What Games are You Currently Playing?

[pressure6666]

Binary Domain.

I'm about 5 hrs into this and unless it takes a nose dive between now and the end I've been quite impressed so far. Whilst it does takes its cues from Gears it isn't derivative. To be perfectly honest it subtley blends eastern and western design very well. It's certainly nowhere near as japaneese as I expected it to be.


A perfectly competent and solid shooter with a decent enough and interesting story so far. Well worth a play, imo.

Here's a cut-scene which may spark a little interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=pODFuJY-0oQ

Looks interesting, seems like the story has a grey morality..Also i never played gears so i'll have that on my radar

Right now i finished Mass Effect 2. I really enjoyed the ride. the paragon/renegade was a nice touch, though i thought it was frustrating to see some conversation options in the screen but disabled..like miranda died on me on the final mission because she had an argument with jack i had no other option but to agree with one of them. lol Still its a great game and im really looking foward to play 3.

I'm also playing blacklight retribution Beta (An online, free, first person shooter). Really nice graphics for a free shooter, lots of costumization options for your character and weapons (you can even change your weapons color, etc). Gameplay wise, while i'm really NOT the right person to review that (i dont play much fps lol) its a lot of fun and works well, but for now it has some bugs that really need to be fixed.

Also i still play DMC4 from time to time, trying to do some awesome combos, and failing

[Apollo]

Looks interesting, seems like the story has a grey morality..Also i never played gears so i'll have that on my radar

I've just finished Binary Domain and despite a few minor niggles I absolutely loved it. When I say niggles they're those which come down to how picky a gamer the person playing it is. I'll get these out of the way first.

Niggles

1: Squad members walking infront of your line of fire. This happened to me about 15 times over the course of the game so its no biggy. The friendly a.i being solid throughout otherwise.

2: Squad members do repeat some of their lines. This mainly occurs when they're telling you to get somewhere or when they compliment you on doing well or give you an ear full if you mess up.

3: The game has a squad trust system and a variety of squad members are introduced over the course of the game. You can pick your squad members for the most part but at certain points you can't which is mildly annoying if you've invested a little time into particular members. That said, the developer has obviously done it so the player gets a feel for all of the squad members and theres another reason but I won't go into that. I think the better design choice would've have been to let the player, play as other members of the team. The game would've benefitted a little more if it would have allowed to see things from other squad members perspectives. And, the main one to see what the other members are up to whilst they're not with you. It's something which Gears 3 does in places and it works well. That said, the fact Binary Domain doesn't do it, it doesn't suffer because of it. Those are just my thoughts in hindsight.

4: The graphics do drop off a little in places. When I say that, I'm not for a second implying the graphics are bad in places because they aren't its more of a styling issue. This only occurs whilst your passing through some of the buildings. Binary Domain has some fantastic looking large scale backdrops and detailed interiors such as a train terminal. It's because of these that some of the buildings interiors which feature clinical (Mirror's Edge) styling are a bit more noticable than they normally would be. To give an idea, you begin by progressing through the lower city which is slum like and somewhat derelict moving onto the more affluent upper city. Think along the lines of Hong Kong in Deus Ex:Hr but visually more of a cross between Mirror's Edge and Ghost in the Shell. Anyway, all that said the game does an execellent job in contrasting the two and not only visually.

As I said all of the above are minor niggles and depends how picky the player is as to how much these things will bother them. Personally, I noticed them but in the grand scheme of things none of them effected the overall game or my enjoyment of it.

Right with all the niggles out of the way on to the good stuff.

Story: Whilst the story is no literal masterpiece which of course isn't to be expected with this type of game. It does more than competent a job and is certainly more interesting with quite a few twists and turns than a lot of what I've played this gen. I could happily go into a bit more detail about the story but I won't. What I will say, is it didn't play out as I envisioned it to and it caught me off guard. Which by todays standards is an achievement in itself. It's also nowhere near as japaneese (ott) as one would expect considering its from the director of the Yakuza games. The characters are all pretty cool with squad being made up of british, american, chinese, french and japanese introduced at different points in the game. And, its good to see they actually got people of the respective nationalities voicing the characters. Overall, the banter has a very good mix to it ranging from extremely funny to genuinely heart felt. You also get different banter and slight changes to the cut-scenes depending on who you pick for your squad and their trust level

The star of the show for me was Cain (the french robot) he is funny as hell just with him being a robot. There's one point where theres an intimate moment about to happen and I was thinking here we go predictability scale about to hit max and Cain just wrecks it. If you have the enough trust built up with the other character the cut-scene changes but Cain's reaction is still genuinely funny.

Gameplay

The game is solid and very fluid. The action comes thick and fast plenty and there's weighty bite to the gunplay. If Bd were a fps in-terms of weight it's more Killzone than Cod before Guerilla patched it. At first its very easy to think Bd is a straightforward traditional japanese blaster where enemies take a million bullets each. But thats only to begin with. This mainly down to the enemy a.i and how your squad members react depending on your trust level.

The enemy a.i is pretty good employing different strategies and theres quite a decent range of variety considering its all designed off of robots. One thing I did notice is the a.i improves as you progress which gives the enemies a sense of a computer system evolving to combat the player over the course of the game which is really cool. Anyway, gameplay wise things like headshotting an enemy will get it to attack its friends, shoot its legs off will slow it down to a crawl and blast its arms and it'll go looking for another weapon. All things seem superficial at first but become invaluable the further you get.

Your friends trust also comes into play. When someone trusts you enough you start gaining access to additional attack options. Where they'll play as a decoy for enemy snipers, rpg or grenade ranged enemy emplacement, charge at the enemy while you provide support or vice versa and so on. Again superficial at first but integral later on.

Both of these all depend on how well you play and your strageties play out. The game has a credit system where you get credits for killing enemies. Things like headshots give additional bonus credits. Credits are spent at machines littered throughout the game. You can buy first aid kits, different types of grenades and weapons. There is also an upgrade system for both physical and weapon attributes for you and your team. This where those credit bonuses come in real handy.

Overall, Bd will seem like a blaster at first but thats only superficial and soon changes once you've found your feet. It pays to play smartly.

My only niggle is the weapon/physical upgrade system is a little too subtle in its implementation. I mean, you won't really notice it too much as your playing through the game. However, if you load a save from early in the game and then a save from the latter parts it standouts out a mile.

Boss fights. The game does have its share of boss fights but there's not loads of them and they're never repeated. Bosses are as to be expected for a japanese game as in they're insanely huge and they can take a fair bit of punishment. The game goes the Crysis way where you squad mates or your boss will tell you how to take them down via your satelitte link. I didn't find this a problem personally, but it may pose a little bug bear for some. It also uses a variant of the glowing spot trope but with these being robots it isn't detriment and the game does imply variation to it.

Graphics and level design

As I mentioned in the niggles at the top part of this the graphics are solid throughout and very impressive in places with the odd drop off here and there. This game is a linear shooter but it has nice mix of levels with large and small arena's, choke points and verticality. It does feature quite a few on the rails sections and perhaps one too many. But these are all good fun, breaking up the pace and never out staying their welcome.


Multiplayer

I've not tried the mp, well, because mp isn't really my thing. But from what I've heard it aint anything to write home about. What I will say is Bd isn't a game which relies on its multiplayer to carry it. The single player campaign is quite lengthy which will obviously vary depending on difficulty and how familiar the person playing is with these types of games. I clocked in at just shy of 9 hours.


Conclusion

Bd is a solid action shooter with a more than competent story. Whilst it isn't perfect what it does do it does very well. And, if nothing else it proves that Japanese developers can take western design, get it right and do a good story all on their own without any western collaboration.

8.5/10 from me.

[Apollo]

Mass Effect 2. I really enjoyed the ride. the paragon/renegade was a nice touch, though i thought it was frustrating to see some conversation options in the screen but disabled..like miranda died on me on the final mission because she had an argument with jack i had no other option but to agree with one of them. lol Still its a great game and im really looking foward to play 3.

Mass Effect 2 was enjoyable but I liked one better. It had a better balance of action versus rpg. Besides, the opening part really got on my nerves. I know why they had to do it but it messed up so much in what the player had built up and carried over from the first game.

[alittleacorn]

U-uh....in my defense, it was selling really cheap in Game! >_<;;;;;;;;;;;





Why, why did I buy this awful piece of visual dog droppings?

[Apollo]

Fez.... as mind boggling as it is brilliant. Just goes to prove massive budgets aren't needed to make good games.

[pressure6666]

Right now:

Ninja Gaiden 2: I'm playing on the easiest difficulty and my arse is getting kicked. It seems i'll spend lots of hours with this one

Castlevania lords of shadow: This game has a big, wonderfull world powered by some of the best graphics i have ever seen. The gameplay is a lot of fun and the combat is chalenging. I really liked the story, but for a game this big it took too much time to develop...I'm trying to complete the trials

Red Dead Redemption: I'm really not a fan of GTA-style games but this one caught my attention due to the different setting. Heading to mexico now

When i'm done ill go for shadows of the damned satanic hell mode...

And thats all the games i have for PS3 at the moment lol i bought it less then 2 months ago

[Shinsa]

dont have much time now a day

Devil may cry 1: Just about finished DMD for the Platinum trophy...(platinum 3 before 1...you know doing the whole "playing it in timeline order!"...however going to skip dmc4 and dmc2 bahahaha...... -__-)

Mass Effect 2: Just started and really enjoying it!

pressure6666, Castlevania Lord of Shadows is a great game! glad to read that your very much enjoying it. its definitely an over looked game.

[Apollo]

I've not had much time but with the gaming drought in full flow I'm catching up on titles I missed.

So far I have only managed to complete Dragon's Dogma which I really enjoyed. It's only main problem being the lack of fast travel. Everything else purely comes down to how picky the player is and whether they mind learning a game or not. That said, the fast travel issue can be worked around if you use your head.

A must play rpg, imo.

[alittleacorn]

This game turned out better than i thought it would be. The gameplay can be quite challenging at points and the visual of Wonderland are stunning. Although I think it cut corners at points, I was convinced of that when seeing a horse outside a pud in the game frozen solid XD regardless still fun.

[Apollo]

I enjoyed Madness Returns... a little old skool in its design but fun to play and the art style kept me interested when things laxed off a little in places.



Inversion. The devs do play it a little safe but in this day and age with development costs what they are its hardly a first. Thoroughly enjoyable game so far.