What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Fenrir]

Kingdom of Amalur: New company makes a new IP.
It's the most generic western RPG humanly possible.
They expect it to sell millions.
It doesn't.
Company crashes.

TO LUCT: Got through Law path. My full warrior team is level 41 and has started learning Strength 4 / Constitution 4. Ozma is the first character who starts out great right away. Vyse certainly isn't. Arycelle and Canopus continue to dominate.
I'm not sure I really want to get serious about the aftergame. Why is everything so faq-bait? Did they just want to sell a lot of guides? I wanted Deneb in my team but her recruitment process is almost a parody. Remember the rumors about reviving Aeris?
Recruiting Deneb as a Wicce is dumber than this.
Getting priest marks for Catiua? Dumber than reviving Aeris.
That stuff about uber holy generals or whatever? Dumber than reviving Aeris.
I haven't even mentioned the Palace of the Dead.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Kingdom of Amalur: New company makes a new IP.
It's the most generic western RPG humanly possible.
They expect it to sell millions.
It doesn't.
Company crashes.

It worked for Golden Sun, it was worth a shot.

[SnowFire]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning DID sell millions.  That game wasn't what brought 38 Studios down.  The problem was that they were ALSO making an MMO in the Amalur universe that:
A) Was going to be like World of Warcraft, but BIGGER AND BETTER
B) Made by a bunch of game developers who'd never worked an MMO before
C) Run with a "cost is no object, look at Blizzard" style
D) Never launched.

The Maryland studio that made Reckoning was the ashes of Big Huge Games, the people who did Rise of Nations, that got bought up back when 38 Studios had psuedo-venture capital in the form of Schilling's investment.  The team working on the MMO was the crew in Massachusetts / Rhode Island managed more directly by Curt Schilling.  The debts the latter racked up weren't paid by the money generated by the Maryland studio, who lost their jobs anyway.

I see from Wikipedia that Rhode Island is busy suing the remains, because Rhode Island fronted a huge amount of money to the studio so that Providence would be a software hub or something.  Not sure why they're bothering; investment, especially investing in a company that most real venture capital stayed far away from, is risky business.  (Actual venture capitalists reacted in horror to Schilling's sales pitches; they could tell he was way too personally involved, which was a *bad* sign not a good one.)

[Fenrir]

"It worked for Golden Sun, it was worth a shot."
...
Indeed.
But Golden Sun had the "Crazy Snes graphics on a handled!!" thing going for it. Amalur has average graphics.


Snow, yeah.
But it's the same idea: The company expected Amalur to sell millions to inject that money into the MMO behemoth, but it didn't sell enough millions so the company crashes. (I thought it sold something like 500 000 copies though? Haven't really kept track)
I doubt the game would have paid itself on its own anyway, since it was made from assets from the MMO.

[hinode]

Isn't getting Priest class marks just stealing from Clerics in Phorampa Wildwood? I've never bothered but it sounds pretty simple to me.

Everything else you listed is pretty awful, yeah.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Wikipedia says 1.2 million. I dunno.


God Hand Hard Mode - Holy crap the Mr. Gold/Mr. Silver level was brutal.
The Last Story - I am now gainfully employed by Evil Uncle Edgar, together we will save the world.

[Fenrir]

Well yeah Hinode.
You'd think there was a more reasonable way to get this than a rare steal on some random enemy on some random map though. No way to get it without a faq.
It's just Catiua's basic class!

[VySaika]

Borrowed Retro Game Challenge from a friend. Surprisingly fun game, aside from the racing portions(Rally King and Rally King SP) and the really old style shooter(Cosmic Gate). The Robot Ninja Haggleman games manage to be alot of fun, and the Guadia Quest RPG somehow captures the feel of the old NES DQ games....without being crappy. It's actually fun, even.

Got to the final challenge, slowly working on beating all the games. Most are done, mainly just Guadia Quest is the one that'll take awhile. It's...almost a full sized NES rpg, so that's no real surprise. 

[hinode]

Well yeah Hinode.
You'd think there was a more reasonable way to get this than a rare steal on some random enemy on some random map though. No way to get it without a faq.
It's just Catiua's basic class!

Fair enough, but the Aeris analogy doesn't make sense for a simple-but-obscure item like that. Meanwhile stuff like Deneb's recruitment or Cressida's recruitment really is as byzantine as all those old crazy Leo/Aeris rumors were.

[SnowFire]

Incidentally, let us pause to chuckle once more at skill growth rates.  Apparently something that Catiua-as-Princess gets hyped for is Princess Whim status curing in the Palace of the Dead, which does indeed sound useful...  except... at lvl. 1, it's got like a 25% chance of removing status all around her or something similarly pathetic.  Using it 3 or 4 times barely seemed to move the needle on the skill chart.  So to get a useful Princess's Whim, you probably have to spam a TP-limted skill like 300 times or something similarly insane.  Maybe more.  On a class you only get for the back half of the last chapter of the game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

How very FF2.

[Sierra]

DDDA: Completed. Expansion boss mk 2 is a very dumb fight. Not just because he looks dumb (although he most definitely does), but because it's the polar opposite of the first-run fight (which is pretty outstanding if you tackle it as soon as it becomes logistically feasible to do so). They stripped away the speed, mobility and ferocity--basically everything that makes the first form a terror. Now he floats serenely around the arena casting spells, I dunno, whenever he feels like it? I seriously chipped through his entire final health bar (using only the basic attack of my horribly outdated magick bow because it was sadly the most efficient tool available) without him doing a goddamn thing. What the hell, Capcom? I also gave up on killing Death because the bastard regenned all his HP somehow. What in the--he's a multiple encounter boss, that's not how they're supposed to work!

Everything else was fun to kill, though.

BBI can get seriously grindy though, as may be inferred from distance between last and current posts on the subject. Most of it isn't strictly necessary, but if you want to get the most out of the new gear, resign yourself to either farming imposingly badass enemies or spending a lot of time running between Asalam and the mountebank. And I didn't even get top notch weapons! I shudder to think of the time investment required to get optimal gear. Actually I think most of my time I was just upgrading armor I wanted to use because it looked nice. Dragon's Dogma has a lot of nice looking swag! (What no of course I didn't dragonforge the chainmail bikini turn those accusing eyes elsewhere.)

Anyway, I'm making one last set of Black Cat runs before shutting down (hey, I still had new gear to upgrade) when the game decides to close things out on a high note. Usual stuff at first, back and forth back and forth:

"Hoy there--"
"I've a business--"
"Hoy there--"
"I've a business--"
"Hoy there--"
"I've a business--"

*Mute TV and turn on Daft Punk to make it bearable*

Wait, what's this? Arsmith spawned on top of a box. NPC pathing does not understand vertical movement, so he just paces round this one-foot circle on top of the box. Then a pawn breaks the box and Arsmith dies from quantum uncertainty.

It's the parade of low-grade stupid that really makes Dragon's Dogma a memorable experience.

[Meeplelard]

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons:  I asked Sage which one to get, he said Ages, so naturally I grabbed Seasons.

Just got the Shovel.  This game seems to take Link's Awakening, then throw in the random silly stuff the original game had like "It's a secret to everyone" *get Money* (only now with something resembling a decent translation...so not as awesome)  Whatever, it's otherwise 2D Zelda, so the game doesn't waste your time as much and is simple yet fun so far.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Breath of Fire II: Hay guiz I just playd this cool game~

It was surprisingly fun once I got passed the "Seven boring sins" episodic sections and actually got back to the Ryu and Nina- based plots. Too bad that's like 20% of the game and you have to get through Highfort to see it.

Still, Shamans are fun! I want a stat topic with Shamanized forms. They are unique and legit forms as far as I can see. It would be nice to at least have numbers for them.


Kid Icarus Uprising: COMPLETE! (Well, barely beaten by the skin of my teeth on super-easy mode, but that's LIKE being Complete.) I have now finally played this, enjoyed this, saw the final Hades jokes, and Meeple can stop telling me to play it...


Pokemon Black: 7 Gym Leaders down! Suddenly, an avalanche of unwelcome plot and exposition appears! It's not very effective...

Vanillite is cute.

I have hacked like every Legendary Pokemon at level 1 into my game at this point. My team is now Articuno, Shiny Rayquaza, Kyogre, and a rotation of Arceus and the other Gen4 Dragon Legendaries for kicks. Despite rolling with illegal Legendaries, their level deficiency makes it so the game keeps fighting back, improving the whole experience.

[Meeplelard]

Still, Shamans are fun! I want a stat topic with Shamanized forms. They are unique and legit forms as far as I can see. It would be nice to at least have numbers for them.

Or you could just go right here.

[NotMiki]

Re: Amalur, RI is suing because the current governor of RI campaigned on, among other things, how states shouldn't be dabbling in venture capital.  So the governor has an ax to grind and is politically benefitted by playing up Amalur as a huge failure.

Re: Godhand Hard mode - Elvis' mansion is possibly even harder than Gold & Silver.  Those areas are probably the hardest in the game because you're lacking the moveset to reasonably deal with multiple enemies.  And by moveset I mean Drunken Sweep.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Elvis' mansion wasn't tooo bad aside from the jewelry room which was indeed very rough. I didn't have as much trouble with it as Gold/Silver's stage, but such is the difference between going in with bad resources and good.

[NotMiki]

Jewelry room, or as I like to call it, the murder box.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Still, Shamans are fun! I want a stat topic with Shamanized forms. They are unique and legit forms as far as I can see. It would be nice to at least have numbers for them.

Or you could just go right here.

It doesn't have Spar's forms. Clearly worthless. (actually I hadn't noticed it since it was buried in the topic)

[Meeplelard]

Oracle of Seasons: So I beat up a moth using a feather to make me jump...

...yeah, this is about on par with the nonsense that went on in Link's Awakening.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Holy crap this game is fun. I wish I had more time to just grind out cool gear and new abilities. The battle system gets pretty intense when you skip all the side stuff. It feels like the kind of game where I'd have fun if I just had hours to sit around and do all the side quests. Sadly, I do not have the time to play the game as intended, so instead every encounter is a grudge match of epic proportions.

I've been playing for about 10 hours now and I haven't gotten to a point where I feel comfortable trying out the other PCs since even the basic randoms slaughter me if I'm not playing at the top of my game with the main.

At first glance, the battle system seemed pretty straightforward, but the actual positioning tricks and necessity of timing are just as integral as strategizing and resource management. It gets a little tricky if even one PC falls and I find myself having to flee more often than I'm used to.

Storywise, I can see why it's been lauded. It's really solid and all the of the PCs are likeable thus far. Great voice work too. The villains introduced so far are sufficiently hateable and I'm eager to bash their metal faces in.


Pokemon Black: Oh great, the bad guys just recruited a Legendary Pokemon, what ever will I do? *eyes the fact that you can have like 3 Legendaries by the time this happens in-game*

Nevermind that I hacked in like 7 of the previous Gen Legendaries. Arceus, eat'em.

[Shale]

Portal 2: The possibility of getting money from random Steam people for playing the game got me to finally put in the time to finish this. Really fun ending (love the logic of "I've learned that the easy way of doing things is usually the best...and killing you is HARD.[/i]"), and I've made $4.75 on trading cards so far.

[Fenrir]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Holy crap this game is fun. I wish I had more time to just grind out cool gear and new abilities. The battle system gets pretty intense when you skip all the side stuff. It feels like the kind of game where I'd have fun if I just had hours to sit around and do all the side quests. Sadly, I do not have the time to play the game as intended, so instead every encounter is a grudge match of epic proportions.

Actually the internets are filled with people doing all the sidequests, then having no challenge ever again and being bored with the battle system.

Re: Amalur, RI is suing because the current governor of RI campaigned on, among other things, how states shouldn't be dabbling in venture capital.  So the governor has an ax to grind and is politically benefitted by playing up Amalur as a huge failure.

Amalur was a failure. Get over it. Rhode Island will rule the world. We are everywhere. Do not resist.

[AndrewRogue]

League of Legends: Got into ranked, clocked in at Silver 2, I'm happy enough. Prolly gonna cool down on playing this a bit to explore other games.

Warframe: Tried this out. Sort of see the appeal. Game does a really bad job of introducing you to your skills and the like, though. Completed... Mercury, I guess? Managed to accidentally go on a mission I'm pretty sure I had no business being on, but the guy with me was p. cool and revived me twice.

Thomas Was Alone: Watched Ashley play some of this. British narration = 10/10 would watch again. Solidly atmospheric, deep, troubling metaphors about being used sexually and abandoned, starring rectangles and squares.

Hotline Miami: So yeah. This sort of seems like what being on drugs would feel like.

[Dhyerwolf]

It's really solid and all the of the PCs are likeable thus far.

So, you're still on the start screen then? Joking aside, the PCs just get vaguely dumber as time goes on in a near uniform manner (at least to the midway section that I'm at).