Had to trade in my copy of Dragon Age 2, because I REFUSED to play anything else while it was in my house...
That being said, I'm on L.A. Noire right now, and I'm finding it rather repetitive, impressive as it is.
Co-op Borderlands with my housemate. Roland and Mordecai make fantastic team. =D
Finished DQ8 finally. Racked up 108 hours. Still have to do the Dragovian Trials. fml
In other news, I just picked up a cute little kid-friendly 2D Castleroid called Monster Tale, for the DS (Reveal Trailer). It's a quirky hybrid of a metroidvania-style platformer and a monster raising simulator, and it works surprisingly well! You play as Ellie, a little girl who accidentally(?) gets transported to the Monster World by a mystical armband. There she meets up with a hungry little beast she adoringly calls Chomp and together they set out to discover why the Monster Kingdoms have been taken over by a group of 5 miscreants who call themselves the "Kid Kings". It's a pretty straightforward adventure romp with power-ups galore, lots of areas to run around in and cool music to groove to, all lovingly sprite-animated in glorious 2D. It was developed by Dream Rift, whose members had previously worked on a (I'm told) sweet little 2D platformer called Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure.
Image gallery
The 1st 15 minutes of gameplay
The crux is the monster-raising portion of the game. Chomp starts out as a baby-mon but can gain experience and stats by being given Pet Items, which he interacts with on the bottom DS screen. As he levels up he gets new skills and abilities he can equip and eventually new forms with even more skills and abilities to unlock. And once those skills/abilities are *mastered* they can be attached to other forms, giving you lots of room to customize Chomp to your preference. For the most part, he basically hovers around Ellie unless there's an enemy or something he can interact with, in which case he gets right to work. It's not at all dissimilar to the Familiar system in Castlevania: SotN. But at anytime you can activate one of his skills with the L or R button (he can have two different skills equipped at any time). Abilities are passive and can be equipped to add extra points in Chomps various stats or raise elemental attack/defense parameters. However using skills and just plain being active on the top screen depletes Chomp's life gauge, if it gets low you'll have to send him to the bottom "sanctuary" screen so he can rest up. If he loses all his life he'll be knocked unconscious and become unusable for a minute or so.
Precocious little scamps, ain't they?
As I said before, the game is a fun little romp but it's also incredibly short. It probably won't last you more than 10 hours at the most... which is just fine for me but some people will wish for a bit more meat. It seems to have been developed with the younger generation in mind, as the game typically hand-holds you the whole way by showing you where you need to go next, and the difficulty is quite manageable. The various Kingdoms are made up of multiple areas, each comprised of many rooms... but they're pretty straight-forward. One big issue is that there are no warp points between areas... and this game employs a LOT of backtracking. You'll find yourself running through the same rooms more than once, for sure... but this is a pretty good opportunity to gather money and items for Chomp. Only the boss battles with the Kid Kings gave me any trouble, and the final Kingdom you explore is dubious in that you suddenly find yourself beset by waves of monsters and precious few Save rooms in between for healing. Hope you've raised your Chomp well, this is where his abilities will save your ass.
As for your main character, Ellie looks cute but she's a little spitfire when it comes to fighting her way through the hordes. Throughout the game you'll find statues that will unlock new moves and powers, almost every one essential to get to the next area. You start will a Mega Man-esque pea shooter (indeed, with the blue hair and her various animations and poses, I find it hard to believe Ellie isn't a digital reincarnation of the blue bomber) and later you'll gain melee attack combos, charge shots, wall jumping (X!), a quick dash, butt stomp and others I'm rightly forgetting at the mo'. You can also find life containers that will increase your Heart gauge and you'll eventually have access to a shop where you can buy even more power-ups with the cash you get from defeated enemies (and if you successfully juggle them post-mortem, you can knock even more loot from their carcasses... bwa-ha-ha...).
So, yeah. This game is sweet. A little short, but worthy of a playthrough. Give it a rent if not a purchase, you'll be glad you did. Hell, it's only 30 bucks on Amazon. DO EET.
(another long-winded post... it's almost... like I CARE)
@Psxphile looks like an interesting game, never heard of it before. But it just serves to remind me of how badly I want to play Shantae on DSiware, which unfortunately for me, I just have the old DS Lite.
So I'm playing Castlevania Order of Ecclesia right now (all aboard the slowpoke train). I'm doing Dracula's castle. Not that into the game really, I feel like I've played this before. And really, I have. But still I come back for more Dracula buttwhooping like it's an annual celebration. But it's making me badly want to play Symphony or Dawn of Sorrow again. Which is good because Dracula X Chronicles is in the mail.
Crysis 2, on PC of course. It's amazing, but the campaign maps don't give you free roam space like in the original.
