Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Shale]

Shale: You forgot the part where the last remaining sister used a move that makes her quinta-turn ON COUNTERS so that by attacking her with enough Unions you can wind up decimated.

I did in fact forget about that. I probably blocked it out because of how intensely stupid it is.

[VySaika]

SF4: Finally decided to go on an unlocking spree today. Managed to get Akuma. Almost got Guoken...except that I mistimed my Ultra on Seth and he canceled me out of it with his black gravity suction thingy. And then killed me. Irritation. Will try this again tomorrow.

Also, AI2: Just got Weathervane Hill back. Yay Wind mana! I need one of those for a couple of weapons! But wait, what's this? I need some sort of hook to get into the hill? Okay, this would be where some freindly NPC will tell me where to aquire such a thing, yes?

...

...

...

...or maybe not. Tried talking to everyone, nobody has anything to say about hooks. I can only surmise that there are other things I must do before I can aquire this hook.

Unless it's optional. That would really suck.

I mean, why would Gust pass up such a great opportunity for a Plot Hook?

[DomaDragoon]

Gotta get around to playing TLR sometime. Of course, given that I own over 100 games that I haven't even opened, let alone started...

Been a while since I posted, so here I go:

Thrillville: Off the Rails - Beat in two days. Game is basically 1/3 Rollercoaster Tycoon, 1/3 stupid minigames, and 1/3 fun minigames. Game gets bonus points for having music from old Lucasarts games (recognized MI theme and the opening to Outlaws off the top of my head). I swear that Level 1 of Bandito Chinchilla is a full copy of one of the levels in Final Fight, excluding the western theme. Picked it up for sale for $10 after trying to find it for six months.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard - Beat. Gameplay is basically "Aim for the head. Repeat ad nauseum." Game had style and little else. Though I do have to admit I was very amused by the final level.

Pokemon Diamond - Decided to do a replay before I go to Platinum. Basic rules: No duplicate moves on my active team. No using any of my endgame Pokes from the last playthrough (really missing Starraptor). No Pokes outside Gen 3/4. Team is Buneary/Roselia(to be switched later)/Cranidos/Krickitune/Prinplup, just passed Solaceon.

Wolfenstein 3D - Cleared floor 5 of Episode 1. I play a floor every couple of days.

[Shale]

Eat Lead seems like the kind of game that is designed to be LP'ed.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I thought Last Remnant had "SaGa gameplay"?

Even with low SaGa respect, that doesn't sound like SaGa gameplay...


Oh yeah, games:
Lunar DS - I had another long car trip, so I finished this. Luckily, the car windows were rolled up this time, so there wasn't any unneccessary running away.

In the game's defense (because pointing out its only good points is much quicker than pointing out all the horrible), once you get past the unintuitive design, the game balances your time/reward/grinding/questing ratio very well. Systems that initially struck me as absolutely horrible ended up working well by playing off of other horrible design choices. Once you figure out how to break the game balance, then it actually has a minute amount of fun. And there is one line of dialogue that made me chuckle. This is the extent of good you will find in Lunar DS.

The line of dialogue? *Warning - Lunar DS dialogue follows*

(The three main characters are talking to the crazy old man who is building the first self-powered flying machine in the world)
Old man: So there's this floating magic Levitation Stone in a cave near here that's crawling with monsters.
Archer-chick Flora: Let me guess... you want us to go get it for you?
Old man: How did you know?
Flora: Well it wasn't exactly... (wait for it)... Airship science.
Gabi: That was terrible.

*End Lunar DS dialogue*

[Meeplelard]

Grandia Xtreme: Oh hey, look! Kroitz pulled a Xanatos Gambit! ...or was it just dumb luck and he was waiting for us cause he somehow figured out we were there after giving up?  The game really isn't clear, I just know its a scenario of "Fuck, surrounded by 6 scrub guars and the villain, our gameplay powers are useless! MUST RESORT TO PLOT SHENINIGANS!" scenario.

...in other news, Venom Ruins are finished <_<

[Shale]

I thought Last Remnant had "SaGa gameplay"?
Even with low SaGa respect, that doesn't sound like SaGa gameplay...

TLR has the typical SaGa "let's throw in everything we can think of, and the hell with polish!" design ethic grafted onto a squad-combat turn-based army-battle game. Also, the method by which you give your squads orders resembles nothing so much as the FFX Magus Sisters - each turn the game selects five options from all the possible actions the squad can take, and you pick one of those five for them to actually perform. It's entirely possible to have the choice you actually want simply never show up.

[Niu]

The thing is, you can. The commands has a certain pattern and formula that dictates which one is going to show up.
One thing in Last Remnant's battle system is to understand how well a command appears and set your team up before hand best to create the situation in battle that allows those command to show up.

Honestly, I destroyed the sisters in no more than 30 minutes. They are much nicer compare to the Hell's Gate

[Excal]

So what you're saying is that in order to get the ability to pick the Fight command with any sort of reliability, you need to master the system.  That's kinda screwed up.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

ET - Game keeps getting zanier. Gay cats, giant robots and what have you. Meanwhile, the gameplay keeps being a lot of fun. Really flexible system they have.

[Niu]

So what you're saying is that in order to get the ability to pick the Fight command with any sort of reliability, you need to master the system.  That's kinda screwed up.

Doesn't that goes without saying? Consider this is a SaGa game?

[Tide]

Last Remnant sounds like the type of game someone should LP and broadcast for pain and torture.

I vote Meeple.

FF9 Hatbot solo challenge…ONWARD

Made some adjustments with the rules…pretty happy with them since it prevents unforeseen death selections from Hatbot. Anyways bosses…

Soulcage – Still have Zidane for this section. Battle 1 – level 5 death’d. Battle 2 – Mustard Bomb, Battle 3 – Victory. Yeah, I forgot about the first two attacks and thus didn’t defend for them. But afterwards, Undead Killer + MP Attack deals around 1800 damage a turn, so it dies super quickly.

Amarant – Man Eater + Counter + MP Attack. That’s that.

Roll Zidane again for the last stretch of Disc 2. Mistodons are largely har har. So they died.

End of Disc 2.

Disc 3 begins and…

Assault on Alexandria: Killed off Beatrix, Steiner proceeds to gain 13+ levels while mopping up enemies with MP Attack/Auto Potion

Tantarian: Already a pretty tough boss with 4 people. Not possible on a solo though thanks to Doom. Eventually it hits and you need to kill it in 2 rounds or so. Not happening. Vivi does have the best chance though alone since he has the best damage manipulation between the tier elemental spells, strengthening and his physicals. Plus spells don’t cause Tantarian to go back into hiding. I rolled Amarant though, so no. I just won it with a team. One of the very hard to impossible battles anyway.

At this point, Hatbot rolls GARNET and Amarant for the next two dungeons. Since I rolled Garnet first, I used her in Olivert. Much hatred and powering up is needed to prevent outright death.

Outer Continent trek: Goal is to reach the Chocobo tracks to use Choco to avoid encounters. Especially after all the power leveling. On the way, enemies eat Boosted Ramuh (76 Peridots + Extension = 4400 MT Lightning damage). At the front of Olivert, pick up lots of Softs and Hi Potions. Onward.

Olivert: Guide to enemies can be summed up as run from everything. Use Softs on Epitaphs but still run. Don’t really need the EXP since Arc’s damage is low and the defensive set up is more than enough to win. Enemies are troublesome in that they deal plenty of damage, and not being able to use spells + losing 25% of your actions = arghle no.

Ark – Ark himself is easy. Auto Potion/Chemist solves Photon, Back row solves Boomerang and Lamia’s Tiara reduces Whirlwind’s power. Clear headed stops Propellor Wind. Then its just a long ass battle where Garnet loses a quarter of her turns while the Mythril racket beats it down. GETTING to Arc is a pain in the rear.

Valia Pira – With all the Bloodstones taken, enemy boss only deals around 600 damage. Auto Potion solves that. Amarant proceeds to go to town with MP Attack and Bird Killer. 1800 damage per physical means it dies after around 6 attacks. Return Magic was tempting, but having it reflect on you would be dumb so its more harm than good. Blocking one of the big three helps, but the fight is very manageable. Getting here requires pretty much all the status defense in the world though (Sleep/Stop/Temperature are needed for certain).

And now…QUINA TIEM for Mt. Gulug.

[metroid composite]

So...in various "which game is more historically important" debates on GameFAQs, I've come to the realization that Quake was actually very historically important; decent argument for being the most historically important shooter, actually.  You  wouldn't come to this conclusion just reading random people on the internet (who will talk to no end about DOOM, Half-Life, and uhh...I've seen a lot of Halo and HL2 -_-).  Basically, the focus seems to be on games that sold well.  (Understandable: it's probably they games they played).

But anyway, I got the urge to actually play the game so that I'd sort-of know what I'm talking about.  I figured I was not going to like it much since I was just going to be playing the one-player, not doing...any of the stuff Quake is known for (modding it into Team Fortress, internet speedrunning, first big money videogame tournament, fist clans, online play, and...well okay I did rocket jump once >_>).  Also, it would be the oldest shooter I've ever played (previous holder of that title being Goldeneye) and there's very few genres where the oldest game I've played is worth much.

Surprisingly though it's...actually pretty good.  I mean, don't get me wrong, does have some issues due to being old (there's no way to do vertical aim with the mouse?  Boo!)  But some of this level and enemy design is...actually pretty cool.  Also, shooter one-player modes that don't have enemies with machine guns seem to be automatically more fun.  Yay, slow moving dodgeable projectiles.

Anyhow, beat the first scenario.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm not seeing at all how Quake is more important than Doom. The huge flood of FPSs really began after the latter, rather than the former. Marathon, Duke Nukem 3D, and Dark Forces all spring to mind instantly as high-profile FPSs released between the two and I'm sure I'm forgetting at least one.

That said it is decently fun. I'm of the opinion that FPSs really haven't improved much at all over the years (in the area I care about, singleplayer, since for some reason I don't care for their multiplayer experience), so I'm not surprised you'd enjoy one of the older ones. I can't say I like it nearly as much as the (slightly older) Marathon games or (slightly newer) Goldeneye, but it's solid enough. It arose in an era where mediocre Doom clones were a dime a dozen and clearly blew most of 'em away.

[metroid composite]

I'm not seeing at all how Quake is more important than Doom. The huge flood of FPSs really began after the latter, rather than the former. Marathon, Duke Nukem 3D, and Dark Forces all spring to mind instantly as high-profile FPSs released between the two and I'm sure I'm forgetting at least one.

Well...I'd say Doom is more important for the PFS genre, but Quake had a lot of implications that reached outside the genre.

For example: When I was Super Metroid speed running at around...2001-2002, Super Metroid speed runs were stored on a Quake site.  Why?  Quake lets you record demo play, which led to Quake having a massive speed run community, whereas Metroid's speed run community on the internet was kinda small at the time--not large enough to have its own website.  So said Quake website kinda became videogame speed run central headquarters on the internet for a while.

For another example: I was brainstorming reasons to call Starcraft an important game, and thought "hey, it was the first game where people were paid big money to play it...right?"  Went to check my facts on that and...no, 3 years before the first big-money Starcraft tournament, someone won a Ferrari for playing Quake (and the high stakes tournaments I can find pre-Starcraft are like...Quake/Quake2/Quake3/Descent3).

So...it's more the institutions that were created around it, as opposed to say, lots of developers rushing to make Quake clones.

[Grefter]

They did though.  They were just -called- Doom Clones, but they actually tended to copy Quake (waaay more use of 3d than Doom ever did also less hordes of enemies and more smaller groups).  Quake is incredibly important for the reasons met points out AND it was an amazing game.  Add in the fact that the engines used in the games also were used to spawn multitudes of other games, Quake is one of the pillars of the gaming community.  If you have to argue that it is even important to people then those people are fucking morons.

The fact that the games are still pretty damned good and high up there on the FPS pile (a VERY big pile of games that are very similar) and it is something to really take note of.  Some real basic stuff that is very universal these days really owe thanks to Quake 2 pretty much.  Very widespread modding (Q2 was made even more mod friendly after they took off in Q1 I believe) and multiplayer over the net.

Quake 3, well fuck me, it is THE deathmatch game even still.  There is a reason Q4 multiplayer was attempting to be a direct graphical upgrade of Quake 3 Deathmatch.  Then there is Quake Live of course.  Team Arena really shows how well you can tune all that stuff into a fantastic Team CTF game when that is all you are making (Focus is good for games!).  Don't even get me started on the number of games that used that engine.... it was still going on almost a decade after Q3 was released I think?  Just a really amazing historical series.

Edit - Oh yeah and remember this is coming from someone who doesn't really like FPS games a great deal and doesn't really like Quake at all.  I may not like it, but it is exactly how you should do one kind of FPS game pretty much.

[Talaysen]

P.S.: HEY TALLY-CHU HOW DO YOU LIKE READY STEADY GO

hey screw you

Actually just had a hueg learning cliff for that song.

Anyway, finished Ouendan, Elite Beat Agents, and Ouendan 2.  Awesome games.  People should play them.  Now.

Cross Edge - At the end of area 1-3 now.  Fought TANK again and managed to actually kill him.  No way in hell am I overkilling that, so I hope the reward wasn't that good.  Just killing got me a whole bunch of EXP and EP and crap, so I'm happy about that at least.

Also, the twinking in this game is hilarious.  Misha has like 50 base INT right now, but after equips it's 200.  Not many games let you 4x stats like that.  Wasn't even all that hard at this point.

[Lord Ephraim]

Last Remnant sounds like the type of game someone should LP and broadcast for pain and torture.

I vote Meeple.

*nod* Cast second vote.  Tonfa can do special PC version footage.

Got a new 1080p TV, so what do I do?  Play a shitty DS game.

Black Sigil:  So I heard a while back that this game was going to be the RPG equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever but it came out!  After 3 or 4 years!  And it's almost as bad as Hoshi DS.  Basically, the whole game is an homage to 16-bit RPGs, drawing the graphical style of Chrono Trigger.  It's starts off mildly enjoyable, with some decent wrighting but I think it manages a worse random encounter rate of Tales of Phantasa SNES.  Stack that upon a sub FF9 ATB battle system, with restricted movement (CAN'T ATTACK ALLY IN WAY!) and RANDOM STATUS EFFECTS before battle.  Menus are glitchly, and sometimes messes up your total exp towards next level and a poor use of the upper screen (DO I REALLY NEED A MAP LEGEND?)  I was almost willingly to try to beat it until the game froze, taking away around 3 hours of work and 2 of those hours are from a pain the ass dungeon.  Maybe whip out the Action Replay?

[Clear Tranquil]

Pamela picks up No Bullying/physical immunity Chapter 7/8 irrc >_> *flees* <_<

[TranceHime]

Actually just had a hueg learning cliff for that song.

Anyway, finished Ouendan, Elite Beat Agents, and Ouendan 2.  Awesome games.  People should play them.  Now.

So Tallychu, Ouendan 2's last song. On the hardest difficulty. Blind Mode. Can you S/full combo it?!

[Yoshiken]

Last Remnant sounds like the type of game someone should LP and broadcast for pain and torture.

I vote Meeple.

*nod* Cast second vote. 

Third'd.

Okay, DL! Time to decide what game I should play next (and use for my podcast's 4th episode in a couple of weeks).
Do I:
a) Play Atelier Iris 2 over the space of about 8 days, having never played it before?
b) Start an FF8 Hatbot challenge, where -everything- except for in-battle actions is decided by Hatbot?
or c) Start training a team for a Pokemon tourney that I'm running in October? (And, if this, let Hatbot choose what Pokemon I use y/n?)

...I'm currently leaning towards b. ;o

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Ouendan 2 - HOLY FUCK ZOKU IS EVIL

(Satisfying to clear, tough.)

[Talaysen]

Yoshiken: Go with A.

[Magic Fanatic]

Ouendan 2 - HOLY FUCK ZOKU IS EVIL

(Satisfying to clear, tough.)

If anything, I think Bambina is harder.

Disgaea 2:  Breaking in Progress.  My average party level is ~68, I still have yet to fight in 6-1, and I already have one Teacher, working on two for hilarious broken specialist cloning when I get that second one.

Good news:  I found the second one.
Bad news:  It's on a piece of equipment where the enemies are four-to-five times my level.

[Shale]

KH2: Timeless River was unmitigated badassery.