Video Games

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 4:46 am

Far Cry update:

If you can get the hang of using it, the bow is incredibly strong. Silent, and enemies react just like they had a three-foot-long metal stick with a broad metal blade shoved through their chest.

They die in a hurry.

I find it unusual that you have to craft wallets to hold more money--your cap is $1000 at first. Then you can go to two thousand. I can hold six thousand, but that's because I got lucky and killed and skinned a couple of sharks already and could make the next-to-last wallet.

Anyway. Need to buy a sniper rifle for hunting. Suppressor/scope/etc? I think I could rack up some money here.

Also, this island has some hellacious biodiversity. Tapirs, Sumatran tigers, bull sharks, komodo dragons, cassowaries, pigs, boars, alligators. You also find remnants of WWII around--the bunkers and bodies of old Japanese soldiers, mostly. I just did a sidequest where I had to find dog tags of Japanese soldiers from back then, because this guy finds them and contacts any kin and gets paid to send the bodies home for a proper burial.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 6:39 am

Maxus wrote: Are there any other really good PS3-only titles I should be aware of? Anything super-good available for download?

not exclusives but...

Devil May Cry 4 has veeeeery solid gameplay and a fun story.

Vanquish is CURAAAZYYY 3RD PERSON SHOOTAN ACTION. The creator of Gears of War commented that if his game were a 'wild west coal train chugging along' then Vanquish was a "Bullet train, with style and everything"

If you like Megaman Legends, well Lost Planet 2 is pretty much MML+Bionic Commando+Giant Robots. If you love call of duty and halo though you may not like LP2.

If you like Dark Fantasy, then Dark Souls. It's easier than Super Mario Bros.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:39 am

I've got Dark Souls on the Xbox.

I also don't like Call of Duty and Halo.

So your reccomendations are important to me. Vanquish sounds interesting, too.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:51 am

Maxus wrote:I've got Dark Souls on the Xbox.

I also don't like Call of Duty and Halo.

So your reccomendations are important to me. Vanquish sounds interesting, too.

I would recommend Metal Gear Rising, it is made by the same company that made Vanquish and it doesn't have much stealth it is really about slicing and dicing and ripping out spines.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 12:59 pm

My god, Sim City is like a slow-motion five-train pileup.

1. Their servers were crushed under the load on launch day, even though they have arbitrarily alterable server power from Amazon.
2. They disabled a bunch of features and more than doubled their server capacity yet failed to fix the problem
3. It turns out that they flat lied about simulation fidelity, claiming every sim would be represented and have fixed jobs and the like, when only ten percent were represented and would drive to the nearest open industrial/commercial/residential building. Also their pathfinding ignored congestion.
4. EA/Maxis had been claiming that the servers did a lot of simulation and were required for any gameplay, making single-player nearly impossible to implement. An offline crack was released within like five days of release; no features except for multiplayer and cloud saving were lost.
5. Apparently you can construct a perfectly happy and wealthy city with residential zones only and no neighbors.
6.

cinemablend wrote:However, with all this good news also comes some bad news. Modders have also discovered that it's possible to mess with files client-side to affect server-side activity. I think you all know where this is going.

Basically, as the video shows below, you can enter into another person's online town and wreak havoc, however the modder notes that he turned off synching to the server so as not to actually cause permanent harm to his friend's city.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/SimCit ... 53685.html

It just keeps getting worse.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 1:25 pm

Leress wrote:
Maxus wrote:I've got Dark Souls on the Xbox.

I also don't like Call of Duty and Halo.

So your reccomendations are important to me. Vanquish sounds interesting, too.
I would recommend Metal Gear Rising, it is made by the same company that made Vanquish and it doesn't have much stealth it is really about slicing and dicing and ripping out spines.

I know someone who's willing to loan me Metal Gear: The Raidening on the Xbox.

I take the view that this is what I get for trying to be cool to people in my daily life--they're generally pretty good about being cool right back.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 1:28 pm

Welcome to Butthurt-City:
Inhabitants: You and everybody else online!

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 11:27 pm

name_here wrote:
It just keeps getting worse.

Didn't they pretty much give a fuck you to customer trying to return copies of SimCity and banned keys from amazon purchases. Also they got mad at the customers that stayed online playing their game, and not for the fact that their servers couldn't handle the load.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 11:46 pm

Well, apparently EA's CEO is resigning. No mention of Sim City, though.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 4:34 pm

So, I got Heart Of The Swarm and played through it on normal difficulty. That... was stupidly easy. I managed to get through the whole thing without once failing a mission, even though I am consistently pretty terrible about Zerg base defenses because expending masses of drones bugs me. The Terran base defenses were largely a joke; it was seriously pretty typical to be able to overrun them with Zerglings. I was kind of hoping to have to face off against the sort of fortress lines I used in Wings Of Liberty, with three-four bunkers, several prometheus turrets, multiple seige tanks, and a few missile turrets in a space only a bit larger than a Protoss Mothership. No such luck, though, it was uncommon to see that much firepower on an entire flank of a base. They stepped up their game somewhat towards the end, but by then Kerrigan had unlocked her capstone power and they were pretty much fucked.

Campaign was pretty damn fun, though. There are evolution missions where you get to specialize a unit into one of two types, e.g. zerglings can be given cliff-jumping and extra attack power or spawn in groups of three and much faster, and you do a short mission where you take out both types for a test drive. Unfortunately, you're still picking without knowing what you'll face in the rest of the campaign; I picked cliff jumping and was severely disappointed by the relative rarity of situations where it actually helped. Most units also have variable upgrades where you pick one of three upgrades between missions, and Kerrigan has a variable slate of powers. That would probably be a lot more interesting if the game gave better indications of what was going to happen in the upcoming mission.

As for missions, most of them were pretty good. There were several retreads of the fun Wings of Liberty missions; an inverted "Outbreak" where you use infestors to subvert Terran bases and spawn waves of infested terrans, then have to hold the line when an effect triggers and kills them all for a few minutes, a variant "Gates of Hell" where you have to protect structures delivered by drop pod, and a slightly modified "Into The Jungle" with Zerg. There are also awesome hero missions, like one where you have a single creature go all Aliens on a Protoss ship.

Oh, they also apparently stream stuff when loading levels, possibly as a new DRM thing. It's not yet been a problem for me, so I have no idea how severe it might be. I'm not even entirely sure I'm interpreting the message correctly; it might be how much is loaded from disk.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 6:57 pm

That sounds pretty cool. I played Starcraft and WoL exclusively for the campaign modes and level editors, and you might have just tempted me into picking up this one in a couple weeks.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:57 am

So, Awakening stuff:.

One of the things in this installment is child characters, with other characters as parents. Beware massive fucking spoilers.

Obvious first question is how exactly do kids born during the story wind up as playable. The answer here is time travel. So they're actually about the same age as the parents.

The foremost second-generation character is Lucina, Chrom's daughter. She has the Lord class, inherits Aether from her dad, and has future!Falchion, which is the best weapon to appear so far in the game. She is a total badass. I have currently equipped her with Aether(Skill/2% chance to get half damage back as health, then launch a second attack that halves enemy defense) and Astra(Skill% chance to launch five attacks at half damage; it's primary downsides are low effectiveness against high defense units and eating through weapons quickly. Lucina has 35 strength and a 12-might infinite use sword).

There's also Morgan, son/daughter of the Tactician, opposite gender from him/her. Mine is seriously overshadowed by his sister, but he's got Rightful King(+10% skill activation rates) and Ignus (Skill% of adding 1/2 of Str or Mag to attacks using the other)

They're all generally pretty hilarious in support conversations; one of them is a Manakete with a very mature, serious personality, which interacts wonderfully with her childlike 1000 year old mother. Another is the daughter of the dark magician girl, who, well,

Noire wrote: So this is how it ends... Killed...or worse. A clean death would be a mercy compared to what awaits... Huh? What's this? An old bow? Hmm, the string's still taut. I suppose I could use this to try and fight my way out. B-but those bandits are so strong and scary and... W-wait! My talisman! Let me just grab my talisman and then... ...... ...I AM THE FIRE AND THE FURY! ALL WHO DEFY ME WILL PERISH! REPENT, SCUM! REPENT THOUGH IT WILL SAVE YOU NOT! REPENT AND DESPAIR! BWAAA HA HA HA HA!

Capitalization in the original.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Mar 21, 2013 3:56 am

It says something about FarCry 3 that one of the "boy, it is ON now" missions is attacking the pirate's pot fields.

With a flamethrower and a reggae song rockin' in the background.

While your character goes, "AHAHAHAH! I LOVE THIS THING!"

K · Post by K » Thu Mar 21, 2013 6:29 am

So Steam has a sale on an RPG called Grotesque Heroes II: Dungeons and Donuts.

Has anyone played it, or will I have to be the lab-rat that plunks down $2.50?

The same question applies to Heroes of Might and Magic VI, Age of Empires III, and Disciples III.

Istred · Post by **Istred** » Thu Mar 21, 2013 10:21 am

K wrote:So Steam has a sale on an RPG called Grotesque Heroes II: Dungeons and Donuts.

Didn't play that one, but the first game I stopped playing extremely fast (I think I did the first few quests and couldn't stomach more). The sequel has a much lower metascore (yes, I know it isn't worth much), so I'd give it a wide berth.

The same question applies to Heroes of Might and Magic VI, Disciples III.

Having both of these, I'd also advise you to skip them. DIII is terrible (especcially if you were a fan of the previous two games) - they changed the combat to HoMM style, while inflating unit HP (a basic squire has 300 hp and deals less than 50 damage - in the older games they had 100 hp and 25 damage) which makes them boring at times; the game is also very buggy and far too easy. They did release an updated version (DIII: Reincarnation), but due to the problems the publisher had I think it is only available at GamersGate (I didn't play that one, so I can't tell you if it is much better). HVI was also extremely buggy (though a lot of that got fixed), but it also suffers from a lack of a random map generator and sim turns in mp - which combined with the new levelling system for heroes means it gets repetitive very fast. Keep in mind that a standalone expansion will get released this year, and I'd expect the edition containing it and the base game to drop in price rather fast. Though I have to admit, it is still a much better choice than DIII.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:55 pm

I got a PS3. And Infamous 1 & 2. And Little Big Planet

So far, nice. My major gripe is how the updates work.

That said, I need to start working on stuff like Disgaea and maybe even try to find Folklore.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Mar 23, 2013 11:42 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6d1A2ro ... r_embedded

Related:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCP85FngzE

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 11:15 am

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6d1A2ro ... r_embedded

Related:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCP85FngzE

This is the second game I am excited about that is coming out this year. The other being Disgaea D2.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Mar 27, 2013 5:02 am

Bioshock Infinite:

Booker DeWitt, our intrepid hero, is a bit of a dick.

I've only encountered the Songbird once, but I can tell you that when he gets pissed, he doesn't half-ass it.

Meanwhile, The Gentleman and The Lady are my favorite encounters so far. THeir bickering is really good-quality stuff.

The Skyhook is made out of viciousness, and firefights are interesting because the police aren't shy about dropping in off the skyrails.

Oh, and this game is really really pretty.

minaziax · Post by **minaziax** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 6:32 am

How to tell if a game is RPG, Acrade, and soo on?
I'm Trying to organize my games and I don't know how to tell if a game is arcade, rpg, and so on. I need like all of them. I know puzzle... of course.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:49 am

If the main character has stupid hair or there are boobs on the cover, it's an RPG. If there is a road on the cover, or more than two trees, it's an arcade. Otherwise, if the title of the box art is a serif font then it is an action game. Everything else is a point-and-click adventure. Your classifications of puzzle games were inaccurate.

Hope that helped.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 4:46 am

So beat Bioshock Infinite.

The ending is a mindbender.

I really don't know whether to put it in "Rocked me" or "lost me", but damn, I can't ignore it.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Mar 30, 2013 8:50 am

Random bit of trivia that I learned: The first Final Fantasy game didn't truncate all damage at 9,999. The game cartridge could handle damage up to 32,000 without issue, it's just impossible to get anywhere near 10,000 damage within the game itself...

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 11:54 pm

Some cool stuff's in the 5th Free Bundle.
http://www.thefreebundle.com/
EDIT: This might be cool, too: http://indiegames.com/2013/03/freeware_ ... ium_h.html

Sigil · Post by **Sigil** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 4:06 am

I stumbled upon a delightful free game called Red Rogue

It bills itself as a "side scrolling roguelike", and I was expecting something akin to Spelunky (which is also worth checking out, being free on PC). My first impression was slightly negative. It seemed like it was too simple. There's no attack button, you walk into enemies to attack them (akin to the original Rogue, for which the genre is named), you can't jump, and you can always find traps.

After playing for a few hours I found that it had a surprising amount of depth. Weapons, armor, and creatures can be identified, and their entries persist between games, allowing you to slowly familiarize yourself with the world. There's a rune system that lets you enchant weapons and armor (well, or you can eat them for immediate benefit), and each rune has a different effect for weapons or armor.

The visuals are stark and unique enough to be charming, and the sound design is pretty great. Be sure to sleep on each time you go to a new floor and wait to see your character's thoughts, which reveal bits of the story (thin as it is).

The default keybinds are a little annoying at times, but it offers the ability to bind hotkeys in the menu once you are in game. The game also features a "dogmatic mode" that pauses the game when you aren't taking any action, actually turning the game into a more traditional roguelike experience. I've found both the action mode and dogmatic mode to be enjoyable.

It's worth a try. In the spoiler below I've included a little bit of information that some people may find to be minor spoilers if they're the sort of people who enjoy playing rogues completely blind, but I think is pretty critical for success and will increase enjoyment.

On the first level, go up. You are now in the Overworld. Items dropped here will be here next playthrough if you die. If you drop a rune that you've already identified up here, all runes of the same kind will be automatically identified on subsequent playthroughs.

Runes of undead are essential. When enchanted onto a weapon, they have a chance to create an effect upon landing a killing blow. If your minion is alive, it may be healed. If your minion is dead, a portal to the Underworld may open, allowing your minion to reenter the world of the living.

The monster faces are more than cosmetic. Every monster has some unique (if sometimes lame) ability. When wearing a monsters face you gain all the features of that monster, including that ability.

For more spoilers, google is your friend.