What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Sierra]

Oh, right. 2AM postin', y'know.

I always thought it was too nice a gun to waste expensive ammo on sniping some random Fiend.

[Fudozukushi]

As an NPC he would have unlimited ammo so there's no loss of profits at all.

EDIT: Animal friend has been surprisingly useful.  Normally you wouldn't bother because y'know, EXP.  But watching a Nightstalker kill a robo-scorpion or a giant rat go on a murder spree or Legion dogs turn on their masters is hilarious.

[Pyro]

Penny Arcade 4: Beaten.

This was a fun gameplay-oriented romp. I didn't mix up Trainers at all so I could get a DL-topicable set of beasties, and even then it wasn't all that difficult on Normal/Veteran. Veteran offered up SOME challenge, while Normal didn't. I'd suggest DLers play on either Veteran or Insane for maximum fun. There is no real penalty for losing a fight (you just restart it at your leisure), so playing on a higher difficulty makes the gameplay shine a lot more in terms of strategy and utilizing your options efficiently.

And there are a lot of options! Every monster has a skillset, the Trainers have skillsets (and passives), and different equip types give different passive bonuses in addition to stat bonuses. The game is heavy on the quickdraw-to-kill-enemies aspect but there are tanking/healing strategies that probably work a little better on harder modes (So long as you don't take TOO long... enemies still power up every turn *grumble*).

Plot/characters aren't worth mentioning really.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Blue Dragon - Randoms were harder than the boss in that factory dungeon! I am amused.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

As an NPC he would have unlimited ammo so there's no loss of profits at all.

EDIT: Animal friend has been surprisingly useful.  Normally you wouldn't bother because y'know, EXP.  But watching a Nightstalker kill a robo-scorpion or a giant rat go on a murder spree or Legion dogs turn on their masters is hilarious.

Only for their default weapon. Other weapons use ammo.

[Fudozukushi]

As an NPC he would have unlimited ammo so there's no loss of profits at all.

EDIT: Animal friend has been surprisingly useful.  Normally you wouldn't bother because y'know, EXP.  But watching a Nightstalker kill a robo-scorpion or a giant rat go on a murder spree or Legion dogs turn on their masters is hilarious.

Only for their default weapon. Other weapons use ammo.

Companions use ammo for non-default weapons, NPCs don't.  The Ranger I gave the AMR to only had one explosive bullet but shot a dozen times.  Same thing with Giles.

[SnowFire]

In the setting, though, that's a kind of nice anime-ish moment, a la the beginning of Wild Arms 4.  "Holy shit, Caesar's Legion!  Wait...  I have a super-gun with unlimited ammo?  Where did that come from?  Wait... the power was within me the whole time!  I can save everyone now!" (Then skip the part where you pickpocket it back.)

[Anthony Edward Stark]

That's pretty weird considering how pickpocketing works but I guess #gamebryo.

[Sierra]

VtMB: "A fighting Tong?" Not anymore, they aren't.

Oh shit, it's the Mandarin.

[Meeplelard]

PXZ: ...I think I killed all the villains (or they "went back to their home world" for those that didn't die...or "are functionally dead but technically not but actually is always dead because Zombie" in the case of Lord Raptor) save for the original creations for this game.  I think this qualifies as being in endgame now?

[Fudozukushi]

Fallout New Vegas, where the word of the day is Slavery.  As in Slavery to the game crashing and freezing but being enjoyable enough that you work past them after the rage comas.

Normally I've been spacing these out every other day for two play sessions, but I played A LOT today and didn't do much yesterday so my mind's all kinda sorta cloudy on what I did.  I brought Arcade to Repconn and then... stopped?  I dunno.  Like I said, hazy.  But after that I went and did Veronica's companion quest.  With great difficulty.  I'd already done the plant thing, couldn't do the Pulse Gun, and sold the E-Finder.  Thankfully the Finder is buggy as shit and respawns, but then I had problems with Freeside Thugs.  If I brought Veronica in she'd kill them.  If I tried to pickpocket the E-Finder I'd get caught by a goddamn kid.  If I tried to talk to the kid he'd end up fleeing because I'm in combat because Freeside Thugs are apparently omniscient in knowing your position.  So after far-too-fucking-many attempts I get the E-Finder and head over to activate it.  Cool thing is that the Follower there has dialogue if you're in the BoS.  Neat.

So blah blah blah, get that done.  The final jackass Paladins at the end are actually helpful since they kill the Scorpions in front of Hidden Valley allowing me to actually fast travel from there.  Veronica stays with the BOS because the other way involves corpses.

Then I did... a thing.  Yeah, that sounds right?  E-DE's quest along the way somewhere.  Followers him since BOS is gonna meet the earth.  Oh yeah, I went and grabbed Arcade's points.  First time I ever did the White Wash.  In fact that's probably the last quest I've never not done before.

Somewhere along the way I went and recoverd Ranger Esteban's corpse.  I had Light Step so traps were no worry, and luck of luck had a caravan distract the fiends while I snuck away with the body without a scratch on me.

At some point I felt the burning need to do Lonesome Road.  Since I wanted to do it with Idolized factions that's what I did.  NCR, Legion, Strip all went to Idolized and I boosted what else I could (Freeside, Goodsprings).  I also finally got around to installing Primm Slim as sheriff.

Once on the Lonesome Road, having NCr/Legion and actual talky stats meant I could ip a good bit more information out of Ulysses.  Unfortunately the Divide ripped a hell of a lot out of me.  Some of the Marked Men were literally cheating since they beelined straight for me as soon as I detonated the warheads even when I was Hidden.  After several failures at the second necessary warhead, I lucked out finding a stealth boy and used that to get to the highway.  Which is where the real FUN* begins.  I manage to sneak past the first group of MM there, but the stealth boy runs out and I have one hot on my ass when I start running into Deathclaw territory.  Thankfully it's an arc-welder MM so he pegs the deathclaw and then they go at it.  Then ED-E does his teleport thing whenever a plot conversation happens and he's now in the middle of deathclaw lane.  So as I'm running on the walls of the highway jumping across pits and breaks to stop myself from being horribly butchered, I suddenly start getting EXP pop-ups.  It can't be ED-E.  Even with 10 CHA he couldn't beat a single MM one-on-one earlier.  So, when I get to satchel charge lane and a Deathclaw blows up there, all I can fathom is that if any of them die I get EXP anyway.

Anyway, the elevator ride was kinda lulzy since the explosions just killed Tunnelers.  Everything until the Temple was unnoteworthy.  But then in the Temple I learned I can't unseal the maintenance pod unless the security bots are destroyed.  BUT HEY!  I had a perk level recently, so I reload that, get the perk that allows me to disable robots.  After a pain in the ass to get back to the Temple, it seems Disabling the security bots completely removes the option to even open the pod in the first place.  hahahahahaha

Anyway, Ulysses comletely steamrolls the final, and I go and burn the whole world to the ground.  Sure, I take Rep hits with the NCR and Legion, but that's what forgiveness is for!  After some truely epic malarky, I get Arcade's comp quest done as well(have them side with the NCR because it's not like I'm fighting.)  I get Rex's done as well during this time.  And that's actually kinda a story.  I went to grab the brain from the Legion dog since this is supposed to be a Pro-Legion playthrough.  Now, I expected since I had Animal Friend that I would avoid fighting the dog in the arena, but NOPE that's another quest I don't care about.  So as I'm hopping like an idiot in the Arena being glad the Fort auto-saves, I hit the sweet spot, the heavens align and a Legionare shoots the dog dead.  HOORAY.

Anyway, after talking a man into becoming a meal for cannibals and blowing up the BOS bunker again and letting Luck guide my actions, it's time for the Arizona Killer!  Well, sometime along the way I freed Silus, taught Legionarress that the Red button on Mines is the off switch and gave false intel on Aureliues of Phoenix's plan thing.

SO ARIZONA KILLER.  My ridiculously stupid original plan here was to use the move item feature to drag active mines from the No-Man's land between Forlorn Hope and Nelson to the stage and let things end that way.  But you can't move active mines.  So, I just set up the AA guy to shoot the vertibird outta the sky.  It's not murder if my pip-boy doesn't say I've killed something!  And then when I fast travel to the Fort in my NCR disguise I completely fail the entire Legion questline.  GG

So, final battle!  It's hilarious watching Prime Legionariess just cave through the NCR lines without any casualties.  Anyway, since I told the Remnants to support NCR they showed up early.  Now, I was planning on running past them before they butchered me, but apparently things have changed and now they're friendly to you even across faction lines.  So now I have two super-tough bodyguards who instantly brutalize any of my other allies.  Since they do that, I don't have any support going forward.  The Boomers are always kinda buggy, they released two payloads and killed nothing.  But the Great Khans manage to buy enough time for me to move on before they're effortlessly slaughtered as usual.  Eventually they both Remnants fall after killing about 30 Prime Legionaries.  In utter comedy, they both had their weapons knocked away at the same time, then grabbed the others and had one last hurrah before dying.

So, talky, talky END.  Slavery finally takes it's roots in the Mojave, and all without me directly killing a thing.  Sorta.

Pacifist Rules, but not as much as Slavery
Rule 1: Don't kill things.  Obviously.  I'm counting Companion kills into this as well.
-Pip-Boy shows that I have 0 kills of any stripe.  ARE YOU GONNA CALL THE PIP_BOY A LIAR HUH?
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.
-I have another plan to try in Arizona Killer later.  It's probably more insane than dragging live mines.
Rule 3: Complete as many Caeser's Legion Quests as possible.
-Done and done.
Rule 4: Complete as many Companion Quests as I can.  (With some trickery it should be possible to get everyone but Lily)
-Raul's quest complete.
-Cass's quest complete.
-Boone's quest complete.
-Veronica's quest complete.
-Rex's quest complete.
-Ed-e's quest complete.
Rule 5: Complete the DLCs I can; figure out if Dead Money is actually possible.
-Old World Blues completed.
-Loansome Road completed.
-Didn't do Honest hearts yet, but I'm gonna do it.  I AM I TRULY MA JUST WANNA CHIEV
Rule 6: Get the maximum amount of Idolized factions I can.
-Well this failed utterly.  Who knew murder made for easier Idolizing?
Rule 7: Get every Ending Slide group.
-29/29.  Who's a bad mama jamma?
Rule 9: Kings Rule Freeside.
-When I was attacked by the Silver Rush Crier, King was running around the Third Floor.  But none of the outside Kings would defend me, even when they got hit.
Rule 10: Slavery Rules the Mojave.
-And there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it other than shoot at me because I have no way of defending myself.


Anyway, I will do Honest Hearts later, I just wanted to blitzed to the ending for now.  Lonesome Road also gave me a preview of how infeasible Dead Money is. 

[Fenrir]

When life gives me lemons...
I play Persona 4 for the first time on Very Hard mode.
After the Longest Intro Ever, the game shows that it is completely. relentless. on that mode.
It's not as brutal as Devil Summoner Hard Mode, as destroying enemies easily is A Thing, but resource management? I treat half the items as more valuable than any Megaelixir in any Final Fantasy. Snuff Souls? 1 Snuff soul is more useful than Chie.
For the First Time Ever in SMT, physical skills are really useful. Yes, I'll use 7 HP to avoid taking 80 damage.

[Shale]

BL2: Beat the game, started the DLC. Captain Scarlett is fun - good variety of stuff to do, good writing ("child schmafficking" is one of my favorite lines in the game), neat treasure.

Sadly, I also discovered that this game does the same thing the first game did, where if you finish the main game and then go into the DLC campaigns you quickly go over the level cap for the first playthrough, so every enemy is at least four levels lower than you and a total pushover. Instead of sleepwalking through the DLC until I got bored and quit, like I did with the first one, I decided to switch over to True Vault Hunter difficulty and just go for the DLC immediately. Which worked in that the enemies are now leveling up with me again, but the problem now is that I'm on track to hit the level cap for TVH before I even finish the DLC, without so much as touching the main game. And I have to finish the main game on TVH before I can unlock the highest difficulty.

Gearbox, I love you but seriously learn to EXP curve.

[Meeplelard]

Project X Zone: Beat it.  Game is simple and fun, but not much else.  It definitely comes off as something intended to play in short bursts at a time, not a "marathon and beat this all at once!" due to it's structure.  It is better than Namco X Capcom since while that game was beefier, PXZ is just so faster.  No, maps don't take longer than NxC; average map in PXZ takes about an hour, these get a little longer come end game; NxC, some maps can take upwards to 2 or 3 hours.  PXZ also has things like, say, animation skip for attacks, and counter attacks don't suck roughly half way into the game, Multi Attacks are a HUGE deal in this case, being legitimately good crowd control, what have you.

Also, this game lacks Leon, and instead gives us Yuri.  Also lacks Shion and gives us...ok, her replacement isn't much better.

6/10 game, and now to derail it with something I know Djinn would thumbs up:

POTENTIAL IDEA: Nintendo joins the crew!

By which I mean I am looking at Nintendo's franchises and picking which ones would fit into PXZ.  Remember that PXZ had a consistent design standard for the most part, using only Humanoid characters with something resembling realistic proportions, or easily reimagined without harming the design, hence why some "no brainers" didn't get in like Sonic.  You'll also notice they used MMX characters, who probably are the easiest to transfer into Adult Humans while still looking relatively normal.  So yeah, I am taking this into account.

Here are some franchises I feel would work, and potentially thoughts on characters that I could see being used; if I leave the franchise blank, it's probably lack of knowledge of the franchise.  Also, only covering good guys, so PCs and Solo Units!

With that said, HERE WE GO! 


Legend of Zelda: Link/Zelda team up seems like an obvious thing; I know I said no villains, but Ganondorf does feel like a shoe-in there.
-As a bit of an aside, a meta thing to consider is that Capcom actually made a few Zelda games in the past, so Link being in a crossover with Capcom characters included is fitting! (...shut up about the latest Smash!)


Fire Emblem: I'm just gonna say Chrom/Robin as a team (Robin wearing a hood to avoid canon silliness), and Lucina as a Solo unit.  Feels like it fits FE Awakening the best.  A second team could be in the game, ideally from characters NOT from Awakening's Universe, just to illustrate the raw scope of FE Cast, kind of the way Sakura Wars had characters all over the place from my understanding in PXZ.

Metroid: Samus is a Solo Unit; seems logical enough.

Sin and Punishment

Xenoblade

Golden Sun: Isaac/Garet team w/ Ivan as a solo unit!  Yes, Garet will start asking too many questions, and one of the "bad guys" PCs like Heihachi or Demitri will tell him to just shut up, and everyone will cheer, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE THIS.

F-zero: Captain Falcon is a solo unit, THE FALCON PUNCH MUST BE IN THE GAME DAMN IT!

Punch Out: Little Mac could make a fun Solo Unit

Pokemon: Here me out on this one; the Pokemon Trainer is a solo unit, where in he has 6 preset Pokemon he uses in his attack.  Something like Pikachu, 3 starters from different regions and typing, possibly stages too, a legendary, and an Uber as his finisher.  Yes, this would be absolute madness on the battle field but isn't that what PXZ attacks moer or less end up as?
As in, a team would look like Pikachu, Bayleef, Blaziken, Piplup, Terrakion, and Yveltal; this is purely for example reasons, nothing more.

Legend of Murasame or whatever it's called: Takamaru as a solo unit.  Because screw you, that's why.

Kid Icarus: Pit and Pittoo as a unit.  hey, if PXZ can put KOS MOS and T-elos together, I don't see why this is impossible.  Also Palutena as a solo unit because DIVINE POWER OF TROLLING!!! is a must.


As an aside, Bayonetta would be perfect in a game like this.  Given her first game was published by Sega, and her second game is being published by Nintendo, and she's made by a bunch of former Capcom guys, she'd be bridging like 3 companies together or something like that!


Anyway, probably others I've forgotten, or we can take more units from franchises or something, but that should be a start for an idea of adding Nintendo's roster into the mix!

Why Nintendo?  Well, Monolith Software did help develop the game and they're owned by Nintendo so...

[Fudozukushi]

FNV: Have you seen what an anti-material rifle can do to a Deathclaw?  Yes, yes I have.  :joecool:

[DjinnAndTonic]

Re: Meeple's Latest Rant

<3

I see you're finally putting your powers to good use!

Suggestion: Earthbound
Well... Mother 3's adult PCs would certainly fit in, though the iconic Lucas or Ness or Mr. SATURN are less likely.

[hinode]

Up to chapter 18 on Project X Zone. The battle system's novelty has yet to wear off on me thus far, but the last few stages have been pretty lengthy. From what I've heard of the game I might end up taking a break around the 30s.

Character interaction has been my favorite part of the game thus far. Really glad they subbed all the pre- and post- battle dialogue for this unlike Endless Frontier, there's been some great lines in those. The actual plot, meanwhile, suffers from dimension hopping so much that it has almost no cohesion at all. All the bosses never ever dying after you beat them is getting silly as well, although from what I understand that was inherited from Namco x Capcom.

The Resonance of Fate duo are my MVPs thus far: great speed, great attack range, huge XP buildup rate, and a cheap barrier piercing skill. Aside from their own skills, they're great at getting any solo unit I want turns ASAP. Kogoro/Mii have a really good natural skillset (including another barrier busting skill) and more well-rounded and might actually be better if the game didn't keep deploying them near the back where they see less combat. Dante/Demitri also stand out just for dishing out tons of damage.

Not sure what's been more surreal so far, seeing a young Heihachi who is almost always on your side or Neneko in general.

[Luther Lansfeld]

EF definitely has some problems killing characters off as well.

[Meeplelard]

Re: Meeple's Latest Rant

<3

I see you're finally putting your powers to good use!

Suggestion: Earthbound
Well... Mother 3's adult PCs would certainly fit in, though the iconic Lucas or Ness or Mr. SATURN are less likely.

Can't speak for the adults in Mother 3 but the characters in Earthbound clearly have a stylized look that prevents them from working well without changing them drastically.  The Adults aren't much better than the kids in this regard.

Best example I can use to illustrate this is Brawl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2VG9IPUyiM

Lucas is standing right next to the Pokemon Trainer here, and is like half his height.  Remember that Pokemon Trainer is suppose to be young boy himself (though, I wouldn't buy the fact that he's 10 like the Kanto Trainer he's based off of is suppose to be, so we can assume he's a little older.  Still clearly not an adult due to his voice.)

Plus he's got things like a big head + small body combo. 

Look at the other characters I chose for this list from Brawl meanwhile.  Link, Zelda, Samus, Cpt. Falcon and Pit offhand.  All of them resemble normal humans, or need minor tweaks that don't really compromise the look.  In Earthbound (dunno about Mother 3), the stylized appearance is a big part of the look.

There's definitely something lost transferring from the Mother stylized style to PXZ's more realistic anime style.  For a similar case, I skipped over Ice Climbers.  Yeah, you could make Nana and Popo look realistic, but there's definitely something lost from the characters in doing so, they'd just be a boy and a girl in colored parkas with hammers...ok, I'll be fair, that is a unique looking design thinking on it.


(yes, I am totally overanalyzing this because it is SUPER SERIAL IMPORTANT and such)

[Nitori]

The Last of Us: man I love zombie movies

[Cotigo]

Hotline Miami: Bought for 3 bucks during a GOG sale.

What even is this game.

[Grefter]

What is Hotline Miami?

[Shale]

Rogue Legacy: Last boss! And now I know that if you kill his first form while standing on the extreme right of the screen, his second form spawns on top of you. Nice.

[Cotigo]

Grefter: As near as I can tell you're a drunken murderous late 1980s furry and you kill errbody

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Project Crosszone - Hi Cancan Dancer Excellen Mii.