4847 replies to this topic

[Anthus]

Been playing Super Mario Maker. Endlessly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's pretty much to coolest thing since Zelda Classic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Endlessly.

[Eddy]

Recently picked up Geometry Dash on Steam again... and now I can't stop playing it. Already got around 850 stars, 50 user coins, about 70 official coins and 7 demons completed. I can only see this getting even more addicting when 2.1 comes out lel

[The Satellite]

Decided that, instead of wait what'd probably be a couple weeks to finish the original Xenoblade before playing X, which I received for Christmas, I'll alternate between them. So I played a couple of hours of X. It's gonna sound more negative than I mean it, but I'm not yet impressed other than graphically. It's a very pretty game. But something feels off about the character designs and animations; they lack the charm and detail of the Xenoblade art style. I'm aware they have different art directors, so I'm sure that's part of the problem, but, for lack of a better description, they appear a lot more "anime" in this game. Character creation felt a little more limited than I'd like, though the voice selection is decent; I went with a female character that had Fiora's voice actress because... Well.

 

Xenoblade Chronicles spoilers

I'd fallen in love with Fiora's voice. And then she died. So now I'm using it here so I can hear it again.

 

But the hair options felt lacking. I dunno, maybe I'm picky; the most in-depth character creators I'm used to were in the Tony Hawk games. I haven't played a lot of other RPGs with heavy customization, but I'm a little familiar with them.

 

I guess it's way too early to tell but story seems kind of typical, rather than immediately unique like in the original. Also the game is bad at explaining things so far; if I hadn't had experience with the original, I'd be lost. And that game explained things well! And the text is tiny. I have to really focus on the arts to know what they are before I use them, unlike in the original where it was easy to see and it didn't take up too much room. Also the controls feel just changed enough that I stumble now and again to do something that was second-nature by now in the original. Like ZR for jumping. I thought X to jump was weird in Splatoon. Also I don't see a way to cancel targeting, maybe that's in the manual somewhere. Or open the map like in the original.

 

Hopefully things become more clear as I play. I do like the idea of switching between guns and melee, especially on the fly, that's neat, but all the displays and menus seem weaker compared to the originals, which were simpler to follow and plain to see. Especially enemy and teammate displays in-game...

 

It'll probably get better. I was almost immediately sold on the original game. If I'd started with this, I'm not so sure I could say the same. Let's hope it turns up better.

[Nicholas Steel]

I have gottten Xenoblade Chronicles X for Christmas too and haven't touched it yet. I have seen someone stream a bit of it too me and during the stream my friend reported that during several cutscenes that feature dialog, the background music will feature vocals making it hard to focus on the important dialog (Why the fuck would you use vocals in background music to a dialog heavy cutscene!?). An instance of this was experienced during the streaming, thankfully the game has subtitles.

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 26 December 2015 - 07:05 AM.

[Jared]

Got Yoshi's Woolly World for Christmas. It's so fun and addicting! I haven't had this much fun with a video game in months.

[Haylee]

Taking a break from Tales of Xillia 2, I'm all debted out.

 

Instead, I'm playing Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on the PSP specifically!

[Tree]

Got Splatoon for Christmas... Stayed up all night playing it. It is the most addicting thing.

 

I'm also trying to beat the original Super Mario Bros. on the All-Stars cart for SNES. It would be slightly easier if there wasn't just the tiniest hint, but noticeable amount of lag on my TV...

[Saffith]

Maybe your TV has a game mode that isn't enabled? A lot of recent TVs do some image processing that adds a noticeable fraction of a second, but they also have a game mode to disable it. It's likely to make the image blurrier, though.

[Tree]

Maybe your TV has a game mode that isn't enabled? A lot of recent TVs do some image processing that adds a noticeable fraction of a second, but they also have a game mode to disable it. It's likely to make the image blurrier, though.

I have game mode turned on, and tweaked some other settings, too. I can still notice the lag when playing Super Mario Bros., though, I don't really notice it when playing other games, strangely... For example: I can't seem to get the timing down for the boost when you jump off an enemy in the SMB, but in Mario 2 USA, Mario 3 and Mario World, I can do it just fine. It could be the difference in the gameplay that's messing me up, but I'm pretty sure there's lag as well. 

[Nicholas Steel]

Maybe your TV has a game mode that isn't enabled? A lot of recent TVs do some image processing that adds a noticeable fraction of a second, but they also have a game mode to disable it. It's likely to make the image blurrier, though.

I've tested the Game mode on a 46" 2008 (JA46A650), 46" 2009 (JA46B650) and 55" 2015 (JU6400) Samsung LCD TV and all it seems to do is disable stuff, specifically it disables stuff you can disable yourself without touching the Game option. It's basically a quick shortcut to turning on/off Interpolation and 2 or 3 other things (I think Dynamic Contrast is grayed out as well), but disabling the interpolator typically has the biggest effect on latency and everything else has a imperceptible impact.

 

Surprisingly, both with and without Interpolation enabled on my Samsung 2008 and my parents 2009 TV they respond significantly faster than the 2015 TV regardless of how the 2015 TV is configured. Just to humor the many people saying to enable Gaming mode I did try that and it didn't improve anything, it simply grayed out the Interpolation option and some other settings and didn't perform any faster than with those settings disabled by my self. I also ensured the power saving settings are disabled on the 2015 TV. Basically the 2015 TV sucks hardcore for gaming because the lag is always noticeable and is quite extreme with interpolation enabled.

 

The 2008 and 2009 TV's do however have noticeable lag when a non-standard video signal is fed to them , aka most 90's and older video game consoles made before the Gameube, Playstation 1 and Xbox lag the TV. Everything else? imperceptible lag. (SNES displays a blank image every other frame to simulate Progressive Scan, NES and various Sega consoles simply don't conform to any standard at all and it's a miracle that they worked so well with most CRT TV's, especially with LCD's as they are typically designed to only support standardized signal formats).

 

Annoyingly the 2015 TV has drastically better picture quality than the 2008 and 2009 TV's, it just sucks that it is so damn laggy! It has recieved a few updates since we got it and I haven't tested it again after those updates were released. The updates gave the impression that their primarily for fixing things like the Netflix application needing an update etc. (Samsung are terrible at providing change logs)

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 29 December 2015 - 12:27 AM.

[Dark Ice Dragon]

Today i completed the post game of Tales of Zestiria, for me it was a nice game but not the best of the saga.

The game is well done and there some good ideas, but the story did not give me the same emotions of Xillia 2 and Graces. 

Many characters look a bit ' too much to others already seen,there even one that look like Sephiroth (but i saw so many Sephiroth's clones in my life that i'm tired to complain for this ), I liked Edna and her apparent cynicism.and she now is among my favorite characters in "Tales of...."

[Lejes]

I guess it's way too early to tell but story seems kind of typical, rather than immediately unique like in the original. Also the game is bad at explaining things so far; if I hadn't had experience with the original, I'd be lost. And that game explained things well! And the text is tiny. I have to really focus on the arts to know what they are before I use them, unlike in the original where it was easy to see and it didn't take up too much room. Also the controls feel just changed enough that I stumble now and again to do something that was second-nature by now in the original. Like ZR for jumping. I thought X to jump was weird in Splatoon. Also I don't see a way to cancel targeting, maybe that's in the manual somewhere. Or open the map like in the original.
 
Hopefully things become more clear as I play. I do like the idea of switching between guns and melee, especially on the fly, that's neat, but all the displays and menus seem weaker compared to the originals, which were simpler to follow and plain to see. Especially enemy and teammate displays in-game...
 
It'll probably get better. I was almost immediately sold on the original game. If I'd started with this, I'm not so sure I could say the same. Let's hope it turns up better.

That's discouraging to hear. The first game already has a muddy, confusing interface that makes it impossible to tell what's going on, and they didn't even try to fix it?

Anyway, I played further into the first game. Battle system is still a mess, which may pose a problem if I ever stop being horribly overleveled from all these sidequests. I wonder if buff strategy will ever be important. It seems like they really wanted it to be, but the information overload makes it impossible to tell if they're making a difference. Did this Strength Up multiply my damage output by 1.5, or did it just add 5 damage per attack? I'll never know. It's also unclear which buffs are able to stack.

Story thoughts/predictions:

Xenoblade the first plot spoilers

I got to the Makna jungle last time I played, and now I have to kill a Rainbow Megabird. Basically Lugia/Ho-Oh. I wonder if the plot is going to continue with this pattern, where I reach a new area and get sidetracked by something, while slowly making my way to my ultimate goal in Sword Valley. Obviously the game won't end once I reach Sword Valley. I hope I get to visit the Mechonis eventually, and it's its own world instead of a single tiny dungeon area. Going back to Colony 9 for more sidequesting let me stumble on an interesting bit of information. Xord was the name of Désirée's father, who was a smith who swung around a large hammer. Yeah. With that, Xord's cryptic final message, and that cutscene in Mechon headquarters of the Mechon scientist building a face armor, it seems obvious where this is headed. People can be reborn as Mechon and it strips them of their souls or something. They're not just eating people for sustenance. Metal Face is also obviously Mumkhar. They both use the claws, it's almost too heavily foreshadowed. The characters started (never stopped?) being dimwitted again. They have a Mystery Girl traveling with them now, who all the Nopon refer to as being somehow different from Homs. And she has magical powers out the butt. And silver hair. And weird clothes. She's obviously a High Elf Entia. Also had a Nopon join the group around the same time. I have to admit I wasn't expecting a beach ball to join the party. They don't even try to downplay it, his introduction literally had the other characters spike him like a volleyball. Looking forward to his mechanics being even more convoluted than Melia's. I've also got this feeling that Alvis is going to be the true villain of the game. Whatever happens may be even dumber than that, but if the future landscapes can be anywhere near as cool as Satorl Swamp at night, I won't mind.

Okay, now that I've recorded all my thoughts on story so far, looking forward to having them all proven wrong when it turns out the Mother Armu on the beach is actually the true for real final boss.

[Golden Guardian]

Looked at my backlog again and realized I've barely touched any of my games lately. So, I kept pressing on in New Super Luigi U since I figured that would be easy to feel like I'm getting somewhere in and am likely going to continue playing The Last Story pretty soon. 

Also, after playing the insane levels brought about by Mario Maker, New Super Luigi U is one of the easiest things to beat levels in. Like, I used to think the base game was hard, but goodness Mario Maker changes a man. (Okay, doesn't help that I'd barely played 2D Mario games before those two but still.)

[KingPridenia]

After about a month of being lazy, finally got Steam on my new computer and fired up Terraria. Sheesh are things different. Before playing 1366x768 with crap settings gave me lag, especially with area transitions (such as cavern to underground mushroom area), and that was with the lowest settings. Now coming back with the new computer and putting my saves on here, the difference is significant. Pretty much maxed everything on 1920x1080 and handling it like a champ. Only problem now is an area I used to have before only spawned Hallowed and Ice Cavern enemies. Now I'm getting Bone Serpents spawning for some reason. Didn't really do much though, just played about an hour doing random stuff.

 

Talked to Jenna and according to her, The Sims 3 works with Windows 10 (her laptop being upgraded from 8.1), so I may try to get myself a copy of it and give it a shot. The Sims 1 is pretty much a no-go on my new computer. The only way to get it to work would be to buy The Sims Complete Collection and go through some rather shady means to get it to work properly. I personally own every Sims 1 game save for Superstar and Makin' Magic. That means taking the gamble of going online to buy a potentially defective product and risk the chance of my financial information being compromised, or simply do without. Or go to someone's yard sale or stand at a flea market. And find out the game is filled with all kinds of things that will inevitably make me never touch another video game again and probably give me nightmares for life.

 

Yes, I'm aware that probably wouldn't happen, but still. Buying stuff like that is just IMO not worth it. Also to be honest, it would be nice to relearn The Sims and have to master all the new things in Sims 3. Considering I only barely touched Sims 2, that's going to make me go into it almost completely blind. I would have gotten Sims 4, but the reviews for it are rather poor.

[Dawnlight]

Finished the Campaign in Halo 5 Guardians. This is the most fast paced Halo game I played. While the game does get repetitive towards the end, the campaign was overall very solid and fun.