What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Shale]

RE4: Cleared Ada's modes. Both are neat, although Separate Ways is pretty darn easy. Played around with Mercenaries enough to unlock Ada and Hunk, but the mode gets annoying quick with how dependent on spawn and drop luck everything is.

[Scar]

XCOM: This is ridiculously fun. Like. Stupidly so.

Current date, 4/11/2015

Things go well. Europe is having a bit of a fit. I am not quite sure how I will manage their panic. Trying to get some satellites in the air. May have excavated too much space too quickly. Funds low. Wondering why the world is funding us so poorly.

The Rogue's Squad. Base of operations: AMERICA. FUCK YEAH.

Lt. Rob "Kong" Delgado (Heavy)
Sgt. Ashley "Axle" Lefevre (Support)
Sgt. Reiska "Vandal" Hill (Assault)
Cpl. Sopko Gray (Support)
Sq. Ciato Campbell (Sniper)
Sq. Laggy Ghalib (Heavy)
Sq. Hatbot Evans (Heavy)
Sq. Djinn Amar (Sniper)
Stelas Weiss
Twil Gesperatto
Smashy Willis
Kilga Halvorsen

Former Members

Sgt. Scar "Zulu" Rodriguez (Sniper) - Killed in Action. Operation Cold Sleep. 4/4/15. Wishes the Rogue's Squad carried Med Kits before this.

The Latinos are always the first to go.

[Clear Tranquil]

Tales of Graces F- Defeated Fodra Queen Chaos Mode on my no dualizing (weapon/armour/uber gems of broke) file at L73 with Cheria/Sophie/Asbel/Hubert (Hubert was L72) Took a few tries and I did end up synthing four paralysis - freeze resist charms though. These made the fight go much easier/smoother and I had a couple of close attempts, one where I got her down to 50'000~ HP before the winning fight. By the end I'd used up all seven of my Hourglasses, most of my Life Bottles and had made a dent in the Elixirs. Cheria/me was also dropping Time Stop - Nurse/Resurrections like no tommorow from Fodra's half HP/limits stage as well. Fun!~

I kind of worried at the end where it was getting slippery and Fodra Queen was spamming, with things like Dual the Sol and Aquarius Sphere and her other attacks basically downing people left, right and center but this time I was able to keep my head and get my last Hourglass up off Cheria's Blurter of Truths Title, heal/revive everybody up, Time Stop for offence after and basically finish her off from there. I was glad I had those Elixirs/etc remaining for the end stage of the fight though~

I had Sophie on Defensive/Always, Hubert on Balanced/Rarely, Asbel on B Heavy/Regular at the start of the fight and for the winning fight Sophie on Passive/Always for the rest of the fight, Hubert on A Heavy/Rarely, Asbel B Heavy/Rarely for her second stage, Hubert on B Heavy/Always, Asbel B Only/Always for her fourth stage and Hubert B Only - Scarlet Salvo spam and Asbel B Heavy for her final stage~

Now to treat my team with some of those uber broken Accel gems =) Thinking of Accel Heal/Accel Extend for Cheria, Accel Charge/Accel Extend for Hubert/Asbel and Accel Eleth/Accel Heal for Sophie though I might be switching Richard back in and will probably go Accel Charge/Accel Restore with him~

Also have to return and 999'999s the F Queen with the Cherias ^_^

[Fenrir]

Witcher 2: Finished.
Broke my no Quen rule for the final boss (not the final final boss, who was easy), who seemed to be pretty much designed for Quen and unbeatable without it on Dark Mode.
This final boss reminded me of Dragon's Dogma's, except much, much, much worse and empty. I've trashed combat in this game enough, but I'll sum this up by saying that it is kind of like Secret of Mana compared to Zelda 20 years ago. All nice looking with RPG elements, but clunky as hell compared to its contemporary games.
I tried beating the optional superboss something like 30 times. Then I had a critical effect happen with Aard -> OHKO animation, before the bastard could summon any gargoyle. How climatic.

I'm really impressed by the story. It is all the political intrigue we except from SRPGs into a regular RPG, without any supernaturaly being/prized mc guffin ruining the plot. It's slow at the beginning and you're introduced to too many names in a short span, but this largely pays off in the amazing last chapter of the game (Because there are a lot of players in the political game, and you can't know who's going to be important to the plot)
Also, Rosche is a bro.

So there's apparently another entirely different side to the story (that's why the game kept talking me about this guy even though I did everything I could to have him killed and ignore him), but...



Back to Dark Souls: DLC!! Oh wait, it's very hidden very far into the game, breaking the unspoken rule that DLC should always be accessible easily in game. I'm continuing my challenge (Get the repair box then kill everybody on sight) except I won't kill everybody on sight in the DLC... At least at the beginning. I still need to get to the endgame first though...

Astoria's straight sword helped me for a while (Magic damage + Sexy two handed R2), but there was a lack of a strong alternative for magic enemies. I tried to put every other stat point into strength to handle one of those monster weapons, and there I had it: The Great Knight Halberd. I can't use a shield anymore, which changes the game significatively, but the damage makes up for it. I think I'm going to use it for the rest of the game.
Ceaseless Discharge and Moonlight Butterfly are dead.

(Cid, your challenge is great. I am still considering doing either fist only or whip only at one point)

[Twilkitri]

Chaos On Deponia - played through

It's worse than the original Deponia.

The core concept is that Goal's mind has been split onto three cartridges, one of which is the one in her head, and Rufus has a remote that he can swap use to swap the data on the working cartridge with the data on one of the other two. The individual cartridges are supposed to be pillars of Goal's personality/memory, but the memory part barely comes up and I can't really say that I recognise the individual personalities from normal Goal... but that would require that normal Goal had a personality, wouldn't it (re: her being incapacitated for 95% of the first game). In theory, this is fine enough for a concept, but I'm not really a fan of what they did with it, for all that Rufus doesn't really use it to demeaning advantage very much.

It still wasn't explained why Goal has her mind on a cartridge in the first place. There's actually another character in this game with their mind on a cartridge as well and it isn't explained for them either.

It was at least explained why Elysium might be fine with Deponia being destroyed. But then it gets all Dibuster. Supposedly, Elysium was built to evacuate a limited number of people from Deponia, yet somehow in the time since that was done no-one on Deponia remembers this, and while people on Elysium do remember the general concept they all think that no-one is currently living on Deponia. It still isn't explained why the Organon want to destroy Deponia though.

I don't remember the first game having any permanent violence, but this one has Rufus at least getting one person eaten by crabs and getting dolphins made into cat food. It's a bit disturbing.

So everyone likes metapuzzles right? How about one where you have to turn the game music down so that the background music doesn't get stuck in a character's head.

Also the game has a bonus where you collect puzzle pieces that form a "pin-up" of Goal, as if she doesn't have enough problems already. Counterbalanced by the fact that the pieces aren't labelled in-game and it doesn't actually tell you that they exist (supposedly it does in the manual, but of course the Steam version doesn't come with a manual), and that if you get them all it gives you the 'Cheater' achievement, which is just confusing.

I'm going to end up getting the third installment anyway : (

[Hunter Sopko]

Dark Souls- Took down the lightning demon near the blacksmith. Upgraded the Estus Flask to +2 (Cathedral and Londo Ruins souls). Basically left some souls behind after I grabbed the latter, due to ghost backstabbery, but a good tradeoff. And best to do it now, since I'm freeing the knight.

Beat Bell Gargoyle. Death Count was at 4. Andy clued me into the Lightning weakness, so I threw that on and pounded it, got lucky with its attack patterns and staggering. Other one just kept spewing fire, so I kept sprinting around the fire and hitting it until it died. Didn't even get hit by it that time. Bell has been rung. Grabbed a curse healing item and levelled.

[Niu]

Tales of Graces F- Defeated Fodra Queen Chaos Mode on my no dualizing (weapon/armour/uber gems of broke) file at L73

Wowowow, Lv.73? You've got skills....

[Cmdr_King]

Not surprising.  ToG is in some ways more like a Star Ocean than a Tales, and CT played more SO3 than the rest of the DL combined.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

She may have played SO3 more than entire countries combined. I'm pretty sure she could solo Freya with Peppita at level 1.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Final Fantasy X-2: Finished. About 16 hours total. Ugh.

[Meeplelard]

Pokemon Black 2: Latios get!  That took more Ultra/Timer Balls (and a Great Ball and a few Dive Balls to make said Timer Balls more effective) than it really should have!  At least he's not a runner...


Then the game hands you a Soul Dew right next to where you fought him.  Which is to say HOLY SHIT THE SOUL DEW ISN'T PROMOTIONAL!?

[Sierra]

Dark Souls, Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? edition: Sen's Fortress through Anor Londo, also plundered New Londo for very large ember. No deaths to Anor Londo snipers! This was 100% dumb luck. Tried kicking him off the ledge, didn't budge him at all, got stabbed in the face. Tried leaping attack, got stabbed in the face. Tried healing, got shot in the back. At this point I retreat down the buttress in a panic and the knight falls off the building. Victory! Deathcount:

Rolled into boulder trying to escape mimic deaths: 1. Second try, I jump down the ladder next to the boulder stack. He follows me, but can't attack in such a tiny space. Success!
Whipping through a steel girder that hits back deaths: 1. Two-shotted by Iron Golem after entering the room. Came back and knocked him off the roof.
Fucking hate silver spear knights so much deaths: 1. Self-explanatory.
@%#$*& Ornstein and Smough deaths: 3. Getting stabbed in the butt through the fog door is never a good way to start this fight.
No, Lautrec, charge ahead of your allies! deaths: 1. Bastard rolled off the stairs, then I got maginuked.

Whips/fists are honestly pretty bad. I wouldn't hesitate to call them the worst weapon types in the game. The whip's one saving grace is at least you have decent range (I have to rely on leaping attacks to do notable damage to anything, though). Fists don't even have that. You can at least backstab people with them (can't with whips), which is hilarious, but nothing can salvage the damage. Even the dragon bone fist's A in strength doesn't get you very far off of that shitty base attack rating. I do like the claw, but mainly just because it's the claw.

Fenrir, good luck taking on the expansion without upgraded weapons. All the DLC bosses have stupidly high defensive stats, and I couldn't deal with the last one at all until I came back with top-tier weapons/magic. Black knight greataxe might be an improvement over the halberd if you can get your hands on one? All those weapons are pretty excellent, though.

[Luther Lansfeld]

X-COM - Started this today. Caused panic in Australia by losing a mission there, and then they left the X-COM project! ;_; France doesn't love me either. Good stuff.

[Cotigo]

Not surprising.  ToG is in some ways more like a Star Ocean than a Tales, and CT played more SO3 than the rest of the DL combined.

Good to know that if I ever fall on my head and decide that it's time to pick up a new Tales game again that Tales of Graces is something to avoid.

Deus Ex HR: Progressing slowly.  Still in Detroit for the first time.  The plot just doesn't have me engaged enough to go through it with the fervor that I played Deus Ex.  Sneaking around and hacking things is fun, though.  After reading up a little bit on how to max out your EXP I decided I'll forego the Zenny thing (Immediately getting Social Enhancer, because when Zenny roleplays he likes to pretend he is eloquent and good at speaking and winning people over and oh god I am so alone) and go for the Hackmaster DoubleTakedown early build.   If anything once I get good at the hacking minigame I imagine it'll be like putting a single point in Computers in DE. 

Also, I keep getting distracted and aggro the police by throwing boxes at them.

Minecraft:  Started up a new server, playing on creative because LEGOS.  If anyone wants in (haha minecraft and this group who am I kidding) just hit me up for the server info.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

X-COM - Started this today. Caused panic in Australia by losing a mission there, and then they left the X-COM project! ;_; France doesn't love me either. Good stuff.

You must have failed very catastrophically or had pretty high panic there already.  What I'm saying is that this is nobody's fault but your own.

[Luther Lansfeld]

>_> Was I trying to imply otherwise? Yeah, I had just ignored Asia for another continent and then got a mission in Australia which I boned up! Could have reset, but the show must go on!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I don't know if you were.  I was just emphasizing that you should definitely feel bad about your failure.  Australia is probably gone, now.  Wiped clean.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Seems reasonable. Sorry Grefter.

[Grefter]

Losing missions is pretty catastrophic yeah.  It is okay Ciatos I always knew you didn't really care.

Ciatos and elves are not ones to load game though.  Expect much death to follow.

So I bought an iPad yesterday, henceforth referred to as an iPaid. 

FF Dimensions - Started.  Square are on to my naming convention and don't like it.  ANALFST is not allowed.  I was bored and mashed accept on default names after that.  It seems okay, especially after I deleted the next game.  Still up in the air as to whether it is worth the $30 price tag it has in Aus for all episodes, but such is life.

Guardian Cross - This game sucked.  Like sucked even for what it was.  You get a set of cards and build decks and you fight monsters and get experience to level up your cards.  You can merge cards and feed them things to help level them up and stuff.  You can play a minigame to catch more cards.

Sounds okay right?  Some generic CCG thing would be cool on iPaid.  In fact I backed something on Kickstarter months ago (for a PC version...) that was just that.  Except it isn't that.  It is shit.

What we have is a Facebook game.  Straight up a facebook game and a bad one at that.  Battles are entirely automated, your deck bashed up against the opposition, no chance to change deck order or anything after you start, so you can't do the pokemon exploit weakness deliberately thing.  You have energy.  You pay to get more energy that day.  There is special pay areas where you can catch special cards.  So there is barely any game to it and what is there is held back behind a paywall.

The worst part is that it isn't even any good as far as Facebook games go.  It is purely money sinks and watching bars go up and piled on Pay 2 Win.

FM3 - I am near the end of Alisa route.  Just about to get Lan I think.  Just found out that you can train up weapon skills people don't start with and for some reason decided to train Liu up in Machine Guns.  Now that I am not tired and catching the bus I realise this is stupid.  I never use Liu anyway and Lan gets Flame Throwers.

I am understanding why Tide approved so much of Macho Man Randy Savage as main though.  This dude is a fucking mess.  Flips tables when he is watching people killed in front of him.  Completely emotionless 2 scenes later when talking about the possibility of other people being murdered.  Gives no fucks about however much damage they have done in the name of their own survival.  Straight up causing civil war in 2 of the three countries outside of Japan he has visited.  Helps Rebel leader escape who has a claim to the throne in the DHZ.

A real piece of work.

I named his Wanzer MACHOMADNESS and it is all Red.

During that whole help Rebel Leader escape plot Miho proved to be pretty boss.  Beat cop that organises prison breaks in mobile military bases, helps hack computers and setup viruses, gets away with it scott free.  Doesn't afraid of anything.

Also bought Little Big Planet for the Vita when I was buying the iPaid, so that is a thing.

[Hunter Sopko]

Miho is the best thing about that route. She is made of win and <3

[NotMiki]

Also, Toejam & Earl is now on PSN. With netplay. Jammin'.

Fantastic.

[Hunter Sopko]

Dark Souls- Explored through the Darkroot Garden. Grabbed a bunch of items, learned how to deal with those knights (Woo upgrading my Morningstar). Wandered up and tried my hand at Moonlight Butterfly. Death Count 4, but beat it. First three times I kept running out of healing. Ended up kindling the bonfire since I ended up getting a humanity on my way (ate one of the item ones, but probably worth it). Fourth time I was doing well and near full health when I misrolled on a seeking spell, ended up killing me outright which was >.> since I'd taken them before and never had that much damage, shield up or not. Fifth time I succeeded with no problems. It stopped going onto the door-side after the first time I started abusing the cover (on the next attempt, not during the fight). Dang.

Probably will head into Lower Undead Burg at this point... may try for the stuff at the bottom of Darkroot Basin though

EDIT: Kinda liked the music for the fight. Classicly ethereal spooky stuff. Good times.

[Fenrir]

I heard that the Black Knight Great Axe was nerfed? I'll have to wait until the Kiln to get one anyway, I think I've run out of knights.
Whips and fists really do feel like joke weapons, since other weapon types are reasonably well balanced. (I' argue that the strength requirements make heavier weapons like large swords worse than the rest, but whips and fists are something else) I tried using the divine whip +10 for a while to beat enemies (Castlevania style) and it was terribly inferior to the occult club you find in Anor Londo, even downgraded to divine.
I don't even know why whips can't backstab? I guess the animation would look goofy and the devs didn't feel like doing a special animation for whip backstabs.

I'm not too worried about high defense enemies yet, the basic Black Knight Halberd is really something and I now have enough strength (34) to carry anything. The giant blacksmith's hammer is pretty good too, I bet it has Lightning Spear +5 level damage.
The biggest issue right now is only having an Estus Flask +0... Takes me four sips to get back to full health. This effectively cuts down my healing ressources in half and makes healing in battle trickier (Tapping the flask button after drinking makes you drink another time very fast, fortunately. It took me two playthroughs to discover that)

Fake Gwynevere, Gwyndolin, Pinwheel and Priscilla are dead. Four Kings are next because I want to piss off Kaathe.
Note: I stayed away from pyromancy and Quelana still appeared. Presumably because I killed Laurentius as soon as I saw him?


Fashion tip: Black sorceror boots + Painting Guardian Robe on a female character. Classy.
I'm back to only thinking about Dark Souls 24/7.
dark souls dark souls

[Fudozukushi]

BKGA only ever has one chance at a drop outside the Kiln.

Quelana appearing without pyromancing it up is random but possible.

[Sierra]

Fenrir: dunno man, I used the axe for the first time ever after the patch and it was still quite badass. If they nerfed it, it must have been amazing before. Whips not only can't backstab, they can't parry or do plunging attacks either. They're real special. And I don't think there's any pattern to Quelana's appearance at all--I definitely have had her appear in runs where I didn't mess with magic at all.

Fourth time I was doing well and near full health when I misrolled on a seeking spell, ended up killing me outright which was >.> since I'd taken them before and never had that much damage, shield up or not.

You take extra damage if you fail a dodge and get hit mid-animation.