What Games Are You Playing?

qaiz said:
Yup, I can already tell that Mario Maker will be Giant Bomb's GOTY which is crazy in a year that MGSV released since the guys there love that franchise
Haha, I 100% agree - this is one of the specific examples I was thinking of! I think they actually started hinting that it will be lately after the changes that were made to MGSV after it came out, but ever since the first "GB Makes Mario" feature I've thought it would be.

Bloodborne will definitely win some awards too, the new DLC has been nicely timed to remind people about that game, but I think it's kind of crazy for people to give GOTY to The Witcher 3 as I didn't see any coverage of that game that stayed positive all the way though, compared to the hype when people had only played a few hours of it.
 
Yup from the 'Giant Bomb Makes Mario' streams to the whole 'The Ryckoning' charity stream that Dan did with Patrick I've never seen the Giant Bomb crew have so much fun with a game, honestly seeing seeing Jeff and Dan laughing and seeing them smile is super infectious and seeing their minds being blown for example when they used the POW block on the conveyor belt to get into the door was just amazing to see. It doesn't look like Brad has jumped into Mario Maker, he's always the wildcard when it comes to GOTY :p

I knew Mario Maker would be amazing from the second it was leaked and announced, and even then it's come a long way, go back and watch the E3 2014 Trailer, it's changed a lot since! I honestly believe that Mario Maker is just an ingenious piece of software, from the way you shake things to change them to the way you just drag a mushroom onto something to make it larger, Mario Maker is a textbook example of a Nintendo game.

I had the same Feelings regarding The Witcher 3 as yourself so I was surprised too, it seemed to fizzle out but apparently a lot of people like it, it's a well made game I guess. I still think that Xenoblade X is the open world game of the year but outside of Austin, the Giant Bomb crew have unsurprisingly ignored it :p
 
Made more progress with No More Heroes, Shinobu boss fight was tough, took an hour to beat.

In a rather off-topic note, I remembered a nostalgic moment from 14 years ago when I got a PS2 for Christmas. It came with a demo disc which featured FIFA 2001, SSX and Wild Wild Racing. It was that demo disc that got me into getting SSX Tricky. Interestingly enough I did not recognise the other games shown on the disc (I did recognise Ridge Racer V) until now - Dark Cloud, Dead or Alive 2, Metal Gear Solid 2 & Zone of the Enders.

December 2001 was a fun moment.


Yes I still have the disc. And the console also came with a physical copy of WRC 2001 demo, which was also fun to play.
 
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Good stuff, Grav. The PS2 really does have the deepest games library of any system, I think.

qaiz said:
the Giant Bomb crew
I definitely don't know what kind of angle Brad is going to come at the goty stuff from. I felt like he was on the MGSV train as hard as anyone, but he is willing and able to argue something personal to him all the way into the top 10. I really look forward to Austin's input for the first time this year though, the same as I did during their E3 coverage.
 
Yup, Brad is one sly sun of a gun, how he managed to get Destiny into the top ten last year after Jeff absolutely destroyed the game blows my mind. I was hoping that Bayonetta 2 would win personally. Speaking of which, Dan did a terrible job of selling Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze to the rest of them lmao, I love that game and the soundtrack :(. Austin's going to come in representing those Gundam games for sure lol.
 
Haha, the DKC:TF soundtrack incident was so good. I think Dan will stand up for his choices more this year now he is settled in.

I hated seeing Destiny get in last year, but on the other hand it was really exciting a while ago when Brad got Starcarft II up really high.

Always nice to run into someone else who follows GB. :thumb:
 
Been playing black ops 3 quite a bit, here's my stats so far
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I'm probably not the best at the "Role Playing" part of RPGs, I tend to create a character based on the kind of gameplay I want and maybe with a mind to completing certain quests in certain ways (once I've played the game a bit). Even so, I've been having a pretty interesting experience in Fallout 4 recently.

My first character was focussed on Charisma and Luck so I could try out the new settlement and critical systems (both fun, though settlements can eat your life and make you question if it was all worth it). After playing for a while, I thought I'd create a new character that would use Power Armour and not much VATS and since my other character was a goodie-goodie type she'd be much less sociable. I didn't want to go for "evil" because I have another character for that (more of an assassin), so she basically left the vault in a bad mood and tended to be as rude and moody as possible.

I've actually ended up spending far more time around "civilisation" with her, my other character built up settlements but didn't really visit many existing NPCs. I've also done some of the main quest (partly due to needing to in order to advance faction stories, which is a bit of a shame) and I wasn't keen on the way it kind of railroads your character in the conversations. In visiting the story locations I also stumbled on some side quests and took on the occasional companion (despite being a Lone Wanderer) and it's actually been good fun interacting with people.

While I'm not so keen on the dialogue wheel, some of the conversations are still pretty good fun. Being "mean" to people doesn't automatically drive them away, some like the more serious and cynical view and even the "good" aligned companions sometimes react better to a snarky comment than trying to be constantly nice. My character is pretty much always moody or sarcastic but it feels like she has organically developed to actually maybe start thinking that she could live in this world and that maybe there are some decent (or at least tolerable) people around.

It didn't really strike me that all this was happening until I was doing a particular side quest where you kill some bad people in the name of justice. I happened to bring along the companion that was hanging around at the time, mostly because he was wearing an outfit that I thought was appropriate for the job. Aside from being a really fun quest, there was a whole other story developing alongside it where it felt like my character was getting into things for more than just the pay and passing the time. She even started to build up some trust with her companion, who she'd only really been tolerating because she needed his help for the main quest before. It was really just a coincidence of different elements and unrelated parts of the game happening to work together at the same time but somehow it came out as a really good story that I didn't expect.

I'd imagine a lot of other people have played through the same quests and played similar characters but somehow the way the whole thing worked felt like a unique story with a certain natural realism to it. It's these kinds of moments that remind me why I really like RPGs, maybe you're always playing through a story that someone else has written but even despite that the experience can still feel uniquely yours. As much as these kind of games tend to be a bit light on the story and role playing elements, there's still a lot of potential for some fun experiences and sometimes you might just get lucky enough to have things come together to make for some great moments.

A bit of a ramble there but I thought it was interesting so hopefully someone else might too.

ilmaestro said:
Bloodborne will definitely win some awards too, the new DLC has been nicely timed to remind people about that game, but I think it's kind of crazy for people to give GOTY to The Witcher 3 as I didn't see any coverage of that game that stayed positive all the way though, compared to the hype when people had only played a few hours of it.
Has there been any negative coverage of The Witcher 3 from people playing for longer? I don't really follow these things much but the only negatives I've really seen were complaints that pre-ordering the expansion pass may have resulted in a slightly worse deal when they also offered a good deal on the first expansion (though it remains to be seen if that pans out). I've found my time with it to be fairly consistently enjoyable, I've played for a fair while but then I'm not necessarily miles into the story (which tends to be secondary with the way I play).
 
Not negative per se, more just that the back third of the game maybe isn't as tight as it could be. They also did a fair bit of work patching that game to get it into the state some people wanted it, which I'm still not sure how to assess as far as how it makes me think about GOTY awards.
 
I have an irrational love for the original Xenoblade Chronicles. Needless to say I've been waiting a long time for the follow-up.

So yeah:

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20 or so hours in at the moment. The game demands a lot but it is oh-so rewarding.
 
ilmaestro said:
Not negative per se, more just that the back third of the game maybe isn't as tight as it could be. They also did a fair bit of work patching that game to get it into the state some people wanted it, which I'm still not sure how to assess as far as how it makes me think about GOTY awards.
But... Gwent.

I think I'd struggle to pick a game of the year these days. Not so much because there's a lot of close competition (though I guess that'd be a factor) but more because I've probably only played a handful of potential candidates. I just don't seem to play as many games these days and most of those tend to be the kind of thing you can potentially play for hundreds of hours. I'm not really sure if that says more about how I've changed or how games have, perhaps it's just both.
 
All I played this year was Splatoon and Mario Maker :X I bought MM3D the day it came out and haven't even opened it yet, in fact I bought ALBW day one and haven't opened that either, likewise for Bravely Default and many other games over the last few years.
 
I knew I wouldn't have time to play A Link Between Worlds when it came out so I sadly haven't even bought it yet! A Link to the Past is in my top 5 all time, too.

My favorite handheld game of the year has been Fire Emblem if, although I'm not sure if I played another handheld game that came out for the first time in 2015. ^^;
 
No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise (PlayStation 3)
It's been a while so let's talk about my progress with Suda51's No More Heroes PS3 release.

Progress with this game started out a bit rough due to the difficulty but once I got about half-way (like Rank 5 onwards) it got easier because I've been upgrading my weapon to Tsbuaki MK-III as well as strength. Once I maxed my weapon and accessories I literally got S ranks for Rank 2 which is sweet.

Sidestories like Assassination Gigs and Part-Time Jobs are 100% complete, there were a few gigs that I had problems with to reach Gold (13 being the most notable due to the difficulty and 'beat it within 15 seconds' requirement) but the rest were fine thanks to the same reasons above. I have 9 Free Fights to work on and I saved those until I had max weapon strength and unlimited battery. Card collecting and Wrestling masks are going well and haven't missed any. I also decided to collect all of the Lokilov balls scattered all over Santa Destroy, figured why not.

Now when it comes to the game itself, No More Heroes is a lot of fun and I really enjoy the dialogue in this game. What puts the game back from being a 10/10 is due to the technical issues that I just can't ignore. First of, the lock-on doesn't work all of the time and it can be a real pain when it doesn't target the person you want especially when it comes to the Gig missions. The dodging is also a bit rough at times and it resulted in me getting my ass kicked multiple times during the Rank 8 and 7 boss fights. The frame rate is also rather off during the driving sequences and once you get really OP and slice multiple enemies at once the game does suffer from some lag (this is due to 'too many things going on' on the screen). Another issue that I hate is with the takedown kills, pressing R2 and Square does not work most of the time and I wish they changed the button input for this to something like R2 and then use the Joysticks much like grabbing someone and wrestling them. Aside from those notes the rest of the game is spot on.

A Platinum seems pretty likely as I've achieved nearly half of the trophies thus far but it depends on how well I can handle Hard mode ('Bitter') and Free Fights. Overall it's a really fun game and I do recommend that you check it out when you have the time.

No More Heroes Progress:
Trophy Progress: 42%
Playtime: 18 Hours 2 Minutes
Playthrough: 1 (Normal 'Mild')
Rank: 2
Cards: 45
T-Shirts: 42

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"Moe"
 
Chroma Squad - Power Rangers inspired tactical RPG where you play as a cast of actors making their own TV show, good fun.

Psychonauts - Been wanting to play this for ages, but never bopthered, seems like a good old school 3D platform game so far, which is great i my book, need more of them!
 
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