Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

[metroid composite]

Portal 2: haven't finished it yet (I've gotten to red, blue, and white goop), but I'm growing less and less happy with the overall game design.

It's getting more and more of what I'd call Half Life 2 puzzle design (i.e. Trash).  You know, stuff like "lets jump between a series of criss-crossing pipes; no portals."  Was not fun in 2004 and is still not fun, sorry Valve.  Or the ones that have caused me the most trouble: find the one single wall location which will fling you to the next door in a dirty outdoor environment where it's not clear where to go next.  It's not like there's a fancy puzzly portal sequence, just "find magical wall tile.  Place exit there.  Jump from high location into entrance.  No other technique will work: stop being creative!"  I got so frustrated with one such room that I checked the internet...and I have a policy of avoiding FAQs my first time trough a game; if I break it, it's usually an indication of a game I'd give 5/10 or less (Koudelka's an exception that still gets 9/10, mostly on the strength of voice acting and plot; so there's still hope).  And also some general polish issues; not HL2 bad where I got stuck in geometry several times, but like..."shooting this tile only makes a portal 30% of the time" or "you can't actually go through this portal: there's an invisible wall."  Granted, never on a tile needed to solve a puzzle (maybe that should've been my hint).

Glados has been pretty good, of course, but her lines are diluted.  Not just by other characters, which I don't mind.  But...there's much more of a feel of gameplay-cutscene separation.  Oh, you completed a chamber?  Here: have a voice clip.  Not as much of the Glados taunts you as you're working through a chamber.

[Grefter]

All of this is 100% valid.  This is why I don't think the game will be as huge a cult success and can easily wait for price drop before purchasing.  I still do think it is a game worth playing sometime though because the good things there are still good.

The find place to put portal areas are flavour areas and the game suffers for the restricted design.  It all comes back to Portal 1 works really well because it is tightly executed and so short and compact.  Portal 2 is everything bigger and it doesn't make for better.

I still have to do multiplayer, I have hopes that the bot test chambers are more akin to the original main game puzzle sequences.

Edit - POKEMANS - So yeah I don't know what it is but I am just not really into this at the moment.  I dig the improvements that were made, but some of the early pokemon distribution is pretty dull, get your first badge and there is like 10 Pokemans so far?  That restricted roster really does show doesn't it.  Having two of those 10 Pokemans be generic Normal types is probably some of the problem.  Both of them getting dark attacks is pretty wtf though.  Sup game, I heard you didn't want people to use Psychics, so I filled your game full of Dark attacks olololol.  TMs being reusable, even with one TM so far from the first gym shines through as good good good good good.  I now have more tools to work with immediately.  The daycare being right after the first town is kind of cool as well I guess.

On the other hand, I know it has been stated before, but the entire second screen being filled with WiFi stuff is amazingly stupid.  Seriously, fucking fail interfacing.  Terribad to an astounding degree.  Platinums little bunch of apps weren't super useful, but at least I could get Pokemans health gauges or something right there without going into menus.  At least it has a clock and battery meter in a good spot though.

[Shale]

Welcome to Pokemon menu fail, population every game in the series. It gets better, too. When you get the Dowsing Machine and switch it on, the entire bottom screen turns into a radar for hidden items. Which is fine as far as it goes, but hitting the menu button? Just switching the machine off and takes you back to the wifi screen. It takes another button press just to bring up the menus, and then you have to turn the machine on again after you're finished doing whatever you brought up the menus for.

[Fenrir]

ME1: Got the overpowered shotgun from the spectre shop and a few levels from fighting turrets on foot.
The gameplay is now what I expected from Vanguard gameplay: OHKO an enemy with Carnage, Lift another, Throw a third one, run to him then punch him before he gets up (which makes him fall down again), then shoot him while he's down with the shotgun. It's great.

I bought the Pinnacle Station DLC because I'm a ME whore. It's really not worth it, probably even worse than ME2's Arrival DLC. The concept is definitely alright, it's very similar to an arena in a ME universe basically.
But it's not balanced at all (especially for insane mode), the hardest fights are the ones that rely on pure luck, you get ambushed by enemies appearing from nowhere (that doesn't happen anywhere else in the game), and that one dude keeps repeating the same lines to you over and over and over. And Shepard acts like an idiot. I lowered the difficulty to finish the DLC because I was getting too frustrated, and usually I don't do that.


Torchlight: Martha is level 14.
Why is she still alive?? If this is very hard, I don't want to know what normal is. To be fair, the fight with the sisters did scare me.

I guess making an archer tank does help. I put about only 2 points in dexterity and 3 points in armor every well, and I spend all my money on buying and powering weapons to compensate. (After all, there are something like 10 armor slots and only one weapon slot) Right now I'm relying on traps, they are a bit underpowered but fun. Really looking forward to being able to buy respecc potions on a constistant basis.
Torchlight is really well designed for an hack/slash loofest, I find it more fun than Diablo 2 and Titan Quest right now. (And Fallout Brotherhood of Steel!!) The console interface seems more suited for this kind of game.

[Meeplelard]

Welcome to Pokemon menu fail, population every game in the series. It gets better, too. When you get the Dowsing Machine and switch it on, the entire bottom screen turns into a radar for hidden items. Which is fine as far as it goes, but hitting the menu button? Just switching the machine off and takes you back to the wifi screen. It takes another button press just to bring up the menus, and then you have to turn the machine on again after you're finished doing whatever you brought up the menus for.

That last part would be my main complaint.  The Dowsing Machine in B/W is really good, but the fact that you have to cancel out of it everytime you want to go to the menu is annoying.  I wouldn't mind re-activating it, except that you have to cancel it then *THEN* press Menu again to open the menu...its an annoying inconvenience.

[jsh357]

Welcome to Pokemon menu fail, population every game in the series. It gets better, too. When you get the Dowsing Machine and switch it on, the entire bottom screen turns into a radar for hidden items. Which is fine as far as it goes, but hitting the menu button? Just switching the machine off and takes you back to the wifi screen. It takes another button press just to bring up the menus, and then you have to turn the machine on again after you're finished doing whatever you brought up the menus for.

That last part would be my main complaint.  The Dowsing Machine in B/W is really good, but the fact that you have to cancel out of it everytime you want to go to the menu is annoying.  I wouldn't mind re-activating it, except that you have to cancel it then *THEN* press Menu again to open the menu...its an annoying inconvenience.

One big complaint I have is that they didn't keep any of the ease of use additions from HG/SS, like toggling running and sending a GTS trade notification to your Wii.  I know they were developing HG/SS at the same time as B/W, but this stuff seems like common sense.  Also, I am not sure how far Meeple is in the game, but once you have lots of items the fact that Pokeballs, held items, and general use items are all in one bag again gets incredibly annoying.  This is not something that should have been reverted.

I do love the changes to mechanics, though.  And Audinos.  Personally I thought the story was terrible, with good intentions but bad executions.  Pokemon fans will appreciate any kind of change apparently, but I liked it better when I was just trying to get 8 badges and fought some gangsters on the side.  Oh well.  It's still probably the best game in the series.

[Sierra]

I guess making an archer tank does help. I put about only 2 points in dexterity and 3 points in armor every well, and I spend all my money on buying and powering weapons to compensate. (After all, there are something like 10 armor slots and only one weapon slot) Right now I'm relying on traps, they are a bit underpowered but fun. Really looking forward to being able to buy respecc potions on a constistant basis.
Torchlight is really well designed for an hack/slash loofest, I find it more fun than Diablo 2 and Titan Quest right now. (And Fallout Brotherhood of Steel!!) The console interface seems more suited for this kind of game.

Traps are pretty great. I coasted through most of the game just by virtue of those. Machinegun trap I want to say was the most reliable, but it's been a while.

[DomaDragoon]

Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS Decade Duels: Now, when I start playing a new game, especially a trading card game, I don't expect to win right off the bat. I do, however, expect to be at least somewhat competitive. This is not the case in this game. The AI in the preliminary tournament is so unforgiving that I couldn't even get a quarter of their life points before I lost each of my duels. The menus are ugly and hard to read, and I couldn't even stop to see what my opponent was doing. Wretched game.

Crazy Taxi: Played through Arcade and Original modes. Fun, a bit hard to control, and I can't manage to do any of the special moves they say I can do.

[metroid composite]

Portal 2: complete.

The last three hours or so were a lot smoother than the escape from "the fall" or whatever it is.  Just...a lot of clean white test chambers which got the gameplay flowing much better.  (Although I did have one puzzle spoiled for me.  I heard someone talking about needing to get blue goop on turrets.  Apparently sometimes people get horribly stuck there).

Hm, probably somewhere in the range of 6/10-8/10 on my scale.  Miscellaneous observations....

1. Final boss felt easier than Portal 1's; I did not die, or ever really struggle to pick up a core.
2. Sometimes the game quantizes portal placement; almost like portals must be on tile A or tile B and nowhere in between.  Kinda weird.
3. At a lot of times, I felt like the game was saying "look, look, we have a higher budget this time!!"  Like when test chambers are being assembled in front of you.  It honestly felt pretty frivolous.
4. The plot felt pretty forced at times.  Like...this time when you enter the boss chamber, it's a cutscene that you can't win; and then this time we go straight into coreswap mode...followed by a cutscene you can't win.  And then the third time you don't go straight into coreswap mode.  And for all that I feel that Portal is by far at its best when you're doing test chambers rather than atmospheric stuff, the plot reasons behind "wait, test chambers, now?  Really?" were often pretty thin.
5. Male characters?  In my Portal?  Blasphemy!
6. So umm...what ever happened to the ending of Portal 1?  Because Portal 2 certainly seems to retcon it.
7. The moon?  Really?  Really, really?  I have so many scientific objections, like travel time and breathing.  At least they set it up with the whole "white goop is moondust" stuff.
8. I'm not sure I understand Glados at the end.  So...she says it's easier to not kill Chel.  Ok, but she had a perfectly good opportunity to just...let Chel go out into space.  So...maybe that part was a lie and she has warm feelings towards Chel--the song at the end would certainly indicate as much--but then she's telling Chel to leave and not come back, which kinda contradicts the warm feeling theory.

[Grefter]

Okay I am only doing this because I am a giant nerd and I love talking about stuff with the Metroid types.  Not defending the ending for the game

There is a secret area in all the find tiny white tile to portal to section where you find out that Glados is the wife/assistant/whatever of Cave Johnson and that if he dies before they can computerise his brain he wants her to run the facility in his place.  So at the end where Glados talks about having been Carolyn it is reference to that.  She does have feelings for Chell as a person and whatnot.  She says she has deleted all of Carolyn's personality, but clearly that is up for debate.

It is fairly contrived, but the series really is refuge in silly nonsense.

And yeah as far as I can tell Portal 2 beginning is a total retcon.  There might be something in the comic that I haven't read?  Really hard to be sure.

[metroid composite]

There is a secret area in all the find tiny white tile to portal to section where you find out that Glados is the wife/assistant/whatever of Cave Johnson and that if he dies before they can computerise his brain he wants her to run the facility in his place.  So at the end where Glados talks about having been Carolyn it is reference to that.  She does have feelings for Chell as a person and whatnot.  She says she has deleted all of Carolyn's personality, but clearly that is up for debate.

It is fairly contrived, but the series really is refuge in silly nonsense.

That's a secret area?  I thought that conversation was forced.  But regardless, what difference does that make?  Carolyn doesn't exactly have a great track record for ethics herself.  In fact, earlier in the story I had assumed that Carolyn *was* Glados, rather than just being a part of Glados' psyche.  She certainly displayed the same lack of sympathy for test subjects...and she was manipulative enough to get Cave Johnson to bequeath the company to her.

[Grefter]

I could be mixing up areas, I played pretty late at night.

Altogether not much difference at all, but it is mostly the gap between a human without many moral qualms and an AI with absolutely none.

Presumably when you are dealing with Glados being influenced by Carolyn a Human there is a need for some kind of human interaction.  Once she has been purged (... kind of) there isn't a need for that and testing on a pair of robots for the rest of eternity is sufficient.

Pretty much it all comes down to Glados isn't completely inhuman.  She is fully capable of doing illogical things.  She doesn't want to kill Chell, so she doesn't.  Then she lies to herself about it being easier to do that.  She lies to herself about having totally purged Carolyn (as hinted in the song).   Self delusion and all that fun human stuff that we are really good at.

[Captain K.]

Desktop Dungeons:  Finished unlocking all the options.  The three race/classes are alternately awesome and irritating.  Although they do let you do some cool stuff like beat Super Meat Man at level 6 and Iron Man at level 7 (did that with the Gorgon).

O_o at the second boss of Lothlorien.  I don't even want to see the third one.

[metroid composite]

Desktop Dungeons:  Finished unlocking all the options.  The three race/classes are alternately awesome and irritating.  Although they do let you do some cool stuff like beat Super Meat Man at level 6 and Iron Man at level 7 (did that with the Gorgon).

O_o at the second boss of Lothlorien.  I don't even want to see the third one.

Second boss is best taken down with physicals (thanks to that 25% magic resist, but also Wizard does well with physicals if you get some relevant 2-3 mana glyphs, due to the -1 mana cost class skill).

Final boss...well, just don't do my mistake, and go "Berserker spawning next to Taurog??  Kick ass!  I'll worship Taurog and convert all my glyphs!"  (Such a strategy won't end well; trust me).

[Rozalia]

PS3 is back and running after much DIY on my part. I replaced the laser but then I got hit with a drive problem for my troubles, to my delight though it just wasn't put in properly so I easily fixed it. So I then turn the thing on seeing that games work again and try signing in online to be shown the word /ERROR/ on screen. I quickly get scared as I might have somehow damaged my PS3 in my DIY but after looking online its just some server problem. Meh I'm just glad the things working at this point.

DW7 - Got all seals, 57 sworn allies, 8 max bonds, all weapons and all stages cleared. Took me freaking (I use the word all the time online) forever.

DDS1 - I popped this in while waiting for my laser and wasted (With ease) the Lord of flies second form. I really need to just complete this so I can move on to DDS2 hard mode and waste that green fat tentacle tits.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Legend of Dragoon, Anal Fisting Edition -

So Albert tells us about his experiences in being trained in the spear with Lavitz and then he meets this girl he had a crush on who has turned into a giant bitch. Weird. Haschel and Dart are all like "OMG, MY MOTHER IS NAMED CLAIRE" "OMG MY DAUGHTER IS NAMED CLAIRE" and Albert's like "What the fuck ever dudes, statisically speaking there are 550000 women in the world and 4% are named Claire it's probably a coincidence". I think Albert is a geek, he just pulled out stats on the morons.

So Dart gets his Dragoonin' stolen while travelling, so we have to chase the perpetrators and kick their asses. We get an obnoxious child in our party and she and Haschel hang out. Then we talk to Princess Lisa, who tells us her family has been acting weird, and we gain entrance into the thieves' hideout. Princess Emille, the obvious doppleganger princess, is a total heathen and a genuinely terrible actor. Maybe her dad is possessed or something, he seems to not care. We go kick some Geireich (Hashcel's student) ass and then we get a couple of great lines. Kongol saves us and Meru's like "I guess Kongol's attracted to you, Dart!" followed by about two minutes later of Geireich saying "I am glad to ... receive your fist, Master..." Ummmmm....

So we get the Dragoon spirit back and find some dude in the cave, but we still have to prevent Dominatrix Man from getting the Moon Dagger! So we save Emille and then we fight Lenus. Lenus was pretty hard but Dragoon Dart red-field magic and has fire physicals = boom dead Lenus. We then go on a boat where shenanigans ensue, Rose trolls Shana by saying she is thinking about Dart, Meru tries to cause a rift between Shana and Dart, and Albert is nerdy. Haschel has modestly dumb flashbacks about his daughter who he is a giant dick to. So we get hit by a PHANTOM SHIP, this has never happened before in an RPG. The ship dweller ghosts seem to like Shana and hate Rose. Terrible taste in humans if you ask me.

So we fight some bosses and hard random encounters and go back to the town with the stupid king. Turns out he is just indeed a total fucking moron. Albert sits on the bed with Emille and I realize he is a) attracted to girls and b) better in every way than me. This sucks, I should kick him out of the party. Or just USE MAGIC ON HIM AND HE'LL DIE his mdef is sub-kongol. So we go into a Water Cave and kill Lenus again or something. Then... we head to beautiful theocracy land, where there is a huge library, and again Albert nerds out. It's kyute. Rose checks out my hometown, Meru is a WINGLY SPOILERS AND SPOILERS WINGLIES ARE GIGANTIC DICKWADS. This game needs more Dominatrix Man.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Ciato you are making Legend of Dragoon sound far more enjoyable than it is~

[Captain K.]

Halo series: Milestone 50 in Waypoint.  I know few of you play the games but it's a massive accomplishment.  I'm wearing the stupid bug helmet on my avatar just because of how hard it was to unlock.

Radiant Historia:  The thaumatech fight was damned hard, and it looks like this spider is going to be difficult also.  I think I may be under leveled (Stocke is 30, Raynie and Marco 29, everyone else is lower), but grinding is dull in this game and I am loathe to do it.

[Clear Tranquil]

I think Ciato missed the WOLF side quest which is perhaps the first time Shana is even remotely useful and hey she's kind/gentle with wolves and kids and stuff! Then this all falls to pieces and she goes and fails forever shortly later~

[Meeplelard]

I miss Ciato doing Journal Entry style stuff personally <_< >_>

Duodecim: Finally beat Feral Chaos in Story Mode 000.  by which I mean I finally reached him and beat him; he wasn't trivial, but the fact that I had a slightly underleveled Prishe and a HUGELY underleveled Yuna didn't help, as did the fact that the normally useful Scintilla is kind of pointless on a guy who guard breaks with damn near everything making Sephiroth sort of fail...it was basically "Firion and Terra" as my only viable choices <_<;

Also beat the Distant Glory re-vamps; not sure if they're requirements for Feral Chaos, but I did them anyway!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I think Ciato missed the WOLF side quest which is perhaps the first time Shana is even remotely useful and hey she's kind/gentle with wolves and kids and stuff! Then this all falls to pieces and she goes and fails forever shortly later~

Huffing animal fur to get high does not equal being gentle.

Also, Ciato springs good memories. Keep up the good work, girl.

[metroid composite]

Desktop Dungeons:

Just beat Gauntlet level 19.  Thing is?  The boss was Super Meat Man (a boss I had previously dismissed as unbeatable on high level gauntlet).  And I beat him without using any health or mana potions.  I'm really liking the Ironshield+Transmuter combo for Gauntlet purposes.  Granted, Monk+Dracul+Platemail could also swing those kinds of results, but that requires three things to spawn.

When Transmuter+Ironshield stops cutting it, I'm actually wondering about Thief+Ironshield or Bloodmage+Ironshield.

[Grefter]

POKEMANS - So got to the second Gym and then promptly went to the forest to load up on good pokemans that the game throws at you in the third town.  Yeah I think like 3 of the things I kind of plan to use for the whole game are here and on top of that one of those was a coin flip between Timbur/Sawk depending on which got the better nature.

Back on the Portal conversation Met, I sat down and read the Portal comic (link to it in game under Extras, is available online), looks like after escaping at the end of Portal 1 that Chell is picked up and put into stasis thing you see at the start of Portal 2.  

[Fenrir]

Traps are pretty great. I coasted through most of the game just by virtue of those. Machinegun trap I want to say was the most reliable, but it's been a while.

Yes, I'm loving the machinegun trap. More range, and not resisted by half the enemies, unlike the fire trap.
Explosive arrows are excellent against crowds too. By now I'm putting every stat point into defense and am still dominating the enemies. (granted, it's an offense oriented game where you can die even if you're still dominating the enemies, even if you're focusing on defense)

It's too bad the shared between files chest is limited in this game. I was starting to put every item that's unique or part of a set into it, just because it's neat.

[Sierra]

Yes. I always wanted to save stuff like that just for style points but found my capacity to do so ultimately more limited than desirable. Shame.