What video game(s) are you playing at the moment?

[Adam]

Well, apart from Lemmings - which everybody should play regularly, what video games are tickling your pickles at the moment?

I'm quite enjoying the Call of Duty series at the moment - it's a refreshing change from Lemmings, but what are you enjoying?

[Proxima]

DROD / DROD:RPG -- an excellent and very complex series of puzzle games. I fell a little bit out of love with a series a while back because there are so many elements, allowing experienced designers to create extremely demanding puzzles, and it has the same problem as any puzzle game, the best designers are always the same ones who can and want to design hard levels, so in spite of the huge number of usermade holds, it's very tricky to find good quality medium-difficulty stuff. However, I recently got back into the series thanks to the prequel, Gunthro and the Epic Blunder, which cuts down the number of elements used and is intended as a gateway to the series (both in difficulty and plot). DROD:RPG is a more mathematical spinoff (it's not actually an RPG) which I prefer to the main DROD series, but sadly there are far fewer usermade holds available for it at the moment.

Sonic (Genesis) games -- Recently I discovered soniccenter.org, a website where you can post your best times and number of rings for individual levels, and that's helped me get back into playing the Sonic games. My times are awful, but I really enjoy the puzzle aspect of finding a route to maximise the number of rings. They also have races every Saturday, rotating through all the numerous Sonic games, and I compete whenever one of the Genesis games comes up, and nearly always come last or second-last

Repton series -- Actually, I haven't been playing these much recently, as Richard (the head honcho of Superior Software) has shown no sign of putting in that extra bit of effort needed to get Extravaganza finally released. I contributed well over a hundred levels for that, so it's hard to feel motivated at the moment. But I do have an ongoing project (five of seven parts done) to post a playthrough of Repton 2: Caverns to my YouTube channel, so I should continue with that whenever I can.

Iji -- I also have a technically ongoing project to post a playthrough of a "perfect game" on Iji, but I haven't touched this for a couple of years.

Final Fantasy IX -- I'm not actually playing this, but right now the guide for the "Excalibur II perfect game" challenge is nearing completion of its absolutely final revision. (One of the toughest "perfect game" challenges in any game, as the Excalibur II can only be got if you reach its location within 12 hours, so you have to fit everything into that time limit.) I contributed to the development of the guide in its early stages, so I'm enjoying watching the final stages and some of the accompanying video runs, which are truly awesome in terms of how they manage to fit doing everything perfectly into the time constraint.

[Clam]

Just a couple of my all-time favourites: Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology. I'm still finding new things to do in these games - there are so many ways to set up a map and it randomly generates a new one each time. There's also Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (essentially Star Wars meets Age of Empires), but it crashes randomly on my PC which makes it essentially unplayable (edit: now fixed!). If/when I get a laptop (which I'll need soon anyway) getting this working will be a high priority

Also Lix of course

[geoo]

Pretty much nothing. I'm doing what I've basically done for the past few years, doing some Lemmings stuff, and less frequently some Sonic 2 ROM hacking. And even less frequently I try out some indie game. I liked Iji when I played it quite a while ago.

On my immediate to-play list (which means it might have a chance of happening within the next few months) are the game Perspective (made by some students of a game design university, you can get all the games for free there, this in particular here: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25930), which seems like it's a continuous instead of discrete version of Fez, mechanics-wise. And Anti-chamber, which is about topological spaces or something...

[Minim]

Well, at the moment I have been playing Worms 3D and Sonic Adventure (The PC DX version) on the PC. On both of these games I notice that you can change the sounds by renaming the files (especially the speeches and the music), and I find that so funny, although I might potentially throw caution to the wind, as it's an irreversible process.

I have Xbox360, and I've got plenty of games, but the ones I play are usually the sports or racing games (like FIFA 13, Forza Motorsport 4 and WWE 13). I'm not into shooters or RPGs.

[mobius]

lately the only other game I play is chips challenge. I recently finished my official first custom level pack of 40 levels.  [creating levels for CC goes a lot faster than in Lemmings]. So far I haven't gotten much feedback on it though so I haven't messed around with it recently. There's two big custom community packs I haven't played yet.

A while ago I bought Dark Souls for the PC and was highly dissapointed to discover the PC version differs greatly from the other versions and has all kinds of problems. On top of that I found I don't really care for the game period. Every 3D game I play, the controls feel stiff, uncomfortable, or hard to handle, after playing Valve games (which usually are so good you feel like you're really there moving around).

[Prob Lem]

Currently, not a lot. I'm going through older games that I missed out on for various reasons, primarily.

One of those is Fire & Ice: The Daring Adventures of Cool Coyote, for the Commodore Amiga, and that's the main one right now. It's of no relation to "Fire 'n' Ice", the prequel to Solomon's Key.

Fire & Ice is a platform game in which you have to freeze and shatter enemies in order to find parts of a key, so that you can progress to the next level (extra lives can be gained by guiding two coyote puppies per level to the exit, also). More info is located here and here, and the legal download from preservation group Back To The Roots, who have permission to redistribute it freely, can be found here, in the "ADF Games" section.

It's already good, challenging, and very well-made, but it's improved greatly by some Amiga emulators allowing you to map up to a button, so that you don't have to tackle the dreaded practice of pressing up in order to jump, which makes it harder than it should be.

[grams88]

Hi guys

There is a really good puzzle game I used to play which was called Fitznik, made by the New Zealand company screaming duck software, what a game, I managed to finish all the levels but it does make your brain explode with the puzzles. 

http://www.screamingduck.com/

If you get a chance download the demo, I'm sure any lemmings fan will love fitznik

[grams88]

My dads mate and I have been trying to get Fire and Ice to work on the atari st, I think this was the game I used to play as a kid because I remember playing this underwater type game which I suppose was the demo version of the game but I could be wrong as my memory is foggy in this area.

 

[Pieuw]

I'm playing Baldur's Gate at the moment. I love occidental RPGs and had never played this classic. Luckily, the Steam Summer Sale showed up and I jumped at the chance. I have to say I'm having a great time even though it's not an easy game to tackle nowadays. The adventure is great and I LOVE the humourous tone of it : crazy characters and many cultural references make it very enjoyable.

I'm not playing Lemmings now, because I worked a lot on my pack and I need to take a break. Just a little one...

[Clam]

I got Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds to work! Turns out this old game can't handle the newfangled graphics acceleration stuff - turn it off and you're good!

It's not as fun as I remember though. Oh well. Still good for nostalgia value once in a while

[mobius]

hey Pieuw, what's your name on Steam? mine is donut munching moron 

there are a lot of good new games out recently

I suddenly got hooked on Marble Drop again. It's a very addictive game, I mentioned it once before:
note: turn down volume, this person has it really loud for some reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THnTivcweF4

very challenging but fun puzzles. Simon, you would like this game as there is no time limit. There are five bonus levels which can only be accessed via a special extral puzzle built into the levels before them.
I really wish a level editor could be made for this game and a community with it too. That would be so sweeeeeet!

Then there's this amazing game which I already talked about a ton; but seriously deserves that much mention:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F73rWC_3oSc

It really is an amazing, amazing game, definitely worth the measly $20. As Nerd3 says the less you know about it before playing the better.

Then there's also this also amazing game which I just began playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1S796fXtl4
It's very funny and I expect it be frustrating (in a good way).

as Pieuw said, after working on this big pack, I need a break from Lemmings for a little while

[Pieuw]

hey Pieuw, what's your name on Steam? mine is donut munching moron 

I just added you

I am now playing Rayman Origins, and I think it's awesome even though it can be really frustrating sometimes. I'm near the end I guess.
I also started to play Revenge of the Lemmings... ta-dah-dah-dah !

[mobius]

that game perspective looks awesome. I'll be playing that while I wait for a game I ordered through MAIL on EBAY    called RHEM. It's old adventure/puzzle game similar to Myst, which is one of my favorites so pretty sure I'll love it.

I was playing Portal today, trying for the transmission received achievement and encountered a possible glitch. Somehow I broke a door.

In chamber 14, I was carrying a cube over to the button. I don't remember exactly how it happened but I jumped on the button and jumped off and the cube got thrown, then there was an explosion sound out of nowhere and the door stayed open even though nothing was on the button. The button stayed in the up position even when I stepped on it or put things on it and the door was permanently open.

What I'm guessing is that I somehow triggered a fail safe program to prevent some actual glitch from happening. After the explosion the block ended up near the door so perhaps the block went into the door before it closed; thus jamming it; and for some reason they decided to have it "break" the door in this way. in any case it felt very satisfying 

[Tim]

I am kind of in a varied state of gaming at this point. I have been wanting to play my xbox 360 lately, but I only have a few family members on my xbl friends list, and so it makes its a little hard to go at any games alone, especially during the day. I much prefer co-op games with friends. Roughly got 15-20 games on it since getting it a few months ago.

As for the PC, it is mainly World of Warcraft, but on occasion I might do something else, like Everquest 2. Up until recently I have been focusing on one or two games overall. Still not sure what to do though

[Ryemanni]

I have been playing Guild Wars 2 and Rayman Legends with my Wii U. I just completed it 100%

[Prob Lem]

I'm currently playing through Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion for the Nintendo 3DS.

It's not quite up to the standards of the games that it so badly wants to be like, such as Castle of Illusion, and Mickey Mania (it's not due to its quality - it's due to having to throw in loads of dialogue and fetch-quests so that modern publishers won't whine about not being able to put an "X Number-of-hours of Gameplay!" bullet-point on the packaging), but it is very good. Really enjoying it.

I will say that the downloadable demo does not reflect how good the game actually is - it actually put me off, initially.

[namida]

Well, mostly working on LPII in my gaming time, but I do boot up Tekken Tag Tournament 2 for the occasional online match or two. Also played GTAV recently, and I'm quite looking forward to Oddworld: New n Tasty and FFX HD Re-release.

[mobius]

RHEM. It's old adventure/puzzle game similar to Myst, which is one of my favorites so pretty sure I'll love it.

This is what I've been doing when I should've been making my contest level. 
If your a Myst fan or a puzzle fan you'll love this series. Also it's purely puzzle and very little storyline which I sort of enjoy. btw, I did figure out that puzzle I posted in chat, it turned out I was just missing something obvious. So far only once in the game was there a really obtrusive sort of-- way-out-there thing that I had to look up the solution for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiwG97748pQ

[ccexplore]

Been playing Wonderland Adventures: Planet of the Z-Bots over the past week or so.  It's the 3rd game in the Wonderland Adventures series (and 6th or 7th if you count all the Wonderland games), was finally released this October after over 4 years since the previous game.  The main developer of the Wonderland games pitched the original game way back in Chip's Challenge community which is how I learned about them.  They are singleplayer puzzle games with a tiny bit of action, storyline and NPCs mixed in, has its roots inspired by Chip's Challenge and evolved from there.

I've been a Myst fan in the past as well, so sounds like RHEM will be something on my list of games to check out.

[mobius]

that looks pretty interesting. thanks for the recommendation.
Now I have that + Perspective on my big 'things that never-get-done' list 

I've just begun RHEM 2, and it's a step up in graphics and sound. Also I've been told the puzzles are harder and more interesting.

still not in a very Lemmings mood 

[ccexplore]

that looks pretty interesting. thanks for the recommendation.

I should mention that although the latest game out that I was playing (Planet of the ZBots) doesn't have a free demo version yet, the older games in the Wonderland series should all have free demo versions I think, which you can download from the midnightsynergy website on the page that features the particular game.  Granted, the demos only feature the levels at the beginning so it might seem easier than the full game.  Still, it lets you get a general feel of the games.

And the game engine's like almost 10 years old at this point, so set your expectations accordingly when it comes to graphics (although to be fair, it's decent enough for a puzzle game).

==============

RHEM does look very Myst-like and intriguing, however it looks like it only ships as a CD rather than an electronic download.  Aside from having to wait for shipping (undoubtedly prone to delays at this time of year), some of my newer laptops don't have CDROM drives so it's a bit limiting.  Anyway, I may still give in on this one day, but for now I think I'll probably look through the rest of this thread for other things to try out first.

===============

This is apparently old news already, but Chuck Somerville who created the original Chip's Challenge has finally created a successor to that game via KickStarter funding.  The result is Chuck's Challenge 3D which you can check out here.

[Prob Lem]

This is apparently old news already, but Chuck Somerville who created the original Chip's Challenge has finally created a successor to that game via KickStarter funding.  The result is Chuck's Challenge 3D which you can check out here.

It's new news to me! I'm absolutely delighted to hear this - I love Chip's Challenge. Thanks very much for the heads-up.

[mobius]

This is apparently old news already, but Chuck Somerville who created the original Chip's Challenge has finally created a successor to that game via KickStarter funding.  The result is Chuck's Challenge 3D which you can check out here.

It's new news to me! I'm absolutely delighted to hear this - I love Chip's Challenge. Thanks very much for the heads-up.

if you're really into chips challenge check out: http://cczone.invisionzone.com/
there's a custom level community for this game as well. With a staggering amount of levels. All of which are not there but in other places like yahoo groups. I don't like using those personally. But there are a good amount of levelsets at this site.

Chuck's challenge looks really cool btw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Y4aAiEF_Y

[Pieuw]

I'm into Portal 2 these days. Not the main game which I already finished lots of times, but the Workshop puzzles. And I was wondering if anyone here had this game? As it's possible to create custom test chambers, I thought it would be fun to share our creations. But if I'm alone, then I'll just share mine with myself

[mobius]

ooh, me, me! 

I'd luv to see your custom portal maps! 

I haven't actually finished the game myself, lost interest half-way through but I still play it now and then

[Prob Lem]

I'm ludicrously addicted to Spelunky on the PS Vita right now. I've been playing it so much that I can almost imagine giant spiders crawling along the top of the forum, and hidden exits in the text-boxes.

[Minim]

I'm ludicrously addicted to Spelunky on the PS Vita right now. I've been playing it so much that I can almost imagine giant spiders crawling along the top of the forum, and hidden exits in the text-boxes.

I remember Spelunky from the XBLA. It's a great game. My favourite zone is the Ice Zone. There are two things I don't like however: The death count, and some blind levels which are very annoyingly difficult (Mainly because there are traps you can't see).

[Prob Lem]

The death count doesn't bother me - I find it amusing, in much the same way as the one in VVVVVV.

The dark levels, though... Ohhh, I hate the dark levels.....

[mobius]

besides making my big levelpack, I've been playing through RHEM 4, which is proving to be the hardest so far. What amazes me a little about the series as how unique he's been able to make each game. So far none of the puzzle concepts have really been repeated or over used. Only in RHEM3 was there a tad bit of predictability with some of the "secrets".

I've also been playing Crystalis for NES.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKbZWpTwxtI&list=PL3oL4tJIsTucvGtsE8v9vr2woJEWp7kdO

[mobius]

Pieuw showed me this game Titan Quest which is really fun--it's a 3D-bird-eye-view Zelda like game with RPG elements.

[grams88]

I've been playing a lot of old racing games such as the brilliant off road game that is 1nsane and other games such as POD (planet of death). Going back to the off road racing games there does not tend to be that many off road racing games out now. Anyone else on the forum that has played 1nsane very good game indeed even though it is coming up for it's 13th Birthday, that's old now ain't it. 

I've also been looking through a list of old dos games to see if there is anything that looks good to give a try,

BTW RHEM looks like a nice game I never heard of that one before, 

[Proxima]

Back on the first page (just over a year ago) I mentioned the DROD series. The fifth game, The Second Sky, came out just over a week ago. I have a small voice-acting role (narrator for the intro texts for some levels), and I designed two rooms that got used.

Although this game drastically increases the number of game elements, which was my main complaint about the series earlier, there are user-made low-difficulty holds that let you practise with each type of monster and learn how to manipulate them -- I particularly recommend Dan's Dungeon. There isn't yet an equivalent including the new 5.0 elements, but I'm working on building one myself.

The Second Sky is also the grand climax of the storyline continuing through the official DROD holds, and it's carried out to perfection, not to mention the awesome new graphics and music. Sorry if I sound like I'm advertising, but honestly, I think this is an amazing game and anyone here would love it. Did I mention that it includes a tribute level to Lemmings?

[Prob Lem]

I'm currently stuck into Tearaway Thomas for the Commodore Amiga, which is a high-speed, very twitch-focussed platform/collect-'em-up with some harsh time limits to keep you on your toes.

There's a video of it here, which makes it look a bit choppy, but in real life it's perfectly smooth.

It's great fun, and is actually more in line with the older arcade games like Bubble Bobble, Bomb Jack, and Rod Land, than its appearance seems to make people think! And the soundtrack's fab.

It also has mildly terrifying box-art. It's not actually bad in any way - I think it just slightly unsettles me due to the game's cute animal protagonist being rendered more like a man in a weird superhero costume, instead (it's very much in the style of the box for the C64 version of Bomb Jack, in fact).



This one's an underrated, little-known gem, methinks.

[mobius]

I'm currently stuck into Tearaway Thomas for the Commodore Amiga, which is a high-speed, very twitch-focussed platform/collect-'em-up with some harsh time limits to keep you on your toes.
This one's an underrated, little-known gem, methinks.

dang, the music on that is awesome! What is it with old games having such cool music? 

[mobius]

I'm currently p[laying a game Simon recommended called Enigma. It's a remake of Oxyd a game on the Atari ST.
Very fun and addicting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eISi5G8y-yA

[Prob Lem]

I'm currently p[laying a game Simon recommended called Enigma. It's a remake of Oxyd a game on the Atari ST.
Very fun and addicting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eISi5G8y-yA

How have I not come across this one before? Thanks for the heads-up - will have to look into this.

[Lemika]

I'm currently replaying Baldur's Gate II, playing Mass Effect 2 (and occasionally wanting to smash my fist through the screen because of certain aspects of it), and have a game of Rome II: Total War that's been on hold for a while. I'm also replaying Lemmings II: The Tribes, and have got koules to work on my Windows machine, so I'm playing that every now and again as well.

Back on the first page (just over a year ago) I mentioned the DROD series. The fifth game, The Second Sky, came out just over a week ago. I have a small voice-acting role (narrator for the intro texts for some levels), and I designed two rooms that got used.

Although this game drastically increases the number of game elements, which was my main complaint about the series earlier, there are user-made low-difficulty holds that let you practise with each type of monster and learn how to manipulate them -- I particularly recommend Dan's Dungeon. There isn't yet an equivalent including the new 5.0 elements, but I'm working on building one myself.

The Second Sky is also the grand climax of the storyline continuing through the official DROD holds, and it's carried out to perfection, not to mention the awesome new graphics and music. Sorry if I sound like I'm advertising, but honestly, I think this is an amazing game and anyone here would love it. Did I mention that it includes a tribute level to Lemmings?

I recall I began playing the first DROD game shortly before a computer crash some time back, but never got very far. Perhaps I'll give the series another look.

[grams88]

dang, the music on that is awesome! What is it with old games having such cool music?

That's so true I loved the old video game music it does take you back in time, The atari st games I thought that had good music well it's probably going to be a big list but I will try and pick the best ones.

(The blues brothers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnhaxNr8YgE

(Ozone)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCxMwReacas

(Fast Freddy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCmWWRkjcCg

(Rampage)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylT-bRocv_Q

(Para Stars)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vefe-wEKnxw

[Pieuw]

I'm playing Assassin's Creed 2 and I'm pretty impressed! The first one was an OK game, with a great concept but sooooo repetitive. This second installment throws away almost every flaws and adds some great new content. It takes place in Italy, mostly in two cities I visited years ago (Florence and Venice) and it's quite awesome to climb on buildings, take a look around and think "I was there!"

I'm also playing Heroes of Might & Magic III, one of my all-time favorite games.

[GigaLem]

I received a bunch of PS2 game from someone who doesn't have a ps2 anymore
Those games are
Tony hawk's project 8 and Downhill jam
Gran turismo 4
Ultimate game board collection
and the game I've been playing the most
DDR MAX and DDR supernova

I can beat Max 300 normally just not on the extra stage no matter how hard try
and im using a ps2 controller

[grams88]

I remember playing the old Tony Hawks games I managed to complete the second and third ones, they were interesting games. We've got a charity shop just down the road which is selling old PS2 games but have not had the chance to look at any yet. (I don't have a PS2 myself)

[Akseli]

Lemmings related I’ve played this year: Epic Adventure, MobiLems, Lix Community Level Set, Lemmings Plus III

Aaand other games I've played this year in chronological order:

FIRE FIGHT          [gameplay video]

This flight shooter game I remember from my childhood and I had searched for it for ages, and it was last spring when I finally found it by using Google image search. I was really happy to find it and I played it through for nostalgic reasons, but the game wasn’t as good as I remembered.


VVVVVV          [trailer]

I found out about this game through its music on September 2013 or so, and I fell in love with the soundtrack. Later on I became familiar what’s the game like and I played its demo, which can be found by some googling and I highly recommend playing the demo if you’re not familiar with the game. VVVVVV is the game that made me to create my GOG account and it’s the first game for years I’ve paid for. I played it through during my Easter semester 2014 and I absolutely loved this retro feeling puzzle platformer despite the short length of the game. The game itself is brilliant, but it ultimately arose to my alltime favourites because of the soundtrack composed by Magnus “SoulEye” Pålsson, and I recently during this year decided to consider one of the tunes, Potential for Anything, to be the very best chiptune I’ve ever heard.


RAYMAN FOREVER          [trailer]

Rayman was my favourites in my childhood even though I only played the sequel, Rayman 2, back then. I was really happy to get this game from GOG and finally play it myself through. Platformers have always been really close to my heart, and Rayman is definitely among the best ones. What surprised me is that Rayman was pretty tricky, one of the hardest 2D platformers I’ve played. It took a surprisingly lot of time from me to finish this awesome game.


RAYMAN 2: THE GREAT ESCAPE          [trailer]

Rayman 2 is still one of my favourite games and probably my favourite 3D platformer, and I remember that I never beated the boss of the game as a child, whereas both my siblings did. I corrected this flaw right when my summer vacation started. By today’s standards, Rayman 2 didn’t look that beautiful as 15 years ago, but I’ve always loved the unique world in Rayman franchise. The prequel was a lot harder than this!


SUPER MEAT BOY          [trailer]

Super Meat Boy is another game that I found out by its soundtrack. In fact, a forum member Pieuw linked me some Super Meat Boy music 1,5 years ago, and it was September 2013 when I found the music again, and I was enchanted. Again, I played the demo on the internet (which isn’t nearly as good as the demo of VVVVVV), and it was last June when I finally ended up getting this game. Super Meat Boy is the reason why I made a Steam account, and I purchased my copy from the summer sales. I had ridiculously high expectations for this game… and then it just topped all of my expectations. This platformer become already one of my favourite video games, and I loved the challenges it offered. I just enjoyed the game ridiculously much and the difficulty curve was super good to get me hooked all the time. I played the whole game in the beginning of June. Right now I am a fan of the composer Danny Baranowsky, who made awesome work with the whole soundtrack, Dr. Fetus’ Castle is just one example of masterpiece tunes in this game.


AVISH, STONE AGE, PUSHOVER
[Avish gameplay video]
[Stone Age gameplay video]
[Pushover gameplay video]

I found out about these puzzle games from the forums, geoo and Simon both recommended them.
I downloaded all of them from Abandonia and played half of Avish, 97 levels out of 100 in Stone Age before getting stuck, and 1/5 from the beginning of Pushover. My favourite definitely was Stone Age that captivated me, also I like the music in this game (yet again ). Not sure when I’ll get excited about these games again.


CORPSE PARTY SERIES          [Corpse Party: Blood Covered …Repeated Fear opening]

This is a franchise that I haven’t played myself because it’s for PSP or Vita, but I found out about it when the most subscribed Youtuber played it through. I’m glad that I followed the series, it became exciting pretty quickly and the endings of the chapters of course hooked me irrevocably. Corpse Party is a horror series, that is strongly story based, and the gameplay elements are somewhat scarce, especially in other games than the RPG game “Corpse Party: Blood Covered …Repeated Fear”, which is the best and the main game in the series in my opinion. I was really obsessed with this series for like whole June-July, watching gameplay videos from every game, watching the 4-episode-anime and reading the manga (I had never before read any manga), wanting to see what’s going to happen in the storyline in all those. Corpse Party series generally increased my interest in anime, manga, even Japanese language etc. The latest installment of the series, "Corpse Party: Blood Drive", came out July 24th in Japan, and I of course didn’t want to wait for like over a year to get the game translated to English, I watched its playthrough in a live stream to get to know immediately what’s the climax of the story.

Corpse Party is a somewhat grisly and gory, heart-breaking series, and Eastern horror tends usually not to have happy endings unfortunately. The series constructs emotional bonds between the player and the characters through detailed background informations. (The anime is different in this way, because it lasts for only 4 episodes and is rushed together, you can't become attached to the characters, and it focuses a lot more in gore than games or manga. ) I wept like a baby in many points throughout the whole series and different installments in it, and that hasn’t been too usual for me… O_o The voice acting is remarkably top-notch, and yet again I love the music, that is really fitting and identifiable for the series.


Now I have next on my to-play-list Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc and Rayman Origins, that came with the Rayman bundle from GOG. I also have Fez and Braid, that were suggested to me, but I have no such bonds to those games beforehand as for the other games I’ve played this year.

[grams88]

Oh I remember looking at that game Stone age, I never quite understood what was to be done but now looking at the you tube video it explains it well, looks a good little puzzle game.

I decided to have a go at Chips challenge which is something I have never played before, I'm at level 59 now after being slightly addicted to playing the game, I can see how you guys think highly of chips challenge.  It sure is a tough one but the thing about the game that makes it good is the levels test you out on many areas, i'e puzzle solving, dodging enemies, quick reactions and many more skills such as route finding.

As Akseli was mentioning about pushover it is a brilliant game in my opinion, I think it must of been three or four years ago my brother and I started playing through pushover again but we were taking shots each at completing the levels. (I think I won that)    A long time ago I couldn't get by the aztec levels but now I can get quite far into the game, still don't think I've completed that game yet.

Another game that I have not heard get mentioned before is a little puzzle game for the Atari st called (Color Clash)

http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/color-clash/screenshots/gameShotId,319471/

The object of color clash is to collect all the insects around the level, sounds very easy but it's not you have to think about what moves you are going to make, also there can be some bad guys around so watch out.

I think the only way you can get this game working is by using the atari st emulator, I use (Steam st).

I managed to complete color clash about four or five years ago, if I remember correctly. 

Thanks everyone for sharing your memories.

[namida]

Aside from Lemmings, I'm waiting on Oddworld: New n Tasty. It's been released for PS4, but I don't have one of those. Out of the systems they've announced it for, the ones I do have are PS3 and PC...

[Lemika]

I've been playing some Unreal Tournament 2004 again. I missed that game. Not so many people in multiplayer as there used to be, but hey, it's still good fun!

I'm also still playing the ones I mentioned last time, except that I finished up Baldur's Gate II and have gone back to Baldur's Gate again, because I'm mildly obsessive like that at times. I also got koules running on my computer, so I've been playing that every now and again.

[Prob Lem]

I've been playing Bunny Mania 2 HD, lately (again, thanks to ccexplore for the heads-up on this). It does a lot of things much better than the ultimately-disappointing Lemmings Touch did.

[mobius]

been playing through Mario64 once again then I'm gonna hit up Banjo Kazooie [for the first time]. Never played it but heard it's a lot of fun.
Then I might try the "Next slide please" game that Simon introduced

[GigaLem]

Im trying to 100% Crash 3

[namida]

Im trying to 100% Crash 3

Great game! You should probably be aware though that full completion is actually 105% (plus, of course, getting all Platinum relics if that bothers you).

[exit]

I haven't had much time to play games, but while I have, I've been playing the following games.
-Lemmings(working on the new cLemmings, title graphics taking way longer than I expected!)
-Town of Salem(a game similar to mafia, played real-time and online with other players, go to http://www.blankmediagames.com/ to play/register)

[mobius]

I haven't had much time to play games, but while I have, I've been playing the following games.
-Lemmings(working on the new cLemmings, title graphics taking way longer than I expected!)
-Town of Salem(a game similar to mafia, played real-time and online with other players, go to http://www.blankmediagames.com/ to play/register)

in case you weren't aware; in the past we played a version of mafia right here on the forum. Next time we do you should join 
Both games, the mafia got incredibly unlucky despite playing well.

[exit]

I am aware of that, and I'm waiting to see if one is going to start up soon. The last one seemed very interesting.
But thanks for the notice, anyways.

[GigaLem]

Just got Super Smash Bros for 3DS and I'm really feeling it

[grams88]

I have still been playing some racing games such as Insane2 and World racing 2, Two very cool games I would say. Got them both for a very good price, very cheap.

 

[chaos_defrost]

More just sort of collecting games to play on stream at this point, haha. Probably going to get streams of stuff like RHEM and Antichamber (again) going pretty soon.

[BradLee]

World of Goo.

Yeah, I know I'm late to the party... :/

[namida]

I've just recently replayed the two Abe games in the Oddworld series, in anticipation of the Abe's Oddysee remake (Oddword: New n Tasty) finally coming out on platforms that I own within the next few weeks; first PC near the end of this month, then PS3 early next month (hopefully). I'll probably wait for the PS3 version, though might just go for PC if it ends up taking too long.

[Proxima]

I'm working my way through Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith on Normal difficulty; so far reached the penultimate boss, Sanae.

I've been a fan of the Touhou games for a while, after discovering them through the roundabout route of reading a very silly webcomic nominally based on Iji but crossing over with all manner of things, then getting into watching playthroughs on YouTube. but I've just this week finally gotten round to obtaining a copy and trying to play one of the games myself. It's very satisfying to discover that I can actually do it 

[NaOH]

I'm working my way through Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith on Normal difficulty; so far reached the penultimate boss, Sanae.

My favourite (and the only one I've beaten) was Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. I also really like Touhou 11: Subterranean animism. It has the best soundtrack of all of them, I think. (Particularly that song onward.)

[GigaLem]

Why-a the heck not?

[607]

Why-a the heck not?

Because it's not that cheap and you can't do that much with it

[namida]

I kinda agree with 607 there. I mean, if you're the kind of person who's into having collections and you're trying to get all of them, fair enough... but otherwise, they're just glorified (and extremely expensive) costume DLC...

[GigaLem]

Well it can be a fighter that fights for you

[mobius]

on May 28 I'm going to be playing Chips Challenge 2. Which is the best game ever! [not really, don't even know what it's like yet]. I'm going to have so much fun. [May end up getting very frustrated with it]. However, looking at the photos/teasers and info I think [hope] it will be an improvement on the first game.
Besides an almost incredible number of new game elements [some of which are really super awesome like pick-up-able teleporters (basically the idea behind Portal, 10 years before it)] there are some noticeable improvements on gameplay: there is a counter for how many keys you collect. Also a save system instead of codes.
Also a total of 200 levels

[607]

Hm, I'd honestly prefer codes above a save system in games with levels that you do in order, like Lemmings.

[chaos_defrost]

Just found a relatively new game on Steam called Snakebird. Charming graphics, but REALLY hard. If you like really difficult puzzle games, I definitely recommend it.

[GigaLem]

You guys should try freedom planet if you want to relive the good 'ol days of the Genesis/Mega drive

[GigaLem]

HYAAH
(because i can)

[607]

How many do you think you're going to get?

[GigaLem]

As many as i can
i have plans for Luigi and pikachu
But i am going to make a b-line for that silver mario when the time comes
also i want a yarn yoshi so bad it is so adorable

[607]

The Yarn Yoshi is indeed adorable. I should try not to buy it, though, as I doubt I'll ever get an Amiibo compatible device

[GigaLem]

Wii U, New 3DSXL, and eventually 3DS

[namida]

I can't imagine using them with a portable console would be very convenient...

[GigaLem]

still i can make them fight eachother

[Ben H]

MouseCraft.

Really good game actually...

The first few levels were a bit too "talky" narration-wise to explain what was pretty obvious, and there was a bit too much hand-holding for my liking. But once you get past that, it's really quite enjoyable.

[Minim]

Ah yes! I remember Mousecraft very well. I even mentioned an article on that just in case if you're interested. It's over here.

[GigaLem]

Amiibos i've collected recently

[namida]

So, I've been playing Final Fantasy X again lately (one of my favorite games of all time). I'm doing the insanely-ridiculous NSGNSNCNONENNENBB challenge. I've previously done it minus the NENNENBB part, and I'm currently up to where I got to on that eventually-abandoned attempt; just after Macalania Temple. Have to repeatedly try fighting Wendigo until it drops an SOS Haste armor for Rikku; although the challenge is possible without one at this point (and one can be obtained much easier later), I think I'd rather farm Wendigo for one now than go without one until much closer to the end of the game.

I've also been a bit stricter on the No "No Encounters" part of the challenge than most players usually are. Generally, it's taken to just refer to literally having an armor (or weapon) with the No Encounters auto-ability, but I've also interpreted it as not doing anything else that actively prevents random encounters, such as activating the butterfly minigame in Macalania Woods, or riding a chocobo (unless it's for the explicit purpose of getting to somewhere you can't reach without riding one).

I've done some fairly insane challenge runs before, but this one is really in a league of its own... wow.

[mobius]

CC2 was very entertaining and on a whole I was happy with it. For some reason I totally lost interest in it for a while. Now I've started playing Dark Souls PC edition, which is great fun. It's a game that seems overly difficult at first but a large part of that is because the game is so complex. And in the beginning there are multiple paths to take, some harder than others, and there's no clear indication which path to take. I believe it doesn't matter anyway.

[GigaLem]

got this last night

[607]

got this last night

We can't access your Gmail...

[chaos_defrost]

Undertale.

It's technically an RPG, but there's very little grinding (unless you want to) and battles play more like a avoidance game/shoot 'em up than an actual turn based RPG. The major selling point of this game is that you can defeat enemies without killing them (but you can kill them if you want), so the menu parts of a fight if you go that route are more puzzle-like than RPG-like.

The story is also pretty amazing, there's some great characterization and the writing is charming and pretty funny at times. There's also a small mechanic in the game that can be a bit of a mindscrew but YOU CAN PET MULTIPLE DOGS THAT'S COOL RIGHT

But yea. Very highly recommended, even if RPGs aren't really your thing.

[Lemika]

Sounds interesting!

I've been playing a lot of Pillars of Eternity lately, after having to avoid starting in on the game for months after I got it due to being too busy. It's been very good, so far, so I'm happy about that. It's basically a new game in the style of the old Infinity Engine RPGs made by Black Isle, although there are certainly differences. Definitely not recommended if you don't like RPGs, but if you do (and especially classic RPGs), so far I'd recommend it quite highly. I've not finished it yet, but it's been a long time since I've had this much fun with a new game.

[607]

I bought a Wii U with Super Mario Maker last week. Me and my brother played Mario Maker for over 22 hours already It's a great game. It has quite a few flaws, but for what it is, it's incredibly well done.
It's really fun to create levels. If only more people would play them... :3 (nobody has beaten any of my levels yet, I made them very challenging )

[chaos_defrost]

More of a "what games HAVE I played recently" thing:

https://coinplay.io/bundle/weekend-4

5 games for a literal dollar. Two of these (Nihilumbra and Back to Bed) are games I've heard are quite good, so much that I've purchased both, independently, for about 3 bundles worth of money, on sale.

One of the others is the game I literally have the most playtime of all the game I have on Steam for. It's a pretty great game, about permuting. I'll buy this package for literally anyone on this board who wants it. If only for Great Permutator. Oh and I GUESS those other 4 games, 2 of which I think are probably also reallllly good.

[ccexplore]

"Spoiler Alert" (no really, that's the game's title)

Ran into this recently on Amazon Appstore (but apparently had been available for a while on various platforms, though only free on Amazon currently).

A bit on the easy, short side but cool concept--tagline: "the platformer you play in reverse" (even if ultimately, it's not actually that different from regular gameplay):

http://www.amazon.com/tinyBuild-Spoiler-Alert/dp/B0170PHO9W/ [free but requires installing Amazon Underground app for Android]
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spoiler-alert/id575634541?mt=8  [$0.99 USD]
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tinybuild.spoileralert [$0.99 USD]
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/spoiler-alert/9wzdncrdh5kw [$0.99 USD, requires Windows 8 or 10]

==========================

"Monument Valley"

As for this puzzle game, it has been around for a while; I tried and finished it sometime last year when it was available one day as "free app of the day" on Amazon Appstore.  More recently, it now appears there is a regularly-free version on the "Underground apps" section of Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015OQVN8C/ [free but requires installing Amazon Underground app for Android]
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monument-valley/id728293409?mt=8  [$3.99 USD]
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ustwo.monumentvalley [$1.99 USD]

Not too hard but certainly more cerebral than "Spoiler Alert", this is another cool concept: how to get around in a world of Escherian geometry.  (They didn't do a good job highlighting that aspect though in the stores' descriptions, screenshots and not even that video on Google Play's.)  Example: rotate your view of the 3D world into a certain angle, and two pieces of platform that doesn't actually connect together in 3D space will look connected in that particular point of view, and this allows you to walk from one platform to the other in the game.

If I have time I might check and see if this currently free Amazon Underground version has the extra chapter of levels available for free as well.

[mobius]

"Monument Valley"

that looks very fun, I think I'd like it. Thanks for posting.

[mobius]

I've been making a ton of CC2 [chips challenge 2] levels and I know at least one person plays this game here. If anyone would like to try any of these out, please let me know

[mobius]

I've also been playing a Steam game called "Lost Marbles" which basically takes the concept of Marble Madness except this game is good.  [I hate Marble Madness]
So far all the levels have been fair and fun and challenging.

[grams88]

Hi Mobius

Just checked that game out the (lost Marbles) sounds not a bad game. Yeah that marble madness game was very frustrating as well as a bit on the short sile. It was always very tricky to keep control of the marble without falling off the ledge into the darkness that waits below.

Have you tried Marble blast Mobius? It was a very fun game, one of my favourite marble games of all time.

[mobius]

No I haven't, I'll have to look into that one. Since we're talking about Marble games (which I just realized I have an affinity for) You might like a game called Marble Drop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Drop
Idk why the game got poor reviews I found few flaws in it and it was lots of fun, and hard.

[grams88]

Actually that might be a good game (Marble drop) Need to give that a try.  In the game do you have to get the coloured marbles into the correct colours so to say. I checked this you tube of the game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUE399XSoqE

Yeah that actually looks like a game I would enjoy. There is some games I like that have gotten bad reviews, like one of the games I can think of is (Crash day) a racing game that was actually quite fun.

Did you manage to complete Marble drop? What about Marble Madness, sorry I had to ask. I just completed that game recently myself for the first time.

[607]

I figured to post in here once again, might be interesting to nobody, but at least it will be interesting for future reference for myself
At the moment I'm playing Super Mario Bros. 2 (as in the Lost Levels), Mario Kart: Super Circuit and various Super Mario Kart hacks.
So much Mario!

[607]

My Controller Pak just got delivered, so I can play Rayman 2!

[Lemika]

After taking a break due to being really busy and replaying Icewind Dale II during that, I've finally started playing Pillars of Eternity again -- I've still not finished it. Also playing GTR2 from time to time, and I ventured back into Unreal Tournament 2004 for the first time since I got a mouse (as opposed to a trackball). That didn't go as badly as I feared, but clearly I still need a bit more practice with the mouse to get to where I was!

[607]

I've recently started playing Re-Volt online, I never did that before as I never set it up properly until a few weeks ago.
At first, I got last every time, but the third day I played I got some better places.
It's definitely fun to play online, although I usually like the diversity of cars, which isn't there when racing online as almost everyone uses Toyeca, the best car.
And sometime it lags a little when interacting with other cars, but that's probably always going to be an issue with online multi-player gaming.

[Colorful Arty]

I was playing Majora's Mask for a few days, but then the new Ace Attorney game came out, and I'm playing that instead.

[mobius]

I've been playing Dark Souls; an action/RPG game with a lot of focus on exploration. It's really a beautiful game, in some areas the graphics look very realistic. It has a very good and immersive atmosphere.

I bought the game a while ago and didn’t like it at first because of controller issues I wasn’t used to and it seemed too difficult (as it’s so noted for). But I picked it up again recently and found it’s really not as overly difficult than most other games I’ve played like this. I think one thing that sets it apart is that the game doesn’t hold your hand in the beginning like many others do [cough Zelda cough] so a lot of things you must figure out yourself, which I kind of like in a game. I’d rather discover something on my own with the satisfaction of figuring something out then reading a lot of text etc.
I think It’s the kind of game where if something seems too overly difficult; you’re probably going about it the wrong way; and there’s an easier way of doing it. Or you're just in the wrong area. The path through the game is very non-linear and there are many ways to go from the beginning, most are way too hard for you at the beginning however.

That being said, the game definitely is not easy, and there are some things I don't like about it, but the good points keep me playing anyway. It’s pretty complex; there’s a lot of things to think about. It’s not a game like Half-Life where running through it at mach speed is the best approach. I like how it forces you to take your time. You have to study every new enemy you encounter to learn it’s patterns and the best way to fight it. I also love how story line is woven through item descriptions that you can read at your leisure and within dialogue with characters instead of long drawn out cut scenes like so many other popular games do.

[Colorful Arty]

I just got back into speedrunning the fangame Mega Man: Rock Force. Amazing game, personally I like it better than most of the official Mega Man games. I may post a Youtube video or stream it when I get good enough; it's a very fun game to speedrun.

[mobius]

I'm toying with the idea of getting into Super Mario Bro. X . IF you don't know, it's a free fan made game which combines Mario 1,2,3 and some Zelda stuff and has a level editor.
Not sure I really feel like making levels/a game if nobody would play it though.

[Minim]

I don't mind giving this game a go; as long as it's a game with a level editor that comes for free. like Neolemmix, only that it's a platformer instead of a Lemmings game.

[GigaLem]

Been playing shovel knight, Enjoying it so far
Though Tower of Fate entrance is giving me S***

[Flopsy]

On my 3DS, I've been playing Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. Some of the music in that game has found its way into my SEB Lems pack

On my PS Vita, I've been playing thee rhythm game Project Diva X.
Incredible entry in the Hatsune Miku Project Diva series, then again all 3 PS Vita entries are pretty strong games.
One advantage playing this game on the Vita over PS3/PS4 is the calibration issues are virtually non existant which makes the game so much better.
Again Hatsune Mike music will feature in the SEB Lems pack

I may pick up the PS4 version at some point but the PS Vita version was £24.99 as opposed to PS4 being £36.99.

[chaos_defrost]

I've found that rhythm games, for me, sync a lot better on CRT televisions than flatscreens - if you can find one at a thrift shop maybe that will deal with any calibration issues rhythm games tend to have on newer TVs? Then again you would also need an HDMI to AV converter which might itself create lag?

[CosmicLemming]

I'm playing Lemmings 2 and Minecraft at the moment.

[Flopsy]

@Insane Steve: You are right with CRT TVs being the best choice for Rhythm games, luckily I was playing Guitar Hero way back in 2006 on a CRT TV and calibration lag was not a thing back then.
Yeah the main issue is games consoles have solely moved onto HDMI except for handhelds which have their own screen contained within itself so lag is non existant hence why Project DIVA games are best on handhelds. If you can calibrate it correctly on consoles using the calibration options then it's worthwhile to have on consoles.

I play games like Rock Band 4 on my Xbox One as well at the moment and that game has horrendous calibration lag, not to mention the fact that everytime a game title update occurs for me at least, it messes up the calibration settings
With that being said, I still highly recommend Rock Band 4, if you ever invested in the DLC for RB1-RB3 on the previous gen, the developers worked hard to make sure the DLC came over with you (free of charge) to the next gen in Rock Band 4 and I think that is a first for any game in any genre! It did take them a while to do it and there were a lot of teething issues but they did it when they didn't have to.
Of course it goes without saying that if you invested in Xbox 360, you have to buy the Xbox One version of Rock Band 4 and same with PS3/PS4 etc.

[607]

I've found that rhythm games, for me, sync a lot better on CRT televisions than flatscreens - if you can find one at a thrift shop maybe that will deal with any calibration issues rhythm games tend to have on newer TVs? Then again you would also need an HDMI to AV converter which might itself create lag?

Wait, does the PS4 need a converter for AV? That seems a bit odd, as HDMI isn't very good for gaming, usually.

[Colorful Arty]

Now that I have more free time, I've started playing Splatoon again. Such a fun game. I'm still only level 30 though...

And man, are ranked battles brutal.

[Flopsy]

Now that I have more free time, I've started playing Splatoon again. Such a fun game. I'm still only level 30 though...

And man, are ranked battles brutal.

Used to play that game way back when it was released last year, it was great when it was released but there are way too many weapons in the game now. It's good if you find something that works but I felt that as more weapon types with different power ups came out, it was harder and harder to counter them because there was more and more!

[CosmicLemming]

Right now I'm playing Plants vs Zombies 2

[mobius]

So I never got into Super Mario Bro. X.
Now I'm playing a randomized/nuzlocke challenge of Pokemon Fire Red, which has been quite fun. Randomized means all the pokemon from gens 1,2&3 are available and planning ahead is much harder. I started out with Eletrike, but he died near Mount Moon. I lost five pokemon so far actually, but I currently have;
Ricky Bobby the Azumaril
Camool the Numel (inside joke name)
Abraham Lincoln the Lombre
Vincent Price the Shuppet
"Red" the Dragonair (which I got from a in game trade so can't change the nickname)
I also recently got a Houndor, but it died only shortly after I caught it but I also just caught "Carlos Danger" the Slackoth which is pretty awesome, as since abilities are randomized, he doesn't have Truant.

This has been quite fun and I'm very sad that I couldn't stream any of this. If I can stream any time soon I plan to stream this or a run like this.

[Dullstar]

Now I'm playing a randomized/nuzlocke challenge of Pokemon Fire Red, which has been quite fun. Randomized means all the pokemon from gens 1,2&3 are available and planning ahead is much harder

I do recall that FireRed and LeafGreen wouldn't allow Gen 2 and Gen 3 Pokemon to evolve until you get the National Dex (my best guess is maybe as an anti-cheat, but it can be observed without cheating by attempting to make a Golbat evolve into a Crobat). Does the randomizer fix that?

[mobius]

Now I'm playing a randomized/nuzlocke challenge of Pokemon Fire Red, which has been quite fun. Randomized means all the pokemon from gens 1,2&3 are available and planning ahead is much harder

I do recall that FireRed and LeafGreen wouldn't allow Gen 2 and Gen 3 Pokemon to evolve until you get the National Dex (my best guess is maybe as an anti-cheat, but it can be observed without cheating by attempting to make a Golbat evolve into a Crobat). Does the randomizer fix that?

I'm guessing it does; because it fixes other things; there's an option to disable bad abilities like Truant and Wonderguard. It also can make trading--evolving pokemon evolve by level like Haunter evolves at level 40 or something like that. Feebas will evolve at level 35.

Speaking of Feebas, I just caught one! in the pool in Celadon, which I hadn't even thought of until I saw it, realizing there's an encounter there. This makes up for missing it in Viridian Forest and Houndoor and Nuzleaf dying. I also got a Magby from the game corner. To retain the rule I'll only allow myself to get that one prize from the game corner (I don't feel like playing the slot mahcine for anymore anyway)
and makes up for the other static poke in Celadon (what's normally evee in the mainsion) being another bellsprout

[nin10doadict]

I'm pretty close to finishing up Pokemon Prism and cataloging its secrets and other goodies. Just a few more hidden items to flush out, the Battle Tower to explore, and the Pokedex to complete (which will require use of cheat codes because the game wasn't completed and I can't make trading work on my emulator but I want to see what that one NPC gives you if you actually do it).

[Colorful Arty]

Welcome to the forums!

[Flopsy]

As I'm currently unable to play NeoLemmix for the time being, I've been playing Hatsune Miku Future Tone on my PS4, it only came out a few weeks ago and it has a massive 224 songs if you buy both packs for it.
Hub game is free but you have to pay to add songs to it.
It contains a lot of the songs from the Project DIVA series and Project Mirai series.
The game itself is actually a port of an arcade cabinet found in Japan so needless to say it is highly challenging!

Also playing through Genesis Lemmings as well, scratches my Lemmings itch for me right now.

[mobius]

I'm pretty close to finishing up Pokemon Prism and cataloging its secrets and other goodies. Just a few more hidden items to flush out, the Battle Tower to explore, and the Pokedex to complete (which will require use of cheat codes because the game wasn't completed and I can't make trading work on my emulator but I want to see what that one NPC gives you if you actually do it).

I heard of that but never looked into it. I will have to check that out.

I've been playing RHEM IV 'special edition' the creator updated the game added a whole new area and some new puzzles. He's also working on RHEM V which is going to some how feature you revisiting RHEMS 1,2 and 3, which is pretty cool I gotta say. Even though these games are sort of lo-budget, I don't believe this concept has been done before, to my knowledge, in this way at least.

[grams88]

Welcome to the forum nin10doadict

That RHEM game looks like a cool game, I need to try that one sometime. I've been playing the tomb raider games recently replaying some of the ones I've completed a long time ago. I managed to complete the angel of darkness tomb raider one that I never completed when I played it over a decade ago. If you havn't tried the tomb games I would reccommend them as they do have some very tricky puzzles in them.

Looking back at the Rhem game, I was looking at screenshots of that game and it does look like it would be something I could try one time.

[Minim]

Playing Sonic the Hedgehog, on th iOS: Only because there's Time Attack mode available as an option. I love the idea of setting times and finding out my position and what can I do to improve.

Also been playing a lot of Pokemon, particularly battling on the online server, ever since Sun & Moon came out.

[GigaLem]

Warning:BIG IMAGE

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I am spent

[nin10doadict]

Been playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a lot. Probably too much. Is fun though... Now pardon me while I go finish 4 more shrines so I can get the Master Sword.

[GigaLem]

Big image

Worth every penny

[Colorful Arty]

Nice. I'm not going to get one until more games come out, so until then, I'll enjoy the Wii U.

[GigaLem]

Nice. I'm not going to get one until more games come out, so until then, I'll enjoy the Wii U.

there's a plethora being developed at this moment
Examples
Sonic Mania & Forces
Mk8 deluxe (next week)
Super mario oddessy
Splatoon 2
and like 80 more as we know it

[namida]

A bit late to this game, but I've been getting quite into The Witcher 3 lately. My gf bought it for herself, but we've both been playing it just as much. I'm not usually a fan of action RPGs, but I'm really enjoying this one.

[mobius]

Nice. I'm not going to get one until more games come out, so until then, I'll enjoy the Wii U.

there's a plethora being developed at this moment
Examples
Sonic Mania & Forces
Mk8 deluxe (next week)
Super mario oddessy
Splatoon 2
and like 80 more as we know it

Everyone's saying that the new Zelda game is amazing. If I ever need a reason to get a switch it'd be for that.
Sonic's on Nintendo now... whoa wait what? I'm missed a lot

A bit late to this game, but I've been getting quite into The Witcher 3 lately. My gf bought it for herself, but we've both been playing it just as much. I'm not usually a fan of action RPGs, but I'm really enjoying this one.

is this game very open ended? Are there a lot of cutscenes? How are the physics and the difficulty?

[607]

I got Pokémon Blue and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD for my 18th birthday, and I'm enjoying them both a lot! ^.^

Sonic's on Nintendo now... whoa wait what? I'm missed a lot

Sonic's been on Nintendo since the Gameboy Advance.

[mobius]

I got Pokémon Blue and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD for my 18th birthday, and I'm enjoying them both a lot! ^.^

Sonic's on Nintendo now... whoa wait what? I'm missed a lot

Sonic's been on Nintendo since the Gameboy Advance.

I already knew that; I'm retarded.

[GigaLem]

I got Pokémon Blue and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD for my 18th birthday, and I'm enjoying them both a lot! ^.^

Sonic's on Nintendo now... whoa wait what? I'm missed a lot

Sonic's been on Nintendo since the Gameboy Advance.

I already knew that; I'm retarded.

You need to get out of living under a rock

[mobius]

I got Pokémon Blue and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD for my 18th birthday, and I'm enjoying them both a lot! ^.^

Sonic's on Nintendo now... whoa wait what? I'm missed a lot

Sonic's been on Nintendo since the Gameboy Advance.

I already knew that; I'm retarded.

You need to get out of living under a rock

but it's really comfy under the rock... and life is simple and easy to understand.

[GigaLem]

Finally Got the Gold tires in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, That just leaves the Glider

My task is simple, collect 5000 coins

[Ryemanni]

I'm just about to start playing Factorio. I've only heard good things about it so maybe I will spend many hours with it.

[grams88]

That's me almost completed Enchanted land for the atari st, I've noticed nobody has done a long play for this game yet bu there was one person I noticed played it up until the fish boss then got beat. I could maybe one time record a long play of enchanted land. It's actually been really fun.

[Flopsy]

I got a Nintendo Switch in the last 5 days, practically got the console for free through collecting tickets (if you could call that getting it for free).
Got the tickets through playing a Sonic Basketball game over and over getting around 150 tickets a time.
The Nintendo Switch cost me 41000 tickets.

Anyway I've been playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2 as my first purchases. I also repurchased Sonic Mania for Switch mainly for the handheld mode .
Enjoying both MK8 and Splatoon, they are very much the same as the Wii U games with slight improvements. Seem to stay connected to matches more in Splatoon as well. MK8 seems to be plagued with connection issues for me .

Also I'm interested to know if anyone else on the forum owns this console other than GigaLem, I wouldn't be surprised if a few more people had them under their trees this year

[nin10doadict]

Farming tickets to get a good prize eh? I've always known there must be people that do that...
Anyway, though I'd like to get a Switch I don't celebrate Christmas so I'll have to save up for one myself. Recent annual tooth cleaning for the cats drained most of my funds. Until then I'm still chipping away at Hyrule Warriors DLC, playing through the Pokemon Ranger games again, fixing Lemmings Squared (almost done with that, actually), and considering remaking my Blockdude engine in Game Maker to make it generally better.

[Flopsy]

Farming tickets to get a good prize eh? I've always known there must be people that do that...

Yeah, we only got into it recently but I think we might cool it down a bit now, there isn't really any other great big prizes to save up for.

We chose the Nintendo Switch over a PS4 Pro and we haven't looked back, it's a great console.
All it needs is some other great games to back it up because the games released so far are looking great!

[Ryemanni]

I bought Nintendo Switch on day one, and have good amount of games for it too. I suggest you check out Arms, especially now that it has released it's final content update. It gets boring quite fast if you are playing solo though, so I suggest you try it out with some friends.

[bsmith]

I have two relatively new games occupying my gaming time for the last few months.
First game is West of Loathing.  A short description is the game is a comedy western rpg.  An insta-buy for me since I am a long time player of the online rpg Kingdom of Loathing.
The other game is Opus Magnum.  This one is a puzzle game with an alchemy theme to it.  The best new puzzle game this year in my opinion.

[grams88]

I bought a few games from steam and I managed to complete the (Marble Skies) game which is quite difficult at times, some of those last levels can be a nightmare. Another game I got was this game called polyball, from what I have played so far this is one top game. The object of the game is to get a fast time and the quicker time you get the better medal you get.

[GigaLem]

I am exhausted but its been done
Ultra Sun Pokedex complete
Big image warning

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[nin10doadict]

Meanwhile I'm still sitting here having not beaten Sun yet because I've yet to get bored enough to start it over or continue from where I left off...
I bought Final Fantasy 13 used for 8 dollars and am playing that again instead.

[GigaLem]

Meanwhile I'm still sitting here having not beaten Sun yet because I've yet to get bored enough to start it over or continue from where I left off...
I bought Final Fantasy 13 used for 8 dollars and am playing that again instead.

Check your file before restarting, you don't want to lose anything special

[nin10doadict]

I know for a fact I didn't get anything particularly interesting. Even if I did I don't really care much. I'm not really attached to shinies or anything. I recall wonder trading away all my shinies and other high level mons before starting over in Y.

[BBP]

I got Lemmings Revolution to run with the patch, it runs great!

Besides that I occasionally play Crank and Robot Unicorn Attack Heavy Metal.

[grams88]

Games I've been playing lately, I've tried Cueclub 2 which is a snooker and pool game which is really fun, been playing some chuck's challenge which was another I bought from steam. Rocket league is another one I've been playing, this is quite a hard game, I usually go in goals to try and stop anyone from scoring.

A few oldies I've been playing was Jazz Jackrabbit, trying it on the turbo mode which is quite tricky. Another game I gave a try was the crystal caves one which is an interesting little game. You have to collect all the gems on each level before you can escape.

[607]

That's me almost completed Enchanted land for the atari st, I've noticed nobody has done a long play for this game yet bu there was one person I noticed played it up until the fish boss then got beat. I could maybe one time record a long play of enchanted land. It's actually been really fun.

That looks interesting! I don't think I've got that game, though...


I've recently been doing another playthrough of Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. It's my fifth almost complete playthrough, but I've only finished 2 so far, as I used to have a bootleg cartridge that would randomly lose its saves. When it stopped saving for real I stopped playing the game, and a couple of years ago I bought a genuine cartridge. I played through it once then, but it turned out to be really easy, now that I knew what to do.
Because of that, for this fifth playthrough I have decided to not grind for levels. If I revisit an area I've been before, I'll actively avoid enemies, while in my previous playthroughs I'd encounter all of them for some easy xp. I'm also not buying more coffee than necessary to get E. Gadd's inventions, and so far I have not bought anything from the item shops. I hope I can keep that up, and I think I can. I've begun to run low on Mushrooms and 1-Up Mushrooms, but I've got to Little Fungitown and bought the pair of jeans that makes you get mushrooms from battles, so that should be fine at least.

And the story and presentation is even more fun than last time. Every time I play through the game again I notice new things.

[nin10doadict]

Superstar Saga is pretty great. Since it seems like you're trying to keep things challenging, I'd stay away from the Mush Badges. They snap the game in half, literally removing all difficulty from any remaining battles in the game if used properly. It's fun to experience such power at least once, though.

[Nessy]

Just got "Ultimate Custom Night" last week on Steam and my brother and I played it maybe too much last weekend It was free and we're impressed with the quality so far.

For those of you who don't know it's based on the "Five Nights At Freddy's" survival horror game series where you work as a night guard (with the exception of a couple games) in a pizzeria with a bad reputation for a lot of supernatural and bad things happening throughout its history. You have to survive each night during your shift by keeping track and outsmarting animatronic characters that try to enter your office to kill you. In "Ultimate Custom Night" you can create your own night by choosing what characters to have to fend off and their difficulty across the entire series so far which allows for a max of 50 in one game!

[Ryemanni]

Nice, I played UCN too and liked it very much.

I now bought Crash for switch, but I won't try it out until I've completed Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze.

[Proxima]

Legend of Grimrock. It's a dungeon crawl with a good balance between combat sections, puzzles and hunting for secrets. I got into this game through youtuber Alex Diener, who is part of the DROD community. I've already completed Grimrock 1 on Hard mode, and now I'm just finishing off an old-school mode (i.e. no mapping) run so as to get 100% achievements, before moving on to Grimrock 2 (which my girlfriend gifted me last night -- we each gave each other a game to celebrate the end of her exams).

One of the main points of interest is that both games have dungeon editors, and there are already some pretty awesome mods out there.

Both games are on sale at the moment; you can get both for £9 if you're interested

[GigaLem]

Decided to finally try out Sly Cooper and the Theivius Racoonus after rescuing it from the garbage.

Disc is playable just audio clips are hit and miss. I am liking what i'm playing so far, though I may need get another copy just in case. I should probably get this sequels as well.

[607]

Superstar Saga is pretty great. Since it seems like you're trying to keep things challenging, I'd stay away from the Mush Badges. They snap the game in half, literally removing all difficulty from any remaining battles in the game if used properly. It's fun to experience such power at least once, though.

Thanks for the suggestion (I'm reading it late, though ), I am using the Mush badges. They aren't as strong now though, as I don't have so many mushrooms, not grinding, and not buying from the item shops.

When my year at school ended I got two great presents from my mother: the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, and Yoshi's Woolly World. The latter is more appropriate to talk about here (and, to be honest, I haven't used the first yet :$).
Since Yoshi's Woolly World's release, I've been planning to get it, and since it came out I have also been listening to the soundtrack. Surprisingly, I actually liked the Yoshi's Woolly World soundtrack more than the original Yoshi's Island soundtrack - which is my second favourite SNES soundtrack (behind Donkey Kong Country 2).
Now I know the rest of the game is amazing too!! I can't play it at the moment, as I'm at my own home and my Wii U is at my parental home. But I am very impressed by the amazing graphics and level design. ^.^ Even those truly rival the original game, which is very impressive, as so far, the original Yoshi's Island (I wouldn't be able to pick between the SNES and GBA versions) is my favourite video game I've ever played.

[607]

I have now finished Superstar Saga, and indeed, the Mush badge is overpowered. Bowser's Castle was quite a challenge, until I decided to try give Mario the Mush badge too (I had assigned him the Soulful Bros. when I got that). Then everything was easy, until the final battle.
Cackletta's Soul was very challenging as always. But when I first got though the initial attacks (I got lucky with what she decided to use), I did manage to stick in. I used up all my 1-Up Supers early on, but I managed to avoid dying for the rest of the battle, as I had relearnt most of the attacks.
Also during this playthrough I looked up how to perform the advanced commands of Chopper Bros. and Knockback Bros.. They are very fun! They also seem overpowered, though, as there is no limit on the amount of damage done. It's probably much less significant without the Mush badge, though, as the damage gets to rather low values without it.
Next time I will play with the same rules, but without the Mush Badge. Because of my no-grinding rule, there is a great level-difference between my first save file on this cartridge and my second one. The first one, I completed with Luigi at Lv. 46 and Mario at Lv. 45, whereas I completed this one with Luigi at Lv. 36 and Mario at Lv. 35. It also only logs 15:00, compared to 17:24.
I wonder how quickly I can fully complete this game... I've got this idea of once playing the entire game in one day, as a marathon of some kind.

[Strato Incendus]

I just discovered Universe Sandbox 2 - a simulator that allows you to create own solar systems, galaxies, etc. - or simulate the consequences of many different cosmic events, both realistic and hypothetical ones (e.g. like what would happen if Earth were orbiting a different star than our own).

It's still in its early release phase, but apparently it gets updated pretty quickly. Remember the news of 12 new moons discovered around Jupiter, just a couple of days ago? Apparently those have already been added to the game!

There is also a free equivalent to this called Space Engine - I don't know whether it allows the creation of custom solar systems as well, but it seems to consist of a larger overview of the known galaxy, whereas in Universe Sandbox, the known parts of the galaxy are subdivided into different simulations. (For example, if you open up a simulation of all our closest stars, then this simulation doesn't necessarily include all the planets around those stars by default; you can add them manually though.)

There's a YouTuber called Anton Petrov who frequently showcases both programmes, i.e. Universe Sandbox and Space Engine.

I thought some of you might share this field of interest - you probably didn't name yourself Proxima or your pack ranks "Neutron Star" and "Black Hole" for no reason .

[nin10doadict]

On the topic of Superstar Saga, there is a glitch in the English releases where certain enemies like Bowletta and Cackaletta's soul actually have 5000 extra HP so that they can run their special death scripts when their HP dips below 5000. This leads to a glitch where if you can reduce their HP all the way to 0 in one turn, they won't die properly and the game starts to bug out.
I was actually able to do this on my GBA to Cackaletta's soul with Knockback Bros. Advance and Mush Badges. At the time I thought it was some freak coincidence. Only recently did I find out why it happened.

They found new moons around Jupiter? Neat; didn't know that.

[namida]

I picked up a game called Extreme Exorcism via Playstation Plus recently. It's great, highly recommend. I uploaded a short gameplay vid on Youtube the other day.

Basic premise: It's an arena platformer, with the twist that in most cases, the enemies are your ghosts from previous rounds.

[grams88]

Funny thing happened when I ordered the Rhem games from amazon last christmas, I went to order it and another game came through the post, can't quite remember the name but it was a game I've never even heard of before. I think it was a new game. I could maybe try to order the Rhem game again this christmas for my brother, hoping my brother is not peeking at these forums or anything as he will know what he's getting.

[mobius]

I finished a small 3D puzzle game called "The Room". It was pretty nice; it' essentially a series of puzzles where you have to figure out how to open up this very complicated treasure box. The graphics were great, the detail was nice and the puzzles themselves were mostly very good. I also liked the loose story and theme behind it all; very mysterious.

[namida]

Found another gem among the Playstation Plus games, "La-Mulana EX".

It has similarities to Spelunky, but it isn't randomly generated and doesn't have permadeath (you can always just go back to your last save). Instead, it has a huge pre-made map in a "one-screen-at-a-time" scrolling style (similar to that of the original Oddworld games), full of various puzzles, bosses, etc. I've clocked up about 10 hours - not including time after resets / game overs - and while I don't know for sure, based on how filled out my inventory and how many bosses I've fought I'd guess I'm maybe slightly short of half way to complete?

It's also avaliable on PC, PS3, Vita (which is what I'm playing it on) and a few others - no PS4 sadly - and there's a sequel that's already out on PC and is coming soon to PS4, Switch and XB1 (but I haven't looked much into it yet).

[Colorful Arty]

I'm getting super into the Link to the Past Randomizer right now. I forgot how good that game is, and with the randomizer, it really never gets old.

[607]

I'm getting super into the Link to the Past Randomizer right now. I forgot how good that game is, and with the randomizer, it really never gets old.

I've got A Link to the Past, but I feel like it's too hard for me. If I ever try to continue it, I should follow a walkthrough, as I keep getting stuck.

[namida]

Found another gem among the Playstation Plus games, "La-Mulana EX".

It has similarities to Spelunky, but it isn't randomly generated and doesn't have permadeath (you can always just go back to your last save). Instead, it has a huge pre-made map in a "one-screen-at-a-time" scrolling style (similar to that of the original Oddworld games), full of various puzzles, bosses, etc. I've clocked up about 10 hours - not including time after resets / game overs - and while I don't know for sure, based on how filled out my inventory and how many bosses I've fought I'd guess I'm maybe slightly short of half way to complete?

It's also avaliable on PC, PS3, Vita (which is what I'm playing it on) and a few others - no PS4 sadly - and there's a sequel that's already out on PC and is coming soon to PS4, Switch and XB1 (but I haven't looked much into it yet).

Upon further playing, I have to say that - while it's still fun - I'm not as impressed as I was at the start. While it started out with fun, clever but reasonable puzzles and a huge exploratory aspect, later on it becomes a major case of repeated "guide dang it!". When you've already explored most of the map, it just isn't that interesting to explore it all again to find the one thing that's changed; and some of the hints are ridiculously vague, also with some cases where it's entirely unclear even when, let alone where, they apply - often a hint applies to the same screen you find it on, but there are some where it doesn't even apply to a screen in the same area.

Some of Spelunky's secrets are similarly obscure, but at least in that case, it has the draw factor of that the main overall game you're playing each time while hunting for these secrets, is constantly changing, and so it doesn't get boring nearly as fast.

I'm still going to keep playing it, but I've long since abandoned any hope of doing it guide-free. Though I am trying to only refer to guides when I need to, rather than following one all the way - a bit risky seeing as the game has a few permanent-missables, but oh well.

[namida]

Upon finally completing La Mulana; I do have to say that despite the few really obscure puzzles, it is a pretty good game. A couple of the bosses (Palenque and Baphomet in particular) felt very luck-reliant, but others were very well designed tests of figuring-out and skill (Tiamat in particular, but also Viy and the final boss). One thing that was just stupid was the bonus dungeon - I don't think I've ever seen such a blatant example of fake difficulty as that dungeon (and I've played a decent portion of I Wanna Be The Guy). Nonetheless, it's a good game overall, and I'll certianly be picking up the sequel at some point (which I've heard is a bit more reasonable on the puzzles).

But not yet, because in just over an hour, Red Dead Redemption II releases here, and I will be busy with that for the forseeable future.

[grams88]

Mu brother will be onto that game quickly (Red Dead Redemption II) I remember reading somewhere that the horses or animals you have in the game can be dead forever, if you get unlucky and kill your horse it will be dead forever I think. I remember watching my brother play the first red dead redemption and the graphics looked really nice, he kept on removing the skin from the dead animals.

Me on the other hand I've been playing some (Worms Armageddon) I usually do a game where each team has eight worms and six teams, five computer controlled teams. It's fun even till this day. Worms World party is really good also, different missions to worms armageddon but still really nice game. Titus interactive I think published the pc version of worms world party.

Tiger Woods games are really fun, I've still been playing the tiger woods 2008 version, the best golf games in my opinion.

[Colorful Arty]

I've moved on from the Link to the Past Randomizer (for now) and am now playing Fire Emblem 6 with the English patch. Very fun game; I love the GBA Fire Emblem games a lot.

[Zoinked]

I have recently bought Fallout 4 from https://www.eneba.com/steam-fallout-4-vr-steam-key-global

Very nice game ! I will be gaming all night !

[grams88]

I've been playing some of the tomb raider games, I'm currently playing tomb raider anniversary. I think I'm on the second last level which has been quite hard.

Also I've been playing some (Parasol stars) on the atari st emulator, I still enjoy my old games.

I ordered the Rhem games for my brother and everything went okay as they arrived. 

[Proxima]

I've just finished Hollow Knight with 100% completion (Thanks to the additional content in upgrades to the game, the maximum is actually 112%, but they kept the achievement for 100% as-is and added a new achievement for 112%. So there's a fair amount of leeway in terms of reaching 100% while leaving some of the hardest challenges for later.)

This is a really good Metroidvania game -- for those not familiar with the term, it's a platformer where instead of discrete levels, you explore a whole world, gradually unlocking new areas (usually by gaining abilities); unlocked areas always remain accessible (usually with unlockable fast-travel) and there are plenty of secrets to find by returning to early-game areas with late-game abilities.

It's a genre that I really like in principle, but don't play much -- it seems to be hard to find out about good ones except by watching others play, but then you lose the sense of exploration and finding secrets for yourself. Fortunately, Hollow Knight is one case where the game is still tremendous fun even after having watched it. That's partly because it's really well-made, with stunning visuals and music, and well-designed levels and bosses. It's also because the difficulty level was just about right for me, and I could feel that I was getting better at the game over the time I played it. (I won't do this for a while, but there are achievements for speedruns that I look forward to having a go at.)

Also, while there are a couple of very nasty sections, there are ways in which the game goes out of its way to be nice to you. The Hiveblood charm, available around mid-game, allows you to continually retry the tough platforming challenges without risking dying and losing progress. Unbreakable Strength, the most expensive charm in the game at 15,000 geo, was the last thing I bought, but you could get it earlier if you're willing to grind, and it's a complete game-breaker

I think this is one I'll keep plugging away at, when I have time, until I get to 112%

[Shmoley]

I’m playing a Pokémon fan game called Pokémon Insurgence it is so hard I’m on elite four/champion I can beat the elite four but I was to underleveled for the champion his top level is 92! So I have to go back and train everyone to at least level 90 might team is a Lucario, Espeon, Delta Gardevoir ( delta Pokémon are Pokémon that are typed differently Delta Gardevoir is ice, electric) Serperior, Nidoking and Mew the music is amazing to and instead of one evil team to take down there are 5! The Abyssal cult, Infernal cult, Sky cult, Darkrai cult, and perfection cult, my favourite is the darkrai cult because I like their leaders back story and her battle theme but you don’t battle her until just before the 6th gym. If you like Pokémon I think you should check it out if you haven’t already! There are some glitches though like once I lost to an elite four member and the game froze when that happens the game saves and shuts off when I went back on the game though I had no Pokémon and it would automatically enter me into the battle and show all my Pokémon were fainted then an error message occurred and the game shut off I was stuck in this loop for a while until I figured out how to load a backup save.

[Nessy]

I'm playing a Pokémon fan game called Pokémon Insurgence

I know this is late but I've heard of that fan game! I haven't played it yet but it sounds really interesting especially the idea of those cults. I always loved the ideas behind the "evil teams" of Pokemon games.

Meanwhile: I grabbed a copy of Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 and 2 a while back. I was able to finally play Mega Man 9 and 10 on my own. Both are amazing and probably some of my favorites from the classic series. I did now move on to Mega Man 7. While I'm enjoying the game the only thing that feels weird about it is the fact that you only choose between 2 separate groups of 4 robot masters at a time instead of all 8 from the very beginning. It doesn't ruin the experience or anything... it just comes off as weird Also wow Slash Man completely kicked my butt... now I understand why no-damage runs of his stage are brutal.

[Colorful Arty]

Getting back into OoT Randomizer! Super fun; I'd love to do a multiworld seed with people in the future if there's interest there.

[Proxima]

Super Metroid. It's my girlfriend's favourite game, so she recommended me to play it after I finished A Link to the Past.

Sorry for not doing this one on stream -- it's nicer for her when it's just the two of us And in any case, while it is a fantastic game, there are some sections, such as getting used to the wall jump and grappling, that would not make for very fun viewing. But I'm really enjoying it and I think I'm a decent way into it -- I've reached the savepoint in Maridia just before the boss.

I have also tried out the LttP randomiser -- actually, I had a little race with my girlfriend, although of course she beat me by a long way, finishing the game when I had only done five bosses. But that was also great fun and we'll have some more races and one day I'll win one of them

[combatmatrix088]

I don't have time to play now but if I did I would probably try out Destiny 2 since it became free on PC recently.

[Swerdis]

Stellaris und Civilization VI still....I love this kind of games. Occasionally, I also play Divinity 2 Original Sin and Elder Scrolls Online - but especially the latter is pretty time-consuming and hard to combine with a full-time-job.

[607]

I bought Harvest Moon DS at the last retro game con/market I went to, so I've been playing... Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. It's just so much better, and there was a lot more that I hadn't done yet than I thought!
I got quite excited when I saw it is getting a remake... I don't have a Switch yet, though!
I've also been playing Super Mario Sunshine, as I'd like to get to the credits of it... but it is so hard to figure out what to do, to me. Some people seem to love that game, though, and it is Mario and a platformer, so I'd like to get through it.

[namida]

I've been playing a bit of a puzzle game I got through Playstation Plus a while back, called "Road Not Taken". It's quite hard to describe, beyond mentioning that the puzzles are mostly randomly-generated.

From what I hear, it's also available on PC and mobile. I'd recommend it if you can get it cheap, though I'd say it's not the kind of game that's worth forking out much more than a few dollars for - the novelty does wear off fairly quickly.

That aside - I've mentioned this on Discord, but I recently picked up that "Untitled Goose Game" (PC and Switch, coming to PS4 in the future). I definitely recommend that one, although it is a bit on the short side so again I wouldn't blame anyone for waiting for a price drop and/or extra content.

[namida]

Not long after the above post I pretty much completed everything I could be bothered doing in Road Not Taken (not quite 100% of the journal, but I got all the trophies and completed multiple runs through the game on both difficulties).

A while back I had asked on another forum what PS1 RPGs people would recommend (outside of Final Fantasy, I mean), and three names constantly came up in the responses - Xenogears, Chrono Cross and Grandia. I tried two of these - Xenogears and Chrono Chross - a while back, but both fell well into the "something about these games just puts me off" territory (in the case of Chrono Cross, this is despite me really liking the previous game in the series, Chrono Trigger on SNES), and I never got around to trying Grandia. Well, recently, I finally gave it a go, and this one is different - I'm actually really liking it!

(No spoilers ahead.)

It isn't the most challenging; a few bosses have given me a bit of difficulty, but so far, only two have given me game overs - one early-mid Disc 1 boss gave me a single Game Over, while an optional boss on early Disc 2 gave me a good 10+ game overs, though I'm pretty sure I'm underlevelled for him at this stage so that was probably a big part of why (and I did beat him eventually!). The battle system is quite interesting - it actually feels quite like a lower-tech version of FFX-2's battle system, which is one of my favorites from the FF series (probably second only to FFX).

This would have been a good game to LP, but when I started I wasn't sure I'd like it. Plus there's still the issue of that LP'ing is often not practical for me these days - as I've mentioned before, I don't often have time where my recording would neither disrupt anyone else nor be drowned in bird noises; and when there is such a window, it's usually during the hours that I'm on-call for work and thus could be interrupted at any moment - this is okay, if a bit inconvenient, for coding or for playing things, but not so much for LP'ing anything.

EDIT: I've now completed it. There were a few more bosses that gave me difficulty. The above optional one was the only optional boss I found; though after finishing the game I did some Googling and found out that four more optional bosses exist (spread across two optional areas, neither of which I found at all). Outside of the final boss sequence, two more storyline bosses - both of which were 1v1 battles - gave me a game over each; and I got a few game overs in the final boss sequence as well, most of them against the 1st boss of it but a couple against the 2nd. The optional boss mentioned before still, by far, gave me the most game overs. I never got a single game over against a "random" encounter, though there were two very close calls where I had to escape to avoid a game over.

[combatmatrix088]

Mostly Destiny 2 as it came out for free on Steam not too long ago. That's the closest thing I can play to Halo games beyond Halo 2 on PC. However, MCC should come out soon so no worries. It's just a matter of time.

[mobius]

I finally got Breath of the Wild and I've not gotten very far yet but its already very fun . It's immediately a noticeable improvement on past 3D Zelda games.

[Nessy]

Taking a small break from Lemmings and I'm finally catching up on my video game backlog:

After owning it for a few months now I finally got around to playing Deltarune for the first time and managing to complete it including being able to beat that "secret boss" on my second attempt which was apparently a decent accomplishment, and if you have played the game you know what I'm talking about

I also picked up a copy of VVVVVV after it went on sale on Steam. I absolutely love this game so far Very simple in concept and yet highly addictive. It's also quite challenging but a good type of challenging... a type of challenge where you want to keep on trying and trying without ever getting frustrated.

I'm also returning to Ultimate Custom Night every once in a while to beat my high score (2000 at the time of this post). It's a shame a Halloween-themed stream revolving around this game never got off the ground, although I don't think this game would appeal to a lot of people on here.

[namida]

As I was pretty impressed with Grandia, I decided to give the sequel a go.

I'm undecided about the story so far. It's a very different tone / feel from the first one, and also ramps up much more quickly. However, gameplay wise, I'm completely impressed. They've kept it pretty similar to the first one, but with some minor quality-of-life achievements (eg. the first game has a "each character has their own, very-limited, inventory" system; the second reverts to a typical RPG style inventory).

Interestingly, the first game averted the usual "use big numbers because they look cool" trope; you'd have around 30 to 40 HP and be dealing single-digit damage at the start of the game; by the end of the game you'd be averaging a few hundred damage and maybe have 200 to 300 HP. The most damage I ever managed in a single attack to a single target was about 1000, and that was by exploiting an elemental weakness and a "counter" hit (both games have a system where if you hit an enemy in the middle of their attack, it does more damage) with a spell that was ridiculously overpowered and expensive to cast. In this one, I can't say what it's like at the end as I'm still pretty far from that (I'd hope, anyway), but you'd need to add an extra digit (not necesserially a zero) on the end of the starting figures, and I've got several attacks that manage 1000 damage at times without any elemental factor. I don't see this as a particularly huge matter either way, but I do find it strange that they averted it for one game but then jumped straight into it for the next - the two games have only minimal story connection (so far, at least) and no returning characters, so this isn't just a creative way to avert the "characters lose their power suddenly when you begin the sequel" situation.

There are a couple of things where I feel the first game did it better. Firstly, the controls - the first game's controls felt completely logical. The second's are a bit awkward, especially being forced to use L1 / R1 to rotate the camera (in the first, you could use these, but you could also use the right analog stick). Secondly, in a lot of places it feels like the game isn't being aggressive enough with not rendering certain walls / ceilings from certain angles - the first game did this almost flawlessly, you'd rarely if ever be unable to see your character no matter where you stand or what angle you look from (because it would cull rendering of walls that would block it); the 2nd game doesn't make much effort in this regard though, which feels a bit awkward - as a reminder, these games don't allow full freedom of camera control; you can rotate the camera but not move it up / down, it always focuses on your character from a fixed overhead angle. These are relatively minor concerns, and I'd still (so far) recommend this game.

[WillLem]

My go-to games are these, in no particular order:

Lemmings
Tetris
Basically any Mario game, but my faves are NSMB Wii, NSMB 2, Mariokart 8, Galaxy and Odyssey
The Tomb Raider series
The SSX series, particularly Tricky and 3
Yoshi's Woolly World
2D Sonic games
FIFA 10 on Wii (it's awesome! I don't think the series gets any better than shake to shoot. I know literally everyone disagrees...)
The Simpsons Road Rage, H&R & Skateboarding

[namida]

The Simpsons Road Rage, H&R & Skateboarding

Oh wow, The Simpsons Skateboarding is usually a game that opinions of are very negative. Personally, I quite liked it too - I haven't played it to anywhere near completion, but I remember when I was younger just playing around on it for hours; I don't think I ever made it beyond the 2nd area at the time, despite playing it heaps - I just enjoyed messing around in general with no real aim.

[combatmatrix088]

Playing Titanfall 2 as I wait for Halo MMC release on PC.

[WillLem]

The Simpsons Road Rage, H&R & Skateboarding

Oh wow, The Simpsons Skateboarding is usually a game that opinions of are very negative. Personally, I quite liked it too - I haven't played it to anywhere near completion, but I remember when I was younger just playing around on it for hours; I don't think I ever made it beyond the 2nd area at the time, despite playing it heaps - I just enjoyed messing around in general with no real aim.

I think it's a hidden gem tbh. Sure, the graphics are sub-par even for its time and a lot of the challenges are prohibitively difficult (the one where you have to grind along a massive section of monorail springs to mind), but it's The Simpsons. On skateboards. What's not to like?

[namida]

The Simpsons Road Rage, H&R & Skateboarding

Oh wow, The Simpsons Skateboarding is usually a game that opinions of are very negative. Personally, I quite liked it too - I haven't played it to anywhere near completion, but I remember when I was younger just playing around on it for hours; I don't think I ever made it beyond the 2nd area at the time, despite playing it heaps - I just enjoyed messing around in general with no real aim.

I think it's a hidden gem tbh. Sure, the graphics are sub-par even for its time and a lot of the challenges are prohibitively difficult (the one where you have to grind along a massive section of monorail springs to mind), but it's The Simpsons. On skateboards. What's not to like?

I've been playing it at two times - one was a few years back, the other was back during the PS2 era (I had the game as a rental, and it was weekly pricing, so I figure the game had been around for a little while at this point - but it was well before the PS3 was announced). On neither occasion did I feel that, for the era, there was anything too off about the graphics - though it might be that I wasn't really aware of what exactly to expect graphic-wise.

While playing Grandia 2 lately, I've definitely felt that the graphics don't feel up to PS2 standards. Except for the models being a bit more detailed, the graphics look more PS1 than PS2 era to me. Not a huge deal though - graphics is a pretty low priority to me, unless they're so bad that it's hard to tell what's going on; gameplay is most important, and probably music after that. Still loving the game regardless - although I do have to say that so far, I liked the original more.

[namida]

Finished Grandia 2 now, and I can definitely say I recommend it. It is a bit shorter than the first one, although I don't think I would have noticed this were it not for the "time played" clock - it didn't feel shorter. The story gets interesting much more quickly, and stays that way - though it's definitely a fair bit darker than the first game too.

Gameplay-wise, I stand by what I said before - this really takes the first game's gameplay, keeps the stuff that worked well, and chucks out the stuff that didn't.

I do feel this one was a bit easier than the first. Only two game overs here,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One against the Tio Clone, and one against the rematch vs Eye of Valmar (leading up to the final boss).

I've obtained Grandia III now, and will likely try it out in the near future - although I hear Grandia Xtreme is meant to come between II and III, so maybe I'll play that first. Definitely going to continue with the series either way.

[607]

My go-to games are these, in no particular order:

[...]
Yoshi's Woolly World
[...]

That's my favourite game!

[Nessy]

After owning it for about 8 months I finally starting playing New Super Mario Bros. Deluxe co-op with my brother (it's basically a Switch port of New Super Mario Bros. U). I did attempt to play it on my own but being able to play it with someone else is way more fun and entertaining!

[607]

New Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

Seeing that name makes me sad, because despite the obvious similarity in name, none of the functionality of Super Mario Bros. Deluxe was included, as far as I know.
Edit: That's assuming you meant New Super Mario Bros. U deluxe, because as far as I know New Super Mario Bros. Deluxe doesn't exist (or at least, not officially).

[Nessy]

That's assuming you meant New Super Mario Bros. U deluxe, because as far as I know New Super Mario Bros. Deluxe doesn't exist (or at least, not officially).

Yes I meant New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe

[combatmatrix088]

I've been playing Halo: Reach ever since it came out on Steam on December 3rd. Playing through the campaign the 2nd time, this time on Legendary difficulty. Also enjoying the multiplayer with all the armor parts you can unlock.

Aside from that, I tried out Resident Evil 2 Remake demo on Steam, and I intend to try out more Steam demos like Code Vein, Doom (2016) and others like Sniper Elite V2 

[namida]

I started with Grandia Xtreme a while back, and I'm quite enjoying it - probably more than the two main-series titles so far. It very much shifts the focus away from story (though not none at all) and towards gameplay, which is certianly fine by me. I've clocked up about 35 hours so far and haven't completed it yet, though I've been revisiting old dungeons a lot (the dungeon doesn't change except for item pickups, but the enemies and bosses are higher level and this often actually is more of a difference than just "higher stats" - and it gives new rewards too).

I definitely recommend this one too.

EDIT: I've completed it (apart from the postgame dungeon) now. I'd go as far as to say this was my favorite entry in the series so far. If you aren't too worried about story, I'd say Grandia Xtreme is the one to play so far. (If you do want story too, Grandia II's the one to go for. Though let me be clear - all three are great games.)

I'm probably going to start on Grandia III soon, I might consider LP'ing this one if I can find suitable time to do so.

[Proxima]

Just finished Oracle of Ages, my second completed Zelda game after A Link to the Past (I had also got about halfway through Link's Awakening before my hard drive failure; I will go back to that one at some point). It was awesome and in fact I think I might like it even better than LttP! The puzzles and dungeon layouts, especially towards the end, were really interesting, whereas in LttP I certainly enjoyed the dungeons but I also felt they didn't fully realise their potential.

Definitely looking forward to trying out more Zelda titles

[Nessy]

Finished playing the new Switch remake of Link's Awakening. It's a very faithful remake of the original with the exception of very small things here and there. Honestly, the only really noticeable change was the possibility that the boss of the secret, optional dungeon only present in the DX version of the original game was nerfed a little bit. I'm not complaining because from what I remember he was a pain My next step is to 100% it (which I've never done) and to try to do a deathless run of it to get the best ending.

I'm also going to take advantage of the at-the-time-of-this-post Steam sell going on to finally pick up a copy of Five Nights At Freddy's Help Wanted especially now that you no longer need a VR headset to play it because there's now a non-VR gameplay mode available in one of its recent updates. I might even get another copy of World Of Goo: a beautiful game that introduced me to the wonderful world of indie games over a decade ago

[Shmoley]

I beat Pokémon insurgence at the end of summer last year, I remember when I heard his last Pokémon fainting I sprang out of my chair and ran around the house so excited and I came back to the screen to see the message that I defeated the champion! I was kind of freaking out.

[mobius]

been playing Breath of the Wild a lot and I can say the hype is real. It's honestly probably the greatest Zelda game of all time... even way up there on the list of greatest GAMES of all time

I need a faster horse...

[namida]

I've finished Grandia III now. Not sure what I'll take on next, sadly there isn't a Grandia IV. I've been revisiting The Swindle a bit lately, but it's more a "short bursts" game than a long term playthrough.

G3 was another excellent game. They finally upped the difficulty a bit, too.

[Proxima]

Rosenkreuzstilette. It's a cute, silly and rather charming game inspired by the Mega Man series; I haven't actually played any of the MM games, so I'm relying on my girlfriend to point out all the references

It's very fun so far, looks great and has really nice music, although the balancing is rather strange. Nearly every boss is ridiculously easy if you use the weapon they are weak to, and ridiculously hard if you don't. Still, I've only been playing for a few days, so I'm sure they will seem a bit less unapproachable when I get a bit more used to the game

[Dullstar]

Nearly every boss is ridiculously easy if you use the weapon they are weak to, and ridiculously hard if you don't.

The Mega Man games also have this problem (except Mega Man 2, where nearly all of the bosses are easy). Plus, half the time the weaknesses never make any sense, so for the most part it's unplayable without a guide, first to tell you which of the robot masters is the least absurdly hard to defeat without their weakness, then to tell you which boss is weak to which weapon. Plus, because of the fact that all the levels are available from the start means that the game gets easier as it goes along instead of harder,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

at least until you reach the Wiley stages, where there's usually a difficulty spike.

[WillLem]

Smashed my speed run/rings record in Sonic The Hedgehog (the Amy Rose hack) this morning. Managed 208 rings in 1:38! Here's a link to the video if you want to watch.

[Minim]

Nice work! It certainly takes a lot of practice and skill to pull that off. It reminds me of one of my older threads, which is similar, but a bit less complex.

[Colorful Arty]

Just got the new Animal Crossing game, and it is so much fun!

[Proxima]

Since I've just played a Mega Man-inspired game, my girlfriend suggested I should give the original games a try, so we've started on Mega Man X. Really enjoying this one so far

We're also playing The Talos Principle together, a 3D puzzle game with an interesting world to explore, snippets of lore and philosophy hidden in odd corners, and fun puzzles involving manipulating simple objects such as blocks, gates and lasers. Somewhat similar to Portal (I think -- I haven't played Portal myself so it's hard to compare). I've just reached the Egypt-themed world, and the graphics and music here are really beautiful This is definitely becoming one of my favourite games.

Also still slowly working on those last few achievements on Hollow Knight. The last part of the game is an (entirely optional) area themed around boss rushes -- the bosses are divided into four "pantheons", each with nine bosses from the main game plus a unique boss, and you have to defeat them in a row with a heal at the halfway mark. In addition, for each pantheon you can take one of four "bindings" (disadvantages, such as halving the damage of your regular attack, or halving your maximum health). So, in all there are 16 pantheon-binding combinations to achieve. I'm definitely not going for all 16 as some of them are ridiculous, but you get rewards at 8, 12 and 16, and I've now done 10, so I am hoping to get to 12

All this may sound off-putting, and it's certainly a big time investment to first get good enough at the game to be able to achieve the bindings, and then actually pull them off. Fortunately, Hollow Knight is one of very few games where the bosses are so well-designed that it's still fun to redo them with different conditions and have to come up with new strategies to meet each challenge.

[namida]

(I think -- I haven't played Portal myself so it's hard to compare)

I highly recommend remedying this.

[grams88]

My brother and I managed to complete an old adventure game just recently. It was Hook pc dos game, It was on the atari st and the amiga but I decided to try the dos one and the game was actually quite good. Tricky puzzle wise. It was a game based off the Hook film that had Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman in it.

At the moment I'm playing through Pushover, a game I don't think I completed in the past so I decided why not see if I can beat this game once and for all. Anyone who has not played pushover, it is a must.

I might think about playing Jack Orlando soon, it's a really good looking game graphically, it's cartoon graphics but done really well. It's an adventure game where you are having to solve a murder.

Also still been playing the Cueclub 2 game, it's the snooker and Pool game, probably one of my favorite snooker and pool games of all time. I like my snooker but bad thing this year is it looks like it will be cancelled this year the (world snooker championship) Uk one. argggggg

[namida]

Me and my gf recently grabbed a couple of Worms games off Steam. We're already familiar with the series in general (we've got Battlegrounds on PS4 via PS Plus and we play it every now and then), but we grabbed two - the newest one (Worms WMD), and the newest 3D one (I forget the exact name but it had "Mayhem" in it).

WMD is very good - it seems to take the general gameplay of Battlegrounds and improve on it well; although I do have to say I much prefer Battlegrounds' UI. On the other hand, I wasn't so impressed by the 3D one - definitely got to give them credit for trying, and some impressive technical achievements to make it work, but ultimately I just feel Worms doesn't translate very well to 3D in practice - as much as it sounds like "Worms 3D" would be an awesome idea in theory.

[607]

I got a Switch Lite a few weeks ago; does anyone else have a Switch here? My friend code is SW-7332-5015-5437. I haven't got any games for it yet, but I am intending to buy Super Mario Maker 2 when I am done with the current quarter of university (which will be later this week or after the weekend).
I have been playing about an hour on it every day (a bit in the morning and a bit in the evening, usually), and have really enjoyed playing classics I hadn't played before. My favourites so far have been F-Zero and Balloon Fight, I think. I already completed Balloon Fight, though (well, I got to the point where the stages loop). I'm looking forward to playing Metroid and Super Metroid, which I haven't yet got into! I have played quite a bit of The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Doki Doki Panic one), with both of which I've had varying experiences. For The Legend of Zelda, mostly positive, and for Super Mario Bros. 2, mostly negative. Both are nice to finally play though, after all I've heard about them.

[grams88]

I really like the worms games, I remember getting worms 3d back in 2003 as a christmas present. It did take awhile getting used to, I think there was a lot of complaints in relation to how the camera moves or works.  My least favorite 3d worms would probably have to be worms forts, don't get me wrong it does seem good in concept.  I think they still have a big community out there for worms, I think a lot of them like the worms armageddon, that was my favorite one. I usually play a couple of games of worms with my Dad at the weekend. You picked a good one there as well Namida with worms wmd, that's quite popular as well.

Oh that F zero game that 607 was mentioning is actually quite a good one. Balloon fight actually looks like a game I would like. You might like the professor layton puzzles, alot of them are quite tricky puzzles, I think you can get that for Switch lite.

[607]

Oh that F zero game that 607 was mentioning is actually quite a good one. Balloon fight actually looks like a game I would like. You might like the professor layton puzzles, alot of them are quite tricky puzzles, I think you can get that for Switch lite.

Hm, I think I'm not so good with puzzles.
I got Super Mario Maker 2, and made a cool video related to it, in which I tell the story of recreating Mario levels I drew as a kid. https://youtu.be/u23OI6gJVL4

[Shmoley]

I’ve been playing this game called Terraria, I’ve played it a lot in previous years and I’m going through the calamity mod. It’s really fun but lots of people call it a “2d Minecraft” but in opinion that isn’t true at all! Sure you can build, break and fight just like Minecraft but Terraria has so many other differences. Sooooo yeah, I recently beat the moon lord without the nurse and that’s a first for me, can’t wait for the 1.4 update!

[Nessy]

My non-Lemmings gaming has been pretty packed lately

First off, I borrowed a copy of Doom 2016 from my brother and managed to beat it not too long ago. Epic game! The Doom series is always going to have a special place in my heart because I have such amazing memories of my childhood self playing the first two DOS games with my dad. It's one of the very few games that we can both understand and enjoy.

Next up, I finally started playing Super Meat Boy (another epic game!) and Final Fantasy VII (the original not the remake). I've been interested in playing a Final Fantasy game for a long while now and I thought the 7th one would be a good starting point. So far I'm really enjoying it

[combatmatrix088]

In some sense I'm playing three games simultaneously at the moment: Terminator: Resistance (2019), the new Halo 2: Anniversary 2020 PC port, and Doom (2016) but I can't finish any of them due to the lack of time lol.

[WillLem]

I'm currently playing through the entire SSX series again. Finished SSX on PS2 and now playing SSX Tricky on GameGube (actual consoles rather than emulations).

My general playing process for these it to choose 3 or 4 characters, build them all up to full stats, win gold medals on everything, and complete their trick book.

It's a fantastic series: anyone who has an X-Box One should check out SSX 3, which is easily the best instalment and has recently been rereleased in HD. Unfortunately I don't have an X-Box One, but I'm quite happy playing it on GC for now

[Shmoley]

In terraria, I’ve made it to the final boss of the calamity mod! Her name is Supreme Calamitas and she is sooooooooooo hard! Seriously, I haven’t done a single point of damage to her..
Edit: Actually, my record on her now is getting her down to 20% hp.

[Nessy]

I'm not playing this but my brother is and I thought I'll share it on here anyway.

I've been watching my brother play a Paper Mario romhack called "Paper Mario: Master Quest" which is supposed to be an INSANELY hard version of the game where enemies and bosses are buffed as hell and overpowered moves and badges are nerfed by having them either take less damage or cost more FP. My brother has managed to get all the way to Chapter 7 at the time of writing this post and I am completely amazed at how he managed to beat some of these bosses.

His first major roadblock was Chapter 3's boss which is actually two parts. In the vanilla game the first part is supposed to be the true boss while the second part is extremely easy and is merely there to prove a plot-related point. In Master Quest that second boss is now a more legit boss battle that has to be fought after fighting an even tougher first part. His other roadblocks were Chapter 4's boss and Chapter 6's boss... and Chapter 6's boss was already a fairly notorious boss battle in the vanilla game.

[WillLem]

I've been watching my brother play a Paper Mario romhack called "Paper Mario: Master Quest" which is supposed to be an INSANELY hard version of the game

Nice! Thanks for sharing. I love a bit of Mario, and there are some really great ROM hacks out there to be found. You never quite know what you're going to get with some of them; I can imagine that playing more difficult versions of the game must be quite daunting at first.

Apparently there's a version of NSMB Wii somewhere with Princess Peach as a playable character, albeit a "skin" so she doesn't have her ability to glide after a jump. I've always thought that Peach should become playable as a reward for rescuing her.

[The Tomato Watcher]

I've always thought that Peach should become playable as a reward for rescuing her.

That is actually how they did it in Super Mario Run. I never got to play as her though; I didn't cough up the $10.

I've been playing a LOT of Super Mario Maker 2 recently. Especially since the Super World update came out, I've been working a lot on that. I've also played a lot of Multiplayer Versus, which is... an experience.

I've recently gotten back into Tetris 99, and I'm as bad as when I left.

I've played a decent amount of NSMBUD. I've gotten about halfway through the game. I have a separate co-op file with my brother, who is not a good sport, let's say. I've also been trying to get gold medals on the challenges. Everyone says the New Soup games are too easy, but those challenges are extremely difficult, especially if you're going for gold.

And, I suppose I should mention this to cover all my bases... I've been playing some Fortnite, too. Listen, I'm not super into it or anything; I just find it fun. Most of the time...

[combatmatrix088]

Finally got my hands on Minecraft Dungeons, and finished it in just a few hours, so that is a little disappointing. Though the combat is quite good, and character-building is really satisfactory, it enriches the story of the game. Had a lot of fun creeping in the dungeons!

[607]

I've been playing a LOT of Super Mario Maker 2 recently. Especially since the Super World update came out, I've been working a lot on that. I've also played a lot of Multiplayer Versus, which is... an experience.

Could you share a level code so I can follow you?
My levels can be found at http://folk.simpsite.nl/smm-levels

I got Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, which released in Europe today. It is a Switch remake of the GBA game Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, which is probably my most played handheld game. It's good so far! Several quality of life changes over the original, but also a stupid quality of life decrease, which I had frankly expected going off other games in the series: names have a maximum of 8 characters, instead of the maximum of 12 that was in the original. Why??
I've also noticed that everything, including the names of all characters, was retranslated from Japanese. That's a bit strange, as it means that some of the characters have different names than in the GBA game (assuming you're not playing the Japanese version).

[The Tomato Watcher]

Could you share a level code so I can follow you?

Sure thing! My Maker ID is CK6-THR-01G.

One thing to note is that some of the levels may be significantly lower quality than the others. Those are my brother's. Pretty much any level whose title is all in lowercase is his. I suggest you avoid them.

[Proxima]

I'm in the middle of two games at the moment.

Tametsi (on steam) is a Minesweeper-inspired puzzle game, where each level has been algorithmically generated to ensure that it can be fully solved without ever having to guess. Many levels use the standard square grid, but there are also grids based on the hexagonal tiling, the octagons-and-squares tiling, and several others -- one particularly interesting one is the square tiling without corner adjacency. So far I've solved 131 of the 160 puzzles, so getting near the end, but the endgame puzzles are all extremely hard, so who knows how long it will take me to finish

Adventures of Square is a first-person shooter based on Doom, but the blood and gore are replaced with cartoon violence -- your character is a square shooting up circles, but they still explode into ludicrous gibs. I've never played an FPS before, but I decided to try this out after Alex Diener, one of the Youtubers I follow, started playing Marathon, and watching him made me reflect on how FPSs can have a lot of the gameplay experiences I really enjoy from other genres -- exploring a large level, gradually getting to understand how it fits together, and hunting for secrets. I've just completed the first episode, and it's been great fun even though I was extremely bad at it to begin with I am definitely getting better, although the final boss was far beyond my current playing strength -- I was only able to defeat it with the help of savestates during the fight. Still, a really fun experience.

[grams88]

The Fallguy game is very fun to play, I got the award that only 22.6% of people who play the game get and won a full episode episode. It is very hard to at least win one full episode. Anyone else tried this game, it's quite fun and competitive if that is the right word to use.

[WillLem]

Currently really enjoying Tetris Worlds on GameCube.

I'm at Rank 14 (of 15) for most of the games now, still on Rank 12 for a couple of the more difficult ones but working my way up!

Here are the games in order of difficulty [with my current rank in square brackets]:

Sticky Tetris: "Clear the Bottom Line". Players must try to clear the bottom line of "Garbage Blocks" - as well as increasing in speed, each level introduces a random stacking of garbage blocks for extra difficulty. Same-colored Blocks stick together in this mode, hence the name. If 25 same-colored blocks connect, a Critical Mass is formed and are cleared from the Matrix. Sticky Tetris also features the gravity/cascade game mechanic, but is made slightly less predictable and more difficult to manage because the tetrominos are made up of blocks which can separate from one another, adding to the mayhem! [Rank 12]

Fusion Tetris: "Activate the Atom Blocks". In this mode, as well as garbage blocks there is a single "Fusion Block" at the bottom of the Matrix. Players must try to connect falling "Atom Blocks" to the Fusion Block. Atom and Fusion Blocks are not cleared in line clears, and clearing a line containing an Atom or Fusion Block causes a Cascade. This is only slightly easier than "Sticky Tetris", mainly because the Atom Blocks are single bricks, which makes them easy to manoevre amongst the garbage blocks. It's also that bit more predictable, making it feel more achievable even though it is technically just as difficult as Sticky Tetris. [Rank 12]

Cascade Tetris: "Go for a Cascade".The player must try to clear lines that cause Cascades. Cascades occur when a cleared line cause other Blocks to fall and clear another line. This game is mainly to introduce the gravity/cascade game mechanic for the later games which feature it. It's tricky but fun. [Rank 14]

Square Tetris: "Go for a Square". While the player plays Tetris, they also must try to combine Tetriminos into 4 x 4 "Squares". Lines cleared containing "Square" blocks cause large bonuses. This takes a bit of getting used to but is fairly easy once sussed. [Rank 14]

Hot-Line Tetris: "Go for a Hot-Line". In this mode, there are six "Hot-Lines" in the Matrix. The player must try to clear lines that are on the Hot-Line. Lines cleared anywhere else earn no points. This is essentially lots of edge-of-seat gameplay trying to clear lines near the top of the matrix. Oodles of fun. [Rank 12]

Regular Tetris: "Go for a Tetris". A normal Tetris game, where bonus points are awarded for Doubles, Triples, Tetrises, T-Spins and Back-to-Back Tetrises. Losses occur when the Tetriminos reach the top. [Rank 14]

Good points:

+ The music is excellent, very immersive and can be randomised so you're not hearing the same tune over and over.

+ Interesting and absorbing variations on the game which I've never seen previously (I particularly enjoy "Cascade" and "Hot-line").

+ Includes the "easy spin" feature which I think dramatically improves any version of Tetris in which it's implemented - it gives the player that bit more control over the game, and allows for much faster and longer gameplay.

+ The "story mode" is quite cute and gives the game some character. The "worlds" themselves are also quite a nice feature, adding a bit of peripheral interest to the game (literally!). It kind of foreshadows the much more extravagant and immersive Tetris Effect in this regard.

Room for improvement:

- None of the games reward combos (where consecutive lines are cleared), with the exception of Back-to-Back Tetrises (4 simultaneous line clears). I didn't realise how much I actually relied on combos to increase my score/rankings in other Tetris games I've played until I played Tetris Worlds. The flip-side of this is that it has re-trained me to prioritise other aspects of the game - namely T-spins, back-to-back Tetrises and faster clearing (i.e. all of the games are played to a 2-minute clock, which brings me onto...)

- All of the games are played to a 2-minute clock! This is fine for challenge modes in other versions of Tetris, but there's no escaping it in Tetris Worlds. You are allowed to play beyond the clock if you're still clearing lines and haven't topped-out, and each time you "Level Up" you get another shot at the 2-minute task, but you can only successfully "Rank Up" if you manage to complete the task within the 2-minutes.
It actually makes "Levelling Up" a bad thing if you haven't managed to complete the current task, since the task then becomes harder - for instance, it's possible to be on Level 15 (the highest level) and Rank 12. If you managed to complete the Level 15 task (having missed out on 13 and 14) you'd only rank up to Rank 13, despite completing the more difficult task. What this essentially means is that if you miss the goal, the tendency is to just hit "restart" (which starts you again from the level below your current ranking) rather than carry on playing, which is very unlike any other version of Tetris I've played, and not necessarily in a good way.

That said, I'm generally loving Tetris Worlds; each game is in fact "completed" once you achieve Rank 11 (having completed Level 10) - that "world" is then "freed" (story mode) and playing beyond that is simply for the personal bonus of being on a higher Rank. So, I have fully completed story mode and yet I'm still genuinely excited about reaching Rank 15 on each of the various games, so it does have that compelling factor to it.

It's a good solid 8/10

[NieSch]

The Fallguy game is very fun to play, I got the award that only 22.6% of people who play the game get and won a full episode episode. It is very hard to at least win one full episode. Anyone else tried this game, it's quite fun and competitive if that is the right word to use.

Yeah, it's really fun and addictive (and frustrating)!

[Nessy]

I have recently finished Chrono Trigger for the first time. It was absolutely amazing I loved the battle system, the characters, the story, and the music... I LOVED the music!

I also decided to try out a new Ocarina of Time ROM hack called "Master of Time". It's one heck of an ambitions Ocarina of Time ROM hack, going as far as to make a full blown game that is just as long as the original Ocarina of Time more or less. I have more detailed thoughts about his one written below

Full Review with MAJOR Spoilers (click to show/hide)

Let's start with what I consider to be the biggest negative of this ROM hack: the story. It sucks, and there's no nicer way for me to put it. I think one of the main reasons why it sucks so much is because it had the potential to be something truly amazing, but any potential it had gets thrown away and lit on fire towards the end.

Prior to the events of the game, from what I can understand, the people of a country named Apello were terrorized by monsters that would only come out at night. Eventually, a mysterious and unnamed person nicknamed the Master of Time appeared and using the power of six medallions created an endless day to protect the people of Apello from those monsters. No longer under constant siege from monsters, the kingdom of Apello was formed where people were able to finally live in peace. Alright, so far so good. Our Link from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask arrives at Apello and meets a fairy named Nite, who tells him about a prophecy in which Link collects these six medallions, uses them to break the curse of the endless day, and becomes the new Master of Time. Why though? I mean, you have to because it's the game, yet everyone seems to be pretty happy with this endless day and no one seems to be even bothered by it in the slightest. Why break the curse? First of all, this just takes out any type of urgency or stakes in trying to break the curse. Take a game like Majora's Mask where the stakes were extremely high in that game not only because of the literal countdown, but because even the NPCs helped to sell this urgency with the way each one acted individually as doomsday got closer. Even if the NPCs in Master of Time weren't bothered by the endless day, there seems to be a lot of missed opportunities to play around with the lore and further develop the world. For example, children NPCs that start talking about a myth they heard about something called a "nighttime" that also has a sun (moon) and many lights in the sky (stars). The dialogue doesn't do it any more justice. It went for a more dark and edgy tone to it and while normally there isn't anything wrong with that as long as it is done well, and I feel like it wasn't always done well in this game. It kind of made some interactions seem almost like a parody and it really takes you out of the immersion of the world and story.

Okay so you go off and collect the medallions in different temples. After collecting five of them you suddenly learn about this plot twist where the Zoras were using special milk to turn everyone in Apello into Zoras. It's never explained why they wanted to do this, but to be fair this plot twist was hinted at in the background throughout the game so I do give the creator credit for that. However, after learning this piece of information you are allowed to continue only to be suddenly captured. Your fairy helps in this and then mocks you later on as you are in a cell waiting to be executed. You don't get a chance to escape, you just get executed in the next scene and the game gives you the bad ending. The good ending is basically leaving Apello entirely, and a message telling you that sometimes it's better to just flee from crazy places. This just comes out of nowhere and anything related to the Master of Time and the endless day are just thrown out the window. What was the point of it all? You are just left completely unsatisfied. All I wanted to do was learn more about the Master of Time and how it all connected with the events of the game. If I did collect all the medallions and break the curse of the endless day, would I have had a final encounter with the monsters that come out at night in order to finally and fully free the people of Apello?

Not happy with that personally.

On the other hand, the dungeon design, music, and overworld were all on point. Dungeons were fairly creative with interesting puzzles. I do wish that some of them were themed a little bit better. For example, we had two dungeons that were called Fire Temple and Water Temple, but that's literally the same name as dungeons in Ocarina of Time. There were also some bits that were largely unpolished, but they were mostly nitpicky things and nothing too overly serious like softlocks and the like. The overworld was also designed well with different parts of it connecting via shortcuts if you had the right items, which is always a nice touch.

Way Too Long, Didn't Read (click to show/hide)

Despite having interesting dungeons, great music, and a decent overworld, Master of Time did not reach its full potential imo as it is greatly held back with a promising story that ends up crashing, burning, and going nowhere.

[zanzindorf]

I just finished Vikings of Midgard, an OHRRPGCE game that's been in development since ~2007. The creator recently posted the full version, and it's fantastic!

The OHRRPGCE is a RPG making engine with a healthy community of developers. In the past, Vikings of Midgard has been packaged with the engine as an example of what you can accomplish with it. Even before it was fully released, Vikings is probably one of my favorite games of all time

It's free, and can be found here: https://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewgame.php?t=38&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
Soundtrack streamed here: https://soundcloud.com/eponym_ent/sets/vikings-of-midgard

It's very much a traditional RPG, similar to the SNES Final Fantasy games. It's got a lot of HP Lovecraft and Norse mythology in it, which is neat.

[Nessy]

With the release of Spelunky 2 came a spark in me to return to the original Spelunky 1 after about a year and a half to finally attempt to get my first win in it... and I totally did! Not only that but I also managed to reach the City of Gold, although I ran out of bombs and so I couldn't do anything worthwhile once I was inside This prevented me from reaching a certain item inside that would have allowed me to reach another bonus area. That'll probably be my next objective. Overall I'm finding the game much, much more enjoyable now that I'm able to reach the later levels a lot more frequently now. I mean, there was a time when just reaching the third area was a miracle. Now it's fairly common.

[Minim]

Great job! I remember playing the original Spelunky on Xbox 360 and have never been able to beat the game (I got up to about the fourth area a few times but never went beyond that). The pitch black stages are always tough if you get one. It's also making me wonder, will the new game be easier than the other one? I hope the new game is a bit "fairer" at least.

[Nessy]

I really dislike those pitch black stages especially in the later levels (minus the third world which I don't think has that level feeling). The most annoying part has to be when you get one of those levels while already holding something in your hands like a weapon, mostly because you have to "juggle" that item with the torch. Hopefully the sequel completely removed them, and also from the little bit that I've seen from the new game I think it's meant to be even tougher than the first one I think one of the reasons might be the fact that it has more levels to go through than the first one, which I'm honestly okay with it.

[namida]

The new game is much harder than the first one. It still has dark levels, though they seem to be much, much rarer.

I really dislike those pitch black stages especially in the later levels (minus the third world which I don't think has that level feeling).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The 1st, 2nd and 4th worlds can have dark levels. Exceptions are that 1-1, 4-4 and The Worm can never be dark. The 3rd and 5th never have dark levels. You also won't get more than one dark level per world, and will not get one if you complete the previous level in under 20 seconds (or might have been 30 - not completely sure).

[Nessy]

Thanks @namida for that info

An update on my return to Spelunky HD (click to show/hide)

I have managed to reach Hell a total of two times now (one time during regular play and the other time during a Daily Challenge) but being too unfamiliar with the hazards has left me unable to get pass the first level in that world so far

[grams88]

That Spelunky game seems very popular, hoping you are enjoying that one Nessy.

I'm playing the (Ticket to ride) board game, it's a good little board game where you have to connect routes up to complete your destination tickets. One other game that is quite good is Carcassonne another board game where you get points for creating cities and other things.

These are games you can get on steam for a good price.

[Minim]

I'm playing the (Ticket to ride) board game, it's a good little board game where you have to connect routes up to complete your destination tickets. One other game that is quite good is Carcassonne another board game where you get points for creating cities and other things.

Out of sheer coincidence, Ticket to Ride is what I'm having as one of my Christmas presents! This game is new to me so I'll let you know how I get on.

[grams88]

Coincidence, Cool

I think you will really enjoy that one, it's certainly a fun game. I think it came out around 2004 so maybe still a new board game to the world so to say.

I like board games, you will have fun with this one. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with the (Ticket to ride)
Thanks for letting us know Minim.

[607]

That Spelunky game seems very popular, hoping you are enjoying that one Nessy.

I'm playing the (Ticket to ride) board game, it's a good little board game where you have to connect routes up to complete your destination tickets. One other game that is quite good is Carcassonne another board game where you get points for creating cities and other things.

These are games you can get on steam for a good price.

Ticket to Ride is great!
We have the Märklin edition, featuring Germany. What I love about that version is that every single card has a different locomotive/carriage on it, instead of one per colour.

I have been playing Super Mario Bros. 35 since it came out on October 1st. It is free on Switch, if you have Switch Online, and puts you against 34 other players in a last man standing type of game. You play through levels from the original Super Mario Bros. (with updated physics, but much closer to the original physics than other recent games such as Super Mario Maker), and if you kill an enemy, someone else gets it on their screen.
I really enjoy the game, but it is rather tiresome to play, because there can be hundreds of enemies flying around, and every single one is represented on screen. Sometimes when I have had a particularly busy game and stop playing I can still see enemies flying around for a few minutes.
It is very fun though! I managed to get 10 consecutive wins within the first month, which was a great accomplishment, and since then I have been trying to get a win without using any mushrooms or fire flowers. Haven't managed to do that yet! The game is really a lot different when you die in a single hit.

[NieSch]

Among Us, Fall Guys and Untitled Goose Game

[The Tomato Watcher]

Hey, NieSch, I just started playing Fall Guys Popular or not, I think it's still super fun! I'm very excited for season 3, and it definitely looks like more of a substantial update than season 2! That Tundra Run level they revealed looks so cool!

[NieSch]

Yeah, season 3 (winter theme) starts today/tomorow.

Edit: It's great fun!

[Minim]

Coincidence, Cool

I think you will really enjoy that one, it's certainly a fun game. I think it came out around 2004 so maybe still a new board game to the world so to say.

I like board games, you will have fun with this one. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with the (Ticket to ride)
Thanks for letting us know Minim.

OK, I just played the Ticket to Ride European Edition board game for the first time yesterday, although we were so overwhelmed by the complexity of the rules that we simplified it for our session.

I built a nice small lead to start the game, until my dad got lucky by claiming two similar routes along his track, along with more importantly, the only one to claim a long route worth about 20 points, so he blew the competition away even before the scores were counted at the end.

Still, we (Playing as a three with my family) had fun with it and we'll certainly consider playing this more often with additional rules once we get used to the game.

[Strato Incendus]

I finally got an old childhood game of mine - Bionicle Heroes - to work again a couple of days ago! That was kind of my main Christmas present, figuratively - I had bought a copy of the game for myself a couple of years ago after having used my brother's version during my childhood. Only to find out then that the game no longer ran under Windows 10. (And this is not the first game for which this happened to me.)

I had to buy an external CD drive for my new laptop anyway, so I gave it a shot. Unsurprisingly, installing the game still didn't work. But I did find the install files online. Of course, that version also included a no-CD crack. But I didn't have to use it; I could insert the CD into the drive as normal and it would play. So it was really only the installing process that caused the problems. (I wasn't quite sure whether it would work, because my CD version is obviously the German one, whereas the online files presumably were from the English version.)

Since I do own a legal copy of the game, I eventually tried the no-CD crack nevertheless. It adds the slight convenience of loading more quickly than having to go via the CD. The game still displays in German.

What a weird new age this is: You buy the official version of an older game, but it almost never works. Usually because the installation process fails at some point. So you still have to go for some online download instead to just be able to use what you've paid for in the first place.

And then, the official version only sits on your shelf, in case somebody tracks your online activity somehow and were to accuse you of piracy. Then you could hold up your official copy of the game if the police show up at your door and say "Here, I paid for it, I'm allowed to make copies for private use."

I think anyone who has tried to make Lemmings 3D work off of the official CD can relate to this problem. And guess what, now we have an online version of that game available as well.

[Nessy]

I finally got and started playing Spelunky 2... like a lot... a lot. It definitely is way harder than the first game, but fortunately I managed to score my first main game win a couple of days ago The next thing I want to aim for is the second ending win which I feel like I can realistically do. However, the third ending looks like it might be way too brutal for me personally I'm curious if anyone else on here has managed to complete that final world and get the third ending?

But in other news I'm more than ready to get back into Lemmings. Not playing levels... but actually making something new after doing some overdue updates on my previous works

[ericderkovits]

Right now have been playing the Age of Empires games(I recently got them online. Got the Definitive versions). I remember playing these when they first came out. So I really like these games.
Also The Definitive versions are much better as gameplay, sound,, graphics, and other features are much improved over the older originals.

Age of Empires 2 is probably the best of these. Also on the 26th of this month an expansion pack with 2 new civilizations is coming out. I plan on getting this too.

[kaywhyn]

Finally took a break from Lemmings this past week and played AoE: Definitive Edition. I had bought the collection on Steam months ago, but I had never gotten around to playing it until now. This was a game that I grew up with, and I absolutely loved it, even if I ended up just typing in cheat codes to win However, I since gotten over using cheat codes for these games a long time ago, and so I play the campaigns and single player legit, even though I suck at these RTS games.

I'm just slowly rolling along the campaigns on the hardest difficulty. I'm currently on the first one in the original AoE, after the Egyptian tutorial one. I have already completed the campaigns before on this difficulty, after much struggling. If anything, perhaps the standard difficulty is more suited for me.

I absolutely love the improved graphics in the DE version. However, the UI is extremely small, even at 150% zoom. The fix is to simply lower the game's display resolution, but I rather keep it at my laptop's default. Then again, I think the last time I played the game was years ago on a laptop with around a 1270 x 1038 resolution, so things were much bigger. Here, my default resolution is 1920 x 1200, so everything is quite small here.

The crazy thing is that I have played nothing but Lemmings daily for the last 10 months. I can understand if people get sick of the game after a month or so, but to go 10 months straight of Lemmings... Needless to say, Lemmings has consumed 10+ months of my daily life, 6 of which was spent on United alone. 

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, as awesome as all the custom content for Lemmings and its many different clones are (NeoLemmix, Lix, SuperLemmini etc.), and as much effort as the developers of those engines put into those games year after year:

Now I've re-discovered another childhood passion of mine, which also has a vary active fandom, much more active than I thought... and the efforts they go to in order to develop custom games for their beloved franchise, well, that's on a whole other level than Lemmings. Programming a 2-dimensional, deliberately reduced game in terms of graphics (8-pixel-characters etc.) such as NeoLemmix must already be hard enough; but these guys make straight-up 3D roleplaying games.

Im talking about the Lego Bionicle fandom! For all the feeble efforts Lego themselves have made to release video games for one of their most successful custom franchises - an excessively-shortened first game to go along with the first movie, and then the fairly repetitive and easy-to-beat "Bionicle Heroes" - the fans are now doing way more than making up for that:

There are currently 3 (!) different custom fan games for Bionicle being worked on (at least that I am aware of - there may be more?). All of which are centered around the main storyline of the first six group of Toa (later renamed to "Toa Mata"). All of these are complete 3D roleplaying games:



1) "Legend of Mata Nui": This is a fan rebuilt of the first official video game Lego ever wanted to release for Bionicle (in collaboration with Saffire, which went bankrupt over the late cancellation). The fans got their hands on an alpha built, then made a beta version, now there is a comparatively stable rebuilt version.
Gameplay here is very much reminiscent of the Legend of Zelda games: Characters have voiced but speak in some pseudo-language, so you have to go by the subtitles; there is a grappling hook ; the bosses have their names presented on screen at the beginning of combat and typically expose a vulnerable spot over and over again over the course of the boss fight, so that's the thing where you have to keep hitting them; there's no leveling-up of characters, but you can fulfil quests to extend your health- and mask-power bar (kind of like collecting heart containers in Zelda). And there's a temple for every element (which is part of the lore, of course), so this is similar to the "shrines" in e.g. The Legend of Zelda - "Twilight Princess".

Then there are two entirely fan-made games, built from scratch; and where "Legend of Mata Nui" is still somewhat level-based (albeit with freedom of movement between the various regions of a given level), both of these custom ones are open-world games.

2) "Quest for Mata Nui": Not to be confused with the one mentioned above. This one is still in development, and is going to be a Starcraft 2 mod. Graphics-wise, this one looks to be the best by far. They have a YouTube channel where they keep posting development updates, from game music to demonstrations of particular abilities and enemies to straight-up short gameplay excerpts.

3) "Masks of Power": This one is also still being worked on, but there is already an available download of the most-up-to-date version. I've just tried it for the first time tonight, and so far it's already much more stable than the fan rebuilt of "Legend of Mata Nui"! It's easy to save, there is no lagging, I couldn't see any graphical glitches, combat works, there are dialogues, even small quests to be fulfilled already... I definitely expected this one to be in a much earlier stage still. The graphics are also largely accurate to the source material - it's just that the landscape is currently a lot "emptier" than in what I got to see from "Quest for Mata Nui". All the important stuff is still here; there are simply fewer details and decorations thus far.

And the best of all: Lego has not shut down any of this - as they could have done for copyright reasons, obviously! "Legend of Mata Nui" has been available for a while now, apparently; the developers of "Quest for Mata Nui" even met up with some Lego folks, so they kind of even got official permission to keep working on this (instead of just a passive "non-interference" by the company). If I remember correctly, they said Lego did give them some "guidelines" on what they should do so that they can retain Lego's "support" - obviously, it would be unwise on Lego's part to just give the developers a blank cheque and let them do whatever they want with their franchise.



The last time I was this impressed by a fan game was when I discovered the fan community of the Dungeons-&-Dragons video game "Temple of Elemental Evil" had not only fixed a bunch of the bugs of the original game (especially when you tried to run it on Windows 10), no, they also went ahead and added a bunch of custom content to it, most of it after the ending of the official part of the game, but also some in between - and they increased the cap for leveling up from 10 to 20, so that there could still be progress during these new later parts of the game. Meaning, they had to program in all the spells, abilities etc. that D&D requires for characters between level 11 and 20 (in rules version 3.5). That thing is called The "Circle of Eight Modpack".

Definitely a great effort as well... but Temple of Elemental Evil is still a turn-based game with small characters you view from above. The people behind the Modpack also didn't create any new graphics, they just adapted and re-used the ones already present in the original game. For example, with a slight change of the lighting, the same building that makes up the upper floor of the Temple of Elemental Evil in the main game can also serve as a church of the (good) Sun God Pelor in the expansion part of the game.

But those Bionicle fan games, especially the two that were built entirely from scratch, without relying on previous "official" work, they had no such help. They had to make everything by themselves, I assume.

PS: Bridging the divide between Bionicle and other, more standard fantasy roleplaying games: There also seem to be Bionicle mods for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. While they look great for the characters themselves, as well, as does the landscape (since it's what we were all used to from Skyrim), there is of course the inconsistency of the robot-like Bionicle characters fighting Skyrim's standard fantasy foes, i.e. organic beings, such as wolves and bandits.

[Proxima]

I finished Tametsi, one of the games mentioned in my last post, in the unlikely event anyone was curious

I've just finished The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang, a weird and silly action-RPG in which you play as a vampire fighting off cloves of garlic. I had never heard of the game until my girlfriend suggested it as something that would be fun to play together, and it certainly was that, although it only took us about six hours to get through the whole game.

I'm also playing Myst, a classic game that many of you will have heard of (I already know that some of the discord crowd have!). I played the original version on the Mac soon after it came out, and although I loved it, I was never able to get anywhere with it, not even off the starting island (Of course, in the intervening 27 years, I picked up through hearing the game talked about that there would be other worlds, so I didn't get to experience that as a surprise ) It has felt absolutely wonderful to come back to it and explore further, especially as I'm playing a remake with really gorgeous graphics.

It's a game that absolutely demands pencil-and-paper note-taking, which is something I have always loved; I still have my original notebook with the Lemmings access codes from all those years ago It helps me to feel much more directly involved with exploring and piecing together the world, and of course it leaves a lasting trace that will be really satisfying to have and look back over when it's complete.

[ericderkovits]

just purchased the Lords of the West expansion pack for Age of Empires 2 (includes 2 new civs-Burgundians and Sicilians). also installed the new patch 44725. Also will start doing the daily tasks to get the new New Years Celebration goodies.

[Strato Incendus]

Has anyone of you here played Nier: Automata? (Yoko Taro / Square Enix / Platinum Games)
It's been in the headlines again recently because of frustrated players review-bombing the Steam version, which hasn't been fixed since its initial release in 2017.

It's not the type of game I would usually play. I'm neither into post-apocalyptic stuff (except for maybe "The 100", haven't seen the final season yet, though), nor into Anime.

But considering that e.g. Arty is currently still let's-playing another mature-rated Anime game (The Fruit of Grisaia), I thought there might be some overlap here.

On my ambiguous relationship with Anime (click to show/hide)

I only kind-of "hate-watched" Yu-Gi-Oh! as a kid occasionally, without actually playing the TCG myself. That may have biased my attitude to anything Anime negatively, because not only is the worldbuilding of Yu-Gi-Oh! so laughably unrealistic and inconsistent, but I also didn't like what the TCG was doing to my fellow students in primary school on a mental level . That one Anime series I had any contact with was always some sort of "competitor" for me - first in primary school as I was into Bionicle while everyone else was playing the game of the violet-black-blonde-haired cactus head, and then later in secondary school as I discovered Magic: The Gathering (which, being the first TCG ever, basically has a natural competition with Yu-Gi-Oh! built into the community by default).

Now in my mid-twenties, of course I have developed a calmer attitude towards such "fandom quarrels" in the meantime. I've realised that a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! players make fun of the Anime show themselves (like through the very successful "abridged series" parody on YouTube), and that the games and franchises can also co-exist in harmony. Thanks to Netflix, I'm now actually able to re-watch the Anime in chronological order, rather than just casually zapping into it when it was running on one of our trash channels on television back in the early 2000s. Konami even earned its first revenue from me recently, when I found out about the game "Legacy of the Duelist" that actually allows you to play through the "story" of the TV show, but with "correct" Yu-Gi-Oh! rules.

I would still never drop any money on actual cards - I'm spending enough on Magic: The Gathering already, and I still consider that a superior game to Yu-Gi-Oh! - but it's still fun to get to do some of the stuff yourself that you saw as a kid. Kind of like Lemmings: Building custom levels was also something we could only dream of as children, now with NeoLemmix, it's not just possible, but with the additional skills and tilesets, we can do so much more than what we were hoping for back then!

I guess the main thing that always threw me off about the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game was the random combination of monsters from all kinds of different contexts: Fantasy, SciFi, Horror, Egypt, Superheroes, all the way up to playing with monsters that symbolised food, of all things... It seemed like the Warhammer 40k of card games.

And from Yu-Gi-Oh! to The Legend of Zelda to Nier: Automata: This seemingly arbitrary combination of a lot of "random stuff" into one setting is one common theme I see with a lot of Japanese fiction.

With Western Fantasy or SciFi, it's usually "here are a couple of species and locations, now let's have their interests clash and combine these elements of the story in all kinds of different ways". Of course, that's what I grew up with, but just considering the number of things you need to memorise to understand a setting, I find it much easier to keep the overview in such a Fantasy or SciFi setting. With the Japanese stuff, I often can't even tell whether it's supposed to be Fantasy or SciFi in the first place.

I only found out about the game by accident, while researching "nihilism in the media" on YouTube. Mainly because I was looking for an answer for why a lot of modern movies and TV shows seem to have become so bleak and misanthropic, with characters constantly yelling at each other and humanity generally being depicted as awful. Now I know I probably should have looked for the term "Grimdark" instead. Either way, these types of stories have become infamous in recent years (especially after Star Wars: The Last Jedi) for failing to inspire people.

Nier: Automata, in contrast, was then mentioned as a "good" example of playing with these ideas. And well... by the looks of it, it clearly did inspire a lot of people in one way or another, considering how many people seem to be waxing poetic about it.

I for one am always immediately suspicious when I discover something has so much unanimous hype behind it. And the fact that I only found out about this game because I was looking for content about a theme it happens to relate to, rather than about the game itself, means that I basically had the conclusion spoiled in the first 1 or 2 videos I watched. Given that it's also not in a genre I normally like, what mainly kept me looking for further information about the game were indeed analyses of its philosophy. Which inevitably led to me finding out about all its central plot twists.

Given that, I took a long time making up my mind whether I would drop 40 euros on this game (and have it take up 40-50 GB of my hard-drive space) to try it out for myself. Considering the dissatisfaction a lot of people were reporting about the Steam version (most players so far seem to have played the game for XBox or PS4), I'm definitely glad I didn't buy it earlier. The version I have now is the "Become as Gods" edition from the Microsoft Store, and I can't complain about any technical issues so far. In fact, it was the release of this improved PC version that led to the players review-bombing the Steam version, to make the developers aware of their unfinished business again, and it seems like now this has finally worked (they just announced on 13th April or so that they're going to fix the Steam version).

So at first, I thought I should wait until the Steam version was patched. But given that I hadn't heard any complaints about the Microsoft Store version, I thought I might just as well go with that one, and so far I don't regret that decision.



Considering this game relies on multiple playthroughs, and seems to care primarily about its story and philosophy, I expected gameplay to be much worse, namely more repetitive. So far, I'm positively surprised in that regard. Maybe things will start feeling more repetitive as I enter the second playthrough (since the game relies on multiple runs to unlock everything), which seems to have very much overlap with the first one, and it is only starting with the first playthrough that new things are added to the mix, which then eventually lead you on to the conclusion.

As I said, I'm not a particular fan of Anime, so I don't feel such a close connection to the characters either. Nor do I particularly care about gimmicks such as the first main character having a self-destruct function that removes her skirt.

The main things that drew me in were the atmosphere of the setting (kind of eerie with all this bright light) and the music, of course.
Though I do find some of the tracks in what I believe is that forgotten Peruvian Chamicuro language a little annoying.

So far, it's a game I'm enjoying despite its flaws - which I mainly see with the game's philosophy. As a psychologist, I think the premises of the core philosophy of the game - Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism - can easily be debunked by modern science. But I'm giving it a fair shot by playing it for myself, and also accepting every little side quest I can find. Maybe some of the things it's trying to say make more sense if you get the entire context.

But don't be fooled, I know where the journey is going, and that the game's main intention is to depress the player and throw them into an existential crisis.
So I'm also kind of playing it as a challenge whether the game can break my spirit too. Apparently there are a bunch of people who cry like little babies when they reach the final credits.

Well, bring it on, game - you're gonna have to go to much darker places than where I've already been to get me to that point.
After all, for all the many real-world philosophers that are represented as characters in this game, I've noticed there doesn't seem to be anybody named Schopenhauer...
And even if there were a robot named "Arthur", I'd probably already be able to predict what he would be saying...

[Nessy]

I have heard of Nier: Automata but I had no idea what it was or what it was about. Good to know now! I must admit that the whole "nihilism in the media" thing is something I really didn't notice but it could be because I don't really actively watch a lot of things now-a-days and only play a few selected modern day games so maybe that's why. As someone who considers themselves the complete opposite of that philosophy, I actually don't mind it as long as it's used in a way that is in service to the narrative the person wants to tell or show instead of it being slapped on because that's what all the cool kids are doing with no real reason or direction (and to be fair that goes with everything else as well).

Also I've noticed that your relationship to anime is actually quite common among a lot of people I know... it's definitely not for everyone. I'm personally starting to get into it now-a-days because I just like how different and fun it can be such as, for example, the blending of "random stuff" into one setting if done correctly.

[Strato Incendus]

As someone who considers themselves the complete opposite of that philosophy, I actually don't mind it as long as it's used in a way that is in service to the narrative the person wants to tell or show

I think the game's main philosophy is not nihilism, but existentialism. Yet, there is also another term called "existential nihilism". Without knowing much about the details of existentialism, there are at least two core premises of it that I think modern science can easily debunk:

1) The claim that "existence precedes essence". (We exist first, and then have to find a purpose for it.)
2) The claim that "human beings are condemned to be free".

Basically, existentialism asserts there is no pre-defined meaning to life, but human beings have the possibility and responsibility to find and define a meaning for their own life.

The problems with those two claims are:

1) Human beings come with at least one pre-defined purpose: Procreation of our genes. And we come with instincts that serve that purpose. If people reject that built-in purpose, then yes, they have to find a different purpose for themselves to give their lives meaning. But it's not like there were no pre-defined purpose at all.

2) Take together all kinds of evidence from psychology, physics, neurochemistry etc. and the idea that human beings had free will, least of all were "condemned to be free", becomes pretty absurd. Especially with the built-in purpose of procreation our genes always drive us to, that actually makes it harder to make decisions entirely for ourselves than if we had no built-in purpose, and thus also no built-in behavioural tendencies, in other words: free will.

So you see how the two premises connect with and rely on each other: No predefined purpose seems more compatible with the idea of free will, but if you accept that we have a pre-defined purpose that is built into our biology, then whatever automatisms (pun intended) serve that purpose also simultaneously limit our freedom to act on our own volition.



As for the question whether the game implements the existentialist ideas in a subtle or narrative-serving way, well... it depends.

If the "narrative" in an ideological sense is to convince the player of existentialism, then yes, most things in that game serve that narrative. If however by "narrative" you mean "do these elements serve the story?", I'd have to say no. Rather, the story is in service of the existentialist narrative.

As mentioned in my previous post, the game features several characters that are straight-up named after real-life philosophers. Among others, there is a robot named Jean-Paul (like Sartre) that just gives you existentialist talking points whenever you speak to him. It's not even subtle.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are also two machine enemies who call themselves Adam and Eve (yet Eve is also male). At the end of the first playthrough, Eve tells the two main characters that he is sure they feel the same as him: "That this world is utterly meaningless."

I mean, I already knew where this game was going with its narrative, and even for me, that came completely out of nowhere at that point. It hadn't been sufficiently set up yet at all. The only thing that came before was Eve losing his brother Adam, who captured one of the two main characters and then challenged the other character - the one you are playing at that point - to a fight so that he, Adam, a robot, could experience the danger of death, in an attempt to better understand humanity. So now Eve is ticked off that you killed his brother (it's not like the game left you any choice in that regard, there are countless cutscenes that railroad you into certain outcomes to allow the story to continue, especially at the end of such boss fights).

In other words, whenever the game hits you over the head with existentialism, sometimes just by a character shouting in your face that any given thing were "meaningless" (it's even in the English version of the title song "Weight of the World"), this is often just asserted. In author speak, it's more "tell" than "show" so far.

I'm currently at the start of the second playthrough, route B. The first time you play the girl on the cover of the game, 2B, the second time you replay the same events, but from the perspective of her sidekick character 9S. And yes, he does feel like a sidekick, often just fulfilling the supporting role, as the game occupies you with "meaningless" busiwork in the background while 2B, the character you played on the first playthrough before, does all the stuff you did last time.

I know the central plot twist the game is headed for, so I am aware that the assumption of "no predefined meaning" is indeed "shown" through the story at a later point, too. But so far, up to the start of route B, it only ever really gets told, not shown.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I've finished NieR: Automata (i.e. all the way up to Ending E) a couple of days ago. Took me something between 40 and 50 hours total across 1.5 weeks. I think that's evidence of how positively addictive the game is to play, and that's even though I'm very aware of the many flaws this game has.

Pros:
+ atmospheric visuals
+ mood-fitting and well-made soundtrack
+ fluid combat system
+ frequent changes in gameplay style (3D third-person, 2D platforming, view from above, bullet hell minigames etc.)
+ despite the game's overall bleak atmosphere, there is room for occasional, somewhat funny banter between the main characters and a couple select NPCs. This seems noteworthy as a lot of other post-apocalyptic franchises like to go full Grimdark and have the main cast yell at each other and treat each other like cr*p. That is fortunately not the case here. At least the early parts of the game (Route A and B) are what I would call "Nobledark", i.e. a dark setting, but you can at least empathise with the characters to some extent. (Sadly, Route C then trashes a lot of that later on.)

Cons:
- excessive railroading in service of the story and narrative (depending on whether you like them or not)
- using the dodge function in combat most effectively will lead to a lot of spamming of the attack and evade keys that can make combat rather hectical at times
- no possibility to save throughout the intro (if you die during the first 30-45 minutes, which is likely since you're not familiar with all the controls yet, you have to start all over again - lowering the difficulty to "easy" just for the starting section is something I would advise the first time you play, however that will make the intro comparatively trivial)
- Route B (second playthrough) is largely a repetition of Route A even though you're playing as a different character
- Route C amps up the tragedy for the sake of it (without the player having a lot of control over it, see the above point about railroading), not necessarily in plot-consistent ways. Many seem to consider this the best section of the game, but the gameplay part devolves into a lot of dragging fetch quests, and the enforced tragic outcomes seem too contrived and arbitrary to me to really hit home.

[WillLem]

Here's what I've been busy with over the Summer, video game wise:

Pokémon Go, which I've become basically obsessed with since my GF introduced it to me

We've also been playing our way through the first 3 Sonic games

Also discovered a game called From Dust which is remarkably similar to Lemmings in that the idea is to save a tribe of people from danger and guide them towards an exit by remodelling the landscape in various interesting ways - definitely one to check out if you haven't heard of it already.

Looking forward to the upcoming Jackbox sessions, and I'm also up for some Gartic if I catch the Discord notifications in time!

[kaimitai]

I can recommend Quake on Steam which received a major update recently. If you already own it, you get the update for free as well. Been enjoying playing online coop/deathmatches with friends, and the new episode is amazing.

[grams88]

Lemmings Revolution, only five levels left except I accidentally deleted my saves ooppps. Hope there is a way to get it back. By the way, those five levels that are left to complete are going to be tough.

[607]

I've recently been 'working on' Castelian on Game Boy (the game called Nebulus on Amiga and ST), Super Mario Bros. 2 on the Game & Watch (emulating a Famicom), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch, Gradius on the NES (on Switch), The Legend of Zelda on the NES (on Switch), Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania on the Switch, Dewy's Adventure on Wii, Yoshi's Woolly World on Wii U and Re-Volt on N64.
That's a lot of Switch! It's been like that ever since I bought it. I'm not playing anything on GBA at the moment, which was my favourite console/handheld before getting the Switch!

[Strato Incendus]

Given that Lemmings was originally marketed as an "action puzzle", I wonder if anyone here has ever come into contact with the Mirror's Edge games?
I discovered them one year ago, and are currently replaying them again - because replay value is certainly something they have going for them!

They're definitely more on the "action" than the "puzzle" side, but I'd kind of say they combine the best of both worlds:
During the initial playthrough, when you still need to figure out the path through a level, you will be busier with the "puzzle" side;
then, you're organically incentivised to do a re-run (not in a ham-fisted Yoko Taro-like way ), because you'll naturally want to improve your performance in getting through the level.
So the second time, when you know the level better, you can focus more on the "action" side. It's one of the few games literally made for speedrunners.

Basically, imagine you had a Lemmings level and its rerun, both being an X-of-everything level; but the first time, you mess around trying out whatever you want; the second time, you put a self-imposed time limit on the whole thing, trying to get through it as fast and efficiently as possible.


I assume Mirror's Edge won't appeal to the puzzle purists, because execution difficulty is definitely a major component.
However, where in Lemmings, execution difficulty is accidental and mostly unwanted, in Mirror's Edge, it's an intended part of the challenge - just like if you were doing Parkour for real.

The "accidental" and usually "unwanted" part of Mirror's Edge is the gun combat, which slows you down and eliminates most of your movement options, i.e. does the exact opposite of what the game otherwise wants you to do (just like execution difficulty in the original Lemmings games hindered the puzzle aspect). That's why they removed gun combat from the sequel, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, which only has martial-arts combat. However, even that often still ends up being clunky.

While many trash the story of both the original 2008 game and Catalyst, and it's certainly nothing to write home about, I actually found myself more invested in at least some of the events (especially in Catalyst) than in other games that attempt to go for a more complex and elaborate story, but fail at establishing a connection with the characters.



I'd sum up the basic idea as a combination of Tomb Raider, Spider-Man, and Temple Run :
You're doing fast parkour puzzles in a metropolis while being chased by cops and private security.

I have only found a few other games that attempt anything similar, but none of them quite come close:
- The Dying Light games and Cyberpunk 2077 (though I prefer the aesthetic of Mirror's Edge over both, since "dark and gritty" has been done to death at this point, and some even refer to Mirror's Edge as cyberpunk, too; I've discovered it by, and hence have always been referring to it, as "Grimbright").

- And then, I recently saw somebody randomly flash in gameplay of Neon White, which looks to me as if somebody had taken the abstract level shapes from the Mirror's Edge DLC time trials (where you're jumping around somewhere in the clouds) and mashed it together with The Legend of Zelda.

[namida]

I've recently been playing two games that both might be of interest to people here. The first is Understand, a puzzle game heavily inspired by Zendo. The second is PsiloSybil, a retro-style 3D platformer with a very similar feel to Crash 1 (but harder); it's early access but the only bug I've run into is slight frame rate drops from time to time, which may be down to my hardware (and in particular that I'm running it at low power to extend battery life).