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

[Cotigo]

Oh.  I thought he just needed to probe moar.

[Scar]

I am playing Mass Effect 1.

It's like...press X. So I do and then I fail.

I AM PRESSING X!

But getting mad doesn't help me at all.

Ah well. I'm sort of a completionist. I guess I will to snag all these surveys and the ones that don't work I will have to walk away from...

[DjinnAndTonic]

Maybe you were actually pressing Y?

Chrono Trigger (played 100% legally, I promise) : So... literally hadn't played this in over a decade, and hearing some music from it randomly made me want to pick it up again. It has been a great distraction from the responsibilities of moving! Game is as awesome as I remember it, despite TORIYAMA. Also, upon nerding out about it in chat, I managed to break Zenny's sanity for a bit - always a plus.

[Shale]

So I started playing Ghost Trick. And met Inspector Cabanela.

Now, I just met Snow in person for the first time, so my standards for fabulousness have been significantly raised in the past week. But Cabanela is FAAAAAAAAAAABULOUS.

Also, the game's awesome, contain your shock. Love the gameplay, love the writing, love love love the art and animation, chuckle consistently at the Ace Attorney references.

[Magetastic]

Scar, that stuff has less than a second per button press. Unless you have quicker-than-cat-like reflexes, just stick to one team, and convert everything old/you don't use into omni-gel and slap it on everything you come across. You're unlikely to run out. Also, increase your hacking skill, if possible. It raises the time allowed to press buttons by a bit per level, if you still want to do that.

[Shale]

Memo to whoever translated Ghost Trick: The past tense of the verb "lead" is "led". Not "lead". ARGH.

[SnowFire]

Does anybody want a copy of Puzzle Agent 1?  I got a copy for free from buying Puzzle Agent 2 and can hand it out to someone on Steam.  Minnesota accents!  An evil puzzle conspiracy!  Snow!

Snow: If I have access to a healthy player base locally for actual, competitive card flopping, is there any particular reason to actually use MtG:O over one of the testing programs (Cockatrice, Apprentice, MWS, etc)?

Apprentice, last I checked, was kinda dead as the codebase was frozen and the people weren't even updating the card sets right.  I could be wrong.  As for the others...  well, depends.  I'd argue they're in general less fun, as they don't (shouldn't) contain copyrighted art and other perks.  No rules enforcement can go either way - when playing random people, it is very refreshing to not have to explain the rules to them on why yes, this really works.  Against friends, that's not an issue, but keeping track yourself has its benefits and its drawbacks.  You'll forget stuff, but some other complex actions won't require spelling out every time, so.

The biggest arguments each way:
* For MWS and friends: Cost.  If you want to test expensive decks before building them, you can go nuts on freeware.  MTGO will set you back.  While I'll hype the ability to build cheap casual decks, chase cards cost only somewhat less than their real life counterparts, so they're still pretty expensive.
* For MTGO: Drafts.  If you want to get drafting experience whenever you want against people who will play for real (because money is on the line), then MTGO is the place.  Attempting to draft with random people on the Internet over Apprentice / MWS / etc. is a massive failure from all reports - even if the technical side can handle it, expect people to randomly leave.  You can also play random people whose level of assholeishness will be somewhat limited by things like "getting blocked" and the fact that you don't really need to talk with random people to play a game.

Incidentally, just got back from playing my first games of real-life in Magic in...  years and years.  Cube-drafted some after work and build a ridiculous fast red deck.  Beat 4 of the other drafters all in 2-0 victories for me, and only had 2 match losses.  One was a very close loss vs. RGW Zoo where all the games were close to the end, 1-2.  The last was more an infuriating match since this cube, unfortunately, had Chaos Orb.  It was errated to be "merely" 2 mana for 1: Destroy a permanent, flip a coin, destroy another permanent.  Of course my opponent won the flip, and yes, 3 mana: destroy 2 permanents is absolutely batshit insane.  And unfun.  Meh.  (The other game he won he got off Tangle Wire -> Armageddon, which still would not be a concern normally, except my beatdown plan was Genju of the Spires rather than my hand.  Bad choice in this case.  The game I won he cast Balance and still lost, so yeah.)  Fun deck, anyway.  Grim Lavamancer, Stigma Lasher, Something Dragonlord (RR 2/2 Level up dude), Ball Lightning, Hero of Oxid Ridge, Siege-Gang Commander, lots of burn...  good times.

[Hunter Sopko]

Memo to whoever translated Ghost Trick: The past tense of the verb "lead" is "led". Not "lead". ARGH.

Don't loose your temper, Shale.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, nothing to get upset about even if that is a rediculous typo.

[superaielman]

FM5: Just getting started. I think I like the basic setup of the gameplay less; it doesn't seem to do the split team system of FM4 and brought back FM3's weapon level system. Plot is... well, the translators did a good job, it's just very Japanese as far as dialog/feel. I am not going to complain about a free English patch for a game with as much dialog as FM5!

[OblivionKnight]

Yeah, nothing to get upset about even if that is a rediculous typo.

lol i c whut u did thar

[Shale]

* Shale commits murders.

It wouldn't be nearly as annoying - not like PW didn't have the occasional typo - if they didn't also overuse the word.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Maybe you were actually pressing Y?

Chrono Trigger (played 100% legally, I promise) : So... literally hadn't played this in over a decade, and hearing some music from it randomly made me want to pick it up again. It has been a great distraction from the responsibilities of moving! Game is as awesome as I remember it, despite TORIYAMA. Also, upon nerding out about it in chat, I managed to break Zenny's sanity for a bit - always a plus.

Speaking of which, I played it for the first time vicariously through someone who hadn't before recently.  Game's still got it despite its age, which is pretty impressive.  Most older games have trouble hooking people, if nothing else than because there are a lot of small, user-friendly features we take for granted now (auto-save/suspend and scene skip, for isntance).

[Otter]

SLRPG: finished off Mack.  13 damage drains on Mario took him down, but Mallow's mdef is good enough that he can pretty much handle Mack on his own.  Dog's up next.

[Scar]

Mass Effect: regardling the survey function.

I figure it was just a couple of them and I have gone back and cracked most of them, but one still won't register me inputting the correct 1st button for some reason. I will chalk that up to a bug or something...I dunno.

Ah well. in other news I blew up a base and I lost a member of my team. Oh noez!

Reminds me of a Transformers quote...

"Prime told me there would be days like this!"

"And you didn't believe him?"

"I do now!"

*cough*

Meaning, I knew the mechanics of the game due to everyone and their mother telling me I need to do things a certain way or I could lose teammates, but I figured I wouldn't let them die.
 
I won't say who died, but I guess its normal for this to happen on yer first playthrough of the series?

I'm making Shepard a goody goody in the first run. I will see if I have enough tolerance to make a second go around afterwards.

[Clear Tranquil]

Breath of Fire III

Mini game fail? I am at the part where I have to collect ingredients to make something to eat for the mayor in Parch. I got the shally seeds and the Horseradish easily enough and then went to the Coffee Shop (I'd decided to leave the fishing for the mackerel till last because I thought it might be the most frustrating/time consuming/difficult part but I now think I was wrong there >_>) I ran into something horrible <_< I am having issues with the well mini game. The main difficulty for me as a deaf gamer is finding it hard to judge and react to the sound of when the water is landing/etc. I have a hearing aid for the ear that is still relatively useful but even with that and the volume on my PSP turned up I am struggling to react on time. Of course the battery in my hearing aid also decided to die and that really was that (my other ear is useless basically and my "good" ear doesn't cope well without the aid) Even with the PSP volume turned up to max I'm not picking up any sound (unless I like hold the PSP all the way right up to my "good" ear but yeah >_>)  It just wasn't working and as if to compound this point PSP needs charged light started flickering to boot >_> If that wasn't a sign to take a break I don't know what is. I am feeling kind of frustrated/upset here - but I don't want to totally give up 

Too bad Nina isn't a kyute little girl anymore!! ;_;

:__;

[Dhyerwolf]

Would headphones help?

[Grefter]

Breath of Fire III

Mini game fail? I am at the part where I have to collect ingredients to make something to eat for the mayor in Parch. I got the shally seeds and the Horseradish easily enough and then went to the Coffee Shop (I'd decided to leave the fishing for the mackerel till last because I thought it might be the most frustrating/time consuming/difficult part but I now think I was wrong there >_>) I ran into something horrible <_< I am having issues with the well mini game. The main difficulty for me as a deaf gamer is finding it hard to judge and react to the sound of when the water is landing/etc. I have a hearing aid for the ear that is still relatively useful but even with that and the volume on my PSP turned up I am struggling to react on time.

As a huge fan of the game words cannot express how angry this makes me.  These kinds of mini games really need visual cues for this very reason.  Especially since it is a randomised number of button presses for the well to reach the bottom, I think it is between 6 and 12 or so.  Without resorting to just random chance (pick a number like 11 and keep trying that?) or working something out with the PSP volume stuff I think you might want to try to get a hand from someone else, because the game straight up isn't going to place nice for you and give you the help you deserve

[Clear Tranquil]

Thanks guys Wow that is amazing Grefter. I tried the counting to eleven thing and it actually worked! Even after finding another battery for my aid I found the counting thng was what still worked best because of the distraction of background noise/etc messing up my senses (and also I can't really keep my PSP up at max in case of disturbing other people in the house but the headphones helped with that at least) It's still possible to mess up the game even with the counting if you lose track of your numbers or aren't pressing the buttons fast enough but the important thing is it does work I practiced with this method for a while and as a result I now have waay too much vinegar

It turned out I hadn't saved after getting the Horseradish earlier so I had to go and get that again too but no worries now all I need is the fish (Nina hit 300~ on a crit with her physical while fighting in the Horseradish place which was fun) ~

[Captain K.]

Ew, that sucks for gaming to be deaf.  I have a similar problem since I'm colorblind and almost all puzzle games make their blocks look too much alike except for the color.

Star Ocean 4:  Up to the part where *temp* leaves.  Working on Battle Trophies and quests before I continue with the story.  Up to 30% total Battle Trophies, with *temp* leading at 57%.

Resonance of Fate:  started.  This... really doesn't feel like a tri-Ace game at all.  If anything it feels like something Final Fantasy team would make.  It's not bad, mind you, just totally not what I'd expect from tri-Ace.  Just finished Chapter 2.

Dwarf Fortress:  Saw Hal playing this at Con, and decided to try it.  It's pretty impressive in how many micro-details it covers.  But not really my type of game since I'm not into micromanaging.  I will say that it's a hell of a lot better than Minecraft.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

RoF does one tri-Ace thing in particular from the get-go: it lays of every mechanic at the very beginning, tells you to go hog wild, and assumes you will figure out how to best use them eventually.

[Captain K.]

RoF:  Now I am playing dress up with my characters.  This game is FABULOUS.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

RoF:  Now I am playing dress up with my characters.  This game is FABULOUS.

If that wasn't enough everyone gets a second outfit later. Of course they continue dressing like hipsters.

Anyway, Amazon had Red Alert 3 on sale for $5. It is a RA game and those are usually fun but more importantly it was only 5 bucks and it stars GEORGE TAKEI.

[MC50]

Decided to play through all the Xenosaga games, despite what I've heard from here!

Anyway, I've finished the first two.

XENOSAGA 1
 - The game was alright. It started really slow, but when stuff started happening it was interesting. A lot of technobabble early on especially, and that could turn off some people.

The combat system was OK. It was simple, but not too hard. There were a couple rough spots (The boss of the Cathedral Ship was pretty challenging), but the hardest spot in the game in my opinion was the Song of Nephilim. Not any boss in there. Just the flamethrower randoms. I wiped to them once, and decided to just grind out a couple levels.

Speaking of randoms, they weren't worth fighting. Maybe that's why I was underleveled, but it took way too long. So I ended up abusing that 100% run rate whenever I could.

Overall, the game was alright. Worse then other RPGs I've played, but not unbearable, and the story WAS interesting to see where it would go.

Final team was Jr, chaos, MOMO. Jr. was solid, there were times when ranged physical was really nice, and times where it sucked to have no magic basic attack. chaos was... alright. Just alright. MOMO was kind of bad early on, but usable later. I've been sticking with this team throughout.

XENOSAGA 2

The game starts out much more interesting, in my opinion! Some of the early cutscenes are cool, like the robot car chase. Also there is music this time! MOMO's subconscious was a pretty tough dungeon for being so early on, but I did enjoy it, actually.

The bunny quests were pretty annoying. I only ended up doing a couple. Actually, I haven't really been doing many sidequests in this series at all, or really opening many segment files. I've done a couple, but I don't go out of my way.

Boss fights are pretty entertaining, but man are they long. I'm SURE they could be made faster, but I'm sure I didn't min-max. I did do things like casting Aura Sword or whatnot on my party members to up the elemental chain, so I did alright in the end.

Randoms are, once again, not worth fighting after a certain point. However, this time, a lot more of them are blocking your path and are un-walk-throughable, so you're forced to. Each fight is 10 minutes. I don't mind randoms being threatening, but when they respawn so quickly, it's kind of frustrating.

The plot focused on Jr, which I liked! Shion seemed to have been made about five times worse in this game, in the first she was... kind of annoying, but alright. In this game she's just a jerk.

They introduced too many characters! Stop introducing them! You have enough!

Anyway, the game was... again, alright. It did some things I really liked (Even if it's simple, I like that NPC's have different text depending on whose in front) and others I did not (Randoms.) Also, the skill system was kind of dissapointing.

We'll see how they close up the plot in the third game. I don't think it'll end well! Maybe some series could give a satisfying conclusion with this many villains, but I don't think this game can.

Also I can't kill anyone they always get away, or we're beat up after a boss fight. It doesn't bother me but it happens a LOT.

[Meeplelard]

Xenosaga 1 and 2 are generally regarded as not bad.  Xenosaga 1 just hasn't aged well for a number of reasons.  Xenosaga 2...most of the hate for that, if any, comes from its battle system (which I liked) where the game actually tried to be more team-centric instead of "KOS MOS SMASH!!!" like the first game had, and some random encounters just take longer than they need too as a result. 

Its Xenosaga 3 that's the one people snipe at.  Ridiculous plot aspects that are sometimes downright offensive, combined with a cheap, lazy battle system and the game is insultingly easy at times...yeah...