[Talbain]

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[sponkmonkey]

Rudie, did you ever talk about Ninja Gaiden 3 on the Hinge Problems cast? Because I would love to listen to a conversation between 2501 and you about that game.
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Rudie I played the whole damn thing just to verify that claim and my Forensic Conclusion is that you need to seek help

We'll support you through this, Rudie. But the first step to recovery is recognizing there's a problem.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[CubaLibre]

[Rud31]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

What if you could feel good pressing buttons in a game that was well balanced and rewarded skill
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[jodeaux]

Witcher 2 free for Gold members, is it worth playing?

[Talbain]

[RadRad]

As I was thinking of what to play in my backlog, but at the same time I didn't know what to play, or even feel like playing a game... So I started Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney for the Nintendo DS.
Why did I wait so long to play this?!
The music, animations, writing all have a nice classic feel to it.
Snappy, flashy, and has that right blend of visual novel and some "action" to keep engaged.
So good, it should have came out on the Sega CD!
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http://www.iamthefourth.com/

[ionustron]

I'm ill as hell, put alittle more time into a new Earthbound play this weekend, this time finding a use for the wiiu tablet - put it on the night stand, aim a wiimote at it, plug a controller in, lay down in bed.

This is an acceptable handheld.

[Mr. Mechanical]

I've started Mass Effect 3 and am several hours into it now. I like it but man it feels kind of like all three games were designed and made by three completely different groups of people.

I like how the reason they give to have you explore the galaxy all over again (again) is to recover assets to help build up the war effort before the big final battle.

Also installed Dark Souls on steam and got it running properly and everything but since GFWL is dead there's no way for me to save. So I can't really dig into just yet until I figure out how to save but I played through the first 30 minutes or so last night and it was pretty tight.

edit-Okay I figured out how to save. I can finally get my Dark Souls on!
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[Felix]

yeah you can pretty much straight up ignore the asset recovery except in the rare cases when it's a quest that has good writing and they tell you explicitly where a given artifact is, it's like star control 2 but not really natural or fun

the consensus on the podcast I think was that 1 was trying to be an interesting 3D action/space sim hybrid but was not especially successful, 2 is a reasonably good cover shooter that's more or less completely worth it if you like the plot, and 3 is an actually very well done jRPG with the best shooting mechanics of the whole series, but it's not particularly interesting in its design and the revised ending is just cowardly

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Ronnoc]

That you play 3 40 hour games and visit the Turian homeplanet, and it still takes DLC for bioware to put a female turian in is still pretty balls

[Mikey]

[CubaLibre]

[parker]

that's not the turian home planet, it's palaven's moon, menae, get it right jack
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[parker]

not you, ronnoc's the one up shit creek without an envirosuit here
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[Ronnoc]

You can see the planet, it's close enough to visiting on a galactic scale

[RadRad]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Reached Lordran in Dark Souls. Liking this a lot more than Demon's Souls so far, even though it's basically the same game. I think it's the setting and the big interconnected levels.

But I guess Demon's Souls had big interconnected levels too? I never played very far in that one.
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[Talbain]

Demon's Souls was much more character-driven than Dark Souls. Dark Souls is about environments.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Finally beat Persona 4 Golden, only to be told by The Internet that to get the "True Ending" with the "real final boss", I had to make a seemingly insignificant, counterintuitive choice on the very last day. Too bad I saved over my last file (at least in 10 or so hours) with my clear data!

FUUUUUUUCK THIIIIIIIIIIIS. From now on I'm using my Vita as a glorified PSX emulator.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Ronnoc]

I'm a bit surprised at how many people that gets, but on the other hand, I learned through getting the bad end on P3 so maybe it's a wash

[Mikey]

What bugged me was that the "True Ending" felt like a lot of bullshit, plot-wise. There wasn't very much in the way of foreshadowing. I sincerely hope P5 does a better job of it, if it's going to do the same thing.

[Quick Shot II Turbo]

I just finished Serious Sam 3: BFE and it was a damn well made shooter/crowd control simulator. I will probably play through the DLC Jewel of the Nile as well.

(Why didn't D3 hire Croteam for Insect Armageddon? Seems like a perfect fit on paper, and makes sense from a budget perspective.)

And Splinter Cell: Blacklist is also a pretty decent game if you like that sort of stuff. The game reverts back to a more traditional SC experience, doing away with most of the forced action Conviction had you dealing with and offering up some really tightly designed sneaking levels as an apology. The main campaign missions are mostly linear, but almost all of the side missions give you a wide playing field and a freedom to go from point A to B in any way you want. The levels themselves are not that big (way smaller than MGS:GZ for example), but are very tightly packed with ledges, pipes, ladders, windows and, of course, air vents. And none of these things are highlighted in any manner until you are right next to them and a contextual icon pops up. So discovery feels as rewarding as avoiding multiple enemies with timed movements.

The metagame does kinda ruin the experience, though. You get the option to sneak around and ignore enemies, take them out non-lethally, lethally or just shooting at everyone with an AK-47. This is all tied into a scoring system which rates your approach. As an example, you get 150 points for avoiding an enemy completely, and only 75 points for gunning them down with a (non-silenced) rifle. Various forms of knockouts and silent kills are all between those two. And at the end of each level all these points are added up and then you get money based off of that, which you then use to buy upgrades that help you become even sneakier or, conversely, a better bullet sponge.

It's all nice and functional, but makes no difference in the context of the game. You don't get any intel from the guys you left alive and nobody on your team cares if you just shot up 30 people like a maniac or spared every single soul. Just points, and money. So whether or not you are lethal is a purely pragmatic choice.

I hate metrics and I guess I hate Ubisoft for heavily integrating them into every single game they make.

Ahh, also, the game features a mission where you end up doing a moonlit extraction on the coastline of Cuba, right next to a certain American blacksite. The similarities to MGS:GZ were eerie.
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[The Blueberry Hill]

[mauve]

http://gfycat.com/TinySpottedAmericanlobster

aaaa
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twit

[username]

I just finished up Blacklist myself this week as well. I agree with most of what you said, although my issues with the scoring system are a bit different. The points you get for ghost/silent kill/blatant kill are distinct from each other so that if you don't commit fully to it you are unlikely to reach the goal amount of the level. On one hand I didn't really care about those goals anyways, but while I see why straight killing would be separate the other two are both stealthy in nature. Missing the goal score because there were a few people you didn't go out of your way to kill (or a few you took out along the way) feels a bit off.

That said the levels were mostly put together rather well and there were very few times when stealth wasn't an option, so while it does have some more modern Ubi touches I still thought it ended up being a pretty solid stealth game overall. A few of the side missions do a very good job of forcing stealth as well which was a very pleasant addition.
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http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/castlevania-sotn/clip1.mp3

[Quick Shot II Turbo]

[Mikey]

I've been on a huge platformer kick:

Trine 2
Escape Goat 2
Puppeteer
Battleblock Theater

I think Escape Goat 2 is the best of the bunch, but Battleblock Theater is surprisingly fun.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[John Mc.]

I have realized that I can not tolerate the discomfort of playing a Fire Emblem game and maintaining my army. I know that I could eventually make it through, but based on the luck and time involved, I could be waiting as long as those monkeys typing Shakespeare. I just don't have the time for it.

On the way home, I popped in the GBA Phantasy Star Collection. My point of reference is End of the Millennium, so I decided to start with the original game. I died a lot at first, but I'm starting to get into the game a little more and I find it pretty cool. Having heard so much about the former glory of Parma, it's really neat to be able to wander around it and (via the menu) appreciate its vistas. So far I have Alys, Odin and the small talking cat that I have enslaved >.>. I am presently getting lost in dungeons and inadvertently grinding!

[Mr. Mechanical]

Finished Mass Effect 3. That was a solid month of Mass Effect right there and I'm ready for a break!

I chose to side with the geth and sell out the krogan. At the very end I chose to destroy the reapers (and all synthetics) even though it would mean starting the whole cycle over again at some point in the future.

That was a really cool space battle scene at the end. That bit right there, seeing all those thousands of ships firing off lasers at each other? They could have made the whole game out of just that one scene and I would have been okay with that.

I liked the little post-credits scene as well.

Going to put Mass Effect up for a while now. Maybe I'll go back and replay it again in a year or two, go for a full paragon run. Or maybe I'll just read the wiki to see what all the alternate choices lead to.
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[ArOne]

Managed to waste 108 hours of my life on Xenoblade Chronicles and finally closed the book on it. I really enjoyed the story and found the mmo-lite combat endearing at the start but it really grew thin around the 60 hour mark with alot of my grief coming from certain fuck ups from the AI party members. To much needless grinding for those of us that don't completely exploit all the systems or comb all the areas with a fine tooth comb to find all the little subquests. Here's hoping X is more densely packed.
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[Talbain]

You'll probably be disappointed, given what they've shown of Xenoblade Chronicles X's areas. I'm just hoping less sidequest grinding is required to progress the main storyline.

That said, the game seems intentionally meant for those who want the ridiculously long jRPG. Which has gradually become less of a thing.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Talbain]

Yeah I deleted it recently because it ended up taking too much time and I noticed I was just mindlessly collecting stuff and checking boxes. Which wasn't at all interesting and really made me question what the point of exploration was if it's all just a collection of "stuff." I think what was kind of fascinating about Assassin's Creed II is that they dwelt on the space a little bit, providing little insights and explorations of the space's historical significance. I really enjoyed reading and the sense of the Ubisoft team enjoying those pauses.

I think it's a problem with modern games generally? I've been playing older games recently and am noticing how much more they dwell on details and minutia and a lot of it seems to have been skimmed away towards a generalizable formula for game types. Exploration game = gathering stuff. Why gather stuff? Doesn't matter, check off boxes. And it just begins to feel manipulative after a certain point. I feel the game would be better served by simply having the overview points as the only real spots of concern and the rest of the world is just sort of left open for the player. Less non-discoverable discoverables, more moving about for the sake of moving about. It's kind of a pity too, because the movement in the game is really great, it's just hampered by always feeling like you should be moving towards check marks.

Illusion of Gaia has a bunch of red jewels but they aren't outlined anywhere for you unless you used the book that came with the game. And even then I didn't use it because it took away from messing around in the environment. You knew they were around but their importance was never tantamount (and anymore, you can just hack them into the game if you're really so concerned about them). I happened upon a lot of them as the game progressed but because the game wasn't feeding them to me, it felt unique in finding them.

Or to simplify, quests with big circular dots with where to go and what to do aren't quests. Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen is the exemplar of discovery, both through accident and intentionality, in videogames. Final Fantasy Tactics and a myriad of other tactics games clearly took a lot from what it set out (though none ever really captured it, in the same way I can't think of a psychological horror game that captured the same uncomfortable feeling elicited by Silent Hill 2).
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[Marshmallow]

My experience is pretty much the same as above. I love sailing around and exploring, but it felt like a waste of time once I realised I was just checking boxes and wouldn't actually discover anything really exciting.

More and more games are becoming open-worlds with nothing to do but collect things outside of the main campaign. Pretty much every one I've played the last few years is guilty of this.

I prefer smaller, hub-based games where there is a lot to do and a lot of detail in a little area. Sure, it won't last as long, but it will be more meaningful. Deus Ex is an example of this, I guess.