Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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

Fair enough. I guess I just don't have a high opinion of the importance of things like speedrunning. I also don't really care that Quake was the first "professional" game when its professional impact was so tiny, much like Street Fighter 2 deserves more credit for influencing fighting games than the games which preceded it, even though it wasn't the first. I put a lot more stock in games that inspire many others and drive millions upon millions of sales and reach millions and millions of players.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

KH2: Timeless River was unmitigated badassery.

That's an understatement.

[Ultradude]

Super Mario World - Whee spin jumping off of ghosts. Whee capes. Not whee Lakitus.

Donkey Kong Country - Oh god Temple Tempest. Millstone Beavers that chase you are also not whee.

[Grefter]

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

Fair enough. I guess I just don't have a high opinion of the importance of things like speedrunning. I also don't really care that Quake was the first "professional" game when its professional impact was so tiny, much like Street Fighter 2 deserves more credit for influencing fighting games than the games which preceded it, even though it wasn't the first. I put a lot more stock in games that inspire many others and drive millions upon millions of sales and reach millions and millions of players.

Like I said.  Modding.  Netplay.  Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.  Like seriously, the most successful worldwide FPS ever was a mod for a game based on the Quake 2 engine.  And it was ridiculously huge with the whole Netplay thing.

[Meeplelard]

I think Elfboy's general point is that Doom deserves the credit it does cause it somewhat pioneered the genre.  It set the standard, made the genre popular, what have you, much like Street Fighter 2 did with Fighting games.  Before them, you barely heard of any.  True, there was shit like Wolfenstein 3D but that was more a sleeper hit than anything else from my experience (hey, I played it before Doom came out!); it was Doom that really made the genre big, and spawned many to follow in its foot steps.

Quake strikes me more as the successor of Doom.  The Genre was already big, and popular, Quake is the thing that found a way to expand upon it and make it better, that many other shooters decided to follow after.  Quake deserves credit for that much, but I don't think that's QUITE as big as Doom that which actually made the genre popular.

I suppose for a fighting game example, it'd be...Mortal Kombat?  Only fighting game that I can think of that had a big following and impact like Street Fighter 2, and was after SF2 made the genre popular, though, MK was pretty much riding entirely on the Violence Factor and little else, so I don't think that's QUITE the same thing as what Quake did with Shooters, which actually expanded upon the genre.

[metroid composite]

Like seriously, the most successful worldwide FPS ever was a mod for a game based on the Quake 2 engine.

Wait, Half-Life used the Quake 2 engine?  *checks* it uses QuakeWorld actually (Quake 1 with fixed online).

Wow, this seriously decreases my respect for the people who argue "Half-Life is super important because it created modding." >_>

[hinode]

Like seriously, the most successful worldwide FPS ever was a mod for a game based on the Quake 2 engine.

Wait, Half-Life used the Quake 2 engine?  *checks* it uses QuakeWorld actually (Quake 1 with fixed online).

Wow, this seriously decreases my respect for the people who argue "Half-Life is super important because it created modding." >_>

...do these people not realize DOOM exists at all? -_-

Incidentally, I believe Quake is the game that popularized mouselook, which would be another significant accomplishment for it.

[metroid composite]

Incidentally, I believe Quake is the game that popularized mouselook, which would be another significant accomplishment for it.

Apparently Marathon had mouselook...although being a Mac game Marathon couldn't popularize much of anything.

[DomaDragoon]

Like seriously, the most successful worldwide FPS ever was a mod for a game based on the Quake 2 engine.

Wait, Half-Life used the Quake 2 engine?  *checks* it uses QuakeWorld actually (Quake 1 with fixed online).

Wow, this seriously decreases my respect for the people who argue "Half-Life is super important because it created modding." >_>

And even then, Quake probably takes a backseat to Doom for modding. Ah, the memories of the old Alien WAD...

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Ouendan 2 - Cleared Normal~

[kokushishin]

DQ IV (DS):  pretty much done with Chapter 6 barring metal slime hunting and amassing large amounts of tokens.   Is it me, or does Psaro do the emo vengeful white/silver haired swordsman gimmick a lot better than most?  Now back to DQ V.


Valkryia Chronicles:  The last few battles were kind of a breeze.  Time to get those rankings and missed aces (although it's kind of moot now).

[DjinnAndTonic]

Yoshiken: Go with A.

[superaielman]

DQ IV (DS):  pretty much done with Chapter 6 barring metal slime hunting and amassing large amounts of tokens.   Is it me, or does Psaro do the emo vengeful white/silver haired swordsman gimmick a lot better than most?  Now back to DQ V.


Valkryia Chronicles:  The last few battles were kind of a breeze.  Time to get those rankings and missed aces (although it's kind of moot now).

I agree there. Psaro joining your team is a great 'ah shit, the enemies are fucked' moment. Shame he takes forever to learn his full skillset.

[Shale]

KH2: Finished Port Royal. It's the first segment to disappoint, mainly because my hopes were pretty darned high for it. Still, not bad at all. Donald stealing Jack's "Not probable" line was the highlight by far.

Fights were annoying as hell, was the main problem, because the pirates' invincibility gimmick stops you from even being able to push them into the moonlight, so you're stuck trying to bait enemies with long-range attacks into running up to you for melee. Yeah, that could have been planned better.

Meanwhile, Atlantica was...I can see why you'd want to just do away with the swimming combat entirely given how well it went over with KH1 players (I didn't mind it, but whatever). Using a rhythm game as its replacement - why not. Gotta have something to break up the cutscenes, right? But why, when you presumably have access to the actual songs used in the movie, are you making up your own crappy ones? This makes no sense to me.

Edit: The least they could have done was make "Swim This Way" an Aerosmith homage.

[Xeroma]

The old songs are there, just later.

[Captain K.]

The crappy songs are from the Little Mermaid sequel.  So no, they're not made up.  But still crappy.

[Shale]

I'm not sure whether that's better or worse.

[Meeplelard]

The one thing that disappointed me about the Atlantica Arc is that it didn't have Kiss the Girl, but oh well.  It got the really important song in I guess.

Anyway...

GX: 10 more floors down in the Starry Corridor!  God damn is this dungeon monotonous, though I'm guessing we're gonna go to whatever the next ruins are if there is a pattern here...

[Sierra]

WAXF: I have recruited 1x Tide. Also, act 3 battles are funny. Highlights include:

Loligoth battle! Switch -> Feeble Mind -> Victory. Ahahaha.

Royal Knights = gravity's a bitch, isn't it? Throwing people off cliffs for fun and profit. I love Grapplers.

Asgard fights! Mk. 2 is decently challenging because you have to exterminate his support (who require a different type of offense--important caveat, see below) before you can focus on him. Mk. 3...well, the party being split into two groups at the start of the fight was the only reason the boss got more than one turn there. Once he was surrounded, ridiculous infinite turn hax ensued. I get the impression I was supposed to use an Emulator to learn Electrigger off the undead and then proceed to exploit Asgard's weakness with that, but I just had Labby spam Lightning instead. When the boss can no longer act, it really doesn't matter.

The level of brokenness you can throw down on a single enemy is sick and wrong. I honestly hope the game doesn't have any more solo bosses, because there is nothing they can do to stand up to you once you have the advanced classes. Debilitator + Rob Turn/Cancel Turn as necessary is bad enough, but...Turn Shift. Seriously, man. It's even getting to the point where I can own whole mobs just by virtue of that spell. Final battle of act 3, for example? Had one reset due to forgetting the boss's range, but the second time...boss and two mooks make the mistake of grouping together while bearing down on the squishy mages. Labby survives the assault with critical HP, yes! Thenceforth, two people cast Turn Shift on her constantly and she spams Devastate until everything is dead. Have a grappler throw new enemies into Devastate's blast radius when there's a chance, maybe.

Act 3 boss had better fucking stay dead, is all I can say. You kick his ass like three times and plow through an entire army of robots and zombies, but he never stops blabbering on about how YOU HAVE NO HOPE OF STOPPING HIM AND YOU MAY AS WELL JUST GIVE UP YADDA YADDA YADDA GIVE ME YOUR BODY FELIUS. Blargh, what a dipshit. I can only hope the body-jumping gimmick of his requires more preparation than he had time for and that he is, in fact, Killed Off for Real.

Stopped for the night after fighting THE THREE STORMS.

EDIT: Also, "MY SOUL ITCHES." Man, this game can be so hilariously awkward at times.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I honestly hope the game doesn't have any more solo bosses

You'll be happy to know it does not.

And yes, Turn Shfit is wrong. I'm not sure why they thought it would be a good idea to give the move fast recharge. It would be a perfectly good move without this. Probably won't be using Turn Shift on my replay, it feels overcentralising. Sacred Slayer OC is already fine, thank you very much.

[Grefter]

WAD hacks were generally very sloppy and incredibly restrictive in what they can do, Quake was just something completely different (Different kinds of multiplayer being able to be made and so on).

Mmmm so HL wasn't on the Q2 engine?  Damn, still point stands >_>  It gave us errr Anachronox if that helps show just how versatile the engine was (The jump from FPS to console RPGish game is pretty large).

When I say Quake gave us modding (and Quake 2 gave us big expansions on modding), I mean these games were made with the developers openly supporting and encouraging mods.  Not "Hey check it out I can completely and totally reverse engineer a dev kit!" shit.  I mean openly giving you tools and considering the mods as important a part of the game as their finished product.

Edit for comparison, Doom's probably most famous mod is Simpson's Doom, which is pretty much just a skin pack.  Everything else is the same, they redrew the 9 or so enemies in the game with Simpson characters and rewrote some sound files.  Compared to Team Fortress, the gap is pretty large.

[Magic Fanatic]

Ouendan 2 - Cleared Normal~

Go clear Hard now.  If anything, the biggest jump is between Normal and Hard.  Hard to Insane really isn't that bad, since it's only like two dozen extra taps a song with a flipped board.



Disgaea 2:  Found something else with Teacher on it where the enemies don't kill me on sight!  Working on getting that one and then having them Teach each other to 100, and then it's just a jump set towards making the game cry from the broken possibilities.  Teaching Lovers?  Mentors?  Armsmasters?  Managers?  Mediator-to-Dual-Stat-Specialists?  Yes please.  If anything, Adell will soon be benefiting from Sprinters, my spellcasters from Nerds, Fighters for Musclemen...  It's all so dreamy to consider.

[Twilkitri]

(there's no way to do vertical aim with the mouse?  Boo!)

I'm not sure whether this is still a problem, given that I didn't see anyone respond to it but people were talking about mouselook later. You want to type
+mlook
into the console if it still is.




Tierkreis -
Looking for the twelfth. Various revelations recently have cheapened the plotline sadly. It's still good.

[TranceHime]

TacticsLayer:

For Physicals:

Tempo Up + Nue

For Magic:

Tempo Up + Special Lesson + Yuka

gg TacticsLayer. Also I bought Halloween special ed outfit, giving me "Flame Shot" and "Ice Shot" skills. I want to recruit Ririka plz

[Twilkitri]

Tierkreis - Finished.

The ending does not make the most sense I've ever seen, and if that clip is all that getting all the stars does for you doing so is so very not worth it. Well, I guess it's more worthwhile than TWEWY's unlockable clip...

Not sure what there is to say about it that I haven't previously. My earlier stance that it is an inferior game to 1 & 2 stands.

The mission system got nowhere near enough worthwhile use.

Never really figured out what I was supposed to be doing with the trading system. I checked on available rumours at every opportunity and the only ones I ever saw were related to particular goods having high prices. I sold some goods at the castle and nothing seemed to happen. Whatever the deal was, it was apparently too obtuse for me to bother worrying about. I ended up having roughly 800 thousand potch on me at my last save anyway so I wasn't exactly strapped for cash.

Some of the character endings seem to imply a setting for another game, although I may be just reading too much into it. Another game in this universe with less of the problems of this one would be pretty dandy.



Still don't have my PS2 back yet. Sadness. I may take the opportunity of between gamesery to watch some shows which have been stacking up and are now towering over my computer tower. On the other hand there are a couple that are calling me to play them... on the other other hand this is counterbalanced by the possibility of rolling Etrian Odyssey. Hm.