What has everyone been playing this week? 2

[Fader209]

Finally beat all the Nightwing challenges in Arkham City!

Hardest recent gaming challenge by a landslide.

Have you been playing Arkham Knight at all?
I finished the core game 100% so am left with a load of tough AR challenges to do.

[Dogg Thang]

Played Firewatch a few days ago and loved it. Gave Deus Ex Human Revolution a few goes but I just can't get into it - maybe another time. Played a game today called Serena. Free on Steam, sounded a little like a Dear Esther type game. Began promising but was mostly an exercise in frustration as you just tap everything to make the story progress and tap it all again and again until you find what activates the next bit. I guess it's probably proof of concept but didn't grab me. It's mercifully short.

Oh and gave Dear Esther another walk through. A lovely game.

[wakka]

I'd like to play Dear Esther. Once I get a new computer (soon, hopefully, if Apple announce the next generation of MacBook Pros at the end of the month as rumoured), I'll finally get to. My only walking sims so far are Everybody's Gone To The Rapture and Firewatch, and I've loved both.

In terms of the latter, a lot of people called

->Open Spoiler<-

out the ending as being disappointing, but I thought it was perfectly pitched. It was a story that had some dark themes but somehow managed to be uplifting and heartwarming. I felt it had genuine warmth and humour, which is so rare in games.

I ended up liking it more than Rapture, which is also very enjoyable - and visually absolutely stunning.

I've recently been playing Yakuza 3, I'm nearly at the end now. Certainly the weakest Yakuza game of the three I've played so far. It's still fun because it's Yakuza - I love the pulpy soap opera storyline that runs through the games, they almost feel like seasons of a Japanese gangster-themed Dallas or something - and the fighting is button bashy fun as always. But it feels significantly cut down in terms of sidestories - a bit of online research shows that around 35% of sidequests, including the awesome hostess bars, were cut for the West. A real shame as the sidequests make up so much of the world of Yakuza.

I'm also not a massive fan of the graphics. Okinawa looks good - suitably sun soaked and tropical - but Kamurocho is just too bright and shiny. It's very much got that plasticky Vaseline-coated shine that so many early PS3/360 gen games had for some reason, where everything looks like it's made by Mattel.

One other issue I have with it - the camera angles. Now the camera just follows you like any other game, but in the earlier 2, technical limitations of the PS2 meant that they had to use fixed cameras to achieve the look they wanted. This had its flaws but was an atmospheric approach. I feel a bit of the vibe is lost now that the camera just follows Kiryu.

Hopefully some of these issues are fixed in the 4th game. I hear it's much better - and the 5th the best yet in English. I'm taking my time with the series as I really enjoy them.

The best for me so far is certainly the 2nd. A great story and some really cool sequences - and the hostess bar management sim sidequest is genius!

[Neon Ignition]

Next should be denting the PC version of GTAV and as I continue working through my Steam A titles the next one is.... Alien Colonial Marines

[Kit]

Have you been playing Arkham Knight at all?
I finished the core game 100% so am left with a load of tough AR challenges to do.

When I finally get all the riddler trophies in arkam city I'll buy Arkham Knight. So look out for me doing the VR challenges for that game around 2020/2021.

[Tobal]

Finished off main section Dragon Quest Heroes, probably the best Warriors/Omega-force game to date, though i had fallen off the trolley for a few years after One Piece W1 and Gundam W4 (ps3 both), as DW7/8/E and Samurai W4 looked increasing like J-pop auditions than legendary Chinese/Japanese generals, and i couldn't face another One Piece W2 and 3 as W1 wasn't all that great, however...

DQ does things abit different with a smaller cast of very different play styles and focus on your core 4 fighters (swappable mid fight) vs legions of classic DQ monsters and the RPG levelling up carries over into this as branching tree system of picking the Abilities, Magic, traits and Attributes with the skill points you get from levelling up and also by purchasing or questing weapons and armour.

Was going to try and 100% it as i was 4 trophies off it, but the end game content (after finishing the story gives hard mode bosses, new arenas and new classic bosses that aren't part of the story) is super hard in the way Warriors games can get which by the looks of it requires me to grind my stats up and craft alot of rare defence items.. way to much work. Going to look in to the Arslan Warriors that just came out and see what changes Omega have made to the warriors formula while i wait on DQ heroes 2 and hopefully down the line Gundam W5 (As the up coming Gundam Breakers 3 although a warriors game at heart, the Breakers series requires co-op to finish the game which means going through japanese servers...)

[Paddy]

Played a good slice of the Hitman BETA and like it very much. At first I wondered what the appeal was but as you replay the missions and find all the alternate ways to kill your mark it lets the game come alive. I still think Agent #47 in the new game looks like a Ken doll though.

I also finished Tales of Zestiria earlier. For my first full Tales of game it wasn't too bad, the core cast of characters worked well together and the combat systems were on the whole quite gratifying. The villain/s weren't anything to write home about (no Sephiroth-level iconic villain here) but they fit the themes of the game which deals with mainly mankind, angels, demons and not giving into one's darker side. The opening theme music was pretty decent too (shame the rights didn't cover keeping the original vocals intact for the Western release though). That said it's got me interested in the franchise and I've got the Tales of Xillia 1 & 2 double-pack coming through the post soon.

Before that though Bloodborne arrived so I'm just going to have to try that our first.

[Arashikage]

Finished A Link Between Worlds earlier and what a charming game it was, one of my favourite Zelda's for sure. In contrast I started Majora's Mask straight afterwards and it feels clunky in comparison. I've heard good things about Majora's Mask though so I am going to stick with it, the altogether strangeness is too compelling.

[kryss]

[MENTION=4287]Paddy[/MENTION] try Tales of Hearts (R) and Tales of the Abyss, I enjoyed both of those.
[MENTION=1826]Arashikage[/MENTION] Majora's Mask is the marmite of Zelda games.

[Paddy]

I've got Tales of the Abyss for 3DS Kryss. Once I've played something else for a while, I'll give it a look (unless I give Tales of Xillia a whirl first and it catches my attention).

[kryss]

I hope they left the Bandai-Namco crossover support characters in ToH:R, that was one of the cool things about the DS original. I still need to get Vespiria started.

[Junko]

Finally got the Yokai demo to download , have been loving it the past few days

[Atticus]

Still enjoying MGSV Phantom Pain. No idea how many hours I've sunk into it so far but it's still only 18% complete.

And a quick look at Super Metroid on the 3DS reminded me how immersive a pair of headphones make a gaming session. So out came the Vita and TxK. Simply a perfect game of Tempest, even without rotary control it's just wonderful.

[Kit]

Beat Arkham City 100%.

Never again.

[MartyG]

Hitman - it plays like Blood Money. I managed to get about five hours out of it but there really isn't a lot of content there so it starts to get boring with the limited scenarios, even with the contracts mode. Probably worth the ?10 on steam though.