What Video Games Are You Currently Playing

[Joyrex]

Anyone preordered or standing in line to get a Wii U Saturday? (I'm certainly not) - so far, the reviews published of Mario U and Nintendoland seem to be what we expected... more of the same, and a mini game collection. It will be interesting to see if the the "Wii Phenomenon" happens again. Personally, I don't think it will, because now the other consoles have motion controls/second screen features, and Microsoft and Sony's next consoles are around the corner and will surely deflate Wii U sales once they are announced.

[Silent Member]

I think this one is going to bomb. The wii had wii sports in the box to drive the sales, and it was a unique thing back then, I don't see any killer app to grab the publics attention this time round. Grandma going for a round of zombie u? I think not.

[Joyrex]

I think this one is going to bomb. The wii had wii sports in the box to drive the sales, and it was a unique thing back then, I don't see any killer app to grab the publics attention this time round. Grandma going for a round of zombie u? I think not.

 

I predict it will be like the 3DS - extremely slow start, scary hints of going under/failure, then Nintendo will finally roll out their other franchise updates, and sales pick up a bit - however, unlike the 3DS/Vita battle (where had the Vita actually had good software at launch as well as good games coming down the pipeline, they would have easily trounced the 3DS), Microsoft and Sony's next consoles will surely deflate any chance of the Wii U recovering if they stumble like I think they will. I give the Wii U a 2-3 year lifespan at best if both Sony and Microsoft's next consoles hit in 2013/2014 as planned.

[Guest Frankie5fingers]

i sure as hell am not getting the wii U (at least not for awhile). itll be like the original. cool at first but soon realizing the best games were the ones that came with the system. third party support will not be enough. honestly, Nintendo makes some great games, if they cant make enticing enough games for their own system how the hell is a third party continually gonna? theyll make maybe a handful of cool games but not enough to justify a new system, especially since the third party games wont be exclusive, so whats the point? ill just buy one game for my PS3 or Xbox, instead of buying a new system and a game just so i can have it with a stupid looking controller that really wont "change the way we play." ill wait for the price to drop, and to see if Nintendo can prove me wrong (which i really hope they can)

 

also on a personal level:

ive been seeing a lot of news about it and by the looks of it the player will have to constantly pay attention to both screens while playing a game. thats just too much. the point of a controller was so that i didnt have to look at my hands to play a game. though this is what it looks like to me, im not sure if thats totally true yet. but if it is then thats really stupid.

[ktait2]

Not totally true, not all games will take advantage of both screens, but yeah still too early to tell. The system does have the portable screen going for it; which apparently runs extremely well. Basically, as long as you can plug the system into a power outlet, you can walk around with the controller and play where ever you want. Streaming real time video wirelessly like that without any lag seems like a pretty major technological achievement to me at least. Too bad the gimmick of having the most powerful handheld on house arrest isn't worth personally.

Edited November 16, 2012 by taint

[Guest Frankie5fingers]

yeah, as a handheld its pretty cool but thats just not enough. im pretty sure most everyone here, and as most people do by now, has an Xbox of PS3. so the only way to win any customers is if they have exclusive games or content that fully utilize the 2nd screen. but they havent shown any promise. im not going to buy Arkham City again just so i can use the 2nd screen to do a neat thing with a few of the gadgets, itll get boring after awhile. thats not fully utilizing the tech. really the only thing it has going for it right now is the cheaper price. and people who don't care too much about graphics or just are cheap will love the new Wii cause now it has third party games. that being said, the majority of the market is people who DO care about the graphics (aka wont buy a game cause the graphics look bad. those kinda people) and will shell out a little more to get the realism. idiots.

then there is also the factor that Nintendo will most likely like to keep its standing as a Family company. so i don't expect to see many M rated games. there will be more, but i don't think much and not to the extent of what they are on the other systems.

 

overall, its just another Wii. nothing more or less. itll have its market but it wont dent any of Microsoft's or Sony's sales.

Edited November 16, 2012 by Frankie5fingers

[skotosa]

Few people that have tried out the wii u say it has really smooth graphics and Anti Aliasing.

[Dan C]

[youtubehd]0OzWIFX8M-Y[/youtubehd]

 

2

[Rubin Farr]

If anyone thinks the next Sony and MS consoles won't rip off Nintendo in some way, you slept thru the last 2 generations. MS will no doubt push a Windows 8 console/pc hybrid with as many ads crammed in as possible, and multiple portals to their content stores. As for Sony, that is a rudderless ship that I fear will come in third again unless they have learned some serious lessons from Vita, which they probably haven't. Trying to tie their next home console to a handheld nobody owns would be a terrible idea, unless they write it off as a loss leader and just bundle it w PS4.

 

Oh well fanboys choose their sides and pretty much stick to em, including all you PC gamers of which their seem to be a ton here these days. Whatever platform you choose, the point is fun. Enjoy yourself.

[luke viia]

does anybody here have a beta key to play Ingress? looks kinda fun: http://www.ingress.com/

 

edit: see also http://www.nianticproject.com/ and http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57550819-1/inside-ingress-googles-new-augmented-reality-game/

Edited November 18, 2012 by luke viia

[luke viia]

i'm actually gonna take back "looks kinda fun" and say "looks like something i'll bike around doing for one afternoon"

 

would be cool to see if geocaching comes into play in their game though, and the question of how they'll deal with advertisements/sponsors in a game about mind control should be pretty interesting (the cnet article talks about this)

 

 

love me some geocaching

[Blir]

If anyone thinks the next Sony and MS consoles won't rip off Nintendo in some way, you slept thru the last 2 generations. MS will no doubt push a Windows 8 console/pc hybrid with as many ads crammed in as possible, and multiple portals to their content stores. As for Sony, that is a rudderless ship that I fear will come in third again unless they have learned some serious lessons from Vita, which they probably haven't. Trying to tie their next home console to a handheld nobody owns would be a terrible idea, unless they write it off as a loss leader and just bundle it w PS4.

 

 

Two generations? What did they rip off from the Gamecube? Or the N64 even? Regardless that those two consoles had some absolutely slamming games (though not many) I'd say that as the major lull in Nintendo's history.

 

Motion controls I'll grant you, the Wii pushed that forward and the other consoles followed. I wouldn't argue that Nintendo were any more innovative than the other two companies though. Remember how rubbish they've been with online gaming, you could argue that online console gaming was the bigger deal and Nintendo ripped that off from the other guys.

[Guest Iain C]

I expect the Wii U to do fairly well because a lot of the non-traditional gamers who bought a Wii the first time round will simply buy the "updated version" - along the lines of non-technically inclined people who buy a new Apple device each year for reasons they don't fully understand.

 

Getting it out before Christmas is the smartest thing they could've done in this regard, because these are the kind of people that buys a game console as a family-friendly Xmas present - rather than full-time gamers like my fellow dorks in this thread, who'd buy a new console at any time because it's a new console.

 

Anyway, back to GAMES.

 

Last night, I finally got into The Void: a A strange and hard-to-describe puzzle game from the Russian developers who made that weird, broken RPG Pathologic.

 

 

This game defies easy explanations. It’s set in a kind of afterlife where you, as a lost soul, have to gather colour from the drained, nightmarish world. You then use this colour to battle nasties, revive these strange naked goddesses, and generally breath life into the world...

 

Except really, it’s not anything like that simple. The story is ambiguous and occluded. You’re never sure quite what you’re achieving by following the instructions people give you. There’s a constant sense that you’re being mislead and manipulated – that your friends might not be your friends and your enemies might not be your enemies.

 

It’s confusing –but it’s not confused. Throughout it all, there’s a sense that it all means something. Everything has a significance even if it’s not immediately obvious. And the compulsion to find out more is what keeps you playing.

 

That’s to say nothing of the mechanics themselves. It’s hard – rock hard. Resources are extremely limited and everything you do has to be planned in advance. Colour – and there are maybe 8 different ones – is your HP, your stats, your experience, everything. And as you travel through the world, you’re always losing it.

 

It’s very easy to get yourself into an unwinnable situation. But most of the time, you’ll understand why – too late. The mechanics themselves are simple, but the game is unforgiving of the smallest mistakes. I played for about 3 hours last night before realising I’d fucked things up irrevocably within the first 20 minutes.

 

That’s frustrating – and it’ll put a lot of people off. But if you care about games with atmosphere, story, very good voice acting and an utter refusal to talk down to you – you really should check it out.

 

The point is, knowing my mistakes I’m now eager to jump in again and do it properly this time.

I’d especially recommend it to Dark Souls fans because the tone and setting isn’t a million miles apart. If you like the idea of kindling the barest hope of life in a dying world, you’ll eat it up.

There are Easy and Medium difficulty patches out there too, so you can enjoy the story and atmosphere without getting your arse handed to you quite as badly. I’m trying to get through it without them though. We’ll see how long that lasts!

 

Oh, and there's tits in it.

[Rubin Farr]

If anyone thinks the next Sony and MS consoles won't rip off Nintendo in some way, you slept thru the last 2 generations. MS will no doubt push a Windows 8 console/pc hybrid with as many ads crammed in as possible, and multiple portals to their content stores. As for Sony, that is a rudderless ship that I fear will come in third again unless they have learned some serious lessons from Vita, which they probably haven't. Trying to tie their next home console to a handheld nobody owns would be a terrible idea, unless they write it off as a loss leader and just bundle it w PS4.

 

 

Two generations? What did they rip off from the Gamecube? Or the N64 even? Regardless that those two consoles had some absolutely slamming games (though not many) I'd say that as the major lull in Nintendo's history.

 

Motion controls I'll grant you, the Wii pushed that forward and the other consoles followed. I wouldn't argue that Nintendo were any more innovative than the other two companies though. Remember how rubbish they've been with online gaming, you could argue that online console gaming was the bigger deal and Nintendo ripped that off from the other guys.

besides motion controls & player avatars, if you remember N64 had the first analoig control sticks and rumble, which every console has used since then.

 

Rumored Xbox 720 specs leaking, they're gonna stick with Kinect again? ugh. and guess what? it's "innovativew controller" has a touch screen on it, imagine that!

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57551679-75/xbox-720-to-offer-kinect-2.0-and-blu-ray-drive-says-xbox-world/

[Blir]

Yeah but player avatars aren't original to the Wii, they took the idea from various games on the internet.

 

I'm not cussing out the Wii or anything but saying other consoles just rip off the Wii sounds a bit flame-baity. And as an esteemed IDM forum of taste and etiquette I thought we were above that.

 

 

lol?

[Rubin Farr]

I'm talking console history, not pc. I also said the competitors rip off Nintendo, not Wii specifically as its been going on for years.

 

I'm not here to defend Nintendo, as people who shit on them will always shit on them. No one is gonna change their mind based on my rambling.

[Nebraska]

[Guest Enter a new display name]

[chim]

Deus Ex. Tranq-Crossbow style on Realistic. Good stuff, hard at times!

[Guest Iain C]

Got a bit further with The Void last night - still got myself into an unwinnable situation, but it all makes so much more sense now. I'm going to storm it next time.

 

The trial-and-error should be frustrating, but mastering the mechanics and figuring the world out is satisfying in a way few games manage to be. The Souls games being an obvious point of reference. This does for adventure games what they do for action-RPGs. Play this game now.

[Guest Iain C]

And how could I forget: the new episode of The Walking Dead hits Steam tomorrow. In many respects, this is the polar opposite of The Void in adventure game terms: the mechanics are simple to the point of box-ticking, it's hard to really fuck up, and the story is unambiguous, immediate, and very very real.

 

And what a story it is. In a lifetime of gaming, I've never been so emotionally involved with a set of fictional characters (in a game). Anybody who's played the game knows what I mean. The writing is on par with the best comics and TV programmes, and although the eventual outcomes are pretty similar, it still feels like your decisions have massive weight.

 

It rides the fine line between being "a game" and an "interactive story" - it's a line adventure games have been walking since the 90s, but nobody has ever managed to balance it quite as well as this before. It's a triumph, and if anything leads to games being taken seriously as a unique storytelling medium (if not art per se) then it's this.

 

Before, Telltale's excursions into episodic gaming seemed like excuses not to flesh out a decent narrative or coherent whole. But with this, they've finally turned the format into an asset - presenting a series of gruelling cliffhangers that leave you counting down the days to the next episode.

 

It's been a brilliant red-letter year for PC gaming, but as we approach December this HAS to be a GOTY contender if that means anything at all. (I don't think it does, but w/e).

 

Anyone else as hyped for this as I am?

Edited November 20, 2012 by Iain C

[Guest Frankie5fingers]

so im in the middle of downloading Planetside 2. it looks pretty cool and i thought id give it a try. anyone here play it yet?

[hexagon son]

I just finished "Limbo" on the PS3. Beautiful, short, well thought out puzzles and very beautiful. Worth the ¥1200 I s@ent. I'm going to go back through and find all the secret prizes that I missed.

(I still can't do the 750,000 point challenge on Peggle, but I've come close!)

[baph]

I just finished "Limbo" on the PS3. Beautiful, short, well thought out puzzles and very beautiful. Worth the ¥1200 I s@ent. I'm going to go back through and find all the secret prizes that I missed.

(I still can't do the 750,000 point challenge on Peggle, but I've come close!)

 

The hidden level is a complete and total bitch to do. Great game, though.

Edited November 21, 2012 by baph

[Silent Member]

Finished chapter 5 of the walking dead.

 

No.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Gocab