What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Gary Sax wrote: My in-laws got me Arkham Knight for PS4. Whatever fucking idiot decided to make the batmobile such a prominent part and make it a tank... fucking horrible. The controls are terrible too. The game starts so poorly because it is ramming batmobile stuff down your throat. I'm not impressed so far, and I was a big fan of the earlier games (never tried the prequel).

Yeah, they lost me with ARKHAM CITY--I don't think Batman benefits from the open world feel. ARKHAM ASYLUM was a perfect gem of a game, and things haven't been made so much better I feel the need for more Batman.

Plugging away at BORDERLANDS 2 with my Psycho. Doing some side stuff for Torgue. He's hilarious. And badass. Badhilassious is probably what he would SHOUT. The missions kind of suck though. I spend way too much time computing how I am going to second wind so I can make it through these boss encounters.

MtG PUZZLE QUEST is eating me up on iOS right now. I'll post about that over on that thread.

I am utterly addicted to Fallout 4.

Last week was Ukranian Christmas so my son got Splatoon. It's not the best game for us to play together but it's ok. However on line it is amazing and even the single player mode is all right.

I've never been interested in on line team shooters... at all. But this concept is cool enough that I dig it more than I thought I would. The fact that they're paint guns does change things but it's not simply a cosmetic change that allows kids to kill each other without odd moral questions coming up, there's much more to it. The ability to paint all the walls and floors and then secretly move through them as a squid (who can't attack but can hide instead) adds a really fun element to the strategy of the game. I'm still not that into shooters but this one, being both third person (I hate first person perspective, it always feels like someone put a box on my head to me) the fun imaginative setting and the cool squid tactics really elevate this one for me. If I were into this kind of game this would be the one I'd play.

In all seriousness, anyone who is not watching Giant Beastcast's Kerbal Space Program play along is really missing out. It has had me bust out laughing out loud in my office multiple times during the last few weeks. This week is the hardest I've laughed at any media for some time (moment they realize what different orbits mean).

www.giantbomb.com/videos/kerbal-project-...-part-05/2300-10935/

BTW, it's for subscribers, but GB subscription isn't super expensive and it has been worth it for me because I enjoy their staff, especially their new east coast staff (Austin Walker is great).

Gary Sax wrote: My in-laws got me Arkham Knight for PS4. Whatever fucking idiot decided to make the batmobile such a prominent part and make it a tank... fucking horrible. The controls are terrible too. The game starts so poorly because it is ramming batmobile stuff down your throat. I'm not impressed so far, and I was a big fan of the earlier games (never tried the prequel).

Arkham Asylum was an amazing setting and some good bat action. Arkham City scored a few less points on the setting/vibe but made up for it by perfecting the gameplay. Man it just feels like being Batman.

Didn't try the pre-quel, but all my friends said that I played the game already with AC and it's DLC and to not waste my money - Arkham Knight looks to be more of the same.

Gary Sax wrote: BTW, it's for subscribers, but GB subscription isn't super expensive and it has been worth it for me because I enjoy their staff, especially their new east coast staff (Austin Walker is great).

The Kerbal stuff isn't premium. I really need to watch those.

Played two more games in our BB1 league this weekend. Woof. Seriously beatdown by some Norse. I got torn apart, played most of the game with 4-5 players and lost 5-0. Then I played Nurgle again and lost 2-0. I'm sure Jeff and Dave are sick of me whinging about it in our email threads but do to some scheduling wonkiness everybody had to play the same two players twice before moving on, and I happened to get set up with arguably our small league's two best players. It doesn't help I'm High Elves and the rest of the league is Nurgle, Norse, Chaos Dwarves, Chaos and Orcs. Poor decision on my part. My elves are in bad shape after 3 games I only have one player at Level 2. I need to go back in after our commish validates my last match to see if someone else leveled up.

Elf BB is the best BB, never a poor decision to play the most tactically advanced and rewarding teams. You'll be running those teams in circles in the long term.

​I've been working through some of my Steam backlog.

Capsule - A small game that is composed entirely of interacting with a radar/sonar screen. You have to navigate an environment while sending out pings to identify objects (to avoid) and to find more oxygen and fuel (which don't last long). You are uncovering a story through messages you download at each base you reach. It was a fun little game, I recommend it.

Ikaruga - My first game of the shmup/bullet hell type (probably not a good starting point I've been told). I liked it, though I started on easy. Once I realized how chaining worked, it opened it up quite a bit. Not sure I have the time to put into it at the moment, but I definitely plan to get back to it.

Monaco - I did the first 5 or 6 missions (with 3 other players) and it felt pretty boring. The stealth system didn't work for me, and it was way too easy to just brute force your way through it. Maybe it was the people I was playing with and hard to keep track of what 3 other players are doing, but I didn't catch any sort of story while playing.

Risk of Rain - I love rougelikes, but I couldn't get into this one. The super tiny scale of the art turned me off, and it just didn't click with me. Maybe I'll come back to it at a later time and see if works better for me.

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist - A free game by the guy who did The Stanley Parable. It's pretty amusing, and rather clever. It's only like 20 minutes long, so you should give it a try.

Portal Stories: Mel - A stand-alone mod for Portal 2. Also free. It is amazing how different the tightly constructed puzzles by Valve are compared to puzzles made by someone else. Valve's puzzles guide you to the solution as you are solving them to make you feel smart. The puzzles in Mel feel very rough and unrefined. They're hard, but not in a good way. I sat in many of them for 15 minutes trying to figure out what to do. I read that a lot of other people felt the same way. It got to a point where I didn't want to bother anymore and uninstalled it. Also, the constant mispronunciation of "aegis" was driving me crazy.

Next up is Batman: Arkham Asylum. I started it earlier in the year but stopped because I didn't have the time I thought I would need to play through it while finding everything, like the Riddler puzzles. I've decided I don't care about that and I'm just going to play through the main game for the story since everyone seems to love this game.

Still dazzled by Door Kickers. The campaign maps are even more awesome. There was a raid in a port, with three team spawning from three rubber boats. We hit the unloading area, a small yacht and an office complex simultaneously.

Da Bid Dabid wrote: Elf BB is the best BB, never a poor decision to play the most tactically advanced and rewarding teams. You'll be running those teams in circles in the long term.

I hope so ... but our league isn't that long. 6 players, everybody plays one another twice and then maybe playoffs for the championship. Who knows, maybe I will make a late run and kick on. That's what happened with our first table top league and I was playing humans.

I finally got to the point in MGS V where Quiet will be helping me. I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes. I've also as of yet been unable to procure a Transportation Specialist. I really want one of those so I can start fultoning larger stuff.

I love the game, but its difficulty is all over the place. One mission will be near impossible and the next a cake walk.

Thanks for the comments on Arkham Knight. I loved Asylum and have kinda bounced off City after trying it a couple times - it's fun but I think I'm Batman'd out. Your various comments have quelled the sudden desire to get Arkham Knight and brought me back to reality.

I'll get into it deeper, but it is not endearing itself to me right now (and I loved City too!). The basic core gameplay is just as good as it ever was but it is getting fucking complicated.

Gary, I don't even have the link handy, but someone solo'd BLOODBORNE on NG6 without dodging or rolling.