What Games are you playing 2015?

[SnowFire]

I played through as Soldier, which is the most "pretend you are in a normal FPS" option.  Shoot things with a wide variety of guns, have special heavy weapons with limited ammo you can also switch between.  This way I didn't have to really learn the "what blocks Biotic powers" rules since guns are pretty obvious line-of-sight, while I found my Biotic skills more easily blocked by walls & shields & stuff.  (Of course that also makes it more *interesting* arguably, but I was fine with not having to bother.)

If I played through again, I'd definitely do with a Vanguard, which still doesn't need to learn Biotic rules but also has more of an excuse to leave cover and charge in.  YMMV on if you're up for this, as it's also interesting because it's more unforgiving if you screw up.  But ME2 has an excellent range of difficulties so I wouldn't worry too much.

[Grefter]

If you aren't into shooters stuff much I would go with Engineer, you can spend most of your time behind cover picking your shots with Pistols and throwing out your powers on cool down.  You get the most diverse and useful skills for taking down shields/armour and your SMG does work on Biotic Barriers.  Also your class passive reduces the cost of ship upgrades so you have to do less of the resource gathering and can get through stuff quicker.  There comes a point where you can pick a type of weapon that you can learn to use.  Pick up the Assault Rifle.

Trade off is that they are probably the least durable class.

The easiest by far is Soldier because the bullet time skill is broken (Adrenaline Rush), but it is also 100% straight shooter gameplay.

For what it is worth though ME2 is a pretty good shooter, so it isn't a bad place to learn the style of gameplay.

and thank you for playing it, I really hope you enjoy it <3

[Sierra]

Freezing dudes and then exploding them so that they freeze and explode other dudes is really pro...but thinking about it, I think that was what I did in ME3, not ME2. Sentinel?

~

Gone Home: This is another one of those games I got because the G.I.A. told me to. It's very brief, but I really enjoyed it. This game's sole purpose is to tell a story through scenery and it succeeds at this brilliantly (there's a written and spoken narrative accompanying it which I am primed to sympathize with for thematic reasons, but it's essentially a complement to the exploration). It's basically a giant love letter to growing up in the nineties. Not to the nineties, per se, in that trashy Hollywood "here is an era-appropriate pop cultural reference and does that not make you want to smile in reminiscence of being young?" way, but a really heartfelt attempt to fit together a nuts-and-bolts recreation of what it was like to be young at a specific snapshot in time. There isn't actually much in the way of gameplay, exactly, but people should take notes from this on how to establish setting in an interactive medium. Also a character dates her lesbian awakening back to She-Ra, which is just perfect.

Then I check the Steam board to dig up the combination to this one safe I couldn't figure out and everyone's all "This isn't a game!" and "It's too short, I got gypped!" and "Homogay agenda!" (Actually it is pretty short for the price but I don't regret my purchase because homogay agenda.)

~

J.U.L.I.A. Among the Stars: This is basically an old-fashioned point-and-click adventure game with an even more old-fashioned sci-fi story at its heart. Sure, there's the very modern and almost inevitable log-trail backstory of a shipful of paranoid crew killing each other one by one (this scenario feels strongly like a mafia game staffed entirely by incompetent townies and watched over by a smug douche of a GM), but more significantly for the heart of the story is that alien intelligence is perceived as a precious commodity that should be approached carefully and anthropologically rather than just seduced (hi Avatar/Bioware) or violently opposed (hi everything else). There's a definite old Star Trek vibe to this that makes me smile. It seems difficult these days to encounter sci-fi that's willing to posit the extraterrestrial Other as anything but a faceless enemy. I'm not finished yet, but there are strong hints early on that the titular AI is lying, subverted or broken and deliberately engineered the collapse of every away mission, as AI are kind of contractually obliged to do, but it's hard to dwell too strongly on this because even the character you're purportedly playing--the only surviving human on the ship--isn't even entirely forthcoming with information. It's been stated in textdumps that she was "cryo-jailed" early in the mission for unspecified reasons and she hasn't seen fit to comment on this at all. I admit to FAQing an increasing number of things as the game goes on because I sometimes find the puzzle logic obtuse, but I'm also a very literal person who's terrible at puzzles so I dunno. (I was completely incapable of discerning anything at all about what you're supposed to do with the translation minigame until I saw it in writing outside the game). So far I'd say it's worth bashing through for storytelling through ambience.

~

Papers, Please: I made it all of a week before half my family died and I got thrown into debtor's prison. Probably better than I'd manage in real life.

~

Atelier Meruru: "Barrel!" is not voiced. 0/10.

How does that crown stay on Meruru's head? It's sitting at like a thirty degree angle. Is it nature's suction cup? Anyway, our protagonist is rather dim, even for someone her age. Calling your dad a "poopyhead" in public? Really? Are you like five? I'd guess she's at least a teenager, although it's difficult to tell since the female cast is lolitastic goddammit. You know, I haven't played an Atelier game since Iris 2 or 3 (forget which ones I played) but I don't remember that being the case.

Anyway inventing stuff and beating up monsters is mindless okayness, although the game takes forever to get past its intro and let you get into a recognizable rhythm. We're talking like Star Ocean intro times here. And it keeps interrupting my gameplay for cutscenes I find it really hard to care about and they just introduced a character named "Estey Dee." Really guys? And then the protagonist of an earlier game shows up reverted to an eight-year-old by a botched potion of her teacher's that was only supposed to set her back to the "ideal age of fourteen" and what the hell am I supposed to--

Eight-year-olds, dude. Goddammit Gust.

[SnowFire]

they just introduced a character named "Estey Dee."

what is this i don't even

[Dark Holy Elf]

I find it so frustrating that Mass Effect has this class system... but you can only choose one class, for one character, and you're stuck with it the whole game. C'mon RPGs, give me my full-party customisation, I wants it. (I'll still probably play it eventually.)

Rayman Origins - Beat the optional super-level. Well. That was satanic.

How long did Land of the Livid Dead take you?

Probably around an hour or so. Good times.

[SnowFire]

Shepard can steal a single skill from any of his/her party members, and which skill you take can be switched up between missions, so you get SOME customization / playing around, at least.

[Cotigo]

Adept was pretty fun in 2. No real guns outside of pistols and (IIRC) the one freebie weapon specialization you get midway through the game, but being able to freeze, float, slam, and otherwise stun entire groups of enemies was really neat.

I forget what I did in 1. Vanguard I think? I have no idea, that was so long ago. In 1 though you can generally have your party members pick up the slack in whatever Shepard can do, though, and there's no real huge differences between Biotic users, Tech users, and Shooty McBangbangs. The only real downfall to not being able to customize characters' classes is that you can at most have two of the same class (making NEB's complaint about lack of party customization even more asinine than it already was!)  This isn't as true in ME2, with there being more variety between characters in the same skillset type.

[AndrewRogue]

I find it so frustrating that Mass Effect has this class system... but you can only choose one class, for one character, and you're stuck with it the whole game. C'mon RPGs, give me my full-party customisation, I wants it. (I'll still probably play it eventually.)

Rayman Origins - Beat the optional super-level. Well. That was satanic.

How long did Land of the Livid Dead take you?

Probably around an hour or so. Good times.

Sounds about what it took me and Ash. Glad you enjoyed it! I'm actually a huge fan. Have you already played Legends or going to move onto it?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Glad to run into another DL fan. I haven't played Legends yet, but I definitely will pick it up at some point.

[Sierra]

ME2 has a fuckhuge cast anyway so practically speaking you can't help but have all bases covered no matter what Shepard is. Oh, did Ciatos grab any of the DLC? It's generally worth it (not as outstanding as ME3's DLC, but few things are).

Star Control 2: I am diseased and unable to sleep and the ceiling just fell off half my apartment so I needed videogame comfort food. This fit the bill. Funny how the remixes take so much longer to download than the game itself.

[Cmdr_King]

Atelier Iris 3- Fin(ally).  Short version: they wanted to make basically AI1, except on purpose.  But Edge and Iris aren't as good of foils for the quirky shop keeps as Klein and Lita, and none of AI3's npc cast are Veola.  It does have a better Pamela though.  No required boss except the final is any good, although some will annoy you to death with resistances.  Decent core system, but you never really get to employ it.  Basically the Atelier equivalent to Grandia.  Which IS better than Grandia at least.  7/10

[Fenrir]

How does that crown stay on Meruru's head? It's sitting at like a thirty degree angle. Is it nature's suction cup?

= Meruru

[Sierra]

I just don't understand the purpose of a hat that can't properly keep your head warm.

[Fudozukushi]

Confusing people long enough to get a sucker punch in.

[Twilkitri]

Shin Megami Tensei IV - Played through, got Law ending

Highly enjoyable (at least once I got a few demons on my side).

I ended up filling my main up with buffing/debuffing skills and pumping something like half his points into strength, 30% of his points into agility, and the rest into luck, on the grounds that you don't need magic for buffing skills and that I wasn't planning on swapping from melee weapons to a gun as I wasn't initially aware that you got one in addition to your main weapon, and I was hardly going to change what I had been doing once that happened. Supplementary reading after the fact seems to have revealed that these were far from optimal choices.

I love the fusion search system and can only assume that there's nothing like it in SMTIII & previous.

Beat Clipped Wings 1 & 2, beat my head against the Ancient of Days for a while and eventually gave up. Never bothered trying the other two DLC missions of that difficulty. Still probably less money spent on unused DLC here than in FE13.

Since it's been over a month since I beat it I can't remember if I had anything specific I wanted to mention unfortunately.



A Bird Story - Played through

I... guess...? it's a little hype-inducing for the followup to To The Moon? But it's not very entertaining in its own right. Not bad or anything, just...

I also don't really understand how the events in the game are going to play into said followup, but that'll be seen when it's seen I suppose.



Abyss: The Wraiths Of Eden - Played through

I was seeing people talk about a HOG that ripped off the setting of Bioshock and I was in the mood for something cazh so I picked it up. Better than I expected but I don't typically play HOGs so I can't really speak for what they're normally like these days. Not to say that it's particularly good or anything, either.

Unfortunately you get essentially no backstory on why Eden was established or what it was like in the past, assuming that these details weren't locked behind expert mode (the achievement for which is called 'The Whole Story', but I have no intention of replaying on expert mode to check what the differences are).



Jazzpunk - Played through

Fairly entertaining. Overstays its welcome a little, I think, but has some pretty great bits.



Persona Q - Played through P3 version

Mostly enjoyable. Not as good as EOIV or P3/4. Crossover games seem to be having some bad luck on those fronts recently.

Party for the majority of the game was (Glorious Leader, Chie) (Yukari, Aigis, Naoto). Did want to use Koromaru but he's redundant against Glorious Leader and Naoto, sadly. Was initially intending to use Fuuka for both navigation roles but eventually ended up putting Rise in as labyrinth navigator so that I could train an additional sub-persona and so that Fuuka didn't need to carry skills for both roles.

Eventually realised that my party was critically poor against electricity, but ultimately the only enemy which really used the element a lot was also an enemy that used elec corrosion first anyway, so that didn't end up mattering. It's possible that there were more enemies which would have used electricity if Naoto hadn't wiped them off the map before they could move, and powerful lategame enemies typically missed a lot due to buffs & debuffs.

After hearing that Circle Recovery and Healing Hand stacked (on top of themselves in addition to each other, and that Healing Hand didn't even need to be on the caster/receiver of the healing in order to take effect) I gave both skills to the entire party, which essentially meant that the only things they were concerned about were mass instant death and/or all my circle casters being prevented from resetting a circle before it expired. Went with Panic circles most of the time although it didn't seem to trigger as much as it was hyped up to - could have been due to my main circle casting duties ending up falling on Aigis, although I did give her an St-Lu Reverse (to be fair I'm not sure whether luck is actually involved in status chances).

The fusion search system is depressingly lame considering that I went into this right after SMTIV. I don't need you to search through the personas I have on hand, game, I can already do that myself! I need you to search through ones I don't have on hand! You don't even tell me about ones that I can theoretically make with the personas I have on hand but I'm not a high enough level to make yet.

No intention of replaying for the P4 version.



Super Mario 3D World - Got to World Crown, but no plans on beating it

Highly enjoyable for the most part.

Not a fan of the parts which required gamepad interaction. Especially the fan platforms, which I had completely forgotten about by the time they showed back up in the postgame. Ended up dealing with one part where I was supposed to use a fan platform for collecting green coins by bringing in a catsuit from outside the level, and only re-remembered what they signified when they showed up in the final Captain Toad level and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to be going.

Got as far as 15 stars in the marathon mystery house before giving up. Eventually managed to get to the second area in Champion Road and decided it wasn't worth the trouble after the first try at it.

[The Duck]

I played Infiltrator in ME2 because I like sniping. They have a cloaking power that has a slowdown effect that helps you line up headshots. Incinerate is also useful for armored dudes. Soldier is very straightforward and Adrenaline Rush is pretty overpowered. I also hear that Vanguard is fun but I didn't get to that class until ME3 where it is stupid.

Also Ciato I don't care what your situation is, always use Garrus.

Freezing dudes and then exploding them so that they freeze and explode other dudes is really pro...but thinking about it, I think that was what I did in ME3, not ME2. Sentinel?

~

Gone Home: This is another one of those games I got because the G.I.A. told me to. It's very brief, but I really enjoyed it. This game's sole purpose is to tell a story through scenery and it succeeds at this brilliantly (there's a written and spoken narrative accompanying it which I am primed to sympathize with for thematic reasons, but it's essentially a complement to the exploration). It's basically a giant love letter to growing up in the nineties. Not to the nineties, per se, in that trashy Hollywood "here is an era-appropriate pop cultural reference and does that not make you want to smile in reminiscence of being young?" way, but a really heartfelt attempt to fit together a nuts-and-bolts recreation of what it was like to be young at a specific snapshot in time. There isn't actually much in the way of gameplay, exactly, but people should take notes from this on how to establish setting in an interactive medium. Also a character dates her lesbian awakening back to She-Ra, which is just perfect.

Then I check the Steam board to dig up the combination to this one safe I couldn't figure out and everyone's all "This isn't a game!" and "It's too short, I got gypped!" and "Homogay agenda!" (Actually it is pretty short for the price but I don't regret my purchase because homogay agenda.)

The wider reaction to this game was really disappointing to me. When it comes to this type of experience, I think "is this a game" is the least interesting discussion point you could possibly have. Otherwise, the weird accusations of collusion from gamers who couldn't possibly believe that someone else liked it were also disheartening. Also, reading others' opinions on the game is also the first time I heard the term SJW which is pretty much the same as the homogay agenda I guess. I thought its environmental storytelling was top notch and the story was simple but resonant. They really did capture the feeling of discovering punk as a teen, which I appreciated. Also, little touches like the differences in their sex ed homework are just great. Unfortunately, you can't really talk about the game without the two points you mentioned.

[Sierra]

The sex-ed assignment was one of the best points of characterization:

-PC character writes a straightforward, by-the-numbers chronology.
-Sister writes a short story about the Nazi invasion of Poland.



I definitely recommend the game but I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that people who expect certain stock mechanics and situations from their games would be uncomfortable with it. A number of the positive responses I did see while forum-digging for details I might've missed made the suggestion "If you don't understand why this game exists, maybe you should go play The Stanley Parable and come back," which is probably just good advice in general.

[NotMiki]

What I'm wondering is...how is it that the people reviewing and discussing a game seem to have been surprised about stuff that a cursory glance at any review or discussion should have clued them in on?  Don't order the chicken sandwich and write a nasty review about how you really wanted a cheeseburger.

[SnowFire]

It's simple logic that restaurants should only serve burgers, cheeseburgers, and fries to better serve their customers, who want that (just as I do).  Now if you want to get a "chicken sandwich", fine, whatever, but don't call it a restaurant then.  Maybe a "food dispensary".

[Grefter]

People complaining about it more often than not haven't played it, or played it after they decided it wasn't a game so they could win points in Internet arguments.

[Fenrir]

I played Infiltrator in ME2 because I like sniping. They have a cloaking power that has a slowdown effect that helps you line up headshots. Incinerate is also useful for armored dudes. Soldier is very straightforward and Adrenaline Rush is pretty overpowered. I also hear that Vanguard is fun but I didn't get to that class until ME3 where it is stupid.

Whaaaat? Use Charge then Nova then shotgun. Awesome.
If you don't like it in 3 I don't think you'd like it in 2.

I'd recommend against Soldier which isn't really exciting and make the action parts not that much different from any third person shooter.
Engineer is a bad choice because if you use an Engineer then you don't have an use for Mordin.
Vanguard is super cool but it is very high risk / reward and requires good reflexes and wanting some Vanquish like fighting.
Adept is fun if you like to throw enemies off cliffs.
I don't know Sentinel and Infiltrator all that well, they're the most defensive classes.

[Luther Lansfeld]

The only real downfall to not being able to customize characters' classes is that you can at most have two of the same class (making NEB's complaint about lack of party customization even more asinine than it already was!)  This isn't as true in ME2, with there being more variety between characters in the same skillset type.

I had a lot of problems in ME1 with those characters getting themselves killed. And using a class like Soldier... well... feels like having an AI controlled character like KH rather than having a party member. I always felt like I had 1 to 1 1/2 characters I actually in practice controlled at any given time. Obviously I will see if this is less of a problem in 2.

ME2 has a fuckhuge cast anyway so practically speaking you can't help but have all bases covered no matter what Shepard is. Oh, did Ciatos grab any of the DLC? It's generally worth it (not as outstanding as ME3's DLC, but few things are).

I didn't like ME1 enough to buy the DLC off the bat. If I like ME2 more I will.

I played Infiltrator in ME2 because I like sniping. They have a cloaking power that has a slowdown effect that helps you line up headshots. Incinerate is also useful for armored dudes. Soldier is very straightforward and Adrenaline Rush is pretty overpowered. I also hear that Vanguard is fun but I didn't get to that class until ME3 where it is stupid.

Also Ciato I don't care what your situation is, always use Garrus.

Using Garrus is always a good life philosophy. Unless someone comes up who is better to make sweet alien babies with, I will try to do charm his sexy self. I've heard good things about the character Samara so I am optimistic she will be cool though. ^_^

[Luther Lansfeld]

P.S. I think I'm doing Vanguard, although Gourry made a valiant case for Infiltrator.

[SnowFire]

[The Duck]

What I'm wondering is...how is it that the people reviewing and discussing a game seem to have been surprised about stuff that a cursory glance at any review or discussion should have clued them in on?  Don't order the chicken sandwich and write a nasty review about how you really wanted a cheeseburger.

To be fair, many of the early reviews actively avoided saying much about the game's content, saying that it was better to know as little about the experience before playing it (which is true). So, some people were surprised at the subversions of expectation with regard to the game's tone, but I really liked what it actually was. People expecting it to be a first person horror game who were blindsided by the "SJW agenda" or whatever did not take well to it at all. However, to me, that sense of unease really contributes to the game experience, just not in the way that you think coming into the game.

I played Infiltrator in ME2 because I like sniping. They have a cloaking power that has a slowdown effect that helps you line up headshots. Incinerate is also useful for armored dudes. Soldier is very straightforward and Adrenaline Rush is pretty overpowered. I also hear that Vanguard is fun but I didn't get to that class until ME3 where it is stupid.

Whaaaat? Use Charge then Nova then shotgun. Awesome.
If you don't like it in 3 I don't think you'd like it in 2.

I meant stupid in the best sense. A low weight Vanguard in ME3 is really fun (completely trivializing a lot of otherwise tough fights). I didn't do a Vanguard character in ME2 so I don't know whether it is similar.

The Shadow Broker DLC in ME2 is excellent. That was the only one I played around with but it adds a significant chunk to the game and adds an option to explore interesting bits of characterization for your team once it is finished. I also liked Kasumi's since hers yields a nice submachine gun. I never played Overlord or Arrival but I haven't heard great things about either.