What are you playing right now? (1 Viewer)

[Bryan^H]

Dragon Fighter for the NES. Crap this is a tough game. Hit detection is fine but there is just so much activity on screen you have to learn to isolate the immediate threats to progress. Transformation to the dragon in right spots is also a necessary.

 

[Ruz-El]

Finished Dragon Warrior III on the NES yesterday. Man, that was a satisfying game. How they fit all of it on a cartridge is impressive. Not sure what I'll play next, but I'm leaning towards God of War 2 on the PS3. After all the hours of old school JRPG lax lazy gaming my twitchy action skills are completely shot haha.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Just started Until Dawn, already about halfway through. Really enjoying it.

 

[Tino]

Loved that game!

 

[LeoA]

With Red Dead Redemption down, I'm thinking of playing through all three Mass Effects next.

Owned the original since before ME2 was even announced and have added 2 and 3 in recent years when I've spotted them new for $10, but other than a brief 30 minutes with the original, I've never played them. So my question is about the DLC.

Anything there particularly desirable? And do I have to buy what I want to play before starting each game, or can I play through ME1 for instance and move onward to the sequel yet still go back with my ME1 save and play the original's DLC at a later time without starting over?

And how about the save progression system that lets you bring your character forward and effect the sequels? Will I lose out on anything for instance by moving on directly to ME3 after finishing ME2 by not playing ME2's DLC packs first?

Or can I just go back at my leisure with each game and experience the DLC when/if I want to, with no consequences for later games or my save files?

 

[Ruz-El]

I have no idea. I would play each games DLC in the order ti was released. Playing ME1 dlc after playing ME2 doesn't make sense to me, and I have no idea if it will screw up your legacy saves. that said, the legacy save thing is a bit of a trick since you can completely redo your character in each game, you just get a bonus for the using the legacy save.

 

[DaveF]

I'm trying something new:


I've never played Pokemon. To me, it was the game of the younger generation. But it's so popular right now, and I'm long interested in AR, that I decided to give it a try. While PoGo won't hold my attention very long -- the collector games don't do much for me after a week or so -- it's a neat idea and fun to interact with in my neighborhood which has a Pokestop and Pokegym a short walk from my house.

 

[LeoA]

Russell, I'm not a stickler for playing games in order. I have no qualms in going back and revisiting an earlier title later on just to enjoy a side mission or two.

I just wanted to make sure that first of all, I can buy DLC at any time if I desire, yet still have the DLC accessible with a save file that was started before each add-on was acquired. I'll likely never replay any of these games, so I don't want to make a mistake to buy DLC that needs to be played at a certain time in each adventure and discover I'd have to restart from square 1 due to having progressed past that point.

And of course if a DLC add-on contributes something important to my save file being transferred to a sequel, I'd want to make sure to do that before moving on to a sequel if it's something that intrigues me.

Sounds like at least the latter is a non-issue, judging by your post that makes that feature sound rather trivial compared to what I envisioned where my decisions from earlier games had some real influence in subsequent games.

 

[Ruz-El]

And of course if a DLC add-on contributes something important to my save file being transferred to a sequel, I'd want to make sure to do that before moving on to a sequel if it's something that intrigues me.

Sounds like at least the latter is a non-issue, judging by your post that makes that feature sound rather trivial compared to what I envisioned where my decisions from earlier games had some real influence in subsequent games.

I'm really not sure so enter at your own risk. You can completely redefine Shepard at the start of each game, but if a guy is killed in ME1, they wont be around in two and three. It's a game where your choices count, so you really should play it in linear order and the programmers reward you with throw backs. I'm not sure if I played all the DLC on my run through since I bought some complete pack on the PS3 when it was on sale and I know some wasn't included, but some DLC stuff was and I believe was referenced throughout the series.

Currently playing God Of War 2 remastered on the PS3. It's fun. the puzzles are puzzling enough without being crazy and there's plenty of bashing creatures to bits to let you forget about the annoying puzzles. It's a nice one to jump into after the lazy playing of Dragon Warrior 3. Story is good too, and I like the presentation where there's not really stages or chapters, Kratos is just a raging maniac constantly pushing forward trying to kill all the gods. Good stuff. My only complaint is being a PS2 remaster it has save points. I've always hated save points. Just let us save anywhere. C'mon!

 

[CraigF]

Fallout 3 on my PS3. I don't know why but its starting to freeze. I heard delete all your save's except the most recent might help. Any other Ideas?

Thanks for that tip, it really does seem to work. Having no more than ~3 saves makes a big diff for me at my early stage ("early" compared to what all seems to be there, based on what hints I get in-game). FO3 can do some pretty weird autosaves, like ones that can put you in an infinite loop, so you sure can't rely on them if you want to go back and try something different = save files can accumulate quickly unless managed.

Different subject:
I think it was Mass Effect 2 that could get really bogged down with some things if you had a lot of save files on tap, it's like it loaded info about all your saves into memory whenever you wanted to load any one of them, or to make a new save file. I mean a lot of info about each save file. And the Mass Effects are games where you might want to go back and change your decisions once you see what happens, so it's good to have saves. Especially ME3 where you can do a certain mission quite early in the game and it blows away a whole bunch of other missions, with important consequences; you had no possible way to know in advance (poor design IMO - I can give a spoiler-free hint if you need it).

 

[CraigF]

The same thing happened to me yesterday with Fallout 3 as what happened to me with Mass Effect 3: I "accidentally" did a task which blew away a lot of gameplay by eliminating main quests. That's what can happen in free-form games...I wish I had known about both possibilities in advance, but then I also don't like spoilers...

So far these are the only two times I've had to backtrack in games, otherwise I just live with whatever decision I made for better or worse. Some people go for speed play, there are whole forums for that, to get through the game without cheating as quickly as possible. OTOH I like to follow the story, otherwise a lot of it doesn't make sense (the first time) when you (accidentally) bypass mainline quests. Also, you may be entering into situations well ahead of your experience/ability level, but these two things I'm talking about, there's no going back game-wise except by an old save.

At least in ME3 tasks to be wary of sequence are labeled "Priority" (even though in ME3 "priority" actually means "do me last"), I should have known better after the other two MEs but forgot, but not so in FO3 where the "journal" is a bit of a jumble, have to admit it suits the style of the FO environment though.

 

[LeoA]

Is clearing the cache a thing on the PS3? I had The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion slow way down for me on the Xbox 360 a decade ago, including freezes, and doing that cured its issues.

And that of course is another Bethesda Softworks title and likely is running off an earlier version of the engine powering Fallout 3.

 

[CraigF]

^ You can't manually "clear the cache" on the PS3 by regular means, but you can do something which sort of does the same thing for a game: you can delete the Game Data for that game (not the saved games themselves). This will cause the game to be re-installed, or the effective equivalent by clearing everything, and it can take a while sometimes, like an hour+. And sometimes it does nothing useful. For whatever reason it's not the same as re-installing the game from scratch because somehow the system knows the game is there i.e. not every installed game has accessible game data but e.g. FO3 does.

Lots of games ported to the PS3 have some minor or major issues. You were talking about the Mass Effects before: ME (1) has a specific porting issue with the PS3 that you will likely encounter from the very start and throughout the game hundreds of times. For reasons that aren't totally clear it doesn't affect everybody the same. You will notice it very quicky if you do at all, it isn't a game-breaker since the work-around is simple but inconvenient/flow-disrupting. It was just confusing to me at first. It's still my preferred one of the Mass Effects regardless.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Finally got around to starting GTA V on the PS4 this past week and am completely addicted to it.

I bought this one release day for PS3, but never got around to actually starting it. Bought it again release day for PS4 because, well why the hell not, since I hadn't started it yet, and a superior version exists. Then sat on it again, because it just seemed too daunting a task to get caught up in. I always had something 'quicker' that I could do first.

Now I can't believe I waited so long to play it. It's just an amazing game through and through. Completely amazes me every time I play. I'm still leery of getting into the Online portion though.

 

[LeoA]

Lots of games ported to the PS3 have some minor or major issues. You were talking about the Mass Effects before: ME (1) has a specific porting issue with the PS3 that you will likely encounter from the very start and throughout the game hundreds of times.

I had forgotten that Mass Effect 1 finally appeared on the PS3.

Too bad to hear that despite its 2012 release years after its original appearance and well into the era of solid multiplatform ports to the PS3, that they still managed to mess it up. It should've been the definitive way to enjoy the game, barring a later remastering on much more powerful hardware.

I'll actually be playing these on the Xbox 360.

 

[CraigF]

^ Sorry about that, I lose track of who's playing what on what. ME (1) should be just fine on the 360, the other MEs are fine on the PS3 too, no porting issues FWIW. Even the patches for PS3 ME (1) didn't address the basic faults, apparently the company who did the port wasn't paid to fix problems, or paid enough. It is also said that Sony themselves are strange about what sort of thing they'll allow patches for, often developers say patches exist but Sony won't put them on their site for distribution.

The problem with the ME(1) port to the PS3 is a timing issue. This affects opening encrypted objects, of which there must be hundreds. I am playing using a plasma, which are noted for their very short lag. In ME that just isn't good enough, even with all video processing minimized (i.e. an ISF mode in my case). 10-20ms lag anywhere in the video chain can make it very difficult to impossible to open an object without multiple tries, as soon as you touch a button, no matter how fast, you fail. Pretty poor that this was deemed acceptable. But then, nobody imagined how successful ME2 would be, and developers/Sony don't go back and fix old product usually. OTOH PS2 ports to the PS3 are generally wonderful, and the PS3->PS4 ones are rather good too from what I've played.

Since the PS2 and PS4 are nothing like the PS3 architecturally, I agree with you and think it's fair comment that the ports to the PS3 from other non-Sony platforms should have been a lot better too.

Anyway, I'm chugging away at Fallout 3. What a massive game. I think it may be my favorite PS3 game so far, eclipsing BioShock(1) and ME(1) even. It has aspects of both, less "creepy" than BS with the strategic decisons of ME. Very suited to me. I only wish it had the interaction "physics" of say RDR though, which was a lot more "realistic".

 

[Aaron Silverman]

I downloaded The Last of Us Remastered (couldn't resist -- it was $7.99 on PSN over the weekend!). Haven't had a chance to fire it up yet, though. I have a feeling that once I start with it, I won't be doing much else!

Interestingly, I read that it requires 40+ GB of space on the hard drive, but the initial download was only 10 GB. I assume that the file was heavily compressed. It asked if I wanted to start by downloading the single-player or multiplayer experience first (I went single), and said that the other would download later, in the background. Interesting.

 

[Tino]

I bought it too even tho I own the disc. This way it's on my hard drive and I don't have to get up to swap discs. [emoji39]

 

[Morgan Jolley]

On PS4, Sony pushed the idea of downloading the first part of a game immediately so you can start playing right away and download the rest in the background. That's why the download was only 10 GB. They had also talked about letting people play games on demand immediately (like, instantaneously) using PS Now while the data for the game downloaded in the background, but that was just an idea they floated before the PS Now service came out.

 

[Tino]

I downloaded The Last of Us Remastered (couldn't resist -- it was $7.99 on PSN over the weekend!). Haven't had a chance to fire it up yet, though. I have a feeling that once I start with it, I won't be doing much else!

Interestingly, I read that it requires 40+ GB of space on the hard drive, but the initial download was only 10 GB. I assume that the file was heavily compressed. It asked if I wanted to start by downloading the single-player or multiplayer experience first (I went single), and said that the other would download later, in the background. Interesting.

I envy you Aaron. Oh to play The Last Of Us for the first time again. Man what I would give.