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

[Crystalgate]

Monsterworld IV: Sometimes called Wonderboy VI, although that title wouldn't make any sense since you control a girl in this one.

Anyway, compared to Wonderboy V, this game is less exploration and more action. Combat and platforming is more refined and once you beat a place, you can't return to it. Make sure you pick up all power up items unless you feel comfortable without them.

I beat the first dungeon. I will try not to upgrade my shield since I want to see if the drop in defense actually does something. In earlier playtrough I upgraded my shield and enemies always did 1 heart of damage with the exception of an auto lose plot battle. I'll see if any enemy will deal more damage or at least he plot boss does it.

[Meeplelard]

If I had to guess one of the reasons why FF13 is considered "Easy" by many, it'd be because there's the fact that there's no penalty to dying at all.  When you die, all that happens is you're set like 5 steps away from the battle that killed you, exactly as you were right before the battle; if there was a plot scene involved, and the fight forced a character you had no chance to prepare or something (see Snow's return, for example), it often puts you in the menu to let you quickly re-equip, use CP, etc. before going into battle.

But yeah, FF13 is not completely easy, as the game does force you to use the system, and you will find yourself dying.  Just because of the fact that there's no penalty to dying, I guess people don't have fond memories of actually retrying areas/fights over and over again, cause simple trial and error works.

That said...

FF8: Dicking around on Disc 2 cause my next area is Trabia Garden...you can see why I'm dicking around <_<.  I did the Shumi VIllage quest, trying now to remove randomness rule from Trabia cause I hate that rule.

NGB: I just blew up two tanks using Bows and Arrows.  The game is awesome even when the fights are stupid <_<

[Crystalgate]

If I had to guess one of the reasons why FF13 is considered "Easy" by many, it'd be because there's the fact that there's no penalty to dying at all. 

Very likely, I've seen it happen quite a lot of times that a lack of penalty for death is interpret as the game being easy.

[DjinnAndTonic]

This is the part where Grefter jumps in and claims that the game is easy because there is one strategy that always works, no exceptions. So not only is it easy, it is boring.

It's an... understandable view that a lot of people seem to have, even if I don't personally agree with it.

Games:
Dissidia: Been playing around with this after Meeple showed me some gameplay trailers of the new game. It's not quite as engaging as it was before... The only character I have any fun playing as anymore is Terra. Everyone else feels... sluggish or inaccurate. And collecting the EX mode items is a pain. It kind of annoys me that they are keeping this particular mechanic wholesale for the next game.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It's also easy because most of the game is limited to holding up to run down a corridor.

[Just Another Day]

Honestly, given a choice between challenge that has few "consequences" but is respectful of my time, and challenge that carries consequences, e.g. makes me redo stuff I've already done, I'll go for the former every time (if my super unbiased wording hadn't given my preference away ^_^). I'd rather a game be a series of individually tricky puzzles/fights/whatever (FF13 and Puzzlequest spring to mind, 4 Heroes of Light too, come to think of it) than a long slow test of my ability to make few enough mistakes that I don't run out of potions before the end of the dungeon (DQwhatever). Extreme example, FF3's final dungeon. Fuck that.

Borrowed NEB's copy of Valkyrie Profile 2, maybe 5 hours in. I like the battle system, still deciding on the character-building aspects (which I'm told "some people"/Ciato have issues with).

But one thing that bothers me about it is that the game doesn't really respect my time. Not so much in the challenge stuff above (it's been pretty easy so far, but with some promisingly tricky fights, reliable save points before bosses), but with long unskippable attack animations, grindy sidequests, hard to navigate menus that require a lot of doubling back/working from memory. Generally I think this mostly boils down to a strange sort of user-unfriendliness which I find a bit offputting, and which often results in simple tasks taking way longer than they ought to. Granted, this is common to Tri-Ace games, but VP2 is so polished in other ways that it seems unusually pronounced. That or I'm getting less tolerant of it as I get older.

[jsh357]

Honestly, given a choice between challenge that has few "consequences" but is respectful of my time, and challenge that carries consequences, e.g. makes me redo stuff I've already done, I'll go for the former every time (if my super unbiased wording hadn't given my preference away ^_^). I'd rather a game be a series of individually tricky puzzles/fights/whatever (FF13 and Puzzlequest spring to mind, 4 Heroes of Light too, come to think of it) than a long slow test of my ability to make few enough mistakes that I don't run out of potions before the end of the dungeon (DQwhatever). Extreme example, FF3's final dungeon. Fuck that.

I agree.  This is how I designed my game, Motrya, and based on my response to the first demo it seems like the best idea in general.  This is actually one of the reasons I have always liked FF:MQ.

[NotMiki]

There's room for a happy medium, but most RPGs you're gonna want to go with the option that doesn't call for as much repetition.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The biggest time waster? Attack animations. Let me see them a couple times and then make them no more than a couple seconds long.

[NotMiki]

So true.  DDS, FFX, Suikoden 1/2, all much better for keeping things concise.

[Yoshiken]

Oh man. I'm planning Pokemon teams.
I downloaded Pokemon Online to start working on teams for VGC '11, and it's hilariously awesome. The metagame is new and original again, which makes things really interesting - everyone's testing new things and trying to see what works. Trick Room is looking brutal, but Erufuun is looking infinitely moreso, to the point that each team should be running Erufuun, running a counter to it, or both. Let me just go find my list again...

<@Yoshiken> Just gathered up a list of all the moves it can use at priority-speed.
<@Yoshiken> And these are just the ones that'll be useful at VGC '11, mind!
<@Yoshiken> Leech Seed, Substitute, Taunt, Encore, Toxic, Sunny Day, Charm, Cotton Spore, Tickle, Growth, Tailwind, Light Screen, Safeguard, Rest, Attract, Trick Room, Fake Tears, Switcheroo, Worry Seed, Stun Spore, Helping Hand.

Okay, so not all of those'll be useful - Worry Seed is one that's not likely to see use, but it has some theoretical worth! But yeah, Erufuun is nuts.
I'm currently trying out a few teams - got a team of just standard attackers which.. isn't doing amazingly. Ran it against a friend's badly thrown together team and still nearly got beaten, which is just :psyduck:. Ran a TR team against a few people, which was doing better if I didn't bother throwing up the TR. :/
Now about to test out some weather teams, and I'm expecting the Sandstorm one to be sickening, thanks to Doryuuzu. That said, I think all of my teams might just run Erufuun because THEY FREAKING CAN.

[Nitori]

DMC3SE: Mission 8, Vergil was kinda easy bro

Psychonauts: Rank 10, so I can burn animals but unfortunately not other people

[Grefter]

This is the part where Grefter jumps in and claims that the game is easy because there is one strategy that always works, no exceptions. So not only is it easy, it is boring.

It's an... understandable view that a lot of people seem to have, even if I don't personally agree with it.

Only saying something because Djinn did.

For record, this one strategy that always works is "Use the party setup the game gives you automatically the first time you have three characters" and "Remember that chapter when you had no Commando's?  Remember how much that sucked?  Use Commandos with your Ravagers!" while it helpfully provides everyone at least one of those two classes and a support class and half the cast has access to both Commando and Ravager.  Pro tip: The game is easy because the way to win is to have a setup that uses Commandos and Ravagers in some permutation.

Things can kill you, yeah.  It likes to throw super strong monsters near you that you are meant to come back and fight later in Chapter 10.  Death costs you nothing at all, like less than Wild ARMs 2 death.  On the off chance that you let yourself die by not changing to a healing paradigm, or using a summon to full heal everyone, or using one of so many "Not die for free" options the game gives you that is.  

Seriously, you spend more time mashing attack and winning in FF13 than you do in FF7 which is the game which defined the stereotype of mash X to win in RPGs.

Pokemans Platinum - Picked this back up after needing a break from FFTA2.  I have 5 badges and haven't played for a while, had no idea where to go.  Went down a route I hadn't killed everyone on.  That took me back to the centre town.  Tried to go north.  I need Strength.  Now I remember why I normaly get bored with Pokemans after 2/3 of the game.  Because that is where they take their hands off the wheel and go "LOOK DUDE NO HANDS LOL WORK IT OUT YOURSELF" after railroading you for so long.  Fine on replays, but tedious first plays through.

[Shale]

Sonic Colors: Finished Sweet Mountain and Starlight Carnival. Pretty impressive. I'm really liking the 2D segments - they feel like the natural evolution of the Sonic style, moreso than the Rush games or Sonic 4 (which was true to the series but not much of an evolution). 3D segments are entertaining, if not as impressive. I preferred Sonic Unleashed's execution-focused time-trial style to the high-speed-platformer approach Colors takes, but it's still fun.
The writing is all kinds of amusing, of course.

Ninja Gaiden II: Chapter 9. Got the Vigoorian Flail - which has a freaking ridiculous variation on the Flying Swallow now - and have more yellow essence than I can ever possibly need. Now I just have to deal with a really annoying boss fight in the dragons. Whee.
Could be worse, though. This level also introduces zombies based on Ash Williams.

[Meeplelard]

Honestly, given a choice between challenge that has few "consequences" but is respectful of my time, and challenge that carries consequences, e.g. makes me redo stuff I've already done, I'll go for the former every time (if my super unbiased wording hadn't given my preference away ^_^). I'd rather a game be a series of individually tricky puzzles/fights/whatever (FF13 and Puzzlequest spring to mind, 4 Heroes of Light too, come to think of it) than a long slow test of my ability to make few enough mistakes that I don't run out of potions before the end of the dungeon (DQwhatever). Extreme example, FF3's final dungeon. Fuck that.

Can't say I disagree with this at all.  The FF3 Final Dungeon stunt was a clear case of superficial difficulty; no, its not THAT hard, but the fact that you have to redo it EVERYTIME YOU LOSE means you don't really get adequate chance to practice strategies against the CoD, so you have to bank on something, and hope it works.   This isn't to say she'd be easy, but she gives an illusion of being harder than she is because of that stunt.

IT really is a good example of why A Lot Of Save Points is *NOT* a bad thing (or alternatively, "Save Anywhere" like, say, Pokemon has.)   At the very least, there should be a save point before any real boss fight, or a huge chain of battles, or whatever.  Being unable to genuinely practice new strategies until something works is part of what makes the "redo long section" nonsense so bad...obviously, the whole "Waste of time" thing is a big deal too.

[SageAcrin]

Shmups use a very precisely designed system for difficulty often because of this exact problem, generally producing short games where the earlygame allows you to do better, making it more likely to do well in the lategame.

And short is 30 minutes in general. I can't emphasize that enough. Also they tend to be consistantly difficult(albiet with a curve), which produces a general feeling of being hard in *all* ways, not just some. There are more elements than just this, but this is a good basic statement.

What I'm saying here is if you're going to use the large time loss method, you have to think about how and why. I disagree that it's always bad, but it's always going to be niche. But when games just toss out lol lose two hours randomly because you made mistakes or got cheapshotted? Bad design in any game. The shorter scenarios are, among things, simply easier to make a good game with, even if they fuck up and make erratic or annoying challenge it tends to be more paletable when you're muscling through it to get back to good parts.

Oh, and I take exception to attrition dungeon design being a bad thing because it makes you lose large amounts of time. It doesn't have to do that at all! People just need to give the PCs less resources if they're going to do that. You don't give someone dozens of healing spells and then try to attrition them. It's bad form.

[DomaDragoon]

Team Fortress 2: I've unlocked a few new things (Gunboats, FAN, Huntsman), but mostly I've been playing around with the new medieval map they've got for the holiday. Basically, it's very small, melee only (except for the Sniper's bow), and proof that I still suck. As you may have heard, Finali is much better than me.

[Captain K.]

SO4:  WHAT DID THEY DO TO WELCH I HATE THIS GAME

SSF4:  Abused the Zangief Spinning Clothesline trick to blast through Hardest difficulty.  Didn't get to fight Gouken though because of the lack of Ultra finishes.

[Niu]

I see CK is having a good start with SO4

[Crystalgate]

Monsterworld IV: Beat it. It's a much shorted game than Wonderboy III and V, but I find it more fun while it lasts.

Fighting is fun, at least while the game is balanced (I'll get more into balance later) as all of Asha's moves are useful, but not overpowered. I even found some effects that I don't think was intended to be an actual combat move useful. For example, if Asha comes into contact with an enemy and that enemy isn't attacking, she will bounce off of it unharmed. Sometimes I deliberately had Asha jump into an enemy to get her to bounce off into a better position.

You have a Papelongo with you, some sort of flying pet, that helps with the platforming elements. You can either throw it forward which will cause it to interact with the environment or you can use it to double jump. It's simple and works great.

The game is also really cute. The main character is a cute girl who's accompanied by a cute pet. When Asha finds an item in a treasure chest, she looks really happy and when she downstabbs, she looks really into it and so on.

There are two design decisions that hampers the game though.

I decided not to upgrade my shield in this playtrough since shields raises defense and I wanted to know if defense actually does anything. As it turned out, against the unbeatable plot boss I did take more damage than in previous playtroughs, but every other enemy in the game still only did one heart of damage. Environmental hazzards such as jumping into a bottomless pit, being crushed by a block and so on also only does one heart of damage. This is a problem since Asha will get more and more hearts as she progress. At the end she had about 25 hearts and an elixir that restores all hearts. Even if you play safe an uses the elixir with three hearts left, that's still 47 times enemies has to hit Asha to kill her. The first time you play the game this is actually plausible, as the game goes on enemy attack pattern and the platforming becomes really awkward. This is a pity since Asha has both great combat and platforming moves and deliberately frustrating them isn't a good idea. A setup where it's easier to avoid damage, but if Asha does get hit anyway she takes more damage, would have been better.

The game already has a damage=attack-defense system programmed in, it's just that said system isn't used in a meaningful way. Well, shields are nevertheless useful as they provide elemental defense (about 1/3 chance of not getting hurt by the elements in question) and the best shield covers everything except some environmental hazards.

The other problem is that the papelongo grows or otherwise changes between stages. This sounds like a fun quirk at first, but it ends up getting in the way of the game. The papelongo interacts with the environment in many ways and those interactions has unique animations. For example, he may blow out a fire. Now, designing new animations for a bigger papelongo was to much of a work to bother doing, so old areas are walled off together with the max health powerups you may have missed. For the last two stages the papelongo also goes trough a change that really makes the gameplay less fun. It's part of the story that the papelongo grows and develops, but for a game with such a barebone story, it doesn't pay to let story impair with the gameplay.

[jsh357]

I really liked Monster World 4, but the soundtrack gets sooo god damn irritating after a while.  The gameplay reminds me of Kirby Super Star, only with more challenge.  Fun way to waste a few hours at any rate.

[Sierra]

Replaying PS4 because man, it's been a while. Up to Zio's Fort. Also: ...Igglanova can be ID'd? Bwahahaha. Never knew that.

[Meeplelard]

X-men the Arcade Game: Magneto can bite me.

Ninja Gaiden Black: Electric Worms and Sewer Stages can bite me.

Final Fantasy 8: Horrible Orphanage Related Plot Twists can bite me.

[Rozalia]

Golden Sun DD - This game is a let down. At first it was average and easy and I was fine with that I mean its the start of the game and all. And 18 hours later its still the same easy puzzles, easy battles, crappy characters, plot, the lot.

Whats sad is the combat would be great if it wasn't all so easy. Mid game bosses should not be 10HKOing my characters damn it. Yeah saying a GS game is easy is not the most shocking thing ever but this game is the easiest of the lot and a new born baby could beat this damn game.

[jsh357]

Golden Sun DD - This game is a let down. At first it was average and easy and I was fine with that I mean its the start of the game and all. And 18 hours later its still the same easy puzzles, easy battles, crappy characters, plot, the lot.

Whats sad is the combat would be great if it wasn't all so easy. Mid game bosses should not be 10HKOing my characters damn it. Yeah saying a GS game is easy is not the most shocking thing ever but this game is the easiest of the lot and a new born baby could beat this damn game.

You forgot that they never stop talking

Please, please stop talking

This is the first game I have played in a long time that I'm considering returning almost a week later