Discuss games you've been playing

[Masked Hero]

I just finished Bioshock for the second time. Still a genuinely good game, although I think it kind of falters a bit after the whole revelation of Atlas' true identity.

I'm not sure whether I should jump into Bioshock 2 or not. I've beaten it before as well and liked it.

[AndyNPC]

Hoshizora no Memoria. It's actually a visual novel and not a video game, but I'm going to talk about it here anyways since The RWP is an anarchy and there is no government to stop me.
So it's a story about this kid that used to hang out with this girl at a lookout when he was like 10 and they would look at stars and stuff. Then the kid moved away but then his mom died so he moved back and he's in high school now but the girl wasn't there anymore. Instead there's this other little girl who looks like her but cosplays as a weird loli grim reaper who reaps people's nightmares. Anyways, she stabs him which makes him forget what the name of the girl he used to know was, so then he joins a star gazing club in his high school. There's also a dragon involved.

I felt really smart because I predicted a major plot twist based off of some completely inane detail that anyone would have overlooked as just a random character quirk added to give some more flavor. Also apparently I have to spend another 70+ hours doing all the other routes to actually find out who the girl at the lookout was. I'm going to try to go two for two and predict:

Spoiler: (highlight to view)

There never was a girl at the lookout

I'll let you know in another five months if I was right.

[DementedSun]

Started to play Gex for the lady. Forgot how much slowdown the actual N64 could have sometimes. And how frustrating platforming in Gex could be .

[Brian]

Originally Posted by Alakazam

It is a very well-known and documented fact on The RWP that Gex 64 and Gex 3 are video games of poor quality.

games i played today:

Yu-Gi-Oh! 2006: Subtitles I Forget (GBA, 2006?)
never played this one before! it let me pick from the first 6 structure decks to start off, so i took ~ZoMBie MaDNeSS~ since i'm hella nostalgic for ratbox zombies in 04/05 formats. anyway this plays like an above-average yugioh game and i can't complain, but i wish password cards were a little cheaper - don't really feel like grinding for 3 hours to get a single cyber dragon!!! 3/5

Wasn't this Eternal Duelist Soul??

[neen]

Decided to start replaying Castlevania: Circle of the Moon because I played a LOT of that game for years on my original GBA. I think I ended up beating the game or getting most of the way through with every class. And I'm playing on an emulator this time and WOW I can actually see the game.

[AndyNPC]

Guys, 100% Orange Juice is free this weekend. You can come meme it up with me on the best online weeaboo board game at not cost!

[Danny Trabajo]

Heavy Smash (Arcade) - Not the best Data East multiplayer sports game, but fun

Cookie and Bibi 3 (Arcade) - Maybe the ugliest looking and sounding arcade clone of Puzzle Bobble but playable in a sense, I like Puzzle Bobble too much to forgive what is bad about it though

Crusher Makochan (Arcade) - This seems to be a game entirely based around tapping one button as briskly as possible, so Makothat what you will

Time Crisis 2 (PS1) (Arcade) - Don't play this lightgun game with an original Xbox controller

PaRappa The Rapper (PS1) - I have something fresh and insightful to say: the music and cutscenes in this game are great, I still can't get very far in it though

Pokemon TCG GB 2 (GBC) - One of the best games of all time

Super Mario 64 Two Player (N64) - A good laugh until someone gets lodged between the castle slide window and the wall geometry and both Mario and Luigi stand frozen, blinking, for eternity

Yooka-Laylee (PS4) - Finally, someone made a sequel to Bugs Bunny: Lost In Time

[Danny Trabajo]

We played CoinOps for a while last night... while I am mostly using this as journal for what to go back to later, I really do recommend checking out some of these old arcade games as they're really nuts in a lot of cases

Canon Ball '95 - This is kind of all-around crazy package, it's like Puzzle Bobble except the bubbles are connected via a molecular structure and you can only shoot directly up, the soundtrack is mid-90s MAME speed metal/surf rock and on completion of every stage you get a photograph of a women in various states of modest undress

Capcom Sports Club - Can't believe I wasn't familiar with this at all. Football: was fine but not close to the best casual/kids football experience... Basketball: beginning to think I don't really love basketball arcade games due to recent experiences but perhaps I just need to revisit some good Midway basketball games that I have enjoyed in the past... tennis: A really enjoyable 2D tennis game, like really good maybe although we only played a few games

Blomby Car - How can you say you have truly lived without booting up Blomby Car

Block Hole - This is a vertically scrolling shooter when you have to form solid rectangles and squares out of Tetromino-style shapes, a neat idea but not amazingly fun in practice

Block Out - A 3D, top-down Tetris from 1989. There were two Tetris games on Virtual Boy and Block Out feels more like "Virtual Boy Tetris" than either of them

Blocken - Arkanoid/Alleyway with chibi anime characters, probably supposed to be played with a spinner or something and not great with a controller

[DementedSun]

Overwatch still has the shittiest, most broken matchmaking I've ever ****ing seen. The better you play, the worse your team mates will be, so therefor, you ****ing de-rank 20 games in a row because you're ALWAYS the top 'scorer'. Blizzard really needs to ****ing hand their game off to a studio that understands how to balance a matchmaking server.

[Breegullbeak]

Arms is better than Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8. Also Dishonored is still incredible.

[Solid Snix]

Originally Posted by DementedSun

Overwatch still has the shittiest, most broken matchmaking I've ever ****ing seen. The better you play, the worse your team mates will be, so therefor, you ****ing de-rank 20 games in a row because you're ALWAYS the top 'scorer'. Blizzard really needs to ****ing hand their game off to a studio that understands how to balance a matchmaking server.

I don't think the problem you're having with the matchmaking is gonna change anytime soon. The best advice for matchmaking is to go in with a team of friends.

[AndyNPC]

I've been playing Friday the 26th. It's real fun when you get past DATABASE LOGIN FAILURE and get a group that has mics and speak English. My favorite counselor is Chad.

[DementedSun]

Originally Posted by Solid Snix

I don't think the problem you're having with the matchmaking is gonna change anytime soon. The best advice for matchmaking is to go in with a team of friends.

I don't know anyone that plays Overwatch, and the few people I do wouldn't even come close to low Masters, which is where I'd be if they didn't **** up with the changes and reward trolls for reporting and then leaving the game :'). I'd even settle for staying at around 3,300 if it meant having even a single team mate with a brain who isn't either screaming over the mic for you to change, yet they are playing a horrible pick that does not mesh at all with the rest of the team, or just sits in spawn trolling and reporting everyone and then quitting. I've literally never seen a worse community for an online game in my life -- even the people in Maplestory are better than that, and they were 13-15 year olds.

[AndyNPC]

Originally Posted by AndyNPC

I've been playing Friday the 26th. It's real fun when you get past DATABASE LOGIN FAILURE and get a group that has mics and speak English. My favorite counselor is Chad.

I only got to play like two rounds this entire weekend because of how bugged the servers are. If you were planning to get this game, wait another week. It's unplayable right now. Hopefully they'll fix it, and if not then only I will have to be the one that wasted $40.

[Solid Snix]

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is pretty freakin good. While thus far I still hold that last year's Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest is the best game in the series, Echoes has a lot going for it.

1. It's really ****ing weird

Echoes is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, which was originally released on the Famicom and is the second game in the series. It is notable for being really ****ing weird, and Echoes stays true to that.

Gaiden sees you controlling two armies simultaneously, moving them around on a world map and getting into encounters in a way not too dissimilar to Super Mario Bros 3. FE2 was from before the weapons triangle system and archers being unable to counter-attack up close.

Promoting units require you reach the end of dungeons and interact with a statue. Oh yeah, this game has dungeons that you freely move around in. Be careful though because there are enemies strung about, and touching them initiates an encounter of SRPG fashion.

On top of reaching a precious source of promotion, you explore dungeons to both grind off of goons and the undead, as well scavenge for items to carry into battle. But because Gaiden was from a simpler time, you didn't have like five spaces of inventory to equip four weapons and a healing item. You have one slot per character, so chose what you give them wisely.

Oh but speaking of undead, there's a giant ****-off zombie dragon that you're supposed to come back to and fight. I haven't encountered it yet in Echoes, but in Gaiden you could just manipulate its simple ai and take it down way early!

Anyway, the point is that this game is different from a lot of other FE's, and Echoes doesn't shy away from bringing back these experimental features from the NES-era. But with that being said:

2. This game updates these 25-year-old mechanics for the modern era

Battles are fast and flashy with fully voiced dialogue. Dungeons are actually pretty fun to explore and are accompanied by lore. The original soundtrack that was kind of baller as **** is back, but now in the orchestrated. Units are now actual characters and all have support conversations with one-another. And thank god the promotions aren't random (oh yeah I forgot to tell you, in the original famicom version, the class a unit would become when promoted was random???). All in all, this game being a blast from the past while also being made totally playable in today's standards is great in this long-ass, now yearly-release series because:

3. It's ultimately a breath of fresh air

Instead of just slapping Alm and Celica's faces on last year's Fates, they took an earlier game and essentially went in a different kind of progression with it. Instead of adding in the weapon's triangle and offspring units and the group-ups from recent games into an older one, they just went "What if we took these mechanics we dropped and just made them ****ing work?"

So now instead of Fates but More, we have a way different spin on the Fire Emblem formula. The SRPG combat is familiar, but the way you go about battle and promoting units is a bit different now. The formula of "read a bunch of dialogue, get into next fight, read a bunch of dialogue" is chopped up by segments where you explore dungeons, look for items, and turn npcs into allies. Hell, even the art is different. Which brings me to my final point:

3. Yo, the art is really good for this game

everyone in this game has really pretty hair.

I think this art style fits the series super well and I'd like them to stick with it.

With all that being said, I hope they remake other entries like this in the future.