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

[metroid composite]

Desktop Dungeons:  What have you introduced me to, MC?  I've been on this thing all damn day.

Don't blame me, blame the IGF!  They're the ones who awarded it "best independent game design of 2010" (take that: Minecraft).  If not for them, I never would have played it.  (And really: you should blame my GDC roommate Irene Berg--if she hadn't been presenting the awards, I might have gone to another event instead).

(But yes, it's getting to the point where this game is harming my health because I stay up too late playing it).

Happiness is a Halfling Berserker in the Library spawning next to a Taurog altar.

*snort* well then.  Uhh...just remember not to take Mageshield.  >_>

[Luther Lansfeld]

Legend of Dragoon -

Dear diary,

Life is getting complicated. Lavitz seems to be trying to shoehorn me into dating Shana, which only means one thing.

HE LOVES ALBERT MORE THAN HE LOVES MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Shana is not a sugar daddy, so there's no way in hell I am dating her. I've been telling her "I think of you as a sister" a lot so maybe she'll get the picture that I don't want to have sex with her. Maybe I can join Emperor Doel's harem instead. Lavitz frustrates me.

~

This game is so campy. So much awkward teenage drama and an undercurrent of sweet sweet mansex. Shana is really really really useless and cries too much; did she have to twist her ankle AND get dizzy on two occasions AND be bitchy and declare her independence? I agree with Rose's sentiment about her. I love that I fought a dragon and a thing that lives in a volcano that was used by Winglies but Yuffie (Drake, a guy who renovates ruins for maximum trolling) is the hardest boss so far. I'm pretty sure he had lower plot power than Kongol or the prison guard guy, but plot power seems to have little correlation to actual gameplay worth. Kongol was an embarrassingly bad boss fight. I just fought Dominatrix Man in the Arena and got plot-killed and some random martial artist joined my group.

I enjoy the gameplay well enough, it's not spectacular but not terrible. It's a little like a less forgiving Shadow Hearts with way-too-long-animation-times on spells. Graphics are PS1-era, music is okay.

[Pyro]

ToV - TitS

1. Main heroine Estelle who knows how to physically fight
2. Male lead who is a very charismatic dark haired pretty-boy. Girls fall for him and he is himself kinda girly. Is more cold-hearted than your average RPG main.
3. Play put on by the characters with a little bit of a 'twist' so to speak.
4. portable crystal-powered remnants of an ancient civilization let you do magic
5. Little girl named *ita who studies said remnants. Is cute. Forms a sisterly relationship with Estelle
6. Estelle and dark-haired lead stop by cliff face at ocean and talk about how beautiful it is and how they hope to continue journeying and seeing new things.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm enjoying TitS so I can see why another game would want to borrow from it (and ToV characters are unique and interesting enough to make the comparisons mostly superficial)

[Nephrite]

A game with a female lead whose acronym is Tits... hm....

[Niu]

A game with a female lead whose acronym is Tits... hm....

Pyro is talking about ED6 Sora no Kiseki

The main character is also called Estelle in that game and one of your main physical fighter.

Though, what I would argue is that Joshua should be consider the heroine instead of Estelle. His girliness surpasses all other females in the cast.

Dissidia 012- Gilgy is an awesome assist for Sephy, why didn't I notice this earlier? A great way to bring the fight back to the floor and easy follow ups after HP attacks.

[Grefter]

Portal 2 - I haven't finished it yet, but this game brings me pure refined joy.  This is the shit I love.  I can't even tell you if it is better or worse than the first one.  It is less concise, but I love it.  It just makes me happy.

[Twilkitri]

Grandia - finished

Generally enjoyable. It had somewhat overstayed its welcome by the end however.

Not really a fan of the dungeons. Found it very easy to get lost, especially in some of the overland ones.

[metroid composite]

Portal 2 - I haven't finished it yet, but this game brings me pure refined joy.  This is the shit I love.  I can't even tell you if it is better or worse than the first one.  It is less concise, but I love it.  It just makes me happy.

Oh, wait, damn: that's out already?  I haven't even preordered it yet!

[Niu]

Dissidia 012- I can now effectively have Sephy chain Iyai and Nagiharai into Gilgy's Hurricane.  Now, thanks to Hurricane's long duration, I actually have enouh time to throw in another HP attack. This is can be very very sick if combined with Alexander or some fast brave regen set up or with the HP damage to Brave ability.
This also seals off opponent's emergency assist evade, consider Hurricane stretches upward for a long distance.

I guess I can try this with Zdiane too. This trick can be much natier than Emperor's Meteor or Holy or Both set.

[Grefter]

Came out on Tuesday mc.

After it has had a bit of time to mellow, I think that some of the puzzles are not as well directed to the player as those in Portal 1 (the time outside the testing chambers is much more is probably the cause of this), but still, it is well put together.  I have forgot how long Portal 1 took me first play through, but I am pretty sure this one is longer in single player, this might make it wear out its welcome I suppose.  Will see.  It still brings a smile to my face anyway.

[Fenrir]

My computer cannot run Desktop Dungeons without overheating. Seriously?


Chtulhu saves the world: Highlander mode is kind of easy and boring actually, so I don't think I'll bother much more. I went up to the second town. Mage Cthulhu >>> Fighter Cthulhu

Risen: Got every achievement. Being a mage who wasted no points on weapons in the earlygame continued to be broken. It's like playing an FPS where every enemy is as fast as you, has no ranged attack and goes down in 1-2 hits. (maybe 3 if you're unlucky)
Great game, should have been called Torchlight. Dungeons are very dark, but you can live with that and pretty much explore without too much trouble. After a while however, you end up being curious and using one of those 50 torches you've found on your travel.
Now you can watch those great lightning effects, pretend to be Indiana Jones and see slightly better! They don't serve much purpose, but they help the atmosphere immensely.

Torchlight: I've tried starting the game a few times, but I can't decide between the mage and the archer girl.

'Splosion Man: Cleared 2-6. This feels very much like most modern 2D platformer; the action is basic (there's only one button), the level design is punishing, there are tons of checkpoints, and the environments feel like they don't ever change. Great fun, too bad about that last part.

[DjinnAndTonic]

A game with a female lead whose acronym is Tits... hm....

Pyro is talking about ED6 Sora no Kiseki

Man, thankfully Niu chimed in with this, because I was having a hard time trying to figure out how I was going to figure out this TitS acronym using Google Image Search.

[Captain K.]

I'm doing the image search anyway.

Desktop Dungeons:  Beat Normal with the first 12 classes, and have the next three unlocked.  Did the level 1 Stoneform thing with the Wizard to beat the factory.  Nothing like going from level 1 to level 6 against a level 9 Animated Armor.

Sadness is getting Super Meat Man (which is totally not an infringement on anyone else's intellectual property) down to *1* hit point and then losing.  Seriously, WTF?  I swear the creator must be using some kind of computer algorithm to make enemy HP/damage totals as precisely annoying as possible.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Here we are, yaoi overlords of the uniiiiverse~

Legend of Dragoon~

So Fruegel has Al captive, and Lavitz is going into a lover's rage and Dart's all ;_; but we go save him anyway. Another person emits creepy yaoi overtones -- this time it's Fruegel. He says "We just need your body!" which means that Albert has to both endure a threesome involving Fruegel, who is like 8 feet tall and 300 pounds overweight, and his UNCLE. This is getting gross, man. So we go through the dungeon and fight some monster. Shana and Haschel have a conversation about how Dart and Lavitz 'share a bond between men that women can't understand'. Are you for realz man.

So we go and save Albert after fighting fatass again and Dominatrix Man comes and steals his Moon Gem or something. Lavitz dives to save the gem and Dominatrix Man ruins his shit and

ALL HOPE IS LOST IN THE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD! When true love dies angels cry. We go back to Seles and hide underground and Albert says "Not only was Lavitz a great soldier, he was a great "guy"." Um, I don't know what that means but Al is a little weird. We decide to storm BLACK CASTLE with its crazy strobe lights. Black Castle is the stupidest name for a castle ever. Doel is trying really really hard to be a SUPERVILLAIN and it's just sad. Like half the town hates his guts, if he were a good Dominatrix Man slave evil emperor he would ruin those people's shit. So we sneak in the castle, we are introduced to the conservation of happiness principle ("Happiness will inevitably breed someone else's unhappiness" wtf emos), we fight KONGOL, I waste all my MP on him because it's funny to see him take infinite damage to my attacks, and then........... ELEVATOR THRONE. Hells yeah, Albert definitely wants that.

So Doel is a friendly guy, right? He's all like "You remind me of my brother Carlo 20 years ago..." and I'm thinking either he's going to lament on how corrupt he's become or talk about what a fool Carlo was but he goes straight for the jugular "a bloodstained corpse in front of me!!!" and then we fight.

Doel is hard, man. He hits Al for like 400 damage with a MT magic. No shit, that hurts. Apparently I didn't see his awesome ST damage move, which OHKOs Albert. Albert, your magic defense fucking sucks.

So Doel bites it and he's all like "You must save the world from Dominatrix Man...................." with sad music in the background. I'm not sure what emotion they are even trying to elicit here, the "wow you are a tool" emotion?

Disc 2 begins, and Dart begins the healing process inside the comforts of the Black Castle and possibly on the elevator throne.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

To this day I'm not sure how that game got made.

[Grefter]

Here is a transcript of meetings involved I found online one time.

Sony exec: HOLY SHIT FINAL FANTASY 7 IS SELLING LIKE A MILLION COPIES AT RELEASE MINIONS WE NEED MORE OF THIS SHIT.  Dude that made Super Mario RPG, we need you and a crack team to make this game.

Super Mario RPG Guy: Did you say crack!?

3 years later

Super Mario RPG Guy: HAY GAIS THIS GAME HAS A TOWN WITH 1000 DOORS, BASK IN ITS GLORY.  ALSO I HAVE BIG NEWS FOR YOU ALL, I LOVE PREOP TRANNIES WHO ARE INTO DUDES.  WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that is some good shit we got on that Sony money.  Okay time to make a shitty action game and have nothing else against my name on the internet.

That is pretty much how it went down.

Portal 2 - Finished.  Final puzzle frustrated me.  Probably should have put it on the back burner until tomorrow, but yeah final puzzle.  Final boss does suffer from similar problems as the original of ergh where in the fuck should I stick these portals argh arhg arhg where is this thing i am supposed to pick up.

Generally speaking the game isn't nearly as good at cluing you in to where it wants you to go as the original was.  It is still quite enjoyable and a lot of the puzzles are good fun in single player.  Some serious bonus points for the snippets of dialogue continually coming back and being referenced, even small aside things coming back up in the final sequence is good stuff.

The new mechanics with the gels are pretty fun and good.  Stops it from being rehashes of puzzles from the first game.

At the end of the day, the design is probably inferior and the execution is probably inferior.  The step down is not very huge at all.  It largely comes from being a bit longer so it isn't quite as punchy as the original (but has to be to make up the price difference, even with the multiplayer).  We are not talking nearly as big a gap between Portal 1 and Portal 2 as there was between Dragon Age 1 and 2 (which were both good also, but Portal 1 is absolute excellence) The writing is still really good and a lot of fun, but there is more characters in this one, so it isn't Glados being the show.  I like the new characters but Glados is still better than all of them, so it is just Glados upstaging them.

Turrets continue to be pretty much the cutest things ever.

So yeah if it is good and you liked portal you should probably pick it up sometime.  If the price tag is daunting then I say continue to be daunted.  It isn't that the game isn't worth the price of admission, but this is a game that will age just as well as the original did.  It is well made and should stand the test of time.  Valve isn't going anywhere and the price tag will drop do a level people will take to.  I don't think there is anything overly much that you need to be on the bandwagon for this one.  It isn't coming out with a new Halflife episode or with a great new team based shooter to play.  We likely won't even be seeing a big CAKE IS A LIE! type thing again or even listening to Jonathon Coulton songs again and again all over the internet.

That isn't to say there isn't a nice song at the end of the game.  It is nice and pretty well done.  I just don't think Portal 2 is going to be quite the big cult hit that the original was.  Hey I could be wrong, but whatever, that is just the feeling.

It has been an interesting couple of years for Valve.  They are continuing to make quality products, but some of the sheen seems to have been tarnished with Left 4 Dead 2.  I don't quite understand it really, it is mostly just a people are dick bags issue, but it isn't a simple PR issue that I see a way for them to address.  From the looks of it though they are doing the sensible business thing and just going lolz whatever bro, you keep buying the games anyways.  Considering the issues seem to be that they "sold out" somehow (by becoming hugely successful??!?? Like... they had been for like a damned Decade before people turned on them?) this response doesn't seem to be doing more than provoke the people that have a stick up their arse about them at the moment.

[Fenrir]

http://ca.kotaku.com/5793543/the-people-are-panning-portal-2
People seemed to be pissed off about hats. Can't say I care.
I'm more concerned about Rockstar. Exclusive missions if you buy the game at a specific store, available later to anyone for a price? Argh.

ME1: Vanguard on insanity. I'm getting torn apart by everything, neither my shotgun nor my magic skills seem to do much damage. I'll do a few side missions before going to one of the big 3 planets.
By the way, Shepard is now a black guy with blonde hair.
WARNING: He's canon.

Torchlight: I decided playing on Very Hard + Hardcore mode, so choosing a character matters a lot less now. Hardcore means that death is permanent, so the game is turned into a Diablo style roguelike, pretty much. I went up to level 3 with Martha, a vanquisher who's gone too close to death a few too many times already.

[Magic Fanatic]

Romancing Saga - Taught the party a whole bunch of skills and proficiencies.  Since I'm still in ER2, I decided that I'd go around and go for Mining and Harvesting, just to make some money and get materials early.  I'll still be spamming Lurk/Move Silently, but no more retreating until I'm sure I'm in ER3.

[Luther Lansfeld]

To this day I'm not sure how that game got made.

I think it was made for awkward sexual innuendo due to horrible translation. I can't believe I've never played this before.

[Fenrir]

Mass Effect starring Wesley Snipes Shepard:
I've decided to make every bad decision in the game. I make as few allies as possible.

Wrex will die, as will anybody but Morinth and Zaeed in ME2!

I'm betting this will have extremely minor repercussions in ME3!!

It took me five playthroughs to find some cohesion in the sidequests! Awesome.
Usually it was all "Get access to the world mapanalyze every planet and get a hell of a lot of sidequests from a bunch of different people at the same time" Then I might have gotten back to those sidequests but by then I had what they're all about and why you care. I only knew that I needed to go to the planet Iliamus in the Gemini Beta system or whatever. (NOT THIS TIME THOUGH, I'm doing sidequests one by one)

Speaking of which, I love how all the directions given in this game are "Go to this planet, in this system, in this galaxy".
Guys, check out right now the incredible lesbian orgy going on on Earth, in the Solar System, in the Milky Way!!

[Yoshiken]

Pokemon: sabdajksbgfdsjkghbajfkgfh. VGC dates haves been announced - I've been planning my team for about 2-3 months, but I've now started my actual team creation. PokeSav is apparently legal but I'd rather not rely on it just in case they've made some changes to the hack checks from last year.

Cap'n K: Care to go team discussion-ing again? Was pretty damn useful last year and there's a LOT more to consider this time round, what with it being an entirely new metagame. ^^

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

To this day I'm not sure how that game got made.

I think it was made for awkward sexual innuendo due to horrible translation. I can't believe I've never played this before.

You were too busy playing Tales of the Abyss and hyping Maestro MolassesXAnise yaoi.

[Grefter]

POKEMANS - Okay so the first gym made me its bitch harder than Gen 1 Charmander starter first play through.  It is a fire guy, okay, so I will lead with this new level 10 Panpour I have.  Lillipup gets lead with.  I 4HKO with all my moves.  It goes first.  It uses Work up twice and 2HKOs me.  I can't beat that without losing a Pokeman and half another.  Potions are a losing trade.  Kill it and go into the level 14 Pansear.  It is 4 levels higher than anything else I have.  It leads with Work Up twice.  What in the fucking fuck is all I can come up with.

Sooooo I go okay, I will go grind I guess.  I leveled up the wrong pokemans?!??  I dunno.  So go grind out one level on my Lillipup and Panpour and then just want to die inside because you can only level on things between Level 5 and 7 and that takes a fucking eternity.  So fuck that.  Try again.

Work Up x2 was just bad luck.  Twice.  Easy win this time, especially knowing not to lead with the Panpour and waste type advantage.  I sacrificed my Snivy (Pimpmaster) and my Lillipup (no name, regretting this) but that was mostly me being lazy.

Turns out I did level the wrong Pokemans, because Purrloin would be capable at Sand Attack spam cheese.  Which would have made my response to the over levelled pokemans rape even more of a Gen 1 response than what I did.

[Captain K.]

Cap'n K: Care to go team discussion-ing again? Was pretty damn useful last year and there's a LOT more to consider this time round, what with it being an entirely new metagame. ^^

I'm not participating this year due to some IRL stuff, but I'll be glad to help you with your ideas.

[Twilkitri]

VVVVVV - Beaten

I'm missing three trinkets, one in the Tower, one which requires you to avoid a bunch of checkpoints so you can die and go back to a specific one, and one in the dark blue area which I didn't end up finding an entrance to. However the game is not compelling enough for me to consider it worth redealing with any of those areas to collect them.

1580 deaths all up, 307 of which were in Veni, part of Doing It The Hard Way. I would hazard that the majority of the rest were in other rooms in DITHW.

Generally fun. Couldn't really get used to Viridian's momentum.



Persona 4 - Started

Have not really reached any gameplay yet so not yet much to say. Some of the things in the manual seem to be steps backwards from P3 but I'll see how things go when I get up to them.