What Ive been playing #002

2015-04-01 8:20 AM

Sportsfriends

I had some friends over recently for a drinking social night and decided to break out the PS3. We had a few rounds of Skullgirls. I brought that out mainly because the 2 of the people that were over were artists and I wanted to show them the art in SG (which is really well done).After that we decided to break out Sportsfriends which none of us had ever played. I had gotten a copy for free from PS+ and hadn’t tried it yet. We had a blast playing Sportsfriends.

Sportsfriends is acollectionof 4 mini games with a focus on local multiplayer.

Now when I say I played Sportsfriends, I mean BaraBariBall which is one of the 4 games that is part of Sportsfriends. We played this 99% of the time.

BaraBariBallis so much fun. What was supposed to be a few minutes of gaming before we got back to other non-gaming socialendeavorsturned into a 5 hour gaming marathon.The game is very easy to learn, even when you’ve had a few drinks and really promotes a part atmosphere.

The other games weren’t too impressive and we weren’t able to try Johan Sebastian Joust because I don’t have any playstation move controllers.If you are looking for great local multiplayer games for parties and people who don’t normally play video games then you can’t go wrong with BaraBariBall.

Guilty Gear Xrd

After maybe 10 years of knowing about Guilty Gears existance I’ve decided to finally take the plunge and try the series out. I ordered my copy of GG and have been having quite a lot of fun playing this game.

I’m totally prepared to admit that the tipping point for me to try this game is the insane graphical accomplishment this game has achieved. Once I saw how the game is actually 3d and read some white papers on how they accomplished the look I was sold.

So I already felt I had a good deal as a technical art study. It was a major bonus that the game is actually really really good.

If you come from a Street Fighter background you’ll notice that the game is much more forgiving, combos are much easier to execute. I believe everything is a chain rather than a link but I could be wrong about that. Regardless, I found myself not struggling on execution like I did with Street Fighter.

Thecharactersare also generally awesome, my favorites being Faust and Ramlethal(confirm the spelling). Faust is just a crazy nutbar design with the ability to use intermensional doors.

Ramenthal has 2 huge swords and can use them for zoning, she also has a ton of target combo-like special moves that she can dispatch. She’s definitely a very interesting character to play.

PT

PT is a free game on PSN for the PS4. It’s supposedly a mini Silent Hill. I haven’t played any Silent Hill games so I’m not sure how true that is.The game has you repeatedly walking down a hallway where things change slowly and get darker/scarier. The game I’d say it as its scariest when you are about halfway in when nothing has quite happened yet but you knowsomethingis going to happen.

Sometimes I found thescarinessof the game wascompromisedfrom getting stuck on apuzzle. I ended up checking my phone to figure out how to get though one section and it pulled me out of the game.## Monster Hunter 4 UltimateAbout 18 months ago I came back from Japan and while I was there I discovered Monster Hunter on the PSP. I liked it but I also heard you need to play with friends. Since MH4 was already out in Japan and I didn’t know many monster hunter players I figured when I got back to Canada I would buy a 3ds and MH4.

I didn’t realize that there was no english release of MH4 and that itwouldn’tcome out until a year after I bought my 3ds. Even worse, when MH4 finally did come out they released a new 3ds that plays MH4 with a better framerate and higher resolution graphics.I guess considering this is Nintendo I should have suspected that they might do something like this. It’s ultimately my fault for not confirming MH4 was released in English when I bought my 3ds.The game is great, if you have played Monster Hunter before then it will be very familiar, only much more refined. Despite my playing the game on an older 3ds it still looks fantastic.Also my work has a Monster Hunter club where we play at lunch and various times. This is really where teh game shines. We have a couple high rank players here who have been gracious enough to guide low level players like myself. As a result, in one lunch hour I got more monster parts than the entire 10 hours I played myself.This is a great game for playing local multiplayer. It also has internetmultiplayer which is also good but it’s never as good as being in the same room with the people you are playing with.

I worry about losing 500+ hours to this game.

Strider

Well I beat Strider and did a few of the challenge rooms as well.

I really liked the game overall, the style is great, the control is great and the combat is great. The biggest problem is that they take way too long to introduce you to all the character mechanics. The big issue with this is that the first hour of the game feels way too shallow because you don’t have enough moves. I’ve talked to quite a few people who were turned off on this game because of this. Hell I put it down the first time because I thought it was going to be too shallow.

I feel like they could have unlocked all the items in the first 10% of the game minus the weapon improvements and maybe the kunai. Also the launch attack I found clunky and it seemed to unoptimized to ever be used. I wonder if it would be more useful if it didn’t stop Strider from moving when it executes.

Here’s what Strider looks like when he’s more powered up and has more ability options.

So I wholeheartedly recommend playing this game if you are looking for some hyper-fighting Strider gameplay. The soundtrack is also really good. Particularly the Kazakh theme.

Tags: what_i_have_been_playing