What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[DjinnAndTonic]

Back to yer roots.

Playing my annual run of FF6. Breaking it in style. Picture courtesy of Elephantgun's LP.

[Captain K.]

Advance Wars DS:  36 maps complete on Money Survival with Colin and Javier.  Might have gotten a few more if I wasn't so sloppy on my first wave.  Damn that Cold Shoulder map.

[Nephrite]

Back to yer roots.

Playing my annual run of FF6. Breaking it in style. Picture courtesy of Elephantgun's LP.

Your picture totally doesn't work!!! I mean I can kinda figure out what it's supposed to be anyway...


FF13: Up to Taejin's tower. Deciding if I want to try and take on Mission 27 so I can redo 24 a bunch or just move on. I really don't like how plotless the game has become so far.

[SageAcrin]

Dungeons of Dredmor:

I played this for a bit a while ago, when I first got it, got bored at how slow it ran, and, while interested, kinda trailed off.

So, recently, I learn that it has (had added recently? was always there and I didn't know about it?) a speedup button. (=) This is good!

I make a build idea, tinker with it, leave the save going and chuck it. Don't like some of the details. Look up the (weirdly spotty) Dredmor wiki. Try a second build, drop it-it was okay, but I feel I can do better.

Try a third build(Unarmed/Shields/Master of Arms/Berserk/Fleshsmithing/Viking Wizardry/Assassination, for the curious), accidentally autopath into a mysterious portal, die.

Try it again, clear full 15 floors and get #88 score on the Dwarven Moderation+Permadeath leaderboard for Dredmor.

Not bad for seven(I think) tries and 27 hours played. (The score is down to 100 now, though.)

I probably didn't deserve a clear that fast (first time I'd seen floors 4 through 15? seriously didn't.) but who complains about good luck in a roguelike?

Screw Lutefisk Avatars forever, in conclusion. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh floor 15 zooooooooooooo

[Dark Holy Elf]

Replaying FFX, just got through the events in Luca (which take too long on the sixth playthrough, even if I like some of the plot stuff there).

Also playing Mario Kart 7. I have three-star ranks on most of 150cc, though even if I finish that I may want to do the same to mirror. Good fun, I'll have a more in-depth review in a few days.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

Got this for Christmas. It's objectively kind of terrible. The voice acting reminds me of games from the 90s where the dev team just recorded their own. The story is actually non-terrible! It's almost like it's not an Elder Scrolls game. But the delivery remains wooden and poorly paced. The gameplay is easy (dragons excepted) and breakable with casual effort. The dungeons are so linear they make FF13 look like a sandbox.

But damned if the world isn't big, and pretty, and fun to explore.

So it does the one thing it does right very well, and that's enough.

(That and Jeremy Soule music.)

--------

Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword - Caveman to Cosmos

I was distressed to realize that not only does this run poorly on my PC, but that it's almost impossible to get a PC that will run it better now because it can only use one CPU and the speeds of individual CPUs have actually gone down with the shift to multi-core processors.

Back to Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn, which remains my favorite version since it strikes a balance between having all of the things (all of them) and being almost like playable on my machine.

--------

Final Fantasy Tactics - Celdia's Complete Patch

Still enjoying this. It's not LFFT for balance, but wheeeeeeee, new classes~!

Hopefully future revisions will balance it, too, because there are some great ideas here.

--------

Had a Dominion New Year last night. It remains the best of all possible games. Although I prefer it with expansions, particularly some of the later ones. IIRC there's a way to play this online?

Also continuing to play Magic over Cockatrice, because who spends money on entertainment? (And also everyone having the entire card pool for whatever format you're playing makes the game much better than Constructed play limited by money.)

I know there was talk on here about using Magic Online last year, but does anybody play on Cockatrice? (Or Apprentice, I guess, but it sucks these days.)

[MalcolmMasher]

Dominion online (which I am playing in another tab as I type this message) happens at dominion.isotropic.org .

I have also been playing Plants vs Zombies on Kindle Fire recently. It seems to have some cuts compared to the PC version, I have read about things like survival mode and they are nowhere to be found. It also cost about $1.50, so I'm OK with that.

[Meeplelard]

Replaying FFX, just got through the events in Luca (which take too long on the sixth playthrough, even if I like some of the plot stuff there).

I get the feeling you might like this FF10 a little bit.  Just a hunch.


Sonic Adventure 2: Beat the Hero side.  Sonic Stages were a HUGE upgrade compared to Adventure it can't be stressed enough.  Ok, Final Rush needed to be shorter, and the stage before it had some annoying design decisions that the primitive camera made harder than it was, but overall they were very well made.  Tails stages were pretty brainless, Knuckles Stages were iffy, though I want to say they were overall better designed than SA1 despite the fact that you can only sense one at a time...ignoring the Pyramid which just needs to die.

Probably do the Dark side tomorrow, for all that I am to understand the gameplay is exactly the same, and thus my opinions won't really change much, just needs to be done if you want to get the FRUE ENDING or something.

[Fenrir]

Great picture.


Snow: Yep I'll just train in Tactics Ogre. *shakes fist*


Soma Bringer solo: Finished. I don't even remember the ending! Why did I not sceneskip everything!?
One of my major problems with the gameplay: You can just put a teleport gate back to town before every boss. If you lose against a boss and come back, his HPs won't be recovered. 

So let's say FF1 has Soma Bringer gameplay. Right before the final boss you use a (dirt cheap) Soma Gate to create a teleport point to some city. You get to remove half of Chaos' HPs before biting the dust. But there's no game over, you reappear right before the city. You teleport back to Garland who still has half HPs, use another Soma Gate, just in case, then destroy him.
This is dumb. The problem is that there doesn't even seem to be a way to fight bosses legit if you want to? Maybe going to another dungeon? I don't know.
Game is really good for the SMAAASH, not much else. But it's really the perfect game for smash. "Walking speed" and "Attack speed" are stats, and you become a crazy ninja god with a sledgehammer/two knives by the end of the game. I don't even know why you're supposed to have allies because they never feel needed.


Star Ocean 2: Wow, I didn't remember the writing being this bad and cutscenes dragging on forever.
I soloed the earlygame with Rena and just got Precis. She's great so far! I've been grinding in that mountain next to Cross castle to get enough APs for max pickpocketing. Is it true that the less talents you  have, the more likely you're going to get a new one? I got dexterity really easily, but can't seem to get the cooking related one. It's a bit of a bother since you basically can't do anything without the related talent.

The hilarious highlight of this playthrough was not recruiting Celine:
"Rena: Join us!
Celine: Yes!
Rena: Wait... Actually, we don't want you to come.
Celine: ..."
This would have been a lot better with Noel though.
Stealing from poor people and Rena's mother feels really good too.


3D Dot Game Heroes: So far, it's a nice old Zelda clone without all the annoying usual Zelda BS. And with huge swords.
The graphics are... creative, but I'm not a fan at all. Everything looks the same after a while.

[AndrewRogue]

Hey Cranbud, hit me up at some point. I play a ridiculous amount of Dominion on Isotropic lately.

Mass Effect: You know what? Gameplay improves about 900% when you fix the goddamn input to allow the HUD to be toggled instead of needing to hold the button down. Why this is not an in-game option and has to be done via fiddling with the config file, I will never know.

[Twilkitri]

Professor Layton & The Last Specter - finished

Was Professor Layton. Entertaining. Didn't have any particularly aggravating puzzles during the game proper. I can't be bothered doing the bonus puzzles this time around so I don't know how they are, although I expect there are some doozies.

Being a prequel and all, they decided to copy the first Layton game and pull a completely unheard-of villain out of disguise at the last moment. Not really sure what I think about that.

Emmy was entertaining, although now I wonder how they're going to handle getting rid of her for the original trilogy.


Professor Layton & The Last Specter: London Life - beaten, done as much of the postgame as I care to

Is not that great of a game, which is to be expected I guess.

Stopped playing at the request which requires you to hand over 10 million wealth. Currently had around 2.5 million I believe.

There was a fair bit of dumb humour which appealed to me so it was probably worth playing in general, but the gameplay isn't really in existence. Which means it would probably be more worth it to just read a text dump rather than playing, if you had access to pictures of the characters on hand so you could check who was talking.


Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition - finished

Was Monkey Island 1 with a bad interface.

Really unimpressed with the change in style for the graphics of the modern version. On top of that some of them are just ugly in general. I guess I should probably state that this mostly pertains to character graphics - background/object graphics were generally fine, in both ways. Not sure what they were thinking when it came to characters then.
They were also somewhat hindered by the hotswap capability, which lead to the modern version animating weirdly at times in order to keep with the classic version (or so I surmise). The time which most comes to mind is when crossing the cable between the main island and Meathook's.

There were times when the inventory treated the cursor as if it was around half the height of an item box higher than it actually was on the screen, and there were enough times that clicking on conversation options wouldn't trigger them that I fell back on using the keyboard for most of the playthrough when it came to conversatin'. The game also didn't lock the mouse into the play area, which made it annoyingly difficult to deal with things on the left hand of the screen, most noticably going to a lefter map on Monkey Island. Fortunately you don't need to do that very often.

Inventory disappearing after an item is selected makes it more annoying than it ought to be to work with. To be fair, you don't need to do much in the way of multi-item work in the game.


Super Mario 3D Land - Up to S8-3, although I haven't finished with S8-2 yet.

Was enjoying the game immensely. Recently this has slackened off due to a mix of the game getting more difficult than my tastes lie, and a couple of gimmicks being overused. Fortunately, I have over 200 lives currently so it has a ways to go before it defeats me. I want to say that stage S7-4 was the worst stage so far.

Does a very good job of keeping things fresh, to a point.

I am either inept or the circle pad isn't the greatest. Far too many times have I jumped in one direction only for Mario to veer off my desired path. There does seem to be some sort of assistance with regards to major facings, given that I can normally manage to walk in a straight line along them despite the circle pad not having any cavities in those positions like the Nunchuk/etc, and the camera & level design normally do a pretty good job at making the directions you need to go major ones, when they aren't being dramatic.

I haven't used Luigi yet. If it expects me to redo every stage with him for some reason, it is barking up the wrong tree despite how pleasant the game is in general. I might do a few perhaps.

I do have to say that I'm not seeing how this game is getting hyped as making the 3D worthwhile. Maybe I'm just not seeing it. It doesn't hurt my eyes, at least. Yes, I do have the 3D turned on.

[Grefter]

Star Wars: The Old Republic  - Playing as an Imperial Agent.  It is pretty fun like you would expect from a Bioware MMO.  I went Operative which means I run around with a blaster rifle and stab things with a knife.  Can go healer.

Combat as Concealment Operative at low level is pretty frustrating since you don't get much to work with and just play like a crappier version of a Sniper.  But you can heal your AI party member through tough stuff especially once they get some AoE skills to tank with.  Higher the level the easier it feels.  Now that I have a few knife moves the combat actually feels really dynamic without actually being functionally that special.  Given the skillset I have I tend to stab a couple of dudes with knives, drop a grenade then shoot another guy in the face with my rifle.  It is all fairly fluid  and makes you feel like a total badass secret agentm, but functionally isn't that huge a difference from normal MMO combat.

Frustrating things, low level economy is fucking tight in this at release.  I have enough money to get what I need but at the cost of forgoing things I want.  Really could do with some more inventory space now I think.  After having bought the mount training last level, so the big low level cash sink handled outside of trade skills.  Of course just before I logged off I accidentally bought a modifiable gun that I can't use yet trying to see what it looks like.  That sucked up half the credits I had left on hand, so won't be getting that next row of inventory just yet.  It is a modable gun, so in line with what I already use, but means the change is entirely cosmetic.  It is a Heavy Repeater though so hey, here is hoping it looks good.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Saiyuki: Journey West
So I played a little bit more of this game, and objectively I find it fascinating as an SRPG. However, it's really not my style... it is too FFT for me. Well-designed in a lot of ways, and the story does a lot of interesting things with the Journey to the West mythos, but I don't have a lot of fun actually playing it. Possibly too slow-paced for me.

I have since finished the LP for it, and really liked the RPG revamp of JttW story, and the final gauntlet of bosses in the last chapter. However, honestly? The thing that keeps this game on my mind is that I want someone like Elfboy/Meeple/Snow/Grefter to play it and write some large write-up about its design/flaws. It just -feels- like a game that I would normally experience that way. And I suspect there are others in the DL who would love it while it is wasted on me. Odd game.


FF6:
As I skip around, playing with bugs, I research why they happen!
...as it turns out, there's not a lot to discover, mnrogar has already documented nearly all of them... and how to fix them... and has patches to fix most of them.

Not a lot on the graphical side of things, yet, though. Well, specifically for Monster/Formation Moulds and the kinds of graphical errors there. I've almost worked out how to avoid getting the graphical errors during Magitek armor sections, but not what actually -causes- the problem. My glitch-fu is weak.

[Sierra]

So it does the one thing it does right very well, and that's enough.

This. Although I must admit it is constantly amusing to me how mechanically NPCs behave. I go to this mine that some mercenaries are occupying, right? Everyone I pass is constantly spouting "No sudden moves, this mine is under our control." So I wonder, what would they do if I up and started mining? Dude's standing right next me while I work, "This mine is under our control. This mine is under our control." Walks between me and the wall, pickaxe passes through his head, he moves on obliviously. "This mine is under our control." And it's always strange when an NPC gets pissed at you during a conversation because of something you said and then immediately reverts to a default cheerful demeanor for their idle quotes once the actual conversation is done. The game's loaded with behavior that captures humanity as well as does a chalk outline and I can't help but laugh.

The VA isn't stellar, but I wouldn't call it terrible. It is often flat and mechanical, which can make NPC interaction a thing of unintentional comedy, but it's not up there with the true horror of office-produced voice acting (do I really need to link back to Chaos Wars here?)

Anyway, one of my followers vanished from the face of Tamriel, very rude of her. The game kicked her out for the plot NPC during the Silver Hand eradication bit. No big, it's done that a couple times before. But this time my ally didn't respawn. Not in her default location, not loitering in the last place I saw her, not hanging around the dungeon she was removed for. Just gone. Have I mentioned Skyrim is a mite buggy?

[superaielman]

FF13: Finally saw the ending. Good? No. Still better than some of the abject failure of previous chapters! Game is a 7 or 8, still deciding.

[Sierra]

Skyrim: Blackreach is fucking huge. Also pretty. (But mostly huge, after you've been there for a while). Also Aela's quest wigged out, the Silver Hand leader won't spawn and the quest flag just points to an anonymous spot of riverbed. So no Companions achievement for me I guess.

Have I mentioned Skyrim is a mite buggy?

[Fudozukushi]

Skyrim: Blackreach is fucking huge. Also pretty. (But mostly huge, after you've been there for a while). Also Aela's quest wigged out, the Silver Hand leader won't spawn and the quest flag just points to an anonymous spot of riverbed. So no Companions achievement for me I guess.

Have I mentioned Skyrim is a mite buggy?

Things tend to respawn eventually.  Probably still faster for just a fresh character though.

Voltron, Defender of the Universe: Shot some dudes, tore a skull tank apart, Blazing Sworded a Robeast.  Good times.

[Meeplelard]

Sonic Adventure 2: Completed.

Game is very clearly better than SA1 to me.  Shadow Stages just as good as the Sonic ones (and his Final Rush was just better handled; actually felt appropriate on length, and a more unique gimmick than just "Grind Spam"), Rouge's stuff...well, she lacked the Pyramid relative to KNuckles, that's something!  Otherwise dull.  Eggman was just like Tails, which is to say relatively brainless.

The game aged a lot better than its predecessor, but it still has some issues.  Homing Attack still feels shaky in its actual tracking and often leap of faith's occur.  This wasn't TOO bad as it wasn't a big deal until the final boss where you needed to homing attack off his balls and sometimes the thing would just fart and miss.  Actually, that brings up the next problem: Boss fights.  With the exception of Rival Fights (which were ok, but noting special), boss fights in this game are bad.  Either they huge time wasters, or just poorly designed and not really fun.  Thankfully, game considers them their own separate stage so you basically have unlimited lives against them so yeah.  The Final Stage overall felt a little shaky on design.  Tails' was fine, but Eggman had a lot of little cheap moments and for the record, I HATE FIGHTING SLIME ENEMIES WITH CHARACTERS NOT SONIC/SHADOW.  Tails/Rouge don't fight that many thank god, but Eggman/Tails...ugh. 

Also, Camera problems still persist.  Not nearly as big as in SA1, as I rarely had "ran off the side of a level cause of Camera" due to how it pretty much defaults to behind the character, but there are times when there's big stuff on the screen that gets in the way and you lose all visibility.  Again, the final boss highlighted this well, where if you missed a homing attack or something and rammed into him, you'd take damage, then get stuck on the water with the camera farting around and him taking up most of it, and you cannot realistically grab any rings or get out of there before dying.  That's a clear case of Fake Difficulty there.


That said, yeah, game's decent enough overall, and holds up much better by today.  The Sonic/Shadow stages are about as good as you can get without modern mechanics being factored in, and kind of interested in doing their non-story stages as a result, because they were clearly the highlight of the game.  So much that it makes me wonder why it took them until Sonic Unleashed to decide to focus entirely on Sonic-based gameplay, but decided focusing on MORE CHARACTERS would make it better (especially weird because SA2 in effect has 3 character playstyles, and clear upgrade to SA1's 6, suggesting Less Playstyles = more time to develop them.  I'd rather less playstyles that are more finely tuned than a bunch of iffy ones.)

[Idun]

FF13: Up to Taejin's tower. Deciding if I want to try and take on Mission 27 so I can redo 24 a bunch or just move on. I really don't like how plotless the game has become so far.

So first it's too linear, and then it's plotless? I haven't played since Dec 31st, but am going to pick it up again later this week. I believe I'm on the last battle for the second disc. Mm.. So far I've liked the game, though I did feel the Hope resolution dragged on longer than necessary, and that the suspense began subsiding prior to the Snow save.

[Nephrite]

FF13: Up to Taejin's tower. Deciding if I want to try and take on Mission 27 so I can redo 24 a bunch or just move on. I really don't like how plotless the game has become so far.

So first it's too linear, and then it's plotless? I haven't played since Dec 31st, but am going to pick it up again later this week. I believe I'm on the last battle for the second disc. Mm.. So far I've liked the game, though I did feel the Hope resolution dragged on longer than necessary, and that the suspense began subsiding prior to the Snow save.

Yes, that is exactly my issue with the game. It is completely railroaded until Chapter 11, at which point the tracks explode all over the place.

[Meeplelard]

FF13's plot has pacing issues in general, and its not just one consistent issue...in fact, its more that the plot is inconsistent. 

I didn't mind Chapter 11 saying "hey, you can do optional stuff now if you want!" since it still had a BIG GLOWING MARK ON THE MAP telling you where to go next, though yeah, the plot sort of dies but I never really was too fond of the plot anyway, so that wasn't a huge deal for me (though, yes, that's actually a bad thing for the game in a completely different way, I'm just saying Chapter 11 SPECIFICALLY is something I don't hold against the game.)


Contrast this to FF12 where its plot is rather consistent and well paced for the first 25%, then sort of stops...and when it decides to do stuff again, its now generic cliche "YOU'RE THE CHOSEN ONE!" stuff.  I consider that "consistent pacing issues" because once the game started having those issues, it was consistent about it, which isn't exactly a good thing, more just you know what to expect after a point.

[Idun]

FF12 was exempted by its awesome sidequests. I gather that FF13 is nowhere near as expansive as FF12, let alone the impression that Cocoon and Pulse seem like pretty small environments. Yeah, I may hop on 13 tomorrow.

Another issue with 13's pacing (at least with Hope) is the excessive use of short scenes that openly interrogate his issue. I liken it to the bipolar Hulkiness of basic cinematography, where the camera captures scenes generally for no longer than 10-15 seconds to move onto the glitz and the glamor. A great example in the steady resolution of an issue is Sazh/Vanille, where the scenes do not compound into such an exasperating experience. In Hope's case, however, you have to wait not only for the SV gameplay+plot, but also Lightning's inability to realize how to handle an issue she helped create.

Perhaps another problem with FF13's plot pacing is that the codex (?... I may be using a Xenosaga term, whatever) mentions crucial plot developments that do no manifest in the actual scenes. This is probably where I consider FF13 leveraging cinematography over actual plot development. It can be good or bad -- for example, Snow + Epic Mom was great, and thorough explanation would have undermined the immediacy of the event, or even the outside scene from when everyone collects prior to a battle.

[Nephrite]

FF12 was exempted by its awesome sidequests. I gather that FF13 is nowhere near as expansive as FF12, let alone the impression that Cocoon and Pulse seem like pretty small environments. Yeah, I may hop on 13 tomorrow.

Another issue with 13's pacing (at least with Hope) is the excessive use of short scenes that openly interrogate his issue. I liken it to the bipolar Hulkiness of basic cinematography, where the camera captures scenes generally for no longer than 10-15 seconds to move onto the glitz and the glamor. A great example in the steady resolution of an issue is Sazh/Vanille, where the scenes do not compound into such an exasperating experience. In Hope's case, however, you have to wait not only for the SV gameplay+plot, but also Lightning's inability to realize how to handle an issue she helped create.

Perhaps another problem with FF13's plot pacing is that the codex (?... I may be using a Xenosaga term, whatever) mentions crucial plot developments that do no manifest in the actual scenes. This is probably where I consider FF13 leveraging cinematography over actual plot development. It can be good or bad -- for example, Snow + Epic Mom was great, and thorough explanation would have undermined the immediacy of the event, or even the outside scene from when everyone collects prior to a battle.

I would pretty much agree with all those points. I don't quite understand what they were aiming for with 13's plot, really. I'm sure they had a reason for the structure of Chapter 11 but I don't know what it IS.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I highly doubt they had a reason for Chapter 11's plot being the way it is; the game's plot feels obviously incomplete there. There are some scenes that really drive this home but I won't talk about them because I don't know how far in the chapter you are yet.

[Grefter]

Okay I was going to not talk about FF13 this year as something of a new years resolution, but let me just posit this.

If the plot is so terrible, why are you tip toeing around spoilers?  Haven't we pretty much all agreed regardless of what we think of the game that there isn't anything of value that you are avoiding spoiling there?  Do you want to avoid spoiling how bad it is?