What are you playing right now?

Post Reply New Topic

The fun one is figuring out where the 8th dungeon is.

When it comes time for that, I strongly suggest just looking it up.

If you've played the original Metroid, you might remember parts of the game where you have to find the ONE breakable block among 10000 others, with no visual cues, in order to proceed, and need to slowly bomb EVERYTHING.

Well, the 8th dungeon is like that, except with the candle. Which of course only works on trees, and there's 10 squillion trees, so... It's the worst example of that sort of thing that I can think of at the moment. There are no real clues as to where it is. Which is oddly bad design for that game, but there ya go.

Dungeons 2, 3, 4, and 6 though are easy finds, you just have to reach the right screen, no special secrets or tricks involved. The doors to get in are obvious once you've reached them. Unless you're on the game's "second quest", where, well... haha, finding dungeon 2 would be a little more difficult indeed.

I'll stop there but can give additional small hints if you want.

I remember that game from so long ago and how myself and my step brother at the time would spend hours upon hours playing it..

Miyamoto revealed in an interview that it was designed to be a social game, so that friends would share clues with each other.

I think this might be from the same interview:

^Going on an adventure like that sounds fun. Unfortunately, Canada is a little big to randomly wander around it without a map.

Sure, but you have to HAVE the clues first.

Considering the only way to find the spot was to methodically and very slowly burn every damn bush (which nobody is going to think to do), there wasnt really much in the way of exploration going on there.

There are other elements in the game that I think kinda pulled off what he wanted, but... that isnt one of them.

I'm busy playing Twilight Princess HD and am stuck on the Snow ruins temple.
I'm just finishing Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (already beat Conquest)
Also playing Pokken and Super Mario Maker.

I am using Miitomo (Nintendo's mobile app) and am looking for friends to add via Twitter @mrsharpmi.

Playing Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, with the new Siege of Dragonspear expansion installed.

Taking a break from The Witcher after finishing the second chapter (of five) because I burnt out already.

Just finished Trails of Cold Steel after a break brought on by my Vita overheating and becoming damaged. Quick tip, don't sleep with your Vita, things are going to get really hot and you'll regret it later luckily it does turn on, several buttons don't work though I was able to at least upload my saves and download them to my newly repaired PS3.

As for the game, it's set in the same world as the two Trails in the Sky games that have been released in English (and are both recommended; play them before this). Cold Steel focuses on a class of students in the Erebonian Empire - the first class to include both social commoners and the upper classes - as they travel to different parts of the country and experience different cultures, get caught up in clashes between the provincial armies and national security forces, and foil the plans of a terrorist group dedicated to the overthrow of the imperialist chancellor and social reformist (plus de-facto dictator) Giliath Osborne. The setting is compelling and obviously parallels real-world issues, rather than following the typical JRPG route of presenting abstract or magical conflicts, and it does so with a sense of nuance despite the heavy presence of anime cliches. As is typical for the series, this first game in an arc pushes the story forward at a slow pace until the finale and ends on a cliffhanger, albeit one which feels well earnt, similar to Trails in the Sky FC.

Unfortunately, the arc between Trails in the Sky and Cold Steel, consisting of Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki, was skipped over by XCEED in localising a more recent series. Those games, set in Crossbell state, run concurrently with the events of this one and there are lots of references to events from that arc. A fan project to translate the games is underway and I doubt XCEED will bring it over themselves as they're currently working on the sequel to this game and Trails in the Sky The 3rd.

The combat system is a turn-based system with a focus on positioning and timing, perhaps think of it as a better version of the Grandia battle system. Customisation is done by a system that is very similar to materia from FF7, but with more than just spells to equip -- you get stat modifiers, various passive buffs, status and stat debuffs tied to your attacks, and so on. It's good but I miss the Trails in the Sky system in which spells were granted by stacking certain amounts and combinations of the seven elements, it was great for specialisation and seeing how much you could get out of what you had at whatever point in the game.

This is getting long so bottom line, if you like JRPGs you need to play these games.

Just began Yakuza 4. Not much to say yet but the cutscenes are well-directed and the game has a typically dark Japanese sense of humour.

Been replaying some of the Castlevania games SotN and on. Thus far I've gotten through that Symphony, Aria of Sorrow and I'm halfway through Dawn of Sorrow. After burning out on The Witcher I figured I needed a game which was more immediately gratifying, and there's not much better for that than these games. Symphony has one of the best soundtracks ever, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv5MAdxxX_8

i usually return to flight simulator because it is the most enthralling for me.

i like seeing the reality of what i could only otherwise imagine.

here is a recent clip of me flying an early 1950's caravelle jetliner (one of the first jetliners) from wollongong (120km south of sydney) to canberra.
it is all presented as a wing view that is what a passenger would see.
the first part is the climb out from wollongong and the second part is the long decent into canberra.
i know no one is interested in this type of stuff much but i find it relaxing and engaging as well.
(i no longer embed videos here because they always turn out jerky).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ7KHuK_a1Y

That's what we did. We had a lot more time on our hands back in 1990, and a lot less games to play

The only level we couldn't find was one of the later ones in B quest (level 8 maybe?). Our dad finally gave up and ordered a strategy guide.

Also, if you were really stumped, Nintendo had a hotline you could call.

But usually, if we were stuck on a game, we'd just ask other kids at school.

Ah, you musta had a school full of kids that DID stuff.

Mine was full of kids that... didnt. Watch TV or crash into each other in some sport, that was all any of them did. As if I didnt have enough reason to hate that place.

Thusly for some of those games I tended to just get the guides right away since those answers werent coming from anywhere else. Wish I still had the damn things but all of my older magazines were lost in a flood many years back. Which just made me hate this damn area more.

Had so many, too... I remember Nintendo Power used to just randomly put out answers to stuff.

^I wish Nintendo Power would come back. Now I have often no idea what's going on the gaming world. I miss their sense of humor.

Find a good RSS newfeeder and add gaming sites such as Nintendolife, USGamer.net, and others.
Everytime you open the RSS Newfeeder it will show the new articles that are posted in bold and the old articles in faded.

Though to be fair Nintendo Power became a very expensive publication and forums to run. In 2003 they started losing money operating Nintendo Power, by 2007 they were bleeding tons of money on it when Nintendo looked for a partner to buy it. In 2009 Future acquired it fully and ran it for a few years before they shut it down due to them losing money on it.

There is no market for most gaming mags in this day of the internet, sales have dropped of like a brick thanks to online sites and forums.
I mean you can buy Retro gaming mag, but even then it's expensive.

None of them are similar to what NP used to be though. Never the same, as with so many things from back then... feh.

I dont even go to gaming sites anymore. All they ever want to do is shove Call of Cutscenes (which I suppose could refer to lots of things really) or CS:Dull in my face, or whatever damn stupid FPS it is this week. Or some jRPG, I'm not sure which is worse. Far as I'm concerned, there's nowhere to go for gaming news anymore if you're NOT specifically interested in AAA games.

Well, no, that's not ENTIRELY true; I know where to go to find out about mobile games that dont just copy Angry Birds or whatever. But that's the exception to the rule now. The only exception.

As it is the only console I even use now is the Wii U, but even for that, releases I care about are very rare. I havent bought anything for it in a long time now.

Bah, I'll stop here before this becomes too much of a rant.

@Misery I don't follow many gaming new sites, but I find it very hard to believe every site doesn't mention much about games you want. I'm sure no site is perfect- you are going to have to see stuff you don't like. It's how shopping works- everything wont appeal to you. Gotta put an effort into looking through stuff to find what you want. I honestly wish you wouldn't be so angry about everything :/ It would go a long ways if you had more patience and didn't just hate a site because they mentioned a game you don't like.

Do some Google searches for indy game sites- many results DO pop up. Every gaming website isnt just for AAA games....

http://indiegamemag.com/

http://indiegamereviewer.com/

There's 2 sites I saw listed on the first results page of Google.

I've used indie sites before. Most of them are just too slow to find things, frankly. The indie scene has exploded, and most sites are bloody useless since they're only going to cover things that the writers notice. Glossing over... 95% of what's out there. This is of no use to me, as most of the things they show are things I've already found well before they wrote an article. Things I may not have just FOUND, but may have also been PLAYING for months before the site in question noticed it (this is really frequent).

But it's not just that. These games release at an alarming rate, and even just looking at those two sites, I can already tell they're of no use. Even Steam's somewhat-crappy "queue" system will give me more info on more games than this (it's at least VERY fast to plow through). They're just missing too much. Which isnt really their fault of course, with the super rapid-fire releases coming non-stop. But it means that one way or another, they're of no use. I have to do the searching myself without the aid of something like that.

And actual REVIEWS (as opposed to news and announcements) arent worth much to me. Every gamer is biased in some way towards or against certain types of games (including myself, of course); this means that for the most part reviews arent exactly the most trustworthy sources of info. The only real way to get something out of reviews is to go through ALOT of them so you see many different points of view instead of just a couple. For my own purposes, alot of reviewers, including indie ones, also tend to focus on aspects I consider irrelevant (graphics, sound, cutscenes), giving much useless info. Useless to me, anyway.

That's why I dont use these sites. I was already well aware of indie-focused sites like those. Used to use them frequently. But I gave up on them awhile ago as they werent helping one bit. I was finding WAY too many games that they never even spotted. And of course... they're also just slower than the "big ones" like Kotaku. They tend not to have the resources, really...


But I also honestly miss when the "big ones" WERE of use. I dont really mean just sites, but magazines too. Nintendo Power, Game Informer, EGM, and some others (many of which dont exist anymore) from way back when. Used to subscribe to a ton of them; what's left of them now have changed too much, and arent of use anymore. Which is a shame, I used to love getting them in the mail.

Ah, how times have changed. Bah.


As for me being angry about everything, as I always say, being negative is just my nature. I'm not going to try to be something that I'm not. I'm called "Misery" after all, and not just because of the character.