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

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

SRWW - Okay, NOW the game is completely broken. Valzacard and Genesic GaoGaiGar get, SRWW tosses its arms upwards and goes back home resignedly.

[VySaika]

* Clear Tranquil nods @ Meeple

Yeah I'm playing through Onion Knight now. He's fun =-)

Onion Knight is my main. Fast, aggressive and can branch anything into an HP attack? Yeah, I'll take that.

[NotMiki]

Torchlight: I seem to be coming up on the end of the plot. Just did the last ember and bounty-hunt quests.

They won't give you new quests?  Rightclick them, man.  Right in the face.  (actually, if you're near the end of the game your rightclick move probably doesn't get more targeted than 'on the screen somewhere')

[Shale]

Nah, I just went and beat Ordrak's face in.

Speaking of which, I just killed the giant, red, scaly, fireball-slinging lord of all evil, and now I'm getting sent into a completely random new quest in the crypt on the southeast edge of town from NPCs I never heard of before. This really is Diablo, because I can't figure out whether I'm talking about Torchlight or Hellfire in that sentence.

[Taishyr]

Gar? Gar!

[AndrewRogue]

Bayonetta (Demo): Devil May Cry clone. Combat is good, everything else was disappointing.

Dante's Inferno (Demo): God of War clone. Worse combat then Bayonetta, but debatably better everything else.

Flamelurker is an Ass: Flamelurker blows.

[Strago]

Torchlight: Started up a Vanquisher with a little puppy on Hard mode a couple days ago. I'm only down to the 5th level of the first dungeon. The game is shiny and eminently enjoyable.

Shooting monsters in the face with two flintlock pistols feels damned good.

[DomaDragoon]

A Kingdom for Keflings: Beat. Very dull, yet somehow strangely addictive.

[NotMiki]

Bayonetta (Demo): Devil May Cry clone.

Read that as "Devil May Cry Alone."  Which is an emo hit just waiting to happen.

This really is Diablo, because I can't figure out whether I'm talking about Torchlight or Hellfire in that sentence.

Yeah, I was a bit surprised by how blatant some of the copying was.  I heard Diablo clone and I was thinking skill trees and fast-pased dungeon crawl with slews of baddies that need to work on their HP, not Identify scrolls with red ribbons and Town Portal scrolls with blue ones, not to mention the atmospheric town music accented by guitar strums.

[Shale]

In fairness, that last part is because they just straight-up hired Matt Uelmen away from Blizzard to compose the soundtrack.

[NotMiki]

In fairness, that last part is because they just straight-up hired Matt Uelmen away from Blizzard to compose the soundtrack.

Ok, that's pretty awesome.  Thievery done right!

Anyone with the Kartia psfs kicking around who wants to hear perhaps the most blatant ripoff, listent to Revelation, the main theme, and see how long it takes you to realize it's not actually from FFT.

[Strago]

Mass Effect: Started it up to see if it would run decently on my computer. Apparently it does!

Why is it completely impossible to make lady-Shepard who doesn't look freakish and terrifying?

[Xeroma]

Bioware character designs.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Mass Effect: Started it up to see if it would run decently on my computer. Apparently it does!

Why is it completely impossible to make lady-Shepard who doesn't look freakish and terrifying?

Her neck is always too long and you can't adjust it. That's what freaks me out.

[DomaDragoon]

Maverick Hunter X: Cleared X Mode, unlocked a movie and Boba Fett. They changed just enough to make it fun to play again.

[Taishyr]

Boba Fett mode is fucking awesome~

[DjinnAndTonic]

I've been neglecting Eternal Poison for Castlevania.

I beat AoS, and finished a stat topic for the bosses! (whoo!)

And now I'm moving onto replaying Dawn of Sorrow. I'm still not decided whether I prefer the AoS art or the DoS art. The DoS art is closer to my preferred style of anime art, but it's also more generic as a consequence. The AoS art is the traditional Castlevania style, but it has a few stylistic choices that mildly irk me. Still a good style though. I do like the amount of detail that the artist puts into her (his?) character designs. I suspect most people here would rate AoS art >>>>> DoS art, simply for the 'less generic' part.

[Meeplelard]

Bayonetta: Beaten Normal mode!  I sucked a lot so I mostly got Bronze statues (aka D Ranks.)

I finally discovered what Bayonetta is!  Its basically Interactive Shonen Anime at its most ridiculous.  Think of a Shonen Anime Cliche, the game has it, just instead of WATCHING ridiculous fight sequences, you PLAY THEM.

Anyway, game is pretty much what I said before; it emulates DMC appropriately while keeping some unique niches to keep the game from feeling like just a knock off.  The game's only flaws that stand out to me are:

A. Cutscenes.  Some of them are uninspired in the still film strip style that I mentioned, which feels like it was done to save space so the game didn't go to multiple discs.  That wouldn't have been a problem if the game didn't have so many and so long.  Thankfully, this factor is completely negligible on replays where you can just scene skip most of them, but yeah, definitely some Metal Gear SOlid Custcene Syndrome kicking in here (something DMC games were good at avoiding.)

B. Quick Time Events.  QTEs are meh to begin with, but Bayonetta fails them up in another, somewhat annoying way; they give you almost no warning when the event is coming (well, you can induce when it happens), and its arbitrary what buttons to push, but worst of all, you have an incredibly brief period of success.  Its really unforgiving, and cause there's a variety of buttons you CAN push, and no way to know WHAT to push, its likely you'll do them twice.
Thankfully, the game is lenient on check points, so often dying in a QTE is just "Redo the animation sequence over again!"

Otherwise?  Yeah, not gonna repeat myself.  Damn fine game, pretty much lives up to its hype.  

...ok, and if the Shonen aspect didn't make it clear, yes, the game just stops trying to keep itself together and just COMPLETELY TRAIN WRECKS in the end, for the sake of more explosions, fights, what have you.  Its fun to watch, but you really need to remember to just completely turn your brain off at that point.

In any event, anyone whose a fan of DMC3/4 should give this game a try.  Actually, seems like something fans of God of War would like too, cause it definitely has some things God of War had that DMC games don't (platforming, QTE, etc...just unlike God Of War, platforming =/= death, it just yields damage loss)

[Anthony Edward Stark]

BioShock. Can't believe I haven't replayed this in so long. God damn but it's a good game. I don't even LIKE shooters.

[Shale]

Oh, by the way. You know everything about Torchlight that wasn't copied from Diablo - a pet that carries items for you and can make merchant runs, fishing for random gear and fish that transform your pet into something else, fame as a stat that gives you extra skill points when it levels up, an enchantment salesman in town with a chance to remove all modifiers from an item, "retiring" your character and handing down an item of your choice to the next one? Yeah, they took all that from a 2005 roguelike called Fate. Although again, they stole it by way of hiring the game's lead designer to make Torchlight.

[VySaika]

I don't even LIKE shooters.

Considering the usual Rob/gun association, this makes me chuckle.

[Ultradude]

BoF5 - ...fairies and digging antz. Huh.

[Clear Tranquil]

It's BoF *of course* there's fairies ...

* Clear Tranquil nods @ Meeple

Yeah I'm playing through Onion Knight now. He's fun =-)

Onion Knight is my main. Fast, aggressive and can branch anything into an HP attack? Yeah, I'll take that.

Niiice. Yeah I can easily see him becoming a favourite of mine too. Hurray for kid characters that kick ass! =)

* Clear Tranquil continues pottering around in quick battle mode for XPs

Beating up on poor Ex Death. Have Terra at L20 now. Is that a good level to start Shade Impulse? Meeple what's a good way to use Terra? I remember you telling me not to spam Tornado at the mini meet but it's been working so far >.>

[Meeplelard]

Tornado spam starts working when enemies figure out how to get away from you; Destiny Odysseys are easy enough for it to work.

Generally, just mix things up.  Snipe with Flood, use Tornado as a defensive move, use her ranged moves to build up brave, etc.  Holy Combo should be equipped ASAP to hopefully Master it for the sake of Ultima, use Meltdown for extra pressure...yeah, she's got a lot of options, its best to make use of most of them.  And then there's "When in doubt, use Meteor!" when you get it <_<

Level 20 should be fine to start Shade Impulse at; you'll get the levels you need as you go along, especially if you stick with one character.

Tornado's a good move, but getting in the habit of spamming it can get you into trouble, especially against higher difficulties (granted...Chaos tends to have a lot of problems getting around that move <_<)

[SageAcrin]

Oh, by the way. You know everything about Torchlight that wasn't copied from Diablo - a pet that carries items for you and can make merchant runs, fishing for random gear and fish that transform your pet into something else, fame as a stat that gives you extra skill points when it levels up, an enchantment salesman in town with a chance to remove all modifiers from an item, "retiring" your character and handing down an item of your choice to the next one? Yeah, they took all that from a 2005 roguelike called Fate. Although again, they stole it by way of hiring the game's lead designer to make Torchlight.

In fairness, if you take Diablo and remove graphics you basically have a roguelike.

It's probably more accurate to say the game's a remake of Fate from the sound of it.

KotOR2:

Up to Onderon, by way of Nar Shaddaa and then Dantooine.

I am up to my ass in Jedi, is nice. KotOR2's way of fixing the imbalance there was to really make everyone Jedi except the people that it wouldn't make any sense even remotely to be Jedi, then have those people get broken stuff to compensate. What the hell, it's fun.

KotOR2 kicks ass, I would just like to mention. Much more fun than 1 to me overall.

Touhou Labyrinth:

You know, I picked this up expecting to get bored with it after a few floors.

I'm on the Floor 10-through-12 extravaganza now. <_<

Remarkably fun game. EO style maps but not FPD(although, considering how they handle it, the difference is mostly cosmetic), moves ubelievably fast as a game(Sub-10 second fights is a GOOD THING for this style of game), kinda sad randoms(They're the kind that would be dangerous if they got a turn and sometimes do so don't screw around, but otherwise...) and ridiculously good bosses(Hey look this guy's using ITD MT 2HKO/borderline OHKO on me.).

I like a lot of the basic concepts, like how it relies on you actually using a team of twelve people in swapouts and how the game uses skill-based delays better than FFX-2 overall(A subtle thing is that every broken boss attack tends to have delay enough so that you can scrape yourself off the floor if you live through it at all, for instance.), and it balances having really simple, static characters by having so goddamn many of them and balancing them. Neat game.