Now Playing

Not sure, haven't seen the movie in a while. Not that great a movie though, only good part is James Woods as Hades.

I started up Persona Q on my 3DS. Pretty fun game. Writing is mostly just fanservice as I expected. The new characters are meh at best and the rest are really flanderized. Didn't do any favours for Naoto and Yukiko at all but the guys in particular still have some pretty funny moments. I never thought I'd be a huge fan of these sorts of dungeon crawler games but I guess this and Legend of Grimrock proved me wrong.

My friend got me Rock Band 4 for Christmas. We played some of it last night. I still need to get all my DLC downloaded. Mostly just played some songs last night. Some cool new tracks on it like The Cure. The character customization seemed really lackluster though. Don't think we'll be able to recreate our band.

The set list on the new game just seemed so bland to me. Only a handful of songs that interested me. Someday I'll get it. For some reason that I cannot explain, my Wal-Mart never got it in. Thought that was odd.

I'm playing the PS4 port of Final Fantasy VII and am doing gameplay videos with commentary. My first video didn't have it because I couldn't find a mic. I subsequently went out and bought one. I've been posting them to my FB timeline for now but I'm going to have my own YouTube channel for game play videos.

I've been streaming myself playing it as well, but I don't normally get many visitors. ajampam watched me play for a while one day. I don't stream if I'm level grinding though, can't really figure out why anyone would want to watch that.

For posterity, of course.

Haven't gamed much lately. Been chipping away a little at Hearts of Stone. It is pretty good so far. I am hoping to finally get around to finishing Game of Thrones, but it bores the crap out of me. I kind of just want to see it through though at this point. I'm in Episode 5.

I ended up sending Tri Force Heroes back to Gamefly. Just isn't meant for singleplayer. May try it again down the road. Not sure what I am going to get next.

Wanted something else to play on the Xbox One so rented Ryse: Son of Rome. A very good looking game. Enjoying it so far. Getting a big combo going is pretty fun. Might get repetitive after a while, but I hear it is short. I was going to rent Mad Max, but still working on Hearts of Stone and didn't want two big open-world things going at once.

Played a bit of Smash Bros. solo. Will be better with some friends over. I played the 3DS version, so I had tried most of the new characters I think, but it is still pretty cool.

I only have Omnislash to get and I'll have all of the side quest stuff wrapped up in Final Fantasy VII, after that it's level grinding and time to take on the two weapons for the first time.  I wish they'd do this treatment to Final Fantasy IX and I guess VIII (it's a stinker).  Maybe Konami will do the same thing with Metal Gear Solid 1 since Hideo went bye-bye-o. Call me crazy, but I'd spend money again on these games I love just for trophies and a cleaned up crisper look.

I started a new game on Skies of Arcadia and am just so happy I did. Just immediately put a smile on my face between how great the world, look, and music is to this game combined with how likeable and optomistic the characters are. I love this game so much

So sad they never released it (to my knowledge) in a format I can actually play it

You can probably get a Wii or Gamecube for cheaper than the game

*le sigh*

Finished Ryse: Son of Rome. I like the setting. Nice graphics. Wasn't all that much too it. Felt more repetitive than it should have given how short it was.

I finished The Witcher 3 expansion Hearts of Stone. It was great. The quests were more creative than a lot of the ones in the main game. Same with the boss fights. Combat is more challenging too. The story feels like one of the short stories from the books.

Beat Dragon Quest VI yesterday, so I started up Yo-Kai Watch. Seems pretty fun so far. I might also start up Persona 4 again, I'd like to give it one more try before Persona 5 comes out. Story was fun, didn't really like the gameplay at all though.

Been playing the Rise of the Tomb Raider Endurance mode. Not exactly my ideal kind of TR experience, but it is a cool idea to explore in an extra mode like this. Has some pretty cool water cooler type moments due to the setup.

I also have Mad Max coming from Gamefly. Looking forward to trying that.

I finally started up Metro 2033 on PC. So far it's scratched both the Half-Life itch and the Last of Us itch. What I mean to say is it's really good. Even though my character pretends to drink from a flying cup sometimes. Last Light seemed good, too, but the long beginning bothered me and I WAS playing it on a console at the time so I have to revisit it.

I'm done with Mad Max. The final mission requires you to finish a car combat race where the odds are ridiculously stacked against you and while there is a way to do it, after 30 something tries, I realized that I didn't give a shit. I wasn't having fun. I'm just not good at racing games or games with racing segments (you guys remember how much I bitched about similar segments in older Ratchet & Clank games).

Such a shame. I was having a good time with that game.

I just started Mad Max tonight. Not sure what to think so far. Only played about an hour.

I tried playing the Tomb Raider reboot again. Got to the part with stick-waggling and promptly deleted it off of my harddrive.

Also got the Dragon's Dogma PC port. You know those games where nothing seems to have any weight to it and you're just really confused? This is one of those games. Also, it has stick-waggling too and when I reloaded the game and retried a quest, I got different cutscenes for some reason. So now I'm even more confused. It's also incredibly quiet for some reason. I have to turn the volume over twice as high as I do for any other game. Overall it seems like one of those games that tries to mix things from other cool games, but always makes you want to play those instead. But since I can't refund it, I guess I'll give it a few more hours to see if it starts to make sense.

I weirdly liked the Tomb Raider reboot. Yes, the quicktime events were dumb and it lacked on variety but I just liked having an action game where I could jump about like a loon as I pleased

To be fair, I was using the Steam Controller which is frankly terrible for stick waggling stuff. But it's my preferred controller for those sorts of games otherwise so I'd rather not switch

Also I'm coming around to Dragon's Dogma pretty quickly. I think the problem is just that it starts with 4 mediocre boss battles, one of which seems totally random and 2 of which end abruptly with no real satisfaction. It does a lot to hide how good the combat actually is.

I'm pretty deep into Borderlands 2. I'm playing it on the Handsome Collection on PS4 and even though I'm playing it solo, I'm still having a lot of fun with it. I never was able to devote any time to that game when it first came out. Never made it past level 10 if I remember. I also have a deeper appreciation for the world now that I've played Tales from the Borderlands. Not saying its a world that needs that... but now a lot of the characters and even the brands of weapons you get have meaning. The thing that impresses me most about this game are the side missions are surprisingly varied and interesting. Don't remember that being the case in the first Borderlands.

ajapam wrote:To be fair, I was using the Steam Controller which is frankly terrible for stick waggling stuff. But it's my preferred controller for those sorts of games otherwise so I'd rather not switch

Also I'm coming around to Dragon's Dogma pretty quickly. I think the problem is just that it starts with 4 mediocre boss battles, one of which seems totally random and 2 of which end abruptly with no real satisfaction. It does a lot to hide how good the combat actually is.

Do you like the Steam controller? Debating buying one still...

I was writing up a big thing about it but I lost that. Build-wise, I like it apart from the bumpers. I hate bumpers and these are the worst ones. Some people complain about the face buttons being too small but that hasn't been a big issue for me. Like I said the stick is in a bad spot for waggling stuff but it's fine otherwise. It's more comfortable than the odd shape suggests.

Apart from Dark Souls and 2D platformers, I generally like it more than a 360 controller. You won't want to play something like Counter-Strike with it, but the average single-player FPS is a good fit. I haven't attempted any RTS games with it but there's some features for it that could theoretically make that work well. Also the motion control is incredible, especially because you can choose how to use it. Even compared to the Ps3's best motion controls, it's a world of difference. There's some issues to keep in mind, though.

First of all you have to be willing to take the time to configure it for your games. That shouldn't be a huge issue anymore now that people have had time to upload some configurations, but unfortunately it seems like some of the most popular configs are made by people who just wanted an Xbox controller. Those should go away with new games, though. Some games have recommended configurations but I often still spend a bit of time tweaking those as well. This generally isn't a huge time investment for controller centric games, but for hardcore PC games it can be. A friend and I ended up mapping about 80 different commands to it for Freespace 2. It's easily my favorite way to play that game, but setting it up was a daunting task.

Second of all the configuration screens themselves could use some work. There's lots of things that could easily work by clicking and dragging, but they use this clunky menu system. The firmware for the controller is still a work-in-progress. Valve's mostly added different control options but I really hope there's a configuration screen update.

My biggest problem, though, is that it feels like a lot of the games themselves aren't ready for it, and you run into some annoying and unexpected issues. It's all because the controller emulates both Xinput and a KB/M. Some games don't support simultaneous input from those, and some don't have enough in-game control settings (for games with QTEs or different types of gameplay, for example.) None of them exist for games with native support, but there aren't a ton of those. I'm really disappointed because MGSV is one of these finicky games. There's a way to work around it but it's just not as good as it could be.

Basically, if you like the idea of a new controller and want to see what it can do, I'd suggest getting it. If you just want to play games, I probably wouldn't. Unless you're waiting for a way to play space flight games without memorizing a billion buttons.

Haven't played much lately. Mad Max makes me a little angry, so I will probably throw in the towel on that one and send it back to Gamefly.

I played through the Baba Yaga DLC for Rise of the Tomb Raider. I enjoyed it, but was hoping for more. From a content standpoint it felt lacking. Not just because it is short in length, but because of the way they reuse sections within the new area and even have you spend some time in an old area for a bit. I really liked the one major puzzle and the final confrontation. There were some other cool moments too. Given how much I loved the main game, I think I was expecting to like this more though.

I decided to pick up The Witness today. I remember being so excited for this game at one point, but I honestly forgot about it entirely on two separate occasions. The first time was before the Ps4 reveal, because I had accepted that it would never come out. The second time was after, because, apart from the still-great puzzling, other indie games have improved upon everything Braid did. Jonathan Blow is obviously a really smart guy but that game tried to be too clever for it's own good at times. The main reason I went ahead with it was because the good reviews reminded me of why I was so excited for it.

And... I actually really love it so far. One thing that turned me off of the game is that the puzzles are very distinct PUZZLE puzzles. Basically a snake sort of game. But it introduces a whole bunch of different mechanics and gently guides you through figuring out how they work. There's also some cool twists on the formula that I've encountered. I can't make out any coherent story so far, just seemingly disconnected audio logs (which can be avoided if you don't want to bother with philosophizing blahblah,) but I'm not sure that's a big deal for me. It reminds me a bit of Antichamber, which I loved, and that game has no story at all. It's also incredibly beautiful. Every new area I enter makes my jaw drop

I really want to check out the Witness BUT...at the urge of my boss (my cool one not my psychotic one) I picked up Bloodborne. And as someone who was a bit iffy with the Souls series I'm absolutely hooked on it now. I bought it, kind of thought "is this going to be another game i buy and then don't beat...?" but he set the stage in terms of what to expect (die a lot, make it to the first boss as fast as you can etc") and it's great! Loving it.

Need to stop starting games that are 70+ hour games though...