The days are getting longer, and the nights are getting warmer. What better time to fire up some sweet, sweet interactive entertainment?
It’s hard to believe it’s already April, and that 2014 is almost a third over with. So much has already happened, so many big announcements and great games. As I’ve been doing each month this year, I thought I’d kick April off by asking what you’re playing. Here are the games that have been occupying most of my time of late:
Infamous: Second Son: I finished this game on a “good” playthrough and am now messing around with playing it evil. Turns out evil is a lot more fun, especially at first, mainly because you no longer have to worry about not blowing things up near civilians . It’s also much easier to earn an karmic streak and set off your amazing super-ability, which I used about four times total during my good playthrough.
There are still a lot of things about this game that annoy me, chief among them the incredibly accurate enemies who peg me with bullets no matter where I am or how fast I’m moving. I’m also surprised how much less variety there is in this game than there was in Infamous 2: There are fewer enemy types, only two “islands” of the city, the environments are less varied, and the boss fights mostly take place in enclosed spaces, rather than out in the city. But it’s just so damned pretty, and so fun to fly around the city, that I’m sure I’ll keep playing. I hope Sucker Punch is planning some solid DLC for this game, as I’d love to have some more real challenges to sink my teeth into. For now, anyway, I’m looking forward to playing it without any HUD.
Monument Valley: It’s a really good week for the iPad. Last night I started playing Monument Valley, a nifty puzzle game that combines Fez-style perspective puzzling with a slightly Journey-ish vibe. I’ve heard the game is very short, and so far I wish that the puzzles pushed back a bit more than they do, but as small, self-contained experience, it’s been lovely.
FTL: Faster Than Light: I’m finally obsessed. I played some of the PC version a little while after this game came out, but it wasn’t until I played the iPad version that I dove in fully. I’ve been playing for hours on end, and have gotten very close to beating the game on easy difficulty… but I’m not there yet. I’m only beginning to experiment with things like teleporting over to enemy ships, and each new thing I try feels like a big gamble. Which is exactly what makes the game exciting. Some commenters were complaining about how the randomised nature of the game makes it feel less masterable and sometimes cheap, which I totally get – I haven’t minded much so far, though. A recent, panic-inducing boarding left me scrambling to protect my ship and keep my crew alive, but thanks to my blast doors (always get blast doors ASAP!) I survived. What a great game this is.
Fez: I’ve been playing Fez again, this time on PS4 and Vita, mostly just to see how the game works on the new platforms. It looks pretty amazing on PS4, and the way those sunsets fill my living room… ugh. Gorgeous. I never finished the game the first time I played it and probably won’t finish it this time, but it’s nice to see it on new systems. The PS4’s game library is really rounding out, eh?
Luftrausers: I’ve been playing on Vita, and haven’t gotten far, but so far A) I love the music and B) the control scheme is brilliant. Especially on vita, it’s one of the best simple/complex control schemes I’ve come across in a while. I haven’t personally been bothered by the Nazi-evoking iconography in the game, though it sounds like some others have. That said, I certainly wouldn’t call it a “pleasant” game to play, and I found this article by the game’s creator Rami Ismail to be super interesting. I love how openly Ismail talks about his creative process and, crucially, its aftermath.
Final Fantasy X HD Remaster: I’ve been playing this mostly on Vita, because I love playing meaty JRPGs on Vita. I’m much more into it than I was expecting – the aquatic world it conjures is lovely and vivid and the story is growing on me, though MAN are some of these characters doofy. But it’s really the combat system that has me hooked — I asked Twitter what they made of FFX‘s combat, given that I was really liking it, and it turns out that a lot of you feel similarly. It might be the most satisfying turn-based system I’ve played in a core Final Fantasy game? (I’m not sure I like it more than Chrono Trigger, but that’s another story.) I don’t know if I’ll be able to spare the dozens of hours more that it’d take to get to the end, but I’m having a good time.
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Jason Schreier has been urging me to play this one for a while, and after I so enjoyed Danganronpa, I decided to pick up a DS cart and play through it. I haven’t gotten that far because I keep being distracted by other games, but so far I’m really into it. I plan to finish and then restart and complete Virtue’s Last Reward, hopefully in time for Danganronpa 2 to launch this fall. Gonna be a big year for visual-novel-style games!
Threes!: In the wake of all this 2048/1024/cloning stuff, I actually started just playing Threes again, and I’m having a blast. I think that it was reading through some of those awesome development texts and emails, but now that I’ve started to learn some strategies I’m getting higher scores than ever. (Though I’ve resigned myself that I’ll never match Jason’s insane top score, because he is a cyborg.)
Titanfall: This game continues to surprise me in that I find myself regularly going back to it even after sinking in a dozen or two hours during the first couple of weeks. That’s more or less unheard of for me with an online FPS, and a testament to how fun Titanfall really is.
One thing that’s got me bummed out, though: It really runs so much better on PC – the framerate is rock solid on my mid-grade rig and there’s no screen-tearing like there is on Xbox One. And yet, alas, I’ve accumulated so many levels on Xbox One (and my friends are all on Xbox One) that I don’t want to make the switch.
Those technical shortcomings aren’t a deal-breaker for me, but like I said when it first came out, I’m surprised the Xbox One version isn’t more polished, given how hard EA and Microsoft pushed it as the most important platform. I hope that an update is coming that will clean things up. When it comes to this game, I care so much less about resolution than I do about frame-rate. Then again, considering how much I tend to fixate on that sort of visual stuff, the Xbox One version’s frame-rate issues haven’t done much to diminish how much I’m enjoying the game.
Upcoming Stuff: I’m sure there’ll be a lot of April games that I won’t see coming, but for now, I’m looking forward to playing Child of Light (which I’ll be reviewing here) and the PC version of Dark Souls 2, which I’ve been holding out for despite really wanting to start the game on PS3.
So, that’s me. What have you all been playing?
Comments
27 responses to “What Are You Playing This Month?”
Probably just more EDF 2025.
I haven’t played anything else for the past two weeks.
BL2 GOTY(which was $12)
All batman games(which was $11)
Guild wars 2
Diablo 3
Star Citizen
Bf4
Titanfall
Goat simulator
Witcher 2
One finger death punch
Plus the backlog of games in my steam library 😛
Oh and Trials Fusion, and Halo Spartan Assault and…. …. …. Viscera Cleanup Detail 🙂
I must be destructive minded, I also finished Infamous on good and reckon I would have used the Karmic Streak once every three or so encounters. With the neon lasers you can slow time and take out the legs of five foes and bam, you’ve got it. Best part is they bank up not dissapear like the evil version
I am enjoying the evil playthrough just for the free roam chaos but I already did all the collectables in my good playthrough and the story makes pretty much zero sense for an evil character, especially considering the game is called infamous…
The ending for the evil playthrough is appalling.
Get concrete power for tribe > tribe elder banishes you > annihilate entire tribeIn all fairness with the title though, despite the fact that being infamous brings with it very little in terms of story, the game’s technically called ‘inFAMOUS’ in that there’s no real focus on one particular side of morality. Granted the evil side’s story is completely lackluster by comparison, the game’s intended title was never specifically aimed at the character choosing the road to infamy.
I just caught up to Walking Dead season 2.
I need to finish off BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea.
then some Diablo III.
I wish Monument Valley was on some other device, I’d really like to give it a go. For me, Dark Souls 2, trying to complete the last few missions in Luftrausers, finally sinking my teeth into Fez and giving Dishonored a go as the GOTY edition is on sale on PSN for $16 with PS+. Going to fire up the PS2 and get stuck back into Beatmania IIDX as well.
My goal for the month is to crack a run through of Reaper of Souls with each character, so probably only Diablo 3 for the month.
Start a game with a new character on Torment 6, then have a 70 join you.
You’ll be level 60 in an hour.
Couple of quests and rifts in adventure mode is all it takes. When you hit 60 though, your 70 companion will start to struggle with the difficulty.
Dark Souls 2 and Dynasty Warriors 8 CE are taking up all my time now and for the forseeable future. The only thing I can see stopping this from continuing is Watch Dogs
Well seeing as I am completing Year 12 VCE, and I no longer have my GTX 770 which basically renders me unable to play games on my PC, I’ll probably be playing anything my 4670K can handle at 1920×1080
Ha, render. Good one!
Probably…
– Insurgency
– Grim Dawn (Act 2 was released the other day XD)
– Titanfall (I’m going to aim for Gen3)
– Dark Souls 2 (when it releases on PC, so I suppose that’s what I’ll be playing next month)
Europa Universalis IV and Banished!
Titanfall, wanna add another Gen.
also gotta finish thief and the last dead rising DLC.
Back to the darkness for me with Diablo III – seems like a lot are heading back which is great! Plus some Titanfall here and there, inFamous SS and Zelda: ALBW. Aaaaaaand study 🙁
FFXHD, Deception IV and The Witch and the Hundred Knight if I have enough time. Probably not enough time for Hundred Knight though.
Is Deception IV actually good?
I would say pick it up on sale. To me its like a less fun version of Orcs Must Die. There is arguably more content in OMD2. The replay ability in this comes from creating new ways to utilize traps and completing challenges.
Trials fusion
Child of light
South park sot
Finished infamous today! Very nice
What planet are you living on? 😛
Planet AMERICA *dum-dum dum-dum*
My sis lent me a PS3 so I’m taking full advantage off that. I’m going to play some of the exclusives I’ve been missing out on this generation.
Wait. It has the FFX/X-2 remaster. Why would I play a new game when I can play a game I raced through a decade ago? I’m not being sarcastic. That’s what ended up happening.
I’m loving it. I was a lot younger when I saw it as way too linear. When I look at FF these days, and compare it to what I already had, I feel like one of those over entitled gamers I tend to dislike. I didn’t go into it with rose-tinted glasses.
The one thing I don’t like though is seeing the cut corners. The new visuals are great. But when you see a Guado NPC (Tromell, I think) next to a party member, the difference really shows. That really is a minor issue though. It’s one of the greatest turn based systems in any game. I will be spending a lot of hours in Spira.
Ignore the whining about the music not being original. It’s brilliant.
And it comes with a rougelike! Very hard to resist trying it out before playing the rest. Anyway, that’s what I’m playing this month, but only because I can’t afford Dark Souls 2.
The March release rush is over so I’m going to be unwinding my stack a bit. I’ll probably be finishing off my replay of Four Heroes of Light, and my NG+ run of Dark Souls II at the start. I have the Easter week off (ANZAC day and Easter in one week so only 3 days Annual Leave!) so I’m hoping to play Deception IV and Atelier Escha to Logy.
Trials Evolution
Trials Fusion
Child of Light
Mercenary Kings
Dead Island
Dark Souls 2- upto Nashandra and being the idiot I am I used a bonfire ascetic so I cant summon players, only Vengarl and Benheart who are pretty useless. I keep getting one shot killed too- the curse stuff is easy to avoid but dodging her attacks is a bitch.
Also been wanting to play World of Warcraft again and roll a new class. Either DK or Brewmaster Monk because I’ve heard they’re a ton of fun to play.
Second play through of Dark Souls II, though may wait for pc version.
Finish FFX and finally give X-2 a proper try
Finish Zelda ALBW, Infamous PS4 – just started its ok not my sort of game but fun for hour or two. Metal Gear Ground Zero’s. Diablo III, Finish Soul Sacrifice
Most anticpated game is the follow up to Xenoblade Chronicals
looking forward to Bayonetta 2 but wish they hadn’t change her hair
As little time as I have for gaming at the moment, my intentions for play-time are pretty low-reaching. I’ll be hitting up South Park, Fez, and Peggle.
Diablo 3 and Hearthstone seem to take up my gaming time at the moment.
Though given my school schedual, it’ll probably swap to 3DS Max and UDK before half-month.
The Elder Scrolls Online + Finishing Dark Souls 2
Just working on one game this month, Persona 3 FES both “The Journey” and “The Answer”
I’ve been reverting to my 15 year old self and playing FFX HD all day/night