What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Shining Force. The end.

[Grefter]

Doctor Who.  Terry Pratchett.  His current avatar.  18 posts ago he said "Dredd: Very solid."  Most of the comics he reads.  Pretty much everything in this post.  Challah he makes.

I have faith in Shale's taste.

Edit - While I am patently hyping Shale in a place he might actually read.  I bought this the other week and suffice to say I am hellaz happy with it.

[Shale]

Quiet, Brazilian scum.

X-COM is definitely getting played, I just can't justify buying it before the inevitable sale discount when my PC backlog is so ridiculous (and includes X-COM games to boot).

Also I may or may not be playing ShF3 at this exact moment.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Doctor Who.  Terry Pratchett.  His current avatar.  18 posts ago he said "Dredd: Very solid."  Most of the comics he reads.  Pretty much everything in this post.  Challah he makes.

I have faith in Shale's taste.

This is about me gratuitously ragging on Shining Force rather than Shale's taste. He was raised on Monkey Island and Sam & Max, he's one of the exalted.

Quiet, Brazilian scum.

Also I may or may not be playing ShF3 at this exact moment.

Instant rimshot, just add water. G'night, ladies.

[Grefter]

And I am playing Fire Emblem 10 because I can't buy Chrono Cross on PSN, otherwise I would be playing it right about now, I see no reason any of this matters.

Also not sure if you know how this pay to play thing works, but okay.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

And Grefter am playing Fire Emblem 10 because I can't buy Chrono Cross

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of multilayered rimshots overlapping each other.

[Grefter]

I think you don't know how rimshots work and your neighbour has taken up drumming as a hobby.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I have no idea what I'm doing

I think the lady doth protest too much.

[Shale]

Also not sure if you know how this pay to play thing works, but okay.

I could buy the game now for fifty bucks, or wait until I can get it for $20 without any risk of running out of games I like in the meantime.

[Meeplelard]

Technically, Shale doesn't make Challah.  He buys the Challah and uses it to make some fine french toast.

SPEAKING OF THINGS WITH POOR TASTE!

Fire Emblem 5: Holy shit, Leaf Promoted!  Also got Xavier.  Uh, yeah, getting him and the membership card does not look reliably doable, seeing as while the Lenster Knights will not attack the kids, they WILL attack each other once they turn neutral, thus likely to kill each other.  Thankfully, I never use Secret Shops in FE games, so I'd rather have that Master Axe that Xavier brings.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Also not sure if you know how this pay to play thing works, but okay.

I could buy the game now for fifty bucks, or wait until I can get it for $20 without any risk of running out of games I like in the meantime.

This is the forum equivalent of a failed marriage proposal. You make me proud, boy.

[Shale]

I do what I can.

[Grefter]

If I didn't set myself up to be disappointed I wouldn't be me.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You feed off that particular pathos, yes.

[Fenrir]

Finish the tutorial and go up to the first boss in Demon's Souls (Phalanx) and you'll know if the game's for you. It's not too long!



Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm by the way just saying, but I've heard XCOM has some pretty suspicious enemy scaling. Like, finish Y story mission or develop X technology and suddendly every enemy is better/more aggressive, while getting your soldier better equipment doesn't do anything so your save is basically screwed if you pick the wrong choices, and the game doesn't tell you about it.

Rest aside. None of this Oblivion-like design is in any PURE Souls game.

[Shale]

I played a bit of it at the last Texas con, so I know I don't hate the gameplay. Didn't reach the first boss, though, so I didn't really get to taste the difficulty level. I downloaded it (why not?), so I'll give it a stab at some point.

OGs2: Final battle. Trying to motivate myself to slog through the evil Choukijin again. And the Custos again. And the Custos grunts again. I was hoping Euzeth would call in some Balmar enemies or something wacky from Alpha/2 or something.

ShF3: Insane mode playthrough. Up to the dragon's cave in Scenario 2. MVPs for this run are spellcasters just because of the 50% defense bonus enemies get from the difficulty setting - although Rock has been ripping stuff apart with throwing axes thanks to the mithril one you get in C4.

[Niu]

OGs2: Final battle. Trying to motivate myself to slog through the evil Choukijin again. And the Custos again. And the Custos grunts again. I was hoping Euzeth would call in some Balmar enemies or something wacky from Alpha/2 or something.

He summons a combined Volkruss if you beat the two split ones.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

BioShock Infinite is a game like Nier.  You beat it and you're only halfway done because the second half of the game is where you play it again and say "HOLY SHIT how did I not catch that?" the whole way through.

I will probably write a long thing about the thematics of the game, but suffice to say at first it seems like it's a story about the whitewashing of America's past in favor of a pre-racial America where everything was great and ignoring the dark side of life at the time, but it's actually about the power of guilt and taking personal responsibility for things.

Also Booker reminded me of one of my favorite archetypes.  He's a terrible person but he's got just the right sliver of decency to hate himself for it and is cynical enough to think everyone else is at least as bad as him.  Reminds me of me. Or Elim Garak.  We're basically the same person, he and I.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FE13 - COLLECT MCGUFFIN TIEMS or maybe I could just recruit Noire and be done with the kids. Cherche's gonna remain a virgin forever, so giving birth to Elfboy will have to wait until a replay. Lissa and Maribelle were also bereft of pony (:downsrimshot:). And Panne. And Nowi (WHO SHOULD NOT GET LAID FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER THOUSAND YEARS fuck you intsys). And Olivia. Jesus, Olivia survivability.

[AndrewRogue]

LoL: I have become a support main. I shall stun all of the carries forever. Seriously though, still mostly playing support as it beats fighting over other roles.

Bioshock Infinite: Picked this up last night. Picked it up on PS3 because I didn't feel like dealing with PC bullshit.

I really miss my mouse.

Anyhow. Not too far in, but thus far I can say this.

[Fenrir]

WA XF: Finished 1-13
I'm surprised by how good Sacred Slayers are. With item slots being extremely limited, I expected healing to be pretty bad. (and thus, rather balanced?) Instead we get near MT full healing at a ver low MP cost. 
Gadgeteers now look utterly outclassed. Especially since I'm not bothering with excavators, obsessively looking for item scopes, and the like.
Tony is pretty useful as a bait for magical enemies / as the guy who goes and opens all those useless treasure boxes. An excavator with sacred slayer equipment would probably do his job better though.

Is there any way to know when buffs/debuffs/status effects will run out?


Ys 1 (Chronicles PSP version):
Beat this. I picked nightmare mode, forgetting that Adol gets to the max level halfway through this game, and that late bosses are already huge bastards in normal mode. Vagullion, Dark Fact and the two disembodied heads took me something like 50-100 tries each. No jokes.

It is Ys 1. Adol doesn't slash enemies, he rams into them. Every item/piece of equipment has a nice picture, every NPC gets an entry in the record book. The strong blue demons from the beginning of the game are a joke 10 minutes later. The game lasts less than a dozen hours.  There's badass music. And anime girls. Every new piece of equipment and every level up is seen as fantastic. The game starts by forcing you to speak to villagers for 30 minutes then it's nearly all fighting from then on. And trees bleed.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

LoL: I have become a support main. I shall stun all of the carries forever. Seriously though, still mostly playing support as it beats fighting over other roles.

I always get support picked out from under me in solo queue.

(I'm finally at the point where I can play other roles, but still main support.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Most status effects wear off following the third turn of the target which gets them, although some (such as Invoke and Rush, and obviously Turn Stolen), use a different number, and sleep/stone/confuse are just completely random. This guide has the complete list. </shameless plug>

Widespread is ridiculously good (and is a large part of what makes Heal so good), but it's balanced by being stuck in a class with crappy stats unless you invest about half the game's worth of CSP into it. Sacred Slayer OC is too strong overall regardless, though.


Star Ocean 4 - Aeos revisit. Both boss fights here are so good, swarm fight done right then nasty boss who summons minions and encourages you to switch between PCs to deal with them or the boss most effectively. I've found the game kinda easy for a Star Ocean thus far, though much of that is the fact that it's kind of a replay in practice due to watching everything before (or maybe it's just a comparison with Dark Souls), those fights were seriously intense though. Great stuff. I'm definitely on the Captain K train for this game.


Dark Souls - So Iron Golem went from "this is frustrating it's kind of a long fight and sooner or later I make a dumb mistake and either fall off the cliff or get hit by his ridiculously strong grab attack" to discovering that the 2-handed heavy attack from my halberd all but stun-locks the guy. Um, lol? (Funnilly enough I only started using it because my light attack sometimes missed between his legs and that got frustrating.) Anyway I made friends with some demons who can now ferry me back and forth to some swank castle. Sure whatevs.

[SnowFire]

Gadgeteers get their niche from the fact that a bunch of good items in the back half of the game are Gadgeteer-only, stuff like the "cure any status ailment" item (rather than the "FAQ beforehand" cure 1 status items).  But yeah, meh to item micromanagement.  The thing I did like from Gadgeteer, though, was Decelerate.  Especially on a character with a ranged attack - Dandelion Shot being the most obvious.  The effect is barely noticeable against hordes of average opponents, but against one badass debuffed opponent?  Buffs / debuffs last according to the number of turns a target gets, so Slow Down / Debilitate -> Formation Arts Decelerate physicals spam -> lol turns.  (Even better with Levin using Cancel Strike, but you aren't using him.)  Sure you can theoretically kill someone faster with Elementalist spam, but the deny-turns with 15HKOs strategy also works and is hilarious and easy on the MP.

[Captain K.]

I'm definitely on the Captain K train for this game.

Is this the first time we've liked the same game?