What games are you playing 2014?

[Fenrir]

Director's Cut adds 5 new missions too, so you can add... 5 hours? To these estimations.
Pretty good value for 15$ before Steam sales.

Lucky Strike is the only hire with dialogue from what I've seen (and she's very confrontational), but I've just checked and this is Director's Cut expansion only.
"Cool hair" is really too much of a relative term. Does Alice have cool hair?
Anyway Lucky Strike's the blonde Demi-fiend. I haven't used hires much because $$$

[Grefter]

Demons's Souls's - Did 1-3 because I wanted to unlock Yuria.  Ostrava is amazingly terrible.  Like killing those 3 Red Eye Knights wasn't that hard since kiting one, killing the other and letting one beat him in the face worked fine.  Killed the two I was handling while peeling the third off him after the fact worked wonders.  He ran off into his little corner to hide.  Then the third one I was dealing with dropped aggro from me and teleported to Ostrava's corner.  Okay.  Fine, clear that out.  I died to Fat Ministers fire a bit (soul form, 10 Vit, no Cling Ring on, no Fire Resist ring on.  Massive overkill) while I worked out best places to zone fireballs on the guys guarding Yuria and Biorr each.  Every time having to run up and kill the 5 scrubby soldiers on Ostrava's patrol route (first time I got to it late and he was engaging them and was at like half health...).  Just so bad.

Then watch Biorr nearly solo Penetrator Knight.  Holy shit.  It is like Iron Tarkus but better with a hot accent (but less sexy personality).  I was throwing Soul arrows the whole time but I think I barely did half the HP bar in damage.  He just randomly took off huge chunks of HP.

Also went to 5-1 just to get Morning Star so I could make a Dragon Morning Star +5 (I cheated for Chunks and Shards.  Fuck this game) just so I could backstab Fat Minister with it to see how it goes. 

Now poking at how to handle Scirvir.  Him having Regen and knowing that NPCs kind of cheat with MP makes me sketchy on how I want to approach it.  Apparently you can backstab him a ton with Soul Remains, but eh.  I think I will either press on to 4-2 and buy Kunai or do 5-1 for Poison Cloud (and 3-1 for Freke).  Kind of tempted to go Kunai just because throwing poison things at dudes seems to be a broken staple.

And man El Cid, not that I am ever ever going to recommend anyone play this game, but if you do play this shit again you should play around with Soul Form and Thief's Ring more.  The amount of bullshit you can pull of is ridiculous.  Every single encounter outside of bosses can be handled poking in and out of range of enemies, they will drop aggro just outside of lock on range.  So you can ping people with hit and fade ranged attacks with impunity.  I just recently started playing around with Cloak to see how much it drops your aggro radius, I am pretty sure you could feasibly aggro enemies and then proceed to repeatedly backstab them while they walk back to their spawn point.

I kind of figure this kind of reason accounts for two things in Dark Souls.  Firstly why the Ring of Fog and Hidden Soul are nerfed as hard as the are (they are right?  They have to be, otherwise I need to investigate sometime... more on this later though).  I also figure this is why enemies in Dark Souls do that weird slow walk backwards to their spawn.  Even prior to abusing the Thief's Ring this basic strategy was how I was handling Red Eye Knight in 1-1 when I did a quick run to bump me up to a level up or upgrade costs for weapons early on.  Shoot them in face, run like a bitch, wait until they start walking back, shoot them in the back and run again.

Thinking more on Dank Souls though, you probably need the Slumbering Dragon Crest to pull it off since you don't have Soul Form to lower noise you make, so it puts it on hold until Sen's Fortress.  Sen's is not built for that kind of play (maybe something with the Titanite Demons down the bottom?) with the tight corridors.  After that you hit Anor Londo and it is full of Sentinels so you kind of aren't getting much Backstab play in there either. 

I suppose it might be fun to play around with in the back area of the Forest?  NG+ maybe?  But who cares about NG+

[Sierra]

I dunno about poison in Demon's Souls specifically, but in Dark Souls at least it's pretty terrible. Like really specifically useful only for giant nuisances you can snipe from a mile off (if you don't mind waiting a few minutes for them to die). I don't recall being poisoned in Demon's Souls being that much of a nuisance (plague is another matter) and status tends to work identically for PCs and for enemies in these games so I'd guess it sucks. Don't think poison got really awesome until Dark Souls 2, where it works fast, nearly every boss is vulnerable, you can design entire builds around it and pretty handily dominate the game (until you get to the DLC and everything immunes or at least has extreme resistance to all status. ffffffffffff).

EDIT: I guess I will have to replay Dragonfall at some point to see new stuff because definitely none of my hires ever spoke up in the original version. Checking again, turns out Steam did keep my saves for me, you just can't use original Dragonfall saves in Director's Cut. I might see about importing my DMS samurai at some point just to smash through it and make getting to new stuff easier.

EDITEDIT: Importing doesn't presently work with director's cut. Well, I didn't say I was going to do it any time soon.

[Cotigo]

Stealth is pretty awful in terms of actually trying to kill anything. You need both ring slots to lower both sound and visibility, and even then it's not even good for running past things because your visibility range isn't really decreased by that much. The only place I can think of it being useful is MAYBE Real-American-Hero-Blighttown (instead of backdoor why-would-I-ever-not-take-this-path-Blighttown), so you risk having to fight 3-4 aborted fetus trolls at the same time a lot less... but that path is obviously before Sen's fortress, and if you've got the Ring of Fog by then you may as well just run past the Valley of Drakes to backdoor Blighttown, even IF you don't take the thief key.

Maybe for running past all the enemies in, like, the tomb of the giants too. But yeah, agreed with cid, that combo is godawful in DS1.

[Fenrir]

Replaying Director's Cut is probably worth it if you liked the original. I'm pretty sure Blitz 's sidequest and Trial Run are Director's Cut only missions, and both were pretty awesome. Being able to choose which skills the four companions get when levelling up is also pretty nice.


So they released the original Shadowrun Returns as this big RPG maker engine + some short linear campaign in America (Dead Man's Switch).

Then they released a proper solo campaign in Berlin with entirely different characters (Dragonfall), that was free for those who bought the game on Kickstarter, but cost the original game + the expansion for those who didn't buy the game before.

Considering that people wanted to play Dragonfall without paying for the worse original game, they released Dragonfall as a standalone + added a bunch of stuff and made the new stuff free for those who already got the original Dragonfall.

Then they add to market that without confusing everybody and it was hard!


I'll have to try the mods at one point too. Wonder if any of them are good.


Elminage Gothic: This is some archaic shit.
Wizardry 1 game systems, TAC0s, 20% hit rate on your front row fighters, etc.
Glorious PSP graphics on your giant PC screen since this is a PSP port.
Thousands of crappy options with one totally unintuitive super over powered one early on (Brawlers. I couldn't do anything without my dragon brawler)
It took me 5 hours to finish the first dungeon. I spent less time exploring than leaving the dungeon / going back to where I was.

Do not play it if you haven't already played, like, every dungeon crawler on earth.

In a regular firts person dungeon crawler in 2014, you press a button and the map screen comes up.
Here, you press a button and the map screen comes up, but this costs one map. Yes you need to buy maps, and you are utterly fucked if you run out of them. Thankfully they are dirt cheap (one random encouter in the first area =~ enough money for 30 maps) so I just buy 90 maps whenever I go back to town. People went berserk over this and a guy made a patch for unlimited maps to make the game "playable"

[jsh357]

The most recent time I played Dark Souls, I did a stealth run (Slumbering/Fog) except against bosses.  It's actually very effective; you basically get the Thief's Ring effect from Demon's against the majority of enemies.  They don't see you coming in advance, which helps out a lot against stuff like Painting Guardians and Silver Knight archers.  You can also make them stop pursuing you from a far shorter distance, which is one of the biggest reasons the Thief's Ring was so good.

However, to really make the build work at its finest, you need the spell "Aural Decoy."  This works like Soul Remains, and seemed to affect almost every regular enemy in the game.  With that going, I had enemies jumping off cliffs and completely forgetting I existed with little effort, then I could finish them off with Homing Soulmass or whatever safely.

In short, stealth is still good in Dark Souls.  It's just a different way to approach the game.

As for Poison weapons, they are not worth it in Demon's or Dark 1.  The damage is just too slow to make a difference.  Even plague is barely worth it in Demon's, except maybe in PvP (which I don't play).  In Dark 2 they are effective, but the game is so broken you can probably just use strength weapons and get more damage out of them than the DoT adds up to.

[Grefter]

In Demons's and Dark Souls the "use" for poison/toxic is specifically for cheese as far as I am concerned.  Demons has a bunch of strategies that are "poison this guy around a corner or through a wall then go have a nap" Dark has poop on Capra Demon and I have heard hype for Poison Arrow counter sniping the Silver Knights in Anor Londo (though I just used Slumbering Dragon Crest and Fog Ring on them actually).  They are far from good, but  they have boring uses if you want to play the game in shitty ways. DS2 sounds like they legit wanted to support them again, but you can't have nice things in DLC.

[Fudozukushi]

Orstrava's AI seems to actually be programmed to be garbage.  He will attack at the absolute worst times.  And what makes it hilarious is just how much his HP starts exploding in NG+ runs.  He has 12,000 HP compared to Bior's 2,500.

[Meeplelard]

FF10: Just beat Seymour's 3rd form.  Ok, now I'm SURE he's dead for good because he fell off a cliff! That's instant death in jRPGs, right?  Yeah, I can't think of a counter example!

Anyway, so we fight a giant robot because the Guado have those.  Not much to say here other than "GIANT ROBOT KILL IT NOW!"  It's basically the epitome of "we're due for a boss, so here's a boss" even though Calm Lands isn't that long...granted I spent forever on it because...well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUOOgNzOv4

But that's not plot relevant!  Anyway, then we go see Yojimbo.  This is mostly Lulu plot summed up as "She failed, she feels bad" and it's trying to give backstory but really, it just falls short because it doesn't really tell us much new nor give us much more insight on Lulu.  Wasted opportunity really; feels like they made the dungeon first for purposes of Yojimbo, and wanted some plot excuse and shoe-horned Lulu development on top of it.  Meh.

One thing that stands out to me though is the discussion of the Thief who brings the Aeon in there.  Notably, Tidus questions why a Thief would do that, and Wakka responds "probably thought he could stop the pilgrimages that way.  Without the Aeons, Summoners won't fight sin and won't die.  At least, that's probably what he was thinking."  Or something along those lines.  Doesn't seem like much at first, but consider who is saying it:

It's Wakka.  If this was said at a point before Bevelle, you can damn well sure he'd make a crack about him being a heretic and awful and say how wrong it is, but here?  He just says it like it is.  It shows that Wakka is past the "YEVON IS ALWAYS RIGHT!" phase in a subtle way; he simply acknowledges the thief's ideas and doesn't inject his own opinion on it. 

Tidus responds with a simple "I kind of agree with him."  Nice way to acknowledge that the thief very much had the same mindset as what Tidus and Rikku have, and was thinking of some method, just one that didn't work out (the Aeon was taken but pilgrimages still happen after all.)

BUT ENOUGH OF THAT! ONTO A MOUNTAIN OF A BUNCH OF SMELLY OLD DOG PEOPLE!

So Kelk is all "You SHALL NOT PASS!"  And Yuna is all "Yes, I WILL pass" and Kelk is all "No!!!!", and Yuna is like "look, you like SPira right?  Well, do you want Spira to be blown up by Sin?  Then let me pass because seriously, Yevon is pointless!" and Kelk is all "Ok, your logic is strong, but I will pretend you win because SHEAR WILLPOWER! which sounds more dramatic!" and they pass.  Also Yenke and Biran are acting like jerks here...

...and then they act like jerks ONE SCENE LATER!  Then Kimhari beats their asses and they're all "ok, Kimhari's a bad enough dude to save the president to guard the summoner, KIMHARI MAY PASS!"   Then they bother you once again to SING THE HYMN OF THE FAYTH!

Funnily enough, Biran and Yenke singing it, despite how their voices really don't fit the song at all, is probably the clearest rendition of the song yet.  Like I was actually able to go "huh, that's the real word there?"  Then 3 OTHER RONSOS join in and they act like the entire race is singing they go from "Rough guys" to Monks singing...yeah, don't think much about it.

One thing worth noting is that this scene proves that no, Wakka did not believe that Tidus was from Zanarkand, or at least, the Zanarkand they know about.  I know someone here claimed "it's clear he believed it!" but the lines when talking to Wakka on Gagazet say the complete opposite.  He says "Through here is the Ruins to Zanarkand.  Hey, I'm sure it's not the same Zanarkand you come from" and Tidus responds "Wait, you actually believe me?" and Wakka goes "Maybe!"  Well, ok, maybe NOW Wakka believes him, but the fact that Tidus is shocked that Wakka actually believes his story suggests that Tidus assumed Wakka didn't believe him; Tidus overheard the alleged "Wakka believes him!" conversation on the way to Luca the claim made, which this line completely nullifies, so yeah, Wakka doesn't believe Tidus, at least initially.  He was clearly helping Tidus out because a combination of "He looks like Chappu, maybe there's a connection!" and Wakka simply being a nice guy who wanted to lend a hand to someone in need.

BRASKA SPHERE!  Mostly Braska saying "Yuna, be strong, I hope you see this!"  of course he does not acknowledge that the only way Yuna is going to see it is if she goes on a Pilgrimage herself and thus condemns her life that way but SHH!

So then atop the mountain...or something, I'm not sure where, there's a save point and some pillars and it's a convenient spot for a boss fight basically, BUT REGARDLESS...

Rikku: I still can't think of anything
Tidus: Yeah, neither can I -_-
Rikku: WHAT CAN WE DO!?
Tidus: We don't know enough yet!  But we'll find a way!
Rikku: Hey, you sound like a leader!
Tidus: Star player of the Zanarkand Abes!
Rikku: AAAAAAAH!
Seymour: About time you noticed me! I've been stalking you this entire dungeon!
Tidus: even when we were buying supplies from O'aka's brother?
Seymour: ESPECIALLY when you buying supplies from...wait who?
Tidus: ...nevermind, RIKKU! I'LL FIGHT THIS ALONE! GO GET AURON!
Rikku: Why only Auron? Wouldn't the entire group be useful?
Tidus: Because I SAID SO!
Seymour: So...you want to die for your father's sake?
Tidus: That's kind of out of nowhere.
Seymour: I'll show YOU out of nowhere! WITH YOUR FATHER'S POWER!
Tidus: Wait, how do you know my old man is Sin?
Seymour: HELLO! MAESTER OF YEVON HERE!
Kimhari: SAVE SOME FOR KIMHARI!

And now I'm turning this into a full fledged abridged moment and basically Seymour spills beans, goes on a nihistic rant, Yuna has Bahamut punch him in the face for 18k damage because my Yuna has much higher strength than she normally has here, he never pulls off total Annihilation because I hit him with Energy Burst with BDL and...wait, why am I discussing gameplay?  DAMN YOU!!!

So Tidus just comes clean, and goes "look I don't get it either, but yes, I'm willing to defeat my old man for purposes of saving Spira."  The others mostly shrug it off but Yuna is in distress because Tidus basically kept a secret so big from her.  Oh sure blame him and not the guy who likely told him the truth.

AND NOW WE ARE INSIDE GAGAZET!  And plot will take a bit of a halt because lots of caves, a giant dragon-like boss, and AWESOME MUSIC DUNGEON IN RUINS!

[Sierra]

Wasteland 2: Look, you guys might be God's militia, but you definitely won't be the first militia I've had to wipe off my boots at the end of the day. Oh but Deuteronomy says it's a sin to eat shellfish-- Need better rad suits so I can execute every last motherfucking one of them. They're pretty heavily armed, though (and armored, which is sorta their undoing because lasers are really coming into their own now). I had to rerun the Santa Monica fight a number of times to prevent the NPCs from getting fragged by stray shotgun blasts.

Random stuff:

-This is the only game I am aware of in which cat litter is a crucial quest item (for science reasons!)

-The Los Angeles map is weird. In the first half of the game you have to monitor your water supplies and make sure you don't wander too far off course into places where you can't reliably resupply; there are also mountain ranges that channel you down certain routes. In L.A., neither of these things are in evidence--the water gauge is totally gone (I guess because L.A.'s broadly flooded) and there are no physical obstacles to movement (they still kinda railroad you with radiation clouds, but it's less prominent). I find it a little strange as a decision decision that they condition you to move around in certain ways for the first half of the game, even adding accessories to further your water-carrying capacity (and thus movement range), and then render that completely unnecessary in the second half.

-Angel Oracle is two sides of unsympathetic jerks butting heads again. Sigh. I stuck with Mister Manners because he could at least kinda sorta be reasoned with (also the accent is frankly hilarious). So now instead of being a society that arbitrarily executes people on a regular basis and then eats them, the White Glove Society Mannerites are just a society that arbitrarily executes people on a regular basis. Progress!

-So I'm mucking around in the maintenance tunnels beneath Angel Oracle and there's jets of steam blocking some passageways. You can pass a strength check to jam these shut, but for one of them I need to pass the valve is on the other side of the hazard. I figure, Gordon's a tough guy, I'll send him over and then turn it off. The steam inflicts piddly damage--and incinerates his clothing. It's hot enough to instantly turn armor into ash yet only deals 5% of his max HP in damage? It's a special kind of steam, and soon it will melt off all your clothes!

-"As the great warlord Gandhi said, 'Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.'" Someone's been taking their history lessons from Civilization, I see.

-People shove some weird stuff into toasters. Shampoo bottles? Sanford & Son?!

-The game awarded me an achievement for contracting an STD. "Crusty clam?" That's, uh, evocative.

I'm doing a lot better at avoiding unnecessary massacres in L.A. so far! (This'll change once I find the militia HQ, though.)

[Grefter]

Demons's Souls's - Did 4-1 and got Kunai to do in Scirvir and died a hilarious number of times to dumb shit.  Turns out NPCs will attack enough and walk through Soul Remains and keep attacking them.  So trying to get in some backstabs to hurry things up got me one shot with sword to the face.  Like 4 or 5 times.  Then there was the times I died trying to hurry things up while I let him heal since I didn't know I needed to interrupt heals each time he was attacked (the AI is very much event driven rather than checking current status over and over). Then there was the time I got him down to nearly dead and missed that he would spam the everloving fuck out of heal.  Oh I thought, lets backstab him past limit phase.  I LEARNED NOTHING.

So next time I just ate dinner while reading news while his health ticked down and then spammed Kunais in his face until he died in the last parts.  PRO AT VIDEOGAMES YOU GUYS.

4-1 I should have finished ages ago, Adjudicator is kind of amazing visual design, but I haven't seen much of him actually in game.  I walked forward and was one shot by the tongue without seeing him once.

Next time it was baiting out the first tongue attack to clear the ledge and then poking forward every now and then and shooting the bird with fire every now and then.

Then I poked in at 3-1 and goddamn the sound design in this place is going to wreck me.  It is way too good.  Every prisoner is going to die just so I don't have to hear them.  I am actually not certain on this given the quality of the sound design here, but I think maybe playing with no music actually helps the atmosphere here, but given how good the rest of the audio is I could be totally wrong.  OH and of course the area is black and grey with blue tones everywhere ad the prisoners are grey with dark brown clothes.  So even systemically trying to clear them out I still got jumped a bunch. 

I cleared like just the starting area.  I am going to do this not at 10pm at night.

[Sierra]

Wasteland 2: I killed them all. God will know his own.

Game wasn't really happy about me doing this, though. I'm pretty sure it was trying to push me into some sneaky, infiltrate the cult and turn them against each other scheme but dude, no, I tried talking to the bigwigs for a couple minutes, they're 100% as horrible as advertised, I'd like to forcibly put an end to their slave'n'rape party right now thank you very much. I open fire in the chapel and my followers are all No, you can't start a fight with innocents! Zuh? What, they're innocent because in this lone particular circumstance of us meeting them they're not immediately massacring whole towns for eating shrimp or whatever? Okay fine, so I wander around Griffith Observatory standing in places they obviously don't want me to until they get pissed off enough to attack. But this only works for the one group and no one else notices me killing them in broad daylight! Arrrgh. Okay! I talk to nananana leader, he says if I don't agree to the plan he's about to propose (of me framing and murdering his scheming subordinates) then he'll kill me; I say no and I kill him. This renders the rest of the militia formally hostile. Finally! Now I can shoot them all without complications.

I think I broke some scripting somewhere, though, because the prisoners won't leave. I talk to the one named representative of the group and he just mopes around all "You've killed us, you idiot!" Drunken dancing vulpine. Dude, they're dead! The guards are dead! You couldn't stop them, the army couldn't stop them, but I did! Everybody's dead! The game even gave me a trophy for fragging all the church leadership! Get out of your cells and go home! Sigh. There was one named officer that wandered off after I got him drunk so I could steal an eyeball and present it to the eyeball's former owner's widow to presumably kick off a quest chain of working against the cult from inside (but nothing actually happened, which was the point where I officially said fuck it, genocide mode). Maybe these guys are stuck there just because this one mook disappeared from the game?

Anyway, I don't think I care enough to reload and look for alternatives. They were sleazebags, good riddance (protip, every faction in this game except the rangers is led by sleazebags). Geez, it's going to take forever just to properly loot that place; there are guns everywhere and I'm out of inventory space.

Oh, in the process of invading the place I found a book titled Killing for Morons. Effect: boost Combat Shooting ranks by ten. So it maxes out a previously nonexistent skill which does...something? Let's find out! "Allows use of a wide range of traditional firearms." Well that's clear as mud. Hey Rob! What the heck does this do!

[Grefter]

Demons's Souls's - I beat 3-1.  Audio solid the whole way through.  Dudes in Iron Maidens 10/10.

4-2 The Real Cameras's Souls's Starts Here.  Pretty close to back to anti-fun again.  The cliff is terrible, but it is the second Reaper that is killing me and is not fun.

[Sierra]

And I hope you're not laboring under the delusion that there's a boss gate immediately after him.

[Grefter]

Of course not.  Hare talking like I don't sit there with something telling me everything that is going to happen before hand right there in front of me.

Also I meant to say last post, Google suggests that your Wasteland 2 book is a reference to a skill in Wasteland 1 on PC (specific to that version) that did nothing.  Apparently in this it boosts your crit rate significantly, like +100%, but the source is just random forum posts of some age so I can't vouch for accuracy of the statement or for current patch version of the game.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Hyrule Warriors - Probably opened a gate to hell, or something

I, for one, welcome our new chicken overlords

[jsh357]

Protip on 4-2:
If you can't beat the Reapers, running past all three of them is way easier than fighting them.  It's almost comical.  Just make sure you are wearing the Thief's Ring.  The third one is most likely to harm you, so you might want to throw Soul remains at him or something.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Oh, in the process of invading the place I found a book titled Killing for Morons. Effect: boost Combat Shooting ranks by ten. So it maxes out a previously nonexistent skill which does...something? Let's find out! "Allows use of a wide range of traditional firearms." Well that's clear as mud. Hey Rob! What the heck does this do!

It's an easter egg.  Combat shooting's a reference to the first game, where it was only in the PC version because (I think) they forgot to take it out.  It does nothing.  I think Oblivion did something like this by hiding a book that supposedly raised your polearm skill?

[Fenrir]

Shadowrun Dragonfall:
That mission to blow up the evil lab. WITH STEALTH ELEMENTS. Oh god.
It was super hard so I restarted the mission and levelled up Charisma to get the Security Etiquette instead of Strength, to bluff my way around. It worked well.

Director's Cut introduces Luca (I think? His first mission is DC only, so I guess he is), who's basically the shadiest guy you can work for in Shadowrun, and that's saying something.
At the beginning of the aforementioned mission to blow up the lab (which was in the original Dragonfall), he made a call to say that he knows I'm going to that lab, and he asked me to say to one particular scientist who works there "We are pleased that Project Vincent is going so well" with no other details.
No idea what this is about.
So I complied and told the scientist, and this scared the hell out of him. (He promised he'd "make the call", I also don't know what this is about either)
Later I'll collect my money from Luca.
Neat!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Hyrule Warriors - Mostly lots of Adventure Mode; I've been trying to get Level 3 weapons for the characters I use more often (Zelda, Sheik, Cia, Impa, Link, Lana) and have mostly succeeded at this point, though I still have some alternate Level 3's to track down (including the all-important Great Fairy and Summoning Gate). At some point I'll be non-lazy enough to post my thoughts on all the characters, but there are still a few I've hardly used (mainly Zant).

Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete - I decided to replay this, currently about three hours in. Hiro just got his second swing and I'm about to get Jean. The game has... actually aged reasonably well so far, which is nice to see. Mostly, the challenge balance is in a pretty great place: enemies are competent but never unfair. The voice acting of the game is somewhat less good now, certainly (definitely an area games have made lots of progress), with Lucia's being particularly bad. Too early to say much on the writing, but at least Working Design's translation is snappy.

Mario Kart 8 - DLC came out today! SNES Rainbow Road + GC Yoshi Circuit, they really want us to suffer.

[Sierra]

I read an LP of Eternal Blue over the summer and to me it was the humor that had aged most poorly. Not the translation per se, casual conversation between the characters comes across fine, but the actual jokes that can make no remote degree of sense to someone not already intimately familiar with mid-90's junk culture.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I've never really had a strong opinion on the game's humour, but yeah that's pretty fair. Obviously as someone from that era I still "get" all the references, so I suppose that does help a bit. They're a bit groan-inducing at points, but that's part of the charm, or something...?

[Grefter]

My memory of the VA in EBC is also that it is pretty grainy recording as well?  Just bad compression tech at the time obviously, but that kind of production stands out now (along with the fact that we don't have to fit the whole track on one CD).

I am not that shocked that the gameplay holds up to about the same level it used to.  It didn't push any boundaries, but was competent for the time.  I don't think it would wow anyone playing it fresh nowadays, but it is pretty inoffensive as well.  Seems like it would just be generically acceptable as a vehicle to get through a game.

[Grefter]

Demons's Souls's - I got the second reaper a couple of times (with Soul Remains making him suicide) then proceeded to die multiple times to things.

The third reaper pull my first look at it involved eating lazer in the face.

k

Then die on the run because my Flame Toss wants to keep hitting the ground instead of the skeleton rolling around below the step.  So walk forwards.  Die to chip damage of rolls stunning me then getting chopped.  This is a good 2 steps into the ledge.  Because rolling skeletons damage very far in front of them.

k

Then the first reaper gets off a Soul Arrow between Flame Tosses.  Somehow.

k

Then another time I rolled back off a cliff because I forgot this is Demons's Souls's and not a good game like Darks's Souls's where you are not arbitrarily locked to the four cardinal directions when rolling in a game with a 3D camera that you can control.  Because of reasons.

k

Died to the Female Shadowlurker because she 2 shots me and they aren't stunned by spells.

k

Turn of the PS3 at this point.

Next time I play I will do 5-1 I guess so I can get Poison Cloud so I can cheese Lazer Shadowz.

I miss fun.

[Fenrir]

Dragonfall: Shit is getting real, I raised the 50k needed for Alice's info, and did the mission afterwards. My fellow characters are maxed out so I'm sure I'm at the very end of the game.

Among the 5 DLC missions there's one for the shady doc but none for Deitrich. I really don't know why he's less important.
- There's one mission for the lodge to "test" the main character. She's teamed with a terrible team of shadowrunners (One is a civilian, one is super arrogant, and the last one doesn't even speak German) obviously things go wrong pretty fast. Fantastic mission.
- The mission for Eiger involves another super duper secret mysterious company taking over the world or something and only mentioned once. (Thinking about it, the Shadowrun world is such an Ayn rand world. Government seems completely absent) Anyway it's very hard but not amazing; it doesn't really involve her plot either.
- Glory's mission has her go back to the place where she got indoctrinated to either save the kids or kill the mastermind. (you can't do both) It's a great mission, and it has one of the most complicated speech checks.
- The doc's mission is pretty light hearted, involving a delusional scientist trapped in a house for years having watched the same few episodes of a crappy TV series over and over.
- Blitz's mission has to be the most fun, but I shouldn't talk about it too much.

I really like Blitz, by the way. He is the nice stereotype of a 20 something English white trash. I felt pretty bad for him for his Emily sidequest, even though all the dialogue choices but 1 were like "As I expected you fucked up again."