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

[hinode]

He's better than them at grass attacking, which is relevant for the reasons I gave. Also don't see where the gym leaders are really affecting things here since HGSS represents literally every single type amongst its 16 gyms and E4, doubling up on Psychic, Fighting (kinda), Dragon, and Poizn.

Gym leaders/E4 members are just about the only enemy trainers that can put up a fight in this game even if you don't have advantageous typing. The Petal Dance arguement for Meganium fades away in aftergame as superior Grass options like Leaf Blade start rolling in for the other Grass types.

If your argument is that the likes of Jumpluff and Exeggutor are better because they can sleep things, then sure, that's reasonable, but they don't really crowd out Meganium at his own job. I'm using Jumpluff and can't help but feel that Meganium would be nice to have on the team. This is my own damn fault for not using an electric, but I wasn't impressed with the grass attacking options in HGSS (I gave up on Bellsprout in disgust once I clued in that Growth no longer even had the decency to afffect Vine Whip and Bullet Seed) and I do see them as valuable.

Frankly, I don't consider Meganium *good* at Grass attacking, in large part because I don't like Petal Dance. I used it on Sunflora for a while due to lack of better options, but there is a very serious risk that you fail to OHKO a boss's Pokemon, they use a Potion, and pretty soon you end up self-confused without even inflicting a KO. I can't see it working any better on Meganium which has lower special attack and might want to refresh Reflect/Light Screen at some point. Something like Bellossom's Leaf Blade or Exeggutor's Seed Bomb is far more appealing as a Grass attack to me.

Part of this, I suspect, is that I consider Water a near mandatory type in-game for Surf, so Rock doesn't worry me (typically running a bunch of special attackers who can blow throw Gravellers doesn't hurt there - you seem to have unintentionally created a team that gets largely walled by them), and Electric is my first choice anti-Water type due to boss Gyarados and random Tentacools/Tentacruels. Electric is so desirable I would absolutely look for one even with a Grass type on board.

You may disagree on the value of a grass attacker and that's fine but it doesn't change my original argument, Meganium is harder to eclipse at the job he does. Typh on the other hand is overtly worse than other fires at the very job he tries to do, and Fera faces varied water competition from all sides (Surf is still the type's money move and still runs off his wrong stat) and one very similar but superior option in Gyarados.

This... depends a lot on playstyle. Your tendency to run six Pokemon ASAP, diffusing exp significantly in the process, tends to work against both.

Feraligatr is probably the single best Pokemon for the "pool all exp into 1-3 Pokemon, smash game with them" style. It's a starter, it can use both attacking stats, and gets good enough neutrality to in fact run Surf+Waterfall endgame, with decent coverage moves otherwise. It's the king of the efficiency, borderline speedrun playstyle, where spending hours on Voltorb Flip to get accurate coverage TMs for a Starmie or waiting until Friday for a Lapras isn't a feasible option, and Gyarados slow exp gaining rate works against it compared to a heavily levelled Feraligatr.

Typhlosion is all about raw firepower: storebought Fire Blast running off 109 SpAtk + 100 Speed makes for a stronger choiced attacker than anything else in the game, with Eruption picked up late in the aftergame at L57 - although exactly how late depends heavily on how broadly exp is being spread. Its coverage moves (Dig, Focus Blast) don't mesh well with a Choice item but not enough to really discourage use of one - Dig lets you switch Typh in on Fire types to KO even with Specs equipped, at least. Ninetales has 28 less SpAtk and support moves good enough that I don't think anyone will choice it, so it ends up playing very differently. Magmar is strictly inferior as a choiced attacker, aside from the admittedly ugly Quilava phase - you can't argue it clearly superior unless you want to argue the game before L36 is vastly more difficult than the game after L36. Arcanine is a problem here, though - Intimidate I suspect makes up for the slightly lower SpAtk/Speed, and choiced Dragon Pulse is actually a good idea here. Typh would need to get Eruption to stand a chance here a suspect, which means the fewer Pokemon to spread out exp out amongst the better.

Meganium by contrast doesn't work as well for "pool your exp into a smaller number of Pokemon" - its offensive is significantly worse than the other two starters, especially since Petal Dance's self-confuse blows if you're trying to sweep entire teams with your STAB moves.

[Dark Holy Elf]

My problem with the "pool all exp into a small number of pokemon" is that the game breaks that way; I'm pretty sure the game can't stand up to ANY badly overlevelled starter, especially with the TM focus that implies. At that point comparisons become fairly meaningless. Do you really think the game has a chance against an overlevelled Meganium? Offence goes up quadratically so his will be more than adequate, and he's just going to laugh off things like Lance's Outrage even before Reflect. I've seen people solo the game with the likes of Rattata (EDIT: And I mean Rattata, not Raticate) and complain that it's too easy.

Ninetales has 28 less SpAtk and support moves good enough that I don't think anyone will choice it

Indeed, which frees up the valuable Choice Specs for any number of other special attackers on the team, preferably one who gets decent special attacks of an element besides the problematic fire (besides lol Focus Blast). Not to mention Ninetales needs only one Nasty Plot (on a turn which it can typically buy itself using Confuse Ray at that) to beat out Choice Specs + 28 SpAtk difference, and said difference doesn't even exist until Level 36 (though to be fair, neither does NP).

[Luther Lansfeld]

Ninetales also gets Flamethrower 15 levels lower! Typh is uh marginally better at special attacking in the aftergame (Level 57 barely even counts, I'm not even close to Level 57 and I've beaten most of the aftergame in HGSS) and way worse at it in most of the regular game.

[hinode]

My problem with the "pool all exp into a small number of pokemon" is that the game breaks that way; I'm pretty sure the game can't stand up to ANY badly overlevelled starter, especially with the TM focus that implies. At that point comparisons become fairly meaningless. Do you really think the game has a chance against an overlevelled Meganium? Offence goes up quadratically so his will be more than adequate, and he's just going to laugh off things like Lance's Outrage even before Reflect. I've seen people solo the game with the likes of Rattata (EDIT: And I mean Rattata, not Raticate) and complain that it's too easy.

Meganium takes significantly more overlevelling, though. Late Earthquake aside, its only TM help is... Iron Tail. For most of the game it would have to chip away at stuff with normal attacks and Razor/Magical Leaf. What level would you need to handle enemy Haunters/Gengars effectively?

While it's true that you basically have to tie both your hands behind your back to make the game even sorta challenging, there is still a significant difference because a easy game, a really really easy game, and a Rhapsody-level game. Most of the serious attempts at hashing out in-game effectiveness ratings/tier lists look either focus on ~4 Pokemon teams with the remaining team slots devoted to HM slaves or they just focus on 1-2 Pokemon teams that crush the game with optimum efficiency. This is a really a philosophical arguement, similar to small teams vs large teams in Fire Emblem.

Indeed, which frees up the valuable Choice Specs for any number of other special attackers on the team, preferably one who gets decent special attacks of an element besides the problematic fire (besides lol Focus Blast). Not to mention Ninetales needs only one Nasty Plot (on a turn which it can typically buy itself using Confuse Ray at that) to beat out Choice Specs + 28 SpAtk difference, and said difference doesn't even exist until Level 36 (though to be fair, neither does NP).

That's 2 turns of setup spent before actually attacking. If you're trying to sweep a whole team then that's a trivial price, but sometimes there's only one or two Pokemon that provide a favorable matchup, so you just want to KO them and setup moves aren't really worthwhile. Both setup sweepers and immediate attackers have their use, I don't consider either type to obsolete the other.

Fire in general is probably worse than I realized in HGSS. I haven't used anything earlier than Ho-oh so I didn't pay attention to their matchups, and none of them get a second STAB except Ho-oh who is broken in general. Ninetales gets points for status at least, WoW is pretty rare in-game.

Ninetales also gets Flamethrower 15 levels lower! Typh is uh marginally better at special attacking in the aftergame (Level 57 barely even counts, I'm not even close to Level 57 and I've beaten most of the aftergame in HGSS) and way worse at it in most of the regular game.

18 actually (24 for Vulpix vs 42 for Typh), but storebought Fire Blast and Lava Plume at 35 mean Typh doesn't really miss FT that much. Severe Voltorb Flip addition can bring earlier FT but that is so time consuming for relatively little gain that I'd ignore the option entirely.

Fire Blast keeps Cyndaquil line tied/ahead for boss damage at all times, at the cost of low PP and 85% accuracy. Lava Plume is good enough either as a replacement or alongside FB; it's stronger than Ninetales' FT. Ninetales is only better at special attacking between 24 and 36, and even then Fire Blast can push it to an effective tie (Quilava has nearly the same SpAtk as Ninetales) for 5 turns.

[Magetastic]

I will say this now: You are severely underestimating the Meganium line. Severely, severely, severely. I cannot see a single better choice of pokemon for not only having a well-balanced, decently powerful team (without TM shenanigans, mind), but also for building it. And that is more important than you're giving it credit for, since that means I have been intentionally tying my hands behind my back, and letting my pokemon get under leveled, and yet Meganium (Still a Bayleef, only on the 5th gym despite it being my 6th badge; which Bayleef was awesome against, btw. Poison Powder for life, y'all) still manages to pull well ahead of what the game throws at me, even with spending the first turn being completely vulnerable. It also means that I constantly have options, since that is what the grass type is for, but Meganium is tanky enough to actually have those options be feasible.

Also, your argument seems to rely rather heavily on both being good at only one thing (lulz, personally I find this a terrible thing to have in a pokemon, unless you wanna hype Shuckle as pretty sweet for being super tanky) as well as sinking TMs into someone just because they're available. There is one rather large problem with your argument involving the TMs; that is a lot of cash you're sinking in, and for what gain? Just so your starter can not suck compared to an easily caught pokemon that is cuter? I dunno. You could be spending that cash (and far less, as well) to make, say, Meganium good at what you're talking about. 

[Just Another Day]

unless you wanna hype Shuckle as pretty sweet for being super tanky

Shuckle for president!

Also, the steel gym leader in Platinum is terrible. Totally pathetic.

(I'm conflicted about pokemon at the moment. I like Platinum, but I'm buying a DS today and don't know if I wanna replay the first third of it... Not totally sold on a gen II remakes either, though, and diamond/pearl seem like a step down...)

[SageAcrin]

I think I can sum this argument up fairly fast.

Totodile's line is a Pokemon you get a huge amount of good options for still including one that plain and simply does it's job better(Red Gyarados, although you can get one of these earlier with a little effort), still.

Chika's line is harder to get an early option for and the ones that do what Chika does stand out as less firmly dominating it.

What Chika does is not what most Grasses do and may not be universally valued, whereas Totodile's offense is generally good.

Put like this, Chika-line really is better than Totodile's line... but it's kinda a weird better. Yes, Meganium does what he does and doesn't do it like many other Pokemon, but you have to care about that first. Do you care? Good question.

I think the only clear thing in this is that Typhlosion would probably be the worst starter by this line of logic. Pure fire cannons aren't particularly valuable overall, in HGSS, and there's a bunch of other options for it, such as Ninetales/Arcanine or Magmar or Entei. (I'll defend Entei. Durable Pokemon with a glaring weakness aren't as bad in-game because the enemy simply can't always exploit this weakness, everyone in Netbattle has EQ while rather few enemies in game have Magnitude, let alone EQ, until very late, so yes Entei still works.) The other two are just a value judgement.

[Luther Lansfeld]

unless you wanna hype Shuckle as pretty sweet for being super tanky

Shuckle for president!

Also, the steel gym leader in Platinum is terrible. Totally pathetic.

(I'm conflicted about pokemon at the moment. I like Platinum, but I'm buying a DS today and don't know if I wanna replay the first third of it... Not totally sold on a gen II remakes either, though, and diamond/pearl seem like a step down...)

The Gen 2 remakes are way better than Diamond/Pearl, I will say that much. I can't comment on Platty, having not played it. Why do you have to play the first third again?

Also, I think Sage puts it best.

[OblivionKnight]

Honestly, if you're using a Pokemon for anything but cuteness, why are you playing the game?  It's pretty obvious that Piplup is the best Pokemon in the game.

[hinode]

I will say this now: You are severely underestimating the Meganium line. Severely, severely, severely. I cannot see a single better choice of pokemon for not only having a well-balanced, decently powerful team (without TM shenanigans, mind), but also for building it. And that is more important than you're giving it credit for, since that means I have been intentionally tying my hands behind my back, and letting my pokemon get under leveled, and yet Meganium (Still a Bayleef, only on the 5th gym despite it being my 6th badge; which Bayleef was awesome against, btw. Poison Powder for life, y'all) still manages to pull well ahead of what the game throws at me, even with spending the first turn being completely vulnerable. It also means that I constantly have options, since that is what the grass type is for, but Meganium is tanky enough to actually have those options be feasible.

Uh... Poison Powder? Really?

If that's the type of option you want lots of, then sure. Meganium has a case for best Poison Powder user in the game. I'd much prefer to take a durability hit to get options that are actually good, like Sleep Powder - actually disabling the enemy outright more than makes up for the extra damage taken due to less durability at the outset.

Also, your argument seems to rely rather heavily on both being good at only one thing (lulz, personally I find this a terrible thing to have in a pokemon, unless you wanna hype Shuckle as pretty sweet for being super tanky)

Specializing in offense *is* the single best overall strategy in-game, where you mainly face endless hordes of middling Pokemon and get to choose whatever matchup you want even on the harder fights. If you go first and KO everything, than you take less damage than what a slower tanky type would anyways. Accurate sleep/paralysis still has significant value because they help with catching Pokemon, especially legendaries, which are often harder than actual boss fights. Moreover, against something like Clair's Kingdra that's hard to blitz, they swing moment towards you faster than a more gradual buff/debuff.

as well as sinking TMs into someone just because they're available. There is one rather large problem with your argument involving the TMs; that is a lot of cash you're sinking in, and for what gain? Just so your starter can not suck compared to an easily caught pokemon that is cuter? I dunno. You could be spending that cash (and far less, as well) to make, say, Meganium good at what you're talking about.  

Um... the main TM I'm talking about is Fire Blast, which is sold for a mere 7500 in Goldenrod. If you can't spare a one-time 7500 for an attack that is seriously overpowered for that point in the game, you are either wasting massive amounts of money on something bizarre or skipping every single trainer possible and then dying repeatedly to halve your cash. There's really not a whole lot to save up cash for in Pokemon in-game anyways.

Also, no amount of cash will make Meganium "good at what you're talking about" in this case. That would require buying an Action Replay to hack in a move like Power Whip or Seed Flare.

I think I can sum this argument up fairly fast.

Totodile's line is a Pokemon you get a huge amount of good options for still including one that plain and simply does it's job better(Red Gyarados, although you can get one of these earlier with a little effort), still.

Chika's line is harder to get an early option for and the ones that do what Chika does stand out as less firmly dominating it.

What Chika does is not what most Grasses do and may not be universally valued, whereas Totodile's offense is generally good.

Put like this, Chika-line really is better than Totodile's line... but it's kinda a weird better. Yes, Meganium does what he does and doesn't do it like many other Pokemon, but you have to care about that first. Do you care? Good question.

If you mean that Chika-line is relatively better at it's niche when you say it "really is better", I'd agree except with a huge caveat: Chika-line is still very much in competition with the other Grasses that fill a different niche for a team slot. Because of how many weaknesses Grass has (and how many types resist it), it's not a good type to double up on, whereas you could easily run say Gyarados and Lanturn together and not even share a single weakness. Just being the best at a specific niche doesn't necessarily mean much if the niche itself isn't good. Call it the RBY Charizard rule, or maybe RBY Hitmonlee rule for a more extreme rendition.

I think the only clear thing in this is that Typhlosion would probably be the worst starter by this line of logic. Pure fire cannons aren't particularly valuable overall, in HGSS, and there's a bunch of other options for it, such as Ninetales/Arcanine or Magmar or Entei. (I'll defend Entei. Durable Pokemon with a glaring weakness aren't as bad in-game because the enemy simply can't always exploit this weakness, everyone in Netbattle has EQ while rather few enemies in game have Magnitude, let alone EQ, until very late, so yes Entei still works.) The other two are just a value judgement.

I can see this argument, but it depends largely on how bad exactly Fire cannons turn out overall. Haven't really thought about it, just so happens that on my two playthroughs I've ran two late joining Fire types (Ho-oh was the earlier one <_<) who are also dual-typed and also of the opposite ends of the usefulness spectrum to the extent that they don't really extrapolate to Typhlosion/Arcanine/Ninetales/Magmar level performance.

As an aside, I'd say that Entei in-game is good because you can potentially get it right after gym 4 at level 40 with Flamethrower prelearned. Also, Dig is good in-game so Entei's attack isn't wasted if you can afford to use that TM on it.

[Just Another Day]

The Gen 2 remakes are way better than Diamond/Pearl, I will say that much. I can't comment on Platty, having not played it. Why do you have to play the first third again?

Well, I've been emulating Platinum on my crappy scrappy little netbook, but it's far from a perfect experience, plus no multiplayer/trading etc. Bought a DS this morning, haven't decided which version to get, though. Probably gonna go with SS, then platinum when I'm done with it if I haven't lost all pokemon enthusiasm by then.

Platinum's been a really positive experience so far, actually. Totally solid.

[Shale]

Went on a bit of a Live Arcade shopping spree.

Shadow Complex: Did most of the challenges, got the bad/awesome/hilarious ending, then got up to the dorms. Fun game. Bit linear thus far, but very well-designed.

N+: This is pretty awesome. Bite-size bare-bones platforming with a huge array of varied stages.

Splosion Man: Haven't actually played my copy yet, but I already know it's good. Anybody who wants to play, drop me a line on Live.

TMNT Arcade 1989: Whee, nostalgia!

[Luther Lansfeld]

Pokemon Heartgold -- Just beat superboss Red! Co-MVPs of the battle are Meganium, who used a lot of Light Shield/Reflect and tanked a couple of the otherwise untankable folks, and Articuno used Pressure to make Lapras use Struggle. Yeaaah I think I was pretty underlevelled (about 52) so I had to use lots and lots of items. I had about 30 Hyper Potions, 25~ Revives, and lots of Lemonade. I used all the Revives and almost all the Hyper Potions. Pretty great battle, Blastoise (owned so hard by Meganium) was a total scrub but otherwise the opponents were pretty scary. I used Amphy to Paralyze people and otherwise die. Magmortor/Raticate/Vappy didn't see much use in the battle other than Vappy getting off a Choice Specs Surf on Charizard and Magmortor Confusing... someone.

^_^ Fun game. I like Meganium a lot because he is actually cute at second and third evos. Petal Dance is also awesome; its drawback is so easy to mitigate by just a) using Petal Dance against something it at least 2HKOs (which is easy) and b) switching him out upon the death, when you don't lose anything. I didn't find it a drawback at all. Razor Leaf was my fourth move and it was passable for those pesky anti-magic people~ Also hits two people in Double Battle~ Magmar was amazing most of the game until the end of the regular game, where he was kinda crappy, but he was good again against Erika and another one of the Kanto Gym Leaders. It was kinda funny. Vappy just Choice Specs'd the world, Ratty was just a fast finisher and had Swords Dance and Double Team, and Amphy was pretty solid most of the game. (I had a +Speed Nature and he was speed blessed, so he was better than average.) Meganium also had all stats above 100~ ^.^

Overall I think the Team Rocket Portions are too easy and really need to be buffed up, and some of the Gyms are still suspect (but not as bad as they sound in the original!). I really like the higher selection of Pokemon in this game. The best thing, though, is that they give you mother-fucking Articuno. Hell yeah. Articuno!!!



I gave it a high 7/10. Not as good as Em or LG, but much better than Diamond.

Next, for the portable I shall play Ace Attorney Investigations.

[Twilkitri]

Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual -

Well, there's some nice music and it's reasonably pretty (setting aside fairly horribly lipsynching). Apart from that it's fairly low-grade.

So at one point you break into a caravan using a bent metal pen insert, and take a bunch of stuff. You need to set up a flashlight in there for light, and I tried to take the flashlight back before leaving in case I needed it in the upcoming cave but it wasn't available for interacting with. So when I attempt to leave, Sylvie is all 'better take this flashlight so people don't realise that there's been a breakin' and takes it back of her own accord. Keeping in mind that we have taken: A brush and trowel, several photos, and a metal detector. And we leave the pen insert stuck in the door lock. Later on we get one remark offhand by the owner of the caravan in question that he thinks he's getting paranoid because he thinks someone might have gone through his caravan recently.

This is the same guy that is thoroughly nonplussed later on that the door of his van, which contains highly valuable valuables and was locked up, is ajar when he comes back, and doesn't even bother checking on them. To be fair, the ending -may- be attempting to imply that he knew more about what was happening than he was letting on, but I think it's more likely that that would be giving the writers far more credit than they're worth. Especially considering that the people who these valuables are delivered to apparently don't even check on them themselves... and the people which had the valuables previously notice that they've gone missing but apparently don't even care despite the trouble they went to to get them in the first place.

So at one point there is a vicious feral cat guarding something you need to access and you need to distract it. Which you do by the old standby of giving it a fish. Which for some bizarre reason causes it to run away instead of any of the reactions you may expect. Kay. In related news, if you look at the fish while carrying it around you get some weird dialogue along the lines of 'Since I can't give the mackerel access to the internet, I figured I may as well let it read the paper'.

So at one point you are in a generally dark warehouse with light at one end, and you can't go down the dark end without light. Sylvie claims that she just needs to find the light switch. Okay. So what you do, is try all your inventory with all your other inventory and find out that you can make a pendulum out of a scarf and a powder case. Now you hang the pendulum up on the hooks in the lit area of the warehouse and tilt it until something happens, which consists of one particular orientation resulting in a shaft of light shining out across the dark area of the warehouse, which you follow and find that it's shining right on the light switch. What exactly were they thinking.

Plus the 'puzzle' after that one is to give two items to a person, two items which you were -required- to pick up to finish the previous puzzle. That is not a puzzle, game, that is just busywork.

I could go on but I think that this has been sufficient to broadcast my thoughts on that particular area.

The interface is somewhat annoying - all onscreen interactibles have only one regular action you can take on them apart from using objects on them (except -one- instance where they don't which confused me for several minutes as to what exactly I was supposed to be doing). This leads to numerous occasions where clicking on an interactible just gives you one of the standard 'action failed' messages, and you can't even fall back on looking at the thing. It is infuriating. There is also one screen with no apparent interactibles where you have to select the metal detector and wave it around the screen to find something, and to be fair it does start beeping once you select it on that screen, but why would you ever select it or anything else on that screen when there is nothing to actively use it on?

I decree it not the best adventure game of the millenium. Now to play the sequel.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

WAXF - Other games? What other games? Currently at 1-5. The prison escape map in 1-4 (not Metal Gear Tonyrinthia, the -actual- escape) was amazingly fun.

[Yoshiken]

Mana Khemia: Finally back on this. On, like, Chapter 5 or something. Just got Anna and Roxis, aced the two modules and have met the DEFENDER OF JUSTICE. I think Roxis is actually the only character in the cast that I don't like so far, which is pretty awesome.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FF6 Eviltype - Hmm, I think I'd done almost everything at last update, but a few more things since:

Narshe - Apparently most people do Narshe earlier in the game than I tend to. This playthrough I did it even later than was normal for me, so yeah. Around this time I rediscovered how awesome summons are, Bahamut took care of things here super-well. Bosses were all unremarkable but again I was probably overpowered, for all that I was only Level 32 or so.

Fanatics' Tower - Holy hell this dungeon is hard. Part of me loves it anyway. Find out all the status weaknesses and use them! OH GOD I FORGOT TO CAST FLOAT. L 90 Magics are just dirty cheating bastards. This playthrough I did the dungeon mostly without Wall Rings which makes it much faster and... probably not all that much harder honestly, the best stuff is still the ignore-reflect stuff.
White Dragon - I like White Dragon, he puts on enough pressure and there's no complete holy walling (except Paladin Shield but who cares) so he remains interesting enough. My one PC without great mdur/holy res just got smashed by Pearl.
MagiMaster - Ohnoes, boss healing! Kinda keeps things interesting, makes me worried about a really weak party that couldn't outrace it but you could always reflect him to stop it I guess. Fun fun. Needs a Life 3/Rasp/Palidor bailout as always but everyone knows about that by now. I had one PC with a Reflect Ring on (my frailest) to protect him.

Anyway the biggest thing to report here is that, after beating MagiMaster, I knew I could handle anything the tower could throw at me, Gem Box in hand, and I proudly started downwards.
*Battle!*
Oh, wait, I didn't heal after the chain-Life 3'ing revived me to ~250 HP. Well, that's okay, I'll just heal now. *enters command* Level 90 Magics are scary, but nothing they do kills me on turn 1, they can only use Merton and Stop-
*Meteor*
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

One of the few times I have -actually said that- while playing a video game. Fuck. Oh well, came back, armed better than ever with the knowledge to beat the damn place, and took it apart well enough.

Only Ebot's Rock and the final dungeon left, now, and I'm probably just going to skip Ebot's Rock.


Devil May Cry - Up to Mission 17. This game is hard. Especially the bosses. Oh god the bosses. Except Griffon, he was a chump. Fun times, gameplay actually manages to have some depth to it, weapon balance is pretty good although I wish switching between them was a little faster. The game does have two notable flaws to my mind. First of all, the yellow stone system is a bit baffling. Why not just give 3 lives like most games? It's just annoying when you beat a level on your last life; I'm tempted to redo the level when that happens so I don't waste money getting the yellow orbs back. The second flaw is that ever since Mission 11 or so the game has fallen in love with DARKNESS which makes it annoying to see things; I don't really dig this. In theory it could lend the game a horror element but I don't think DMC is very effective at horror anyway.

Still a very solidly fun game overall mind.

[NotMiki]

WA:ACF - needs to be a drinking game.  take a shot every time the bad guys tell our heroes how insignificant they are then leave without killing them.  I don't recall it being this ridiculous in the original.

[Xeroma]

NEB: DMC3 addresses most of those flaws... and it addresses all of them if you play DMC3 Special Edition[has an option to make the lives system more sensical]. You can equip two guns and two melee weapons and switch between them at any point in gameplay, and the game generally doesn't have difficult to see environments.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Somehow I neglected to mention the game's biggest flaw, though, which is the occasionally screwed up camera angles. OH MY GOD WHERE THE FUCK IS THE BOSS STOP SHOWING ME DANTE AND A WALL. Fortunately you can watch the direction Dante's guns are pointed and listen for sound effects so in practice it's not nearly as bad as it could be, but still lazy.

Also I am at Mission 18 now, MAJOR SPOILERS happened. This game's plot is silly. Not silly enough, though! That's what DMC3 is for~

[Xeroma]

Camera is also better in 3, less static. DMC1 was originally going to be a Resident Evil game and it shows >_>;

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Camera is also better in 3, less static. DMC1 was originally going to be a Resident Evil game and it shows >_>;

As I recall, that god-awful GBC game was a prequel to it. Leon gets infected with some weird virus at the end of it and in DMC!RE4, it was going to turn him in to a super-powered killing machine.

Then RE4 came out and we realized he already was one.

[hinode]

New Super Mario Bros Wii: Beaten.

I realize that all the enemy courses were essentially easy mushroom farming mini-stages, but world 6's really takes the cake. It spawns infinitely without having to clear any stages, is really easy to beat, and as a bonus all the Bullet Bills on screen are killed when you get the last target, meaning you'll almost guaranteed to get some 1-ups as well! Just in case you mess up and die every one in ten tries or so. I had 90+ mushrooms coming into the final world and just spammed them on every single stage. Thankfully all the stronger power-ups are much more scarce.

Stage 8-1 was one hell of an introduction level to the last (non-optional) world. Killer smoke advancing from the left, falling rocks from the top, and periodic insta-kill lava geysers from the bottom? Yikes. Just yikes.

The rest of the world never quite lived up to that intro, though. Bowser's Castle in particular was frankly underwhelming for a final stage, right up until the real final boss. I have never been so happy to see a Propeller Mushroom.

Now to go back and get all the Star Coins and secret goals that I missed previously.

[Meeplelard]

First off, Elfboy, for one of your complaints, there is a half solution:

For Melee weapons, at least Ifrit and Alastor, you can swap between them while you're on the ground by pressing the L/R3 button (Forget which offhand); again, gotta be grounded, and you can't be in DT.  It would suck that it only works for Ifrit and Alastor, but really, those are the only two melee weapons you should be using (Force Edge is worse than Alastor in every way, Sparda's a total novelty weapon more than anything else), so you shouldn't care.  Guns, sadly, no shortcut exists, which is annoying cause I do find myself swapping between the 3 Main Guns a lot.

Anyway...

Actually, DMC1, when it was still Resident Evil 4, was going to be about a Detective (named Dante) going into a gothic castle and well, ZOMBIE OUTBREAK!!! there and all that.  Just while making the game, they realized how little the game was resembling a Resident Evil, so said "Fuck it, lets keep what we have, but make a totally new game out of it!"

Xenogears allegedly was the same deal; initially meant to be CT's sequel, somewhere along the way they realized they were straying too far away from their intent, but they liked what they had already, so rather than scrap it, just alter it into something new entirely.

Really, DMC1 initially being an RE really shows.  It has the same Camera Angles as REs, a shit load of emblem puzzles (though, DMC3 didn't fix this but I don't think it was as bad as DMC1), Marrionettes being the basic enemy sort of scream "These were originally zombies" based on how they move and such, enemy specific fatalities, the "You are Dead" game over screen...really, the game is just so obvious where it got its routes from.

DMC2, they actually worked away all the RE-ness from the game, though many will credit DMC3 with this, cause DMC2 was just so different than DMC1 that it might as well not count (where as DMC3 has a lot of the same basics as DMC1, just with a lot of improvements, modernization, etc.)

Interestingly, DMC2 was the opposite compared to DMC1 in regards to the weapon swap.  You could swap Guns on the fly, but not Melee Weapons.  Then again, DMC2, the 3 weapons were identical for melee in terms of how they handled, just different Range and Power, so you typically just stayed with whatever you found most favorable, where as Guns were about as varied as DMC1.

Then DMC3 just lets you swap both! ...but limits you to one style at a time, sadly.  DMC4 then said "Take this Style Swap button and have fun!"

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

XF - Man, how many acts does C1 have? I'm at like 1-8 right now.