What Games are you playing 2015?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Also dammit Reyna your hair is way too fabulous for you to be a dude in disguise. That's not fair.

That plot twist's probably one of the most random things in the entirety of Ashley's story, since it hardly gets any sort of spotlight past the initial shock - the only thing I can even fathom justifying it would be a relentless pursuit in the name of failing the Bechdel test. Granted, I find Reyna a pretty decent character anyway (I like the tension between him and Glynne, even though Glynne's insistent genital sand-dipping annoys the hell out of me), but that plot point's so unexplored it's frankly baffling.

[Shale]

Mario 3D World: World 3 cleared out. Generally fun (the boo house is a particular highlight, but I tend to like those in general) but Chain-Link Charge is the worst level in the game thus far by leaps and bounds. Also, the map music sounded like it came straight from FF7 and that kept confusing me.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Yeah that level is pretty dumb. Probably the worst in the game?

[Sierra]

Also dammit Reyna your hair is way too fabulous for you to be a dude in disguise. That's not fair.

That plot twist's probably one of the most random things in the entirety of Ashley's story, since it hardly gets any sort of spotlight past the initial shock - the only thing I can even fathom justifying it would be a relentless pursuit in the name of failing the Bechdel test. Granted, I find Reyna a pretty decent character anyway (I like the tension between him and Glynne, even though Glynne's insistent genital sand-dipping annoys the hell out of me), but that plot point's so unexplored it's frankly baffling.

It's weird, right? Not because there's a crossdresser in the party, but because why is he even doing it? He said he found a traveler dead on the road and decided to impersonate her, buuuut he burned the letter, didn't tell anyone about it, and Ashley/Glynne didn't even know what kind of person they were supposed to meet up with anyway so whuh? Convincingly changing your voice for that long couldn't have been easy! And Glynne's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Monster: You mustn't have the librum!
Glynne: Ashley, I think they want the librum!

Thanks bro they didn't just tell us that. Dude needs Lezard glasses so he can push them up on his nose every time he overprotectively butts into Ashley's business. You can tell the dog's evil because he has shifty eyes.

[Grefter]

Also dammit Reyna your hair is way too fabulous for you to be a dude in disguise. That's not fair.

That plot twist's probably one of the most random things in the entirety of Ashley's story, since it hardly gets any sort of spotlight past the initial shock - the only thing I can even fathom justifying it would be a relentless pursuit in the name of failing the Bechdel test. Granted, I find Reyna a pretty decent character anyway (I like the tension between him and Glynne, even though Glynne's insistent genital sand-dipping annoys the hell out of me), but that plot point's so unexplored it's frankly baffling.

It's weird, right? Not because there's a crossdresser in the party, but because why is he even doing it? He said he found a traveler dead on the road and decided to impersonate her, buuuut he burned the letter, didn't tell anyone about it, and Ashley/Glynne didn't even know what kind of person they were supposed to meet up with anyway so whuh? Convincingly changing your voice for that long couldn't have been easy! And Glynne's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Monster: You mustn't have the librum!
Glynne: Ashley, I think they want the librum!

Thanks bro they didn't just tell us that. Dude needs Lezard glasses so he can push them up on his nose every time he overprotectively butts into Ashley's business. You can tell the dog's evil because he has shifty eyes.

#NotYourShield

[Sierra]

I've somehow maintained enough distance from that entire clusterfuck to not actually know precisely what that hashtag means and I am comfortable with my ignorance.

[Grefter]

Commonly it is used by sock puppet accounts who's profile declares some kind of oppressed group X and declaring that the target does not represent all of X so they cannot use them to defend themselves.

The fact that it is used by sockpuppets has unfortunately invalidated any actual people using the tag (for all the fallacy of it in the first place where the declaration is literally a shield for another group).

[The Duck]

GREFTER ARE YOU BUYING GRIM FANDANGO REMASTERED

[Grefter]

Is it coming out on PC or is it PS4 exclusive?  I love the game, but $600 for it is PRETTY steep.

[Hunter Sopko]

PS4 and Vita. Pretty sure there's a PC version too.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Is it coming out on PC or is it PS4 exclusive?  I love the game, but $600 for it is PRETTY steep.

It's on the front page of Steam right now. Look under "top sellers."

[Grefter]

Then of course I am.

[Grefter]

Mass Effect 2 - Restarted as Vanguard.  I am not super happy with the play style yet, think I need more points in Charge.  I am falling back on using Pistol and SMG because that is how I am used to playing from most of my runs of this and ME3 multiplayer.  I will play with some other shotguns other than the base one and the Eviscerator though, maybe the Geth Shotgun will be nice, I remember liking that in ME3 multi.

Did Kasumi recruitment and Loyalty missions straight out of the gate.  Had honestly forgot the boss fight, but didn't find it a real problem.  M5 Heavy Pistol from whatever DLC is pretty amazing at the start.  Fire ammo power up on top just makes dudes be handled easy even if I am not popping domes all day every day (which is to say, I am popping domes most days you guys because I am 2 pro 4 u).

Gods I fucking love the Locust SMG you get from the Kasumi loyalty mission.  So great.  Just an amazing gun.  So accurate and does so much damage per clip.  Adding weapon buffs just makes it shred things to pieces.  Normally will mow through Shields and Barriers like nothing.  Something to handle Armor and it is done.  Game over.  Normal mode beaten already.  Fantastic weapon, the only reason I swap to anything else is to maximise efficiency of Thermal Clips and because the boom of heavy pistols is satisfying as fuck.

Oooh yeah also meant to comment on the formal wear you get from her mission.  I think the collar is too high and the necklace is pretty gaudy, but I was still thinking of rocking it all the time inside the ship.  Then I sat down for a heart to heart with Miranda about her father.  So yeah I am not going to wear the formal dress all the time.

[Shale]

Infamous 2: Beaten, finished all sidequests, unlocked all powers, got almost all dead drops but am not going to scour the map for the last five. The good-path final boss fight was pretty terrible, unfortunately; not only is the most efficient way of killing The Beast to just aim the reticule at him and mash triangle until he goes down, it's basically the only way to fight him, because if you take more than 40 seconds to blow him up he'll do an unavoidable, unescapable grab on you and then crush you to death. Nice. And the sub-boss who accompanies him dies just as easily, so that doesn't help. Credit to the devs for switching up the last karmic choice, but making it impossible to take the good/bad route unless you already have good/bad karma (respectively) is not friendly. I'm not going to go out and kill enough citizens to drop me by three morality tiers just to see the other ending.

Still, overall it's a very fun game, probably a point above its predecessor on a ten-point scale. I'll do the Festival of Blood DLC before long.

[Sierra]

EP: So my buds were all "Hey, maybe if you do X thing on this map, ??? will happen." So I did X thing and apparently(?) as a result it chained into another map with a douchy boss. He looked pretty scary, so I took my time clearing out all his friends, healing up and buffing before approaching him. Then he taunted me and flew away. What a jerk! I'm assuming I ran out an invisible timer since the game had outright told me how to deal with his barrier and everything. Is bonus battle pretty much what always happens when you hit a secondary objective?

I now have a chibi-Ashley. She's not as good as Ashley, but that's like...not being as fast as Citan, boo-hoo? I'll never run out of healing and mace beats, at least.

It's honestly pretty weird these days going back to a game where it takes so long to chunk through one map and as a result you might go an hour between saves. Also the inability to train up anyone outside of mandatory battles (because there are only mandatory battles) pretty much ensures I'll stick with one team, occasionally subbing in a new character if they look better than someone in the established group. I figure it'd be really tough to bring back someone who's been out of the party for a while because your equip options are restricted by level in this game, meaning you can't just toss your best gear onto an underlevelled character to give them a fighting chance.

[Meeplelard]

Crisis Core: Final Dungeon, it's killing me, Expert Mode is cruel!

Paper Mario: Just got to the Big Boo House or whatever it's called.  Fights are starting to speed up a bit now that I have MT damage that has been upgraded and actual FP to support it with (as well as Refresh.)

Star Fox 64: Replayed this on a whim, still really fun.  I did the primarily yellow route because reasons, going towards Sector Y and Area 6 the other two ways.  Outside of a stint where Peppy decided to die on Solaris, I think I did pretty well for not having played in a while.

[Hunter Sopko]

Infamous 2: Beaten, finished all sidequests, unlocked all powers, got almost all dead drops but am not going to scour the map for the last five. The good-path final boss fight was pretty terrible, unfortunately; not only is the most efficient way of killing The Beast to just aim the reticule at him and mash triangle until he goes down, it's basically the only way to fight him, because if you take more than 40 seconds to blow him up he'll do an unavoidable, unescapable grab on you and then crush you to death. Nice. And the sub-boss who accompanies him dies just as easily, so that doesn't help. Credit to the devs for switching up the last karmic choice, but making it impossible to take the good/bad route unless you already have good/bad karma (respectively) is not friendly. I'm not going to go out and kill enough citizens to drop me by three morality tiers just to see the other ending.

Still, overall it's a very fun game, probably a point above its predecessor on a ten-point scale. I'll do the Festival of Blood DLC before long.

Festival of Blood is awesome, if short. Also shows you EXACTLY why teleportation wasn't in the maingame. Soooooo broken (but so convenient).

I don't remember not being able to make the final Evil choice as Good. Final choice, IIRC, is choosing between Nix and Kuo that last time. Choosing Evil when you're on Good path will set your Karma to full Evil, and you can do both endings if you reload. It's Evilpath that's a bitch and makes you replay, I believe.

[Shale]

I was on the good path and the choices were "Do the Good ending" and "Abandon this mission so you can accumulate evil karma and qualify for the Evil ending." Not in those exact words, but close (and only slightly more succinct, it looks really dumb in big block letters).

[Captain K.]

Curtain Call:  Unlocked all the characters.  Got my first perfect chain on an ultimate today (Celes's Theme <3).  I want some of the DLC songs but I refuse to spend another dime on the game until they release Krile.

One thing I've noticed while playing is that Final Fantasy 1's music is really really good.  Nostalgia glasses aside, it's just well done stuff, and a bit more puzzling in light of how bad 2 and 3's music is.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'll defend FF3 as having some rather good music for a NES game. As someone who doesn't really have the nostalgia effect (I played all three games within a relatively short span in my late teens), I thought FF3 had clearly the best battle themes of the original trilogy, and some other good tracks as well. That said, the choices for non-battle stuff in Theatrhythm itself is... questionable. I don't care for Boundless Ocean, or the Crystal Cave, or Doga/Unei's theme, or Elia's theme, for instance. YMMV.

FF2 has some scattered good tracks (Rebel Army is a classic, although it doesn't lend itself wonderfully to Theatrhythm) but isn't great overall, yeah. FF1 competely kills it (and FF3 for that matter) on dungeon themes in particular. Well over half of FF1's dungeon themes are enjoyable to listen to which is phenomenal for a NES RPG.


FF7 - So I did 19k damage with a single Deathblow/Added Cut from the Powersoul against Jenova-Death, that was a thing. I'm not using elemental defences much for once (Rune/Gigas/Wizard Armlets hype), and as a result Schizo was by far the hardest boss in the game so far. ... but not very hard.

Kid Icarus Uprising - Beat the game. I did in fact set one new personal best, beating Chapter 24 (the penultimate one) on 6.0 intensity, which means I have now beaten every chapter except 22 on that difficulty or above (22 is satan, brutal air battle followed by possibly the game's hardest boss). Otherwise I feel rusty. Going to play some more; haven't decided if I should shoot for beating levels on Pit Must Die mode or going after some of the trickier achievements which still elude me.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

EP: So my buds were all "Hey, maybe if you do X thing on this map, will happen." So I did X thing and apparently(?) as a result it chained into another map with a douchy boss. He looked pretty scary, so I took my time clearing out all his friends, healing up and buffing before approaching him. Then he taunted me and flew away. What a jerk! I'm assuming I ran out an invisible timer since the game had outright told me how to deal with his barrier and everything. Is bonus battle pretty much what always happens when you hit a secondary objective?

I now have a chibi-Ashley. She's not as good as Ashley, but that's like...not being as fast as Citan, boo-hoo? I'll never run out of healing and mace beats, at least.

It's honestly pretty weird these days going back to a game where it takes so long to chunk through one map and as a result you might go an hour between saves. Also the inability to train up anyone outside of mandatory battles (because there are only mandatory battles) pretty much ensures I'll stick with one team, occasionally subbing in a new character if they look better than someone in the established group. I figure it'd be really tough to bring back someone who's been out of the party for a while because your equip options are restricted by level in this game, meaning you can't just toss your best gear onto an underlevelled character to give them a fighting chance.

You'd figure correctly. Planning your secondary party members beforehand's pretty much your best option, though at least later joiners scale up levels to a decent degree. Regardless, the backbone of your team will always be the main PCs in any given story, for obvious reasons. Also, bonus fights are kind of an obscure clusterfuck which changes your route through Besek and determine which ending you'll get. If you care, just grab a FAQ, but by that point, I honestly wouldn't.

[Meeplelard]

I'll defend FF3 as having some rather good music for a NES game. As someone who doesn't really have the nostalgia effect (I played all three games within a relatively short span in my late teens), I thought FF3 had clearly the best battle themes of the original trilogy, and some other good tracks as well. That said, the choices for non-battle stuff in Theatrhythm itself is... questionable. I don't care for Boundless Ocean, or the Crystal Cave, or Doga/Unei's theme, or Elia's theme, for instance. YMMV.

To be honest, it's a case where FF3 really should have used some of the DS variants of songs.  FF2 had some of it's remake-originals inserted (Boss Battle A for example) and a number of FF3 songs just don't work without the DS reworking.  Boundless Ocean is the best example I can think of; the NES version is just kind of "bland, slow overworld" while the DS version actually gives the "ruined world" vibe that it's trying for and sounds much better as a result. 

Really, the older games should have had a mix of the original variants and remake variants; seems kind of silly to just force yourself to ORIGINAL ONLY!!! for the NES games when they have had plenty of updated versions in remakes and in the case of FF2 and FF3, half of the world has only ever heard those songs, pre-Theatrhythm, in their redone form.

[Sierra]

EP: "You saved Fungus." What.

Captured the 2nd stratum boss! I'm not very consistent about doing that sort of thing, but Ashley combos, they be a handful. Maybe I should actually try summoning someone for once? (I usually just eat captured majin for skills.)

Persona finally got tired of being told it wasn't me and gave us a proper boss fight. Geez, took you long enough, stick to the script please. So now we're trying to break the curse on our pure and innocent protagonist so she won't transform into a demon god or something, and to accomplish this we are told to venture into the darkest depths of the abyss looking for a dude named DOOM SHADE who eats souls. Seems pretty legit you guys?

Why am I just noticing Glynne has identical character design to Rufus in VP2? Glynne is a Rufus that simmers forever with the resentment of the permanently friendzoned. Meanwhile everyone in town has openly told me they know Reyna's a dude but he still does his hair like a girl anyway. Well hey, I guess if you can get away with it.

EDIT: I forgot to mention we casually ran into the princess lost in demon country that people are supposedly trying to rescue and the party was just way too into Ashley's problems to really even notice. Whatevs, she's an unarmed, pampered teenager, clearly she can take care of herself.

[Cotigo]

SR4 - Got my last super powers. Death from Above eliminated my only issue with the game, how hard ot was to aim your landings.

At 76% completion. Gonna 100% it before moving on since I spoiled myself on Keith David's loyalty mission so I think it would be best to do everything else first. Not gonna scour the map for the collectibles, though, that sounds too tedious, and I can do without fully levelling up buff or stomp.

Once I'm done with the game, I probably won't be playing SR3, least not right away. My sandbox urge has been quenched and also I kinda hate the driving simulation parts, though that's mostly cuz the game expects me to be somewhat adept at it when I'm forced to drive even though I have never really needed to drive outside of those sections. Would probably piss me off less in SR3, since I'd have to practice it more.

Also Jonny Gat may be the lamest NPC in the game.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

But his recruitment mission was GLORIOUS.  Saints of Rage, c'mon!