What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Michael Barnes wrote: Fire Emblem: Rebirth- I went with the "easier" edition, I've realized that the permadeath thing is a load of crap in FE because there's no real way to rebound from major loss, and losing key classes early on to stupid one-shot criticals winds up making the game more frustrating than fun.

I think that's the wrong way to regard permadeath in Fire Emblem.

Permadeath is in the game to force the player to always put 100% into the game, that is, you cannot make a mistake or someone dies. It's what gives the games this tight, puzzle-like feeling and I think the game loses a lot if that's not a concern. For me, it seems it and the experience limitations are key to Fire Emblem so it feels wrong to remove it.

It also leads to lots of balance problems and makes the game snowball. With permadeath every single enemy is a challenge so even when there are few of them the game reamins challenging. Without it you can just suicide all your units and win, trivializing bosses and rendering some challenges meaningless. A mage has a staff but is protected by infantry? Suicide an unit on it. Archer hiding behind armour? Suicide an unit an unit. Reaching the end boss? Suicide every single unit of your army on it because there's no reason not to. Kamikaze tactics work better than anything else and removing permadeath enable them.

I mean, you should play the game as you like it best! But I really dislike non-Permadeath Fire Emblem. It's like making units respawn in Chess, just...wrong =P

The Critical hit thing is baffling, though, since it was solved back in the 1990s and then brought back.

Finished Uncharted 2, I liked it a bunch, though it has a few too many of the same scenes. We get it, there are a lot of bad guys and some of them have RPGs or whatever. I also don't like having the main characters become a romance, but then again I'm the oonly person who plays videogames these days for reasons other than making space people fuck.

I have Uncharted 3, but taking a break for something different: Unravel, a platform game where you're this little yarn golem. It's fun so far, and a nice break. After that will probably be Firewatch or Tales from the Borderlands. Then Uncharted 3.

I've also been looking at games I already have on my PS4 that I didn't play much. Assassin's Creed: Black Sail, The Last of Us, Lego Hobbit. I only got a little ways into each of these and didn't really go for them, so I may just delete them to free up space. Am I missing anything here?

Fired up Rise of the Tomb Raider after being away from it for a while. And of course I'm in a long combat sequence. :/

I really just want to raid tombs.

I am in the endgame of THE WITNESS (it's pretty great), and when that winds up, I'll be looking. I might go back to DIABLO 3, need to fix my account that some rando polluted with a hacked character, giving me like 1500 Paragon Levels. Feels dirty playing it. It's OK, gives me a chance to work on Crusader, whom I kind of ignored.

I am looking at DARK SOULS 3 of course, but I want it healthy. It'll be 1.0 in April and lord knows I will be pissed if something borks a save in that game.

Anyone looking to ship out BLOODBORNE for PS4? I want a crack at that.

More Earthbound, but now with lots of Mario Maker and Smash Brothers in the mix. My son has decided to proceed forth with Super Metroid...I told him that if he beats it we'll get that Metroid Prime Trilogy. Is there multiplayer in one of those three games?

Speaking of multiplayer, in a few weeks is Spring Break. Our plans to go out of town fell through, so outside of a few hiking day trips we'll be in the area. I'm thinking about picking up the hardcopy of Shovel Knight and the amiibo (*groan*) so that my son and I can play it two player in the evenings. Think we can get this title done in a week playing an hour or two each night?

Also, with the Twilight Princess HD about to come out, it's got me itching for some Zelda. Think I should go for it or the Wind Waker HD?

Sounds like a great time at Mr. White's house.

If you liked TWILIGHT PRINCESS, WINDWAKER should be great. I wasn't a huge fan, and would lean towards the LINK BETWEEN WORLDS on the handheld, but that's me.

Don't mock Amiibos, man. Those are cool toys. I think you can beat the game as you describe, but SHOVEL KNIGHT has a lot of secrets and cool shit to find for completionists. It'll be great either way. Is ROGUE LEGACY on that platform? Pick that one up if able--it's not 2p, but it lends itself to handoffs run over run (it's a roguelike, so you die all the time).

I think the second METROID PRIME has multiplayer, but not sure if that came over on the trilogy build.

Just bought the WiiU and various Mario stuff "for the kids".

Well done Lee...best console on the market. You win Father of the Year.

More on Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2. I am going to say something crazy, I think this is going to turn out to be one of the best games of the year. A total surprise. I actually am having more fun with this one than I was with Battlefront, and I'm finding myself wishing that PopCap did it instead of Dice. Weird, I know. But this game is GREAT. The gameplay is really top notch with lots of unique modes, a generous amount of single-player only content that is NOT some kind of shoehorned/phoned in campaign but rather integral to the core design concepts. really fun (and not frustrating) multiplayer, colorful visuals, tons of quests and upgrade options...every time I start it up I'm almost overwhelmed by how much there is to do and see, it's easily equal to Destiny in this regard but the progression is more...wait for it...satisfying.

It has that whole lightflash/DING! frisson of opening packs of cards too...most of which you buy using money you earn by playing the game, not by putting it on your credit card. Although that option is there, it feels completely like an optional accelerator.

The quest missions are fun, the Garden Ops gameplay is great. I love how they mix up the defense stuff- you'll get a wave where you have to run through checkpoint hoops ("Because I don't know why!" the game tells you) or collect chickens. You use consumables that come from the cards you open, so you might have to REALLY think about using your last Bonk Choy halfway through the game.

River and I played for about about hour and half over the weekend splitscreen, and it was a blast. He's not very good at it (because 6) but we laughed a bunch and got to try out all of the characters. The corn guy is probably my favorite, but I'm also partial to this cactus that is effectively a sniper...and has a radish drone that you can pilot over the battlefield. He also lays Wall-nuts and potato mines. The orange is pretty great too- he transforms into a ball like Samus.

The zombie side I've just played with a little, but the superhero is really fun as is the pirate (he also has a drone, a robot parrot). There are a TON of varieties of each character and all kinds of customization options.

Above all, the game is just FUN to play. It is just tuned to fun, and that's it. Everything about it charming, silly and inviting and virtually nothing about it is off-putting or ugly.

Target has it for $41.99 if you reserve another game for $1.

So FarCry: Primal is pretty damn good. Even my wife is playing it now. There is a great world to explore and most everything wants to kill you. I dig having pets that you can send to bring down enemies. It is worth a rental at the very least.

Should I pre-order Dark Souls III for the Xbox one ? I've never played any of these

Black Barney wrote: Should I pre-order Dark Souls III for the Xbox one ? I've never played any of these

Remember Jedigenius's spielon the wonders of Ninja Gaiden - if you dig that type of game, then yes.

I think it is also a really good choice if you are into games like Pattycake Panic and Natalie Imbruglia's Crystal Crunch.

Black Barney wrote: Should I pre-order Dark Souls III for the Xbox one ? I've never played any of these

You'll like it unless you're fucking baby that cries all the time like a baaaaaaaby

the_jake_1973 wrote: So FarCry: Primal is pretty damn good. Even my wife is playing it now. There is a great world to explore and most everything wants to kill you. I dig having pets that you can send to bring down enemies. It is worth a rental at the very least.

How would you compare with 4? I wanted to get 4 because now it's discounted, but if Primal is better, I'm willing to wait. The reason I'm attracted to Primal is because I like how Far Cry 3's culture was so strange, and Primal would even be more different!

I think I'll probably preorder since 100%ed Bloodborne and ground through a lot of DS2 sins of the first scholar.

It does make me wonder, though, if I shouldn't just work through DS2 and the Bloodborne DLC and get to DS3 when it has a great GOTY edition or something...