Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Other than fixing the camera, probably the game's biggest issue was that the Final Fantasy side of the crossover barely existed. No FF world(s), the only plotline carried over from one of the games is that Cloud doesn't like Sephiroth, and in general the characters could have been replaced by originals and it wouldn't feel like anything was missing.

You shouldn't think of Kingdom Hearts as a FF crossover in anyway. It's a Disney series crossover with some originals made up to center the story around (Sora et al). The FF characters play such a background role anyway that they might as well be N1 cameos. KH2 gives them a little bit more screen time, but at this point they are, like you said, more like original characters than FF characters.

[Shale]

After playing it, I don't, but that's how it was billed, and not knowing the reality of it coming in it's jarring to see FF characters wandering around in somebody else's continuity serving no real purpose whatsoever. Not to mention that I'd like to see what KH would do with a full-fledged FF setting or cast.

[Grefter]

Djinn:  Remember that I am saying this as a massively pretentious art fag.

Braid is chock full of wank, it is a good game but the way that the plot is given to the player is highly disjointed and deliberately obfuscating purely for the reason of smoke screening.  It is about the invention of the nuclear bomb when quite frankly playing the game as a creepy time manipulating stalker villain would have been a lot more appealing and taken about half as much bullshit to convey.  The fact that the part where it is all about the first nuclear testing is both incredibly annoying because it isn't really obvious until you get the secret ending bit with all the stars, but on the other hand that ending makes no fucking sense unless you know that the game IS about that.  Congratulations you got all 7 regular stars now you can save (Capture) the princess and then she glows and fucking EXPLODES as soon as you touch her.  Now know that this is about the invention of Nuclear weaponry this is kind of cool and logical.  If you don't know that, it is just one big giant FUCK YOU to the player.  Here do some over the top ridiculous hidden quest finding that you need to have restarted the game because you didn't see the black tip of the star on the dark blue background of the sky in the window above the frame of the puzzle picture in your room on the way to world 3 and you played the game like any fucking reasonable person and completed the puzzle and just screwed yourself out of the ending that is put in place for you to run around and find these incredibly well hidden bonus items.  And then the princess fucking explodes.

Case in point, you finish the game, you get the epilogue and you need to touch the red books and then hide behind something to get the full plot monologues out.  Not only is the awesome gameplay and the plot completely mutually exclusive, the plot is actively hidden from the player. 

No, that isn't art, that is a man kicking his devoted fans in the balls.  No that isn't performance art either.

While Braid is a good game, everything extraneous to the central game is complete and total wank garbage.

Also ToP > entire Tales series put together for interesting and innovative plot.  I can't actually think of anything else that really has the player taking the role of such a blatant aggressor.

[Twilkitri]

Shining Force 2 - Up to the Red Baron.
Last attempt at that level he IDed the main, which was not something I knew he had the capability of. Not the most pleasant way of finding out.

PS2 PS2 - Did the first dungeon.
As enjoyable as the original so far. Not sure I really care much for the attack charging system though.
I bought some graph paper in celebration of it working but I have a suspicion that it's not going to be as easy to map as the original was.

Man, Steiner's Revenge seems flagrantly overpowered currently, and needs comparatively barely any defending/low charges to activate. I wonder what it's based on and if it will keep pace with regular attacks throughout the game... it's ludicrous overkill to current enemies.

[Clear Tranquil]

ES- Party level up means gameplay fail up. It's nice that you literally have three seconds to frantically adjust the camera, find an enemy, and begin targeting before your attack time starts running down.How can a game have such a neat core combat system then utterly fuck it up? It's like if VP2 AP ran down while you stood still and you couldn't adjust the camera.

You can set it back to partly level 1 in the menu I think. I haven't had too much problems with party level 3 so far, there's usually an enemy directly in front of Viola/whoever the current fastest party member is when battle starts and I now have an idea of where on the battle field enemies can be depending on which side battle is initiated in the world field.

 

I love the graphics, the music's wonderful, and the fights are usually fun. On the flipside, the last duengon (Fort) was obnoxious, it's easy to run out of items and you have to do backtracking if you want items generally. You need to be using pictures so you have enough items to get through the duengons. Frustrating.

It's not that bad if you utilise Orange Glow/Heal Arrow/Sacred Signature. Any two of those makes the party self sufficient enough for Fort. Polka can get Earth Heal soon after Fort too or maybe even in it depending on how much training one does.

I now have over 130'000 G

Eternal Sonata (here be spoilers) -


Ludo Cemetery. Freaking maze like dungeon makes for dizzy, annoyed and unhappy CTs >_> Probably just because I was still tired this morning/didn't have time to concentrate before leaving for mum's but yeah I can't really say I like this place. That could change though. Used Viola/Retto/Claves for the Woodland Grove, Jazz/Falsetto/Claves before that in the swamp. Ended up with Retto dead against the waterfall boss and no angel trumpets left from already reviving him/Claves in the fight, ouch that was some pain the boss dealt out.

Previously I had fun fighting Tuba with Viola and Salsa, Beat ended up dead that time. At least he'd already taken his pictures >_>

I'm enjoying this game. Beat brings some much needed humour value to the plot as does Allegretto's interactions with Beat. Salsa is a brat but again though there is humour there with her own interactions with Beat. Viola's ribbing of Retto over Polka is also amusing.

Battle system wise I'm loving how I can now set more items, four special attacks and also how Salsa can buff special attacks. Battle prowess-

Retto- Damage, damage, damage!

Beat-  Beat seems to becoming a bit outdated now, still has the range but so do others.Taking pictures and selling for ££££££!!! is *GODLIKE* of course but I don't usually take those type of abilities into account when character rating (Locke for Godlike111! >_>)

Polka- Orange Glow, Earth Heal and Shade Comet for range are useful. Nether Wave does surprisingly good damage off Salsa's buff too. That speed is pathetic though. Probably LVP because of that, dunno between her and Beat.

Viola- MVP (could change) Fast, damage, range, healing, self buffing.

Salsa- That speed is insane. Even faster than Viola what. Shadow Silhouette for damage + MT buffing is also v nice. Closest runner to Viola for MVP so far.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Djinn:  Remember that I am saying this as a massively pretentious art fag.

Braid is chock full of wank, it is a good game but the way that the plot is given to the player is highly disjointed and deliberately obfuscating purely for the reason of smoke screening.  It is about the invention of the nuclear bomb when quite frankly playing the game as a creepy time manipulating stalker villain would have been a lot more appealing and taken about half as much bullshit to convey.  The fact that the part where it is all about the first nuclear testing is both incredibly annoying because it isn't really obvious until you get the secret ending bit with all the stars, but on the other hand that ending makes no fucking sense unless you know that the game IS about that.  Congratulations you got all 7 regular stars now you can save (Capture) the princess and then she glows and fucking EXPLODES as soon as you touch her.  Now know that this is about the invention of Nuclear weaponry this is kind of cool and logical. 
Case in point, you finish the game, you get the epilogue and you need to touch the red books and then hide behind something to get the full plot monologues out.  Not only is the awesome gameplay and the plot completely mutually exclusive, the plot is actively hidden from the player. 

No, that isn't art, that is a man kicking his devoted fans in the balls.  No that isn't performance art either.

While Braid is a good game, everything extraneous to the central game is complete and total wank garbage.

Actually, this really helped me crystallize my thoughts on the game. You're right, the central game is by far the strongest part of the story. It is a more general cautionary tale against Obsession where you are slowly coming to the realization that you are a time-manipulating stalker. Following this line of thought, when you seek out its extremely well-hidden secrets (plot/stars), you are indulging further in 'Obsession'. The game makes it very clear that simply the act of playing a video game is mildly obsessive. To be completionistic in the face of such tiring secrets is somewhat extreme. And so, the story reflects that. Instead of a simple, somewhat generalized story of Obsession (Tim alienating himself from his life to pursue the 'Princess'), the story follows the theme to its logical (and yes, pretentious) extreme, the creation of the Nuclear Bomb.

Honestly, if it weren't for gameFAQs and yes, my general obsession with video games, I would have never come across a single bit of text about the Nuclear Bomb in the game. I would have contented myself with the (somewhat vague) simple cautionary tale of Tim and the Princess. Instead, I discovered there was more to do, and I obsessively found all the secrets... and it was tiring. I could have been doing something else, something more fun. In the act of playing through the ridiculously hard secrets, I seriously started to think that I must be obsessed. The whole point of the story just kept hitting me in the face, and that intrigued me even more. And yes, it was something of a let-down that "It was about THE ATOMIC BOMB?!". But I kind of feel like that's the reward for obsession.

tl;dr - I completely disagree with your point that it isn't performance art. Thanks for making me think about it again, though.

Also ToP > entire Tales series put together for interesting and innovative plot.  I can't actually think of anything else that really has the player taking the role of such a blatant aggressor.

Far be it for me to argue with you if you actually -liked- a Tales plot. I'm glad you managed to find some enjoyment in at least one of them.

-Djinn

[Sierra]

IN: Finally got around to clearing Normal with all four teams. Yay and stuff, now I can use something other than the Magic team again. http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=2651

Randomly decided to try out Hard immediately thereafter (still using Magic team though since I'd got used to them). http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=2652

Didn't clear that, naturally. Should really finish PCB Normal with Reimu/Marisa before trying Hard mode on anything.

[074]

Yeah, so I haven't posted here for a while.  Anyway:

God Hand: This game is awesome.  End of story.  Challengingly difficult for once, and...awesome.

I get the feeling people would argue with me on what I actually found difficult, though.  So far, hardest stage boss has been...Shannon.  Yes, THAT Shannon.  Human form, not Demon form (which I trashed on the first try something hilarious and pathetic.)  Likewise, hardest stage so far (not counting the ARGHIHATETHIS that is Stage 7) was actually 6, due to shit luck with demons, and the idiocy that is the pit.

That, and there's just one thing that I really hate.  It's not the uberdemons.  It can actually be summed up in three words: "Sensei! Onegai shimasu!"

End of story.

[Meeplelard]

You shouldn't think of Kingdom Hearts as a FF crossover in anyway. It's a Disney series crossover with some originals made up to center the story around (Sora et al). The FF characters play such a background role anyway that they might as well be N1 cameos. KH2 gives them a little bit more screen time, but at this point they are, like you said, more like original characters than FF characters.

I more or less agree with the exception of Auron.  The way the game portrays him, and how they treat him, etc. and even how he GETS INTO THE KH2 WORLD, it really feels like they quite literally pulled him from FF10.  He's the only FF character that was accurately portrayed in the KH series when it comes down to it, and for all we know, that may have been intentional.

Some of the KH2 Representations I actually did like otherwise...and by "some" I actually mean "Leon."  THe rest all more or less sucked...well Sephiroth was kind of amusing, actually, only cause seeing him have actual personality was funny.  Plus he verbally owns the crap out of Cloud, which gets massive bonus points in my book (KH2 Cloud takes the Emo up a notch...yes, you read that right.)

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I dropped the seven bucks to play that game because not only did it have Tron in it, but he was played by Bruce Boxleitner. Everything else was unecessary filler to get to the part with Tron.

[Shale]

What about Seifer? I'm expecting incredible character depth there.

[Meeplelard]

Seifer fails in ways that Seifer isn't SUPPOSE to fail.  So yeah, he still has the same worth, but for the wrong reasons, or something <_<;

Fuijin doesn't talk in caps, IIRC, so right there, not in character, for that matter.

[Grefter]

I like Tales games, ToP suffers the problem that most of the plot is outside of the game or in remakes that were rewritten at points (ToPr does have more dialogue than the original unless I am mistaken, the uh quality of the fan translation is a bit higher as well, not knocking DeJap's work though).  I have issues with the presentation of ToP plot, but at least it is original.  I like Tales games, but gave up on the plots at ToD (Which is a shame because I really was expecting something more ToP level at first).

On Braid, to quote Yahtzee on a game that is a MUCH better piece of performance art

... but then I remember that any game designer that sacrifices fun to make an artistic statement is obviously stuck so much his own arse that he is in danger of choking on his own head.

To put that into perspective, this is about No More Heroes, which merits this with kind of shonky controls, not by hiding the entire plot behind a brick fucking wall.  It might be a smarmy clever way to present the plot to the player but it is still shit game design and when I am playing a game design is law. 

You can provide the player with that kind of experience without being a gigantic gaping anus about it and oh I don't know, associate gamer points with it at least?  Something that are pointless and stupid and people do in fact obsess over instead of having it be a completely extraneous component of the game with no benefit other than giving the player one more obfuscated puzzle piece to your mindlessly hidden away plot.  At least if you throw them the Achievement points shit you are ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT THIS VITAL PLOT REVEALING THING FUCKING EXISTS for a good start. and you know what?  You would be bringing the whole meta obsession factor out to a whole new level and even doing a world fucking first by making Achievement points on the X-Box fucking DO something for a change.

[Smashy]

BvS: Onto the annoying part of Monochrome.  Hopefully I'll finish this before the 21 day bonus comes up so I can attempt an Out on Top run.

Estiah: Main just got his level 37 Mercenary charms and Strike to play with, while my alt now has enough stats to actually be able to hold up in a slugfest with the new charms he unlocked.  Both of them have pieces of one of the strongest combos in the game now, which should be fun once some other teammates can also use the combo.

[TranceHime]

Estiah: Smashy linked me to this and I thought hey why not. I juuuust started, so I'm still pretty low down the ladder (Lv5) but oh well.

7th Dragon funtimes with the RPGDL: I'm going to record the Death Scissors fight sometime today or Thursday.

[Meeplelard]

MK: Ghost Tallychu get!

ToV: Plot Fight with obvious Anti-Villain Rival just completed!  Also, damn him for using all those Trademark Tales Swordsmen attacks!

[Shale]

KH: Tried to beat Kurt Zisa again. Got it down to its last life bar, and then...well, fuck the autotargeting in this fight. Both the glowy doom balls in his hands and his disembodied head move around so fast that Sora just flails wildly nine times out of ten, which leads to awesome things like landing two whole hits on the head in one of the cycles. Not to mention the way the head sometimes decides "screw you, I'm going back to attack mode after fifteen seconds."

[Niu]

3) RESCUE MISSIONS.  You do not put the immobile person you need to rescue in range of two monsters that 2HKO her and make you need at least two turns to get in range to attack them.  That's just completely ridiculous.  The other ones were less retarded but still really frustrating since you don't have much leeway on getting over there on time.

Why I say A ending is best for the last. Getting your full screen paralysis/freeze trick makes everything much easier. Or dash, switch, than pull up the auto revive and bait the enemies away etc etc. I see those rescue missions clearly as making you use the skills you have harvest on the other routes.

Fuijin doesn't talk in caps, IIRC, so right there, not in character, for that matter.

That is a localization flaw actually. She still talks the way she does in the Jp. ver.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

AT2 -

* Jo'ou Ranbu fucking strangles Gust games saving mechanics and their horrible vulnerability to save corruption.

Screw this game, I'm not playing over 25 hours of this again.

[Hunter Sopko]

SH3- Got Tirawa, did Frank and Natan's sidequests, so I'm pretty much done. Still not doing Purgatory. On track for the good ending, though. Just need the Soul from those other Malice Soakers in the Gate. Will finish tomorrow.

[Grefter]

Whoa whoa whoa, this is a common problem with their save mechanisms Snow?  First I have seen it, but good heads up to have... might start making secondary saves when I play more.

Fucking ouch though.

Enchanted Arms - replaying this because I have been talking it up lately and I have to see if it is as alright as memory.  It is holding up.  Combat is a bit more brutal than I remembered at least at the start, but now that I am playing it I do recall specific enemies and packs in the bit I am up to as being pretty rough when you get stuck in an unlucky party layout first turn (and say get ambushed).  So it is a bit random which if this was a SMT game I would be swearing at it from my high perch of cynic scorned, but you know it isn't SMT so it isn't FUCKING BULLSHIT.  You have a retry system even more forgiving than your standard Wild Arms fair (of hey look out you can only try this shit 90 more times guy!), you can just retry and the odds of you getting a bad party formation many times in a row is pretty low, so hey it works out.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

That's the problem with the secondary saves: you can't really have them if it happens. Gust games tend to stuff all their saves into a single space (so, you save five files, they actually occupy the space of one. If one is corrupted, the entire savespace is corrupted). The problem was that the game started refusing to even overwrite the corrupted data due to being unable to load it. It reached a point it couldn't even recognize the memory card. Thus, data permanently lost.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So I was going to get the Pitt for Fallout 3, since it looks intriguing and a big step up from O:A. Guess what? The file's bugged and once you reach Downtown, it crashes and there's no way to fix it.

[Luther Lansfeld]

So I beat SMB3 for the first time this week. It's really a great game, but it's very frustrating and challenging. I had a lot of trouble with 5-9 which is just moderately ridiculous (fire chain chomp is chasing me?! ;_;), as well as 8-1 (until I figured out how to trick it) and 8-2. Bowser's Castle itself was disappointingly easy though although the first try through when you are small is hilarious. LAZERS!!! Ow...

Also played a lot of F-Zero for the N64 and got first place on all the Novice races, which was cool. The Joker portion took me about three-four tries, the rest less. It's a really great game but it's very chaotic, and going and playing 50cc SMK after it was generally a bad idea.

Next on the list was SMK! 50cc is ridiculous and boring, so I moved pretty quickly to 100cc. Special Cup is hax. Took me a few tries to even get through all the races which is embarassing. Didn't help that the person I was playing with was lapping me DESPITE BEING SMALL. How embarassing. >_>;; After getting through Special Cup (x.x) I decided to try 150 cc Mushroom Cup and Flower Cup. I actually did really well on those; I think 150cc is really where the games shines and is not sloooow. I still refuse to touch Special Cup on 150 however. <_<

Also played some Mario Kart Wii. Played on 150cc, and generally did not-really-very-well. On one hand I am not really at the skill level where I should be playing high-level racing but it's a lot funner than the slow stuff. Same with Double Dash. I tried a little bit of Double Dash before I was confined to being an item girl. I hate doing it but I hate losing even more so whatevs. >_>

[Niu]

AT2 -

* Jo'ou Ranbu fucking strangles Gust games saving mechanics and their horrible vulnerability to save corruption.

Screw this game, I'm not playing over 25 hours of this again.

Wow, I find new flaws of localization!!
Gust realy need a different publisher.