What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Vexorg]

I also found that another thing that helps a lot is to have a good portal runner character for the item world. Tink seems to be the best option for this. you can get his movement stat up higher than just about anyone else. I think with the right items you can get him up to a MV stat of 25, he can fly over enemies, and has some pretty good specials (sonic roll and nail bat in particular)

I've got over 200 hours into a save file, but haven't played in quite a while. One of these days I need to go find the last treasure map I need to get to the Land of Carnage.

Oh, and don't forget to stack characters when you go to collect felonies (throw a stack of characters onto the dark court portal.) You can increase the rate of XP game by as much as 300% by collecting felonies. This can be a bit tricky to do with nonhuman characters though. You'll be able to repeat felonies by transmigrating, and once you get stats high enough you can get as many as 12 felonies at a time.

Runners are helpful, although I've found that Disgaea 2 has some of the hardest 'random' item world maps to work through out of all three games in the series so far.

If I remember correctly both Tink and the Mothman monster class can both reach 31 MV. That's with a weapon and three pairs of the best shoes w/boosts. Neither one has an attack that can move a gatekeeper off the portal, so there is a limit to how useful they are without a Fist user to push gatekeepers if they are too strong to kill outright and your trying to run quickly through the item world.

Between all three Disgaea games so far I probably have over 1000 hours into the series. ^_^;

I've got my Tink buffed up well enough that he has no trouble taking out most gatekeepers. In fact, I think Tink might be the strongest character in my party right now (it's been a while since I last played, so I can't be sure of this.) In D1 I found that the ninja was easily the best portal runner (insane dodge skills, and had fist skills that could push gatekeepers off,) but they don't seem to be particularly useful for much of anything in D2.

Personally, I find D3's item worlds to be a lot harder to work through than D1 or D2s item worlds, mostly because it's so hard to raise MV stats on most characters.

[PainAmplifier]

I've got my Tink buffed up well enough that he has no trouble taking out most gatekeepers. In fact, I think Tink might be the strongest character in my party right now (it's been a while since I last played, so I can't be sure of this.) In D1 I found that the ninja was easily the best portal runner (insane dodge skills, and had fist skills that could push gatekeepers off,) but they don't seem to be particularly useful for much of anything in D2.

Personally, I find D3's item worlds to be a lot harder to work through than D1 or D2s item worlds, mostly because it's so hard to raise MV stats on most characters.

D3 hard to raise move...How so? In D3 you can boost anyones MV by +2 through the class world easily enough. All it takes is 55K mana total, or just 5K if you are that short on mana you can only get the first boost. And it's no harder to get good shoes and add +MV to them either. Actually D1 should be the hardest since you can't do any character boosting in that game or boost the MV stat on items either. And to make things even easier you can +2 the throw ability on your characters as well to make some runs even easier.

In D1 and D2 (so far) I've found it a bit easier to just exit and wait one turn for mobs to move closer to me, then wipe everything out at once than it is to rush for the gate unless it's really close and simple to reach. Or just slog my way to the gate killing as I go if my main is over the level of the mobs in the item still. (About anything under level 2000 right now) Since DEF isn't gimped in D1/2, it's pretty easy to tank mobs attacks in those two games if you've built that up even a little bit. Counterattacks and boosting them is a viable strategy for the first two games...in D3 you pretty much don't want to let the enemy get a single hit in ever, once you have passed the main story maps/levels. (Especially not in LoC!)

[ryu]

my mother got me epic mickey for my birthday, so to wrap up my first impressions:

- great intro
- still quite dark art direction. really cool
- basic platforming gameplay, as aspected, feels nostalgic
- not too easy. platforming requires precision. some "puzzles" are not that easy to solve

but

- worst camera i have ever seen. it's moving really slow and won't always face the direction you need it to. thanks to that 60% of the playtime is wiggling the camera around and being frustrated you can't see shit/aim correctly thanks to it

[Aquas]

my mother got me epic mickey for my birthday,

December birthdays for the win.

I've been able to finally get Super Street Fighter IV. I spent a lot of time the past year or so playing this game with a friend. Finally owning it I can actually practice and improve, wow, lol. Starting on improving my Rose. Getting a Gold subscription soon, too, so if you wanna play me feel free to add me. Also, I picked up Resonance of Fate and will be getting into that soon. Purdy excited with some new games for a change. The Pork is gonna be out of my price range for a while >_<.

[professor ganson]

PainAmplifier, thanks much for the reincarnation advice. I have now reincarnated everyone once and got everyone to level 40 on that grinding stage you mentioned. That was mostly a dull grind, but it was nice for balancing out my party, getting some of the more pathetic members of my party in much better standing. The stat boosts are definitely worth the effort.

I don't understand anything about felonies. I guess I'll need to read up on that to decide whether it's worth pursuing further.

[CptRansom]

Far Cry because I've been in the mood for an FPS lately and Stonekeep because I saw it on GOG, always wanted to play it as a kid, but never got around to it, and I've been in the mood for a GOOD dungeon crawler/action-RPG (Diablo 2's been done to death, Torchlight honestly just bores me, I had a lot of fun with Phantasy Star Online [played offline - I hate people], Oblivion won't run on my PC without looking like total shit and GOD FORBID I TRY TO MOD IT, can't get into Morrowind for whatever reason [I think it's a little TOO open... scary]... I'm open to other good single-player dungeon crawlers for PC/360).

Stonekeep is neat, but a bit confusing. I constantly feel like I'm missing something, but guides are for pussies who don't want to spend 100 hours on a game, get to the end, go FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF I MISSED SOMETHING, and then ragequit forever.

[PainAmplifier]

PainAmplifier, thanks much for the reincarnation advice. I have now reincarnated everyone once and got everyone to level 40 on that grinding stage you mentioned. That was mostly a dull grind, but it was nice for balancing out my party, getting some of the more pathetic members of my party in much better standing. The stat boosts are definitely worth the effort.

I don't understand anything about felonies. I guess I'll need to read up on that to decide whether it's worth pursuing further.

Glad to help!

Hate to say it though, but grind in the Disgaea games is boring no matter what map your playing on. The only time I've found it even tolerable is in Disgaea 3, when you have a full set of Statistians and access to Land of Carnage. With that I can level from 1-9999 in about 4-5 uses of Big Bang. The cap on extra XP for Disgaea 1 or 2 really limits your ability to level up quickly. (300% in D1/2 vs 9600% in D3) That's not to say playing the game isn't fun in itself, but when it comes to storing levels and maxing things out, the whole transmigrate and relevel cycle needs to be rethought so it's less tedious at times. I'm still working a bit on finding a better way to level up quickly in D1/2, but with so many other games to beat/play I don't focus on it very heavily.

As for Felonies, they are *VERY* important in D2. Felonies are the Staticians of D2. Each Felony is worth 1% extra XP gain. Your Felony 'stamp' will only show up to 99 felonies, but you can get up to 300% XP gain through additional felonies. The first 99 felonies also raise your Dark Assembly influence as well as lowering shop prices and raising the HL you get for selling items. (D2 on the PSP apparently fixed a lot of the issues with keeping track of Felonies, I wish I had it...)


Currently playing Demon's Souls the most right now, with some Disciples 2 and random other games in the mix. Oh god, I tried playing Maximo again and I have to question myself why I ever got this game to begin with....it's just irritating and overall plain -not fun-.

[dannnnn]

I've been playing a bit of Castlevania HoD these last few days.

I tried out single-player on my first go just to get a feel for the game and you start off so underpowered it's silly. I had to hide behind a wall using a magic attack on the first boss for five minutes (!) just to beat it. Then I went online and within three hours I'd built up a pretty beasty character simply because I was playing with other high powered characters on Hard difficulty. I wasn't contributing much but I was getting stronger in the process. That's just bad game design.

Why didn't they use an EXP system? Everything is dependant on item drops. After two days, my Alucard was powered up to the point where I could complete the game on Hard in single-player with little trouble (Drac's third form was the only nasty bit that I had to practice) and now there's really no point in carrying on. I haven't had enough of the game yet, but there's nothing to do now besides power up the other characters. There's no challenge when you play online, even in Hard mode. No skill required, just bludgeon your way through everything as fast as possible and repeat. The game is just a grind-fest.

I only paid 600 points for it in the sale, thankfully, but then you've got an extra level DLC for 400 points (!) and two characters each costing 240 points... what an absolute rip off. That's over 2/3 the cost of the full game! The DLC should be half that at most.

So yeah, to sum up, I'm kind of addicted to this game and I do enjoy playing it (being a big CV fan helps), but I hate myself for it

[drauch]

Finally got off my ass and have been playing Portal. What have I been doing since 2008...

[Ruldra]

Playing a bit of NetHack recently. I always wanted to understand the game and get somewhat deep into the dungeon but it's tough. None of my characters ever got past Minetown.

[PainAmplifier]

Ah! Before I forget this tip...don't forget that you can 'stack' felonies in Disgaea 2.

That means when you reach the level with the Court Gate in it, take the time to make a tower of 10 characters, and have the bottom one throw the other nine into it.

This lets you get the felonies for that Bailiff on all nine characters. So if the 'charge' indicates you will get 2 Felonies for that 'offense', throwing 9 characters into the court gives you 9x2=18 total felonies earned! (2 Each) The judge will not fail to notice, and makes some slightly different comments during the 'trial' as well.

[PainAmplifier]

Playing a bit of NetHack recently. I always wanted to understand the game and get somewhat deep into the dungeon but it's tough. None of my characters ever got past Minetown.

I think I reached Minetown...once. And that's all the deeper/farther I ever got with NetHack. Not because it was good/bad...but I simply have too many other distractions to spend the time on it. And you need to invest a certain amount of time in that game to succeed.


A wonderfully complex game, although the learning curve is incredibly steep. A lot of games have their roots in the depths of NetHack(/Rogue), although many people really don't know or realize it.

Diablo (1) for instance owes a lot to these older games. Dwarf Fortress is another one, although that one went on a different tanget regarding simulations. On the Console as well, Fatal Labyrinth for the Genesis is probably the most obvious example. But just about any game with a deep randomly generated maze in it shows some of the heritage that comes from Nethack and the Rogue inspired games. I have an older book called Fatal Distractions, that went into the history of the early PC/Mainframe games and came with a CD that had the current versions of those games on it. http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Distraction ... 1878739778 A bit out of date now, but as a 'look back' this was a pretty good book.

[Vexorg]

I've got my Tink buffed up well enough that he has no trouble taking out most gatekeepers. In fact, I think Tink might be the strongest character in my party right now (it's been a while since I last played, so I can't be sure of this.) In D1 I found that the ninja was easily the best portal runner (insane dodge skills, and had fist skills that could push gatekeepers off,) but they don't seem to be particularly useful for much of anything in D2.

Personally, I find D3's item worlds to be a lot harder to work through than D1 or D2s item worlds, mostly because it's so hard to raise MV stats on most characters.

D3 hard to raise move...How so? In D3 you can boost anyones MV by +2 through the class world easily enough. All it takes is 55K mana total, or just 5K if you are that short on mana you can only get the first boost. And it's no harder to get good shoes and add +MV to them either. Actually D1 should be the hardest since you can't do any character boosting in that game or boost the MV stat on items either. And to make things even easier you can +2 the throw ability on your characters as well to make some runs even easier.

In D1 and D2 (so far) I've found it a bit easier to just exit and wait one turn for mobs to move closer to me, then wipe everything out at once than it is to rush for the gate unless it's really close and simple to reach. Or just slog my way to the gate killing as I go if my main is over the level of the mobs in the item still. (About anything under level 2000 right now) Since DEF isn't gimped in D1/2, it's pretty easy to tank mobs attacks in those two games if you've built that up even a little bit. Counterattacks and boosting them is a viable strategy for the first two games...in D3 you pretty much don't want to let the enemy get a single hit in ever, once you have passed the main story maps/levels. (Especially not in LoC!)

I think it's mostly a matter of the initial grind up to the point of being able to get enough mana to even bother with the class world. I don't think any of my characters have more than about 400-500 at a time right now, and I'd say I'm about 3/4 through the story.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I thought going from Vanquish to Kane and Lynch 2 would be a mistake, but not at all. KaL2's 60 fps frame rate is awesome! I wish developers today would wake the hell up and make more games with this frame rate...

Reportedly Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond (sidescrolling sequel to the original Matt Hazard game) runs at 60 fps too. Not bad for a game slagged off to hell and back by the journos who wouldn't even care to mention that fact.

[1up]

Been on a gaming binge the last couple of weeks finishing Enslaved (360-great game, would give an , Fist of the North Star (PS3-okay game...a 6), Vanquish (PS3-pretty mind blowing...an 8.5), Kane and Lynch 2 (360-not as bad as its rep says...a 7) and now playing Spatterhouse 360.

I thought going from Vanquish to Kane and Lynch 2 would be a mistake, but not at all. KaL2's 60 fps frame rate is awesome! I wish developers today would wake the hell up and make more games with this frame rate...

what kind of game is vanquish? Only seen a couple of videos and it looked like a cross between gears of war and devil may cry. Its getting good reviews so I might put that on my to-get-list

Only game Ive been playing for the past 3 weeks, occational mame game aside, is Call of Duty: Black Ops. Havent touched anything but the super addicting multiplayer.

[ratlhead]

I've finished Golden Axe Beast Rider few days ago. A very underrated and underappreciated game. Slow begining doesn't reflect the intensity and challenge (compared to the shitload of GoW clones these days) the game has to offer.

And Outrun 2006 CTC mostly now.

[PainAmplifier]

I think it's mostly a matter of the initial grind up to the point of being able to get enough mana to even bother with the class world. I don't think any of my characters have more than about 400-500 at a time right now, and I'd say I'm about 3/4 through the story.

I can understand that somewhat. The early parts of the Disgaea games are you pretty much just bootstrapping yourself up with better equipment, stats and unlocking things. I take it you are in Chapter 6 now? (Character level 60-70ish?)

A couple of things you can do though to make things easier.

1)Take the time to subdue some Managers for at least one character. You can dupe them with the Puppy Paw Stick later on. Max is 300 for one specialist and the only limit on stacking is how many open specialist slots you have on each item. You should be able to buy items with Managers on it from the shop and subdue them for 50-100 per item. That's 3-7 items to get a full 300 Managers for 300% Mana gain per kill.

2)Put the characters you want to use as runners in the Robber Shop and place them in the classroom around your main character, and your secondary characters around them so that they are surrounded on at least two sides by characters who will be (mass) killing enemies. The extra Mana Gain is 'free' for this club and can add up pretty fast, even though it isn't as fast as the True Robber Shop. (I don't like the TRS, since the characters not in it don't get any Mana at all.)

For reference think of it as a 2x2 block. Mao in the upper Left, your two runners in the adjacent spots and another heavily used character in the lower right. Your runners will get Mana from both Mao and your secondary as well as any kills they get on their own.

3)When in the Class World, take the time to clear all the Geo Blocks from each stage. Doing so not only gives the character a bit more mana itself but also reduces the costs of learning skills at the trainer significantly if you can clear all the stages. Even missing a stage or two due to bad geo blocks is still enough to cut the cost of training a lot. Later on in the game, you will end up with more mana than you can shake a stick at and can just ignore clearing and race through the gates.

Try to clear the blocks by throwing them next to each other to get them to chain is good way to clear a lot of blocks for few actions. When things aren't so nice, having some magic characters with 3x3 attacks helps clear a ton of blocks fast as well. Although getting the mana to boost your magic attacks to that level is another issue altogether.

4)Buy mana potions, but don't drink them unless the character using them is in the Gods of Cookery club. Being in the Cooking Club doubles the effects of items you consume. So not only do you get 2x HP/SP, but you also get 2x Mana from drinking Mana Potions. (Or 2x stats from serums later on!) If you want, you can level up the Mana Potion in the Item world first, but I never bothered. Feel free to just buy the el cheapo Potions from the Misc item vendor if you can't find the Item world vendors, and just drink a bunch of those while in the GoC club. This should get you 200 Mana per 'Mana Potion I' if I remember the amounts correctly. Buy a bunch, go to the practice map with 4 prinnies and drink/clear until you have enough mana for the 5k trainer costs. A little time consuming but very easy if you need the mana that early.

I've finished Golden Axe Beast Rider few days ago. A very underrated and underappreciated game. Slow begining doesn't reflect the intensity and challenge (compared to the shitload of GoW clones these days) the game has to offer.

Underrated?

I though this game was overhyped to start with. Poor combat, Bland/brown Graphics, near useless 'beasts' and some of the most generic and cringe worthy dialogue/story since Plan 9. This was one of the most boring and generic 3d action games I have gone into with higher than normal hopes. (I think only Brutal Legend was a greater disappointment recently.)

GA:Beast Rider felt like a bland strip mining of the Golden Axe name that was setup by some corporate bean counter somewhere.

I'm glad I only rented this one, even then I still felt like it wasn't worth the money. I gave up very, very shortly into the game. If it was just 'slow' to get better I might have stuck with it more, but it didn't just fail to excite me, it actively made me hate it from the very beginning.

The game should never have been given the Golden Axe name at all. It had nothing in common with the original series other that. Although no matter what you called it, I think the game still would have gotten the bad reviews it did.

[Davey]

Crazy Taxi on XBLA. My goal is to get to the first page of both the Arcade and Original leaderboards (15th place or better).

w00t, got it. Just barely, though, so I'll probably have to keep improving to stay up there.

Also, some dude broke the game... $100k in 3 minutes? Over $300k in 10 minutes? WTF.

[ratlhead]

@PainAmplifier: I don't want to give a counter argument about everthing you said about GA:BR, but i can honestly say, give it one more chance, it's not a perfect game but it definitely has it's qualities.

[PainAmplifier]

@PainAmplifier: I don't want to give a counter argument about everthing you said about GA:BR, but i can honestly say, give it one more chance, it's not a perfect game but it definitely has it's qualities.

I'm not going there again. The game may be playable despite it's flaws, but this is one that was sold on it's name and it utterly failed to live up to that in any way. And in fact, I felt that it offended me with how it treated the Golden Axe background. And that's not easy to do considering how shallow the original source material was.

This game is to Golden Axe, what Invisible War was to Dues Ex.

[ratlhead]

Ok, i would like to give a rundown about your biased/unsupported complaints about the game;

Poor combat

Not true. Actually it is very simple yet strategic combat system. You have to select and time your attacks\combos against enemy types, stategically use your beasts and potions. You simply cannot mash your way up through the game. If you find that type of system poor, so be it.

Bland/brown Graphics

So what do you expect of a Golden Axe game? Blooming with colours like a Mario? It doesn't have any less colour than any other game (I've played every one of them) in the series.

Code: Select all

near useless 'beasts'

Again, not true. Beasts are the most useful things in the game. But you have to learn how to use and protect them. And they carry out to the next stage. They can be very useful in tricky situations.

most generic and cringe worthy dialogue/story

Well, it may be true but since when the story was the most important aspect in this type of a game? Were earlier titles any better? Golden Axe stolen by Death Adder bla bla... Same shit

The game may be playable despite it's flaws, but this is one that was sold on it's name and it utterly failed to live up to that in any way. And in fact, I felt that it offended me with how it treated the Golden Axe background. And that's not easy to do considering how shallow the original source material was.

So can you tell me, what did you found about in this game that didn't live up (and you've admit it's shallowness) it's source material so much? Besides new westernized character designs and lack of multiplayer with Gillius and Ax-Battler i don't think it's not true to it's source.

You didn't even played through the game to the end and tried to understand it's mechanics, yet give a wrong impression about it here. Just like most of the 'professional' reviewers everywhere else.

[sjewkestheloon]

I am binging on videosgames post christmas.

Infinite Space - Just played an hour on it this morning. Seems like a lot of fun so far, can't wait to get into the ship customisation.

Guitar Hero 3, Metallica, 6, Band, Rockband and RB Beatles - Finally improved my health to the point where I can play a plastic guitar without muscle fits, also taking advantage of the fact that these games have plummeted in price. Finally 5* Raining Blood (Reign In Blood?) Normal, something that elluded me for some time. Guess all that DJ Max Fever and RB Unplugged helped.

Vanquish - Playing this one chapter at a time and loving it. High octane fun.

Fallout: New Vegas - Finished the story through once and now mopping up from a previous save to hit level 30 and work on some of the leftover quests. I've had a lot of fun on this run with hardcore mode and a refusal to fast travel which has forced me to really explore and fight a lot of enemies.

Monster Hunter Tri - Finally got a Classic Controller Pro so can lance with some level of consistency.

Little Bog Planet PSP - Great relaxed platforming with a compelling crreater kit, looking forward to messing with it more.

ZHP Unlosing Ranger Vs. Darkdeath Evilman - Great grind heavy roguelike that''s quite forgiving given the genre.

[monkeyman]

Finally got off my ass and have been playing Portal. What have I been doing since 2008...

Probably scratching your head at all the 'cake' jokes on the internet. Still better late than never.

Now sing along now: "This was a triumph, I'm making a note here: huge success..."

[GateofThunderforceIII]

Vanquish is a third person shooter much like Gears of War, but with some Bayonetta-ish flash added to it thanks to both games being from the same creator. It's pretty high powered and fast compared to Gears. Awesome game and I hope it turns into a series...this and Bayonetta.

[RNGmaster]

Moving through Shadow Hearts: Covenant. I doubt you're supposed to kill Astaroth in one hit, but I somehow managed to. Fun stuff.

Oh, and I wasn't overleveled. I hate random encounters and avoid them at all costs. It's just so easy to break the difficulty curve in this game

[ratlhead]

Moving through Shadow Hearts: Covenant. I doubt you're supposed to kill Astaroth in one hit, but I somehow managed to. Fun stuff.

Oh, and I wasn't overleveled. I hate random encounters and avoid them at all costs. It's just so easy to break the difficulty curve in this game

Yeah, it's very easy to abuse the combo system in Shadow Hearts II. Fortunately they've managed to fix that to an extent with introduction of combo gauges in From the New World though.

[PainAmplifier]

Finally got off my ass and have been playing Portal. What have I been doing since 2008...

Probably scratching your head at all the 'cake' jokes on the internet. Still better late than never.

Now sing along now: "This was a triumph, I'm making a note here: huge success..."

LOL, I did the same thing. I didn't play Portal until Valve ran the promo where I got it as a free download.

I'm glad I did though, as Portal is an great game. More so because the entire setting, sounds, dialogue and graphics all work perfectly together to create a believable world that never breaks the immersion. The awesome ending song just takes the cake! (In more ways than one. ^_^)

I have high hopes that Portal 2 can keep the same level of awesome.

[dunpeal2064]

Moving through Shadow Hearts: Covenant. I doubt you're supposed to kill Astaroth in one hit, but I somehow managed to. Fun stuff.

Oh, and I wasn't overleveled. I hate random encounters and avoid them at all costs. It's just so easy to break the difficulty curve in this game

Have this game sitting on my shelf but haven't tried it yet. How would you compare it to the first? I absolutely loved the first game, but just haven't had time for an rpg lately

Since I decided to get a SFIV arcade stick (for mushi, raiden, and soon rsg) I thought it only proper that I get a copy of Super Street Fighter IV. One of my good pals is as into fighters as I am shmups, so I thought I'd try to learn one for his sake...

... and wow do I suck at fighters now. This is nothing like Guilty Gear xD

[spadgy]

I'm a very lucky boy. It's LittleBigPlanet2 with my wife and best mate.

EDIT: And strangely, Gran Turismo PSP while the kettle boils or I wait for the bus.

[RNGmaster]

Moving through Shadow Hearts: Covenant. I doubt you're supposed to kill Astaroth in one hit, but I somehow managed to. Fun stuff.

Oh, and I wasn't overleveled. I hate random encounters and avoid them at all costs. It's just so easy to break the difficulty curve in this game

Have this game sitting on my shelf but haven't tried it yet. How would you compare it to the first? I absolutely loved the first game, but just haven't had time for an rpg lately

Combat is more polished than the first and there are more customization options, but it looks and plays like an early PS2 game.
Two annoying problems: Items (of which you need many for characters' special skills) are often hidden on random spots on the ground or in almost impossible-to-see treasure chests. This means you pretty much need a guide.
Also, there are very few random encounter types. Combat gets tedious very quickly.

However, boss battles are just amazing, and unlike many other RPGs it rewards strategy and good reflexes. Level grinding is a non-issue, since if you can hit the strike areas enemies are pretty much gone.