The Whatever The Heck You're Playing At The Moment Thread

[dmauro]

Played a bit of Borderlands. Unfortunately I also realized that it's not just UT3 that is giving me problems saving, and when I moved my stuff around and changed permissions and ownership and stuff I messed something up and games and apps are having a hard time saving file preferences and such, so I played Borderlands for an hour or more, it doesn't have a save system, only autosave, so of course I didn't get any error that it couldn't save, and now it doesn't remember a damn thing.

Anyways, it's pretty cool, but it already feels very grindy and a little too much like a lonely MMO. Very charming intro with fitting music. The graphical options are all great (occlusion shadows), but lack of V-Sync is sort of driving me crazy. I picked the girl and have been tearing it up with a nice scoped pistol, but apparently I'm too good because she says way too often "Damn, I'm good at this" or something to that effect. The sort of soundbite that should be played much less or at least should have alternates. So yeah, good graphics, nice fps meets RPG, but I'm not really deep enough to say if it makes a good singleplayer game or if it's only worthwhile with other people. And even then, the combat isn't sooo exciting, the vehicles will have to be a lot of fun.

[isfet]

i'll try to see if i can rent it at some point and give it a spin.  i have some suspicions about the game that are holding me back from purchasing it.  well, that and being broke.

[dmauro]

When starting a new character you can't skip ANYTHING. I'm going to take that to mean that they don't think their game is good enough that you'd want to play through again or start a second character.

[isfet]

i'm not sure i follow.  what do you mean "skip ANYTHING?"  character-creation wise or are we talking about cutscenes here?

[dmauro]

All the cutscenes in the beginning and all the tutorial-ish stuff in the beginning with the robot like getting your HUD set up. There is no character creation, that's all done by picking one of four characters and then using skill points in one of three different threes (each branch has maybe 4 or 5 levels with two skills per level that take about 3 to 5 points to go full). The beginning movie is really nice and all, but I don't need to see it again. You also have to delete all the intro videos (like NVidia and such) somehow because you can't skip them. Why do developers do this?!

I broke down and pre-ordered L4D2 for $45 bucks. The demo will be available to early adopters in an hour and I'd like to play with some people. At least with a game at $45 (no tax) I can feel good about having saved about 30% of the $65 I would have spent on a console game.

EDIT: In Borderland's defense, you can alt tab out of most of the intro stuff without a problem and let it run in the background.

[FortNinety]

Just tried playing the Wii JU-ON game. Might possibly be the worst Wii game ever created. Was gonna beat the game as soon as possible and then hope to trade it into Gamestop before they start refusing to accept copies. But now am thinking of holding on to it, for purely historical purposes.

[FortNinety]

Tekken 6 just arrived in the mail! Both versions... so the question is, which one do I crack in first/spend most of my time with? Anyone else around here playing the game or have plans to? And if so, what platform?

[isfet]

i'm going to get Tekken 6 eventually and will probably get it for the PS3.  how soon i do that, kind of depends on the financial stuff in the next week or so.  but yea, i'm definitely looking forward to picking it up.

played Metal Gear Ac!d 2 a bit last night.  it does everything that 1 does, except better and with more style.  someone on sb described it as "Metal Gear Persona" and that's actually a pretty apt description, if you ask me.

[isfet]

so i can't remember; do Dave and Mike enjoy adventure/exploration games like the old Lucasarts style games?

http://machinarium.net/demo/

if so, then you should go play Machinarium!

it's the newest game from Amanita Design, the guy(s) who brought out Samorost some years back.  i actually interviewed this guy back in college, though the electronic transcript of that is long gone (thanks to hotmail).

it plays pretty similarly to his other games, but the puzzles are a bit more logical than in Samorost, which tended to kind of be...point, click and see what happens.

i'll probably download it sometime in the not-too-distant future.

[dmauro]

Seems cool enough, but I don't know that I'd pay $20 for it.

[FortNinety]

i'm going to get Tekken 6 eventually and will probably get it for the PS3.  how soon i do that, kind of depends on the financial stuff in the next week or so.  but yea, i'm definitely looking forward to picking it up.

Curious: why the PS3 version? Since you have a stick already for the 360.

someone on sb described it as "Metal Gear Persona" and that's actually a pretty apt description, if you ask me.

I'm willing to give the game a shot, despite the fact that such a description originates from SB. I'm assuming that they enjoyed P3/P4, though to what degree is perhaps something I'm maybe better off not knowing about.

[isfet]

i mean, it's not like it's a life/dating sim, but it's got a particular....style, that Persona also seems to have, if that makes sense. 

as for Tekken 6 on PS3, well, the reasons why are this:

1) it was developed on PS3
2) i have a stick for the PS3
3) games look better on PS3 on my TV (Bayonetta is the exception here)

[dmauro]

The Left 4 Dead 2 demo is out. Joe, you should get a new PC for this (well for the full release in November anyways). And then you can play Stalker too.

[FortNinety]

After spending some time on the 360 version of Tekken 6, gonna concentrate on the PS3 version. Till I get a stick for the 360, the PS3 pad will do, since I'm used to it for Tekken since part 2 on the PSone. Though the already long load times are pretty much intolerable on Sony's machine.

Also, and this was a problem in Soul Calibur and a number of other recent fighting games: when I hit continue after losing, why can I just get right back in? Instead of having to wait for the stage to reload, and forget about how here it boots you back to the character select screen. The time wasted is seriously agonizing.

[isfet]

Matt:  does PS3 Tekken 6 not install to the HDD?  secondly, with continuing, it might be an option you have to turn on to skip the character select screen.  some games have that feature, anyway.

Dave:  $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$