What games are you playing 2014?

[Cmdr_King]

Ranger: no comment

But... a proper pompadour is a joy AND a responsibility.

[Sierra]

By the time Belmont got his whip I had the run time down to three and a half minutes.

So what exactly is permitted under Belmont guidelines? Whips and kunai and uh...it's really a shame PCs can't toss the Gyrm axe like enemies do. It's got the same arc and everything!

Anyway game re-done. Darkdrift is the weakest katana by a substantial margin. God dammit, Agdayne! And it would be so cool toting around a vorpal sword, too. Manslayer is probably the best. On paper it should be a little weaker than Uchi or Blacksteel but...I sometimes found it consistently doing more damage than those for no obvious reason. And it's not just oh hey you hit an enemy mid-attack here's a damage bonus, it looked consistent for specific enemy types. At least this is what I saw farming twinkling titanite in Amana, did better vs archjerks and mushrooms but less vs priestesses. I dunno.

But the important thing is, POIZN at no loss of attack power. I really wish it was more obvious when enemies actually got hit with status in this game, though. Like, it doesn't tick on boss damage numbers even when you can tell (if you squint real close) that the boss health meter is slowly degrading. But it definitely does hit because both Velstadt and Guardian Dragon dropped dead on the other side of the room from me. So Manslayer, definitely a worthy place to dump your twinkling titanite, just a shame it shows up so late.

Velka's set + Washing Pole is 100% Sephiroth cosplay (I even had white hair this time! Though I was shooting for pale blonde, in-game lighting looks a tad different than chargen screens). I'm not sure how I never noticed this before. Washing Pole sadly sucks, stats say it should outdamage the other katanas but I dunno, maybe you have to hit with just the right part of the blade or something? Because it generally didn't outperform like it should on paper. It gets you reach and crappy durability, that's about it.

Stone Twinblade (extremely rare drop from unicorn jerks outside LGK, I despawned the entire corridor trying to get one and nabbed it on the last pass) is probably the most decent representative of that particular weapon class. A hundred or so attack power over the basic Bastile twinblade (which suuuuuucks). I dunno if I can recommend it for all the previous reasons mentioned, but it's perfectly functional and you're not necessarily gimping yourself just for using it. Dragonrider Twinblade is marginally stronger and actually sorta respectable at +5, but multi-element so it probably balances out. Also it eats your game's supply of dragon bones so fuck that thing. These weapons are really good at stunlocking almost everything of humanoid size, I'll give them that.

[Meeplelard]

Kirby Super Star: Just 100%ed including Arena.  Ok, NOW I can get onto Kirby Dreamland 3!


Pokemon All Starter Playthrough: Greninja got Dark Pulse, Sceptile finally dropped Cut, Charizard...had trouble with an Aerodactyl in a skybattle so I cheesed it (don't give me that look!)...that Aerodactyl had it coming!  Stupid STAB Stone Edge in a Sky Battle off that speed *grumbles*

Also, is considered wrong to use a Tough Claws Flare Blitz from Megazard X on an Abomasnow?


Oh yeah, Empoleon has Ice beam, Emboar can shoot water out of it's mouth and is questioning if that means anything, and Meganium dances around like the pretty dinosaur that it is while everything nearbye is gets killed by flower petals.

[Dark Holy Elf]

DmC - I take it back, they ruined Vergil after all.

Reasonably fun game but definitely well short of great. Random design is a mixed bag. The scrubs are scrubs and exist to get owned for free by Osiris and provide minimal at best distraction to real enemies. Some of the real enemies (Witches, the elemental knights) are pretty good, some go through overly long near-invincible phases which kind of bore me. The best part is that the game isn't afraid to mix up combinations of the various enemies, that was definitely cool. Boss design... well there aren't very many of them! Overall, meh. Hunter's fine as a first boss, Bob Barbas is a really fun boss stylistically (but kinda iffy as an actual boss), Mundus Spawn is probably my favourite (reasonable array of moves to deal with). The last two bosses were pretty blah though, and overall that's just not enough in a series known for this. Like this is one place DMC2 beats this game, you don't want DMC2 beating you at much.

Certainly the best thing about the game is all the silly combos you can do with instant weapon switching mid-combo (if this was practical in DMC2-4 I missed it, and it very much isn't in 1) and with the pulling and pushing (taking one of the neat ideas of 4 and expanding it greatly). This was the first DMC where I expect I'll remember more than two weapons a year after playing the game, so good show there.

'sokay. Glad I've played it, but not high on the replay list.

[Fudozukushi]

@Belmont run.  Whips and throwing knives obviously.  Bare-hand attacks for those few Belmonts who did so.  Holy Urns from Targray are effective Holy Water replacements.  Some Belmonts use fire whips, so I can upgrade it along that line or use Charcoal Resins or Flame Weapon(lol) to emulate that effect.  Gaberial uses light and shadow magic so that means I can lightning/dark as well.  Theoretically I could use some of Richtor's moves as a base for say... Sacred Oath or Heavenly Thunder/Binding Bolt if I really want to do something weird.

[Fenrir]

Jonathan has a fire crossbow, but that's a stretch.
And he's a Morris!
Enjoy the holy water spam, it's pretty cool.


Apparently the Santiers Spear is the best twinblade. That thing sounds completely ridiculous, with movesets from 4 different weapon classes.

You can notice poison working by a damage number staying constantly above the boss and never disappearing. (Like, 15) It msut be the damage done every half second or something. This makes poison much more noticeable than bleed for me.

[Fudozukushi]

Today's Dark Souls 2 Trolling Video.
And another.

Santiers is also completely unbreakable.  OH JOY.

[Fenrir]

Nice.

I just made a run for the Murakumo and died against Prowling Magus. 4 real. It was hell with unupgraded weapons and extremely few life gems. Scorpion Lady was also a close call.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Duck Tales - Hard Mode run, only Moon and Vesuvius left. In practice, for the most part it actually feels slightly easier than Normal, mainly because you get a much higher supply of lives, which replace the full healing items. Scrooge's maneuverability is so good that durability doesn't feel like much of an issue if you're remotely quick on your reflexes, so you don't -really- feel the loss of two heart cointainers throughout the game much. The game remains a joy to play overall anyway - the stage design is generally quite solid, if not particularly innovative, and the boss fights are amazing fun.

[superaielman]

Civ 5: I decided to run Autocracy India. http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3336349969157700721/AD33A350C6609E06A222B658B6336F93A377539B/

[SnowFire]

Today's Dark Souls 2 Trolling Video.
And another.

Okay, I'll bite.  Can you explain why these videos are funny to a non-DS player?

In one, a guy runs around, uh, casting spells?  Is he healing the evil knight or something?  Then he runs up and kills the dude.  Seems like a vanilla invade.
In the other, guy gets backstabbed by a phantom he wasn't paying attention to and dies.  'k.  Is this an unusual death somehow for an invade?

[Fudozukushi]

Today's Dark Souls 2 Trolling Video.
And another.

Okay, I'll bite.  Can you explain why these videos are funny to a non-DS player?

In one, a guy runs around, uh, casting spells?  Is he healing the evil knight or something?  Then he runs up and kills the dude.  Seems like a vanilla invade.
In the other, guy gets backstabbed by a phantom he wasn't paying attention to and dies.  'k.  Is this an unusual death somehow for an invade?

The boss in the first video can summon players as grey phantoms to help him fight other players challenging him.  Hostile phantoms otherwise can't interfere with boss fights.  The hostile grey phantom summoned player then goes and heals the boss.
The second video has a friendly NPC white phantom outright killing the PC.  I didn't even know that was possible.

[Fenrir]

Yeah, this fight is an unique case in Souls games, and as an invader, spending most of the fight healing the boss is pretty creative/evil.
Oh man that got me thinking. The wonderful Channeler's trident dance has to work on that boss too right? (This boosts the stats of allies. Looks like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_133035&feature=iv&src_vid=24N4BW2syPs&v=mbIhwTClif4)

Another no death run failed, with the Full Moon Sickle.
I died because of some weird glitch, and I wasn't even mad because scythes are terrible and I basically wanted ANYTHING ELSE.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Civ 5: I decided to run Autocracy India. http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3336349969157700721/AD33A350C6609E06A222B658B6336F93A377539B/

Wow that's a lot of unhappiness.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Super is a firm believer of the mantra that it is better to be feared than loved.

[superaielman]

Japan declared war on me. I responded by capturing most of his civilization and setting it on fire at the same time. I had 10~ cities burning there at the same time, which is why my happiness was so special.

[Sierra]

I love how the second invader walks in, stands there a minute just processing what the hell is going on, then politely leaves.

Scythes are pretty terrible! The damage can be outstanding if you land it precisely point on, but if you're anything like me that happens so inconsistently that the average is pretty scrubby.

DS2: Bows-only is a thing. Yeah that's right, this is happening. Oh my god this is so bad. I decide to allow myself the capacity to punch people barehanded if/when I run out of arrows. This happens several times in the first hour. This wasn't as much of an issue in DS1 because arrows were incredibly cheap, but in DS2 the weakest arrows cost ten souls each! The basic scrubs in the first zone give you 50-90 souls each, and you only get up to maybe 3HKOing people once you've multiply upgraded the bow and got some more DEX. So your brain starts processing every enemy in terms of profit margins and at best 2/3 or your souls accrued constitutes actual gain and augh. Also suddenly Last Giant is a grueling test of endurance (I brought Pate for a distraction and he actually almost died) and HERO SKELETON in the Majula basement is an epic test of fortitude. Holy shit arrows are so bad vs skellies, I am putting off chariot and skelemob for as long as possible (Nito was by far the worst part of DS1 bow run too).

So that's horrible and I may be chipping away at it in between more worthwhile ideas for a while. What's left on the table here? I dunno, I was thinking: Great Demon Hammer pure STR mode, hope I get two for utter ridiculousness, maybe go dragon transformation because I haven't tried that yet; or LOST SINNER cosplay run. And then I'm out of save slots (assuming DS2 has the same limit as DS1. Let's just hope it does).

Actually, the latter sounds pretty cool, let's go with that. After a couple hours of chunking through standard cleric MACE cheese, it's starting to come together. Armor, check, pyromancy, check, sword...still a ways off. I need more petrification cures before I can help out Ornifex/Straid, so off to Harvest Valley next. And yeah, I'm using the sword no matter what, that awful, terribad weapon that eats your HP when you hit people for no added benefit. I'm sure this won't cause any major amount of swearing on my part from unnecessary deaths down the road! Pyromancy is just thematically appropriate and anyway I wanted to try it out as a principle form of offense just because the game so clearly does not want you to do this (it's obviously meant as an accessory to other casting classes; or at least this was my initial thought, but some rudimentary testing now with Flame Swathe turned out a difference of like a hundred damage between users with 30/40 INT/FTH and one with single-digits for both stats, so it really looks like stats barely matter for it at all).

The character model is fashioned after my darkwraith pyro from DS1. Forget trying to relight the first flame, the Lost Sinner's real transgression was spamming Black Flame in low-level PVP (NG+ at SL50? I can dig it).

[Fenrir]

Seems to me that regular greatswords are about the same thing as scythes (they might even be a little faster) except they always do optimal damage and have a more varied skillset.
Only downside is that they can't bypass shields, which is almost totally useless in PvE and doesn't really seem worth it in PvP.
So far I think scythes might be the worst melee weapon type in the game. Axes, great axes and twinblades are also pretty bad but probably not as much. Weird how fist weapons and whips are actually better than all of these.

Good luck with your bow only character vs guys like Smelter Demon. Get him with poison arrows!
Skelemob should actually be very easy at range, watch out for the wheels though.

[Fudozukushi]

There's another secret to the Lost Sinner's sword that is absolutely amazing in how awful it is.  I don't want to ruin the surprise for it though.

Dark Souls 2: Since Shield-Only is just Club+- I decided to spend a bit with the Belmont run.  I learned the secret to the Old Whip is to carefully position yourself to only hit enemies by the very tip.  If you do that you only lose 1 durability instead of 4 or 5!  Progress!  Unfortunately due to some bad positioning and outright bullshit I died to Dragonrider and seriously contemplated just deleting the character an hour of farming be damned it's a terrible night to have a curse.

But I am also very lazy and just dropped him next fight.  Go and grab the Notched Whip, be completely baffled by bleed in this game again when it suddenly adds 200 damage on attacks and lose a couple thousand souls to hyper armor.  Also the full moon sickle dropped from the first fatty. 

Over to Forest, die again to getting geometry stuck on the throwing knife jump.  Ballista room was actually pretty easy with whips because I could just one-shot dudes and not be overrun.  Whips got nearly broke in the end so I had to fist the final dudes.  Yay Belmont fury.  Notched Whip is now +4 and with skelton fight I'm surprised to learn whips are slash damage instead of strike.  That uh... doesn't bode well.

[Captain K.]

Hearthstone:  I'd been saving my gold for the expansion but apparently it's not coming out for a while.  And since it's really painful playing with just the basic cards it's back to the Arena.  Went 7-3 with a Paladin deck that I thought was terrible as soon as I made it!  Highlight of the week: playing Betrayal on an enemy's Emperor Cobra.

Also got my first Legendary, Cairne Bloodhoof.

[Sierra]

There's another secret to the Lost Sinner's sword that is absolutely amazing in how awful it is.  I don't want to ruin the surprise for it though.

I'm not invading or killing any NPCs this time! Not even Bellbroing for titanite! (All my gear uses twinkling or dragon bones god dammit.) The Lost Sinner will remain innocent. I'm even just going to sit back and watch Pate/Creighton duke it out again.

And what else would whips be? Were they strike in DS1 or something? (I don't remember them being particularly effective vs skellies in DS1 or anything.) Definitely onboard with whips being better than a lot of things in DS2. I'm surprised, but pleasantly so. Ditto for caestus, genuinely a highly effective option if you're built for it (probably the easiest run I've had through the game, and definitely the most fun).

[Fudozukushi]

Hahaha, oh no, if an NPC dies EVER you get the Sin for it.  You can't actually do Pate/Creighton because it'll still give you sin even if you do nothing.  And there's no way to remove sin without getting bluecopped, and that only works til you're back down to 9 sin.  Even if you invade the traitor you still get sin.

I always figured whips for more hitty less cutty I guess?

[Sierra]

Whoa okay. Note to self, never talk to either of them again. I think that should cover it!

[Pyro]

Child of Light: Finished.

Child of Light combines unbelievably gorgeous visuals, a suitable soundtrack, an engrossing sense of immersion, a competent battle system, and a simple story. These things extremely well together and I have to hand it to the game.

I would have liked to see the endgame plot handled a little differently I felt Nox was not given enough focus as she and Aurora had actually built a relationship with each other. Also Umbra's lack of a more extreme reaction to her daughter's death.

High points:
- Just wandering around the world and gazing at the impossibly high waterfalls, trees, windmills...
- Boss fights. Great boss music and the fights themselves tended to be competent enough...
- Boss Intros. These tended to be fast but very stylish.
- Random battles that didn't just roll over and die.
- A few plot points were presented beautifully enough to be emotional.
- Aurora's personality and dialogue.

Low Points:
- Aurora not being a particularly good PC. She's really a mage and should be raised as such (though being one of only 2 mages in a game where a lot of enemies can only be damaged with magic is vaulable!)
- Lack of equipment tinkering.
- Lack of resolution with Nox.

Others should play this when you get a chance.

[Sierra]

DS2: Terrible sword acquired! Aw god it's one of those weapons where DS2 thinks you want attacks to charge in the direction you're moving instead of towards the enemy you're locked onto. For fuck's sake you guys. Also I lack the stats to use it one-handed. I don't know if I'll bother to fix this or not. I'll always be using it two-handed (because that's just how Lost Sinner rolls) and I'm probably going to make it a fire weapon which does no favors for the crappy-by-default scaling. The raw damage per hit at +3 is okay I guess (though it's probably not getting any higher until like Aldia). The HP drain is...not unnoticeable. It'd be worse on a fast weapon. (Did I mention this thing is slow? This thing is slow.) Apparently Old Sun Ring/Ring of Thorns can trigger from the self-inflicted damage. That might be fun to play around with. Hit people and you explode at them.

Anyway 3/4 Old Ones down. Iron Keep last for obvious reasons. Smelty eats it on the first try to ratbro spells. I barely had to attack him at all. And then the archer jerk outside decides to step in and snipe me while I'm fighting Pursuer mk. 2. You sonuvabitch! That's the last time you put a knife in me, Pagoda.

Playing crow roulette for dragon bones got me a Demon's Great Hammer and Old Whip in succession. God dammit, game.