What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[JBC]

I was playing Diablo II hardcore until my buddy died today.

Sorry drauch, hang in there man.

[drauch]

Thanks for the condolences, friends. News of his death spread through town like wildfire, and I may have found some new companions who are willing to start a new quest as a result. Most have never played untwinked Hardcore before, and speaking frankly, they're all scrublords, so this shall prove interesting. I shall teach them my ways to conquer Hell and redeem myself as the leader of the scrubs. I saw two good men die last time, and one abandoned me, but I'm not ready to step down just yet. I shall not be broken.

[BIL]

What a blow. I'm still getting over RIP BAD POOPS ;-;

[drauch]

What a blow. I'm still getting over RIP BAD POOPS ;-;

Man... Never forget.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I think the farthest I ever got on Diablo II Hardcore was late Nightmare or early Hell, but that was rushing, doing lots of Baal and other runs, etc. So it's not as good as untwinked or anything. I have no desire to play anything with permadeath nowadays unless it's extremely short like Isaac.


Finished 100% on Terra's story in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Final Mix, so I now have the platinum trophy for that game since I had done the other 2 characters already. Going to finish up 100% on KH2FM now except for gummi crap so that I'll have that one as well(will probably do Gummi crap later on so I'll have actually 100%'d this game, but I really have no desire to do the level 3 missions or Ex missions right now outside of Assault of the Dreadnaught which I had to do level 3 for a Blueprint and the 1 Ex Mission per route I did for one of the trophies)

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Started in on Dark Souls 2 with the Cleric class. This one seems to be tougher than the first one with the penalty for being hollowed.

[Acid King]

Almost mopped up Gears Judgment, down to the last boss on the hardest difficulty with all stars and declassified missions completed. Earth Defense Force 2025 should arrive in the mail tomorrow.

Started in on Dark Souls 2 with the Cleric class. This one seems to be tougher than the first one with the penalty for being hollowed.

The first is definitely tougher. You get a ring fairly early on that eases the penalty for being hollow and eventually you get another ring that prevents you from losing your humanity and souls when you die. It breaks when you die, but since it is repairable you can use it ad infinitum.

[Ed Oscuro]

Decent difficulty spike in Urban Chaos, including new enemy types. Really the only thing I have to say is annoying is the constant shield peek / hipfire headshot combo, feels like abuse really (you don't need cover at all, just pop the shield up and reload or wait for an opening to fire). Still, it's interesting to play against enemies that can actually shred the player in seconds flat, for once - just not always fun to do so, especially if there's a huge raft of them coming up and you have to just blindly peek/shoot in hopes of taking them down. Clouds of smoke also are annoying when under fire. So far the game hasn't thrown large groups of enemies at me when I can't shield them all - there's been a couple enemies to my side when entering new areas in a skyscraper, but running right past to cover takes care of that.

Strange feature / semi-cheat: One of the loading screens mentioned rotating the right stick 720 degrees for a "bonus." I'm not sure if it gives any damage bonus, but it does guarantee any kill triggers slowmo. Just what the doctor ordered?

[Immryr]

You're living in a dreamland if you think dark souls was harder than the second game. Especially when you take the dlc stuff into account.

[Acid King]

Exploiting the repairable rings of sacrifice to stay human and summon help for the bosses trivializes a lot of them. I cleared probably half a dozen bosses on the first try with AI summons, including the final bosses. The only fight I got stuck on for any significant length of time was the three sentinels, which was mostly because I was still feeling the game out and I hit them earlier than I should have.

[Immryr]

can you hear what you're saying? "dark souls 2 is too easy, you just summon and kill everything" is about equal to "shmups are too easy, you have unlimited continues".

[Acid King]

Where did I say it was easy and how is anything I said equivalent to your analogy? All I said was that I felt the second one was easier because it's easier to use summons, the rings of sacrifice are repairable so you don't have to worry about losing souls so much, and the penalty for staying hollow is balanced by the ring that limits health reduction. You're reading shit in to what I wrote that simply isn't there.

[Immryr]

yeah, i was exaggerating to make a point. what I'm saying is... to get the most, or the "real experience" from dark souls, you should be playing without summoning. much like to get the most from playing shumps you should be looking to complete the game without using continues. so saying it's easier than the first game because you can summon more easily just says to me you're judging it from a weird angle. personally I think the ring of sacrifice is a cop out too.

[Acid King]

yeah, i was exaggerating to make a point. what I'm saying is... to get the most, or the "real experience" from dark souls, you should be playing without summoning. much like to get the most from playing shumps you should be looking to complete the game without using continues. so saying it's easier than the first game because you can summon more easily just says to me you're judging it from a weird angle. personally I think the ring of sacrifice is a cop out too.

I don't think considering all the tools they give you to be judging it from a weird angle. Daifukkatsu is largley considered to be the easiest DDP game because of the autobomb playstyle. It may not he the way to optimal scoring but 1cc is still a 1cc. If you want to take this to the logical end for DS2, maybe the only legit way would be to join the Covenant of Champions, since it disables summons and increases the health of enemies and increases the damage they deal. Then maybe it could be considered tougher, but if you use everything at your disposal, then yeah, I'd say is a bit easier. It's hard for me to judge the DLC difficulty since I only played through the sunken king, which was tough, but I was on NG+ when I tackled that section.

Edited for typos

[Immryr]

yep and most shmups, or most modern ones at least, give you unlimited continues. so yeah, shmups are too easy and short, you just keep pressing start!!

to me the changes to summoning and making the rings of sacrifice repairable is just a way for from soft to make the game more friendly to new players without actually just nerfing the difficulty of the game. jolly co-op is definitely a fun part of dark souls, but shouldn't be done on a first play through of the games imo, and shouldn't be taken into consideration when talking about the difficulty balance of the games.

[Volteccer_Jack]

yep and most shmups, or most modern ones at least, give you unlimited continues. so yeah, shmups are too easy and short, you just keep pressing start!!

You're trying to be sarcastic but that's a real legitimate problem with shmup design that has repeatedly spawned huge multi-page discussions on this site. You don't put something in a game if you don't want the player to use it, that would be idiotic.

The only way Dark Souls 2 is hard is if you accidentally pick one of the terrible weapons to upgrade, and even in that case every boss that isn't just "tons of mooks" is still a joke.

[Acid King]

Only continues aren't part of the gameplay mechanics, they're more like quick saves in PC games. Its a junk analogy, man.

[Ed Oscuro]

Played a bit more of Urban Chaos 'till I couldn't stand it anymore (that, and a badly-timed late-mission death kills the mood!)
Switched over to Tenchu again, got the third and fourth missions done with Expert Ninja. As long as you don't fall into a pit, any blind fool can get Expert Ninja...I got spotted 20 times in the limestone cavern! It amuses me more than it should to make an enemy spot me, then jump up a two meter ledge and crouch there until the enemy stops searching, and then jump right down.

Weird level but the opening area, with the leaves in the pool and the really tricky enemies outside the main entrance, is really neat. The next mission, Deserted Temple, isn't very hard at all but it's one of my favorites just for the diversity of scenery.

[Immryr]

Only continues aren't part of the gameplay mechanics, they're more like quick saves in PC games. Its a junk analogy, man.

Well I disagree. Death and how a game deals with it are certainly game mechanics, important ones at that.


More on topic I'm still grinding my way through etrian odyssey 3 at the minute. Currently just about to finish the 3rd stratum. I'm thinking about changing up my party a little as it's currently way too defensive. I have a hoplite/ninja, a prince/farmer AND a monk/prince. Probably going to switch out my prince for an arbalest.

[null1024]

Crazy Taxi [Steam].
I fucking did it. Got an Awesome rank today.
Final total: $10893.08, as Gus.

I don't think I have it in me to get a Crazy rank [$20000]. I'll keep playing, but if I hit 20k, I will be completely floored.

[ACSeraph]

Picked up Under Night, this game is fucking horrible. I want my money back...

[BulletMagnet]

I'm not a fighting game buff, but I did pre-order this to support the developer and localizer...could you offer more details in a way that could be understood by someone who thinks "plinking" is a game on The Price is Right?

[ACSeraph]

Endless feeling, hugely damaging combos from basically any starting move and no way to escape them once you're caught. So think maybe BlazBlue without a burst. No thanks. Seems like you are always doing the same combo too. Just poke, poke, poke until something hits and then go into your overly long combo. It feels badly paced, more of the game is watching/dialing combos than it is actually fighting... It's basically the things I dislike about these kinds of games distilled with none of the good.

I can make no judgements about balance or competitive viability, I've heard though that it's legit on this front. But being a legit game doesn't make it a fun game.

[Sinful]

I'm sorry, but Dark Souls II is definitely harder the Dark Souls. Like was mentioned, especially if you include the DLCs. Why is it harder? The more you die the harder it is. Ring or no Ring. That is how you realisticly judge difficulty in all videogames.

That Ring ain't that much help either. Because you still get sent back to the checkpoints anyway... oh, you miss your lost souls? Give me a break, if you want to powerlevel or catch up in levels, there are many ways for easy farming. Like redoing boss fights.

Abusing the Ring also raises Soul Memory, especially during the first half of the game (not really the later half). So newbs really abusing it get punished by higher level invasions or making invading harder. One of two reasons Souls Memory exists (the other being the abuse of low leveling and only upgrading equipment).

[BulletMagnet]

Endless feeling, hugely damaging combos from basically any starting move and no way to escape them once you're caught.

Sounds like an odd thing to overlook, considering that even Killer Instinct had ways to escape combos way back when...I recall that Melty Blood was at least somewhat well-received, did that suffer from the same ailment?

[Pretas]

UNIB's real problem is its horrendously skewed character balancing. Gordeau, Merkava and to a lesser extent Waldstein completely run the show, even after having been progressively nerfed in patches. They almost make GG's Zato/Eddie look restrained. Good luck trying to use someone like Akatsuki or Chaos (my favorite characters) against them. Hilda is also incredibly cheap, though at least she has a health bar made of glass. On the other end of the spectrum, there's flaws like Akatsuki's parry not behaving as it does in Blitzkampf and being essentially useless.

I still like the game, but it's a 3/5 star effort at best. It is actually less combo-centric than Melty in its current incarnation, but its issues run deeper.

[ACSeraph]

Yeah I hate to make a balance judgement call without digging really deep into the game, but initially it certainly feels like its lacking. The fact that the characters you just listed out are the only ones that ever see play at our arcade here is telling. I've been playing Orie, and I've noticed that she seems to have no options whatsoever to deal with zoning. I've mained Fei in SF since basically Turbo, so I'm used to having to break in, but in UN with Orie it just seems pointless. The game feels shallow. I was really disappointed with P4 Ultimax too when it came out, but after playing this that game looks like a masterpiece.

[Ed Oscuro]

Man, remember all the hype over Cold Fear? Thinking about it a bit more now, it's such a badly made and illogical game. Oh well. I guess there is a pacing reason for the indoors = stable, on deck = severe sway system, but I can't say the same for the rather awful maze pacing. I can't think of many other games that have you refuse to pick up ammo for a weapon you can't carry. Too-dark lighting, horrible mismatch of RE4 and analog stick style movements, and door transitions that reliably spawn enemies are just a few more problems with it. As I recall, I never got too far into it the first time around, but I'm roughly where I was before now.

I also popped in Ninja Gaiden Black - seems about the same as it always did, gotta try again at the first real boss. Man, I don't like those spellcasters...

Update: A little while later, here's how I'm doing on Normal:
Chapter 1 - Greater Ninja
Chapter 2 - Master Ninja (had to replay the boss)
Chapter 3 - Head Ninja (using Lunar, and lost both Talismans), replayed the boss for Master Ninja (using the Dragon Sword)
Chapter 4 - In progress, got killed by the clock tower Spider Ninjas so I'm restarting the level.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

The Battlefield: Hardline beta. I'm not really getting into this one very much. The mode where you just drive around in circles is really awful. Why not have the player try to reach a destination? It makes no sense. Plus no Tanks makes baby Jesus cry.

[Satan]

Are there any 'domestic terrorists' in it?