Video Games

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Feb 03, 2013 5:19 am

Maxus wrote:
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Played Legend of Dead Kel. I took the adorkable ship captain with me for the last battle. I was taken a bit aback when she threw herself at me...
Yeah, me too.

Be sure to do the Gravehal quest. That's pretty awesome.

And gives you the most evil-voiced man in the entire game...

I missed the evil voice, who was that?

Alright, completed the gravehal missions. So now my character is in a relationship with 3 different women. Only one of those was technically my choice (the second sprung it on me without a chance to decline, the third was a quest requirement, there should be an option to simply have a political marriage).

My biggest issues are:

1. I have sometimes played characters in video games who tried to sleep with as many people as they can, but I prefer the ability to choose to not be sexual if I want.

2. All three of those have been women. I am positive that there are no men in Amalur that you can romance. If I was a gay male or a straight female I would be bothered (the fact that I had no choice in what happened to my character makes me feel kind of weird about it.)

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sun Feb 03, 2013 6:14 am

A lot of single-player consists of spamming an omnishield and then spamming omnimines. The dismaying thing is that it's exactly as effective in multiplayer. It turns out that all the wild interplayer synergies that they cooked up are exactly as effective when you synergize with yourself by just hitting more keys.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:04 pm

John Magnum wrote:A lot of single-player consists of spamming an omnishield and then spamming omnimines. The dismaying thing is that it's exactly as effective in multiplayer. It turns out that all the wild interplayer synergies that they cooked up are exactly as effective when you synergize with yourself by just hitting more keys.

What do you mean by omnishield? You can only block one element at a time without special gear, generally. Rock/Ice armor doesn't block a lot of elemental damage.

I got through the single-player Magicka campaign with a kiting + freeze strategy, and that worked fairly well for most of the game, especially when I picked up minion summons and the knife that boosts your run speed.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:11 pm

Some tips for Magicka:
http://www.magickapedia.net/wiki/Spell_Combinations
http://www.magickapedia.net/wiki/Efficient_Combinations

Beams aren't as great as they used to be, especially in single player mode.

... Huh. I should try the QF-S-D + S-D-R combo. Looks like it would synergize well with my playstyle.

And I hadn't realized Arcane Ice Shard Barrage was spammable. Not sure if it will be good, but I'll have to try it next time I play.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:18 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:What do you mean by omnishield? You can only block one element at a time without special gear, generally. Rock/Ice armor doesn't block a lot of elemental damage.

You can block like four elements at once.

qfsafe?

Shields steam, arcane, fire, and electricity.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:40 pm

Yeah. You can't quite block everything at once because some stuff cancels, but you can block a lot of elements simultaneously. I think I just meant QFSAFE.

There is also the literal omnishield that's just E self-cast, but that depletes really quickly.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Feb 04, 2013 1:13 am

Magicka: eqras is basically the best thing you'll ever throw around. You aoe cast it to create a ring of icicles around you that explode (or enchant and swing it at a clumped up mob), hitting multiple enemies per icicle for 1k+ damage per icicle they are in reach of. The same spell when cast on self creates ice armor that will protect you from being at the center of one such explosion (then the ice armor is depleted). eas will just give you a time-based immunity to it, and also works, but you're susceptible to physical that way. eqrw does the exact same thing with healing, which means you use it to heal everything on screen (i.e. mostly yourself) and kill undead. Healing enemies doesn't matter too much, since killing them from full isn't usually harder than killing them at all. Add r to your ice wall for a slowing effect, but very little survives it and you can spam it superfast anyway, so why bother?

Anytime that doesn't work, your goal should be to get enemies wet with water/steam, then freeze them with cold, and then hit them with whatever will hurt them and keep them frozen.

If you are playing cooperative multiplayer and your companions don't shield themself properly for you to use screenclearing death walls of exploding magic lightning ice, just put steam and lightning together on something safe and precise (like a beam) for auto double damage.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Feb 04, 2013 1:17 am

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:
I missed the evil voice, who was that?

The Ljosalfar dude who runs the shop inside the main hall. I think he pops up on his own, as you do stuff. He's also a fence, so you can sell stuff.

Seriously. Go talk to him and listen

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Feb 04, 2013 2:55 am

Kaelik wrote:
Avoraciopoctules wrote:What do you mean by omnishield? You can only block one element at a time without special gear, generally. Rock/Ice armor doesn't block a lot of elemental damage.
You can block like four elements at once.

qfsafe?

Shields steam, arcane, fire, and electricity.

John Magnum wrote:Yeah. You can't quite block everything at once because some stuff cancels, but you can block a lot of elements simultaneously. I think I just meant QFSAFE.

There is also the literal omnishield that's just E self-cast, but that depletes really quickly.

For some reason, I guess I missed that in play. Thanks, you just made the game significantly easier in some zones.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Feb 04, 2013 5:50 pm

So on the recommendation of a friend, I got Dust: An Elysian Tail.

Once you get past the furry and the talking sword, it's actually pretty damn good. Action/platforming. Combat is flowy, and you feel badass when you nail the right combos. Both bosses I've fought haven't been ginormous puzzle bosses. The first one, I more or less had to outfight him. There also

Oh, and hand-painted animation. Think Odin Sphere. Except more fluid.

Do have a word of warning: Normal difficulty has been pretty easy. Even a boss will lose a lot of health in a hurry if you've bothered to upgrade your attack power and you get a shot to go all blender on him.

Second word of warning: I thought the dialogue branched. It doesn't. It's one of the classic "go down the list".

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Fri Feb 08, 2013 1:23 am

Super Hexagon is probably about as close to perfection as any videogame I have ever played has been.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Feb 08, 2013 1:34 am

I played a version of that on Newgrounds, it's a lot of fun. I mean, I kind of suck at it (though certainly got better with practice, from "totally shit" to "not very good"), but it's fun and intense.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:28 pm

Is there a "cute monster girl seduction" mini-game? Because if a game is perfection, it would definitely include that.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sat Feb 09, 2013 5:11 am

Hurgh

I've been playing Dead Space 2 again because I never got more than like two and a half chapters in my first time around and I kind of want Dead Space 3, and even though a lot of the scares are nonsensical or rote, it's still getting to meeeeeee

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sat Feb 09, 2013 5:54 pm

Did anyone try Mechwarrior: Tactics yet? I found the actual gameplay pretty lengthy/boring, but didn't play many games yet.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Sat Feb 09, 2013 6:01 pm

Fuchs wrote:Did anyone try Mechwarrior: Tactics yet? I found the actual gameplay pretty lengthy/boring, but didn't play many games yet.

Is it in open beta yet? The game play looks like it's based off of the Battletech tabletop rules, so that won't be everyone's cup of tea.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sun Feb 10, 2013 11:47 am

Cloed beta still. I got in by buying the 20 dollar founder's pack or what's it called.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Feb 10, 2013 12:12 pm

i got into that closed beta without paying somehow . .
and it's not nearly as good as it claims to be.
megamek is free and better.
the only thing that MW:Tactics has over megamek is the real time animated combat after you are done with your commands . . and the camera position often makes it so that you can't see shit anyway . .
and for this, somehow they made the phases different too . .
for every round you have to do something like 2 times movement and 2 times shooting or something like that . .
it's, basically to MegaMek as MWO is to MWLL sadly <.<

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sun Feb 10, 2013 2:13 pm

I tried Megamek, but I cannot wait eons just for a bot to move in a simple 4 vs 4 match.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Feb 10, 2013 2:23 pm

you can make it faster by tinkering a bit.
give it a bit more RAM and switch it to dumb AI, so it does not try to calculate all possible moves for all units all the time, only for the currently active unit.
makes it much faster.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Feb 10, 2013 4:37 pm

Got the Mass Effect trilogy. I am starting to regret it. I didn't buy this game to drive a stupid clumsy tractor that the game didn't even tell me how to drive (I had to read gamefaqs to find out it had rockets and shot missiles. Then I hit the jump button and flipped over on my back. After which I got eaten by a thresher maw.)
Please tell me that this isn't the whole game and I can get out of the tractor witout dying again.

Dr_Noface · Post by **Dr_Noface** » Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:04 pm

Your space tractor requires more minerals.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:18 pm

Care to elaborate?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:31 pm

You actually can't mod the Mako, although Tali and I think Garrus have a skill that boosts its shields.

When you flip it, you can usually knock it back upright with the thrusters, although it's actually usually pretty good about staying upright. I actually had relatively little trouble steering it, though the sheer quantity of internet bitching indicates I'm in the minority on that. It can go up pretty much anything, including the ~75 degree inclines the random planet design seems to think is impassible.

It's only mandatory once a plot planet, and technically you can do those sections on foot, although it is a gigantic bitch. I don't think any thresher maw fights are mandatory, which is good because fuck their shield-bypassing acid.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:46 pm

Once I got used to strafing and got used to the idea that everything is sticky and would adhere the tractor to it if I touched it, the thresher maw was easy. What I am now stuck on are a bunch of geth on the planet the asari chick went to. They are too small for me to hit, don't take damage from being run over, and kill me in one hit if I leave the tractor.