Now what are you playing now 2: Limited Collectors Edition

[Gallstones2]

I am playing Skyrim on the xbox 360 Friend has it on PC but is slowed down due to lack of a good video card. but it does seem to consume a lot of my free time

[tattuchu]

Final Fantasy XIII-2. I dunno, so far it's not grabbing me. I don't like any of the main characters. They're boring. And the voice acting isn't very good

[Drewish]

Mega Man X 3 Zero Hack

[Eriku]

I don't get the purists hate for Skyrim. The interface is smooth (which is rare for anything trying to be an RPG), the world is huuuuuuuge (100 hours in and I still have more than half the locations to find... I've found something like 110 of them), you can choose a variety of paths in your proficiency, and each quest line is an engrossing story to me... I skipped the main story, for the most part, until I was done with the Mage's College... That alone lasted me as long as your average freakin' game does... then did the main story, felt that perhaps I was a bit done with the game... WRONG, Thieves Guild did the exact same thing for me as the story progressed, again requiring a shitload of hours and depriving me of sleep because I wanted to know what happened next... I still have Companions, the Dark Brotherhood and the Civil War to do out of all the main plots.

That and just the scenery, the music, the entire package... Incredible stuff.

And I still haven't gotten far in Arkham City or Uncharted 3... Let alone started Assassin's Creed: Revelations, thanks to most of my game time going to Skyrim... *sigh*

Someone pointed out that this is grade A escapism... considering how many times I've told myself "just another 15-30 mins", only to stare at my watch and find that an hour or two has gone instead, I'd say that assessment is spot on (=

Gonna get some mileage out of this game yet.

[The Curious Squid]

Tatt, did you like Final Fantasy XIII? So far, this one has a crap story (12 hours in) but the gameplay has been tweaked a fgew ways that make it better and less fucking boring. It looks great but the soundtrack is all to shit. They need to bring back the composer from the older games because Leona Lewis does not make for a palatable soundtrack FACT!

I got the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection two days ago and I'm loving it all over again. The HD hasn't made too much of a difference graphically but it still looks good despite being about 10 years old.

My sister's boyfriend also bought me Portal 2 which I played for a little bit and I still have to get a few trophies for Batman Arkham City and I've got Disgaea 4 to play through, not to mention Modern Warfare 3. Pretty much set for video games for a long time.

[Animavore]

MW3 is a horrible, nasty game

Still playing BF3 to the death. They fixed the VOIP on Monday and people are now communicating with each other. Communicating and owning

[The Curious Squid]

BF3 is fucking boring, I can never get into those games.

[Animavore]

After 7 years of the same 'ol COD gets kind of boring too.

I was all set and excited for MW3 hoping Infinity Ward would bring it back to glory after Treyarch's terrible Black Ops. I was expecting some sort of overhaul. A new, refined engine for a start. In reality they actually managed to make a worse game than Black Ops. I played it on my friend's PC after playing BF3 with graphics turned up to eleven. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that looks?

I know they have big plans for the next gen consoles so I wouldn't disregard the series yet..

[The Curious Squid]

Graphics don't mean anything, it's gameplay that counts and BF3 is lacking in that department

[Animavore]

Fucking lol! I've had hours of fun on BF3. I find the game much more varied between infantry, tanks and aerial combat. You may disagree because you'd rather just run 'n' gun (nothing wrong with that) but to say BF3 lacks gameplay is a joke.

I'm not sure why this being turned into a BF3 vs MW3 thing anyway. I've always been COD until this year and had hundreds of hours of enjoyment on them. I've never owned a BF game til now and wouldn't have if COD was still up to standard. I'm not putting it down out of some class of fanboy-ism. I have, I believe, good reasons for switching to something new this year. Until Infinity Ward up their game that's the way it remains. We won't see that 'til next gen. BF is already on next gen.

[Eriku]

Never been too big on those shooty shoot shoot games... Bought BF3 because the graphics looked SICK bruv and thought I'd get a kick out of it, but meh...

I'll give it more time at some point, though.

[PsychoSerenity]

Attempting to play Magicka again but it's so damn buggy. And seeing as the gameplay (or at least what I've seen of it so far) can be rather repetitive, it's too frustrating to be worth it when you have to play the same bit eight times because of several different glitches and crashes. And this is with all the patches they've had, god know what it was like to begin with. And it's such a shame because I'd love to fully explore some of the concepts they've put into it. Maybe when I eventually get a new PC it'll be more compatible.

[tattuchu]

Tatt, did you like Final Fantasy XIII? So far, this one has a crap story (12 hours in) but the gameplay has been tweaked a fgew ways that make it better and less fucking boring. It looks great but the soundtrack is all to shit. They need to bring back the composer from the older games because Leona Lewis does not make for a palatable soundtrack FACT!

I got the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection two days ago and I'm loving it all over again. The HD hasn't made too much of a difference graphically but it still looks good despite being about 10 years old.

My sister's boyfriend also bought me Portal 2 which I played for a little bit and I still have to get a few trophies for Batman Arkham City and I've got Disgaea 4 to play through, not to mention Modern Warfare 3. Pretty much set for video games for a long time.

I meant to rerspond to this when I got home from work, but now I'm too drunk

Squidward, what do you consider this game's improvements over the last? So far I'm not crazy about it, but I have gotten into it some more and have been playing it every evening. I'm so happy to actually have a game to play again that occupies my time and holds my fickle attention.

[The Curious Squid]

My biggest problem with XIII was that the fights were pretty much entirely automated and the AI just stood around a lot looking useless, you only controlled one character and even then you just select "auto battle" with it for most of the game meaning that the fights pretty much involved just hitting L1 to change between 6 preset fighting styles which you only use for the boss fights. In short, they tried to make the fights faster but ended up just making them boring.

XIII-2 now lets you change leader at any point in a fight meaning that rather than just watching your AI team mates stand around like planks if they don't have any more Buffs/Debuffs to cast in support roles you can switch over to them and have them attack, it also means you can queue spells in the ATB gauge, something the AI and auto battle never seems to do meaning you can get support spells on your entire party much faster meaning you can Paradigm shift back to attack classes in less time.

The ability to capture all the monsters (Pokemon stylee!) and use them in fights gives it a lot of variety too and the Quick Time Events (Feral Link attacks and active cutscenes) make you actually do more in the battle, get more involved.

In short, you have more options and more control over the characters, FFXIII plays itself while you watch, XIII-2 still does a bit but it's a big improvement on gameplay. The game itself is a lot more open ended too, you're not just limited to corridors with a single route, you now have maps that require a bit of exploration and there are side quests that don't just involve killing the same monsters on different parts of the map over and over.

The soundtrack and story are shit though.

[tattuchu]

My biggest problem with XIII was that the fights were pretty much entirely automated and the AI just stood around a lot looking useless, you only controlled one character and even then you just select "auto battle" with it for most of the game meaning that the fights pretty much involved just hitting L1 to change between 6 preset fighting styles which you only use for the boss fights. In short, they tried to make the fights faster but ended up just making them boring.

XIII-2 now lets you change leader at any point in a fight meaning that rather than just watching your AI team mates stand around like planks if they don't have any more Buffs/Debuffs to cast in support roles you can switch over to them and have them attack, it also means you can queue spells in the ATB gauge, something the AI and auto battle never seems to do meaning you can get support spells on your entire party much faster meaning you can Paradigm shift back to attack classes in less time.

The ability to capture all the monsters (Pokemon stylee!) and use them in fights gives it a lot of variety too and the Quick Time Events (Feral Link attacks and active cutscenes) make you actually do more in the battle, get more involved.

In short, you have more options and more control over the characters, FFXIII plays itself while you watch, XIII-2 still does a bit but it's a big improvement on gameplay. The game itself is a lot more open ended too, you're not just limited to corridors with a single route, you now have maps that require a bit of exploration and there are side quests that don't just involve killing the same monsters on different parts of the map over and over.

The soundtrack and story are shit though.

I guess I should be grateful for the variety the monsters provide in battle, but I actually like it less because I find the monsters are generally useless. Or maybe just not as useful as I imagined. When I captured a Behemoth, for instance, I almost wet myself I was so overjoyed. I thought I'd kick some serous ass with him but he doesn't appear to be all that strong, not as strong as I thought he'd be. Also, because the monsters are not permanent party members, I don't have the opportunity to level them up properly. Well I do. But which ones? I've got a hundred of them. Which ones to I use my monster building materials on? I can't build them all up. So I have to concentrate on just the few I figure will be of the greatest use. If I've chosen wrong, I'm fucked because there are only so many materials to go around. And often I find that the monsters I thought would be of great use turn out to be the opposite. I have one that's a healer. So I leveled it up as much as I could and tried to use it in the really tough battles where I desperately need periodic healing. But the little fucker doesn't do much healing. And it's also very weak, so tends to get killed very easily. So in tough battles where I need a healer, I don't get one. I could set up Serah or what's-his-name as a healer of course, but because my permanent party is so goddamned small, I've focused on leveling them up as Ravager and Commando. I need them attacking.
"it also means you can queue spells in the ATB gauge." I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you mean that you can bring in a fresh monster into battle pre-primed and ready to do their special thing, yeah, that's cool. I've found that to come in handy.

There are a lot of things that annoy me about this game. Shitty story and music, as you mentioned. Very bland characters for another. Its as if they didn't want to offend anybody by using characters too quirky or unique, so they opted to keep them as bland as possible. But I like the quirky and unique characters. Reading some reviews, I was surprised to find that a lot of people disliked Vanille from the last game. I used her in my party a lot. I though she was hilarious. And I would expect that a lot of people would hate Hope, but I loved him. He was my favorite character. I thought he was interesting because he actually had a fleshed out back-story, and also because he actually had a personality. Yeah he was mopey and whiny. But I'm mopey and whiny. So I could relate to him. I liked Sasz as well, though I rarely used him in battle. Again, a very distinct personality, and lots of visual appeal. Well designed, and the thing with the little bird nesting in his afro was bizarre and yet at the same time very funny. Lightning, to me, was boring. Fang was slightly better, but still kinda boring to me. And Snow I had no use for. This time around, there's bland boring Serah, and bland boring what's-his-name. He's so boring I seriously can't even remember his name. And it annoys me that he talks and acts vaguely like Tom Cruise. And then they brought Hope back, but made him boring as fuck, with very limited animated motions. Like, his body language is always the same. He nods his head while he talks, and lifts up his hands. That's it for body language. That's all he ever does. And then there's the main villian, whatever the fuck his name is. Again, boring, bland, awful design, and what the fuck is up with all the pink and purple?
I fucking hate the Moogle. Annoying as fuck. Says kupo too much. TOO MUCH. When it talks, it's even worse thanks to the awful voice actor. It doesn't help that it punctuates every single goddamn sentence with kupo. And it shouldn't talk anyway. Did it talk in the other games? I don't remember it talking. Maybe it did but we just didn't hear its voice, I dunno. But I think it'd be more interesting, more enigmatic, if it didn't talk. Making it talk just makes it boring. And annoying. Not to mention the fact that it's referred to in the game as a male, and yet it's given a screechy little girl voice.
Speaking of annoying voices, what's up with Chocolina? Holy fucking shit. And why can't I upgrade my weapons and synthesize shit?
Another thing that annoys me is the way the characters act and talk. They blather on a lot about New-Agey Kingdom Hearts kind of crap. But besides that, sometimes they just don't make sense. Like when Serah finally reunites with Snow after who knows how long. You'd think they'd be so happy to see each other. Snow disappeared and Serah was so worried, right? And they're boyfriend and girlfriend and engaged to me married. And yet when they meet up after a long worried absence, there's no hugging or kissing or anything. They don't even hold hands. I mean, I realize it's only a video game, so it's not like they're gonna make out or anything. But for Christ's sake they should do something. Serah keeps saying over and over again that Snow is her fiancee. But it's it's just empty talk, because she doesn't act like he's her fiancee. And neither does he. Snow just stands there like a big dumb idiot smacking his fists together like he always does.

Anyway, more later. I gotta get back to work.