What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Or having her wear pants. That would be silly.

[Clear Tranquil]

FF13 Lightning Returns - Cloud's costume is way too strong. Cloud's costume is WAY TOO STRONG! That damage is ABSURD!!

How is Aerith? 

Does she come with an innate healing ability or anything?~

[Dark Holy Elf]

I had absolutely no problems reading the text in MK2.  I tested both on a standard CRT TV and my 46' HDTV. I was using component cables though...

Ace Attorney 5: Finished.  I think it's in the middle of the pack in terms of ranking.  My overall gripe is that they kind of wanted to go with a 3 protagonist route, but with only 5 cases (and 2 of them are filler) there wasn't enough content to fully develop characterization and gameplay.  I still tend to get ahead of the game when it comes to cross examinations in that the game wants me to press first before presenting the evidence.  The result is that I never finish a trial with a perfect score.  There's a new DLC case today but at six dollars it seems pretty steep unless it's a 3 day trial.

Well there hasn't been a 3-day trial since the first game IIRC (unless Apollo Justice had one and I blanked it out) but for what it's worth the DLC case is certainly on the longer side of average, and certainly doesn't lack for new content, so if $30 for the first 5 cases was worth it for you then $6 for one more certainly should be. Plus it has an orca dressed as a pirate with a moustache.

Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies - Beat the DLC case. Heh. (significant spoiler warning) Oh yes, watching the game's villain running around in his traditional role again is surreal. Ha. Anyway, it's the first case in the series where the death isn't a murder by any definition? We were overdue for that. Overall a solid case, although the as with the maingame I think it gets a bit overwrought at points with things like the "villain"'s sudden transformation. Does tend towards convolution somewhat too. On the other hand... mad props for how it kept me guessing as to everyone's role in the thing. One of my complaints with the rest of the game was usually how obvious the killer was... not the case here! Dr. Crab was certainly a good red herring. I can't say I didn't enjoy it a fair deal and yeah is definitely worth picking up. Great humour and style points too. You can probably reasonably play it after the second case which maay be a better time than at the end, but I could see going either way there.

[Meeplelard]

New Super Luigi U: I beat Wendy O'koopa and am heading down the alternate path because reasons.  Stages are shorter but way harder than NSMBU still (I got close to losing all lives, but then got lucky on some minigames and now have about 14 so...), and you have more power ups (mostly the NSMBU power ups + Coptershroom and Penguin from NSMBW), and yet...I am getting all Star Coins easier.  I guess with smaller stages, even with a time limit, their locations tend to be more obvious and easier to get too.

[SnowFire]

Niu, re SMT4: I can't really comment on how out of character people were, not knowing the other games too deeply...  although I've looked at Nocturne boss fights on YouTube before the lulz, and there didn't appear to be a whole lot of depth there.  Not that there's a lot of depth in Nocturne in general with its silent protagonist and not even properly melodramatic scenes when he fights his friends, because he's silent.
<NocturneFormerHumanClassmate> Hello let's see who is more powerful, our friendship is over, oh no you beat me, why didn't you adopt my goofy philosophy.
<NocturneBeelzebub> Hello I am demon, chaos is awesome, we must fight to see if you are worthy of my help.
<NocturneLucifer> But first, I must know the extent of the power of darkness you hold within.  Behold the supreme power of darkness me, let's darkness fight.

Anyway Beelzebub is basically a non-entity in SMT4, so I suspect it's more a general demotion to random sidequest boss that would aggravate him.  However, some of the SMT4 characters have the combination of "vast importance" and "tiny amount of lines" so I have to assume that we're supposed to fill in details from SMT1, even if SMT4 is technically its own universe.  Stephen's the most obvious example - I'm still not 100% sure WTF he's up to and why in SMT4, but at least SMT1 plot from Wikipedia gives some context for why there's a teleporting magical dude in a wheelchair occasionally showing up and spouting off cryptic advice.

Also, even if it isn't exactly the same universe as SMT1, SMT4 clearly includes the same plot elements.  As best I can tell, SMT4 is some wacky world where the chaos / neutral / law endings to SMT1 all fired off simultaneously.  It's neutral in that Our Hero saved Tokyo as a member of the Counter-Demon Force, but the lower half of Tokyo became an anarchist demons & gangster Chaos land, and the angels established their 1000 year kingdom on the roof.  Our hero then reincarnates again shortly there after - it's 25 years Tokyo time since the trouble but he's 18 - and the angels somehow snuck an extra 1,000 years in up top, because that's how they roll.  Yuriko constantly reincarnates because that's how she rolls.  No idea why Stephen is still around and is buddies with a goddess but hey.  The various characters met in the alternative universes are "Chaos Hero" and "Law Hero" basically in Kenji & Kiyoharu.  In Blasted Tokyo the missiles hit because for some stupid reason that's what Law wants to do, in Infernal Tokyo it ended up being a chaos-led world by Chaos Hero.

As a side note, there's a *little* bit of it, but SMT4 really needed a Yuri Hyuga type character to call the various villains on their bullshit.  SMT series seems to want to pretend that, while crazy & evil, the Law / Chaos plans are [idealistic / noble / tempting]-if-flawed...  when they're really not, just stick with crazy & evil.  (Similar issues with, say, WA4 acting as if Lambda's plan is "Tragic Idealist Gone Too Far" rather than "totally batshit.")  Look, Chaos supporters.  Even if YOU think you can win a fight with invading human-devouring demons, all of your support network that gets you food and fixes your clothes and repairs your weapons won't.  You're going to end up with the Atlas Shrugged II problem once all the "weak" are eaten.  Law supporters, you're mildly better, but you're total hypocrites, and I'd like Our Heroes to point this out.  For the sake of peace and order we must kill everything, got it, or something.  (To the game's vague credit, I do appreciate how it shows the "outsider" approach to Judaism and to a lesser extent Christianity - God has picked a Chosen people semi-randomly, and everyone else gets divine nukes dropped on them and are scorned, because.  That is pretty scary and resonant, I'll grant.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

10/10 post for working an Angry Flower reference into a discussion of SMT plot.

[NotMiki]

Or having her wear pants. That would be silly.

Well, "there's a free camera so you're only allowed to wear pants and no skirts allowed because some perv might look up your knickers" is not exactly an empowering message, either.

[Captain K.]

Just go the Lollipop Chainsaw route and have the character be fourth-wall aware of where the camera is pointing.

[Scar]

Invisible cartridge Zelda: Yusssssss!

A LttP world with new dungeons and other new things?  Yussssssssssss! I am a happy camper right now. Your house gets taken over by some guy that turns it into a rental shop, and instead of give you free ish, he charges you to rent the crap. If I were link I'd kick his arse to the curve. It is interesting though that the game has some of the iconic items from the series found in this shop and not in the dungeons like mostly every other Zelda game.

I've gotten as far as the new other world. Games fun and easy so far. I don't mind the difficulty, it's like nostalgia mixed in with new treats. My mind is constantly retracing the steps in LttP and fighting with what is in this game. Like, oh there should be a tree on this spot or that was a house in the old game and such.

I set up my street pass character for everyone to beat up on if anyone is interested. I'm having a fun time with this one.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Or having her wear pants. That would be silly.

Well, "there's a free camera so you're only allowed to wear pants and no skirts allowed because some perv might look up your knickers" is not exactly an empowering message, either.

It's less about empowering characters that are fictional despite what Toriyama thinks and more that Toriyama has demonstrated himself to be an utter creep and at least should have the privilege of putting characters in skirts taken away, since the board at Square has apparently decided not to fire him like they should.

[NotMiki]

Or having her wear pants. That would be silly.

Well, "there's a free camera so you're only allowed to wear pants and no skirts allowed because some perv might look up your knickers" is not exactly an empowering message, either.

It's less about empowering characters that are fictional despite what Toriyama thinks and more that Toriyama has demonstrated himself to be an utter creep and at least should have the privilege of putting characters in skirts taken away, since the board at Square has apparently decided not to fire him like they should.

I agree about Toriyama, but the empowerment we're talking about here isn't for fictional characters but rather for the game's audience, just like any other message from the media about what women should or shouldn't do that takes as a given that men are creepy horndogs and that nothing will change that ever.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Or having her wear pants. That would be silly.

Well, "there's a free camera so you're only allowed to wear pants and no skirts allowed because some perv might look up your knickers" is not exactly an empowering message, either.

It's less about empowering characters that are fictional despite what Toriyama thinks and more that Toriyama has demonstrated himself to be an utter creep and at least should have the privilege of putting characters in skirts taken away, since the board at Square has apparently decided not to fire him like they should.

I agree about Toriyama, but the empowerment we're talking about here isn't for fictional characters but rather for the game's audience, just like any other message from the media about what women should or shouldn't do that takes as a given that men are creepy horndogs and that nothing will change that ever.

If you're going to have a free camera and give interviews about how you "can't eliminate pantyshots" from your game, you should probably either reconsider your character designs because you actually don't want them like you say OR not make comments like that in the first place because you're clearly trying to draw attention to it. If he's so concerned about it that he would bring it up in an interview, why wouldn't he just design her with pants?

Besides, if the game's audience is looking to the guy who made Parasite Eve 3 for empowering messages, they're probably so fucked in their day-to-day lives that nothing anyone can do will help.

[superaielman]

Dawn of Mana- Started, played an hour of this, quit. This may be the worst game I've played since Hoshigami.

1. Switches between third person and first person combat with some frequency.
2. Related to that, the worst camera I've ever seen. It's easy to miss enemies or items.
3. Seems to have modeled the core gameplay concepts of Chocobo's mysterious dungeon. IE: Start over at L1 after every chapter, only one PC (Though CMD did let you use a couple of others...)

Basically is completely unplayable. I also got motion sickness from the spinning platforms and trying to switch between weapon types on them.  Hit detection and targeting were sub secret of mana. Speaking of SoM, this game makes SoM look like a quality product.

FM4- Finished my NG run today. Game clock says 21.5 hours. I spent at least an hour and a half idling and dicking around though. Had great fun with the playthrough, first time I've played FM on NG and not NG+ since I first beat it in like 2004.

[OblivionKnight]

Seriously?  The fuck did you start playing that?  I said years ago when it came out that it was a pile of shit!

WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ME!?  WHAT HORROR HAVE YOU VISITED UPON YOURSELF?!

[superaielman]

I thought it had the potential to be funny bad! Nope, just bad bad. I can assure you, I'm never touching that game again.

[Captain K.]

X: beaten.  Final party was Vivilion (MVP, no really), Chesnaught, Furfrou, Aurorus, Talonflame, Clawitzer (HM Slave only).

I'm not as in love with the game as others were.  Lacks a lot of the polish BW2 had.  Worse than Diamond/Pearl as far as first iterations of a generation go.

The good:
fashion

The bad:
way too many menus on the bottom screen, and all shoved in your face at the beginning of the game.
Lumiose City - wow what a clusterfuck

The meh:
roller skates - they were fine for running around, up until you had to talk to someone or go through a door at which point said task became impossible

I actually don't think it's the XP share that's a problem for leveling, it's getting xp from capturing pokemon that throws things out of balance.

[Dark Holy Elf]

You could stop using roller skates by using the D-pad instead of the analog, helpful if you wanted more precision.

The EXP share is absolutely the problem for the level curve. It literally results in 100-250% more exp (unless you use 3+ pokemon per opponent which is not the norm). By contrast even if you catch over half the pokemon you encounter in a pokemon game (which is crazy considering how many of the pokemon you fight are from trainers) that's only a 100% boost... actually much less because boss pokemon still give considerably more exp than randoms.

I played without Exp Share on and I thought the level curve was fine. I've never heard of anyone who played the entire game with Exp share avoiding becoming overlevelled (i.e. above the levels of at least the Elite Four, if not the champion as well). I actually think the "exp for capture" is a good move since it makes no sense to punish the player for capturing things, even if the penalty is relatively small.

[Grefter]

The bottom menus at least try!  They all force your first interaction to be a tutorial.  Failure shines through when my older brother was half way through the game before he even realised they were tutorials.  I mentioned Super Training to him and he had no idea what I was talking about.  He knew that there was patting pokemon and feeding them cupcakes and had literally no idea where it came up for half the game because the UI while forcing you to do the tutorials doesn't actually engage you to interact with the different pages. 

Also suffers a ton from modern iconography UI design holes.  Icons are great when users have learned them.  They suck until they do so and you force users to click into menus to find out what they are.  I didn't realise there was a save button on the front screen of the default menu for ages.  OHHHH that is what that button is.  Okay.  Cool.  It is cool if your UI is intuitive.  UIs tend not to be.  Even Apple in all their It Just Works tm you will note that iOS apps still have fucking tooltips telling you what each app is.  Click into one (say Kindle App) and suddenly no fucking idea what any button does.

Literally worse initial user experience than power user menu cruft.

Also would agree with Fashion being the greatest Lumiose being the worst and agree with Elf RE: experience/capturing.

[Niu]

SNow Fire, SMT4 - I'll just say this, SMT4's endings and philosophies are extremely half baked. Especially we had more "to the bottom of it" ending not too long ago in SMTSJ. This is the SMT Law & Chaos in a simple term: Law "Human with intelligence are cancer, let's make them into mindless dolls", chaos "survival of fittest, nothing more and nothing less".

Stephen is one of the character that is OOC the most. He is a neutral force that has transcended above physical realm, and help out in the past just because he can. How he sided with the Tokyo Goddess and set up bunch of things for her is extremely unlike him.
As for Beelzebub, he pretty much is Lucifer's right hand henchman, he is out there doing his own thing in SMT4 is already very weird. In past games, he is always acting in behalf of Lucifer. Be it SMT1 or 2, Devil Survivor, or even Devil Summoner.
Of course, nothing beats the super fanatic Gabriel. That is truly head desk worthy. She supposedly is the most moderate and peaceful one of the four.

Though, why are you under the misconception that SMT4 after SMT1? The alternate universe works very differently from SMT1 either, especially the LAw route.
BTW, Yuriko IS Lilith. Her cult worships Mem Aleph.


FF13 Lightning Returns - So.... in the end, everything is Etro's fault, again? Just by how much she can fail at life? Her stupid whore level is reaching the same level as Lucretia.
And continues having fun with Cloud costume, its fire power has made hunting down Abanda a breeze. I am successful in driving Abanda extinct, which rewarded me with an end game weapon, at fairly early level of the game. Than I took the said weapon and mopped Gaius to the floor. Ah, everything is going so well.
BTW, I did't get the Aerith costume. Getting her download code requires purchasing a completely useless guide book.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You could stop using roller skates by using the D-pad instead of the analog, helpful if you wanted more precision.

The EXP share is absolutely the problem for the level curve. It literally results in 100-250% more exp (unless you use 3+ pokemon per opponent which is not the norm). By contrast even if you catch over half the pokemon you encounter in a pokemon game (which is crazy considering how many of the pokemon you fight are from trainers) that's only a 100% boost... actually much less because boss pokemon still give considerably more exp than randoms.

I played without Exp Share on and I thought the level curve was fine. I've never heard of anyone who played the entire game with Exp share avoiding becoming overlevelled (i.e. above the levels of at least the Elite Four, if not the champion as well). I actually think the "exp for capture" is a good move since it makes no sense to punish the player for capturing things, even if the penalty is relatively small.

Another thing to note is that the level curve balances itself out quickly if you use the XP Share for a while and then turn it off, like I did. By the fifth gym, my level lead over everything (which already wasn't -that- high) was completely gone. By the seventh, enemies were already higher-levelled than I, so it led to a pretty cool difficulty curve - though I feel the gym battles are kinda less interesting than the random trainers who randomly employ badass stuff all over the place. Speaking of which!

Pokémon Y - Currently at the Victory Road, crawlin' along like nobody's business. I kinda wish I had Baton Pass on me, since that'd let me play one hell of a sweep-crying game with Greninja. Sweeping the universe with Chandelure is an acceptable substitute, though.

[Meeplelard]

I'm not as in love with the game as others were.  Lacks a lot of the polish BW2 had.  Worse than Diamond/Pearl as far as first iterations of a generation go.

Ok, first off, how is it worse than Diamond/Pearl?  DP has a pretty iffy Pokemon Draw, while XY clearly has an amazing one, and DP is the slowest Pokemon game to date, while XY is quite possibly the fastest.  I seriously cannot see what DP did right that XY didn't do, while the reverse I can find many things.

As far as polish compared to BW2...

Offhand, the only things BW2 did that XY didn't do are:
-Better Dowsing Machine (though, XY's is functional once you understand how it works, so  it qualifies as "Good Enough", just BW2's is more convenient)
-Free Space Aspect (dunno why this didn't return; it was a really neat mechanic for item management)
-The inability to search for Pokemon by Area (as opposed to by Pokemon)

These are really the only things XY is lacking and none of them feel like deal breakers.  I can see arguing BW2 > XY because it does have it's advantages (like a legitimate aftergame), but I can't see how one can consider XY sub DP quality, when it is clearly closer to BW2 in quality.

[Dark Holy Elf]

A lack of aftergame such as the uber elite 4 in FRLG is probably my biggest gripe with the game. As someone who missed gen 5 I had no problem with XY's dowsing machine (being able to use it with one of four registered items puts it above early games in the series at minimum), and searching pokemon by area isn't a huge problem when the pokedex is actually ordered by area instead of completely randomly holy shit. Really I think Lumiose City being difficult to navigate is the flaw of the game listed thus far I most agree with and it's really not that bad, just means you can easily miss a couple TMs and places to buy pokeballs, evolution stones, etc.

[Meeplelard]

Like I said, I don't view the Dowsing Machine as a flaw of XY, because it works well enough once you understand how it works (mostly the "which way you're facing matters" aspect for whether it notes or anything.)

Registering is something else BW2 did better thinking on it; you can register way more items, even shortcuts to entire menus (big because accessing the menu otherwise takes off dowsing machine.  Using the Register method keeps Dowsing Machine.  Still gotta turn it off to save, which is lame.)

Again, not saying XY was bad about it, nor saying it is a deal breaker; more a case of "One did good, the other did better", and generally, XY's methods were "good enough" that I don't really care that much.  Just trying to think of things BW2 did better; whether it was significantly better or marginally/technically better is a different story.

[Scar]

Is there a link or thread with all of you guys' friend codes for the 3ds?

I just my my own 3DS and here's my friend code: 3239-3831-6546

[Grefter]

Bumped it up the top for you when I could have just posted a link, but whatever, I am tired and dizzy.

Warfrane - Laggy is back, so I am playing a ton of this.  I still fucking love this game.