What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Fudozukushi]

Fallout New Vegas: Started a new character because the PS3 broke and I can't play Xillia.  Anyway, felt like going on Hardcore mode.  I've almost drank myself to death twice!  This is fun~

[Grefter]

Nearly means you weren't hardcore enough.

[Grefter]

Wild Arms V - Fuuuuuuuuck this game.  The first hour or so is the most tedious boring bullshit with little bits of animu plot of the most annoying kind (grrrrrrr you found thing I lost!  Mad at you! Except I am not and want to make out.).  This is after you have run through a dungeon on a cold open.  Then you get to go to the world map which is hands down the worst I have seen in many years.  You move incredibly slowly, the camera is close enough and the whole things looks like. A lower quality dungeon rather than a world map.  It is lazy, hacky and terrible and clearly only there because people complained about it in 4.  Then you get to run around the map with no direction and no fucking map.  If you go the wrong way the game only tells you after you have walked to a dungeon.

Once you get there it is a boring dungeon with patchy plot sequences, half a full party and you don't get access to skills because of the different skill systems.  One of your two gimped characters is even more gimped than the other.

This is a terrible way to start a game.  It is the complete opposite of WA4 which as a whole is a very punchy short well paced game.  At least when Triace make me have a slow shitty opening they are pretending it is plot instead of a moving slowly through dungeon and "world map".

Edit - Game would be better if shitty Virginia (Rebecca) shot Dean in the face and the game was hot sweaty lesbian action a with Avril.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Speaking as someone who quite likes WA5 overall, that post is still pretty much spot on and I hope to see more. <3

[Luther Lansfeld]

PW5 - Holy shit I love the defendant of Case 2. What a strange fellow.

[Dark Holy Elf]

caw-caw-caw-caw

[Meeplelard]

Pandora's Tower: 8 down! 4 to go...or is it 5?  I can't tell if the game ends at the 12th or 13th tower...probably 13th because "You got the last macguffin! OH NO! BAD STUFF HAPPENED! ONE MORE DUNGEON BECAUSE FINAL BOSS!" will occur.

Also, I'm seeing a pattern with the second set of dungeons...in that they're all basically the same thing as the first 5, only MORE ADVANCED!!! but somehow simpler because you already know all the tricks the game is going to pull.

[Fudozukushi]

Fallout New Vegas: Went to Honest Hearts to get sweet sweet .45 auto SMG and grab green gecko hides to make the armor.  After an inordinate amount of green gecko kills hampered by me being low level enough that they rarely spawn, I made the gecko-backed reinforced metal armor!  Then promptly replaced it in five minutes with the desert ranger gear.  GG.

[Grefter]

WA5 - Map sucks more than I first said, you can't save anywhere on it.  So you end up leaving town, crawling through a dungeon to get to a dungeon to crawl through to the end of, have to walk out of that dungeon then crawl through another dungeon to get back to town.  One of these dungeons is significantly longer than the other, is less interactive and has a significantly shittier map.  It is at least a decent representation off a bleak wasteland that is actually full of trees and plants.  It is boring though! 

Also I was wrong about not getting a full party as quickly, because you are capped at 3 peeps in battle.  Why in the fuck that just hampers the good combat system.

Now that I have mediums... Am I just being nostalgic for the depth of the skill sets in WA4 or do mediums come with less skills than characters had in 4?  Because that also hampers the good combat system they are reusing.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

[Meeplelard]

WA5 is like a marriage of a bunch of ideas that WA3 and WA4 had, except they weren't implemented as well in either, so it falls into an uncomfortable middle ground of both.  I don't think the game is that bad, but as far as gameplay concerns go, they didn't think things over as much as either game.

Playing WA4 and then starting a WA5 file shortly after (that I really should get back too), the differences are immediately apparent; kind of hard to overlook how Move+Act becoming a standard completely changes things.

I will give WA5 one thing on gameplay: They did allow for a variety of hex formations.  They don't limit themselves to the perfect Hexagon shape that WA4 used, so the game mixing things up in that regard is kind of neat.


THAT SAID, onto a game completely unlike Wild ARMs outside of the dungeon crawling and puzzles! ...ok, maybe it's got more in common with Wild ARMs than I thought...

Pandora's Tower: Big Flaming Tower of DOOM!!!! #2 beaten.  Hey look, Elena's becoming a psychopath! Are we actually having something that resembles plot development?  I sure hope so!  Only took about 75% of the game of doing the EXACT SAME THING EVERYTIME!

...ok, there are Elena dream sequences, except that they make little sense right now.  I'm sure they're intended too until the last one where the game goes "AND THIS IS WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT!" which I wouldn't mind if the game had notable plot other than "Aeron is a really damn dedicated Boyfriend."

[Random Consonant]

Mediums give you five OCs and the fifth comes in at Lv90 and you only get to equip one at a time ever.  Not that any of the final set of OCs looked that great.   Not sure what the heck they were smoking there.

[superaielman]

Orcs Must Die 2- Been playing a 5x the number of Orcs mod. It passes the time till Defense Grid 2 comes out.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The one good thing WA5 did compared to 4 gameplay-wise (besides the varied hex formations as Meeple mentioned) is giving you more badge slots quickly, as well as a good array of badges to fill them. It doesn't make up for the gutting the skill system got, but it is something.

[Grefter]

WA5 - Shitty Brad (Greg) plot still the best.  It was cool when Brad and Clive had those bits too.  Carol is what you get if Trance was cosplaying Rudy (If Carol isn't a robot then her animations upon meeting you at first are fucking terrifying and she can die in a fire.)

Also one more Wild Arms game with Niu as a villain out of nowhere.  We are batting 6 for 6 now aren't we?

Holy fucking shit they have finally decided to give up and assume that their target audience is that fucking dense.  There is a faction called The Moderates that are fighting another faction who will do anything by any means at any cost to achieve their goals.  I don't know if they have explicitly been called The Extremists yet but you are 1 step away from it guys.  I know majour plot elements in WA games are not known for their subtlety but the politics ones are normally not quite so blatantly explicitly labelled.

More badge slots is kind of neat but I need more access to interesting badge choices to make it worth it (Counter build with Comet Mark and Arctic Blade is neat and only real thing I have going and I have three slots so am already at the point of going "Not sure if stack and should be throwing on 100 hp or not").  This early on not enough badges are worth considering.  Stat badges are either too negative on their downside/too weak to be worth a downside.  Thief badge for Avril and HP ones are really all I care about for stats.  Knight badge would be okay but Sword Medium users have other good badges available and everyone else wants Magic if only for items (Sword users may also). 

Sea medium snoozes Luck Medium rulezes.

I feel no reason to use Dean for a few reasons, primarily I don't use him because I want in battle voices to match up for all characters and I had to turn off his spoken clips.  Not because Yuri Lowenthal is annoying.  It is because some fucking idiot decided to make him speak every time you open the map. Argh shut up shut up diediediediedie.  But like gameplay wise his stat spread isn't that different from Greg and Greg gets Ranged basic physical.  Slap sword on them both and Greg just has so much more flexibility with Dash.  The ammo difference wasn't noticeable at 2 on Greg, now that ammo pools scaling upwards, lol.  I assume something scales up in ammo use soon or ammo pools scaling upwards on later Arm Parts is going to pretty much eliminate Ammo as a gameplay feature.  I would even use Carol in place of him.  Rebecca slots Sword just fine too and Carol can run Luck (Shoot Anywhere pretty cool!).

Everything having move and act fucks up so much stuff in the system.  It makes it harder to control the field (possibly by intent), it slows down combat a ton because all the AI is ADD as fuck and moves when there is no need to, it makes Jump even more niche than it already was (thankfully they put it on two mediums so it can be extra not used) and all in all on your normal hex grid it mostly kills positioning matter.  So it is a good thing they have the varied layouts.

Edit - Oh and speaking of ADD AI Balam is annoying as fuck as a boss.  Isolate, Replace and Warp.  All while walking around.  Opening move was walk forward, Warp back to starting position.

[Sierra]

LET'S HAVE A LITTLE LOOKSIE

LET'S HAVE A LOOK AROUND

LET'S HAVE A LITTLE LOOKSIE--

*Dean muted*

Seriously is there anyone who DIDN'T mute Dean a minute into exploring WA5's world map. I'm so relieved they at least gave the option.

~

Fallout New Vegas: Went to Honest Hearts to get sweet sweet .45 auto SMG and grab green gecko hides to make the armor.  After an inordinate amount of green gecko kills hampered by me being low level enough that they rarely spawn, I made the gecko-backed reinforced metal armor!  Then promptly replaced it in five minutes with the desert ranger gear.  GG.

Is the .45 that good? I've never actually used it. I tend to ignore things where the ammo pool starts in an expansion because I get nervous about oh noes ammo shortage if I don't have like a thousand spare rounds in stock or something idiotic like that (also I tend to main energy weapons and always wind up murdering the sole energy weapon vendor in New Vegas, so gogo Cid planning skills). My favorite the last run through the game (paused just prior to the DLC, for whenever I felt like running them again) wound up being the 12.7mm, which I love because it sounds like a futuristic laser machinegun* and I can unload it in a deathclaw's face at medium range and murder the fuck out of the thing before it even has a chance to close to melee.

Also I habitually run with the Vault 34 security armor. It looks like ass and is only sort of decent as armor but it's incredibly cheap to repair and it's not like I see my character anyway (I prioritize responsibly). Alternately Sierra Madre security armor (same reasons) or Christine's stealth suit for sexiness. I...don't think I've ever actually crafted a single item in FONV outside of like weapon repair kits (SO MANY WEAPON REPAIR KITS).

(*Yes I know there are genuine futuristic laser machineguns. I don't particularly like them.)

[Nitori]

Starbound: I extracted the brain of an innocent bird and got a 170 DPS axe when I had a 28 DPS hammer

[Fudozukushi]

Fallout New Vegas: Went to Honest Hearts to get sweet sweet .45 auto SMG and grab green gecko hides to make the armor.  After an inordinate amount of green gecko kills hampered by me being low level enough that they rarely spawn, I made the gecko-backed reinforced metal armor!  Then promptly replaced it in five minutes with the desert ranger gear.  GG.

Is the .45 that good? I've never actually used it. I tend to ignore things where the ammo pool starts in an expansion because I get nervous about oh noes ammo shortage if I don't have like a thousand spare rounds in stock or something idiotic like that (also I tend to main energy weapons and always wind up murdering the sole energy weapon vendor in New Vegas, so gogo Cid planning skills). My favorite the last run through the game (paused just prior to the DLC, for whenever I felt like running them again) wound up being the 12.7mm, which I love because it sounds like a futuristic laser machinegun* and I can unload it in a deathclaw's face at medium range and murder the fuck out of the thing before it even has a chance to close to melee.

Also I habitually run with the Vault 34 security armor. It looks like ass and is only sort of decent as armor but it's incredibly cheap to repair and it's not like I see my character anyway (I prioritize responsibly). Alternately Sierra Madre security armor (same reasons) or Christine's stealth suit for sexiness. I...don't think I've ever actually crafted a single item in FONV outside of like weapon repair kits (SO MANY WEAPON REPAIR KITS).

(*Yes I know there are genuine futuristic laser machineguns. I don't particularly like them.)

.45 auto is pretty good yeah.  The super hand load rounds are 1.3x damage and -4 enemy DT making them some of the better rounds around.  You don't need to worry about .45 ammo outside Zion though, Vendertron starts stocking the stuff once you're done there, even though he pre-stocks Lonesome Road ammo.  I'm gonna grab some 12.7 for the survivalist's rifle.  Stuff just doesn't exist in Zion though which is annoying.

All my previous PC playthroughs were abusing the shit out of Light armors being way better.  So this time around I felt like going giant heavy-armored unstoppable death machine.  Once I get back to the Mojave I'm gonna grab the Avenger minigun and Power Armor Training before heading into Loansome Road and complete that so I can grab the Scorched Sierra Madre Power Armor after the bombs fall.

I was against the gatling lasers for a while too, but then I tried the Sprtel-Wood 9700 and it was fancy-awesome.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Fallout New Vegas: Started a new character because the PS3 broke and I can't play Xillia.  Anyway, felt like going on Hardcore mode.  I've almost drank myself to death twice!  This is fun~

You should play it with J.E. Sawyer's mod to put a cherry on it.

http://fallout.gamepedia.com/JSawyer

[Fudozukushi]

Fallout New Vegas: Started a new character because the PS3 broke and I can't play Xillia.  Anyway, felt like going on Hardcore mode.  I've almost drank myself to death twice!  This is fun~

You should play it with J.E. Sawyer's mod to put a cherry on it.

http://fallout.gamepedia.com/JSawyer

I don't have the Hardcore Achievement yet so I wanted to do it before I tried out JESawyer.

EDIT: Speaking of Fallout New Vegas: Completed Honest Hearts.  Originally I was just gonna go kill white legs and didn't give a shit about speech checks, but rereading the Survivalist Logs convinced me to go for the mercy end since at that points I practically was the Survivalist.  Once back in the Mojave I went and grabbed the Avenger.  Along the way I ran into a couple deathclaws, but the .45 SMG cuts them up good.  The young ones can' even get through my DT.  The Avenger itself is sadly disappointing, though that's partially because of condition at the moment.  A full box of ammo couldn't kill one damn sentry bot.  That means its nightkin hunting time!  Gotta get that condition up.

[Sierra]

*Cid scans list of changes*

-Haha the Van Graafs were set Neutral originally what.
-The King fuckin' better be flagged Good.
-Nerfed Sunset Sarsaparilla, nooo! (This is my principal source of healing. I almost never use stimpacks.)

[Niu]

Wait a sec, did Grefter just compared me to Volsung? This is insulting.

[Grefter]

Duo of course.

[Captain K.]

Tomb Raider:  beaten.  Great game.  The realism was really high.  Graphics were great, movement and combat felt smooth.  I don't know what they did to that poor voice actress but you could really believe she was getting murdered.

The game's biggest flaw is related to its biggest strength.  Because it is so realistic the parts of it that are not realistic stick out like a sore thumb.  Lara can take so much damage and regenerate so quickly the Solarii probably think they're fighting the T-1000.  Which isn't to say the combat isn't fun, but kind of ruins the atmosphere that the rest of the game sets up.  And as for plot, it can be summed up as "I'm reunited with my crew!  Oh no I am separated from my crew by yet another load-bearing Solarii."  Keeping Lara solo just felt contrived after a while.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Fallout New Vegas: Started a new character because the PS3 broke and I can't play Xillia.  Anyway, felt like going on Hardcore mode.  I've almost drank myself to death twice!  This is fun~

You should play it with J.E. Sawyer's mod to put a cherry on it.

http://fallout.gamepedia.com/JSawyer

I don't have the Hardcore Achievement yet so I wanted to do it before I tried out JESawyer.

EDIT: Speaking of Fallout New Vegas: Completed Honest Hearts.  Originally I was just gonna go kill white legs and didn't give a shit about speech checks, but rereading the Survivalist Logs convinced me to go for the mercy end since at that points I practically was the Survivalist.  Once back in the Mojave I went and grabbed the Avenger.  Along the way I ran into a couple deathclaws, but the .45 SMG cuts them up good.  The young ones can' even get through my DT.  The Avenger itself is sadly disappointing, though that's partially because of condition at the moment.  A full box of ammo couldn't kill one damn sentry bot.  That means its nightkin hunting time!  Gotta get that condition up.

God damn, the survivalist.  It's amazing how plain text in a room can be so evocative when games so frequently fail to pull that off.

[Luther Lansfeld]

PW5 - DLC case. I can't stop d'aaaawwwwing.