Author Topic: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition (Read 237473 times)

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #576 on:** March 07, 2012, 04:30:24 AM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBMKLyRfY8Q

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #577 on:** March 07, 2012, 04:49:04 AM »

They did perform that in the stage version. Also the McPoyles show up and Charlie plays harmonica.

AndrewRogue · « **Reply #578 on:** March 07, 2012, 03:25:34 PM »

Mass Effect 3: Started last night. Having a blast. General combat continues to be improved. Shepard has more auto-dialogue/more character now, which is just gonna piss some people off to no end. Honestly, I think they're pretty close to finding the ideal sweet spot for this sort of game.

Opening of the game is a bit rushed. Introduction to Vega is sloppy, as well as recapping players on the events immediately before (non-import make a difference, maybe?) But then goddamn Reapers everywhere.

The whole kid thing is a bit forced and too heavy-handed, but, for now, I'm content to believe it is a figment of Shep's imagination.

Mars was pretty fun on the whole and gives you a pretty good feel for controls. Spacebar being used for everything in the game is a little annoying, but honestly, not hard at all to adjust to. Movement to and around cover is MUCH better and your speed is pretty damn good. That and the ability to stay in cover is huge given (at least on Hardcore) your health and shields go FAST.

Character interaction has been increased about a million fold up through this point, so that makes me happy.

Made it to the Citadel and talked to the Council and now it is time to dick around a bit!

Explored the new and improved Normandy. Alliance really hates interior lighting. New layout is slightly confusing to me, but it is roughly analogous to the ME2 ship with some differences due to retrofits.

In general, as of about two hours in, game is again improves upon its predecessor. The continued refining of the system is likely to annoy some people (likely the auto-dialogue being at the forefront), but so far, I'm satisfied.

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #579 on:** March 07, 2012, 11:41:30 PM »

You know what I feel the biggest difference nobody mentions is? Debriefings rather than emails to end side quests. It's a small detail but it makes the stuff you do seem more important.

Not that the email Grunt sent me afterwards wasn't great.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #580 on:** March 08, 2012, 12:28:43 AM »

Arkham Asylum - Started this yesterday. The start is -extremely- slow, even if it has The Joker, who is awesome. Batman in serious situations just makes me laugh due to shear absurdity. He's a dude with bat ears, a wet suit, and a ridiculous cape. He looks like kind of a moron talking to police officers, like a cosplayer going into a business meeting or something.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #581 on:** March 08, 2012, 02:11:06 AM »

Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin: Beat this!

I find myself with rather little to say about the game. It's pretty good but not amazing. Generally I think the 2D singleplayer Castlevanias I've played have generally linearly improved and this game does feel in between Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia. Of course I haven't played the ones which are usually regarded as less good which might endanger this linear trend!

On a positive note, though, I will say that I greatly enjoyed the final boss battle. Probably the two hardest boss battles in the game where both framed as 2-on-2's which I liked stylistically; it certainly gave PoR's final boss a unique feel. Took me a lot of time to learn how to handle properly. The second form was easier (as well as more generic) but certainly durable so I had to learn how to fight it well, and, in particular, truly get good at the first half of the fight. Fun times.

I beat the game without getting the Vampire Killer because the game was all "DON'T USE THIS IT WILL KILL YOU". I look in a FAQ and the game was just full of shit? Okay. So I load it up and beat Whip's Memory which was a fun enough boss... I made almost no progress until I figured out how to deal with him then he became fairly easy. Worse than the big plot bosses but I'll take it over the plotless scrubs.

For bosses towards the end I mainly controlled Jonathan using the best available spear... they had loads of damage and reach, which I found handy. Even with swords, he felt more sluggish than most Castlevania mains (and certainly was a huge shift from Shanoa's lightning-swift sword attacks) so some of the challenge of bosses came from working around that. I controlled Charlotte a bit less often, which became significantly less often once Jonathan got his Space Jump Uppercut, because her normals were worse, though some of the spells were handy enough. I do appreciate the two available PCs though, as well as the option to have both fight at once, and the ups and downs that came with that. (First form of the final boss largely spoiled a second PC, I found, but the second form had lots of opportunities for her to help out, including That One Attack.)

So yeah it's pretty good. Not much else to say, I'll probably do something else with the game eventually.

Grefter · « **Reply #582 on:** March 08, 2012, 10:20:41 AM »

Ciatos playing Arkham Asylum? Well that seemed like it was out of nowhere. Hope you enjoy it though.

Persona 3 - So I finished this. The PSP version really fixes some of my key issues with it. They ripped some of the bullshit out of the combat system (controlling characters), dungeon exploration (fatigue system), dating sim stuff (people don't randomly get pissy at you for not doing stuff with them at regular intervals requiring you to spreadsheet your fucking social interactions out like a 30 year old with 3 jobs). It leaves the game far more polished and playable. It still isn't something I consider fantastic, but I don't hate it and want to punch everyone in the fucking face for it now. Kind of like Skyrim though I played it on super fucking easy mode because it is a game I don't really give a fuck about, so that might make some of the other bullshit in the combat system less bothersome. I still rage at enemies with MT Instant Death. Yeah you Homunculus and stuff. But when 2 gets used up on 25% MT ID on your 4 character party I want to punch things. It leaves me wondering who the fuck uses Ken or Koromaru. Fuck using a character weak to one of two types of instant death in a game.

I still like SMT aesthetics at time, I am a sucker for saving the world through practical demonology. Mara is kind of creepy and actually surprisingly intelligent for a SMT demon design as well. The fact that it is a pun in Japanese apparently isn't really the appealing thing, but with Mara being the spirit of temptation in Budhism? That is fairly fitting. Mara is a giant dick monster riding around on a chariot for reference. I am left pondering the meaning of it being a circumcised dick monster though.

I still need to watch the ending sequence (killed the boss this morning then left to work). Even did the final form proper like (cause you know, easy mode). Fuck that must be a boring arse fight on normal or hard. lol we made a boss u can only attack half the time. isnt it fun. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz oh time to rebuff. Also multi acting. So your debuffs wear off quicker and making buff spells twice as good in comparison. Nice one arseholes.

Also for reference, most of the optional side stuff is five kinds of get fucked, but that is SMT sidequests for you.

So overall. P3P. It is a game. What the fuck ever.

It DID make me pretty pumped for P4: The Golden for two reasons. The name is still fucking hilarious. Even more so than FES was. Noun? We don't need no fucking nouns. I hope they put out a remake of Fresh Prince of Belair and just call it The Fresh. Or a remix of P.Y.T. and just call it P.Y. Secondly, if they improved on P3 that much (over two games, because you can't get it right the first time when you can convince people to buy the game two more times to make it "okay"), then man, P4 honestly sounded pretty good to me. I just never got around to playing it and I was kind of SMTed out when it was released. I look forward to see what sort of ground they make on that.

Since Mass Effect 3 is installing I guess I can watch the ending sequence for P3 now while I eat dinner.

Fenrir · « **Reply #583 on:** March 08, 2012, 10:34:48 AM »

I use Koromaru, bitch.

God Hand: In game trying that leg sweep move in a fight against three bosses looks really, really desperate. Maybe that will make them laugh, giving me the distraction I need to punch them in the face.

Chrono Trigger Crimson Echoes: It's that CT hack that got canned because Squaresoft sent a Cease & Desist letter at the last minute, holding a glass of wine in one hand and cacking maniacally. Obviously everybody was royally pissed and a prototype for the hack got leaked.
It's nothing too groundbreaking but it's still a pretty cute hack. I like it. It's nice to see Porre starting to become crazy in CT. Oh and I especially like how Magus is trying to act badass and failing to accomplish anything.
But the game spends too much time trying to tie up CT with CC and explaining time travel stuff when the original CT just didn't care. (for good reason) The new graphics are pretty good, but there are some areas that are supposed to be in ruins but just look glitched.

Grefter · « **Reply #584 on:** March 08, 2012, 12:26:26 PM »

Oh right! Of course.

So yeah watching the ending now. Tons of spoilers follow. So here is a big gap to skip over and just not read. I am not doing tiny text because even my attempts at humor shouldn't take actual effort to seek out. There is nothing of value here to discuss about my opinion of the game other than jokes as a running commentary of Social Links ending vignette things and the final sequence.

Edit - Okay so I wrote a fucking wall of text and didn't notice. I will shrink it because WHY DIDN'T YOU AVOID THE SPOILER WALL OF TEXT is a dick move. It will still be a readable size instead of the bees dick font size everyone uses to avoid SPOILERS YOU LEAVE VAULT 13 IN FALLOUT SPOILERS stuff.

Edit 2 - I am brilliant and made it bigger instead of smaller.

*Aigis cried despite being a robot* The robot with functional AI can cry and that is surprising? If you didn't want her to be able to cry why the fuck did you give her tear ducts? If she had them why the fuck is that surprising when she has clearly been capable of emotions for months at least.

Otherwise, self sacrifice of yourself is the key to victory and the answer to life is your friends and that was the most fucking boring plot boss I can think of. Really? Can I watch that same attack animation a few more times? That would be cool. I didn't get sick of it the last 6 times it played. SPIRIT BOMB MOTHERFUCKER.

Oh so they all lost their memories. Retcon history so that they lived in the same building for a year and NEVER FUCKING TALKED TO EACH OTHER? Fuck that shit. Fuck everything about that. But the people in the same grade are friends and don't remember how or why? Except for Aigis, lol.

Your memory wiping magic is less effective than the little glowsticks in Men In Black. Good job.

Oh so I get to spend another 2 days fucking around in dating sim game. woooooo. Good thing I have DLC still downloading.

Okay, so lets get back to this. The reason to live is for friendship. You will die in March. They mind wipe you so you forget all your friends. Not mind wipe you so the Dark Hour is forgotten, the fact that you had lived with and made good friends with people over normal activities outside of school hours.

that is fucking brilliant

Junpei forgets the woman he loved and remembers that he fell in love with someone.

Yukari invites you to meet her mother who she now has unresolved resentment towards once again. She wants to take you to meet her mother so she can say you are her best friend. lets do it over Spring Break she says. Organised just days before the main character will be dead.

Bebe writes in Hiragana with a French accent. Oh and he won't come back to Japan because a relative died. You get a letter about this days before you will die.

Rio resolves her relationship problems with Volleyball. True love was finally found with the thing she was always obsessed with and not the boy she loved. She is going to go to a training camp to get good at volleyball. I hope the funeral doesn't ruin it.

Fuuka tries to start another club that only the two of you are members of. This is going to be great.

Hidetoshi gives up on the whole thing that represents him as being the Emperor arcana and decides to become a teacher. I choose not to laugh in his face because the game is already being a bigger dick to everyone else than I am.

Mitsuru remembers being friends with the main character. Wonders what her life would be like without her and looks forward to hanging out after Mitsuru graduates. Lets meet on the weekend. Again, plan to meet up just days before you die. Also her dad died mysteriously and she won't remember why.

Saori writes a letter to you admitting that she pussied out of a suicide pact with her boyfriend before he topped himself (or he just died or something?) and how you changed her life. Again, letter talking about how important people in someone's life died and how important you are to their life. Then you die.

Akihiko got in a relationship with you because you live in the same dorm. Yukari and Junpei just finished saying earlier that they don't really know him and haven't talked to him much. Your friends don't talk to your boyfriend who lives in the same dorm as you all. Nice.

Ken can no longer remember how his mother died. Has no resolution to his anger issues anymore over it, but remember he should be pissed off at someone for letting her die. Also is not totally skeeved out by the fact that he got moved to your dorm.

As an aside from the running commentary, no one bats an eyelid about the main party living in this dorm together put together by this one guy? Now that no one will remember why Mitsuru was helping back him and his influence. Now he is mysteriously disappeared.

Monk dude found his wife and kid. His home life is terrible.

Bunkichi and Mitsuko are going to refurbish their book store. Nothing bad happens. Except that the game is set in 2009, so smack bang in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis and they run a book store. We are still feeling the aftermath of how hard that industry crashed in 2009/2010. Bet plenty of you missed that one.

Sun guy (Akinari?)'s mother comes to meet you and talk to you about him cause he died. Which is creepy because he sent you best wishes to fuel the Spirit Bomb. Wonder if it killed him. Anyway, she finds out that he gave you his notebook and tells you to keep it to remember him by for the rest of your long life. Shouldn't be hard. Now let us relish the tragedy of a sick 19 year old die in the story of the death of a perfectly healthy 16 year old.

Maiko's dad talks to you about his daughter in past tense a lot. Creepy. He feels sad because his house is empty. Then he hits on you because his daughter likes you and runs the fuck away. Maiko went to live with her mother because she thought this guy could cope better?

Koromaru is a dog.

President Tanaka is being investigated for fraud (of his own money? And they say it might be tax evasion? Unless he claimed the charity on tax how the fuck does that even work? Then he spent it on Charity and should have a receipt). He fucks with the media and drives away like a boss. Still the best character in the game. Game tries to fuck with him, he tells game to get fucked. Pimper than TheDisco Pimp. Taught her everything she knows. Except he won't die like a chump.

Aigis remembers everything. Aigis gets to have her friends ignore her and not talk to her for 3 months. Hope you are getting good value out of those emotions Aigis!

This all is fucking brilliant.

Oh awesome, Mitsuru gets to have a sudden breakdown on stage talking about the death of her father. The crowd is stunned that she stumbled over a speech where she is talking about her dead father. Nice.

Then everyone spontaneously gets their memories back. This plot point went far. Alright. I didn't like the ending until now. This, this is pretty enjoyable. I didn't expect the game to deliver Schadenfreude on this level.

Aigis talks about finding the meaning of life. The party arrives on the rooftop to meet up like they promised just in time for the main character to die without ever getting to talk to everyone as a group.

superaielman · « **Reply #585 on:** March 08, 2012, 12:29:21 PM »

Brig: Grand Edition- I hate fighting meteor doom enemies on defense. 200 freaking damage to your entire army is bad; that is made infinitely worse when two characters have it. I got lucky and Iscalio never rushed me with four meteor doomers, or they would have fucking wiped me out. (They had a Loki/Super Tyrant/Necromancer/Lillith).

It's fun to see the AI play the system smartly. They protect promoted monsters reasonably well and level up good project knights (Lance, Kiloph). Shame that GE's time limit is so short.

Cmdr_King · « **Reply #586 on:** March 08, 2012, 07:32:46 PM »

re: Persona 3

I always figured the implication was that the main character remembered just fine and didn't want to bring up the whole "we totally fought death itself and prevented the apocalypse" thing and ruin the mood. Which raises the question of why the hell they and Aigis didn't hang out more.

Jo'ou Ranbu · « **Reply #587 on:** March 08, 2012, 08:14:49 PM »

Quote from: Grefter on March 08, 2012, 12:26:26 PM

Grefter vs. Persona 3

<3

Grefter · « **Reply #588 on:** March 08, 2012, 08:40:39 PM »

The Main remembering does very little to change the hilarity of the ending sequence. Edit - I should clarify there. I don't think the main character new that what would happen does. Even assuming that they remember the events and that they didn't know the outcome of those events, that doesn't stop how much the plot is just fucking with everyone (other than Tanaka because he is a boss).

I get that they are going for a bittersweet ending. You could do that without layering on the fuckery that deep though. It is straight up comedy at that point.

On reflection. I really like the Heirophant one for the subtlety of how much they are fucked over, but my favorite one is Sun. It mixes narrative dochebaggery with irony to a degree none of the others quite matches.

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #589 on:** March 08, 2012, 11:55:51 PM »

ME3- holy shit, it's CONRAD VERNER! A small part but so awesome. And you can make sure his ending is a good one, no less.

I shoulda tried to recruit him. I bet his rating is at least 120.

Monkeyfinger · « **Reply #590 on:** March 09, 2012, 01:00:38 PM »

Quote from: superaielman on March 08, 2012, 12:29:21 PM

Brig: Grand Edition- I hate fighting meteor doom enemies on defense. 200 freaking damage to your entire army is bad; that is made infinitely worse when two characters have it. I got lucky and Iscalio never rushed me with four meteor doomers, or they would have fucking wiped me out. (They had a Loki/Super Tyrant/Necromancer/Lillith).

It's fun to see the AI play the system smartly. They protect promoted monsters reasonably well and level up good project knights (Lance, Kiloph). Shame that GE's time limit is so short.

Is this one of those games where you spent the first few years idle so the AI could level up?

superaielman · « **Reply #591 on:** March 09, 2012, 01:34:54 PM »

No. Grand Edition has normal mode and multiplayer mode. There are three normal scenarios in MP mode- one of which is the start of the game, two which are a little later with Leonia and New Almekia defeated (and Esgares in the last one). There's a fourth multiplayer mode unlocked where it's a normal game, except every country starts with a ton of unlocked monsters. IE: Norgard starts with a Fafnir instead of a White Dragon, Leonia starts with a Seraph unlocked, etc. Esgares gets the strongest pool of monsters by *far* (Zemeckis and Esmeree start with a L20 Lucifer and Lilith).

MP mode is meant to be played versus humans, but you can also just set up other countries under AI control. It's lots of fun either way, and different from the normal game- there are no animated cutscenes, just text like in normal Brig. You also don't fight Bulnoil/Snake of Chaos.

Grefter · « **Reply #592 on:** March 10, 2012, 12:01:39 AM »

Tactics Ogre: The Death of Flash - Started this up to play on the bus. Decided I will play without FAQing the shit out of it. So now I am confused and have to make choices about things without understanding them.

Clearly what I will do is poke and prod Ciatos to understand things outside of Archers are broken. I need to understand things like "How do I get more archers?" and "How badly is the game going to punish me for being a douchebag constantly?" and most importantly "How do I get more archers?".

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #593 on:** March 10, 2012, 05:53:04 AM »

Mass Effect 3 just took the crown for best dialogue. This is technically spoiler stuff, but you'll only see it if you port a game with Mordin dead and you just don't do that shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr9k2ywHWL4

In other news, I'm about to start into the end game. So far? This game is amazing.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #594 on:** March 10, 2012, 06:01:10 AM »

FF1 Origins - Started this today. I killed Garland without taking damage. An extremely difficult boss, to be sure.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #595 on:** March 10, 2012, 06:16:58 AM »

Shadow Hearts: Covenant - The revenge! I'm replaying this game because it's pretty cool and I like replaying games that are cool. Currently in the Paris subways, i.e. where the game still kinda tries! Also huh, Yuri actually isn't a very good PC right now because L1 fusions are blah and he has no GT, although obviously he's still solid with ST damage and HP and such. Meanwhile Gepetto still has game-worst everything that isn't damage, and the damage is overkill for most randoms.

Wait why am I replaying this game and immediately analysing the gameplay, this isn't what I'm replaying the game for. That said it's too early to say much about the plot, except to say that earlygame Nicolai is pretty fun. Also, shut up, Blanca.

Grefter · « **Reply #596 on:** March 10, 2012, 10:50:19 AM »

Needs more DDR mat.

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #597 on:** March 10, 2012, 11:10:25 AM »

ME3- Finished. God damn that ending was an abrupt tonal shift. A shame, because everything before the last five minutes is amazing.

WELCOME TA EARF is honestly one of the best sequences I've played in a game in a very long time. It is what climactic final battles want to be.

Jo'ou Ranbu · « **Reply #598 on:** March 10, 2012, 05:09:22 PM »

Quote from: Dark Holy Elf on March 10, 2012, 06:16:58 AM

Shadow Hearts: Covenant - The revenge! I'm replaying this game because it's pretty cool and I like replaying games that are cool. Currently in the Paris subways, i.e. where the game still kinda tries! Also huh, Yuri actually isn't a very good PC right now because L1 fusions are blah and he has no GT, although obviously he's still solid with ST damage and HP and such. Meanwhile Gepetto still has game-worst everything that isn't damage, and the damage is overkill for most randoms.

Wait why am I replaying this game and immediately analysing the gameplay, this isn't what I'm replaying the game for. That said it's too early to say much about the plot, except to say that earlygame Nicolai is pretty fun. Also, shut up, Blanca.

Bullet to the brain stem in that case, because Blanca only thinks. I can't fathom why they thought we'd want to read the thoughts of a shallow, sociopathic dogwolf that isn't even interesting about it, though.

NotMiki · « **Reply #599 on:** March 10, 2012, 06:11:19 PM »

Dammit, now I want to go play it again.

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Author Topic: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition (Read 237473 times)