What Games are you playing 2015?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Saints' Row 3 - I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING

[Sierra]

The sooner you stop trying, the happier you'll be.

Bloodborne: Ailing Loran floor 2. Blood-Starved Beast redux. For the first time in the game, victory hinges on turning HP into bullets. At this point bosses just have too much HP for anything other than parries to dent their mammoth healthbars. I also got the Beast Claw! I don't have the stats to use it. Dammit game, I'd at least like to preview the moveset. Oh yeah, I also actually upgraded the hunter's torch to +6 purely for those stupid blobs that otherwise take an offensive amount of time to kill. Worth it. Also, I can finally stop complaining about the chalice dungeons giving shit rewards for echoes. One excursion now nets me like 100k and I'm stocking up to 99 each of the attack items that are completely and utterly worthless at this point of the game just because I can. (Probably I should direct resources toward the obscenely expensive status cures instead.)

I ran through a round of Hintertombs before all that, though, because I was scared of going where I was supposed to go and wanted something easier to warm up on first, and I figured I might as well see if there's a different tileset here. There kind of isn't at first, it starts out looking exactly like Pthumera, but I did eventually find a mini-Valley of the Defiled full of enemies who weren't actually immune to poison. I stood and laughed as they died until a giant with a mortar exploded me into the swamp.

The stop-motion deadites are really the worst fucking thing.

[Fenrir]

I stocked on sedatives and didn't avtually get to use thel IIRC.
i then spent everything towards levelling more hp even after hitting the soft cap. Worth it.

[Meeplelard]

Codename STEAM: Completed.  Yeah, just going to echo what Snow said.  For the 2nd to last map, I got my ass kicked with those rude reinforcements, reset to a mid-battle save, and found a work around that seemed cheap but on hindsight, seems intended if you want to get the Turn Limit req, because PLANNING AHEAD!!! 

Regarding the polish and lack of writing beyond basic caricatures and missing it's potential?  I feel like this being the first entry in a potential new IP, a lot of this was working out the kinks and getting the basics done.  I suspect a 2nd entry will take a number of the complaints and fine tune a lot of it, and possibly give more focus on the "THESE ARE CLASSIC LIT CHARACTERS LET'S DO STUFF WITH THEM!"  Also, come on, who doesn't want to play as some other president's interpretation of a giant robot?

So hopefully, game does well enough to justify making a 2nd which can make full use of the potential, now that they have the basic concept and ideas down.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Saints' Row 3 - Why did they feel it necessary to add an option to customize your dick size?

[Grefter]

So you could mod out the censor bar.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Saints' Row 3 - This game's idea of driving is remarkably close to Carmageddon's.

EDIT: I have no idea how I objectively feel about this game, but I know I spent -at least- 50% of the time I'm playing it laughing so far. Also, holy SHIT you can dress FABULOUSLY.

[Sierra]

Saints' Row 3 - Why did they feel it necessary to add an option to customize your dick size?

The "sex appeal" slider is anatomically (and quite possibly grotesquely) very specific for either gender.

~

Oh god you're doing it. Okay.
These bosses are the hardest things I've done in Souls next to NG1 Gwyn so I hope you're ready. At least two bosses will take you one million tries (Cursed Fire Dog and Cursed Amygdala) I had an easier time with NG1 Ornstein/Smough and 4 Kings. Do not Fashion Souls anymore and just pick the best stuff for each battle.

Ultimate fire doggie down. First try victory. Throwing knife kill.

(Throwing knives deal approximately 0.2% of the boss's healthbar in damage even with optimal stats for scaling. You can carry up to twenty of them at once. Have I mentioned how hilariously worthless attack items generally are, and how totally out of proportion expensive their purchasing prices really are?)

This reminds me of Kalameet in all the worst ways. He just has way too much fucking HP and defense and the most dangerous factor is just your own impatience. So I waited for him to puke lava and stabbed him in the feet a couple times every time that opportunity arose, because it's safe to hit then and pretty much only then. Then he stopped puking for the middle third of the fight. After some trial and error I switched back to the spear and figured out I could use the R2 charge pain train to dart in and jab him on the chin after he tries a bite, without actually triggering the follow-up combo that would ordinarily ping when I tried getting closer to hit with the katana. Then eventually he started puking again and I went back to playing it safe. That's pretty much it! The paw swipe flamethrower caught me off guard a few times, but everything he has is easily dodgeable if you keep your distance. The charge attack looks scary, but he used it maybe four or five times and he has terrible aim. (Of course, it probably helps that I've fought this enemy before in a weaker version, and knew the moveset going in.)

I'm prepared to estimate this took a solid hour, but that beats dying over and over for a solid hour to get it done quicker. Anyway after that ordeal I helped people punch Fume Knight to death a few times just to unwind because I'm not crazy you guys, I'm not.

I'm actually not done with Ailing Loran, though. I have no idea how to deal with Darkbeast Jr., there just doesn't seem to be any safe window to hit him. Anytime I think I've got his attack patterns down, the game goes "Haha no actually this three-hit combo turns into a five-hit combo if you're close enough, lol git gud scrub." And I don't think you can parry him at all. Fuck this fight. There's also a wing of floor two that I haven't been able to clear because I was really wrong about something:

The stop-motion deadites are really the worst fucking thing.

Wow, no, they're bad, but they're relatively reliable parry kills. Dungeons with 2x spider-summoning bell maidens that call new enemies almost exactly as fast as I can kill them, that's the worst fucking thing. I actually went on to the defiled chalice instead of finishing Ailing Loran because I figured there couldn't possibly be anything in there more aggravating than this, and so far there hasn't been. (I'm not optimistic about uber Amygdala, though.)

[Grefter]

(Throwing knives deal approximately 0.2% of the boss's healthbar in damage even with optimal stats for scaling. You can carry up to twenty of them at once. Have I mentioned how hilariously worthless attack items generally are, and how totally out of proportion expensive their purchasing prices really are?)

Why do we like these games

[Fudozukushi]

(Throwing knives deal approximately 0.2% of the boss's healthbar in damage even with optimal stats for scaling. You can carry up to twenty of them at once. Have I mentioned how hilariously worthless attack items generally are, and how totally out of proportion expensive their purchasing prices really are?)

Why do we like these games

Well, I really enjoy bad hit detection and dying in two hits.

[Sierra]

Sometimes, Grefter, I really don't know. Today is one of those days. The hilarious thing is that attack items are much more useful for raw damage purposes at the start of the game when they're actually vastly cheaper, since early on they're actually scaled appropriately for enemy HP and the game's inexplicable and onerous price hikes haven't hit yet. By the time they're expensive and it might take multiple enemy kills to fuel the purchase of one bomb, it would in fact take most of your inventory of bombs to kill one enemy. Bloodborne's economy is stupid stupid stupid.

[Grefter]

hilarious

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Those exchanges are pretty much why I'm so reluctant in ever bothering with Souls. I'm not sure I'd want to engage in such an openly abusive gaming relationship.

[Fenrir]

Attack items have pretty much always been earlygame only in Souls no? Even in sl1 runs I eventually stopped using them pretty fast unless I wanted to poizn something.
Not sure why they needed to raise their prices though.

Amygdala is going to be super unfun too, protips:
Attack his arms during the first phase, not the head, you'll have a bigger window and be able to esccape more easily
Get behind him during the second phase and attack his legs/tail. He can't hurt you. It's Going to take forever but you don't care. Btw you can't do this during the first phase.


The boss you're facing now actually redeemed chalice dungeons for me, and he also took me infinimillion tries. You just really need to git gud , learn his attack pattern and dodge accordingly there. You can't dodge in the same direction for the entire fight like you can do against a lot of aggressive Souls bosses.
Caffeine can help a lot.
Also: don't blink, only noobs blink

[jsh357]

Throwing Knives were really useful for me against Ebrietias (sp?).  If you aren't using a YOLO close range strategy (I couldn't make this work the whole fight due to camera in the final phase hiding the laser spam) they do pretty good chip damage while waiting for an opening.  And you want to use any opportunity to damage her since her charge attack is so difficult to block and will just eventually kill you if you take too long.  I suppose a gun might work better if you have high enough Bloodtinge, but I was going SKL. Cane and top hat the whole game, like a boss.

Oh right, I played Bloodborne.  Loved it, favorite Souls game.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

In non-games I'm actually playing related news: I'm considering buying Civ 4 and 5, given how my laptop can run Saints' Row 4 pretty easily. Anyone care to tell me how could this possibly go wrong?

[Luther Lansfeld]

Dunno about Civ 4, but Civ 5 is pretty enjoyable if you enjoy tinkering around with empire building.

[The Duck]

You will be forever bereft of your time and will.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You will be forever bereft of your time and will.

As long as I don't get late to work...

[Excal]

I don't know about Civ 5, but Civ 4 has a built in clock.  This is a necessary feature.

[Magetastica]

Civ 5 has no built in clock, but is quite excellent. Only downside is that the DLC packs add way too much of the necessary gameplay/balance/etc, at least IMO. It is totally worth buying them, though.

Rondo of Swords: I am now invading the Holy City of Verona The Vatican Seine. My current party is Serdic/Ansom/Margus/Marie/Cotton/Alhambra/Sasha. However, given the fact that I need to bench people at certain levels until I get their shit, Alhambra and Sasha are currently benched for Shino shenanigans. Alhambra is in the process of promoting now, and Margus/Ansom already promoted. Thank you for the warnings, btw, I am sending Ansom and Alhambra on their Tarot quests and both are currently at 3. Ansom is on his 4th now, though, so I have Kay in his place.

Still finding it fun, and I do plan to beat both paths.

Idly, I've figured out a few things about enemy mages/archers. Archers have a range equal to their Move, and are not able to Move+Attack. Mages, meanwhile, run on spell levels 1/3/5. Weak mages have level 1 spells, strong mages have level 3 spells, and bosses have level 5 spells. This is how you can determine the damage/range of their spells.

Also, I heard I may be the only person in the DL to have actually played through the entire game before?

[Sierra]

Attack items have pretty much always been earlygame only in Souls no? Even in sl1 runs I eventually stopped using them pretty fast unless I wanted to poizn something.
Not sure why they needed to raise their prices though.

It's the price increase that gets me. Why make something progressively more expensive in inverse proportion to its actually decreasing usefulness?

Snow: I actually find Bloodborne markedly less respectful of player time than either Dark Souls game, despite being shorter than both of them. I really want DS2 quality of life improvements with BB environments. Maybe one day that'll actually happen.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yeah, I'm including Bloodborne in the same bundle all the same. Feels like From Software openly spites its players' time and disposition in wildly erratic manners.

[Fenrir]

Man I feel like basically every game but Souls has no respect for my time now

I'm assuming they raised the price of healing items and bullets for balance and then also raise the price of every other item to not have a weird discrepancy and because they didn't care about them anyway.


Dragon Age Inquisition:

Here is a scene:

Random NPC talking to herself near the Inquistor: "ALL THESE PEOPLE DYING... BECAUSE WE LACK HERBS" *glares at Inquisitor*
Inquisitor: ............
Random NPC: "BTW I have made a list of all the herbs I need here. Look"

I have to say that the various environments look pretty nice and the game is huge. And all these codex entries! Sometimes I read some of them and find some of these cool.  DA:I is a pretty credible Best Game Ever even if I don't really care about it.
It would be cool to have one of these games with actual cool combat. (Witcher 2's combat was so mediocre I'm not holding my breath for the third one)

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm honestly hard-pressed to think of a game I've played which openly has less respect for its players' time than Dark Souls. Maybe some games with really marathon animation/loading times from the PSX era, like FF9, or some other games which are way too long without a plot to justify it? (Note that "does not respect your time" is not the same as "bad", and indeed if you really love Souls you're not going to be bothered by this, just like FF9 fans. And on the other hand, Devil May Cry 2 perfectly respects the player's time!)

(FF9 fans are still baffling, though.)


Codename STEAM - Chapter 13. The experience remains enjoyable, but still a bit rough around the edges. I'm annoyed that I still can't predict when enemies are on overwatch or not. And under what conditions weak points show up. I guess I should just treat some of these things as kinda random and behave accordingly.

Dorothy is a terrible PC, holy crap. Even setting everything up so she can get into point blank range, her damage isn't that great, and everything else about her (HP, limit break) is just worthless. I guess if you get her in close against a large target with no defence she has good DPS, then Fox gets off a Deadeye shot and does more anyway, lol.

Rough opinion of PCs so far:
Fox > Lion >> Queequeg > Cafila > Tinman > Tom > Tiger Lily > John > Randolph > Scarecrow > Dorothy

Fox's killing power is unmatched. Lion and Queequeg having party-wide passive abilities puts them high on the list regardless, but they're good even past that, with Lion's game-best HP/high damage and mobility (and did you know that replacing e.g. Henry with Lion increases your party's effective total HP by ~225 or so? Yeaaah). Cafila's a nice variation on Queequeg who can do big reliable AoE damage from big range, Tinman gives more turns to PCs better than him, Tom is kinda situational with the durability but a 1-steam weapon deserves a lot of note (and sometimes has huge DPS potential). Tiger Lily's a nice safe choice who I could be underselling some. The other PCs largely fill inferior niches, though at least John fills his before you get better PCs. Randolph... I could be underrating some; there are certainly some maps where lure can be handy, but also some where he feels worthless, so hard to say. Scarecrow and Dorothy I don't think I am, they are bad.

Henry I have no idea about. Best limit break by far, junk otherwise. I'm pretty sure he's somewhere between Tom and Dorothy, but past that I dunno.


Hyrule Warriors - Ganon Mode is kinda dumb but fun in small doses; I still need to unlock Playable Giant Chicken. Otherwise, I've fully unlocked the Master Quest map and beat its "final battle", working on the Twilight map now.