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

[Strago]

Alpha Protocol -

Restarted on Normal mode exclusively for the reason of making the dumb mini-games easier, since I don't care for blowing EMPs on every single one. In particular, the lock-picking controls are so weirdly clunky (perhaps they're better on the consoles?) that occasionally I'd run across one that I literally could not complete in the allotted time. It was weird. As far as the rest of the gameplay goes, I've managed to fix the mouse sensitivity issues that were driving me nuts, so all is well.

So: Normal difficulty, Tech Specialist, largely training in Stealth/Assault Rifles/Sabotage/Technical Expertise. He wears aviators and has a giant scruffy beard. He calls it his freedom beard. I just finished the Saudi missions and started things rolling in Taipei, so the game is definitely only now starting to hit its stride. I do like the way that things are starting to pan out, though. And Steven Heck seems like he might be funny? He also seems like he might be obnoxious and horrible, but I cannot yet tell. All I know is that his sociopathic tendencies greatly appeal to my Thorton's Jack Bauer-esque levels of aggression. He also hates Sean Darcy and finds Mina Tang and Scarlet Lake obnoxious. Yet Mina's still all over him, for some reason. Oh well. Women, you know?

Man, you guys make X-COM sound so fun, yet the one time I tried it out I found it completely inscrutable.

[Pyro]

Demon's Souls: Beaten after a long hiatus. Not much to say on this game that hasn't been said already. It manages to be a downright scary adventure game without being an outright horror game. There is so much nightmare fuel in this game. So very much.

The game will be remembered for some of the more dick moves it pulled, and the (sometimes cheap) ways I got around them. Warding made things so much better it wasn't funny though. The difference between being OHKO'd and being 3HKO'd is kind of important! Warding is badass like that.

Heavenly Sword: Older game but it was fun, if terribly short. Kai's sections with the motion-controlled sniping were a blast. The ordinary combat was cute, and the game so short that it stayed 'fresh' the entire time. Not much else to say about it. The plot is pretty laughable but there is sufficient hamminess to be enjoyable!

Not sure what I'm going to play now.

[Scar]

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Don't even remember buying this game, yet there it was sitting on my shelf with all my other DS games. And the funny part was that I was really Jonesing to play this game, but didn't think I owned it! SCORE!

Plowed through the normal parts fo the game and am currently in Draculas castle. I'll tell you what I have no luck in this game. I have been tryign to collect all the glyphs from each of the monsters that drop them and they have been stuborn as hell. Also, I didn't know you get medals for beating bosses if you took no damage. Only boss where I accomplished that was the wall guy in Dracs Castle.

Fun game, lots of fetch quest type adventures to be had. These games usually always deliver.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Alpha Protocol -

Restarted on Normal mode exclusively for the reason of making the dumb mini-games easier, since I don't care for blowing EMPs on every single one. In particular, the lock-picking controls are so weirdly clunky (perhaps they're better on the consoles?) that occasionally I'd run across one that I literally could not complete in the allotted time. It was weird. As far as the rest of the gameplay goes, I've managed to fix the mouse sensitivity issues that were driving me nuts, so all is well.

So: Normal difficulty, Tech Specialist, largely training in Stealth/Assault Rifles/Sabotage/Technical Expertise. He wears aviators and has a giant scruffy beard. He calls it his freedom beard. I just finished the Saudi missions and started things rolling in Taipei, so the game is definitely only now starting to hit its stride. I do like the way that things are starting to pan out, though. And Steven Heck seems like he might be funny? He also seems like he might be obnoxious and horrible, but I cannot yet tell. All I know is that his sociopathic tendencies greatly appeal to my Thorton's Jack Bauer-esque levels of aggression. He also hates Sean Darcy and finds Mina Tang and Scarlet Lake obnoxious. Yet Mina's still all over him, for some reason. Oh well. Women, you know?

Man, you guys make X-COM sound so fun, yet the one time I tried it out I found it completely inscrutable.

There's still the classic "totally useless" Bond girl to come, so you still have someone to bang.

[Cotigo]

LFT:  About to get betrayed by Gafgarion. 

Almost got owned in Dorter 2 by a lone Archer hiding in the corner.  The only way I could attack her was with my 2 mages, and both were out of MP.  I poison her, bide my time until someone crystalizes... and then Gafgarion steals the crystal.  He then proceeds to Haste me repeatedly.  I secret fist him partially out of spite, but mostly so he cuts his shit and lets one of my mages take the crystal.

Agrias steals the next one, but makes herself more useful by raising my fallen units.  For some reason she completely refuses to go up and Stasis Sword the archer and end the battle.  Poison wears off, I start worrying that I'm going to have to redo the battle because of this nonsense.  In any case, eventually I get lucky and another enemy crystalizes near my Black Wizard, so I go up to magic her to death... and Agrias finally decides to use SS and end the match.

Fuck you, game.

[hinode]

New Super Mario Bros Wii- Halfway through world 5 now. Pretty fun thus far, I'd say it's definately better than NSMB DS as of now, though not quite SMB3/W level.

The Good:

Stage design is varied and interesting. World 1 was just plain easy and World 2 had some gimmicks that I was iffy on, but I've really been liking world 3 and upwards so far. Difficulty is much higher than NSMB DS; it's SMB3 level at least, and feels somewhat harder to me thus far.

Item storage ala SMB3 returns. Yay!

Lots of design callbacks from SMB3 and SMW, even a few from Yoshi's Island. Koopalings, fence climbing, airship levels (complete with the movable nuts), POW blocks, and a bunch of other stuff are back, and most are integrated pretty well into gameplay.

Penguin Mario is pretty much Frog Suit + Ice Flower + Blue Shell from NSMB DS. This is a surprisingly effective package.

The okay:

Ice Flowers are a lot harder to use than Fire Flowers, the ice balls bounce at higher angles and last shorter making them harder to use offensively. Conversely, they can kill a bunch of things that Fireballs can't, like Dry Bones, so it's a fair tradeoff. The only sorta-complaint is that Fire Flowers are kinda rare now, with Ice Flowers being more common.

Yoshi controls well enough, but he can't be taken out of a level. I guess it'd screw up level balance in some cases, but still disappointing.

The bad:

Only being able to save after beating a fortress/castle/airship. BOO! I was hoping that they'd get enough complaints about that in the NSMB DS to fix it for this, but nope. You can even get it after beating the game, too, when it's lost a lot of usefulness. Quick Save helps to some extent, but not enough really.

Controller shaking feels really gimmicky, like it was put in just because this is a Wii game and they wanted to shove Wiimote functionality in there somehow. I can't think of anything that just using another button couldn't have done just as well, and with less risk of accidentally spin jumping. This goes for the whole Propeller Mario powerup, as well. I'm fine with the tilting functions, which are at least less prone to accidental screwups.

The "carry Toad to end of level" bonus feature is really annoying, as carrying Toad around restricts your options a lot and he dies pretty easily. Luckily this is totally optional, but the completionist in me gets irked by ignoring that and periodically makes (mostly futile) attempts at rescuing Toad when the captured Toad icon pops up on the world map.

[Shale]

FFTA2: Back to this now that FFV is toast. Did a story battle against Illua, which would have been a lot trickier if I wasn't protected from darkness. Then left the Rift to protect the Yellow Wings from House Bowen, and...wow, that was the toughest mission yet. Took three retries, mainly because the Yellow Wings are (a) really underpowered, and (b) total morons. Seriously, why would an archer with her choice of five squares that all give her a shot from behind on her target choose to stand right next to him and get flattened by Bonecrusher? Fuck you too, AI.

* Shale checks FAQ...wow, the next fight is the final battle? Seriously? I thought there were more storyline characters to get. What about the Heritor class? The Scion summons?

[Hunter Sopko]

Cross Edge- Doing the postgame until I get the 3000 enemies beaten trophy. I got the 900 battles trophy within like, 5 or 6 fights when I started today. Can't be that far from it. All the PCs gotten at this point. They were pretty easy, now on 5-2. Overkilled Cursed Blade and beat Lindwurm. Stopped there. Lucky me though, an Angel Knight in Augustine's battle dropped a Gungnir

[Sierra]

Man, you guys make X-COM sound so fun, yet the one time I tried it out I found it completely inscrutable.

That was my initial reaction. So many buttons what is this I don't even. Just fiddle with it for a bit, it'll become clear.

[Meeplelard]

* Shale checks FAQ...wow, the next fight is the final battle? Seriously? I thought there were more storyline characters to get. What about the Heritor class? The Scion summons?

All optional.  Vaan/Penelo can be gotten like right before the final battle, Heritor Class is obtainable anytime after Adelle does her temporary MIA stunt, and the Scions are gotten through...actually, I'm not sure, I think its any of those "Go to the other world' missions.

Its not hard to figure out where to go for things like these, but yeah, FFTA2's forced stuff is a very minimal thing.  Its like I said; the game lacks any real plot, but doesn't pretend to have one either, so really, how long could the game be on forced stuff alone?

[Shale]

Yeah, there's a reason I'm not saying the plot hasn't resolved itself yet. Hell, myabe it's because I haven't played the game for a while, but I honestly have no idea who this woman is (other than that she was bossing around Ewen) or what she wants. I just thought stuff like Heritor was forced.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FE9 - =)!

It's funny, I have an utterly average Oscar in basically all ways. However, this hardly keeps him from being my non-Titania MVP. FE9 Cavs for fucking Godlike.

Anyhow, ninja edit for unit analysis on my noteworthy people:

Ike: L14, 28 HP, 12 Str. 5 Mag, 11 Skill, 14 Speed, 11 Luck, 11 Defense, 4 Res. Pretty normal. Solid unit, but doesn't truly impress me. Only one weapon type, the worst of them to boot, keep him not amazing.

Soren: L11, 29 HP (Seraphic Robe), 0 Str, 14 Mag, 13 Skill, 11 Speed, 9 Luck, 4 Defense, 15 Res. Solid too, got a bit Res-blessed. Robe keeps his pdur from being Lucius-tastic, at least.

Mia: L11, 22 HP, 11 Str, 3 Mag, 12 Skl, 16 Spd, 7 Luc, 8 Def, 5 Res. Durability of fail. Strength is solid, though, which keeps her a solid option.

Titania: L5, 35 HP, 14 Str, 5 Mag, 14 Skl, 16 Spd, 14 Luc, 13 Def, 8 Res. Utterly godlike so far. Titania is all but necessary to keep your party going, and giving her XP is worth the hassle, all things considered. She's been crazy awesome so far, with Axes and Lances to spam like a good girlscout.

Oscar: L15, 33 HP, 12 Str, 3 Mag, 11 Skl, 12 Spd (Speedwings), 7 Luc, 13 Def, 5 Res. As much defense as Titania while being about ten levels lower is a good start. Ike/Oscar support is fucking godly, the evade/defense boosts are delicious. Otherwise, he's an average Oscar, but an average Oscar rules the universe anyway.

Boyd: L14, 40 HP, 12 Str, 2 Mag, 10 Skl, 13 Spd, 9 Luc, 9 Def, 2 Res. Some pretty excellent speed so far. Strength isn't quite as impressive, though, but Axes help with that some. Fast axeman in a game like this is pretty much toodles anyway.

[DomaDragoon]

The Saboteur: Cleared the story, at 60% optional freeform. The game can basically be summed up thusly: Captain Irish Stereotype, the love child of Wolverine and Altair, singlehandedly throws the Nazis out of Paris thanks to the occupiers having the attention spans of goldfish. Though given than I played 30 hours of it in five days, I rag on it because I like it. Just like you people.

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, there's a reason I'm not saying the plot hasn't resolved itself yet. Hell, myabe it's because I haven't played the game for a while, but I honestly have no idea who this woman is (other than that she was bossing around Ewen) or what she wants. I just thought stuff like Heritor was forced.

Well, considering the game's "plot" is basically just the Wizard of Oz with an FF-style twist (and a more optimistic main character), there's not a whole lot you can do or make resolved.  IIRC, Illua's plot was basically just "some girl in a similar case as Luso, only took less of a 'lets have fun' approach and sort of just went all 'summon demons!'"  Seriously, I'm not quite sure, I just recalled she also had a Grimoire like Luso, only hers wasn't filling up like his or something cause she didn't take the same "Oh, if I have fun, it'll fill up itself and then I get to go home?  Well, that sounds like a great idea!" approach Luso did.

...really, though, I'm not sure; again, FFTA2 doesn't have any real plot and what's loosely there feels like the devs were like "We only put this in the game cause we felt it was some sort of subtle requirement to make you not have to do all 300 missions; really, we didn't want a story at all..."; stuff like Heritor was mostly just tossed in for "hey, Adelle is special! I Mean, SHE'S A FEMALE HUME SO SHE'S GOTTA DO SOMETHING!"

Female Humes are not special at all I know, its just Adelle, but Adelle is also the ONLY Female Hume PC in the game, so uh...<_<;.  Then again, Cid and Luso are completely unspecial in terms of characters (though, Cid's a unique race...just he's identical to Banga gameplaywise, so its a huge "who cares" factor)...honestly, was it really that hard to give those two a unique Job just to make them stand out more?  They gave one to Hurdy, Vaan and Penelo (Penelo being relative to Viera, mind), and the way unique jobs work in this game, there's really no penalty since its just "One extra job on your list" rather than "replaces Squire"

...and in the end, I realize I said like absolutely nothing that was probably relevant to your statement, whoo FFTA2 plot discussions?

[Dhyerwolf]

Soul Nomad- Had done a bit of a speed replay of this a bit back to get some stat topic notes/feel out a bit more. Notable differences in fights from the first time around:

Thuris 1: Had to grind+throw on full decors first time around. Didn't need to do either this time to beat it first time. Still a really solid fight, but after having analyzed the game, I had a much better handle on how to deal with it.

Dio: Killed everything on the field but Dio. He attacks Revya...and the 15% crit comes in. Yep, Revya's party is flat out OHKOed. Ow. Not a high probably this will happen, but still rather nasty!

Classes that saw more play in terms of early game leadership:
Deathblossom: Early archers have that nasty durability issue. Deathblossom has a lot more durability, but isn't as great against mages. Still, not a liability. Replaced by the special PCs range options of course.
Whirwin/Swordsman/Bandit/Gryphos: Partially because I was aiming to keep Levin so Levin was in Revya's party, partly because I was using all the Nereids with Juno. Whirwin had the evasion, Swordsman is the most consistent fighter, Bandit has a bad-ass special (High mult+murders the leader's offensive stats in case it does live), and Gryphos because the mobility+attacking breaking was a fun combo (Although I ditched it pretty quickly).

ToV- About to go Leviathan Claw's manor. Belius fight got me the first time around (didn't realize there is was an easier way to kill the shadow and I was ice magiced to death!). Hoping that the battle system kind of breaks out a little soon (Fairly typical Tales, which is okay, but waiting for the time when it takes it to the next level).

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Deadwood: The Game-

Wow, that ending actually kind of got to me. Congratulations, Rockstar. You elicited something of an emotional response.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Wait? Rob has emotions?

[Captain K.]

I'm as surprised as anyone.

ToS:  Beat the Advanced Singles arena with everyone (starting with Zelos at level 60), beat the team arena, beat Abyssion (at level 64 or so, he was annoying).  Game kind of rolls over and dies after all that - even the Cursed Book was a pushover.  Now lovely Raine can Absorb 5 elements, Null 3, and resist physical attacks.  Not that there's any enemies left worth using that against.  Guess I'll work on figurines next.  Only missing two rare monsters for monster list, but one's in the Ice temple which has been destroyed.  So that and the Collector's Book will have to wait for the third playthrough.

Advance Wars Dual Strike:  Finally got good at the Combat game, collecting the trophies for that.

[Cotigo]

Wait? Rob has emotions?

Rob has emotions.  He just buries them and bottles them up like a man.

Someone could learn a lesson or two from this, ahem.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Good for you, Zenny! Admitting you have a problem is the first step. 

[Taishyr]

Late, but yeah, Scions are totally optional, Heritor skills are totally optional, Frimelda is totally optional, Van/Penelo are... I think you can at least miss Penelo before the final, don't recall if you can do the same with Van but FFTA2 plot. Bare bones.

Illua gets no details like ever, get used to this. She's still somehow a Heavy/Godlike to most interps. Somehow. >_> (Not to me! Buuut she doesn't like dealing with a team, ever.)

Really, there is one thing I'm actually kinda impressed at FFTA2 about, but at the same time find it kinda lame... eh, a rant for another time, even if it is FFTA2 PLOT. But yeah, FFTA2 is really a "do the sidequests and aftergame at least some" game, in theory, since... yeah. Rambling! Shutting up on FFTA2!

WA:ACF: Demon Prophet for Godlike. Chooses the weakest attack each round to get hit by out of three? Either that or he randomly chooses one of three people in the fight to get hit by each round. That plus fast MT 3HKO damage of any ACF element plus 3HKO counters to physicals... 66% chance to immune damage plus fast plus ...probably PCHP+ durability otherwise + pretty fast damage + if you allow it, Fate Storm to single targets (I'd limit it to when enemy has >33% mHP but that's me) = pain in the damn ass.

Otherwise, been having fun, recruited CALAMITY and TORRENTER so CALAMITY/TORRENTER/ENTER THE MATRIX has been my team for exploring. TORRENTER swaps for TAKE A NUMBER, I'M NOT CUTTING IN LINE AS WELL AS RAQUEL, SHUT UP once I've downloaded from all monsters in an area/dungeon. BANG BANG steps in for bosses.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, there's a reason I'm not saying the plot hasn't resolved itself yet. Hell, myabe it's because I haven't played the game for a while, but I honestly have no idea who this woman is (other than that she was bossing around Ewen) or what she wants. I just thought stuff like Heritor was forced.

Well, considering the game's "plot" is basically just the Wizard of Oz with an FF-style twist (and a more optimistic main character), there's not a whole lot you can do or make resolved.  IIRC, Illua's plot was basically just "some girl in a similar case as Luso, only took less of a 'lets have fun' approach and sort of just went all 'summon demons!'"  Seriously, I'm not quite sure, I just recalled she also had a Grimoire like Luso, only hers wasn't filling up like his or something cause she didn't take the same "Oh, if I have fun, it'll fill up itself and then I get to go home?  Well, that sounds like a great idea!" approach Luso did.

...really, though, I'm not sure; again, FFTA2 doesn't have any real plot and what's loosely there feels like the devs were like "We only put this in the game cause we felt it was some sort of subtle requirement to make you not have to do all 300 missions; really, we didn't want a story at all..."; stuff like Heritor was mostly just tossed in for "hey, Adelle is special! I Mean, SHE'S A FEMALE HUME SO SHE'S GOTTA DO SOMETHING!"

Female Humes are not special at all I know, its just Adelle, but Adelle is also the ONLY Female Hume PC in the game, so uh...<_<;.  Then again, Cid and Luso are completely unspecial in terms of characters (though, Cid's a unique race...just he's identical to Banga gameplaywise, so its a huge "who cares" factor)...honestly, was it really that hard to give those two a unique Job just to make them stand out more?  They gave one to Hurdy, Vaan and Penelo (Penelo being relative to Viera, mind), and the way unique jobs work in this game, there's really no penalty since its just "One extra job on your list" rather than "replaces Squire"

...and in the end, I realize I said like absolutely nothing that was probably relevant to your statement, whoo FFTA2 plot discussions?

My theory on FFTA2 is that they took the myriad FFTA fans who said "No, seriously, we'd prefer this game if it had no plot at all." exactly at their word. If I was going to remake make an extremely similar sequel to a game that had gotten a lot of flak, that'd be how I'd go about it, listening to complaints specifically.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn:

Started this up. Currently on 1-4.

The good:

Aesthetics are much better. I didn't instantly turn off normal animations(they are long and need a single-button-press skip and don't have one. :|) but did eventually. I like the music, although nothing particularly stands out.

Mages blow much less. Micaiah is actively *good* right now holy crap. I mean, she's not awesome front line tank but she is fine at what she does.

Knives don't suck. Even if they did it wouldn't matter because one of the people that gets them is a Jeigan.

They created some...interesting character builds as experimentation. Some didn't work(Leonardo) but the stats have some weird-ass people in there as well as generically standard builds. I like that they tried.

Basically everything about FE9 that was good still seems intact, although I'm not far enough to say if the design is worse in general or anything.

The bad:

1-3. 1-3 is like a more freeform version of that XF prison escape mission. I don't mind the game being hard-and, actually, this is part of why I forgive it more than the XF version, as FE10 does not pull punches at any stage here-but when I can't kill an archer across a wall, not because I lack healing items or staff users to handle the damage, but because only one of my dedicated range attackers can actually not get OHKOed by the counter and the people who aren't dedicated are over here trying to keep everyone from not dying....yeah.

(Also, putting a steal on a moving boss on the same stage? Seriously? I missed nothing really notable outside of Rexaura which I couldn't use in 9, but I've already missed a skill in this. Oh well.)

Mind, I've seen maps I disliked way worse, let's be clear. FE4 had that one bullshit stage where fifteen million pegknights swarmed your castle near the end, for instance, and I've played enough SRWs I shouldn't have to have seen some very, very bad map design. But I disliked this. Then again if this is the main issue I have with the game so far, that's pretty good, right?

Oh, and BEXP on early C1 stages, that's horrible too. To the point where I very seriously considered setting aside one of the early stages for staff/Sacrifice constant abuse just because I would lose nothing, and to the point where I actually did completely ignore the turn timer on 1-2 and 1-3. Seriously, guys? 80? For clearing in ten turns on 1-3? 80? Oh wow I can get 80% of the way from L1 to L2!!!!!!!!! Come on.

[Shale]

My theory on FFTA2 is that they took the myriad FFTA fans who said "No, seriously, we'd prefer this game if it had no plot at all." exactly at their word. If I was going to remake make an extremely similar sequel to a game that had gotten a lot of flak, that'd be how I'd go about it, listening to complaints specifically.

Well, I couldn't get past the first third of FFTA, and I've logged almost 60 hours in FFTA2. I think it worked!

[Idun]

This is the longest I've played any Dragon Quest game if anyone's curious. VII I immediately returned the next day. Either way, I made it to Baccarat finally, after being chased by some chicken enemy that I was uninterested in fighting. It's nice that they have such a huge target range to come attack me at. I'm hoping there is something later in the game that either cancels out or diminishes the encounter rate, because I seriously see no point in fighting in the battles. Auto does perfectly fine until a boss sometimes.

[Dark Holy Elf]

(Also, putting a steal on a moving boss on the same stage? Seriously? I missed nothing really notable outside of Rexaura which I couldn't use in 9, but I've already missed a skill in this. Oh well.)

To be fair, it's a boss you can one-shot, so it's not so bad. Lure him forward with Sothe, steal, and have Micaiah blow him up. (If your Micaiah is Mag-screwed this may not be possible, but it just means you have Aran or someone toss in a shot first.)

Also, I'm a bit confused about your archer-behind-the-wall comments. I don't ever recall trying to kill an archer through a wall in that map. It doesn't shock me that it wouldn't work too well! FE10 enemy archers tend to be powerful attackers (the exact opposite of 9) and you want to kill them at melee. If he's behind a wall, you stay away from that wall until you can get to him. The game is going to pull some more situations with nasty enemy archers like this (ones on top of ledges in particular) so keep your eyes open.