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

[Yoshiken]

Finally got started on MtGO!
Entered an M11 draft, manage to get foil Leyline of the Void and Reverberate while building a pretty nice Red/Blue deck around Chandra's Spitfire/Fire Servant - a Reverb, a Bolt, 2 Lava Axes, a Fling and 2 Combusts helping along the way. Oh, and Destructive Force, for all that I never hit the 7 mana to play it.
First round, I come against a White/Blue flying aggro deck. It was.. odd. Game 1, I use up a Mana Leak to stop him overpowering a creature with Armored Ascension, only for him to play Angelic Arbiter next turn, effectively locking me out.
Next game, I throw the Combusts in and don't need to mulligan, got an early lead by Unsummoning something of his and then going in repeatedly with a Scroll Thief. Managed to get both Fire Servant and Spitfire on the field, only to run into the Angelic Arbiter again. Nothing a Combust can''t deal with! 3rd game was as simple as getting a few early hits with an Augury Owl, followed by Fire Servant -> Lava Axe next turn -> Bolt for the win.
Second game was Blue/White/Red weenie deck and... I got murdered, plain and simple. At one point, I was sat on 5 lands with Destructive Force, dying in two turns from what's in hand. Drew the land on the first turn, not on the second. ;_;
Still, got 2 packs for that, and am now entering another!
Snowfire, I blame/thank you entirely.

[Grefter]

Xenosaga 2 pretty much rides entirely on the combat system, if you enjoy that you will like the game (CATHEDRAL) if you don't you will hate it.  The plot is just straight up suffering from second installment syndrome in that it can only really start new plot threads and not resolve any if you have a terrible writer that needs to go OMG TWEEEEEEEEST in the final installment.  Shock horror the game has a terrible writer. 

On the other hand even if you enjoy the combat system, the GS System side quest thing can pretty easilly turn people off as well, because seriously, some of those things are fucking stupid.

XS2 definitely gets a whole lot of love from around here.  The hate definitely stems from XS3 specifically and the way it taints the actual good sections of the plot from 1 and 2.  Plenty also comes from XS1 from people with taste, but you know, people have to fail it up pretty hard.

[DomaDragoon]

Ordered a new computer. It'll take some time to get here and be set up. It's pretty low end, but it should be good enough to play some stuff, like MtGO. I'll hold off until the 12 release, though.

Faery: This is a mediocre turn based RPG centered around mythological creatures and places. They seemed to believe that it was good enough to spawn a sequel, since the first game ends with "to be continued". It's not. Beat it.

[Scar]

Mass Effect - Beaten

Not bad. I think I'd prefer if I made Shepard a bad ass instead of a goodie two shoes. In the end one of my crew died and uhm...I am not sure if I got the canon ending.

I might replay this dunno. ToV is waiting in the wings.

[Captain K.]

DQ9:  100% Items collected.  That doesn't include wardrobe items though; still have a long way to go on that.

[Fenrir]

Renegade Shepard is indeed better.
Resonance of Fate is both complicated and simple like most Tri-Ace games, and the atmosphere kind of fits I thought.



Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Finished, nearly 100%. Still a more polished Assassin's Creed 2, the best game in the series, something fun to play if you haven't really seen next gen games yet. We all know the plot will be awful later on in the saga, but at least for now it's allright.
Near the end I managed to connect headphones directly to the 360, and they really enhanced the experience. Seriously, just climbing stuff and riding around with your horse with headphones on = Mind blown.

Got another game that could really benefit from headphones:
Rez HD: Very experimental, got maybe too much hype but it's a wonderful experience worth playing once. (better with headphones) This is a trippy game, but you can't relax at all as it's a very offense oriented on rail shmup at its core, and the penalty from getting hit is severe. Still, I beat it and I suck at those games, so it can't be that bad. The game was at its best during the first four stages, the fourth boss being the climax of the game. Then it gets all 2001 Space Oddyssey.

Half Minute Hero Super Mega Neo Climax: A 360 remake of the PSP game. I'm in Stage XV.
It's made of about 60 full RPGs where you have only 30 seconds to beat the boss. Fighting is automatic and super fast (about 2 random battles every 3 seconds on average), you get levels at an insane rate, time pauses in villages and you can rewind time for a fee (that gets pricier the more time you use it) Each RPG has its own particularity, like a 5 seconds fetchquest where you have to get some axe or something. There are allies, branching paths, equipment you get to keep between levels (unlike levels), and two titles per map you can get by meeting special requirements.
Honestly, it's priceless for any RPG fan. I love it. It's not really a parody, just a ridiculously super fast RPG. The game is really easy, but there's a lot of fun from replaying each RPG to try and get a better score. (10 seconds 45 in stage 12 is my best)

[superaielman]

Plant vs Zombies- At 4-1. It's pretty fun, and the challenge has ramped up since 3-5 or so.

FM5- Okay, the new link system could very cool. It's based on weapons instead of character- IE your fist user sets melee weapon L, and will automatically attack if you're in range and have LP. Definitely neat, will see how plays out with assault weapons.

[Hunter Sopko]

KH: BBS- Played some more Aqua mode. Magic Mirror boss was a fucking AWESOME battle. Also Command Board gave me earlygame Ragnarok and Meteor Shower. Let's see how this goes...

[Dark Holy Elf]

Radiant Historia - In Chapters 3 (not a typo, for the non-players~).

This game continues to be very enjoyable. The writing is not perfect but it's certainly telling a fairly unique story and doing so in quite an effective way. Gameplay is solid despite a couple nagging flaws (there's a general lack of epic-feeling boss battles, if no shortage of moderately tough mini-bosses against various formations of soldiers and the likes. Also, the game seems to really not want you to use PCs who aren't Raynie or Marco). Battle positioning and turn order stuff and bunching enemies up to nuke them, again it is fairly unique and solid and fun. Generally keeps me engaged even when it's easy, and it generally isn't -too- easy (I've come close to dying a couple times) if not overly hard.

Bayonetta, meanwhile, is proceeding along nicely enough though I am focussing more effort on RH, not so much because Bayonetta is bad (because it's not! Quite an enjoyable experience even if it has some occasionally questionable design choices involving its main character) but because I'm just digging RH that much.

Also watching Grefter finish Ciato's playthrough BoF4 (which was stopped shortly before Fou-Lu's Tomb), which is funny because he is a completionist and she is very much not, so we have been subjected to lots of make-up completionism. Also I and II were the most randomly awesome boss fight ever before 2004 gave us Hippopressor and Cathedral.

[SnowFire]

Glad to hear it, MC50.  The Xenosaga series is one of the rare attempts to do something really epic in video games, and while it doesn't *entirely* succeed, I seriously appreciate the attempt.  There are some parts of the setting I think are done quite well and interestingly, at least.  I also like Xenosaga III a whole lot as well.  There are some stupid twists in there - as the rest of the DL will remind you - but no less stupid than what I've grown used to accepting in any other RPG, so I was more willing to enjoy the parts that were good.  XS3 also isn't entirely a pushover.  I'll take fast, fun, and on the easy side (XS3) over slow but more challenging (XS2).  At the very least bosses in the first half of the game can take a hit, so I'd find myself swapping in back-row members after depleting the MP of the front line and the like.

--
Did a New Phyrexia / Mirrodin Besieged / Scars of Mirrodin draft on MTGO, and 3-0ed it.  My first draft since Ravnica (not counting the Cube Draft on Thursday). Granted, each match was won 2-1, in fairly exciting games, but since I feel I had a rather underpowered deck, I am still eminently happy with this.  I didn't find any real bombs, but a consistent R/G deck still goes far, along with some canny decisions on blocking, when to save Myrs to cast a 7 mana spell, and screwing over Infect with my Melira / Melira's Keepers I drafted.  Even won one game via concession when my opponent realized he'd be decked from his card-drawing and my ability to jam up both the ground and air while gaining life.  The deck in the finals had a lot of broken stuff in it - Hero of Bladehold most notably - but I managed to squeeze out the wins anyway.  Fun times.

10 Forest
6 Mountain
1 Copper Myr
1 Iron Myr
1 Pristine Talisman
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Ezuri's Archers
1 Crush
1 Glissa's Scorn
1 Wall of Tanglecord
1 Razor Swine
1 Hexplate Golem
1 Trigon of Rage
1 Vital Splicer
1 Tangle Mantis
1 Burn the Impure
1 Blisterstick Shaman
1 Tangle Hulk
2 Mutagenic Growth
1 Glissa's Courier
1 Spine of Ish Sah
1 Alpha Tyrranax
1 Maul Splicer
2 Melira's Keepers

Relevant sideboard:

1 Chancellor of the Forge (never sided in.  My first pick.  Bad idea, not very bomby compared to common 7 mana stuff like Hexplate Golem + RRR in mana cost, ow.)
2 Carapace Forger (sided in vs. a fast poison deck just to get some dudes on the board quickly despite like never achieving metalcraft)
1 Ogre Resister (never sided in, but possible - another tanky mid-range dude.)

---

Dark Holy Elf: Yeah, it's a little surprising that Raynie & Marco are core party members in both histories.  If I'd been in charge I'd probably have tried to mix it up more.  And S/R/M is an entirely solid party you can go through the entire game with.  That said, traps are hax, so give Aht a shot when not fighting screen-filling enemies.  Eruca...  yeah, she's a glass cannon later, but she starts off as kind of just glass.  Rosch has his uses too, for all that he's in your party rarely - there's at least one fight I found him damn near indispensable in.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Oh, I don't mean to say that the other characters are worthless, it just feels like the game designers made it a bit too easy to just roll the main three as much as possible - certainly to this point I've had worse results whenever I've used anyone else, partially due to that level differential that quickly opens. This may change if anyone but those three starts really sticking in the party longterm I guess. The other characters do have uses but clearly have some skillset catching up to do. (e.g. the first-tier traps are certainly good for some fights, but I wouldn't call them hax due to the setup needed with turns that could otherwise be bunching yet another enemy up... they're still useful, but if they had, say, 20% less damage than they currently do, they'd be near worthless despite still being game-best damage).

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Finished, nearly 100%. Still a more polished Assassin's Creed 2, the best game in the series, something fun to play if you haven't really seen next gen games yet. We all know the plot will be awful later on in the saga, but at least for now it's allright.
Near the end I managed to connect headphones directly to the 360, and they really enhanced the experience. Seriously, just climbing stuff and riding around with your horse with headphones on = Mind blown.

I dropped a decent chunk of change on some nice headphones not too long ago. The Witcher 2 is likewise amazing with a good pair of multi-channel headphones. It makes Left 4 Dead actually really goddamn scary, too.

[Grefter]

I am mostly doing stuff in BoF 4 because it is a thing there to do, so you get subjected to hours of fishing because I go oh what can I do now, there was some fishing to do.

Notably I haven't gone out of my way to get a Culverin or get 2 Firangis for Scias and Ryu.  It is interesting to see only single hit weapons in use (and interesting to note how terribly the game even bothers to balance them, what up plot item being worse than storeboughts by a sizable margin).  But hey it is just a thing to do

POKEMANS - I am up to victory road.  woooooooo

Magic 2012 - Picked this up because so much Magic talk at the moment and hey I fucking love Magic.  I don't like the challenge puzzles as much this time.  A few to many so far have involved knowing what you are going to get on a draw to win, which is fine as a puzzle, but cuts back on the feeling of being able to look at that situation and pull out a win just by having good situational analysis and comes down to clutch oh hey stars aligned you got a win!!1

Archenemy on the other hand?  Holy shit I fucking love this.  I wish I wasn't playing the green deck for it so much (only a few cards left to unlock in it though...) and had saved the White equipment deck for it.  That specific deck (Gideon) was amazingly abusive when it was the opposition.  Had a draw that I just straight up conceded on Turn one.  Scheme of draw three cards and reveal them, put lands in play and others in hand.  They drew 3 Plains.  Played a plains, so first turn had WWWW available, dropped a Kor Duelist, Trusty Machette and equipped it.  GG right there.  That shit is straight up abusively good.

That deck on the other hand was hella fun to run through the regular campaign with, won many a game by stalling out and then blitzing them down.  The decent availability of flying in the deck goes a long way.

[Captain K.]

Yeah, wait until they use Introductions Are In Order and drop a 12 mana creature on the first turn.  Archenemy is alternately amusing and infuriating.

[Grefter]

I think I can handle 12 mana creatures better than double strike rapists.  Seriously I fiip flop between unending rage at Double Strike and amazement at how much fun it is.  It is probaby my first introduction to it that that made me hate it so much (Read beatdown deck in Kamigawa that my brother played against, couple of creatures with it just effortessly tore through him unti they played Savage Beating when I come from this crazy world where Relentless Assault was an amazing rare.  Not the most pleasant introduction to a mechanic.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So RA3 has finally just said fuck it and discarded all pretenses of realism. And I realize now this is what I always wanted to to do. Trained attack bears teaming up with speedboats armed with tesla coils that sprout mechanical spider legs to walk on land facing off against destroyers that have tank treads to cross land and helicopters armed with freeze rays (which do NOT stop... the pain). Saying "fuck it" made this game awesome. 

[DomaDragoon]

Magic 2012 - Picked this up because so much Magic talk at the moment and hey I fucking love Magic.  I don't like the challenge puzzles as much this time.  A few to many so far have involved knowing what you are going to get on a draw to win, which is fine as a puzzle, but cuts back on the feeling of being able to look at that situation and pull out a win just by having good situational analysis and comes down to clutch oh hey stars aligned you got a win!!1

You just don't have enough faith in the Heart of the Cards, Gref.

[Twilkitri]

Back To The Future Episode 5 - Finished

On the one hand, had somewhat more variety location-wise than the previous episodes had had, on the other hand was noticably shorter.

Was a bit annoying that they threw out the happy medium direction which the previous episode had implied they would be going in, but was generally enjoyable. The standoff puzzle was a little too contrived, though.

Ending was amusing.



Super Robot Wars L - Finished replay 1

Grolier managed to explode some support units with his MAP but whatever I've beaten him cleanly before.

Happily managed to avoid getting Ken this time.

Sadly barely managed to raise Godannar!Kouji's kill count due to the team autobalancer constantly putting him into slots which wouldn't get sortied.

Not a great deal to say.



Suikoden 3 - Played through Geddoe chapter 1.

Not sure how much I care for the battle pair system.

Generally good in general so far.

I remembered the duel triangle backwards and got one-hit-killed by Guillaime ;_;

[Grefter]

POKEMANS - Finished.  So the ending is amazingly stupid.  Like I had bitched before about how the plot gets really stupid when there is ninjas involved?  Well apparently the whole part after the Elite Four is made out of ninjas.  You beat the E4 and then Captain N beats the champ.  So instead of fighting you there he wants you to come to his castle instead.  So he summons his castle around the Pokemon league (which true to form is in he middle of a mountain range).  I mean this completely as I describe it.  He summons an ornate multistoried castle out of the ground that completely surrounds the entire Pokemon League area.  You go inside and a Ninja tells you that Captain N wants a fair fight.  They heal up your pokemon and give you some free healing items lying around (and an Ultra ball!!!).  From there you go through a gauntlet of capturing a legendary, fighting Captain N and then the SECRETLY EVIL BAD GUY.  You can't save between any of these points, but they do heal you.

I love how dumb this is.  There is a castle that is underground, surrounding the headquarters of the Pokemon League.  It can surface at any time.  No one as noticed it.  It has been there for over a decade at least because it is where Captain N was raised as a child.  That is some serious dedcation to pointless theatrics that Team Plasma has.  Also hilariously SECRET EVIL BAD GUY rags on Team Rocket and Galactic because they drew to much attention to themselves.  Seriously dude?  You just had somone affiliated with you summon a villain castle out of the ground.  You make a habit of going around town to town stealing pokemon after having big demonstrations about how making Pokemon fight is evil.   You are a fucking pot and you are blacker than the case of this game.

So the serious pokemon plot?  It is fucking stupid as fuck.  Not because the concepts that they are bandying around are bad (is making pokemon fight a good thing?  Can you just agree to disagree over massively varying incompatible ideas?  Both of these are pretty decently challenging questions to be asking in a kids game).  It is the execution that is fucking horrible here.  You know what would have made this work perfectly?  THE NORMAL POKEMON FORMULA DONE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT LIKE NORMAL.  Just introduce and address the plot points!  Leave the rest of the game as is.  It honestly would work really well and would be more likely to engage the target audience with these very questions instead of "Holy shit Captain N just summoned a castle".  You can actually talk to kids without talking down to them or shaking fucking keys in their faces.  THey played through your whole Pokemon game.  I think they are either invested in it or not reading it at all.  Get with the fucking program.

Overall it is another Pokemon game.  The interface is terrible and while highly polished there is a million and one quality of life issues that is completely down the toilet still.  It gets Pokemon Game out of 5 stars.

[DjinnAndTonic]

POKEMANS - So the serious pokemon plot?  It is fucking stupid as fuck.  Not because the concepts that they are bandying around are bad (is making pokemon fight a good thing?  Can you just agree to disagree over massively varying incompatible ideas?  Both of these are pretty decently challenging questions to be asking in a kids game).  It is the execution that is fucking horrible here.  You know what would have made this work perfectly?  THE NORMAL POKEMON FORMULA DONE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT LIKE NORMAL.  Just introduce and address the plot points!  Leave the rest of the game as is.  It honestly would work really well and would be more likely to engage the target audience with these very questions instead of "Holy shit Captain N just summoned a castle".  You can actually talk to kids without talking down to them or shaking fucking keys in their faces.   THey played through your whole Pokemon game.  I think they are either invested in it or not reading it at all.  Get with the fucking program.

This is not a problem exclusive to kids' games! Though honestly, a lot of games might be better if they shed the pretense and just shook the keys harder (works for DMC).

[Grefter]

Indeed it is not just a problem in kids games, but as a franchise specifically targetted in that space I wanted to ensure that I was presenting my critique specifically in that frame work, if only to avoid having "It is a kids game" thrown back in my face because I have certainly used it in discussion before regarding things that I see as flaws in the games or other people's arguments about the franchise.  Edit - okay touchpad, you can read that bump as a click on Send.  I still get to finish that sentence off properly though

[Fenrir]

I dropped a decent chunk of change on some nice headphones not too long ago. The Witcher 2 is likewise amazing with a good pair of multi-channel headphones. It makes Left 4 Dead actually really goddamn scary, too.

Man. Can't wait to play Witcher 2. I believe it's getting a 360 release in fall or something.

Half Minute Hero: Finished just about everything. It's amazing how well handled both the romance and final dungeon were, considering they last respectively two minutes and five minutes.
Still a really good game, only 10 bucks. I was really disappointed by hard mode though. The only difference is that time doesn't stop in villages. Wow. That's like calling "Active" in Final Fantasy/ Chrono Trigger Hard mode and "Wait" Normal mode. Really lazy.

I got Infinite Undiscovery. Surprisingly no one ever talks about that even though it's a Tri-Ace game. Let's all find out if the name "Infinite Undiscovery" makes any sense in the context of the game. (SPOILER: No)

[Shale]

Dissidia Duodecim: Finished Chasm of the Rotting Earth in Confessions of the Creator. That was long and annoying. But I got 1600 KP! Gambled an eight-fight chain, quadrupled it with two KP bonuses, then picked up the Silver Cup to re-double that. So I should be set at Moogle Shops for a while. I'm using Firion and Warrior of Light as my main fighters (L100 and 85, respectively) while powering Tifa, Kain and Gilgamesh up from the low 40s in the other three party spots.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I dropped a decent chunk of change on some nice headphones not too long ago. The Witcher 2 is likewise amazing with a good pair of multi-channel headphones. It makes Left 4 Dead actually really goddamn scary, too.

Man. Can't wait to play Witcher 2. I believe it's getting a 360 release in fall or something.

Half Minute Hero: Finished just about everything. It's amazing how well handled both the romance and final dungeon were, considering they last respectively two minutes and five minutes.
Still a really good game, only 10 bucks. I was really disappointed by hard mode though. The only difference is that time doesn't stop in villages. Wow. That's like calling "Active" in Final Fantasy/ Chrono Trigger Hard mode and "Wait" Normal mode. Really lazy.

I got Infinite Undiscovery. Surprisingly no one ever talks about that even though it's a Tri-Ace game. Let's all find out if the name "Infinite Undiscovery" makes any sense in the context of the game. (SPOILER: No)

I would be surprised if the Witcher 2 got a console port considering how the director spent so much time talking in interviews about how consoles were holding modern PC gaming back, and the engine works so well because they didn't even bother considering console ports.

[superaielman]

Plants vs zombies: Finished the maingame. Pretty solid game and a cute concept. I like how the minigames were thrown into give level variation.  Not much else to say, may or may not do more modes.