Obiwanshinobi wrote:Having once erased all of data stored on my PS3, I started Demon's Souls afresh, as a Wanderer class character again. This time after Phalanx, I entered Tower of Latria in hope to keep it substantially different from the original run of mine. "One more go" compulsion is there, but I remain in "am I even enjoying myself?" questioning mode.
At this point of my lifecycle, I find questions like that most alienating.
If you want a hint or some advice you can PM me or post in the FromSoft thread or w/e.
Latria / 3-1 is a brutal starting point, I remember taking a looong fucking time beating that stage on my first run. As I recall the feelings this place evoked were apprehension, dread.
It's a lot more manageable once you have a consistent technique against the Mind Flayers but the main obstacle is the environment itself trying to confuse and kill you.
I've been playing Dead Space for the first time over the last couple of days. I'm up to chapter 5 currently and so far it's great. in terms of aesthetics the game is pretty much god tier. does the whole 'Aliens the video game' thing really well, spooky corridors, flickering lights, horrible skittering and creaking sounds and malformed beasts popping out at you from vents etc. great stuff.
I really like the primary game mechanic of blasting limbs off your enemies too. very visceral and satisfying. in terms of story/mission structure it's all very generic. "oh no, this thing is broken - go and do these three things to fix it", "oh no now this other thing is broken"... etc but since the game looks and sounds so great, and it feels good killing aliens, it's enough to keep me going so far.
1080° Avalanche right out of the box oughtta be the most likeable first-party GameCube title... with the worst music. Tough luck SSX 3 was around at the same time, but Avalanche seems free of its ilk's most grating issues (even the character models and voices don't rub me the wrong way). Considering system-exclusivity, it's a shame the framerates aren't smoother in such a fast-movig game, but it's a technically respectable console endeavour for its gen.
Can't judge how its gameplay compares to the direct competition (not much of my genre... yet).
Demon's Souls' Tower of Latria reminds me of the first Max Payne even more than Psi-Ops or The Suffering now. In fact, I wish the prisoners here spoke with the voices of junkies from Max Payne. What a sentimental journey through the last decade's mouse & keyboard TPP action gaming!
Rogue Trooper Wii port seems good enough, if not quite as responsive as the Wii's finest point & click action titles. I expect Sniper Elite Wii port to be of the same quality.
Rayman Origins (also Wii) - gets challenging.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
Obiwanshinobi wrote:Demon's Souls' Tower of Latria reminds me of the first Max Payne even more than Psi-Ops or The Suffering now. In fact, I wish the prisoners here spoke with the voices of junkies from Max Payne. What a sentimental journey through the last decade's mouse & keyboard TPP action gaming!
You so crazy, Obi.
Speaking of feeling Payned, I tried out Max Payne 3 recently. I'm slowly warming up to it, but R*'s whole act of being for the little guy is wearing thin with their horrible practices (in this game, their piling DRM bullshit into the game - which is already on Steam in this case - not only takes up time but it even interferes with keyboard layouts). Why did they bother spending, presumably, millions of dollars to turn Max Payne into pretty much every other one of their games? The Super Baseball Bat Booger cartoons ain't a patch on Address Unknown, that's for damn sure.
Haven't really bothered with the special functions - for the most part the game bullet-times you if you slip up, and I found the G-SYNC monitor I had allowed me to put a bullet right into the head of all the guys at the start with ease. I died quite a few times in various parts, but using bullet time and shoot dodge extensively just sorta kills the pace.
Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
Legend of Heroes Trils in the sky FC. 20 hours in and I only completed the prologue. Still on the first chapter. But the game is really good, and that's what matters
Leandro wrote:Legend of Heroes Trils in the sky FC. 20 hours in and I only completed the prologue. Still on the first chapter. But the game is really good, and that's what matters
Same. I'm on the old schoolhouse right now. Mouki is kind of a tricky miniboss.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Kinda sad playing Stella Glow now that I've learned it's imageepoch's final game. But even before I came to that realization, I was finding the game less engaging than Luminous Arc 2. Perhaps I slightly prefer the look of LA 2. Or perhaps the difference is just in me: I was relatively new to the genre when I played LA 2 and I have fond memories of all the games that introduced me to the genre.
So I'm taking a break from it and going back to Fire Emblem Awakenings. Wanted a bit more challenge and this is an excellent fit on Lunatic.
Personally I prefer to play Awakening on hard whilst attempting to grind as little as possible. Very fun to try and push the pairing and dual strike mechanics as far as they can go without outright breaking them with min-maxing. Lunatic I quit pretty fast.
(as I understand it, the difficulty balance is kind of lopsided too. Everyone tells me the final battles are actually really easy, though I dunno how much I should trust them.)
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Mischief Maker wrote:I just picked up Darkest Dungeon.
This is EXACTLY what I've been wanting for a while. A big thing that has annoyed me about post-infinity-engine WRPGs is they almost never let you create a custom party from scratch.
I also love the art style.
Awesome game, I'm interested to know what you think of the bosses.
So far I've taken on the Necromancer's Apprentice, which went as expected, and the Wizened Hag.
The Hag was both surprising and kinda hilarious. OF COURSE the one skill my Highwayman didn't upgrade was pistol shot and he was the only one who could reach her (besides the Man at Arms' Retribution counterattacks) so Reynauld the Kleptomaniac Crusader finally gave his all to me by getting stewed to an inch of his life then walloped with a giant meat tenderizer.
I'd almost classify this game as more of a strategy title than an RPG.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.
An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.
Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
In the process of moving right now and the only thing hooked up is the PS4 and WiiU, so I decided to replay Bayonetta 1 on hard mode. So glad I did, the depth of the game shines through so much in hard mode.
The more limited witch time really forces you to learn the enemy attacks and proper dodge timing so you can activate it and go for big damage with your less safe moves. Normal was a damn good time, but you really could just flail around mashing out whatever and dodge canceling all the time to great effect. Hard mode feels closer to the tight action you get in something like NG (albeit with a radically different flavor).
I finished it pretty quickly and dove into infinite climax, but got bored (not frustrated) after the first few stages. I think by removing the witch time mechanic entirely the game becomes incredibly shallow. Most of your moveset is too unsafe to use outside of witch time, making your best neutral attack pattern well timed dodge-offset. This is fine for hard mode, because you are still thinking carefully about when to dodge and capitalize on witch time with your more powerful moves. By removing the mechanic entirely, the game actually becomes far more passive. Your really have no incentive to do anything but dodge-offset in Climax mode, and you don't even have to think carefully about your dodges since there is no reward to doing so. Just sit safely back spamming ABA-offset all day long. Really unfortunate. After a good while of ABA purgatory I thought to myself: "This is so damn repetitive, why am I not playing Bayo 2 hard mode right now?" Good question, so I turned it off and dove into 2 instead. Don't see myself returning to Climax again.
Flatout
Once again I keep playing this. I will probably grab the sequel at some point as I'm having loads of fun with this. Already into the Gold cup and running through that.
Squire Grooktook wrote:Personally I prefer to play Awakening on hard whilst attempting to grind as little as possible. Very fun to try and push the pairing and dual strike mechanics as far as they can go without outright breaking them with min-maxing. Lunatic I quit pretty fast.
(as I understand it, the difficulty balance is kind of lopsided too. Everyone tells me the final battles are actually really easy, though I dunno how much I should trust them.)
When I first got Awakenings, my goal was to no-miss on Lunatic without grinding. I made it through the first 10 stages, but then I hit a stage (maybe 11?) where I kept losing at least one character (usually more). To avoid that frustration I'm currently trying Lunatic in casual mode (no permadeath). It would probably make more sense to play on hard like you suggest. It would be nice to get through the whole game and in a timely fashion! And getting to know the game as a whole could make playing on Lunatic a bit more manageable, like getting a better idea about which characters are worth developing.
So I just got Freedom Planet. Am I missing out if I skip adventure mode and go straight to classic? From the little I've seen, the voice-acting is pretty cringey.
Freedom Planet is really good. I just wish it was a bit shorter. Might be one of my favorite indie games if I could 1cc it, but a single sitting play session just sounds exhausting. And this is coming from someone who likes Gradius V's length.
Not that everything has to be 1cc-able, but the game kinda lacks a good source of tension. Some great setpieces and boss fights, great ost, great presentation (definitely nails the "what if Treasure made Sonic" vibe), could use some restructuring though.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Been working on Crazy mode on Gurumin(Steam). The difficulty of this mode is as good as I remember it from the PSP. It's definitely punishing though since you either get 1 shotted by stuff(along with losing most of your drill power from all the damage the enemies do) or just lose pretty much all your attack power.
I never really cared for S-ranking on the PSP release, but I'm trying to S-rank it like I did on the previous difficulties for the Steam Achievement. The requirements aren't too bad since you just need to defeat all enemies and open all treasure in the level while not getting a game over from KO(because that is automatic C rank). You can take as much time as you need to or abuse items and still get the S rank, which is enough for the achievement if you have them on all but 1 level.
On PSP, I was just trying to clear the mode, so I didn't care whether I got C ranks or whatever rank.
I've mainly been going for S+++ ranks for the most part so far, though I do have a S++(second boss completely RNG trolled me by not opening up for attack enough, will go back with his elemental weakness which you can get before the 4th boss), a C, and an S+ to redo runs of eventually. While I didn't know the exact requirements for the + ranks before, I do know what they are now.
S is for 100% a level with bad time and item use(I know item use lowers rank somehow, but I'm not sure how much it takes or if it depends on what rank you're going for). S+ can be done through not using too many items or doing better time. S++ for even better time than S+(or S+ time with low item use), and S+++ for very good time and low/no item use. I don't know the exact time limits, but I at least know what the runs need to be like.
While it wouldn't be as bad to S+++ on a lower difficulty with stuff transferred, Crazy mode enemies just destroy you if you are hit by them even if you bring over stuff from clear data. For S+++ a level on Crazy, it seems like you have to avoid being hit because you either get 1 shotted(C rank) or your attack power goes to complete crap(and of course, using items to get it back to level 3+ might lower rank, I may have to check if it's any item or just healing). Stuff like water or trap damage doesn't do enough to lower attack power unless you stay in it for a while, so it doesn't have to be a full no damage. That's not even going into the horrible fact that Crazy Mode enemies can just randomly take 0 damage from your attacks for no reason, which lowers your chance of getting a good time as well.
Last thing I did was defeating the 3rd boss. I've been using the Nurse outfit from Happy Boss Rush for most of the run so far, only switching to a normal outfit for the first 2 areas of the 3rd dungeon(first one requires a lot of time in water, so I needed water immunity equipped to avoid having to use items, while I probably would have been better off with Nurse Outfit for the second due to there being barely any water, though I still wouldn't have S+++ the level). I'll try to S rank or higher as much as I can with the Nurse Outfit, but unlike the other difficulties, once I get access to the good ending, I'll be doing it regardless of my S rank status so that I can get an even more powerful outfit to help with the S-ranking(which means I'll need to beat the final boss 3 times instead of just the 2 for the previous difficulty achievements).
You're sure to be in a fine haze about now, but don't think too hard about all of this. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good. You know, it's just what hunters do! You'll get used to it.
Stevens wrote:Does anyone here share my undying love for MDK 2?
Hate to be a killjoy, but I'm a fan of MDK1 and considered MDK2 to be a huge disappointment. MDK1 was epic, staring with you storming huge battlefields as tanks are being airlifted in and bomb-carrying kamikazes leap out of trenches to rush you, MDK2 had you fighting against hallways full of security camera turrets. MDK1 had a sniping system with enemies that reacted based on what part of their body you shot, MDK2 had timed jump puzzles that involved sniping plasma ball buttons. MDK1 did its world building wordlessly through giant level design, music, and physical comedy, MDK2 just used voice acted cutscenes with jokes that aged poorly, "Who's your daddy? Yes, I am."
And I did not like playing the other two characters at all.
The one positive I'll give to MDK2 is it had a fantastic soundtrack.
I consider Giants: Citizen Kabuto to be the real spiritual sequel to MDK1.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.
An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.
Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
Squire Grooktook wrote:^^^All the boss fights in there are super fun too. Wait till shit gets real though.
Loved that tournament. Gave me a Yu Yu Hakusho vibe
Just finished Legend of Heroes. What a game. Definitely the favorite storytelling on a jRPG, what a joy to play. We've all seen that kind of story, but here it's done so efficiently, perfectly paced, no useless dialogue or exposition to me. And all with a light hearted touch, seals the deal for me.
Great writing does wonders for characterization, better than any CG cutscenes or voice acting could do. The characters were so charming and captivating, with just text boxes and minimal in-game expressions going for them. This kind of game is a Falcon punch on the face of Squarenix and other similar big budget jrpg companies.
I'm hyped for LoH Second Chapter, will get it as soon as I see a discount on Steam.
I finished DmC: Definitive Edition earlier today. Got an SSS rank on all of Dante and Vergil's missions on DMD/VMD, including their Bloody Palaces. It's nowhere near as good as DMC3 or 4, but it's not bad either. It's easily the best western-developed 3D action game that I've played.
I started playing DmC to take a break from Ninja Gaiden II, so I guess I'll get back to that.
Leandro wrote:[Just finished Legend of Heroes. What a game.
Agreed, Trails really feels like no other game I've played. The almost "slice of life" nature of the plot made it hard to tell what would happen next, and the huge amount of well written script, and resulting character development, was on a level I haven't really seen before in an rpg. Felt like playing a Miyazaki film.
All that, and it still manages to be fun and well paced in terms of gameplay. Wow.
Working through Second Chapter myself, right now.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Got back to my old Ys Seven file and finished the game. Bit of a cliche, weak ending, but the whole game felt good.
Now finishing getting those bonuses on the Bravely Second demo.
ChurchOfSolipsism wrote:I'll make sure I'll download it illegally one day...
