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

[Dark Holy Elf]

Saga Frontier - Lute speedrun again. Improved time by over an hour, to 1:43. A bunch of route improvements, and in particular I didn't bother with the Koorong caves or two separate visits to Scrap (which means doing Shingrow without T2, but apart from now needing to dodge the bats, things weren't too different). I dropped EngineerCar because while mecs are easy to make supertanks, they're hard to get any form of damage in the constraint of a speedrun, so there's really no need for more than one tanky backpack user. King Sei was a huge improvement, since he can get Dullahan so easily. Thunder absorbed Silf from a SpearValkyrie (68% chance) so I ended up making him into a Shrieker (reasonably tanky, good mage) which got the job done... not as well as a Dullahan but was much easier to get. Silf and GroundHit combo with each other in both directions, which was handy. Hamilton didn't get TrickShot this time (did get Bound), so she suffered a bit due to worse inexpensive damage (and also TrickShot can activate DeathSynthesis regen), Rouge lacked LightSword this time, both had less HP, but same basic approach worked. Spriggan was tough but quite doable this time.

[Captain K.]

KoF13:  Gasp, am I actually almost good at this game?  I'm still bad at the fancy cancels, but I'm stuffing people with my good footsies/counters.  Currently #84 ranked player.  About a third of my losses have come to the guy ranked number 5.  And I'm not even too terrible against him once I beat his Kensou.  Damn that character is hard to fight.

[Xeroma]

The cancel system allows for silly stuff, it's just about knowing what goes into what. For example, Takuma has all kinds of bullshit he can do by cancelling Zanretsuken[forward,back,forward+A or C] into his command grab[hcb+B or D]. The command grab gives you enough time to link it into crouch C, into whatever special or super you want.

Now that my net is less assy I can actually get online with this game on 360, we should play sometime. It might still be kinda laggy though, DSL net :F

[Hunter Sopko]

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep- Finished frue final. Didn't expect the secret chapter to be that short. Frue final sort of disappointing, and I can't remember enough of KH lore to fully recognize everything in the end (though I'm at roughly 90% I'd say). Mostly what happens to Aqua afterwards.

Game hovers at either 6 or 7 depending on my mood. Best KH gameplay yet!!!!!111 Plot... not so much. Playing through the three routes wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so damn similar. Well constructed within the KH universe, but... not the best presentation.

Magic Mirror is easily the coolest boss fight I've seen in a while though.

[Shale]

DQ5: With Ghost Trick, SRWL and RH all wrapped up, this is the latest long-abandoned playthrough I'm picking up to fill time on the bus. Finally killed Bishop Ladja, got the asperthingy and Sun Crown, and am heading for Nimzo. Randoms in Mt. Zugzswang continue to be incredibly annoying, but Ladja himself was pretty much a protracted joke.

Batman: Arkham City - It's really good, contain your shock. Not firing on all cylinders out of the gate quite like Arkham Asylum did, but it's still a premiere Batman simulator with great gameplay, atmosphere and acting. What flaws it has in immersion I blame on Penguin being a poor substitute for the Joker as a primary villain, and the Catwoman segments being non-skippable and extraneous to everything. Hopefully that won't be a problem much longer.
Also, I need to see if there's a way to turn down the radio chatter, because argh is it getting repetitive.

[Sierra]

Penguin's out of the picture before terribly long. Catwoman segments are often very short (and I think there's all of four of them...five at most). If you notice a way to turn off WMOOK in Arkham, please tell me. EDIT: For what it's worth, they did succeed in making Penguin a vicious bastard. Still no substitute for Joker, though.

AC doesn't have any individual segment that's quite as outstanding as AA's Scarecrow sequences, but it's consistently a better game regardless.

[superaielman]

I was unable to get Civ5 on sale.

Orcs must die: Loving this.  It's brilliant in a completely different way from defense grid. Defense Grid was about resource management and smartly upgrading your towers at the right time. OMD is a straight up gibfest that either lets you godmode with your main character or smash everything with traps. You get full price for selling things and there is no real reward for holding onto resources the way DG's compound interest system worked.  Both are however fantastic takes on the tower defense genre and are worth playing.

I'm up to the bridge right now, just got Paladins as a unit.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

@Super: I don't consider not getting Civ 5 much of a loss. Between the base design and the mod community, Civ 4 is still better in basically every way, and if you have a PC capable of running Civ 5 decently you can run the really amazing mods on full size maps without running out of computer resources.

Anyway, got Skyward Sword for my birthday.

Completed the first flying sequence despite not knowing how to gain altitude, which was REALLY annoying, but that's on me for not paying attention to the instructions. The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.

Everything else has been amazing. I can't decide if the timeshift shenanigans beat out the atmosphere and creative puzzles of the water temple (yes, the freaking WATER TEMPLE) for my favorite sequence.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.

You don't get to say that without beating Taz-Mania for the Genesis at least five times.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.

You don't get to say that without beating Taz-Mania for the Genesis at least five times.

Oh. Oh. No. Why would you remind someone of Taz-Mania. WHY? People actually BEAT that?

I reiterate, FUCK mine carts.

[Shale]

DQ5: Beat. Nimzo was...worst DQ final I've seen? Only occasional doubleacting, and all his MT was owned by Insulatle. Things only got dicey because I forgot to give Son a prayer ring and he ran out of MP. Final party was the main, hitting things with the Dragon Staff, a Golem, alternating between charging power and whacking things with a Metal King Sword, a Slime Knight, spamming the Sage Stone, and the son/hero (who never actually did anything hero-y in the storyline, did he?), whacking things with the Zenithian Sword, acting as my Insulatle battery and occasionally using Multiheal/Kazing. Not that I needed them against Nimzo.

Overall....6/10? Low 7? Playable enough in the DQ way, but the plot has enormous potential, nearly all wasted.

[Meeplelard]

Okamiden: started this, defeated a huge frog, and saw two "THE WORLD IS BEING REVIVED IT IS VERY PRETTY AWE AT THE PRETTINESS!"

...well, they got one part of Okami's spirit right, at least!  Not much else to say beyond that.

[Captain K.]

Now that my net is less assy I can actually get online with this game on 360, we should play sometime. It might still be kinda laggy though, DSL net :F

KoF netcode is not too shabby thankfully.  About 75% of my fights are fine, 20% have slight input lag, and 5% are unplayable shit-fests.  Like you do the movement for a fireball and see your character duck, stand, duck again, stand, walk forward slightly, punch.

[Xeroma]

Good to hear after how bad XII's was. Now I just need to decide on my team members properly..

[Anthony Edward Stark]

@Super: I don't consider not getting Civ 5 much of a loss. Between the base design and the mod community, Civ 4 is still better in basically every way, and if you have a PC capable of running Civ 5 decently you can run the really amazing mods on full size maps without running out of computer resources.

Eh, I like Civ 5 a lot, but I don't think it's really a question of better or worse. They're different enough that the type of game I feel like playing is what determines which one I play. I play V when I want to fight some wars, because I think that hexes and no stacking makes it a lot more fun.

[SnowFire]

Yeah, not really a fan of Civ4 wars here.  What mods do you hype anyway, Bobbin?

[Bobbin Cranbud]

Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn is my favorite, but playing it is hell on the machine I mostly have access to these days.

(Disclaimer: I've played Civ 5 only briefly due to 1. disliking it and 2. not usually having access to a computer I can run it on; when I did have more regular access to that PC, however, I still pretty much exclusively went back to Civ 4.)

Fall From Heaven and its derivatives are also excellent. I'm not normally a fan of epic fantasy, but the gameplay is worth it.

I like the Legends of Revolution UXP for a relatively light mod that allows me to play decently-sized maps. History of the Three Kingdoms is another great one for that, and the Legion mechanics are great.

Planetfall scratches my Alpha Centauri itch better than actual Alpha Centauri.

[Lord Ephraim]

Dark Souls: Finished.  The final boss was without doubt the easiest boss in the game, easier than Pinwheel, easier than the tutorial boss, much easier than the bonewheel room the the catacombs (if I got a legit death, it was from that room).  Block his first attack, parry the second, and stab him for 800 damage. Repeat 5 times. Completely predictable. If his grab was faster, it would have been scary.

Hardest boss was probably Capra Demon.  Poizn dogs makes the fight 5 times harder than it needed to be.  Four Kings and Bed of Chaos are gimmick bosses. Seath is owned by curse resistance. Nito is a joke; didn't need divine weapons here.

The real difficulty in this game is dealing with the environment, narrow passageways, archers, bonewheels, input lag and a terrible camera.  This game has some of the best designed areas (Anor Londo, Duke' Archives, Catacombs) and some of the worst areas ever in a game (Lost Izalith, upper part of Blighttown, Tomb of Giants).

Combat is sweet and rewarding when you beat an enemy or boss on your own and co-op is fun.  I'm not into PvP until they remove/nerf the ninja flip ring.  Way too many havel armor users moving like a thief, complete with impenetrible poise and defense.  They fixed all the other broken equipment.

Overall, I think the game is a 7.  I think a mandatory install would have fixed all the lag and framerate issues and no friend co-op is lame.

[Cotigo]

Named my first post-release minecraft world "So lonely and sad" and had the seed the same thing.  Spawned me in an area absolutely fucking full of wolves (which you can tame).  Either wolves are way more common post-release or this game has a sense of humor.

[Shale]

So I think I can sum up the difference between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City now.

In Arkham Asylum you play as Batman while he navigates the cramped corners of an asylum that has been taken over by the inmates, forced to confront both his greatest enemy and his own deepest fears.

In Arkham City you play as Batman and can make him punch a shark right in the face.

[Fenrir]

Ceaseless discharge is easier than the final boss if you know the way to insta-kill him. Both are pretty hard if you don't know the trick! The final was probably my hardest boss honestly.

Grandia Parallel Trippers: NOOOOOOOOOO
I'm up against the final boss and I can't lose. My two accessories bring me physical immunity and status immunity. I have some magic that gives me magic immunity for like 5 rounds.
Problem is, the final boss can't lose either. He has monster defense and his arm casts Allhealer every turn.
Tried a bunch of strategies like using Cancel Sword, changing accessories, etc, nothing works.
I have max level and max stats already.

I don't even know how you're supposed to beat the punk in a normal game without using the missable End of the World.  Anyone played this?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.

You don't get to say that without beating Taz-Mania for the Genesis at least five times.

Oh. Oh. No. Why would you remind someone of Taz-Mania. WHY? People actually BEAT that?

I reiterate, FUCK mine carts.

I think I beat Taz-Mania at least a good ten times. I was eight and hopelessly bored.

[Shale]

Next up on the DS: Knights in the Nightmare. And wow, this game has so many insane systems going on you could tell me N1 made it and I wouldn't bat an eye. Breakable weapons, charge-to-prepare attacks, sure, whatever, been there. Danmaku attacks in a real-time-with-pause tactical RPG? Enemies chosen by slot machine? Battles won via tic-tac-toe where you pick a square by murdering things? Breakable PCs? Now you're dealing with someone who needs therapy.

Also, I played and beat Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. Fun game with excellent writing, but there's a bit too much rehashing from the first one, in terms of both plot and puzzle themes.

[Xeroma]

It wasn't made by N1 Shale, it was made by Sting. You might remember them from Riviera or Yggdra Union.

[Hunter Sopko]

Koudelka: Fun little game. Enjoying myself, but that may be because I'm getting ridiculous amounts of drops. Not that I hear it would be that difficult otherwise. Just the right atmosphere, moves along well, the writing isn't terrible and the voice acting barely manages to avoid being distracting. Stopped after fighting the reflections of the party, which I understand is the end of Disc 1. Woo