WHAT VIDEO GAME ARE YOU PLAYING??

[Bryancd]

Yes, I just always think if it from a hardware standpoint.

[Jobydrone]

This game has gotten absolutely slammed in reviews, glad to see you're enjoying it Bryan.  From what I've seen the troubles may be due to several total reboots during the development cycle, where they had to start over practically from scratch more than once, until someone at Sega finally said "Get it done already" so some compromises were made.  I'll play this when the price drops hit (possibly in a few weeks based on the reviews) or maybe give it a rental

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Been playing Miasmata lately. Miasmata is sort of the anti-Far Cry 3. First person survival game where your trying to cure the plague that you've got with plants you discover around the island. There is a creature on the island with an intelligent AI, apparently, that will hunt you on the island and you have to avoid it. You only have limited melee weapons and nothing else to defend yourself with. I've been playing for a couple hours and I have yet to see the creature though. Still, it's an unsettling experience for how lonely you feel on the island.

[Geekyfanboy]

So I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online MMO since December and I'm totally addicted.. anyone else playing this game?

[ChrisMC]

I played it for a while...I really enjoyed it, just don't have the time to dedicate to MMOs lately.

[billybob476]

Yeah sadly my time with MMOs is at the very least on a hiatus. I spent the last few weeks re-playing through the King's Quest series for my show. What a ton of fun. I think I'm going to give KQ6 a peoper playthough though, that one was always my favourite.

[Rico]

Yes, I'm still playing WOW.  I also grabbed Torchlight 2 off Steam last weekend when it was on sale.  Cool game.

[Jobydrone]

Last night I finished an epic play through of "Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch," on the PS3.  I haven't played a game like this in a really long time.  I've generally not enjoyed Japanese role playing games.  Ever since I started gaming, I've always been drawn to the more American style of RPG, going all the way back to the gold box Dungeons and Dragons games and in more recent years the Bethesda produced RPGs like Fallout and Elder Scrolls or Bioware's Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and the like.  In fact the last pure JRPG I played to completion was all the way back in the PS2 era, Final Fantasy 10.  But Ni No Kuni is something really special.  It's a combined effort from Level Five, who've a long history of creating unique and interesting combat and gameplay systems for Japanese role playing games like Dark Cloud, Dragon Quest, Rogue Galaxy, and White Knight Chronicles.  The thing that makes this game so special, though, and what drew me back to the genre, is that studio's collaboration with the premiere Japanese animation producer, Studio Ghibli, who are the creators of such wonderful films as Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle, and My Neighbor Totoro.  Ghibli did all the animation for this game, and it's chock full of high quality cut scenes and painted environments that just radiate with Ghibli style and substance.  The characters look just like Ghibli creations, and the story is truly moving, sad, and exciting.  I really felt for the characters and wanted to see how the story ended.  I don't think I've ever played a game that is so much like actually playing an animated film before. 

The actual gameplay is really fun too...at the start you travel alone but very soon into the game you meet your other party members.  You use monsters that you fight but eventually can befriend along the way, called familiars, (alot like Pokemon), and there are hundreds of unique looking and really fun monster designs to find and capture.  After a monster becomes your familiar, you can name them, level them up along with your party members, feed them to make them stronger in different stat areas, equip them with weapons, manage their abilities, and eventually evolve them into different, more powerful forms along branching paths.  It's truly amazing how much detail went into the level system for these familiars.  The main character and all the party members have their own unique spells and abilities as well, and while they start out weak and need to use their familiars to fight for them, by the end of the game the main party have epic and powerful abilities and powers that sometimes make the familiars seem a little bit lacking.

I've been obsessed with finishing this game for a couple weeks now, to the consternation of my wife who's been banished from the TV after the kids go to bed for all that time.  My game clock says I've played this for over 50 hours.  If you have a PS3 (this is a Playstation exclusive) and have ever been a fan of RPGs or Studio Ghibli, you absolutely HAVE to try this game.  I know the length is daunting, but  believe me when I say it takes something really special for a guy with a wife that hates gaming and four kids to commit 50+ hours to a game like this.  You'll be glad you did.

[billybob476]

I got totally sucked into the new SimCity. Played until 1am last night. Despite reports I only had one minor issue logging in (I assume the server I chose was too busy, flipped to another and all was well) and the game was solid for my 4 hour play session.

It is both simpler and more complex then previous installments in the franchise. I've only scratched the surface thus far and I think I'll be playing this one for quite awhile. It's as quirky as I've come to expect from a SimCity game and the graphics are awesome looking.

Based on my initial playthrough this is a recommend. I think I'll be doing a UMBCast on it in the coming weeks like I did for the new X-COM.

[Jobydrone]

Cool!  Sims were never my thing but there's alot of buzz about this game.  Looking forward to hearing your impressions.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Your one of the lucky ones. The reports I keep getting is that people still can't unlock their preorder, have to suffer through long queues or can't login at all. Its a nasty launch and they haven't even added the Europeans to the mix yet. Of course, they could have avoided this mess but *shrug*

That said, the gameplay footage I've seen looks pretty good. I like the simulation engine they're using. I like the look and graphics and the new stuff they added. But I feel like this SimCity (5) is missing features that would make this a short-lived game for me. Such as the ability to change terrain and the lack of larger cities.

[billybob476]

They're focusing more on making multiple cities which compliment each other. Depending on your intended play style (multi or solo) you can view your region as a single large subdivided city. Apparantly a patch is rolling out across all servers of the course of today which will address stability issues.

Going though a major release right now at work might be making me a lot more understanding then I'd be otherwise.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

They're focusing more on making multiple cities which compliment each other. Depending on your intended play style (multi or solo) you can view your region as a single large subdivided city. Apparantly a patch is rolling out across all servers of the course of today which will address stability issues.

Going though a major release right now at work might be making me a lot more understanding then I'd be otherwise.

Which its fine that they want to do a multiple cities complimenting each other, but the fact that the cities freeze in time whenever you leave one to go to another makes that idea less attractive to me. Sure, its to encourage multiplayer but there aren't enough multiplayer features to really make me want to play with friends. The interaction I've seen is pretty limited, it feels more like Facebook's "friends" interaction they have in games like farmville and that was never a very good feature.

[billybob476]

I'll let you know when I start up a second city in my region.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

http://www.destructoid.com/amazon-has-pulled-simcity-from-its-store-248072.phtml

Ongoing server troubles have resulted in SimCity getting pulled from Amazon.com. Not even Diablo 3 got pulled from an online retailer during its troubles. It also has a 1 star average rating now. People are not happy.

How about you Billybob? Able to login?