Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Uh G3 has no dancers and I think Violetta is gone for goods. <_<

Ruilia!

what the fuck is a ruilia

[Talaysen]

what the fuck is a ruilia

Dahna's sister.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Dahna's stick-up-her-ass sister.

EDIT: Wait, Dahna's the one with a stick in her ass, never mind. Forgot Dahna had any personality for a second there, it has since evaporated!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Her personality, like Raven's, was crushed between her massive boobs.

[Taishyr]

Raven's a guy with massive boobs?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

No, that's Bianca. And having massive boobs would be an improvement on Raven's role in G3 anyway.

[Sierra]

And yeah, a lot more plot in terms of what's going on in Raze's since, as before, it turns out his entire plot seems to be a sidestory.  Which is kind of funny since in a lot of ways he's treated like the main character, right down to Ulrika getting called an extraneous main to her face, and getting to be the main sprite in the joint scenario.  Though, that last bit could just be because I did his path first.

Pretty sure that is the case, yes.

[Veryslightlymad]

NBA 2k10: (In other words, "Game none of you care about")

Finished up my first season in this buggy (but not as bad as people say) game with Sacramento. To no one's surprise, I wound up at the bottom of the league, I think I had the fourth worst record.

Luckily I won the draft lottery and was able to recruit one fictional "Ramon Lopez", a Point guard from Puerto Rico who instantly supplanted Kevin Martin as the star of my team because HOLY SHIT he is ridiculous.

I dunno how to describe this beast. He's like if you averaged Derrick Rose and Deron Williams, so you had someone DAMN GOOD at driving (but not Rose good) and DAMN good at shooting (But not Williams good) but with terrific court vision anyhow you slice it. Also, he's got freakishly fast hands on defense and can pluck balls from damn near every point guard in the league. The BEST BALL HANDLERS, to put it another way. Oh, and he rebounds at an absurd clip, too. I almost want to say he was generated because Fake Jason Kidd retired, but he's just... much better than Kidd is. So I basically had my franchise saved by a ridiculous stroke of luck.

I run:
Ramon Lopez, the Absurd
Kevin Martin
Andres Nocioni
Jason Thompson
Spencer Hawes

which, once you give this team an actual point guard, is a pretty hilarious lineup, because Thompson and Hawes are surprisingly good at getting good position inside in this game. And Lopez is a BEAST. He'll give me 30 and 10 a night, with maybe 4 steals and 4 rebounds.

My rotation is
Tyreke Evans (Randomly dropped 9 points in player rating... he's still my sixth man, but I should replace him for optimal efficiency.)
Francisco Garcia
"Kevin Cohen", a Power Forward I drafted in the second round, but I'd be perfectly happy starting him if I didn't have Thompson. Steal of the draft. I'm absurdly lucky.
Sergio Rodriguez, better in this game than in real life
Jason Kapono (Acquired via trade for beans)
Primoz Brezec (fills a hole in my roster)
and
"Rudolph" somethingorother, another generated rookie that I got in the second round that sucks now but is being carefully molded into a defensive supermonster.

I was running a pretty simple drive and kick offense until I got Lopez, and now my offense is more a series of pick 'n' rolls with Lopez and my three main bigs. That is, if Lopez can't beat the opposing point man on his own, which he often can. When that fails, I have Martin or Nocioni bail me out. I was afraid that I wasn't utilizing Martin's great offense until I finished a game and saw he scored over 20 points and I have no recollection of it happening. Makes him the perfect second banana to this rapidly improving team.

All in all, I expect to make the playoffs in just my second year running the franchise. It's amazing how much one lucky offseason can change. I have about 10 million dollars in cap room that's burning a hole in my pocket, but it wasn't quite enough to lure away any of my targets in the offseason, so I have next year to look forward to.

[DjinnAndTonic]

P2EP: Hitler in the first game, spaceships in part 2! Oh, Persona 2, you never cease to amuse me! <3

Fought Wang Long (snrk) Chizuru for REALZ this time. Overall a disappointing fight compared to her 'shadow' from before. One neat trick was the reflecting clones. If she used it before going critical, it might have actually made the fight challenging. She has this nifty ability to create 4 duplicates of herself. They all attack with fairly weak abilities, but the clones reflect MT attacks (Chizuru herself doesn't so that's how you figure out which one is her). However, not knowing about the reflect, I of course just MT'd them with my strongest stuff and Ulala got hit 4x by her strongest magic. Ouch-dead. Of course, then it only took one hit to finish off the real Chizuru, so no big deal, but a fun trick.

[Hunter Sopko]

AI1- Having fun with this. It's average but enjoyable with a good sense of humor, sans Lita. Screw her. Veola should've been the PC in her place. Just got both halves of the mirror. Party is Klein, Arlin and Delsus (Crossbow ftw). Delsus is probably the most amusing PC I've seen in a while.

[Taishyr]

Djinn: A fun trick that's... actually circumventable by trying to run!

IIRC, it zooms in on the real Chizuru as she says "Accept your fate."

[Scar]

Wild ARMs XF

wtf is hard and why even with fragile can't my characters hurt this bastard!

[OblivionKnight]

P2EP: Hitler in the first game, spaceships in part 2! Oh, Persona 2, you never cease to amuse me! <3

Fought Wang Long (snrk) Chizuru for REALZ this time. Overall a disappointing fight compared to her 'shadow' from before. One neat trick was the reflecting clones. If she used it before going critical, it might have actually made the fight challenging. She has this nifty ability to create 4 duplicates of herself. They all attack with fairly weak abilities, but the clones reflect MT attacks (Chizuru herself doesn't so that's how you figure out which one is her). However, not knowing about the reflect, I of course just MT'd them with my strongest stuff and Ulala got hit 4x by her strongest magic. Ouch-dead. Of course, then it only took one hit to finish off the real Chizuru, so no big deal, but a fun trick.

Long Wang is funny - the part of the game where Katsuya and his focus on physical power shines, since she's weak to them.

[Excal]

Hard is one of a few enemy only statuses that basically nerf physicals beyond recognition.  Fortunately, unlike Soft, there's ways through this.  First, use magic!  Also works for Soft creatures.  Con: Still leaves all your physical units kinda useless.  Second, two weapon types break through Hard.  Axes (Secutor weapon) and Maces (Sentinel weapon).  These ignore the Hard Status, allowing you to whack that annoying enemy with ease.  Indeed, any Secutors you have come with Weapon swap built in, so they can pick between accurate swords, and powerful axes as they see fit.

There's also other tricks that involve non-typed damage, but I'm guessing you don't have grapplers yet.

[Sierra]

AI1- Having fun with this. It's average but enjoyable with a good sense of humor, sans Lita. Screw her. Veola should've been the PC in her place. Just got both halves of the mirror. Party is Klein, Arlin and Delsus (Crossbow ftw). Delsus is probably the most amusing PC I've seen in a while.

Lita hate is meh, but Veola can always use more hype.

[DjinnAndTonic]

P2EP: Finished. Not bothering with a ton of side stuff cause I'm lazy.

Okay, so this was a surprisingly fun experience. I like IS better (the fan translation is still the better script between the two, but EP's translation is overall fine), but EP's story does some fun things and holds up pretty well. I can't imagine this game with IS, as the way it works off of the backstory is what really shines about this game to me, so I guess I understand why it didn't do so well in America when it was first released.

The story isn't nearly as crazy as IS's was, but I was really attached to the cast in general. One scene where the crew is about to board a speedboat and Maya makes for the driver's seat with her special 'OMG Maya's gonna DRIVE!' music playing before Baofu steps in and stops that nonsense (and the music) was genuinely funny. Very well-timed and managed to overcome that whole silent protagonist thing with good use of music. It really made the whole otherwise kinda embarrassing 'lol Maya's driving sux' running gag entirely worth it.

Tatsuya was... well, it's nice that he talks now. He was a bit emo in parts, but having played IS first, there were definitely times I felt he was justified. I mean, it makes sense that he would try to keep the others out of it and do the whole 'solo-hero' thing since the only thing stopping the End of the World was the fact that they didn't have the info that Tatsuya did. Also, the flashbacks being retold with Tatsuya's lines instead of Maya's was a neat touch. Taking the time to put the scenes together and we'd actually get a real conversation between the two lovers...

And yeah, I liked the ending. I'm a sucker for bittersweet muck like that. Yeah, the world is safe, but not without some sacrifices and none of that sugary-sweet 'everyone's happy' kind of ending. Too unrealistic? Or maybe I'm just a jerk who doesn't like seeing characters happy?

It was great that they still gave a lot of screentime to the main cast from IS without having them take over the story.

And Nyarlie wasn't nearly as hard this time around without that quadruple-turning madness from IS.

P1 references felt kind of wasted.

I kind of wish more of this game was ranked. But I'm surprised that Maya's even ranked at all.

Yay, another productive weekend. ^_^;;

tl;dr: I liked it, but not as much as IS.

Does anyone know if the ending theme in the American version is the same as the one used in the Japanese version? It just sounds... so very American. I like it, actually, but I'm curious if that's a localized addition.

[Scar]

You know, I'm also in favor of more games having not-so happing endings.

(kinda like Kain in FF4! Had to get that in before obscurity and mockery!)

I'm also keen to the idea of more characters dying. Death in rpgs happens all the time, but the main cast is usually death free? Don't buy it!

(FF4 did mess this one up, or else it would have been that much better! How does one survive strapping bombs to one self AND then jumps off a flying vehicle? Cid for Godlike durability I guess? >_> )

~

[Pyro]

As for XF Hard attribute, Felius' polearms also get through it.

[Scar]

Ah, I have him as a Secuter for that sexy atk plus skill. Want it early so I can have it on any of his other classes.

Also, how long to buffs and debuffs last in this game. I can't get an accurate reading. Sometimes I slow an enemy every other turn and sometimes the spell is still activated. Go figure, that it peaves me to waste a turn.

[Luther Lansfeld]

EP's a great game, glad you liked it Djinn. The ending is really cool.

[Pyro]

Scar: All status effects/buffs/debuffs in XF wear out on the end of the third turn the target has after receiving it (not counting the casting turn, in the case of a self-buff)

[Bobbin Cranbud]

NBA 2k10: (In other words, "Game none of you care about")

OBJECTION!

I care about NBA 2k10 far more than a bunch of DS games I could never play due to eyestrain.  (And yes, I'm fully aware of the irony of those two sentences following one after the other.  How I wish they'd port the Ace Attorney games to the Wii... )

What have you found to be buggy about NBA 2k10?  I hadn't heard anything bad about it prior to this.

[dude789]

Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

I finished this a while back and am currently working on the stat topic so I figure I should post my thoughts on the game.

It's very good, I was concerned that the Mario and Luigi series had losts its way after Partners in Time, but this game brings back eveything that was good about Super Star Saga. That being said, is it as good as SSS? Unfortunately, no. It pulls off the gameplay, graphics, and music as well as SSS did and I think  this game is a bit funnier than SSS, but there are other places where the game stumbles a bit. First of all, the world isn't as expansive as SSS's world was. This is expected as the game is split into levels both inside and outside Bowser but once you finish an area in Bowser there is really no incentive to go back and a large portion of the game is having Mario and Luigi explore places which Bowser has already explored. The other major problem the game has is that Fawful just doesn't work that well as a villain. Compared to other villains, Fawful actually accomplishes what he sets out to do, but he's not intimidating at all especially since Bowser is the one who deals with him most of the time. However, the dungeons that Fawful has remodeled are all wonderful and are some of the best parts of the game.   

So overall SSS > BiS > Pit, but BiS is definately closer to SSS than Pit in terms of quality and any Mario and Luigi fan should pick it up.

[AAA]

Saint's Row 2-Beaten.

Game was really good overall. The first Saint's Row was an unabashed GTA clone, while this one...obviously borrows many aspects from GTA, but makes them their own, and furthermore improves on the basic concept of GTA in several ways. It seems like the developers sort of found their own style of doing things and the game benefits.

The major obstacle in the game is the PC controls. I managed, but somebody with worse reflexes than me would have a tough time driving and shooting at the same time and the game constantly throws missions like that at you. This is also the major reason I did no racing minigames because I seriously doubted I could do them using a keyboard. Anytime something got frustrating 99% of the time it's because of the controls.

On the other hand, the game is ridiculously easy. Your main character regenerates health when he's not being shot at, the game just throws infinite ammo weapons at you, and the AI is none too bright. The boss fights against Maero could have been difficult, but in the first one he just stood stock still while I shot rocket after rocket into his face, and in the second he just drove in a circle around me while I pumped shotgun rounds into his car until it blew up. I had a pair of pistols that:

Could be dual-wielded
Killed anything, including swat teams, in 2-3 shots
Had 30 rounds of ammo
Took like a second to reload

And that's assuming I didn't headshot, which I often did. The stat progression also helped make the game a pushover, as at the end of the game my main had 15% resistance to bullets, 30% more damage in melee, and lost the cops 15% as fast.

The story is hilarious with a few serious scenes here and there. It's also seriously fucked up sociopathy sometimes, especially the Brotherhood missions. Anybody who's played the game knows what I'm talking about. I made my main a overweight Hispanic eternally smug war machine who does the Smooth Criminal dance to taunt his fallen foes, who speaks in a Cockney accent and is ice fucking cold. He also wears a Centurion helmet!

Minigames were generally amusing. Some were plain tedious (Escort, Snatch), some were okay (Septic Avenger), others were kickass but hard (Mayhem, Insurance Fraud), and some were just plain kickass (Fuzz, Heli Assault). Generally the games had a great concept, but occasionally fucked it up due to the controls or artificial difficulty. Crowd Control is a great example. The idea is that you're security for a celebrity and you have to get rid of stalkers or obnoxious fans before the celebrity gets too annoyed and throws a fit. You can beat them up, but that gives you very little cash(you need a certain amount to beat the level), the best way to get cash is to grab and throw them into something. This would be fine except the stalkers come in so many numerous waves that you're constantly running around trying to stop them and if you try to throw them you end up wasting so much time on one person that 4-5 of them swarm the celebrity and raise the annoyance level way too high. You can try and punch them all but that keeps you in the level longer and sooner or later the crazy fans will simply overwhelm you. It's just a giant pain in the ass.

8/10 I suppose. Highly recommend to anybody who enjoyed San Andreas, as this is basically San Andreas 2.0

[Grefter]

I put Insurance Fraud way up there in the cool idea but fail implementation.  I could beat all the Crowd Control missions but couldn't ever get far enough for a reward in Insurance Fraud.  It is way to vulnerable to RNG.  Have to go to a zone on the other side of the city, fucked.  No cars spawn.  Fucked.  Annoying as all fuck.

Crowd Control on the other hand is largely about getting a baseball bat and hitting things.  Certain maps are easier than others though so it gets hit with massive RNG also.  Get train level, win for free.