What games are you playing 2014?

[Luther Lansfeld]

Lloyd Irving gets 10/10 character of the year, but NieR gets a huge hate rant? Grefter, why do you hurt me so?

What is love? Baby don't hurt me no more

[Meeplelard]

Castlevania Lords of Shadows: I was tempted to do an abridged version of this but really, there's not enough plot in my playtime segments to bother.  In any event, mid chapter 2.  INITIAL THOUGHTS!

-Core Battle system is actually pretty good, way better than expected.  It's not as button mashy as I was expecting and you can do legitimate things besides Dial Up combos, instant death kills, and throw an occasional special attack.  Basically, there's variety and it's responsive with one exception.
-Platforming stuff isn't too bad either, and they help by making Instant Death not a thing; instead you just take substantial damage when falling off a cliff.
-Enemy design is kind of bland so far, and some enemies are idiotically designed...
-...which leads to the exception.  There are segments where you need to pick up Grenades from goblins, which ok, fair, but the "Pick Up" button is the same as "Grab enemy" button, and for some reason the game will decide the latter is more important than the former.  Yes, the GENERIC Action overrides the circumstantial one, one that is necessary to advance the game.  Really should have just made them two buttons.
-Light Magic idea is cool, and yay healing!  What isn't cool is having to absorb Magic via Onimusha logic, which is a real pain when surrounded by enemies and you want to restore magic with all those power ups around.  Look, it worked in Onimusha because enemies came in small waves; here enemies can just keep on coming.  Just do what DMC did where running over the power up heals you, if not what God of War did where it just gives you regardless of where you are.  If you want an "absorption" mechanic, do it the way Ninja Gaiden did where it's a way to get out of reach items!
-Probably the single worst thing so far though?  Health.  The game never restores your health automatically between stages.  The game has a DMC-style Mission Based structure, but doesn't heal you between missions.  Like what's the point of a mission based structure if you're not going to do that?  Is it because they just want you to backtrack to earlier areas so you can get power ups you couldn't get before?  I'd be willing to accept this if this was a Castlevania Tradition, but this is so unlike the rest of the franchise.  The Classic 2D games fully healed you when you beat a stage, even as far back as Castlevania 1, the Metroidvanias healed you at every save point, etc.  Lords of Shadow basically means if you win a fight at the skin of your teeth, you're boned.
-To add to this, dying doesn't fully heal you; it follows God of War rules where you revive at last checkpoint with the same amount of health you had when you got there.  Granted, Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge did this too, and it was annoying for bosses, but that doesn't make it good design, and it also had that limited restoration mechanic NG2 had.  I guess the idea is that because this game doesn't rate you at the end of fights like all the other spectacle fighters, thus no penalty for dying, they had to compensate somehow, but again, this game is so stingy on health...


...basically, yeah, so far it's got a good combat system ruined by how it handles health.  Dunno how my final thoughts will be by the end.  Plotwise?  Gabriel is more like-able than I expected! He's not a good or compelling character, but at least the whole "he's not a happy dude" thing is sensible since his wife's death was 2 days before the game begins, as well as he seems to have honorable intentions.  No, this isn't a very done character, but at least I can support this guy's mission and say I want him to succeed.

[Monkeyfinger]

Banner Saga: Hum.

The battle system doesn't seem very interesting at all... Basically:
- There's no healing, and the less HP people have the less damage they do. They become worthless pretty soon. So you really want to have initiative. Which is easy since enemies just run like morons.
- You can choose to attack either attack or defense and there's minor strategy involved in this.
- Speed is weird: One enemy gets a turn, then one ally gets a turn, no matter how many allies or enemies there are. So battles against a ton of enemies are actually pretty easy. This is pretty dumb. When you're down to 1 ally or 1 enemy though, poor guy gets destroyed.
- It's a strategy RPG with basically no terrain quirks, just flat floor. It's pretty boring.

What I'm most excited about is that there are a lot of choices that seem to affect the game, and the game uses a Souls like save system with which you can't save and reload. So yeah big thumbs up for that. I assume you can reset if you lose a battle though.
The setting is nice too. Ice, snow, vikings, politics, famine. The art style looks impressive but animations are minimal; so the game is not breaking any boundary compared to anime games with anime talking heads. Its only difference is that it's not anime.

You can reload in the banner saga but it's tied to checkpoints which are spaced far apart.

[The Duck]

Borderlands: The Presequel - I was gifted this and booted it up and quickly realized that my Borderlands fatigue is still alive and kicking. I didn't seem to hate 2 while playing it (although the meme humor is terrible and Handsome Jack is horribly obnoxious), but afterwards, I didn't feel the need to ever pick it up again. They hardly change anything here, adding some new characters/classes and an oxygen mechanic and making everyone Australian. I don't think I'm going to bother.

Shadow of Mordor - I beat this and really had a good time with it. It ends with a QTE boss fight which has no weight or import, but the core game does what it sets out to do as well or better than anything that has come before it and the Nemesis system is kind of brilliant and I wouldn't be unhappy if a variant of it were implemented in other games. There are a ton of ways to approach each situation and you are encouraged to use all of them due to the Captains' weaknesses and strengths (whereas I felt some of the gadgets in the Arkham games were a bit superfluous or clumsy to use in combat). The camera can be a bit wonky and the things you can and can't do parkour shit on seem a bit arbitrary sometimes. Still, the combat is really good and satisfying, and fighting several high level captains at a time is incredibly fun.

The story pretends to have the import that is associated with the hushed tones of Elves whispering to each other about powerful rings and shit, but as seriously as it takes itself, this is a game where you eventually get the power to explode Orc heads for no good reason and all the orcs yell about alcohol in Cockney accents (speaking of, it seems every orc with a unique epithet, and there are a lot of them, has unique flavor text, which was cool of them to implement). The game itself didn't even need to be part of a licensed movie property, but I guess the Lord of the Rings still sells.

I also picked up Bayonetta 2 and will probably play through Bayonetta 1 first, which I'm balancing between starting up Dragon Age Inquisition. I'll probably have to check out the Dragon Keep thing because I have completely forgotten the plot beats of both games.

[Meeplelard]

Lords of Shadow: So...you can mount spiders, trolls, boars, and wargs, have them break stuff, then strangle them to death...

...still classier than anything Kratos does.

[Shale]

Dragon Age Origins: Picked this up as a freebie from the EA store, playing it because why not. It's more tolerable than Bioware's earlier RPGs, for whatever that's worth -- meaning the battle system is remotely playable, but I still want to strangle the AI at least once every other fight. Playing a Dwarf Noble rogue, just left the first town.

[Grefter]

ToS - I levelled up a couple more times and swapped Collette over from the T path to the S path to get Paraball because fuck it lets get the broken scaling attack.  Like 2 more levels was worth over 100HP on each character easily.  That makes it both easier to survive hits and boosts healing.  About to do Asgard Human Ranch.

Still took many tries.  I literally have no idea how you are meant to handle a giant horse that can 3HKO your team that can just decide to jump over everyone whenever it wants.  Free Run was really really important introduction to the Tales combat system.  It was broken in the opposite direction at first but hooooooly shit does it make these fights feel like you are completely at the whims of the AI.

[Clear Tranquil]

Did you like go to temple of wind/Asgard/Tower of Mana first or something? That's the hard path while Palmacosta/Thoda is supposed to be the easy path or something (though the Thoda boss can still screw you up if not careful - don't think I had Paraball yet) Yaay Paraball~ Anyway I was really mean to ToS on my first run and just jacked up Colette's luck with everything I could (starting with getting two Rabbit's Foot at Luin) for Toss Hammer poison hax and Paraball spam. This is really cheap but I just wanted to get through the game as soon as possible to see the story and was like god mode Colette why not because god mode cute angel girl is funny (I also picked up her Little Pickpocket title early as well)~

(well I beat the arena with Colette without using poison hax but probably will do that with poison sometime as well because broooke, and the Devil Arm's boss one time with poison and one time without, and the stuffs Colette wasn't around for - also Toss/Ice Hammers, poison/ice elemental shenanigans is fun too~)

You probably already know but remember to beat the first Sword Dancer before Tower of Salvation (think that is the cut off point anyway hopefully not earlier - think you can handle him with your levels now)

(oh if you have the patience you can use the fight and flee method vs Sword Dancer to swipe some EX Gems with Colette's steal if you want~)

[The Duck]

Bayonetta 1 - This game is fucking bonkers.

[Fenrir]

Banner Saga: Hum.

The battle system doesn't seem very interesting at all... Basically:
- There's no healing, and the less HP people have the less damage they do. They become worthless pretty soon. So you really want to have initiative. Which is easy since enemies just run like morons.
- You can choose to attack either attack or defense and there's minor strategy involved in this.
- Speed is weird: One enemy gets a turn, then one ally gets a turn, no matter how many allies or enemies there are. So battles against a ton of enemies are actually pretty easy. This is pretty dumb. When you're down to 1 ally or 1 enemy though, poor guy gets destroyed.
- It's a strategy RPG with basically no terrain quirks, just flat floor. It's pretty boring.

What I'm most excited about is that there are a lot of choices that seem to affect the game, and the game uses a Souls like save system with which you can't save and reload. So yeah big thumbs up for that. I assume you can reset if you lose a battle though.
The setting is nice too. Ice, snow, vikings, politics, famine. The art style looks impressive but animations are minimal; so the game is not breaking any boundary compared to anime games with anime talking heads. Its only difference is that it's not anime.

You can reload in the banner saga but it's tied to checkpoints which are spaced far apart.

Is there like one checkpoint per chapter? Because there are about 3-4 battles/chapter. That would sound right.

I went through Chapter 2, and holy hell that was exhausting just to play. Morale was super poor all the way through and food supplies were low. I sided with the brothers in the village crisis and lost, the brothers got killed afterwards. I like the contrast between Rook & Annette and the giants , I expect that the giants are going to suffer pretty soon. In Chapter 3.

[Grefter]

Yeah I deliberately did the hard route first (it is harder just on raw numbers), but like I have noted, I have had to do some grinding because I am bad, so my levels are pretty much around normal for that area based on some googling.  Luck hacks on Collette might be a fun thing to pursue, but they would definitely be more viable in a game where you have more control over the battle field.

On the other hand, the Item use timer is hella tiny here and you can stock 20 of items instead of 15, so there is weird spikes of where the game is easier compared to other Tales games.  Most of it isn't complaining, I know I took the hard route.  It is just jarring compared to my memory of my first play through and general Tales difficulty levels these days.  The point for "Normal" has drifted down over the years it seems.

Also I forgot to note for DJ that this short session featured the zenith for Lloyd as a character.  After the Tower of Mana he determines that Collette can't feel any more because she s bleeding and then tricks her by trolling her with hot coffee that he is all like "it is super hot right? Lol jk it's cold yeah? Loll lol I troll you it is actually hot". That is literally the best he gets.  He is socially adept, practical and genuinely caring about a friend while not going "noooo we can't do this its not fair there has to be a way to save the world AND not have you die for our sins".  Literally the opposite of Tidus.  Then the scene after you infiltrate the Asgard Ranch he goes to throw away the Ex Sphere that he has just been told functionally contains his Mother's life (whatever that is) in a hissy fit and needs to be talked down.  It is all down hill from here guys.

[Meeplelard]

Bayonetta 1 - This game is fucking bonkers.

You have no idea.

[Grefter]

Bayonetta 1 - This game is fucking bonkers.

You have no idea.

I object to this.  Other than Fenrir I think you will find Gourry is the most qualified person in the DL to determine just how bonkers video games can be.

[Shale]

Okay yes true, but it's more about how you get up to level 20 and then look back on the first few stages as nice, sedate, normal times.

[Hunter Sopko]

DA:O- Uhhh. That was a bizarre glitch...

Sided with the elves, fought Witherfang. After the fight, the intro cutscene with the discussion between Witherfang and Zarathias starts playing again, only this time Witherfang and Swiftrunner are replaced by corpse/blood spot, with audio. Cutscene ends and I lose the affection points with party members AGAIN, cuts straight to post-fight scene, only Zarathias' model was completely darkened out and there was no audio. Weird.

EDIT: Oh, and I totally cockblocked that elf kid. Still a douche.

[SnowFire]

Also in fairness, Axeman accuracy is bad...but they get a super cheap skill that boosts their accuracy (And is the best skill in the game because of this). That one dog is game MVP because that damage/durability combo is insane.

Yeah, the thing is the axemen are all totally lame as characters even by JDA standards, so I don't *want* to use 'em.  Also, they definitely blossom later.  Until Chapter 6 or so - a good chunk of the game - basic magic is just awesome, often doing better damage at 100% accuracy and range even for non-mages with the only downside being not generating a Burning Aura.  Unfortunately JDA clearly expects you to be using the higher level magic for C7 & C8 to break defense, not realizing that the crippling MP costs on the more powerful magic makes it not real enticing to set.  It's not a big deal, it means that mages can be mages and if I want big damage I just use transform abilities, but it IS a big deal vs. the final, where transform abilities don't last long enough to smash through the regen.

Then the game froze and I got no ending. At least I got a laugh out of the situation.

Yeah, I should clarify that one of my 'resets' to the final boss fight was involuntary - my Vita randomly flipped out and claimed the memory card had been removed.  (This was after I cleared the mooks but before I found out the final boss had insane defenses, thus I didn't know I would want to change my skill loadouts.)  The second reset I just got walled in the lame way regen does.  Oh boy slap fight where you can't kill me but I can't kill you, sigh.

My Vita seems to be being bad about this - I fought the Nightmare final boss in Oath in Felghana off an old save again for giggles today, and got the same "lol your memory card was removed" on the third & final phase.  Figures.

I thought all Mary Sues were bland and uninteresting ?
I read about the plot twist and it's pretty nice. I then watched the ending on Youtube and laughed for 5 minutes.

Hey now, Mary Sues *can* be fine.  Nothing inherently wrong with the amazing super-talented character beloved by his or her friends and feared by their enemies.  It's just grating if the character isn't 'sold'.  XG Citan is super-duper awesome and knows the plot and is friends with everyone and is secretly a master swordsman blah blah blah, but you get to see him actually doing awesome things.  JDA Jeanne is just bland.

JShe's a Mary Sue, which is fine, but she's a really bland and uninteresting one, which is hugely disappointing.  She doesn't have to have weird quirks or craziness or flaws to be interesting, just give her *something*.

I would definitely say that Jeanne was at least slightly unbalanced. She got herself hyped up, believed in her own infallibility and she fell down hard and lost big because of it. If she was smarter or more level headed things probably would have turned off differently. Not to say that she was super interesting, but she definitely had a notable flaw that the plot capitalized on.

If the game had stopped in C4, I'd have agreed with your point.  But PLOT TWIST actually the armlet was calling Jeanne to secret forest training with Luther by way of canyon-to-forest teleport or something???  And the armlets are psychic or something and know what's best.  So really Jeanne's mistake was just fate, or sped up fate?  Yeah I dunno.  If I'd been told "look Jeanne is coming back in C5, write around it," I'd have had her *punished* for her mistake and have her come back all haggard and scarred from her near-death experience, and have had a peasant village nurse her back to health from the brink of death.  Make it so she suffered & paid a price, and had to learn a hard lesson.  Instead she gets free legendary hero training after falling into a canyon while wearing armor and is positively rewarded for it as she gets the best armlet.  The game tries to hype the events at Rouen as vaguely her fault, maybe, but not really since it's possessed Roger blaming her...  and it doesn't really make sense anyway, this is too disconnected to really be Jeanne's fault except in the sense it's anyone's fault when bad things happen after their defeat.

[Grefter]

So hey, maybe this one will make up for things to Djinn.

ToS - Just killed Kvar, suprisingly easy boss fight for one you are outnumbered for, but that is pretty much 100% foreknowledge.  Paralysis Charms on 2/3 people to halve all the damage they take is kind of a huge deal, but the hard part of the fight being trash mobs that don't have massive Defense like bosses do helped a lot.  Lloyd was capable of doing damage to them rather than just being only useful for tying up the boss and defending like he is (again, going for Eternal Apprentice on the hard path is Pretty Stupid tm). 

That said I want to talk a little bit about Kvar.  There is some plot around him that is blah blah blah, Kratos avenging his wife Lloyd avenging his mother blah blah blah.  None of that shit fucking matters.



What I really want to talk about is how Tales of Symphonia has a Dragon Quest character for a boss battle.  He is a coded gay half elf that is rocking Saiyan armour and pansy booties.  Toriyama should sue.

Every time he is on screen he is at LEAST the second worst dressed character on screen, it is fucking amazing.

Edit - Just to actually rile Djinn up, the reason he is always the second worst dressed character on screen at any time is because he shares all his scenes with Kratos.  The thing to rile you up is that I know you would fuck the shit out of a Kratos cosplayer if you met them in spite of the shittiness of the outfit.


Edit 2 - OKAY FIND DJINN I WILL FUCKING HATE ON LLOYD NOW OKAY BECAUSE I JUST AM WATCHING THE SCENE RIGHT AFTER THE GAY ELF DIED FOR MY SINS.

Fucking hell Lloyd you found out the effects of Collette turning into an angel for what 2 fucking nights at most before you told everyone?  She expressed her desire for you to shut your stupid fucking face about it so that she can enjoy what as far as she expects is the last parts of her humanity without worrying everyone.  She has grown up her whole life expecting to be a sacrifice and she has come to terms with this fact and you fucking have to piss all over that in spite of her adamant protests all because... what?  You feel bad for like half a fucking hour?  Fuck you and your selfish fucking righteous wank.

Also I love that you kill one gay Toriyama half elf mad scientist for him to be replaced immediately by another gay Toritama half elf mad scientist



It is weird, this isn't a consistent design choice in the game, like there is plenty of Anime As Hell characters here, but just these two make me think of DBZ rejects.

Also mad props to http://aselia.wikia.com/wiki/Kvar this wiki article which is the source of these pics.  There sections for Kvar are amazing.  The category titles are Angelus Project, Luin Razed and Burning In Hell.  Naming your headings after vague events that happen half way through or at the end of the paragraph are great ways to categorise sections rather than like actual descriptive parts on a timeline or explicit descriptions of events  10/10 would Web 2.0 again.


Edit 1 billion - Also I love that the party apparently had enough explosives to blow up the Asgard Human Ranch somewhere?  (I am not shocked between them that they know how to use them to be fair)  They do it all without comment.  Also that it is clearly called the Asgard Human Ranch even though it is most closely situated to Luin, but you see at some point in the plot Luin is going to be destroyed soooo...  Better call it the Asgard one.

Edit 98989879879 - Goddammit DJ, why do either of us even like these games again?  Lloyd literally shits the bed on his character instantly in this sequence.  He goes from competent but boring pragmatic to having Full Blown Tidus with NONE of the justifying elements to the character Tidus has.  When the 12 year old of the party is more respectful of Colette's sacrifice that she is actively choosing to pursue than you do then you have some fuckign problems

[DjinnAndTonic]

I liked Tales of Symphonia for being one of the first ARPGs that hammed up all the ARPG tropes AND the anime tropes when I was an even huger weeaboo than I am now (middle school, I think?). Also, Zelos is still pretty awesome.

Re: Kratos - I actually don't really like Kratos' design either. I do like Lloyd's design, and I actually like most of the tropes that inform Lloyd - I like the dumb energetic hero-types (see: FF13 Snow, Justin, Tidus). But Lloyd was just boring and irredeemable (apart from yes, that one scene with the coffee mug).

Never noticed all the gay-coded half-elf scientists in ToS before. Another reason to hate it. Yay.

Honestly, ToS is so low on my list of Tales games now. I liked it a lot before, but the new games are so much better, and it's aged REALLY poorly.

[Grefter]

Legit really specific there, I don't ever think you like Kratos or his outfit.  Just that you would totally fuck a dude in that outfit (it is really really tight).

On the other hand it also is full body other than his armpits.  I have no idea who thought arm pit windows as a cool thing to have.  It positively makes Zelos' belly shirt wayyyyyyyyyyyyy better.

[Fenrir]

Snowfire: Good point about Citan.
This feels wrong though!
I now hesitate between totally agreeing with you, and re-evaluating whether Citan is awesome or not because I was about 14 years old when I saw him

I object to this.  Other than Fenrir I think you will find Gourry is the most qualified person in the DL to determine just how bonkers video games can be.

Yo BTW this came out yesterday
http://store.steampowered.com/app/335670/


Freedom Wars: Rank 8 or 7 I can't remember.

I'm close to the end of the game and have only lowered my death sentence from 1 000 000 years to 930 000 000 years
I hope these endgame missions give a ton of exp.

Yeah I'm not really feeling the game anymore. I think I've been waiting for something more interesting to happen the whole time through. The beginning is by far the best part, then the game becomes monotonous. There are no new environments and very few new enemies. Even the best outfits are given at the beginning of the game. (aside from that sweet headset I just got. I should post one picture of Yattaf and her android)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Yo BTW this came out yesterday
http://store.steampowered.com/app/335670/

Oh wow, Mother 4 is looking really good.


..seriously wtf did I just see

[Shale]

inFamous 2: Almost done the first island, two more sidequests and one more story quest. Getting the improved glide has been the best upgrade in the game thus far because flying is awesome, second best is Bolt Stream -- Jesus Christ that murders everything. I went with ice powers at the power transfer event because Nix sucks and is dumb, and also because ice grenades are fun.

[Hunter Sopko]

inFamous 2: Almost done the first island, two more sidequests and one more story quest. Getting the improved glide has been the best upgrade in the game thus far because flying is awesome, second best is Bolt Stream -- Jesus Christ that murders everything. I went with ice powers at the power transfer event because Nix sucks and is dumb, and also because ice grenades are fun.

Ice rockets are far, far more broken. OHKO on any human-sized enemy, pretty much.

In general, Fire-powers are better on large enemies (Napalm grenades so broken on those), Ice is better on human sized ones.

[The Duck]

Little Inferno - Just picked this up on a weird bundle and finished it. I don't know if this was discussed here before, but this is a Grefter game if there ever was one.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Game where you set things on fire in order to trigger oddly nuanced emotional responses from an ultimately artificial skinner box construct? Yeah, that game was made from a piece of Grefter's ribs while he was asleep.