What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

I did a top 3 on New Years on twitter. Top is Bloodborne, I think, followed by Mario 3d world and then Card Hunter.

DESTINY: THE TAKEN KING was amazing. Best game I played in 2015. Followed closely by ROCKET LEAGUE. Both could be supplanted by SUPER MARIO MAKER once I can sink my teeth in on that title.

Hex Sinister wrote: Is the couch co-op pretty good or tacked on?

It's a built-in. They definitely had husband-and-wife as the driving idea behind the game. Even the main characters default as man-woman. I also love that there's internet games, so you could have two couples playing together on their couches via the webz.

Cool, thank you. I'll keep this one in mind for sure. It's hard as hell to find games for me and the lady. Trading off on Skyrim is okay at best.

Big Games Workshop sale on Steam. Has anyone played Space Hulk Ascension? I have the first Space Hulk for my iPad, but I'm curious about the more video gamey Ascension and what it offers.

I have enjoyed it. It is well worth the $10 on sale. I had to take the plunge for BB2 and the two available DLC teams. I am interested in Relic coming to digital form. Different name, but same game I would think.

Gary Sax wrote: I did a top 3 on New Years on twitter. Top is Bloodborne, I think, followed by Mario 3d world and then Card Hunter.

Nice! I got into Card Hunter (and the ipad version) for awhile but it got too same-y for me after awhile. I think I stopped after the first major arc or so. Cool ideas though.

I played about 40 hours, bought the starter pack and the expansions... total of like 30 bucks? I didn't get to the sci-fi content but finished almost all the rest. But the 40 hours I put in was very enjoyable and I consider my experience over. It's a really good free to play game with respect to being friendly to someone who just wants to make a solid package purchase.

I bought The Witness, it's downloading overnight. I've heard wonderful things so I'm excited about it, might play it with my wife. I liked Braid a lot.

The Witness does look pretty cool. Had I not just grabbed Rise of the Tomb Raider over the weekend I'd probably have already gotten it.

Gary Sax wrote: I bought The Witness, it's downloading overnight. I've heard wonderful things so I'm excited about it, might play it with my wife. I liked Braid a lot.

Played it for an hour last night. It's austere in the extreme, so far. Gorgeous though. Very intuitive puzzles and level design.

I played The Witness for about two hours. "Austere" is putting it mildly.

It's interesting to be sure. The way the game presents information is _brilliant_, and I'm not going to explain how. But as an example, there was a piece where I noticed something very subtly changing. I didn't pick up on it at first. But then something changed in a sequence of puzzles and I realized the game was telling me to anticipate it.

The puzzles themselves...I'm not completely sold on. They are old timey maze-type puzzles, there doesn't seem to be anything but this one particular type of puzzles. But there have been a couple of twists that have complicated that setup. .And again, the game gives you information but you have to translate it using what you already know...or go looking for a key to decipher the newest information.

I keep wanting to get back to it, so that's a good sign...but I'm iffy on it being a $40 title and I'm not sure if it'll be compelling in after 10 or so hours.

Played the Witness for an hour this evening with my wife. Got out of the tutorial area. So far, so good.

Then I started playing Darkest Dungeon now that it made it out of Early Access to 1.0. It's an amazing game. It's just that... it has been a depressing, kind of grinding year for me and the idea of coming home and getting my ass kicked for a while in a video game, basically just trying to stay above water with all my rapidly deteriorating heroes... it's a hard sell after work.

PSA for anyone interested in Bayonetta 2. Hold off on getting those $70-90 copies if you aren't particularly interested in getting Bayonetta 1 with it.

Bayonetta 2 is getting re-released on Feb 19 for the Smash Bros tie-in. Price: $30

It won't include the first game, but still a great deal. I wish I had waited to pull the trigger... sorta, though I really enjoy the bundle and both games are fantastic.

Bayonetta remains quite possibly the best action video game I've ever played. I remember the first time I played through it I was just laughing the whole time...you THINK you've played over the top games before...I think it may even blow stuff like God Hand away. The second one is the lesser only because you expect it to be as ludicrous as the first one and it is, but it doesn't exceed that. But it has some of the better scenes in it.

Seriously- between these two games, Vanquish, Mad World, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance...let alone the unexpectedly amazing Transformers: Devastation- Platinum is literally the absolute best developer working in action games today. And now they are doing a TMNT game...that is a day one download as far as I'm concerned.

I'm about 100 puzzles into The Witness at this point. I think the game is brilliant and some of the puzzle designs are almost astonishingly smart. The way the game gives you information and actually engages the player in a dialogue- without any dialogue- is stunning. The environments are interesting and beautifully rendered. The level design is completely organic, and only gated by your own knowledge of how to solve particular puzzles. I'm far enough into it now to see how its "variations on a theme" plays out, if you're worried that it's "just" single-line mazes...well, just wait until it starts to change things up on you. Same concept, but different execution.

So I think this game is really great and mostly deserving of all the accolades...but I can't help but mention that there is a certain preciousness to it that I think is both cloying and somewhat annoying. There is no direct narrative to speak of, but it does use the silly "audio log" trope to feed the player these bits of disjointed, out-of-context readings of quotes from folks like Rabinadrath Tagore. It comes across as stupendously pretentious in a bratty "I'm not going to be like Call of Duty!" way. Maybe there is a larger or more subtle theme that will come out later on, but for now the game is essentially an extremely well-designed update to the MYST-style game...sans terrible "CD-ROM game" acting. But with Philosophy 101 aphorisms in place of it.

A couple of the puzzles are just ridiculous...there have been a couple where I thought I had the logic, didn't, and wound up going in circles for 20 minutes. There was one where what I thought was just decoration wound up being the key to solving it. There was one where I never did figure out the logic but I trial and errored it somehow.

DO NOT, whatever you do, look at any kind of hints or walkthroughs. The whole point is that the GAME teaches you how to find the solutions- if you pay attention to it. So learn from it. Not some dude on YouTube.