What has everyone been playing this week? 2

[fallenangle]

About 20% into XB360 Tomb Raider: Underworld.

The outdoor areas look very pretty at times but like all the other Crystal Dynamics's TRs I've played, excepting the brilliant arcade orienated Guardian Of Light, the core gameplay, whilst it has its moments, is already getting a bit .......... meh.

[importaku]

Todays challenge is this.... Mizuiro blood


Barely keeping my head above water with this one, the word games are pretty hard when my vocab is limited. Just about scraped through the shiritori word game.

[Anpanman]

Not much just EDF portable 2 on Vita.

[hush]

Just MK X for me

[Neon Ignition]

Waiting for new stuff to download, just started Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. More of the same... good fun

[QualityChimp]

I was playing GTA V for while, trying to steal a jet fighter from the airbase. Skydiving in was a failure, but riding a bike around the perimeter moat loses the star rating and getting out is a little easier. Took me loads of attempts, but stole it eventually. The process would've been quicker if Rockstar had added the option to load your last save rather than reloading and having your character leave hospital the having to reload your last save. Grrr.
I'll come back to the game later.

Played a little bit of Minecraft. I love digging down and listening out for monsters and then digging to find them.

Did a couple of nights of Dead Island doing co-op with my bro-in-law. It's less scary the second time around, but still lots of fun.

On my phone I've been playing Crossy Road, a pixelart Frogger clone and lots more Marvel Puzzle Quest. There was an excellent Ultron story to tie in with the movie. I got a Scarlet Witch cover, but Quicksilver and Hulkbuster eluded me. They're launching The Vision next.

[TonyDA]

Been playing Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition on PS4 as I missed it on last gen, and picked it up cheap a while ago on the US PSN store. Took a while to get into it, and it does have a last gen feel to it, but am enjoying it. The combat sucks though.

Have also decided to work my way through some of the PS+ freebies recently. After finishing Dust a couple of weeks ago, I've started Never Alone - lovely graphical style, very chilled game. The kind of thing that I'll only play a few times, finish, get all the trophies and never look at again - ideal as a freebie!

[chopemon]

I finished off Yakuza 4 on Tuesday evening. Fantastic RPG with a great world, style and characters.

Last night I continued mentoring Miss Chopemon in the ways of MonHun 3U. She's early on and we're working our way through the HR1 quests cooperatively. She started with the hunting horn but wasn't feeling the game. Last night she switched to dual blades and is enjoying it a lot more. I also got past the Senran Kagura Estival Versus tutorial on PS4.

[fallenangle]

Finished TR: Underworld and went straight onto Tomb Raider 2013. Very unusual for me to do two similar back to back games but I've now got both under my belt.

TR 2013 is a real curate's egg. In places it is actually awful, often annoyingly patronising. Particularly early on a gamer with any previous TR experience will be gobsmacked by how CD have managed to further dumb down what was the core gameplay and the frequency with which you're made to feel like little more than a passenger. The linearity, reliance on QTEs, unnecessary, repetitive prompts, general unattractiveness and soul destroyingly cliched secondary characters at times almost made me chuck it in.

But now at the end I'm just about in the positive camp over all. I still don't consider it a TR game, it owes very little to the original concept or even Crystal Dynamics previous efforts. But once I accepted I wasn't playing TR but a dumbed down platformer for the masses I actually started to enjoy parts of it a great deal.

Maybe other will disagree but I think the visceral combat is what really saves it - killing with an ice-axe or shooting enemies in the head with powerful bows never gets old. Its not what TR was ever about before but in this game it works although it is used again and again almost as the punctuation necessary to keep the interest of gamers with short attention spans.

What disappoints about the combat is that stealth, something I've long wished to be added to TR, whilst often possible and well implemented, is regularly thwarted by the game itself forcing you into these unavoidable fire-fights.

However a positive I didn't expect after some of the reviews I'd seen is that, except for the first encounter, there is also none of that killing exotic animals is wrong stuff. We're genuinely back to pre-CD TR with lots of wildlife slaughter possible if that is what you want to do.

The real downer for me is that the optional tombs are a bit of a joke, a half hearted sop to old school and long time TR fans. There's less puzzle content in them during whole game than just one such tomb or temple from almost any of the previous games, including Underworld. Annoyingly such puzzles as there are, even when not entirely original, are well designed and, I think, often quite cleverly thought out. But there is simply just not enough of them.

It rather sums up TR 2013 for me, a nod towards the previous games and that's it. The rest is cut scenes, cliche, undemanding platforming, QTEs and third-person combat. But somehow, despite my criticisms, it still worked as a whole to entertain me. Perhaps that is because it was so very different to Underworld.

[Kit]

I liked Underworld but I recognise the criticisms you're making. It looks sublime (better than 2013 tomb raider in places) but there's parts that are like 'this is tomb raider!!!!' then others that feel like they belong in a different game. It also went on far too long. I got bored playing.

[fallenangle]

That's been the problem with TR every since Crystal Dynamic stook over. They've never really understood what were the core (Core) gameplay elements: puzzle solving and exploration, which within a TR consistent world using an ever expanding toolset of moves, was actually the main puzzle element. Combat was secondary, almost incidental some times, although there were some good boss fights like the dragon in TR2 and the Willard Spider in TR3.

CD put LC in a much more linear and inconsistent world, simplified everything to make the platforming easier and ramped up the combat until, with TR2013, it is the major part of the gameplay.

Personally I think of the two genuinely original main games ie. Legend and Underworld the latter is actually CDs best TR game. There are parts of it that did bore me greatly and indeed wonder what the hell some of the things included were doing in TR.

You're spot on about the way Underworld looks; stunning (the Shiva/Kali statue area inThailand) and impressively big at times and that wow factor is almost entirely missing from TR2013. However TR2013 does do a choppy ocean very well.

[hush]

Not really that much just abit of Shovel Knight on the Vita and liking it so far also played some Race to the Sun on thePS4 and fought i'd start playing Destiny not really sure why not feeling it right now but i'll give it more time

[Junko]

Project Diva weekend , I can't be the only one that loves the Vocaloids ?! And dusted off my old PS2 brought from here for some Katamari

[Pikate]

- Got the 120th Star and defeated Bowser in Super Mario 64 on Virtual Console
- 3-Stars in all of Mario Kart 8's 200cc cups

About to get cracking on Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush which is the start of me completing a chain of ACTUAL NEW RELEASES ON WII U which will also including Splatoon, Paper Mario (Virtual Console) andYoshi's Wooly World.

What a time to be a gamer/alive

[charlesr]

Just started Dark Souls 360. LOL @ first demon. Had no idea there was another exit so flailed around inflicting 2% damage until I died. Over and over.