What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Supreme Commander-

So I took down the final Cybran offensive and finished the UEF campaign. How did I manage to stop a Monkeylord Spider Walker and dozens of lesser units? Well, they just so happened to walk right in to my nuke this time. I then used Black Sun to destroy the Aeon and Cybran homeworlds like so much Unabomber.

[Grefter]

ToPr - So Teleport is crap.  I missed some loot in Dhaos castle because the place is way bigger than I remember and the encounter rate was kind of shitting me off a little.  Will clean it up later.  Seeking Eyes prove that people who don't take Mint in battle are insane.  Fucking cheap stun attack spamming ambush boss fights.

Red Lantern I thought was part of the treasure hunt sidequest which I thought you could only unlock after getting access to Dhaos' castle.  No big loss to me since I don't use Klarth.  I will just have to do a dungeon and get possibly out of date loot, not at all like half the stuff you get from chests the whole game anyway.

[Dunefar]

RKS: Up to Iris 2.

Dracula 1: Fun little stage like a toned down version of MM2's Wily 1.  It's a good warm up for the harder stages after it and the boss is creative.  Once you figure out what the extra block is for he's a breeze. Bravo on taking the concept of the dragon fight and making it more oddball awesome.

Dracula 2: Bloody. Uh, past that, the boss is concentrated awesome. It's a ripoff of the boss from MM2's Wily 2, but it's gorgeous and different enough to entertain.

Dracula 3: The stage is decent, if a bit pitfall heavy. Nothing great, nothing bad; it's all about the boss anyway. Death is absolutely nutso. His first form has enough speed to keep you dodging like mad, the second form keeps you off balance the entire time. Nice Castlevaina homage and the gameover screen gives me shivers. Fuck Shadowgate, that stupid gameover screen gave me nightmares as a eight year old.

Dracula 4: This stage is awesome fun. While the bottom route is only okay, the top route is very well designed. It's all a warmup for Dracula anyway, whom isn't as hard as I thought he would be. The first form is very manageable with his weakness, the demon form is hard but not overwhelming if you did good on Dracula 1.

Iris 1: The water segment is on the hard side, but everything after until the boss is fun. Nice Megaman 3 lift, that moving platform part was a fun homage. The Spider boss is just like in Megaman X...except you have spears firing from either side of the falling elevator. This is enough to rather ruin your concentration on the boss, which makes dodging much trickier. It doesn't cross the line for being hard.

Iris 2: Two notes here. 1. I shouldn't do this stage at 1 AM while I'm half asleep. It's not helping. 2. Fuck this stage. It's a take off on Gravity Man's stage in MM5, flipping you from floor to ceiling with reversed gravity.  They're a lot more liberal with spikes and pitfalls, not to mention hard jumps. It's a very easy stage to die in, just like that damned ice girl's. Objectively I think the long spike fall upside down is brilliant, the execution was really painful on top of an irritating stage to begin with. Yeah, this game tends to overdo it in blocks; guess who the boss is? C'mon, think, think! Who's the worst recurring Megaman boss? Yep, it's Yellow Devil! I took one look at him and turned off the game. I don't wanna deal with that until I'm awake, dammit.

RKS is still incredible. Fuckin a' they overdo it at times, though.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

ToPr - So Teleport is crap.  I missed some loot in Dhaos castle because the place is way bigger than I remember and the encounter rate was kind of shitting me off a little.  Will clean it up later.  Seeking Eyes prove that people who don't take Mint in battle are insane.  Fucking cheap stun attack spamming ambush boss fights.

Red Lantern I thought was part of the treasure hunt sidequest which I thought you could only unlock after getting access to Dhaos' castle.  No big loss to me since I don't use Klarth.  I will just have to do a dungeon and get possibly out of date loot, not at all like half the stuff you get from chests the whole game anyway.

Yeah, but I believe I missed one of the islands - apparently, I can't find the fourth South Euclid island for the life of me. Regardless, it's a dungeon and it's a dungeon with pathetic randoms that give tons of XP, so that kind of thing kinda summons me. And yeah, Teleport fails in the remake. You just love Soul Blade forever instead, since dear god did that thing get a kick upwards in ToPr.

KH - Atlantica and Halloween Town busted, midway through Neverland now. MP Rage = cookies, as usual, and dear god the Oogie Boogie fights were hilariously sad. YES, SWING AT ME WITH YOUR MIGHTY 8HKO DAMAGE AND INEFFECTUAL TRAPS. I was getting hit on purpose to get MP for Sonic Blade at some point. >_>

[Sierra]

Dracula 3: The stage is decent, if a bit pitfall heavy. Nothing great, nothing bad; it's all about the boss anyway. Death is absolutely nutso. His first form has enough speed to keep you dodging like mad, the second form keeps you off balance the entire time. Nice Castlevaina homage and the gameover screen gives me shivers. Fuck Shadowgate, that stupid gameover screen gave me nightmares as a eight year old.

Death is hardcore, yes. I can't seem to get past him without burning a couple energy tanks. And yeah, the gameover screens in general are pretty awesome.

PCB: So, started this up and tried out each of the girls a couple times. Sakuya has awesome range but I think I like the other two better. I am...not as bad at it as I could be! Yeah. Playing on Normal, because I don't play anything on the Easy setting. Farthest I've got so far is the musicians, on stage four (I haven't been using continues).

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You're nuts, Cid. Start on Easy, you'll be thankful. It's still not easy, and it's great to adjust to the learning curve. Sakuya is generally the best character to use if you want to clear the game, and Marisa is the worst. Reimu is pretty balanced, but stay away from ReimuA if you want actual damage.

[Sierra]

ReimuB is who I got farthest with, yes. And you don't need to tell me of all people that I'm nuts, man. I already know that.

[AAA]

OS-Chapter 6. After that boss things have been a bit easier. Now I'm just trying to conserve resources as much as possible. That baby dragon boss was the easiest so far. Storywise it's just been drama drama drama angst angst angst hamhanded feminism yaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy

[NotMiki]

Lagoon - beat!

has...anyone ever actually played  this game?  If you're the type that looks at Cloud's sword and thinks the FF7 guys are compensating for something, you will probably come to the conclusion that Lagoon's designers, to a man, have huge dicks.

Anyway, fun, brief waste of time. If you hit the max level (and you probably will) you have 255 HP and 255 MP.  How much XP do you need to accomplish this? 65535, of course.  Ah, SNES.

[superaielman]

Aah, Lagoon. That brings back memories. Game had a good OST.

[Captain K.]

More Touhou:

Eastern Wonderland or something like that:  Hey, it's the exact same shooting game again!  How many times can they remake the same game?  It's like they work for Tales of... Team.  (zing!)  Anyways, although this one has better music than the others, I quit on stage 5.  Too damn boring.  These games aren't hard, they just bore you to death with repetition.

PoDD:  Okay, this one is actually fun.  Especially since there's some strategy to it other than SHOOT EVERYTHING.  Last boss takes too damn long to die though.

[Xeroma]

I do hope you realize that you're playing the games that aren't popular in these parts, Captain. Get the windows Touhou games :/

[Crystalgate]

I once owned the cart for Lagoon. That meant no frameskip for the health regeneration which hurt. Also, somehow I managed to miss all the moon equipment and got to the final boss without any of them. That lead to a lot of backtrack fun.

Anyway, the game had good music and some neat ideas, but is in need of polich.

[SageAcrin]

PoDD:  Okay, this one is actually fun.  Especially since there's some strategy to it other than SHOOT EVERYTHING.  Last boss takes too damn long to die though.

WE HAVE ANOTHER PoFV PLAYER IN THE MAKING!

(They essentially redid PoDD except better and with netplay as Phantasmagoria of Flower View, one of the PC games. Not entirely the same, of course, which is good, but the same VS-style shooter.)

[Meeplelard]

I was planning on playing stuff but...well...
First, last night, parents ask if I can go to help sit Shivah (basically, week of mourning after someone dies in Judaism), and help make a minyan (10 people required for a full service) at someone's house.  The person in question who died was the grand father of a friend I've known my entire life, naturally I agree.  Hence, morning cut off!

Ok, no problem, I figure I'll play something after I come home, sleep on it some, and wake up...

Work calls about an hour later, requesting if I can come in.  I say yes, cause well, more money.  Well, pressed for time now, in that I can't start anything up, and that's 4 hours out of the day.  Oh, we were intending on going out for dinner (my family, I mean) tonight as a postponement of my Birthday, so yeah, part of the night was gone too.

...I don't have a car, so mother drives me...she picks me up WAY EARLY to go to Work, an extra 15 minutes off! Then I get picked up *40 MINUTES LATER THAN MY SHIFT ENDS* without being so much as called.  This was...inexcusable; I can see why they were late (legit reason believe it or not), but hell, they KNEW it was going to take a while, they should have called.  By doing so, I could have WORKED those extra 30 minutes (they wanted me to stay a bit later, I said I was expecting someone to pick me up), but NO, I had to stand around and do nothing.

Ok, rather than rant, I did get SOME gaming in! ...in a rather weird way...

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Basically, it went like this.  Sister came in room, we were watching some AVGN, I notice a link to "Best and Worst Sonic the Hedgehog games by Screw ATtack!" I make a comment of "I bet StH2 is #1" idly, since that strikes me as the big popular one (like MM2 for Mega Man, SMB3 I guess would be Super Marios, or maybe SMW?  Etc.)  Somehow, we get talking, I randomly decide to show her how I have the game on my PSP in Genisis Collections!

Played up to Hilltop Zone.  Nice nostalgia trip, game is still fun despite its simplicity in platforming elements.

[Dunefar]

RKS:

Finished! The last string of bosses was pure awesome. I loved both the ship and the saucer, with Lilli being awesomely useful for the second.  The style was top notch and the battles were lovely in an over the top sort of way. Really, I can't recommend this enough to any sort of Megaman fan, it's both pretty and smooth to play. It's also harder than most current games, I'd peg it around the difficulty of a good NES title. It's hard at times, but practice quickly makes perfect.

What was up with the dragon at the end, anyway?

---

RKS Rider Mode:

Oh for fuck's sake. Instead of a smooth button press combo(Down and jump) for slide, it's a double tap forward for dash? So the precise speedy movement of before is a less stable, easier to miss triggering or trigger by accident dash? Argh. Oh, and the defense...you're kidding me, right? Right? I played the prologue and Grolla's stage(Cute boss fight, even if I couldn't beat it in one shot) and I want to dunk the creator in acid. I don't mind the game being challenging, but Rider is distinctly unpleasant to play as. The damage and walljump don't seem to make up for the flaws so far.

[Xeroma]

You can hit weapon change L for dash instead of double tapping forward, you know. Doesn't change the fact that Grolla mode is a pain in the ass though.

[Shale]

SRW OG Gaiden: Finally beat it! Duminuss was pathetic, Dark Brain was...er, not. Quite possibly the most durable SRW boss ever, with a total of 900,000 HP over two forms and 30% HP regen per turn in both of them. Even with the utterly insane support characters that join up in this fight, I had to drain every useful character's SP almost completely (average remaining was somewhere in the teens) in order to eke out the last bit of damage I needed for the kill from the last active character in my team. That only did it by about 800 HP, too. Yikes.

Then I fought Shu, and if anything the epicness of that fight was underhyped. The grunts are Valsions - copies of the one Bian used in Ryusei's path in OG1. And I mean exact copies. Of a midgame boss from two installments ago. Their finishers are about 70% as powerful as the weakest attack of any enemy in the previous level, and they miss anything more evasive than a Grungust about four times in five. Shu himself had worthless regen, middling HP (390,000? After Dark Brain? Piece of cake.), a nonthreatening MAP, and only one spirit trigger that didn't even do much. Weak.

Overall, a highly enjoyable game, if pathetically easy toward the end. Can't say I'm particularly shocked at either part. The new music and units were excellent, nice level design, what story I could make out was nice. Bring on OG3.

[Dunefar]

You can hit weapon change L for dash instead of double tapping forward, you know. Doesn't change the fact that Grolla mode is a pain in the ass though.

Oh good, that will help. Thanks.

[Niu]

ToPr - So Teleport is crap.  I missed some loot in Dhaos castle because the place is way bigger than I remember and the encounter rate was kind of shitting me off a little.  Will clean it up later.  Seeking Eyes prove that people who don't take Mint in battle are insane.  Fucking cheap stun attack spamming ambush boss fights.

Red Lantern I thought was part of the treasure hunt sidequest which I thought you could only unlock after getting access to Dhaos' castle.  No big loss to me since I don't use Klarth.  I will just have to do a dungeon and get possibly out of date loot, not at all like half the stuff you get from chests the whole game anyway.

If this is the PS version you are playing.
Red Lantern is somewhere in the Moria I think. Anyway, one of the light changer items is in Moria. Which means, in order to get Pluto. You must do Moria once to get all three light changers. Go do Shadow's cave and found Pluto's ring, then go back down to Moria again to fight him.

[Grefter]

I don't think that will bother me to much Niu, I do like the game and Moria isn't THAT bad (as long as it doesn't crash).

ToPr - Doing the treasure hunt and I suck at finding some of the beaches and stuff.  Meh.

Edit - And yeah it is the PS version Niu.  I wouldn't even consider ToP GBA worth noticing even as an example of how to fuck up a game.

[Cotigo]

Half Life 2:  Beaten.

The rest of Nova Prospekt was okay.  The chapter afterwards was kinda lame (yaaaaaaaaay, let's have you set up turrets and spend 10 minutes doing nothing but setting them up again to kill Combine.  Yawn.  Anticitizen One and Follow Freeman, which followed, were far better.  Follow Freeman was pretty intense at points, largely owing to the fact that you were running away from Striders the entire time.  Our Benefactors and Dark Energy were pretty meh.  Getting the upgraded Gravity Gun was cool, but gameplay wise was pretty dull (note to self:  Play on hard later.)

The ending was irritating.  Total cliffhanger.  So, obviously, I immediately started up Half Life 2: Episode 1, which... doesn't work when I try to load the first chapter.  Damn it.  I went through this with the original now I have to deal with this, too?  Gah.

Despite my grievances, HL2 is probably my favorite game at the moment, behind Portal and TF2, which, let's face it, don't really count against it since they're both awesome made by the same developer and use the same engine.

[Hunter Sopko]

.hack//GU 3- Beat Ovan. Crazy, crazy battle. A more intense version of the final boss fight from 2. Used almost all my healing items to win. Probably should have redone it, but oh well. The avatar battle afterwards was a bitch starting out, but easy once I got the pattern down (Unlike Sakaki who was rough even after knowing the pattern). Data Draining's become a pain in this game.

Story stuff afterwards was good. Yummy, yummy story. Yummy character development. Everything I was hoping for. Can't wait to see what the rest of the game holds.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

KH - Finished Neverland. Man, these bosses are awesomely epic. Slaughtered Hook, then decided to do some sidequesting. Mauled Hercules Cup both team and solo, did some puppy hunting and 100 Acre Woods fetchquesting. I think I only have one page left to find. Cure is still godlike, and so is Sonic Blade. Give me that over Ars Arcanum any day of the week. Now, up to Hollow Bastion where Sora shall OWN EVERYBODY WITH HIS MIGHTY WOODEN SWORD~.

[VySaika]

Persona 3:

Sleeping Table. AHAHAHAHAHA I'm so dead. Tried fighting this thing like...4 times now.

First: I had Mitsuru/Ken/Akihiko with me against a boss who spams absurdly strong MT Almighty and Fire spells. That went over about as well as expected. The only people Maragidyne didn't OHKO were the Main and Akihiko, who then proceeded to die to the following Megidola.

Second: So I come back with Junpei/Koromaru/Yukari as my team. Yuka gets OHKOd by Maragidyne even without weakness hitting, but Junpei and Koro tank it out, of course. Alright, so I think I can leave Yukari dead and just do healing support myself, right? Afterall, I have Diarama on a persona that resists fire, so I should be good. Just set Junpei and Koro to all out offense and away we go. Well, the table's dodge hax keeps dropping those two on thier butts, and I just end up getting Megidola'd to death. Fun times.

So I go and get some levels. The Main goes from 42 to 46, and I get all the others up to thr 40-41 range. Good times. Have to blow a Treasta Gem to escape because the reaper came out of nowhere on me on one floor and I hit triangle JUST in time to avoid the fight. But otherwise, training was productive.

Third: Okay, time to do this. Junpei/Yukari/Koro again, seems like the best team. Anyway, to sum up, it busts out Hamaoun(sp?) on Koro, and then Megidola spams us to death. Joy. But, I'm getting the basis of an idea...

Fourth: Swap Yuka for Shinji, and just put everyone on full assault. The team dies off quickly, as predicted, but I don't care. Now it's just me and him, and the MTness of his attacks no longer matters. I'm sitting here spamming Diarama, and attacking when he misses or when he uses Maragidyne when I'm at full, leaving me with enough HP to survive a Megidola. And you know what? I almost win like this. Get the sucker down to really low life, thanks to my mage's mark I'm not in any danger of running out of MP, and then what does he do? Uses a Fear attack on me, which paralyzes me for a turn, and then uses some attack called Ghastly Wail(if I remember right), and kills me. Well, fuck.

Still this boss is getting fun now. I'll get a couple more levels and try again. Maybe look into some sort of fear-blocker as I can afford to drop an MP healing item instead of attacking at some point to make up for the lack of Mage's Mark.