade for your magnetic field and the third upgrade for your rockets as soon as possible – you will need them)
There is also a 2 part comic explaining the backstory (Warning: Spoilers) http://drjavi.deviantart.com/art/Polis-Prima-1-259618382
http://drjavi.deviantart.com/art/Polis-Prima-2-259618452
Also, better alien races than in Mass Effect http://drjavi.deviantart.com/gallery/32773172
Going through GW2 withdrawal, I decided to try out The Secret World’s beta this past weekend. Apart from noting a woman in a position of power in the early Illuminati storyline, I didn’t really play it long enough to give any kind of cogent social critique; it just wasn’t fun for me. L4D/2 are much better zombie grinders.
I also finally got around to “playing” the visual novel, “Digital: A Love Story”, by Christine Love. Despite the pretty much linear flow, it felt quite interactive. I loved the microcosm of online culture, and there were a couple heart-wrenching moments.
Following up from that, I started “don’t take it personally, babe; it’s just not your story” by the same creator. That was a bit disturbing, both in the voyeuristic nature of the teacher’s ability to monitor students’ private communications, and in that I could relate a little too well to some of the student drama–what does that say about my emotional maturity? <.< Queer as heck, which was awesome, although I was a little put off by some use of homophobic epithets. This is the progress we're supposed to expect 15 years into the future? I also loved the metaness of the literary references to the story… Ultimately I reached a point in (Act? Chapter?) 4 where I was given a choice that I was just unable to make, and had to stop playing for now. That's no criticism of the game, but rather high praise that it could evoke such a strong response.
I will definitely be trying out "Analogue: A Hate Story" next.
I haven’t done much gaming in the last little while, truth be told, as I recently got a new laptop and have spent a good deal of time getting that up and running, updated, protected, and transferred old stuff to it, etc. With what time I have stolen away to myself, though, I have been doing a lot of my same old iOS games. I’ll list them here as an update of what I’m tinkering with.
iOS mobile phone/ipod:
Please Stay Calm. Zombie survival game. Get weapons, hunt zombies, upgrade skills, join a safehouse and upgrade the safehouse, go scavenging, and so forth.
Stardom: The A-List. Be a movie and/or theatre celebrity star, working your way up the popularity ladder from below D-List to top tier A-list. Star in movies, theatre productions, have amusing quests with fun characters, and also date anyone you want to. Same-sex relationships between players and NPCs allowed.
Book of Legends. Fantasy-type RPG game, where you go on quests, get gear, level up, join a guild to do little raids, and so on.
A few games that I am playing on my gaming Facebook that are actually pretty fun are:
Marvel Avengers Alliance. It’s a superhero game where you play as your own personal SHIELD agent (customize your own PC) and you recruit various Marvel heroes to your team and go on quests through several chapters of story events. Rather enjoyable, imo. Particularly because you don’t have to really pay to progress in the game, you can farm certain special monetary points in order to unlock other heroes and what not.
Idle Worship. Very adorable little game that doesn’t subscribe to energy bars and friend invites and the other garbage that litter FB games. You just play as a god, good or bad, and preside over your little world of Mudlings. Build things, help your friends (or sabotage them if you’re a bad deity), and play with powers.
The Last Stand: Dead Zone. It’s a zombie survival game where you spend a lot of time upgrading and managing your safehouse. Outfitting it with various security bits and bobs, food and water system upgrades, bedding, worktables for making gear and weapon mods and all manner of things. You go out into the world and scavenge for wood, metal, cloth, and a countless variety of other junk items in order to break them down or create new upgrades/items/etc you need to fortify your safehouse. Through your adventures, once you reach certain safehouse milestones, you’ll attract new survivors to take residence with you. Basically, you are making your own little survivalist community. You can choose a class for them (there are about six from engineers to fighter to medics) and you’ll deploy them in the world — and by deploy I mean you control the party in real time in various environments — to scavenge buildings and containers and acquire more items. It’s still in Beta and a bit early in development — but quite fun! No energy or other silly FB formats either.
So I’ve started Persona 3 on many a recommendation here and have to say I am … underwhelmed. I’m a good way in (June) but am really not feeling the love so far. There’s atrocious flow, little personality, little meaningful character interaction and little plot. :/
I’d be interested to hear what’s attracting you to P3, though!
The plot starts to really kick up hard toward the end of July, and I personally found all the characters fascinating (especially Mitsuru and Akihiko, because they’re my type, but minus Junpei.) A lot of what draws me to Persona is the S.Links and the mini stories contained in them. There are parts of the game I loathe (oh my God the beach trip why get out no) but I’m replaying it right now on a master run for a non-gamer friend to watch, and we’re both drawn in even though this is my fourth time through.
And when I am on vacation I forget what day it is. Oops.
I’ve been working on a Persona 3 replay for a friend (just hit the end of July, so we’re Revealing Things!) and I’m working toward a perfect S.Link run so I can have the ultimate Persona.
Also finally seriously picked up FFXIII-2 and powered through chapter 4, so I’m making good progress.
I had to give up on Class of Heroes; it had too many “making it harder just because we can” bits, like not providing you with any back-row weapons even though by definition you have to have back row characters, and there was no plot. Which, okay, it’s a dungeon-crawl-loot game, but I still expected something. Now I’m glad I didn’t impulsively throw in to the Kickstarter for CoH2.
Just starting Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, which is one of two PSP games I won’t be able to repurchase on my Vita (I’m trying to get them out of the way before I go to the pretty shiny screen and don’t wanna come back.) So far it’s….well, Kingdom Hearts-y. XD
Well, the story behind CoH is that it’s a school for dungeon explorers, so of course that’s what you’re doing. There is a sort of main story, but it doesn’t become apparent until later in the game.
CoH1 does have its shortcomings, but CoH2 should remedy all of that. It’s going to be awesome
Well, sure, I get that it’s a school for dungeon explorers, I just…I dunno. I expected there’d be a bit more to it. Mostly I’m frustrated by how basically ineffective mages are and the fact that after six hours I had just enough money to buy one slingshot and rock, leaving my other two back row people staring off into space while the front row stabbinates. :/ I don’t mind grinding for progress but I really mind when I put that much time into buying a first-level weapon.
I played CoH nearly two times through (stalled out on the last boss on my first playthrough), but even so, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s an incredibly slow burn, and the item system, both drops and in town, is tedious and frustrating, as you found. You can spend hours gathering cash and random drops to craft something, and find a better appraised item five minutes later. Even so, I loved mapping the dungeons, and it was cool to create a party that could survive just about anything the dungeon could throw at it. If CoH2 fixes the worst parts of CoH I’ll be all over it.
Started up Trine 2 cooperatively with Ike, which is lots of fun so far (only around two hours in).
Also just started Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, which isn’t too bad (some of the more complex cards and their abilities aren’t handled properly, game mechanics-wise, unfortunately, but it’s better than 2012 in that regard).
I just started Pokemon Conquest. I wasn’t sure how I’d like a tactics game, as I tried Disgaea and had to give up, but so far it’s pretty fun. I’m not too far in though, but I’m glad I bought the game at least.
I’m still playing Trails In The Sky. I just missed a side quest in Zeiss, so I think I have to start this chapter over (last time I saved was at the end of the last one).
I don’t like expiring side quests.
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) is doing its best to engage all my free moments. Tactical real-time combat, level-ups and loot! GameFAQs has an avid and knowledgeable group of players that serve as a decent stand-in for knowing someone like that in real life during those times when I get stuck on a quest. The Felynes are adorable and (mostly) helpful, though I can do without the constant yowling.
Torneko: The Last Hope (PS1) is a Mystery Dungeon-style game with Dragon Quest IV’s Torneko as the main character. After an initial gentle learning curve, it’s unsheathed its claws. You lose very little on a failed dungeon run, though, and each run has its narrow escape or new insight or bit of further progress that encourages another try.
Hoping to finish up Amalur soon. Only three more areas to go! At a guess, there are ten or twelve hours left.
I have been playing Max Payne 3. It is an awesome conclusion to an awesome story. It was definitely the finale that the character deserved.
http://www.videodetective.com/games/max-payne-3/201397#.T-SboLWCp-c
My boyfriend and I just picked up Animal Crossing: City Folk, and he’s coming over soon for us to start a town together. (I really wanted to put all my old, original items into my friend’s house first though.)
We also picked up Bioshock, and I believe we’ll be starting that pretty soon.
Otherwise, I’ve only been playing Threads of Fate lately, with a little FFV mixed in. I still want to play through them all in order and get to X pretty fast, since my boyfriend never played it (and try XII together).
I’m thinking of returning to some of my Gamecube games though, especially the RPGs. We’re still early in Fire Emblem (and I want to go through these so bad, since the 3DS one will be out early next year) and I haven’t gone that far into Baten Kaitos, but I really enjoy it and miss playing it.
Also, does anyone here import? Is anyone considering importing .Hack hybrid for Versus, or importing Atelier Ayesha? I’m very tempted myself, but I wanted someone’s opinion first.