What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Meeplelard]

Project X Zone: Up to Chapter 13!  Apparently there is a party split because...I guess the team is starting to get too large so it's either smaller maps with less units or huge oversized maps that take forever like the previous one!

To be fair, the previous one was really kind of 2 maps spliced together, since you kill all enemies, then HUGE TANK OUT OF NOWHERE THAT BASICALLY CHANGES THE LAYOUT OF THE MAP! followed by a whole bunch of reinforcements, with 3 bosses.  At least I got to shoot Saya in the face with a machine gun or something.

[Fenrir]

Yeah I really really recommend the fan patch for Bloodlines. Wesp5's.

There are a lot more combat/dungeons lategame compared to earlygame the game's no Fallout 1. So you need to think about your build a little. It's not Alpha Protocol where you pretty much just die if you pick the wrong build, but you'll need some offense as some parts can get pretty damn hard.

I'll just dump a ton of info on you since I've played the game 8 times.

Ok:


- Defense sounds worthless but is good for survival, I suggest raising it lategame.

- You should focus on one weapon type. Guns are good lategame but terrible early. Using a few points on melee or unarmed to make the earlygame smoother and just focusing on guns lategame is not a bad idea.

- I really really suggest only picking one "social skill". Ventrue's Dominate and Malkavian's crazytalk count as social skills. Also every woman is bisexual and every man is heterosexual (obviously) so you should pick a girl if you want to use seduction. In regular Bloodlines, Persuasion is much better than the other two skills and on par with Dominate/Crazytalk, but I heard the patch changed this.

- Thaumaturgy and Celerity are OP.

- Hacking is cool.

- Don't get crazy about books, they're only really useful if you want to min/max.

- It's better to focus on most skills, but Haggle and sneaking are skills you might want to put a few points in even if you don't want to max them.

- Yeah don't pick Malkavian. Or Nosferatu. I think female Ventrue, Toreador or Treme would be more your thing.


Hotline Miami Vita: Finished this in one setting. Damn.

[VySaika]

Female Toreador is what I played, it worked well. They get celerity! Celerity is op as shit.

I do hear Tremere is even more ridiculously strong, though.

[Fenrir]

Nah Tremere's thaumaturgy is less strong than Celerity. Still OP.

They get a really useful shield that eats half damage and lasts for a while.
Plus a skill that drains maxHP (Like, 1/3rd) and works on most bosses. And the multitarget version of that skill. They just completely trivialize both final bosses.
And Blood Boil, which is not particularly useful but still fun.

[Scar]

So I rented Skyward Sword...

and while the game is tons of fun, I fucking can't stand the Wiimote controls. It makes the gawd damn game so frustrating at times.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Malk is great for a second play through but if it's your first play through I eagerly await your forum post in a couple weeks asking "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED IN THIS GAME???"

[Fenrir]

That's the only innovative part of 3D Zelda since Majora's Mask!


I finished the litteral pixel hunt in Hotline Miami and got the other ending.
True ending = Coherent ending.
Regular ending = Meta.

Best tracks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR1SvoPhCVg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taU8ugPg618
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYLxlIF7Wn0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJDrXiMVndw

I still need to get A+ everywhere with the frog, and then maybe replay the entire game with only Oscar.
Sounds like a game for Gref. Rob. Zenny. Trips. You've all already played it, right?

[Sierra]

I'll just dump a ton of info on you since I've played the game 8 times.

I really wonder sometimes how you have time to do anything but play games and post about it.

Anyway, decided to go Toreador. That which cannot be seduced will be shot. (And I'm sure by now it's correctly assumed that I will run female protagonist whenever a game gives me the opportunity.)

[Niu]

Project X Zone: Up to Chapter 13!  Apparently there is a party split because...I guess the team is starting to get too large so it's either smaller maps with less units or huge oversized maps that take forever like the previous one!

To be fair, the previous one was really kind of 2 maps spliced together, since you kill all enemies, then HUGE TANK OUT OF NOWHERE THAT BASICALLY CHANGES THE LAYOUT OF THE MAP! followed by a whole bunch of reinforcements, with 3 bosses.  At least I got to shoot Saya in the face with a machine gun or something.[/quote

Meep, this gets worse. It eventually gets to a point that you'll feel NxC's map is actually shorter.

[Grefter]

Anyway, decided to go Toreador.

You chose poorly.  Dracula was totes a Ventrue.  Ventrue 4 life.

Pretty sure Rob has played it, Zenny is too busy crying about not getting 12 inch tube steaks nightly.  Trips I am dead certain has played it.  It is Otter The Game.

I haven't played it because it is too twitchy and anger inducing and I am banned from those kinds of games after playing Trials.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

You chose poorly.  Dracula was totes a Ventrue.  Ventrue 4 life.

Right on Ventrue bro.  I didn't become a Dracula to be some poor-ass biker or a mincing fop.  I wanna GET FUCKINNNN PAIDDDDD!!

But yeah, I've played Hotline Miami.  That game is disorienting as fuck when you're drunk and it's 2 AM.

[Dhyerwolf]

TitS- Sorry, I don't believe that your world has invented airships but apparently not banks. At the part where the Matron is mugged of her $100,000 while walking along the coast. Guessing I'm not going to get rid of this plotline for a while. On the plus side, game's challenge hasn't gone to shit yet. And hey, the first plottish boss actually seemed to have durability, speed and damage (more than all the bosses in the topic!) and some of the monster hunts are putting up decent fights. 

[Fudozukushi]

Fallout New Vegas: Rule of the Pacifist.

When I last left off I was a bright shiney level 1 outside New Vegas.  Well Freeside but close enough.  My first goal, find two more locations nearby and level up!  This was interuppted by a Fiend winning a fight with a caravaneer who promptly plasmaed off 1/3 of my health with each shot.  As I bunny hopped around a building and gullped down stimpacks wondering if I could make a break for Crimson Caravan, the Fiend grabbed a 10MM pistol for some batshit reason and let me make it to the CC who promptly shot him to death.  Yay!  My first not-kill!  And then on my way to Freeside I got jumped by another Fiend!  Like, I only get a Fiend on Eastside maybe once every other playthrough and then all of a sudden I get two in one game.  What the hell.  So I scooby-dooed back to CC who promptly decapitated the bitch.  Yay more loot.  Shitty loot, but loot.

Thankfully that's the last of my Fiend adventures for a while, but my Freeside adventures start out just as--if not moreso!--dangerous.  I'm quickly attacked by a thug and his pool cue, as I've just arrived no random Kings member will save me, and attempts to beseach the Followers for aid go on deaf ears(enemies won't go into the Fort it seems), but the sheer experience of seeing the Fort gives me my first level and the power of Swift Learner(which oh god will I need).  But then I remember the bodyguard Kings who promptly makes him eat a 10mm submachinegun death.  Then when I get attacked by more and more Thugs Mick & Ralph come to my rescue because Thugs will go in there for some reason.

I mostly just play around Freeside-Stripe for a while since it's chocked full of pacifist quests.  One NCR trooper randomly dropped dead allowing me to loot the Light NCR armor.  Useful with the 10% move speed for Light armor.  But unfortunately, my pacifist ways cost the life of dear Old Ben, for when he got surrounded by three Thugs I could do naught to save him.  But I also got to watch a hooker explode a dude's head with her bare fist so everything worked out alright in the end.

I suddenly felt the burning need to do the main storyline trail crumbs in reverse, so that's what I did.  Despite not actually doing any NCR quests previous to Boulder City, smooth-talking my way through that was apparently enough for a Fame bump.  Also a dead radscorpion came flying over the horizon in chunks.  That was weird.

Heading down to Novac, I can't actually get the ghoul quest from Manny, so I have to get it from... Nobark.  Huh.  Anyway, I evade the outside feral ghouls and they won't follow me inside.  Natrually my non-existent ability to Sneak means the indoor ghouls find me despite me beelining for the safe floor.  And then the Feral Ghouls follow me to the safe floor.  Well, this'll be an interesting trainwreck!  I head over to Jason and BLAHBLAHBLAH him and run around to throw the ferals off my trail since the Brotherhood are just ignoring them.  Except Jason.  Who's now hostile to me and whacking my ass with a tire iron.

Well shit.  Let's see how many cars we can pile on this trainwreck!  I hop down to the basement, past the feral ghouls lost there and Chris running around like a jackass, and Jason and the two ferals follow me.  I go and talk to Davison get his BLAH and run over to Harlon and get HIS blah and let him kill one of the ferals and... why is there only one feral?  I head back and see a bunch of friendly pips on my compass and... well this apparently happened.  So with all the exciting things over with--except for Harlend getting obliterated by the Nightkin during his escape.

Heading over to Primm, and trying to free Beagle is looking like a disaster.  While the guys in outside Primm can be killed by the NCR guys nearby, those inside the hotel won't come out and there's two guards at the very start.  One of those two took themselves out with Dynamite, but the other's adamant steve.  This is gonna be tricky.

Back up to Goodsprings for the tutorial.  Than over to the Prison for... well no real reward since I only get Powder Ganger fame if they actually fend off the NCR.  And that just doesn't happen unless you stack the odds in their favor or they get lucky with NCR bugs.  And the NCR didn't even lose a single trooper this time.  And then they immediately went to sleep in the  prisoner beds once everything was dead.

In the mood for Powder Ganger fame, and since it's one of the only quests I can do for Boone--oh yeah I did Boone's recruitment thing.  Yay technicalities.  Where was I?  Oh right, I head to the Legion Raid Camp and lure them into an NCR patrol.  Well, I do that after witnessing this.  Unfortunatly the Legion wins the fight, so I end up luring the dude into Nightstalkers to finish them off.  Thank you Animel Freind.

This allows me juuuuust enough of a clear path to bring in Boone and get his history points.

Then I go and do some stuff for the Khans because it's a lot of Skill checks I can make.  Same thing for Bitter Springs and Camp Golf.  Gonna do Return to Sender soon.

Then I also realize the sheer particularities of what I have to do at McCarren.

Pacifist Rules more than Tunnel Snakes
Rule 1: Don't kill things.  Obviously.  I'm counting Companion kills into this as well.
-Going good so far!
Rule 2: Complete the Caeser's Legion questline.  Since this Questline unavoidably involves killing people, my actions to complete those Quests will be solved by not directly murdering people.
-Haven't even touched it.  My devious Master plan now involves 6 Perception.  I have 1 base.
Rule 3: Complete as many Caeser's Legion Quests as possible.  (This includes taking out Forlon Hope through what I'll describe as a hair-brained scheme.)
-I don't even have the Legion on my Pimp-Boy yet.
Rule 4: Complete as many Companion Quests as I can.  (With some trickery it should be possible to get everyone but Lily)
-Of the 13 History Points available for Boone, I need 5 for his quest.  There are only 5 points available that don't require something dying directly as a result of my actions.  1 of those points runs opposite of a Legion Quest.  Oh joy.  THANKFULLY.  Said Legion Quest seems to require me to kill someone with no alternatives, so niener niener niener.
Rule 5: Complete the DLCs I can; figure out if Dead Money is actually possible.
-Not a priority right now.
Rule 6: Get the maximum amount of Idolized factions I can. 
-Already failed Powered Gangers and Good Springs and maybe even Novac.  Good going me.  Getting Idolized with the Stripe will also have some problems.
Rule 7: Get every Ending Slide group.
-11/29.  Well that's just low-effort ain't it?
Rule 8: Come up with more Rules.
-See below.
Rule 9: Kings Rule Freeside.
-Damn straight.

[Sierra]

As I bunny hopped around a building and gullped down stimpacks wondering if I could make a break for Crimson Caravan, the Fiend grabbed a 10MM pistol for some batshit reason and let me make it to the CC who promptly shot him to death.  Yay!  My first not-kill!

Taking the Iji approach to pacifism, I see.
 

Rule 9: Kings Rule Freeside.
-Damn straight.

Good man.

[Sierra]

VtMB: Knox Harrington, the video artist?

Game references its favorite things blatantly and proudly, I see. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, call the president." Also Corvega, car of the future today.

Anyway, cleared out most of the preliminary Santa Monica quests. Tourette, huh? Cute, guys. So at the moment I am mostly just sitting on XP until it looks like I need it for something, though I did shell out for a couple ranks of hacking so I could actually get into anything. I am kinda failtastic at combat but that's not such a big deal when you have Matrix speed.

EDIT: oh yeah, the hotel? Was neat, but I expected all hell to break loose when I picked up the pendant. Instead I just walked right out of the building. Oh well!

[Meeplelard]

Project X Zone: Bruce Willis decided to show up again and actually joined me instead of being just a prologue character.


Also finally got a chance to play Shadow Over Mystara Co-op with a friend.  Game is even better when you have at least one other person!

[Fenrir]

I'll just dump a ton of info on you since I've played the game 8 times.

I really wonder sometimes how you have time to do anything but play games and post about it.

This reminds me that I only have two days left for my master thesis.

We all only ever pick female characters but seriously, if you ever want to replay Bloodlines. Choose a male malk.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Dear DQ5 fan translation team:  Thank you, phrase Joy Cookies is now a regular part of my lexicon.

[Fudozukushi]

As I bunny hopped around a building and gullped down stimpacks wondering if I could make a break for Crimson Caravan, the Fiend grabbed a 10MM pistol for some batshit reason and let me make it to the CC who promptly shot him to death.  Yay!  My first not-kill!

Taking the Iji approach to pacifism, I see.

This line will become even more hilarious later.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I'll just dump a ton of info on you since I've played the game 8 times.

I really wonder sometimes how you have time to do anything but play games and post about it.

We all only ever pick female characters

Speak for yourself.  I don't need to play Fallout 2 on easy mode.

And on the topic of good RPGs and being a totally rad dude, I finished a playthrough of KotOR2 with the restoration patch, which I hadn't done in maybe a year?  Possibly more.  Anyway, game's much better as a dude because the Handmaiden has a solo fight with her sisters (which is one of the few times you can directly adjust a follower's alignment rather than doing it via your own with influence), throws down with Atris, and does other things that are relevant to the climax of the story, while the Disciple doesn't really do anything that isn't in some way redundant (the stuff about Revan's tactics is also basically the same stuff that G0-T0 explains, for example).  Also you can be Jesus. 

Still good.  It ended with me and my bro Atton going into the edge of known space to fight aliens and shit because we didn't have anything better to do.

e:  I forgot one good thing about the Disciple.  If you're dark side Atton may kill him at the end.

[Grefter]

Game references its favorite things blatantly and proudly, I see.

The bins around Santa Monica are all shaped like bins from Arcanum.

[Sierra]

Yep. Also apparently some local dude made bail by hocking 40 copies of Arcanum.

[Otter]

Started up Bloodlines just because it's been discussed here and I'm dangerously impressionable.  I made a male Ventrue named Osaka-bancho with a focus on strength, melee, and Dominate.  My RP will consist of either making people genuflect or making them into examples of what happens when you don't.

In 4jf news, Rick Perry has made it safely back to Galuf's castle with the help of his telepathic moogle friends.  This run is my intro to blue magic and I'll admit that consequently I haven't gotten to know time magic, beastmastery or samuraidom as well as I might, they all sorta function mainly to carry blue.  It's still been a ride just figuring out all these new spells and it's made more comfortable by the fact that I can run from all the randoms I want without really needing to worry about my level come boss time.  That said, my previous and inaugural run taught me to respect the lategame bosses and especially NeoElfDeath himself, whom I ultimately cheesed out that time with Break but I haven't learned any Break spells so far this time around and so we'll just have to wait and see how that shakes out won't we.

[NotMiki]

Rogue Legacy - is tactical leveling dressed up as a roguelike dressed up as Castlevania.  You go into the castle, loot shit til you die, then spend money on either improving the equipment available to you, improving your statz and passives, or improving the classes available to you.  Each time through you have to chose one of three 'heirs' of your last intrepid(ly suicidal) adventurer, and they can have random traits and have pre-assigned classes, so the game gently nudges you toward trying different playstyles.  What makes it really work is you lose all your money each time you respawn, so if you want to unlock some of the pricier stuff, you need to do well in a single run.  And to top it all off, the controls are nicely responsive and enemies are well-designed.  Good times.

[Captain K.]

Happy Wars:  Pretty fun!  Basically LoL but with a lot less shit going on.  Mostly playing Mage right now because I got a spiffy premium wand from the spinner.