What's everyone playing?

[Nev]

I have like four serious games in progress and have barely even started on three of them:

Kingdom Hearts - almost done
FFX - just saw Maister Seymour for the first time, and I'm still distraught about the Penny Arcade spoiler
God of War - playing this through on God mode first try is sort of hindering my progress, but it's still fun - only just beat the first Medusa
Metal Gear Solid 3 - just had the first big shootout cutscene after rescuing Sokolov, haven't played in weeks, I'm sure all my food is spoiled by now

I keep trying to get better at Soul Calibur 2 as well, but it's not really happening.

[Lox]

I am all about Knights of the Old Republic 1 for the PC at the moment. I'll play it and then stop for a bit then play it and stop for a bit. My roommate is playing 2 right now so it made me want to get back into 1. I'm still on Taris, not that far into the game, maybe 4 hours.

That's about it until this fall when Zelda comes out and KH2 and then FFXII whenever it comes out. Plus if I can get my PSP from freepsps.com, then I'll play GTA: LCS too.

[Julius Seeker]

Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Knights of the Old Republic
Final Fantasy 7
Fire Emblem: Sacred Stone

[Blotus]

I pretty much only play SF3: Third Strike and Halo 2 on Live. Nothing else has caught my intertest lately.

[Kupek]

Resident Evil 4, and I started up Metroid Zero Mission last weekend (fun, quick game).

[Agent 57]

This list consists of games that I've started and haven't gotten around to finishing yet:

-Halo 2, single-player (Yeah, I know, where the hell have I been, but I just really figured out how to play it last week and am finally starting to like it.)

-MM Zero 3 (Not sure why I stopped playing this, although I think it was RE4-related.)

-Viewtiful Joe 2 (I just can't bring myself to play this for longer than a half hour at a time for some reason. I can't figure it out.)

- PoP: Warrior Within (although I doubt I'll ever finish this utter POS - in fact I'll most likely end up trading it in for God of War or Jade Empire once I get around to it.)

[Eric]

World of Warcraft

[Don]

Nothing on the console. I'm finding console games to be just boring as MMORPG, but on a MMORPG I get to talk to people, and the work you put in is still useful 50 or even 500 hours later.

Though there are a few console games I'm looking forward to:

Shining Force Neo (thuogh Shining Tears doesn't bode too well)
Kingdom Hearts 2 (because KH is cool)
FF12 (it's FF)
Wild Arms 4th Detonator (always like the atmosphere and music of this series even if there's absolutely nothing else good about it)

[Tortolia]

Dragonrealms, EVE Online, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Story, Front Mission 4.

[Zeus]

Right now, Burnout 3, just finished Minish Cap, Superstar Saga, Mario vs Donkey Kong, about 3 hours into RE4 (it's taking a while), Karaoke Revolution 2, and I want to start and beat MGS3 real quick so I can trade it in while it's still worth something before Substinence comes out

[Flip]

Not much.

On the PSP i'm way into Lumines and Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee. On the computer i mess around with CS:S a little, but i play a lot of online poker now which, according to my bank roll, i'm not half bad at. Small stakes, so even though it is real money it is more of an entertainment thing than anything, and if you find free entertainment great, try entertainment that pockets you some bucks! Not too sure if my PS2 even works, lol, as i havent played it for quite some time. Being on the go a lot, i was the perfect candidate for a good portable and am still infatuated with my PSP. I recently bought a 256 mem card which i piled a bunch of music on; i was told i have to wait until Christmas for a 1 meg card which will open up the movie alternative. Ripping and formatting DVD's onto the card is an easy process.

[Torgo]

God o' War and Front Mission 4.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

World of Warcraft.

Halo 2 on Live when I'm in the mood to get owned by twelve year olds.

Fire Emblem and Mr Driller Drill Spirits on the DS when I'm on the train (and waiting for res sickness to pass in WOW :).

[EsquE]

Last 5 or so games I played:

Prince of Persia
Star Wars: KotoR II
Crimson Skies
Super Mario Sunshine
Resident Evil Zero

Currently playing:

Resident Evil (GC)
Final Fantasy VII (I have a sickness)

[Zeus]

How do you like the remake of RE? I thought it was excellent

[SineSwiper]

Currently playing Xenogears 2. Shellie is playing (when she actually plays on the console) Kingdom Hearts and FFX-2. Stopped playing KotOR 1, but I'll get back to it eventually. I have a large queue of other games I need to play.

[EsquE]

How do you like the remake of RE? I thought it was excellent

I loved it...if you're going to do a remake, REALLY do a remake, which is what they did. Not just pretty it up but overhaul the gameplay and the controls, and especially with a game like this you move around the scary bits. Now if they'll just give RE2 the same treatment...

[Shellie]

Actually I got bored with KH and FFX-2....I started playing Katamari Damacy

Star 7 is killin me.....

[Zeus]

How do you like the remake of RE? I thought it was excellent

I loved it...if you're going to do a remake, REALLY do a remake, which is what they did. Not just pretty it up but overhaul the gameplay and the controls, and especially with a game like this you move around the scary bits. Now if they'll just give RE2 the same treatment...

I'm the only one on the planet who didn't like RE2 as much as 1. Don't know why, but I thought 1 had better atmosphere in it. I've always disliked the gameplay in all survival horror games (Silent Hill as well), so it's all about story and atmosphere to me and I thought the first, and especially the remake, were better

[EsquE]

How do you like the remake of RE? I thought it was excellent

I loved it...if you're going to do a remake, REALLY do a remake, which is what they did. Not just pretty it up but overhaul the gameplay and the controls, and especially with a game like this you move around the scary bits. Now if they'll just give RE2 the same treatment...

I'm the only one on the planet who didn't like RE2 as much as 1. Don't know why, but I thought 1 had better atmosphere in it. I've always disliked the gameplay in all survival horror games (Silent Hill as well), so it's all about story and atmosphere to me and I thought the first, and especially the remake, were better

RE1 scared the shit out of me...it was so fresh and unique...you got pulled into it. RE2 didn't scare me at all, but was a better game overall. Better graphics, deeper gameplay, story, acting...it took all the good stuff in RE1 and made it better, and polished the whole thing up. But nothing other than Silent Hill has come as close to being such a purely emotional gaming experience as RE1 was...

[Zeus]

I loved it...if you're going to do a remake, REALLY do a remake, which is what they did. Not just pretty it up but overhaul the gameplay and the controls, and especially with a game like this you move around the scary bits. Now if they'll just give RE2 the same treatment...

I'm the only one on the planet who didn't like RE2 as much as 1. Don't know why, but I thought 1 had better atmosphere in it. I've always disliked the gameplay in all survival horror games (Silent Hill as well), so it's all about story and atmosphere to me and I thought the first, and especially the remake, were better

RE1 scared the shit out of me...it was so fresh and unique...you got pulled into it. RE2 didn't scare me at all, but was a better game overall. Better graphics, deeper gameplay, story, acting...it took all the good stuff in RE1 and made it better, and polished the whole thing up. But nothing other than Silent Hill has come as close to being such a purely emotional gaming experience as RE1 was...

I think that's why I loved RE1 and Silent Hill 1 the best; gameplay don't mean much to me, it's really all about the atmosphere. SH2 became dull as you had LONG stretches without anything happening but SH3 was quite fun. Haven't tried 4 yet. I have the two Fatal Frames for the Xbox and really want to get into one of those soon. I tried the first one for an hour and it had wonderful atmosphere

[the Gray]

Guild Wars, and little else.

I'm interested in WoW, but right now while I have my buddies interested in GW paying a monthly fee doesn't make sense when I'd only play a little bit.

I also have a fucktonne of Console games to go through. Metroids and Finishing Star Ocean top the list there.

[Nev]

I like to do this every once in awhile, keeps me in touch with what's out there.

[Zeus]

Guild Wars, and little else.

I'm interested in WoW, but right now while I have my buddies interested in GW paying a monthly fee doesn't make sense when I'd only play a little bit.

I also have a fucktonne of Console games to go through. Metroids and Finishing Star Ocean top the list there.

It will take you 'til the end of time to finish Star Ocean, man ;-)

[Torgo]

I think that's why I loved RE1 and Silent Hill 1 the best; gameplay don't mean much to me, it's really all about the atmosphere. SH2 became dull as you had LONG stretches without anything happening but SH3 was quite fun. Haven't tried 4 yet. I have the two Fatal Frames for the Xbox and really want to get into one of those soon. I tried the first one for an hour and it had wonderful atmosphere

Fatal Frame was one of the creepier games I played. FF2 is more of the same, but with a different story, so if you don't like FF1, then you probably won't think much of this one. If you don't mind mediocre gameplay as long as you have great atmosphere, then you might like SH4. The parts when you're in a 1st person view in your room really give you a feeling of being trapped.

[Tortolia]

Shin Megami Tensei is making me long for the days of ridiculously difficult dungeon crawls with utterly obscene random battle rates.

Thank god for emulation, you just don't get games built like this anymore.

[SineSwiper]

Shin Megami Tensei is making me long for the days of ridiculously difficult dungeon crawls with utterly obscene random battle rates.

Thank god for emulation, you just don't get games built like this anymore.

Xenosaga 2 is actually a fairly hard game when it comes to regular battles, especially when you're first learning the combat system. Enemies seem to hit hard, and you really have to play attention to the various types of weaknesses of the enemies to get past them.

Consider that one enemy would say, be weak versus physical attacks & ice & slash, you would have to put ice on one character's weapon (provided s/he has slash and physical attacks with no element already attached), then find the right break point on the enemy, have enough burst or boost to continue the attack past that point, air/down the enemy, and unleash the rest of the damage. (For even more, do all of that as a back attack.) Granted, that's overkill and you'd be doing massive amounts of damage, but if you ignore most of that and just hit the fight command over and over again, you wouldn't be doing much. This is just one enemy type we're talking about, so you'd have to memorize some of the weaknesses of the other types that are in that area as well.

[Julius Seeker]

I really enjoyed Xenosaga II's battle system, there weren't a lot of battles in the game compared to most other RPG's, but each battle required some sort of thought, experimentation, unless it was one you fought before of course (but usually you wouldn't fight more than 3 battles that are the same as another; there are a few cases that you do, but it's very rare; that is of course if you don't run around trying to level up).

Yeah, Xenosaga episode II's battles were certainly no Final Fantasy cake walk, not in any instance.

[Don]

Shin Megami Tensei is making me long for the days of ridiculously difficult dungeon crawls with utterly obscene random battle rates.

Thank god for emulation, you just don't get games built like this anymore.

I'm sure the reason why such games don't get build anymore was that it was a stupid concept to begin with. I don't think anyone liked the ridiculous encounter rate in FF9 (I didn't actually notice it) and that was the last game I can think of that has a very high encounter rate. High encounter rate + big dungeons = meaningless inflation to game's length.

Then again, we seem to just get sidequest/world inflation now to make up for the fact that dungeon/encounter flation is no longer there.

[Zeus]

Shin Megami Tensei is making me long for the days of ridiculously difficult dungeon crawls with utterly obscene random battle rates.

Thank god for emulation, you just don't get games built like this anymore.

I'm sure the reason why such games don't get build anymore was that it was a stupid concept to begin with. I don't think anyone liked the ridiculous encounter rate in FF9 (I didn't actually notice it) and that was the last game I can think of that has a very high encounter rate. High encounter rate + big dungeons = meaningless inflation to game's length.

Then again, we seem to just get sidequest/world inflation now to make up for the fact that dungeon/encounter flation is no longer there.

I didn't find FF9 to have ridiculous encounter rate, but it was a tad high

[Kupek]

I didn't find FF9 to have ridiculous encounter rate, but it was a tad high

High enough that I put down a replay of the game, despite liking the characters, music, story and atmosphere. I was in a particularly obnoxious dungeon where they took away some of my abilities and I asked myself if that's really how I want to spend my free time and decided it wasn't.

[Julius Seeker]

High Encounter rates on the PSX where load times are always horrible is always extremely painful. It is why I believe more games should have been like Final Fantasy 8. Load times on SNES and NES titles were non existant, so they could get away with the extremely high encounter rates with little problem.

[Tortolia]

See, I still enjoy the old-school 80s/early 90s style dungeon crawls, which is exactly what SMT is.

It's my PC gaming roots showing.

[Don]

Well, dungoen crawls actually makes your characters weaker as opposed to 'hug the save point/restore spot'. In some extremes you get say Grandia 1, where regular encounters are fairly difficult so you just hug the restore point and use H&E or Dragon Slash until you run out of MP, run back to save point, and then see if you can go a little bit further next time. I always question what's the point of even having random encounters when you get a game layout similar to Grandia/FFX where it's trivial to get all your HP/MP/whatever back and each restore spots are separated by a negligible amount of distance so that the chance of dying in between them is very small.

[Julius Seeker]

FF10 is a hard one to judge, mainly because of its advancement system being such a large part of the game and only advanceable through battles. Perhaps if there were other ways to gain AP it would have been better. That's something that hasn't been implemented in any RPG I have yet played except Xenosaga Episode II; but not to the level that I would like it to be.

[Don]

FF10 there's no point to fight random battles. Some of them are as hard if not harder than the bosses (King Behemoth anyone?) and Flee never fails and with Tidus's speed it's basically same as No Encounters except you can't avoid the loading time. But, if for some reason you do fight them, you'd just hug the save points anyway similar to how you'd approach the Grandia games. Since FF10 doesn't have any super powerful attacks that eat up a boatload of MP but kills everything, you can't just instantly annhilate everything but the result is similar. You're never threatend by random encounters because even if you only have 1 guy left, as long as it's Tidus you can always run away until you reach the next save point (unless you get ambushed, which is rare).

[Imakeholesinu]

I've been playing Eve Online since tort got me hooked. Before that it was CS:S, but I've been thinking about going back to 1.6, not because it doesn't treat me very well, but because I found some people in my area that are cool enough to play with. I still have yet to break out the numerous console games my little brother left for the old PSX like Parasite Eve and Lunar, but I'm sure I'll do that soon. Plus I've got to finish Final Fantasy Tactics at some point.

[SineSwiper]

You haven't finished FFT yet? That game is awesome!

[Nev]

I never finished FFT either. That game is quite difficult.

[Julius Seeker]

Go with Monk, thief extra speed skill, and Ninja two handed ability, you can move right through the game without any real difficulty and do nearly all of the major side quests and stuff in about 17 or 18 hours.

[M'k'n'zy]

I have my genesis hooked up and have been replaying Sword of Vermillion.

[Nev]

I really liked that game! I found some weird-ass item once at a friend's house playing that - "Digger's Wand" or some shit. Could never figure out what it did.

[Oracle]

I beat Chrono Trigger again this week.

[SineSwiper]

On FFT: Read my Auto-Battle FAQ if you're having trouble with the game. Nothing like letting the PC go through the battles for you, or at least helping you out with some of the more time-consuming classes. (Calculator comes to mind...)

One thing to note in that game is that you will definately need to build up your skills. By building up, I mean killing everybody but one enemy, and finding a continous loop for all of your characters to say, Leg Aim the enemy, cast Cure on your allies, do damage to your one of your allies (so that the Cure gives out JP), do that Monk MP regen (so that your Cure doesn't run out of MP), etc., etc. For even better results, use Yell to build up speed, so that the enemy doesn't even get a turn.

Of course, if that's too tedious (and it is kinda boring), you can always use the JP Scrolling Glitch. I used that in my last play of the game, and it saves some time with building up JP. There's a FAQ for that on GameFAQs, too.

[Don]

Speed break the enemy, put it to sleep, and then you can even speed break the people who won't be needing the xp (like Ramza). Accumulate is a nice infinite loop skill, and so is Steal Gil (can't fail from behind if they don't have a mantle item).

[Kupek]

Or you can just play the game without doing any of the level building tricks, play with whichever classes you want, and you'll get through just fine.

[Don]

It is quite possible to be stuck in a situation where you can't win and you can't get out if you play it like that.

[Flip]

I remember getting stuck a few times, where is it saved right before a big hard battle and doesnt let you avoid it to level up. I think once when i was training Ramza on some odd class (ie he sucked, but i wanted some skill only that class had) he had to one-on-one this almost impossible guy, i lost a bunch while i kept trying a miracle weapon break, once it hit i beat him, but i dont think i could have done anything without weapon break and would have been stuck forever.

[Kupek]

It is quite possible to be stuck in a situation where you can't win and you can't get out if you play it like that.

I was stuck at a hard part a few times, but I was able to get past it eventually. That, however, had to do with the saving system (my only save was right before a difficult battle; no way to go back and get stronger).

My point is that there are many different combinations that work, so you might as well just choose the one that you find the most fun. If you have entire party of Priests, you're going to be in trouble, but I don't think most people will choose something like that. Most people are going to arrive at some balance that suits them, which I find more fun than exploiting holes in the gameplay.

[Don]

The game's foundation is already pretty weak anyway. I'm pretty sure you could just take 5 Ninjas and beat up everything straight up (put martial arts on secondary if worried about healing). Anyway I used a pretty random mix of classes when I play FFT but the fight in question really requires you either to be about 15 levels higher than the boss to win it straight up or abuse one of the game's many cheesy stuff (Yell-Chakra-Accumulate infinite combo, Split Damage, Calculator-anything, etc) to win at a reasonable level.

Another annoying battle is the one that takes place 2 battles later where if you don't have a speedy class (Ninja/Thief) you can actually lose before you even get to move.