What has everyone been playing this week?

[hush]

only Demon Soul's

[Kaosu]

Hit over 100 hours in Tales of Vesperia and I'm STILL on my first playthrough. Synthing is a horrible chore which I've commited to finishing for god knows what reason... about forty items to go until I finish the Collector's Book.

Not looking forward to having to do the 100 man melee... let alone the 200 man melee with each character... it's too much...

[JazzFunk]

Finished the incredibly solid but also incredibly uninspired Timeshift earlier after being told by my doc I do have swine flu, and not just a ruddy, bollocking bad cold. This completely legitimised my continuing week-long absence from work, absolved me of any guilt or responsibility, and left me looking forward to a few more, uninterrupted, selfish days of mostly gaming.

Anyway, I got told all this on the day when I'm starting to feel OK, it's like Sod's Law in reverse, and that is very rare.

After clocking that boring-yet-solid, Soviet ****-****e of an FPS, Time****, I decided to properly sit down and start playing GTA IV. I've only managed about 10.23% so far, but the whole atmosphere of the thing is giving me that Shenmue feeling, despite the core gameplay still being essentially flawed n' floaty. I know I'm late to the party, but what a beautiful world they created, it is an absolute pleasure to *just* walk around within it.

Also been playing The Simpsons Game on DS (especially good for frequent bouts of the swine flu ****s, ten minute sessions dans le bog, etc.) Fun, if crap, game, fun.

[Skull Commander]

Three main games for me this week, all on Xbox 360:

Fight Night 4 - Playing the legacy mode and it's a improvement over round 3. Better AI but terribile menus

Fifa 10 - feeling so-so about this years title. Great in local multiplayer, but not really feeling the rest of it so far. I will persevere though. Terrible menus

Mirror's Edge - Had a little shot of this, playing a couple more levels. Good and bad in equal measures.

[dreamylittledream]

Mini Ninjas - its utterly charming and so much fun. I'm motoring through it though as a) its fairly easy and b) want to give Uncharted 2 my full attention on its arrival.

[MrMarbles]

WipEout Pulse - rock hard compared to post-patch WipEout HD. I'm only on the second tier and am already struggling with some races and time trials. Missed this the first time around (although I'd bought and loved WipEout Pure), but it still looks and sounds great. Interesting getting to play this after having played WipEout HD and Fury. I feel I've done it in the right order.

Everybody's Golf 2 - an absolutely perfect handheld game. Looks great, full of charming touches and everything about it is spot-on.

Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story - very slowly working my way through this; finding the gameplay suitably varied at the moment (6+ hours in and I'm not getting bored of anything yet) and the dialogue, visuals and sound are all great. Very much enjoying it whenever I sit down to get a bit further.

FIFA 10 - mildy disappointed by this year's effort. Although multiplayer is great fun, there are a lot of niggles with the single-player game. The menus are also heavily creaky with age and in need of a drastic overhaul. Oh, and it's buggy as f**k.

Shenmue II - revisiting this on my lunchtimes and, crikey, it's dated terribly visually. Still, I'm finding that the visuals matter less the more I get sucked back into Ryo's world and I'm sure that, if I scrape a little further, the magic will envelop me once more.

[Number45]

I'm further into NGS than ever before, and probably enjoying it more than I ever have before. Could do without the Rachel sections though, they're ****.

Nothing much else. I did start up the original Half Life earlier in the week, but haven't played much of it (Don't worry, I've beaten it many times before).

Hoping to have NGS done by the end of the week though, so I can concentrate on Uncharted.

[Darwock]

Still exclusively Warhawk - recent achievements... I finally got my KDR to an even 1.00, after 9300 kills, and I earned the exemplary team cross medal. 5000 points away from reaching 1st Lieutenant rank, which I am going to try and get this week.

[BaudAttitude]

I played through Aliens vs Predator: Requiem and Infected, both on PSP, then started the recent Prince of Persia. I'm a little behind the curve.

[Neon Ignition]

Metal Gear Solid: Touch - Just been picking at this on the bus rides home and as my battery allows. I'm about 3/4's of the way through and as the difficulty increases it's starting to become a little over fiddly thanks to the touch controls but so far it's not impassable.

Uncharted 2: Beta - After the original Beta I was gonna stay clear but in the end caved so set myself a new low limit of just reaching Level 10. As people started to learn the maps and controls the play balanced out and some of my original concerns died down. I'm sure it'll get some play in the weeks before COD6.

Grand Theft Auto IV - Before the eps come out I've been giving this another go to see how much of my original issues with it came down to disappointment. On some levels I can appreciate the technical accomplishment of the game but on others such as the viewing angles, car control, online set up, story, city design etc they still stand. It's not as bad as I remember, just inferior to play compared to the PS2 era titles imo.

Call of Duty: World At War - Another one picked up again ahead of the sequel to brush up on skills. It's been ages but the smoothness of the gameplay surprised me. Wasn't long till I was barrel rolling around shooting peoples shins off.

[Holio]

FIFA 10 : Really is a great game, playing on semi control atm, trying to get down to manual, but my passing on semi is low enough I think. It's truly amazing the freedom you have in this game whether trying to break down the wing or cut out a pass. No game should ever need Super Cancel.

Wipeout HD : Thinking about DL the Fury add on pack, so gave this another spin, tis lush, just got a bigger TV, and truly the PS3 games look alot better on the larger screen.

MotorStorm : Pacific Rift : As above, tried it on the bigger screen and despite it only being 720p compared to the full 1080pness of Wipeout, it shifts and moves beautifully, so many routes round a course as well. Really need to play more of this. Still find the load times a little long, but not as bad as the first game. Once again, stunning.

Colin McRae Dirt 2 : Played some of this a couple of weeks ago, forgot to add it on, love the rally sections, not convinced about the Off Road racings areas or rally cross. For off road the MotorStorm games seem to do it much better, in Dirt they seem a little too uncontrollable. Beautiful to look at and play.

Right now, IMHO, gaming is amazing! Woot Woot!

[Dirty Sanchez]

Had 2 games of COD4 after a 2 week layoff.

Been digging into GT PSP and Motorstorm Artic PSP.

This. again.

[C']

I thought this weekend would be dedicated to Demon's Souls but I'm still totally addicted to Dissidia Final Fantasy on PSP.

So much content to this game but I still haven't even strayed beyond Story Mode (totally ignored Arcade Mode, Quick Battle and Duel Collosseum) yet the amount to do just in Story Mode puts a lot of other games to shame.

Got my second character to Lv.100 (Firion) and took him through the Shade Impulse and Distant Glory chapters as well as getting 100% completion of his Destiny Odyssey chapter.

Next up - Onion Knight.

[MrMarbles]

Next up - Onion Knight.

I don't care about anything else about the game. I just want to play it for this - it conjures up the most amazing imagery in my mind.

[C']

Sadly this is probably now what you had in mind but here you go.



You're mind's one was probably better.