What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Hunter Sopko]

Enchanted Arms- Professor FrankenKo was evil? NAW REALLY?

Wait, the DOG was evil too? ... well played game.

[NotMiki]

Enchanted Arms- Professor FrankenKo was evil? NAW REALLY?

Wait, the DOG was evil too? ... well played game.

The long-awaited sequel to Dragon Quest VIII?

[Grefter]

Fenrir brings the true robots to life in his games.

Rob, I am playing on Hyperspace Cannon.  Imperial side obviously, that is where my guild is at and another one from my WoW server (might merge or something).  Will bail if they open Australian local servers though.

[Crystalgate]

Dragon Quest VIII: Started a new game. I'm not going to do the casino this time. It's not meant as a challenge as much as the casino simple being boring. I'll still allow myself to use the initial coins though. I just beat the octopus boss.

I intend to go for Boomerang 52 and then Courage 82 for hero. After that I'll start pumping Spear. He will not be a good boss killer that way, but I tried that build before and it worked just fine.

Yangus will get Fisticuff 42 and Axe 66. This should make him good as both randoms and bosses. I haven't decided what to take after that.

Jessica will get Whip 23 and Staff 100. I don't know how effective Whip will be without the Gringham Whip, but there isn't much else I want to put points into.

I'm a bit unsure about Angelo. I'm considering Sword first since the hero now lack a good boss killer option, but I won't get a Falcon Blade though.

I could also stay at 18 for Boomerangs, and then give the hero enough Spear for Multi-Thrust. Then I get Bow for Angelo instead. I know Bow has some useful skills, but the mp draining animation is a pain though. I must decide before the next level up.

[Shale]

Fallout: Glitch Vegas – that should give you an idea of how my last couple of days have gone with this game. First I blundered my way through Beyond the Beef (the White Glove Society quest) only to get stalled at the end because without quest prompts I wasn't sure how to resolve the endgame without making everybody want to kill me. So I did the quest properly, only to have the entire Society turn hostile against me midway through because I killed an assassin who was shooting me in the face, in a room where nobody could see it.

I figured this happened because somebody found the body off-camera, so I did it again, this time closing the door to the room where the dead body was. No reputation loss, no hostile waitstaff! Huzzah. So I reach the end of the quest, dramatically interrupt the villain's monologue, and his dialogue glitches out and I get beaten to death by said villain and his accomplices. So I reload and wait for him to finish his monologue, then I interrupt him. This time he doesn't go hostile but instead turns around and runs out of the room. I use the gun taken off the assassin to shoot him in the back as he flees, which, for some reason, triggers everyone else in the room to go hostile against him and beat him to death with sticks while he cowers and tries to run away. It is awesome.

And then, after I've left the room and am walking to the casino floor to turn in the quest at last, they “discover” the body of the person they killed. This somehow causes me to lose reputation, which makes me Shunned by the White Gloves, which makes everyone in their casino turn hostile to me. Including the guy I'm supposed to get my reward from, who is now trying to murder me with a shotgun. 

Okay, lesson learned. Reload, don't interrupt the villain, let him run away, collect reward. Woohoo! Cash and fame. I fail the “kill the Gundersons” quest but don't care, no way I'm dealing with the fallout from a quest that requires me to kill somebody in that hellhole of a casino. On to new adventures! New quests! Vault 21! The Gommorrah! Maybe even meet with Mr. House sometime this year!

An hour later, I discover that in one of my trips to the casinos (where they confiscate all your guns on entry, and return them when you leave), all of the weapons in my companions' inventories have vanished, never to be returned. Back to my last hardsave. Which is at the end of Beyond the Beef.

It is now my life's goal to somehow call ARCHIMEDES down on the Ultra-Luxe Casino, and then pee on the ashes. Game's still awesome, though!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Fenrir brings the true robots to life in his games.

Rob, I am playing on Hyperspace Cannon.  Imperial side obviously, that is where my guild is at and another one from my WoW server (might merge or something).  Will bail if they open Australian local servers though.

Was hoping it was Harbinger. Apparently it's "the AUS server" or something. Day one, started there, normal server. Day three its full of Australians.

[Cotigo]

The Ultra Lux is buggy as hell.  Look up how to reset quests to the beginning in the console, because honestly you're going to need to do that quite a few times.  There's a lot of quests that I was advancing both sides as far as I could go before finally picking a side and this tends to glitch a lot of areas out.  The NCR fort in New Vegas and the Ultralux were the worst.

[Niu]

Masoukishin 2 RoE- Two routes finished, only one left now. I would assume Yanlong's Noble Phatasm is at least rank A++ anti army at very least.

[Grefter]

We rolled elsewhere because the "Australian" servers got raped to hell and back before we got in and no one did the premade guild thing.  Which is terrible if we raid and need to recruit, but whatevs.

[Cmdr_King]

Final Fantasy XIII- And so I finish today, having technically started on goddamned release day.

Game would be better if it was basically a boss rush, because the whole system is designed around controlling the flow of battles and the standard battles are not finely tuned enough to make this enjoyable at all.  That you slam into a brick wall in terms of overall power level after C11 doesn't help.  Still, boss design works very well with the system which is good since it wouldn't work without tight design; it's chaotic and a great deal is out of the player's control.

Otherwise the game can't really do anything well without fucking up something related in equal measure.  So, 5/10 feels right.

[Clear Tranquil]

Not as harsh as I expected!~

How was the final dungeon CK? Did you do any extra grinding? I was wondering how it would go with the randoms in there.

Out of curiousity did you play/rate FF12?

[Meeplelard]

He played some of FF12, but don't think he got particularly far.

[Captain K.]

Dark Souls:  Went to the Painted World to get an extra copy of Great Magic Barrier.  Except I forgot that was in Ash Lake instead.  So cleaned out Painted World anyway.  I was having trouble beating Jeremiah since apparently he has massive resistance to magic AND fire.  So I summoned some guys to help.  Except the first guy I summoned attacked me instead.  Is this a thing now?  Anyway, after I determined he wasn't going to help me I gave him Wrath of God to the face.  Luckily the second guy I summoned was very nice and helped me with Jeremiah and cutting Priscilla's tail.

And agh, I am so close to beating Four Kings.  Got them down to about 10% life before my last Great Magic Barrier expired.  Looks like I need one human DDer in addition to Beatrice to get the job done.

OMD:  Into Act 3.  Five-starred Rebirth on the first try, yay.

[Cmdr_King]

Final Dungeon was arghlefuck.  I basically abused map items to get through.  Didn't grind, because honestly the bosses were about finding the right tools to get through, not trying to survive for 10 seconds while buffs were applied and failing repeatedly.  Much as I didn't enjoy the last chapter, though, it had good bosses and earlier points in the game were good, just ridiculously uneven.

I played FFXII just long enough to beat the final boss, Rogue Tomato.  It's kinda like PE, slow solo RPG with good atmosphere and not a lot else.  I'm told there's a HUGE aftergame but meh, those are very rarely fun.

[Shale]

You have to give it credit for changing the main character after a full half of the game, though.

[Cmdr_King]

I'd question why they never follow up the first half, but honestly post-Sakaguchi Square seems to have given up on things like 'tying together plot threads' and 'coherent story telling'.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Don't forget brevity or the barest shreds of subtlety.

"YOUR NAME IS HOPE YOU GIVE US HOPE."

[Shale]

The really sad thing is thinking about how much potential that line would have if you could still rename characters in modern RPGs.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn - Approaching the end of Chapter 1. Training up Edward, Fiona, Ilyana, Laura, and Vika from this group, as well as Tormod (but that's later!). Crappy people for the win.

[Excal]

I see Operation: Play Something New took an axe to the face.

Radiant Historia: Decided to give this another go. Rushed through Ch 4 Alternate, followed by 4/5/6 True, all of which were shockingly short. Currently working on Ch5 Alt and expecting end of Ch6 True plot to be relevant fairly soon.

Oh, also. Arkham Asylum, nothing much besides hunting down Riddler Trophies and doing the Challenges.

[Grefter]

If you could rename characters though devs would miss out their chances at deep and meaningful symbolism.

TitS - Approaching the final dungeon which reading ahead is pretty huge.  That is different for this game.  Look forward to it.  Also checked time played and it is way higher than I expected.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I see Operation: Play Something New took an axe to the face.

Indeed it did. Playing new games is hard.

How are you enjoying Radiant Historia?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

If you could rename characters though devs would miss out their chances at deep and meaningful symbolism.

TitS - Approaching the final dungeon which reading ahead is pretty huge.  That is different for this game.  Look forward to it.  Also checked time played and it is way higher than I expected.

And Snow was dictated to all the blow they used to convince themselves they made a sub-par game rather than an unmitigated shitheap.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FE10: So 1-E proves to be the first real challenge of the challenge-ish playthrough. Five game overs so far.

[Fenrir]

SaGa 2 DS: I'm considering manipulating battles so that the two similar robots in my team like each other while every other relationship between robots is full of hatred. This would add a bit of robot racism to the mix of hatred and loneliness.

Metal Max Returns Solo: Finished; every hunt included. The final was tough, I maxed every stat on my WhiteMuu tank and only gave it two Excaliburs. The first part of the final dungeon was aggravating with all those paralysis monsters.
The game is fun but I don't feel it lends itself that well to solo playthroughs. Battle damage is so random.

For the frog the bell tolls: Finished.
What a weird ass gameboy game. At least it solved two mysteries:
- Who's that Richard dude in Link's Awakening and why is he around frogs??
- Who's that awesome professor dude in Wario Land 4? (Somehow, I recognized him instantly)
Overall it's a very story focused game (on a gameboy, yes) with largely irrelevant platformer with rpg elements gameplay.

There's one really great scene near the ending. The final boss is a snake. The main's rival and his army have all been turned into a frog.
The rival goes all "Step aside! Even as a frog, I'm better than you!" then he sends every man from his army, one by one, slowly, and every one of them gets eaten by the snake the same way, without being able to deal even one point of damage.

It also has Zelda's engine, and the strange battle system from Freshly Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland. Speaking of which, I love that game. (for all that it probably hates its player) Probably my #2 DS game after Castlevania OOE. (I don't know, I don't keep track of this kind of thing)