What are you Playing?

[usamimi]

Someone traded in a limited edition copy of Project X-Zone at my local game store, so I picked it up with some of the trade-in credit I had squirreled away. I'm so excited to get to play it, I've been wanting to since it came out but just never got around to it! I love the opening animation done by Studio Trigger, it looks really cool.

[greg]

That's cool! Project X-Zone can be had for under 1,000 yen at the used game stores where I live. I still do not yet own a 3DS, so I haven't bothered to buy it. I should really get started playing Namco x Capcom sometime though.

So I have finally reached the final boss in Ys Book 1 for the DS. His name is Dark Fact and and he's kicking my butt. The FAQ on Gamefaqs says that he's one of the easiest in the game to defeat, but I really don't agree. I have the most powerful sword, armor, and shield (the game won't let me approach him without those) and I'm using the ring that doubles my attack power. I just keep hacking and hacking, but I am dead before I have even half of his life drained. Plus, every time I hit him, the panel of the floor I'm standing on drops off, so after a while I run out of space. I try to hit him only on the corners, but that means I hit the jerk even less often. Dark Fact is just really hard. I'll keep trying, but I am really growing tired of the difficulty.

[llj]

I don't remember Dark Fact being that hard on the PC Engine. Guess they upped the difficulty there in these later versions. The final boss in Ys 2, though...URRGGGGHHH.

[Char Aznable]

Just started up Haunting Ground on the PS2. I've been wanting to play this one for years, but it's apparently something of a rare, and extremely expensive, title. Well, I finally got my hands on a copy and started playing it yesterday. So far, it hasn't disappointed me. While I'm a huge horror movie fan, I'm not big into horror video games, but this one is unique and atmospheric enough that it's hard not to get into it. The story follows a girl who wakes up in the basement of a mansion with no memory of how she got there. While trying to escape the mansion's deranged servants she befriends a dog, who stays with her through the game--making for a nice dynamic when the player has to give the dog, Hewie, commands...and the neat part is that Hewie's behavior is determined by how the player treats him during the game.

[llj]

Haunting Ground is one of the few games from the PS2 generation I've been searching for a good price for. The other game I covet most from that generation is Gotcha Force for the Gamecube.

Though not a big urgency for me, I also wouldn't mind a copy of KOF 02+03 for the PS2, which seems weirdly rare.

I used to not be into horror games (or film) very much but I feel like there's something weirdly empowering about beating a horror game, like conquering fears or something. I now dig the horror genre, although I still stay away from torture/gore porn or anything that seems too sadistic. I don't mind violence, but movies that spend an inordinate amount of time inflicting physical pain on people, like, say, a long sequence of a guy getting his intestines ripped out and fed to him is way too overboard for me (I made that up. But I'm sure there is a movie out there with a scene like that). The Korean movie I Saw the Devil seems to be an excellent example of gratuitous gore porn I try to avoid. I more prefer the suspense aspect of horror, as well as surrealistic what-the-fuck sequences. Cheese and campy horror is also welcome in my books.

[greg]

I agree. I like intelligent horror movies like The Shining, but I refuse to watch movies that involve gruesome torture and the like. The Saw movies are a perfect example of this. Growing up, Dad said he was flipping through channels late one night and came across a scene in a Hellraiser movie involving a girl getting her skin ripped off. This sort of stuff is just disgusting and seems to be stimulating for some in the wrongest of ways. There's a Japanese director who made movies that are so disturbingly realistic that they've been mistaken for snuff films. IIRC, Charlie Sheen was given one of his movies and he alerted Interpol, only to find out that it was a legitimate movie. No thank you.

As for me, I'm too chickenshit to play horror games. In high school I played Doom just before bed a few times, and it was a bad thing to do. I've never heard of this Haunting Ground, so I just checked out a few minutes of a Let's Play video of the game to see what it entailed. The last one I started watching was Fatal Frame. I appreciate these LP videos to show me what they are like because I am too scared to play them myself, but I just won't get sucked into watching these videos too often.

There was one Pew Die Pie video series of a game in which you use a video camera with night vision capabilities to stumble around in the dark. Those videos are fun to watch because he's such a screwball, but I had to stop watching them. Besides, if you are hiding in pitch black darkness and using a video camera to see the bad guys, that video screen would be projecting a pale blue light on your face! Minor oversight there.

[Kame-Sen'nin]

I haven't been gaming too much lately due to other obligations, but when I have, it's mainly been playing through Final Fantasy V (via the Gameboy Advance port). I've also been doing a bit of gaming on my Amiga 1200, including the infamous Akira game, U.N. Squadron (A.K.A Area 88), Alfred Chicken, and Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2.

[Char Aznable]

As for me, I'm too chickenshit to play horror games.

It's funny because I can watch nearly any horror film and be unfazed, but horror video games really creep me out. I rarely play them, with the exception of Resident Evil 4, a small handful others, and now Haunting Ground. Though, recently, I've been trying to get over that and pick up a few more horror titles from the PS2 era. The footage of Silent Hills for the PS4 looks phenomenal too, but not one I'm ready to play anytime soon. It's those 'jump-scares' in these games that drive me nuts, because at every corner you're just waiting for something to pop out. It's also the excellent use of music and sound effects in many horror titles...with even just a decent surround sound system or some adequate headphones, it can be very chilling.

Haunting Ground is one of the few games from the PS2 generation I've been searching for a good price for. The other game I covet most from that generation is Gotcha Force for the Gamecube.

I used to not be into horror games (or film) very much but I feel like there's something weirdly empowering about beating a horror game, like conquering fears or something. I now dig the horror genre, although I still stay away from torture/gore porn or anything that seems too sadistic.

I've kept my eye out for Haunting Ground on eBay for quite some time. It's been one I've wanted to play for years, so I splurged on it, and ended up paying a hefty $50 for it used. It's in like-new condition, though...which I've seen some copies in that condition go for nearly $100. It's a shame it's so rare. Indigo Prophecy is another game I've been wanting to play--thankfully it's significantly cheaper.

Yeah, I was never a fan of the recent gore/torture porn films either, like Saw or Hostel. I also think many of the recent horror films, like Annabelle or The Conjuring have been terrible. But anything from the classic Universal Horror films like Dracula/Frankenstein, all the way through to the '80s slashers like Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street/early Hellraiser films have been favorites of mine. I've been enthralled with the horror genre since I was a kid, having seen many of the films at an extremely early age--but as a kid I also met many of the actors who played in horror films, so for me it was never anything more than movie magic, special effects, and make-believe. I can't recall a single film, horror or otherwise, that ever gave me a bad night's sleep as a kid. Sadly, horror films in general have far more cultural merit and significance than many critics give the genre credit for.

[greg]

I started playing Radiant Historia on the DS last week. I'm about 3 hours into it so far. It involves time travel, but it's not the same as Chrono Trigger. Think of Doc Brown's explanation of tangent, parallel timelines in Back To The Future Part 2 and that is how this game works. You can time jump to those moments where a crucial decision is made. You apparently need to explore the different timelines to unlock certain events that interrelate to each other. The only downside to that is having to go back to where I've been before, and skip through a bunch of dialogue I've already read to get to the point where I need to something different.

[_D_]

Been playing a lot of Borderlands Handsome Collection The Pre-Sequel over the past few weeks on my Xbox One. I originally bought 2 copies so I could give one to friends but I don't think they play it much. The nice thing is I don't have to buy any DLCs as they are all included with the game. At least on the XB1 I can play a lot of multiplayer online games. There are almost none on the PC, so I've abandoned that platform for this game. The controls on the PC are better though. The XB1 controller gets tiring to use after awhile. This never happens for me with a keyboard and mouse...