What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Grefter]

Yes then.  Easilly.

YOU CAN MAKE YOUR DUDEBROS LOOK PRETTY. Bonus missions and stuff supposed to be pretty good (haven't got to them yet though)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

OFF - Amazing (and terrifyingly strange) atmosphere and setting saddled with pretty generic gameplay and annoying puzzles - it's sorta like Terry Gilliam's Magicant. The indie RPG Maker RPG universe puts out some crazy stuff.

[Meeplelard]

NG3RE: The game gives you the Scythe, really is there any other weapon to use in the game now? 

...ok, yes, the Lunar Staff is the best at building Ninpo by far since apparently raw # of hits builds Ninpo and this is important for the final boss where there is literally a section that's "Keep fighting until you get ninpo built up than fire!"  It's kind of dumb really because said Ninpo is suppose be UBER OVERPOWERED, but it's really just a "Advance Boss Fight" move with ridiculous gauge, *Sigh*

Boss fights in the later part of the game aren't too bad.  They aren't all that good, but they seem to hold off on most NG bullshit, so that's enough for me.   Then again, they had to balance around lacking items so they couldn't just throw whatever at you.

That said, game is ok.  It does Mook Combat reasonably well, boss fights range from really stupid to forgettable inoffensive, the QTEs and ilk are actually not too poorly done and rarely a "push X to not die" kind (more of a "Push X to avoid taking damage" kind), and sometimes they don't even tell you what to do, you have to figure it out...which surprisingly helps because it gives you a sense of actual decision making.  You're in Falcon Dive, missile coming at you from the left, HOW TO AVOID THIS!?  Obviously, "Dodge Right" and they give you enough time to recognize "QTE POINT!"

Sadly, game still flubs on areas and isn't amazing by any stretch.  Like it has a few gimmick sections that I'm not convinced add anything (Sit in car and shoot guys before car explodes, no way of telling just HOW much more punishment you can take!)  And one of the cooler gimmicks, Stealth Kills, is completely absent after Mission 2.

Ayane's actually a fun alternate character to play as unlike Rachel, though her boss fights are really just "fight 3 suped up mooks with her limited arsenal."  She's very clearly a character created as an afterthought bonus as a result, albeit, she mostly fights mooks and is fun as a result.  Unlike Rachel who is gimped in all ways possible outside of maybe her Ninpo equivalent.


The game also has the misfortune of legitimate plot.  The first two games basically just said "Ryu's a Ninja, there are bad guys, go kill them dead.  By the way, most are demons, monsters, zombies, etc. so don't worry about moral ambiguity here!"  This game through in actual nonsense that...uhh...doesn't really help.  The whole schtick with Mizuki's family, Ryu's arm is cursed, a little girl whose a total plot device because shut up she's important...yeah, I can't say this game really benefitted from having plot more complicated than "Ryu kills bad guys."  OH BUT WE GET TO SEE RYU'S FACE THIS GAME! HE UNMASKS HIMSELF!!!  Not sure what the point of that was...



Arkham Asylum:  So, onto a game where you do actual Ninjaing, just started this, up to the Gordon Tobacco following stuff.  Not much to say yet.

[Sierra]

ME3: "I don't know how else to say this, Traynor: my shower's only for winners."

Citadel DLC best DLC. Tactical full-party banter action is go! Seriously fun stuff, they really leveraged the cast for all the snark it was worth.

Oh I guess I did some plot stuff too. Maybe it's just because I've already seen the finale, but anytime an evil space robot tells me that I couldn't possibly comprehend its goals and motives, what I hear is, "The writer hasn't actually figured that out yet."

[Nitori]

Far Cry 3:

- getting into position to snipe into an outpost
- a whole bunch of wild animals wander in and kill everyone, causing the outpost to be liberated

now I feel bad about hitting so many animals with my car

[AndrewRogue]

So I'm thinking of doing a semi-Hatbotted Dark Souls run.

Any suggestions how how to do it?

[Fenrir]

Hatboting your stat raises sounds boring, you'll probably end up with an half assed character with a lightning club like everyone.

Suggestions?
- Hatbot your class
- Hatbot the only two stats you'll be ever able to raise (you might want to raise some vitality anyway)
- Pick a master key and always Hatbot the next boss you'll fight: (At the beginning: 1: Taurus Demon, 2: Bell Gargoyle, 3: Pinwheel)
- Hatbot which path your weapon will take
- Attribute a number to each of those weapon types : Fists, daggers, whips, bows, greatbows, greatswords, greataxes, greathammers, ultragreatswords. Hatbot the three weapons you'll be able to use throughout the game from that pool, and work on getting them ASAP. (you may use a cestus or something until then)
- Hatbot the two spells/ two miracles / one pyromancy skills you'll be able to use and maybe use them


Tactics Ogre PSP: Warren Report told me the father of one of the bosses I killed is a famous architect.
The artistic presentation is wonderful, and makes the tiny sprites look very silly.

[AndrewRogue]

That sounds along the lines of what I was thinking. Hatbotting random stats every level-up would be suck.

I mainly want to randomize my path, as it were, not my entire experience and end up completely subpar. Which is tricky.

Like most of your ideas, though. I think maybe if I get Int/Fai as a stat I'd allow Spells/Miracles and just binary yes/no if I could use them? Same for Pyromancy.

[Sierra]

Hatbotting usable weapons probably will make the biggest difference in how you play. There's just so many out there that you wouldn't normally use and a lot of them require specific builds.

I wouldn't Hatbot stats at all, you really need a specific spread for some things to be usable to any degree, but class/weapons is probably fair. I would probably go class -> weapons -> spells if you get a class with any affinity for it (there are a ton of wacky utility spells that don't see regular use because straight damage is more consistently useful).

[AndrewRogue]

Hm.

Roll: Class
Roll: Weapon Category
Roll: 3 Weapons from Category
-> If weapon category is is one-hand primary, roll dual-wield/shields/nothing
Roll: Sorcery/Miracles/Pyromancy/No Magic
-> If magic is allowed, roll yay/nay for every available spell

?

[Fenrir]

Sounds pretty good! Hope you'll not end up with a classic one weapon + shield or your experience will be pretty basic.

Evaluating TO characters so far:

- Denam (Knight): I just throw him in the middle of the battle and have him heal with items or spells. His sword doesn't do much damage but he never dies. Special characters seem to have 50 more HPs with no drawbacks, and knight is a tanky class.
- Canopus: Winged god with a crossbow. I wish he could use one of those great bows instead, but ah well. I'm not sure I want him as a 3 mov archer.
Berserker, Warrior, Terror Knight: Every physical class is much better than before. They can actually survive on the front range.
- Cleric: Went from necessary to complete waste. He heals for less damage than items, requires MP and might be OHKOed by an archer. He's relevant when you're broke, which is all the time, but items are cheap and you could always sell another leather armor for like 10 +2 herbs. I gave basically everybody Field Alchemy, and don't regret it.
- Archer: Worse than before, but that's saying nothing. Archers rock the world. And there are even some male archers now!
- Gryphon: Pretty good! I'm glad beasts got this much needed boost and can actually equip stuff. I don't think I'll use more than once anyway.
- Dragon/Beast Tamer: Well I used one to recruit the Gryphon. Empower Beast doesn't look like it makes up for the low stats at all. 70 TP for a one turn move?  Maybe I miss a good way to increase TP. I wish the beast tamer still had his aura around him (at least beasts don't suck as much anymore)
- Ninja: I gave mine dual daggers for higher avoid. I'm not exactly impressed yet.
- Rogue: I used one to steal a boss' vitality ring. He stole some worthless ingredient instead. Otherwise he dies to a sneeze and does 1 damage with his blowgun.
- Witch: Got hit hard. She has 2000 spells but most seem worthless, her damage is not impressive and her long range is not long enough. Maybe I'm missing some awesome status in her repertoire.


BTW I checked missables and fully intend to get that obnoxious no deaths/no chariot worthless title >_>

[Dark Holy Elf]

Clerics pay off somewhat when you get Major Heal; that + Mother's Blessing can easily restore upwards of 300 HP total in a single turn. I actually found them one of the better classes because Archer and Knight crowd out so many other roles between them.

Plot PCs have randomly better stats, yes.

[Sierra]

ME3: Thessia. Hahaha what. Did you really just do that, game?

*ninja flips ninja flips ninja flips* *boss gets shot a lot from the safety of across the room* "HOLD ON I NEED TO RECHARGE MY SHIELDS" *ninja flips ninja flips ninja flips* *boss gets shot a lot more without doing anything to return fire* "HOLD ON I NEED TO RECHARGE MY SHIELDS"

What was somebody thinking? Unfortunately, he does have the one power even Shepard can't top: cutscene immunity. He really did sneak in from one of my Japanese animes.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Almost all the really shitty things in ME3, like the dead kid scenes and Kai Animu Leng, are the work of one guy who worked alone because his ideas were SECRET.

Did you take Javik with you to Thessia? He lays a huge burn on Liara.

[AndrewRogue]

Almost all the really shitty things in ME3, like the dead kid scenes and Kai Animu Leng, are the work of one guy who worked alone because his ideas were SECRET.

Did you take Javik with you to Thessia? He lays a huge burn on Liara.

I dunno, I thought Kai Leng worked. He pretty much got humiliated by Shepard EVERY time they met.

It was hilarious. Especially his shittalking while backed up by a choppa.

[hinode]

Katanas are a better choice than Daggers for Ninjas in TO because Ninjas can only equip a limit subset of daggers, mostly low level ones. I guess Baldur Dagger +1 is okay enough to last until you get Damasc, but that requires item crafting and if you're willing to craft in the maingame you can get noticably better 1h katanas anyhow.

Boon of Swiftness is probably the most useful spell that Clerics get, the speed boost is nice and it can't be duplicated by items. There are other classes that get BoS (Valkyrie/Rune Fencer does with better movement/durability and less awful damage than Cleric even during the time when Valk damage totally blows), but if you're going to use a Cleric for whatever reason you might as well go ahead and spam Boon as much as possible.

I find it really helpful to have at least one mage at all times to deal with monsters and golems, who can be troublesome for the rest of your party to deal with at times. Best elements to specialize in are Earth, which gets AoE Petrify and Slow and Lightning, which gets ST Shackle (same effect as FFT Don't Act) and AoE RT reset.

[Sierra]

Almost all the really shitty things in ME3, like the dead kid scenes and Kai Animu Leng, are the work of one guy who worked alone because his ideas were SECRET.

I hope that's the guy who got fired. Most of the game is great! But when it's stupid, it's special ed stupid. I have to wonder if maybe the fight being such a joke was the programmers getting back at Mr. Auteur. "Just because we have to put this mook in our game doesn't mean he has to be competent." But just because it's hilarious in a horrible way doesn't mean the game wouldn't have been better off without it. Seriously the last thing I need when everyone in the plot is facing genocide is the sudden appearance of a comic relief villain (intentional or otherwise) who owns everybody with cutscene powers.

Did you take Javik with you to Thessia? He lays a huge burn on Liara.

I did not. Usually I try to take people who might have some personal interest in a mission, but for some reason it didn't occur to me in this case (which is silly because hey prothean artifact). I brought Ashley because I hadn't used her much. She had some fun needling Liara's sense of cultural self-esteem, but that's about it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Boon of Swiftness is about as weak as a haste spell can be (due to its short duration it grants less than 1 turn on average to its target) but it's still worth using because it funnels turns away from someone who can't do anything useful (on turns when no healing is needed) to someone who can. I still don't like it much because of its cost, which forces you to use better magic herbs than you would otherwise, but I'd have to compared to costs of various herbs before deciding if this is just me being irrational or not.

I did just fine on my first playthrough where my lone wizard died (finishers kill anti-physical enemies well enough) but yeah it's probably worth using one. Just ugh, hard to ignore how much worse they are than archers at almost everything.

[SnowFire]

If for some reason you are badly underleveled for a fight, mages' stock goes up, mostly thanks to status spam now being required.  Of course you *also* want archers anyway for actual damage + killing people before healing thanks to their finishers.  Certainly the way I won the Ozma fight underlevelled (because it seems like plotwise it should be done pre the Lanselot plot, and she certainly has dialogue vs. Barbas & Lanselot, but dang if the enemy level doesn't suggest it should be done while in the middle of the Hanging Gardens or something).  I won it via bringing 2x mages + 3 archers + Canopus (flying psuedo-Archer) + 2x clerics, with everyone else just being meatshield distractions.  Mages spammed Petrify, archers actually killed people.

But yeah, this is a pretty unusual case, and it's very hard to intentionally be underleveled in TO (well, underleveled overall, at least, obviously new classes can be underlevelled) unless you're intentionally switching classes constantly.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Almost all the really shitty things in ME3, like the dead kid scenes and Kai Animu Leng, are the work of one guy who worked alone because his ideas were SECRET.

I hope that's the guy who got fired. Most of the game is great! But when it's stupid, it's special ed stupid. I have to wonder if maybe the fight being such a joke was the programmers getting back at Mr. Auteur. "Just because we have to put this mook in our game doesn't mean he has to be competent." But just because it's hilarious in a horrible way doesn't mean the game wouldn't have been better off without it. Seriously the last thing I need when everyone in the plot is facing genocide is the sudden appearance of a comic relief villain (intentional or otherwise) who owns everybody with cutscene powers.

He's that same dude who did the ending and his storyboard just ended with "LOTS OF SPECULATION!"  He get shitcanned?

Did you take Javik with you to Thessia? He lays a huge burn on Liara.

I did not. Usually I try to take people who might have some personal interest in a mission, but for some reason it didn't occur to me in this case (which is silly because hey prothean artifact). I brought Ashley because I hadn't used her much. She had some fun needling Liara's sense of cultural self-esteem, but that's about it.

Javik shatters Liara's whole world. That part where she recounts all the religious stories related to those relics? Javik deconstructs her entire religion in like ten minutes, explains that the protheans are her gods, and that he is incredibly fucking disappointed in the asari. Their world was altered to give everyone biotics, they were given an enormous leg up in tech, and they were genetically compatible with all races. They were basically engineered to be in the perfect position to beat the Reapers and they pissed it all away.

[Grefter]

Prof of the true infinite depths of teh ebils of DLC according to the Internet.

Have I mentioned how over reactionary people were about Javik?  He is on the border of good taste, but he is nowhere near as "vital" as the wider public made him out to be.

I am just going to echo how hilariously shitty Kai Leng is.  Watching Laggy breakdown when we were both playing it is a highlight from 2012.  The fact that Andy just rolls and is cool with it is proof that he is the cuddliest nicest guy ever.  He is like a puppy with an English degree that loves card games.  Why the fuck is there not a TV show based on this I have no idea.

Edit -  it could be set 15 years in the future and we can set him as approaching middle age as a tenured middle school English teacher struggling with a mix of Tweens trying to be cool and jaded like the teenagers are and their natural fascination with the newly widely accepted freedom of the fluidity of language.  No longer are we ruled by strict structures of sentences, tense and grammar, spieling.  How does he grade that?  Does he blame his classic favorites like House of Leaves for their deconstruction of publishing and storytelling for this travesty that it has done to his beloved dialect?

He can wear a tartan waste coat and a bowler hat.  It will be fantastic. 

Edit 2 - Scottish Terrier obviously.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The BioWare fan "public" is fucking toxic.  On the ladder of bad, they're only above people whose interests are, by their very nature, fucked up.  Like dudes who like anime for pedophiles or dudes who use the Book of Erotic Fantasy in their D&D games.  Nothing they think or say has any validity.

Javik is a type of DLC I'm okay with.  He's really no different from Leviathan, another mission that revealed major details of the game universe's backstory but weren't critical to the plot.  Yes, the game is much better with him there, particularly in places like Thessia or his stuff on the Citadel with the hanar, but as far as the game's main plot is concerned, he's kinda secondary.  Does his DLC have lots of interesting stuff in it?  Yeah.  But I think that's a good thing.  DLC done well is a good way to extend a game (look at New Vegas for the best example of this).  If he didn't have cool shit that came with him you'd say "I got this bonus character and he doesn't do or say anything cool ever."

[Grefter]

The sad part?  I legit think if they had not made it Day 1 DLC and just made it "exclusive" to the collectors edition for like a month like all the fucking Gamestop/Amazon/whatever preorder "exclusives" are and then released it later then the community would have given next to 0 fucks and instead developed the toxic "well you should have just bought the Collector edition then noob" elitist nonsense you see instead.  Fucking bees dick difference but changes the way (dickhead) end users take ownership of the scenario completely on its head.

[Sierra]

Javik's an ass, but an enlightening one. He doesn't have to give you a dissertation on his people's religion or history to tell you what they were all about, he just has to keep being who is, stepping all over everybody and everything they value in every conversation and generally not giving two shits. In the grim future there is only war.

[Grefter]

WA:XF - So I have been playing more of this and yeah maps generally a bit better I think?  Less REINFORCEMENTS NOW KTHX.  I will note the irony that when I checked the Conditions for the Bridge with King Tarasque mission I failed because I wanted to see what would happen if I took it as literally as possible (it just says to pull the switches, so I ran Levin over and hit the switches straight away and failed because dudes not over the bridge yet), but hey I deliberately did that one.  That is on me.  I am not going to be a dick about it.  I beat the level by turning Ragnar into an Excavator (suck it elf u h8er [this is a joke]) and had Levin and him only deployed units and ran over the bridge.  Deploying Levin was a waste of time.  I could try to kill King Tarasque, kind of wonder if he drops like a pile of gold or something.  I don't really give a toss though.

What I am going to be a dick about is the plot.  Why the shit does the game suddenly become all about Ragnar there?  Like, he gets POV bits for 3 or 4 levels while the rest of the cast is mostly kind of just there.  Like one Felius scene that is stupid foreshadowing.  No Clarssia scenes because she is all "u guys probs hate me now ".  Nothing from Levin?  Really?  So you went with Ragnar because he is the last dude left?

Also fuck King Hrathnir.  He just rolls up on you after what should be a pretty climactic battle with zombies that were constantly reinforcing on the map (that I was one shotting with Elementalist geared Sacred Slayers of course) and is all "try harder nubs." and then is all one shotting zombies with his big cleave move and is all "Problem?" then commits suicide by trying to blow himself up with bombs that he clearly could have you know, got a detonator for or something if he was planning to do that shit.  Dick.

Also I know like it is a running thing that Snow is Edna.  That is pretty self evident (I mean I JUST saw the sequence where she is all "eff you guys i will just go get the rl princess" at the party.  This and the sequence just before that where she tried to troll the rl Princess and gets served and is all "BITCH I CUT U" and then getting verbally pimp slapped once again by her prisoner is like MAXIMUM SNOW.  But you guys seriously.  The whole villain cast is Snow.  Charlton is the pissy 50 year old he is going to become "that isn't how you DO things you need STRUCTURE and ORDER and CONTROL.  All the while I am going to SMOKE my CIGARETTE all the TIME.  It is a surrogate penis you know."  But man, Weisheit?  Weisheit is teenage Snow.  Some of you may remember him when he first turned up here and Niu was like this guy is my friend, he is like me but even crazier yaoi fiend.  This younger man is the Snow that Niu was referring to since we have clearly seen some actual deep dicking has calmed that aspect of Snow down (that and he was into Yaoi before it was ruined when it went mainstream in the US).  Weisheit is Snow in full World of Darkness LARP mode wanting to have Felius all up inside him.

For reference Rupert isn't part of the Villain cast.  He is the Straight man of that ensemble and there is no fucking way Snow is ever going to play a Straight Man convincingly.  Rupert is pretty much just a troll rather than a villain.