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

[Captain K.]

To be fair, he thought of the Old Men last! But I agree, it'd be more badass if it was just the four Old Men there. They're the real heroes, as they said!

Everything is better with old men.

[hinode]

To be fair, he thought of the Old Men last! But I agree, it'd be more badass if it was just the four Old Men there. They're the real heroes, as they said!

Everything is better with old men.

Someone needs to make a TVTropes page with that name.

[Meeplelard]

FFTA2: I finally did another plot mission!  ANd then I...have to either do another, or fight a level 44 Red Mage! Clearly I can deal with the latter!!!
.
..or not, good thing I save BEFORE accepting the mission <_<

Also nice to learn that moves like Moogle Lance do NOT take the Weapon element, allowing me to be more willing to use things like Atomos Blade, as I can still get past the Elemental Law restrictions without having to temporarily hurt my skill growth.  No clue how FFTA handled it, though, then again, FFTA2 is also more lenient about laws in general (and less penalizing if you screw one up.)

Okami: Just did the shrunken section.  Trying to find that damned thief whose apparently hiding out.  I did carry 3 people across Lilypads though!

Anybody who tried to deny that the mood of this game can be considered something other than "playful" really needs to wake up.  I mean, the narrator just spoke of an EVIL FORCE and then ended with "Wait, aren't we forgetting something?" followed by Issun jumping around an Emperor's inwards in order to control him...said Emperor walking in a manner akin to a Monty Python Silly Walk.
Seriously, anybody who tried to imply this game was meant to be have a dark, deep plot...uh, no, its clearly just the game itself having fun.

(I'm not saying names, but someone tried to question how I can say that cause I was too early in the game.  After 25 hours of playing, though, without the game once pushing me into doubt of this impression, I feel I can safely say this is the case.)

Note that by "playful", I mean the game's story and ideas feel like it was written by an elementary schooler, and it was picked up by an actual writer who turned it into a full story.  I'm not trying to knock the game in any sense, mind, just saying that it gives that kind of impression, which is fine, cause it works in its own unique way.  Just people who try to claim the game is remotely serious...uh, no <_<

[Pyro]

Okami is playful in the extreme. There are a few rather surprisingly dark points in the story, but the tone overall is very childish. Oh and awesome.

[Meeplelard]

Okami is playful in the extreme. There are a few rather surprisingly dark points in the story, but the tone overall is very childish. Oh and awesome.

First off, if its not obvious, you are NOT the person I was referring too, but somehow I don't think you assumed that, ubt just couldn't hurt to verify!

That said..
I can understand a moment or two of dark points, but yeah, the general tone is childish and what not.  Just...the concept alone screams that.  You have a MAGICAL DOG who PAINTS SPELLS with the help of a little wood fairy thing...really the game is just an elaborate, original fairy tale.  Okami plays to this factor, rather than try to work around it, so it ends up being an advantage rather than a flaw.

This goes back to the whole "Dragon Quest is an Elaborate Fairy Tale" argument as to why the games suck.  Yes, Fairy Tales aren't necessarily bad, but...the difference between Okami and Dragon Quest is rather stark.
Okami is very childish, knows this, and tries to play to it.  Even when its trying to be scary, it feels more in that "Disney Villain" sense rather than genuinely threatening.  Actually, it basically is your typical Disney Animated Movie, if spread to the scope of an Adventure Game (this isn't necessarily a bad thing.)
Dragon Quest is very playful but...tries to pretend its not.  It pulls these big dark scenes...that utterly fail to have any major impact cause either its playing this cutesy, silly music in the background totally destroying the mood, or cause the games don't know exposition to save its life.  Its a Fairy Tale that tries to pretend its not one, and uh, yeah.

Basically, same style, but Okami doesn't try to hide it while Dragon Quest often does (OR alternatively, uses its kiddy style to hide the darkness, which is equally as bad.)

And now, suddenly I realize just how well Okami would work in Kingdom Hearts...just sort of lacks the "Square" or "Disney" aspects and thus will never happen ever...
...which is exactly why Amateratsu needs to make a cameo PC form in Mega Man Powered Up 2!  No, I have no clue how this will work, it just does.

[Fudozukushi]

WoW: Quel'Delar~

[Niu]

KH BbS- Good thing Kouli existed, or I would have died of shock. And it seems Aqua on top being a Pyro, is also very good with mines.

[Dhyerwolf]

So Niu is praising someone else for spoiling him? Makes sense!

[DomaDragoon]

WA XF: Still before the prison fight. Been trying out a few of the classes just to see how they work.

Sonic Rivals: It's surprisingly decent, though I would have hated to have paid $30+ for it when it was brand new. In the final act in Sonic's story, because everyone else is lame.

[Yoshiken]

So. Finally beat FF3 earlier. Honestly, I just got seriously unlucky with my first attempt, as Shuriken/Arise/Curaja-All/Attack is more than enough to beat CoD. Did have one moment where both mages were on low health, but Curaja quickly solved that, alongside an Arise or two.
Final party were all Lv 54, Ninja Luneth/Sage Arc/Devout Refia/Knight Ingus.

Next DS game up is DQ5. Idly, I like that I've been finishing DS games lately. Now, if only I could do the same with PS2 ones...

[Niu]

So Niu is praising someone else for spoiling him? Makes sense!

I think you misinterpreted.....

[DjinnAndTonic]

In a sudden twist of fate, my next DS RPG turns out to be FF12 Revenant Wings! Despite Suiko Tierkries and FE11 sitting around, I popped this in on a whim and played around with it.

I hadn't seen much about it online, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. It's some weird FF RTS, and I'm really not an RTS person. The touch screen makes it bearable so far, so I suspect I will be powerlevelling while watching TV or something before I can get through anything more difficult than what they're throwing at me now. I just don't want to have to deal with it.

On the other side of things, the party-building aspect is pretty neat. I'm really excited about making pacts with more Espers to use as my ground troops. Yeah, that's a good selling point. I <3 the FF series summons, and it's cool to use them en masse.

Vaan and Penelo -actually- have something to do with the story in this game, so that's nice. They weren't bad in FF12, they just didn't matter. Unfortunately, whereas FF12 did a lot to eschew many of the the standard anime tropes, the RW staff obviously had a meeting along the lines of "You know what this game is missing? Anime Tropes. We need a whole shit-ton of those." As a balancing measure, they also decided to play up the lightheartedness and adventuring aspects of the tone, so at least the tropes feel appropriate.

I also discovered the crew logbook. Probably my favorite bit so far. I believe it's supposed to function like a 'where do we go next?' menu option, but the translation team went out of their way to make the log entries amusing. The PCs bicker and respond to other PCs' log entries and it made me smile.

So... I think I'll stick with it for a while, but the novelty may wear off quickly since I'm not a fan of the battle system style.

It is notable that it seems of the PCs have their own unique skillset this time around, so they are viable duelists for a change. However... stat topiccing it would be pretty rough. Perhaps Meeple might know a good way to go about it. I'll make some stat notes regardless. What would you say Endgame level normally is? Since I'll be intentionally overlevelling, I'll have to know when to measure stats.

[OblivionKnight]

Bah, if you guys want to play DS games, play fucking WIZARD OF OZ, DAMNIT.

[Dhyerwolf]

It is notable that it seems of the PCs have their own unique skillset this time around, so they are viable duelists for a change. However... stat topiccing it would be pretty rough. Perhaps Meeple might know a good way to go about it. I'll make some stat notes regardless. What would you say Endgame level normally is? Since I'll be intentionally overlevelling, I'll have to know when to measure stats.

Think Meeple mentioned that there was no real solid way to measure damage at all, which is kind of a killer for a stat topic.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I also discovered the crew logbook. Probably my favorite bit so far. I believe it's supposed to function like a 'where do we go next?' menu option, but the translation team went out of their way to make the log entries amusing. The PCs bicker and respond to other PCs' log entries and it made me smile.

So, they cribbed the only good thing about Tales of Legendia.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Bah, if you guys want to play DS games, play fucking WIZARD OF OZ, DAMNIT.

So this. But I don't have a copy. And I want to play it in English.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE10 - So the Endgame-3 boss falls to the dynamic duo of Ilyana and Lethe, with the former doing 20 damage thanks to hitting weakness (and only taking 43 damage to her capped 45 HP due to being on Cover!) and the latter doing 7x2. Obviously not the fastest version of that fight ever (Rafiel's lack of Canto sucks, but he could refresh the healers safely at least) but it worked.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It is notable that it seems of the PCs have their own unique skillset this time around, so they are viable duelists for a change. However... stat topiccing it would be pretty rough. Perhaps Meeple might know a good way to go about it. I'll make some stat notes regardless. What would you say Endgame level normally is? Since I'll be intentionally overlevelling, I'll have to know when to measure stats.

Think Meeple mentioned that there was no real solid way to measure damage at all, which is kind of a killer for a stat topic.

Yeah, there are no numbers on the screen. It streamlines the gameplay a bit, but it does hamper measurements. However! At least enemies have numeric HP, so I can test damage figures by simple subtraction (for all that it's a pain in the ass). Luckily, there's not many skills in the game to test.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Even better, it turns out the Ultimania has formulas and stat-level charts for PCs AND enemies (and the one temp!).

Trance/Xer/Tai/Niu, please translate this so I can be lazy:

[Dhyerwolf]

LoL 2-  Wanted something old to play and thought I'd go for something that had a few DL holes to fill in. Elfin. WTF. WTF.  What a painful thing to throw at someone during the part of the game when you only have 1 PC. I saw this bastard do 560 to while I was defending (And had 430 HP! It's like motherfucking Energy Charged Saki...except I was defending). The HP+the evasiveness+painful damage is grah inducing.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Okay, I've got the damage formula this time. The last image was of how to determine effective attack/defense. This one shows the method from taking the base damage to the effective damage. And I'm hoping that accounts for enemy defenses.

Trance/Xer/Tai/Niu...? A little help?

[Magic Fanatic]

LoL 2-  Wanted something old to play and thought I'd go for something that had a few DL holes to fill in. Elfin. WTF. WTF.  What a painful thing to throw at someone during the part of the game when you only have 1 PC. I saw this bastard do 560 to while I was defending (And had 430 HP! It's like motherfucking Energy Charged Saki...except I was defending). The HP+the evasiveness+painful damage is grah inducing.

Funny enough, that's probably one of the hardest fights in the game.  The rest are all pretty gimmicky but not threatening at all, or ARE threatening but you have ample healing...  Or are optional bosses.

A guide I read recommended being level 9 for that fight, and it'd probably be in your best interest to FAQ all the arte combinations if you if you haven't already.  If you have the space for it, < \/ \/ \/ /\ will be a good move for charging up AP for a while.



Disgaea 3:  Unlocked Land of Carnage!...  And proceeded to get my ass kicked on HoO4.  Whelp, back to the grinding board.

[hinode]

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but by far the best feature of Diablo patch 1.10 was the easy ability to mod the game. All you have to do is:

1) Extract txt files from patch_D2.mpq with an MPQ browsing application, or download extracted versions from the internet
2) Edit the files in Excel or something else that can handle tab-deliminated text files (you can use a text editor, but the fields won't line up properly)
3) Place them in the right subfolder
4) Add the "-direct -txt" to the shortcut that you run D2 from

Not only does this make life a lot easier for full fledged mod makers, but it also makes it really easy for someone playing single player to eliminate most sources of bullshit in the game if they want. For instance, I think the Ancients in Hell with their three chances to roll crazy boss mods, inflated HP, and ability to draw magic modifiers that give them immunities that aren't displayed on screen (seriously, wtf Blizzard North on that) are complete nonsense with their can't-TP-or-die policy in single player. In multiplayer games there's at least some room for tolerance as long as one person stays in the room at all times. So I opened monstats.txt, nerfed the hell out of their Hell difficulty stats, and promptly killed them all in three hits. I also edited the Gloams' lightning damage from 200-300 to the intended 5-190 damage - they're still pretty scary in large groups, but at least it's not an instakill anymore. I also edited in all the ladder-only runewords and uniques, not that any of them have dropped.

Up to Worldstone Keep 2 waypoint now. Hardest challenges have come from fire-immune Succubi in the Crystalline Passage, who made for brutal progress (especially backed by corrupted rogue archers) and fire-immune Frenzytaurs in Worldstone Keep 1. I got lucky and found the stairs there pretty early, but standing in my way was a Frenzytaur boss back that killed my merc three times.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, Elfin is ridiculousness.

[Strago]

Mass Effect:

Started playing this a little in my scant free time. Haven't gotten far enough to comment. Is it good? Should I keep playing? ME2 sounds like it's going to be super rad, but... will my computer actually be able to run it? It runs Dragon Age happily, but I dunno how much more graphically intense ME2's going to be. If I won't be able to play the second one, my drive to play the first diminishes substantially. Hrmm.