Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

[Sierra]

Still, highly enjoyable. Will definitely play through all the DLC as well. Any opinions as to if I should do this before or after acing all the basic game's missions? (like, will it be less fun with a maxed out file, level 20 everyone etc?)

I haven't done the DLC yet myself. Have you gone through the skirmishes on hard, though? Pretty sure that option only opens up on new game+, at least, and they switch the setups around pretty significantly for some of the maps. Some of them are still easy, some of them are brutal.

[Just Another Day]

No, not yet. Looking forward to it.

[Dhyerwolf]

FF 13- The Xbox just ate all of my chapter 5 saves. WTF.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Good an excuse as any to just quit playing.

[Dhyerwolf]

Minus my general enjoyment of the game.

[Meeplelard]

Your Hard Drive didn't happen to get a little loose, did it?  That sometimes happens on mine, and it pretends there's nothing there; simply pushing it back in (or unhooking it entirely and putting it back in) tends to remedy the scenario.  UNless you mean SPECIFICALLY your Chapter 5 saves and your others are still around, in which case, that's weird.

[Dhyerwolf]

Yeah, all the other saves are fine, but it reverted completely back to the start of Chapter 5, and appeared to kill any saves I had beyond that point.

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, that's...just really freaking weird.

[superaielman]

Grefter's rage is actually enough to destroy saves now. Impressive.


FE9- Done! I liked the game. It makes some major improvements to the FE formula with BEXP/altering the weapon weight system. Challenge wise, probably the easiest FE game to finish.  Why? You get handed the best Marcus type Paladin in the series early and you get a steady stream of excellent prepromo units the entire game. Tanith, Titania, and Stefan are all very good, and even some of the lesser options like Callil and Geoffery are quite solid. You probably never need to touch a unit that isn't promoted  until Volke joins, and you don't need one for combat for the entire game.  The Laguz royals are even there if your Ike gets screwed bad and can't stand toe to toe with Ashnard. Kill order: Ike-Titania-Mia-Boyd-Oscar-Jill-Nephenee. Brom was the next nearest and he was a notable drop. Titania should be 1 but Ike got fed a ton of kills once he got Ragnell.

Mia wins the award for being RNG blessed, as she got a stupid amount of STR. Marcia wins the award for RNG boned this game. Nothing shocking there.


Ike was fairly decent and the story stuff was outright good in the first half. Naesala made an excellent slimy villain; somehow he manages to be more hatable than the creepy bishop furry. Nice work there. Ashnard was just bad. His story/plot was completely nonsensical, and the game would have been far better if it hadn't overreached and tried to tie several events (Serene forest, etc) together into an overarching plot. Bad guy invades kingdom-->you go to beast kingdom-->Rally help-->win. Ashnard's plans make zero sense and are pretty terribly executed. I was wondering why the hell he would invade a small kingdom that was under the protection of a far larger and stronger one (To the game's credit, they actually discuss this in depth from Ike's PoV.) You honestly have to worry why anyone would follow a king who's masterfully inept on top of being a cruel dictator. The only time the game tries to explain why anyone has loyalty to him is from a freaking extra scene with Sothe the useless thief/street rat. Augh.

Oh, and Soren is an obnoxious shithead who makes Shinon look sympathetic by comparison. He annoyed the living hell out of me from start to end, with special ire going to him figuring out the truth about Nasir and then not saying anything to Ike. Good job.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Mana Khemia is addictive like crack. Seriously, this is a damn good Skinner box. I fell asleep and I was still mentally synthing items and filling in the Grow Book. The last time I did that kind of shit was Tetris.

I must applaud Gust's ability to design something like that, if nothing else.

Oh right, and I beat Isolde, so yay, full voting rights.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Isn't

Bad guy invades kingdom-->you go to rival kingdom-->Rally help-->win

the only plot Fire Emblem does?

[Cmdr_King]

FE7 does something else, but is actually worse for it.  FE10 also does other things, but doesn't suck at it.
It's the basic forumla and even those two games use it in parts though soooo >.>

(Although frankly the formula is so basic that it's a staple of the entire srpg genre.  FE is just bare bones on plot so it stands out more.)

[Anthony Edward Stark]

FE7 just removes the "get help from other country" part, really.

[superaielman]

Basic plot is fine. What moved the story was the character work and Ike managing to bridge relations between kingdoms. Once that vanished, the overarching plot stepped in and blah.

[Ultradude]

I played some Touhou games recently.

I've beaten PCB and IN on Easy without continuing and managed Sakuya's (comparatively laughable) last word in far too many tries. I'm also in a low-level tournament with friends for Hisoutensoku.

That's... pretty much it. PCB was beaten with Sakuya A aka the one that's really good at living but pretty bad at scoring. IN was Reimu/Yukari because I'm still too new to do really well without homing weapons to cover my ass. Torn between playing more games on Easy or trying to do IN on Normal without continuing.

[NotMiki]

Torn between playing more games on Easy or trying to do IN on Normal without continuing.

Play more games.  It's more fun that way, and having a variety of challenges thrown at you is better general training than rote memorization.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Super's FE9 rant is pretty spot on.

Ashnard's plans make zero sense and are pretty terribly executed.

To be fair, it seems that by FE10 the writers realise this as Ashnard is turned into a complete pawn for something else. (This incenses Ashnard fans. Elfboy laughs.)

[Grefter]

Mana Khemia is addictive like crack. Seriously, this is a damn good Skinner box. I fell asleep and I was still mentally synthing items and filling in the Grow Book. The last time I did that kind of shit was Tetris.

What.  As an N1 fan I thought you would recognise a Skinner box scenario when you saw it.  MK uses pretty standard Classical conditioning, you do things and you get rewarded for it.  There is very little actually random (or infrequently random)  in Mana Khemia.  A huge part of Behaviourist forms of conditioning is the random factor which amplifies the effect.  A Skinner box scenario needs the randomness to be truely B F Skinner worthy and randomness is something N1 games have in spades.  Edit - You can actually see some of that in my distaste expressed when people started playing MK2 and the resource gathering had another game layer on top of it.

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/vampire_bloodlines.php

This link should have the patch with less of the Gamespy shit coating if you still don't have it Rob.

[Cotigo]

L4D2 - Downloaded the City 17 custom map.  Purple checkered tiles in the sky aside, it's really neat.  Pretty long, though--we ran through it pretty quickly and it took an hour and a half?  Bots fuck up quite a bit though but that's custom maps for ya. 

I imagine VS on this would be fun.  4th level's hospital has a lot of places where SI could come at the survivors from every side, 2nd and 3rd level have quite a few potentially bitchy chokepoints, and the finale... well, okay, survivors should sweep the finale pretty easily.

Anyway point is all L4D2 players should DL this map so we can run through it sometime.

[Rozalia]

SSF4 - Decided to switch characters as playing as Ken all the time gets boring so I'm now breaking heads as Dudley. My win record with him is slightly lower and I have trouble with Bisons and Balrogs who were everywhere yesterday for some reason but I'm having fun. The highlight of yesterday was beating a Ken by Ultraing through his Ultra and throwing a Dhalsim just as he did his ultra

Capcom did a good job with the new characters in that they are all very playable and easy enough for even me to use. Also 99% of people are no longer Saget with his overpowered cheapness so life is good.

[Meeplelard]

Super's FE9 rant is pretty spot on.

Ashnard's plans make zero sense and are pretty terribly executed.

To be fair, it seems that by FE10 the writers realise this as Ashnard is turned into a complete pawn for something else. (This incenses Ashnard fans. Elfboy laughs.)

In fainress, I seem to recall you stating like right around the time I finished FE9 that "Yeah, Ashnard is beaten, but he is so obviously a tool" so its possible he was made intentionally lame cause he was planned to be one from the get go.

FE9 really is nothing more than set up for FE10, which it does a decent enough job at in the end, and FE10 does a decent enough job of telling its story.  The 2 Tellius games are exceptional in the series as far as story goes, though, in FE9's case, that's more "The rest of the series sucks at this" contrast to FE10 where its flat out good at times.  The Formulaic stuff in FE10 is...all in Part 1, from what I recall, Part 1 basically being "Typical FE Plot with an Atypical Team!"  Part 2 is of course rather unique (its...pretty much inverting the scenario entirely actually, and is pretty awesome because of the unique perspective and plot behind each maps.  Pity its shortlived, but then, I guess that's advantageous of not overstaying its welcome.)

Ok, I suppose Part 3 is rather generic, but...at the same time, unlike all other games, split perspectives mean you get to see shit going on from both sides.

...actually, FE10 is just awesome for the Multiple Perspective thing to begin with.  Thanks to it, a lot of interesting maps can be made just due to the variety of units that keep being changed.  I mean, its hard to deny that 2-P is freaking sweet if only for pure stylistic reasons, and stuff in Part 3 where someone is a PC one map, then an enemy the next cause you swapped sides on a whim...yeah, fun stuff.

[dude789]

...actually FE10 is just awesome for the Multiple Perspective thing to begin with.  Thanks to it, a lot of interesting maps can be made just due to the variety of units that keep being changed.  I mean, its hard to deny that 2-P is freaking sweet if only for pure stylistic reasons, and stuff in Part 3 where someone is a PC one map, then an enemy the next cause you swapped sides on a whim...yeah, fun stuff.

I also really liked the way FE10 handled the multiple perspectives, especially with what they did at the end of part three. Not only that, but FE10 made it so that one side was clearly superior to the other in terms of military strength. It was interesting to see one side scramble to come up with a strategy even if it was one that went against their morals to protect their people while the other side just bulldozed them with their overwhelming might.

[superaielman]

To be fair, it seems that by FE10 the writers realise this as Ashnard is turned into a complete pawn for something else. (This incenses Ashnard fans. Elfboy laughs.)

Demonic posession could explain it. The only thing Ashnard was good for at all was defending Daein (Which Sothe refers to and you see the conquences of at the start of FE10), and even that he clearly didn't give a flying fuck by the way he abandoned his country at the drop of a hat.

Also, fuck off Edward.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

SSF4 - Decided to switch characters as playing as Ken all the time gets boring so I'm now breaking heads as Dudley. My win record with him is slightly lower and I have trouble with Bisons and Balrogs who were everywhere yesterday for some reason but I'm having fun. The highlight of yesterday was beating a Ken by Ultraing through his Ultra and throwing a Dhalsim just as he did his ultra

Capcom did a good job with the new characters in that they are all very playable and easy enough for even me to use. Also 99% of people are no longer Saget with his overpowered cheapness so life is good.

Holy crap, they nerfed Sagat? Finally.

He's still probably top tier, though. The only time he hasn't been top tier has been in MvC2.

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, think the main nerfing to Sagat was mostly he doesn't do obscene damage anymore, so its possible to win slugfests with him now.  He's still got good stuff all around of course, just now other characters can actually trade hits with him and come out ahead.