What games are you playing 2014?

[dude789]

Yeah that mindset doesn't really appeal to me at all. I never really investigated inspections after I figured out they were the game's method of grinding (and SN is pretty easy most of the time, why would I grind?).

I do actually kind of like breaking games (kinda. If they're broken to the point where they can't fight back at all they get boring fast) but grinding is like, the child's way of breaking games. I'm much more a fan of learning how best to make use of the tools available to me without grinding, since with the degree knowledge = power in RPGs this is pretty much always an option in all but the most primitive of entries into the genre. I have no issue with people who want to break games via grinding, and certainly Disgaea is a good vehicle for that, but it's not for me and of course a big part of why I rate Disgaea poorly and why it took me just shy of a decade (holy shit, has it really been that long?!) to play a second N1 game.

I'm not a big fan of N1 style grinding either, but in Soul Nomad it is mercifully quick if you know what you're doing. Just grind up the MC by abusing the Invisibility Decors and menu spells in inspections and then buy a bunch of guys at the same level.

[Cotigo]

Bioshock Infinite: Small update, I ran across a tear that had Creedence Clearwater Revival playing from it. The game is set in the 1910s or thereabouts... for fucks sake the twist has to do with time travel or alternate universes or some bullshit like that doesn't it.

So many guns I don't want to use because I am paranoid about not finding another Carbine if it sucks. They really could have done a better job with the guns here.

EDIT: Not 20 minutes later I go into an alternate universe. Oh man this is gonna get retaaaaaaaarded.

[Grefter]

You missed earlier that a barbershop quartet were singing a Beach Boys song in the slowpening sequence.  The music is legit some of the best done stuff in it.

[Fenrir]

That's it I beat Dark Souls 2 without dying once. I am awesome. The end.
LOL at the three jerks at the beginning of the game saying I was going to die over and over again.

[Captain K.]

Enjoy your ring of trolling.

[Fenrir]

Yes.

The plan so far is to constantly alternate between Invisible Zweihander +10, Invisible Pyro Hand +10 and Invisible Caestus +10 in PVP.

[NotMiki]

That's it I beat Dark Souls 2 without dying once. I am awesome. The end.
LOL at the three jerks at the beginning of the game saying I was going to die over and over again.

:O

[Meeplelard]

Kirby 64: Crystal Shards: Beaten with 100%.

Ok, game starts off on right foot, but slowly decays into the KDL2/3 problems though never quite as bad.  As playing it, I notice the game really does take a lot from those games more so than the others.  First off, it takes a lot of those one-off monsters from KDL3 that were boring and such like the Kappas, and just uses them again.

Next off, powers...the power combining is a lot like the animal thing though more powers are actually reasonably intuitive in use and less weird, and the stand alone powers are generally fine unlike KDL3.  Though, I still don't like what they did to Cutter and Stone.  I guess they were trying something new with Stone (Slow moving near-invulnerability) but the conventional style is better, and Cutter...it went from rapid fire boomerang to slow moving powerful one, and feels more unwieldly.  Additionally, while it brings back Bomb from KSS, it dropped Parasol, and still left out ones like Sword (though Fire + Cutter = Sword, so I guess that's fair?), so the number of base powers feel so limited compared to KA and KSS.

Also has the same issues with music, and minibosses are literally "larger versions of previous basic enemies."  This is boring!

It's ashame, because it has all the makings of a decent Kirby game but sort of drops it mid-way, and becomes chore-like.  Looking at the staff, it seems, yet again, Sakurai wasn't on board with this game...

...which explains all the similarities it has with KDL3, ranging from same basic style of gameplay to the reusing of the bland generic enemy designs instead of actual Kirby mainstays (though, lack of Waddle Dee and Waddle Doo makes sense here because one of the main characters is a Waddle Dee, who turns into a Waddle Doo for a boss fight...)

Looking ahead at the games through the "History of Kirby" section on the Anniversary Collection, seems Amazing Mirror, in terms of powers, goes back to more conventional Kirby things and brings back a lot of the mainstays like Wheel, Sword, etc. and some of the new fun ones like Fighter from KSS.  Seems Squeak Squad is similar in that regard.  Glad to see they went back and recognized that it was Adventure and Super Star that are the big ones, and not the Dreamland games.

I will give K64 one thing: First game where you can play as DeDeDe!  Short segments sure, but hey, PLAYABLE DEDEDE ARGUMENTS INVALID.

Oh, also played some of the challenges.  Probably will finish them when I do extra mode on Kirby Adventure; seems they literally just shoved a small part of Kirby Return to Dreamland in the game, which...well, I'm fine with this!  It makes the Anniversary Collection feel meaningful beyond "He's 6 games that are on the E-Shop!"

[NotMiki]

I play games sometimes!

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma
After Continuum Shift, I was worried that the antagonists would drive BlazBlue plot forever, constantly getting their way despite the good guys' seeming victories.  So I was pleasantly surprised that BB:CP plot amounts to a robust counterattack by the forces of, for lack of a better word, good.  BB:CP really moves the plot, whereas BB:CS seemed more like all the ideas that they couldn't fit into the first game.  Good stuff.  All that said, the new cast of characters was almost universally unimpressive.

Risk of Rain
totally awesome hectic combat platformer.  Won't use the word roguelike because Meeple is allergic to it or something.  Anyway it's great, so I beat it on normal with every character, then unlocked everything, including the really ridiculous stuff.  You should play it unless you hate fun.  And pump up that volume.

Desktop Dungeons
It was 50% off on Steam so I picked up the commercial version of this.  Lots of polish.  Implements a town-building mechanic, with some snappy writing.  Good music was an unexpected surprise, as was character portraits for every class/race combo.  An excellent filling-up-bars simulator.

Impossible Spellcard
Best Touhou game since Subterranean Animism.  75 spell cards, and a lot of them have the characteristic polish and subtlety that make Touhou games stand out from the crowd.

Kero Blaster
New game by the Cave Story guy.  It's short, and frankly shallow, but enjoyable.  Features nicely balanced weapons.  Plot that is unusual in the same way Cave Story's is, but has a lot less going on.  Retro graphics are pretty great.

[Sierra]

You missed earlier that a barbershop quartet were singing a Beach Boys song in the slowpening sequence.  The music is legit some of the best done stuff in it.

Yeah, hearing R.E.M./Tears for Fears done vaudeville was pretty special. There was plenty I didn't care for in Bioshock Infinite (the two-guns thing is dumb, maybe realistic carrying capacity but still dumb) but it definitely has its moments.

[Fenrir]

There are only three games left.

Demon's Souls. Went back to it.
No death challenge in this one too.

Comments
- Demon's is less videogame-y and feels like a real place at times.
- I'm on rollerskates
- "Jumps" are so floaty
- This game is really easy compared to the two others

Well, to be fair, the game is only easy if it's played like Dark / Dark 2, and it might not want you to do it.
Healing is strictly finite in this one, you have to go buy more weed when you run out of it, while Dark/Dark 2 auto-replenish weed at checkpoints.
And the game forces you to be super conservative at first, you get like 10 souls from killing enemies and basic crappy herbs cost 100.
So basic math shows you that you have to pay attention. The perverse effect is that you'll so want to preserve your healing items that you'll run around at low-ish HP because you might go back to the Nexus or might heal that with a free regen item instead of that costly herb.

But yeah fuck that, I went with a two handed claymore, rushed in the middle of enemies and only used shields under particular circustances and spent 20% of my budget on herbs. Until I died because I underestimated plague babies.
I killed 7 bosses and it was so easy.

[Meeplelard]

KH3D: in Tron Land still!  Died a lot because yeah, probably chose the wrong world to go to first, but levels are getting up, and so is my durability (as well as Defense Boost being gotten), so I'm getting better at the "not dying" thing, as well as abusing Flowmotion attacks.

[Grefter]

Child of Light - This is a neat little budget release.  It uses a sloppier version of the Grandia style combat system (everything interrupts charges).  You can only ever use two characters at a time (but can swap party members instantly).  This commonly puts you in the position of gauging what the opponent is going to do based on their current charge speed and determine if the optimal thing to do is block or risk eating a ST hit to the face (MT has a big windup and you can normally either interrupt or it is easy to predict).  You do get some flexibility in that you have ability to slow down any single foe at a time (or spend the meter on healing which is a terrible waste of meter).

The fact that the system is a bit sloppier than Grandia 3 doesn't matter too much since it is generally pretty easy game anyway (harder than Grandia 1 and 2...). 

It is pretty and the rhyming scheme for dialogue can be fun.  If you have a system that has it on it and want a JRPG for $15 I would say to try it out.  When it inevitably drops in price I would definitely say to try it.

My biggest gripe is that my favourite character in combat is a temp and while all the other characters you get are useful in niches I don't find any as much fun as that temp.  The final recruit is especially boring in comparison and the last three all seem to be made to try and fill in her niche but do it in less interesting ways.

[Sierra]

There are only three games left.

Demon's Souls. Went back to it.
No death challenge in this one too.

Comments
- Demon's is less videogame-y and feels like a real place at times.
- I'm on rollerskates
- "Jumps" are so floaty
- This game is really easy compared to the two others

Three games?

-Yeah, this is something that really strikes me about Dark Souls 2: the environments feel much more like videogame levels than anything people might've built for actual use. Like, Forest of Fallen Giants/Drangleic Castle, none of the rooms serve any discernible purpose beyond being a series of empty corridors that lead you to a boss fight. Boletaria Castle at least is meant to be a freakishly defensible fortification, Anor Londo at least has places of recognizable use like bedrooms and a chapel. Tonally DS2's environments cover a fairly wide range, but they routinely lack that extra touch of character that would make them come together as a former habitation of people, and they rarely shoot for the extremes of unpleasantness that its predecessors sometimes managed (for all that I didn't care for Demon's Souls' universally gray-and-brown color scheme--and a lot else about the game--I'll readily acknowledge the prison and the swamp as some of the most viscerally nasty locations I've ever encountered in a videogame).

-Demon's Souls bosses are scruuuuubs. Maneaters gave me a tremendous amount of trouble, but otherwise the vast majority of them I took on the first try. Let's see, I also died to...Penetrator and Old King Allant, that's it. Mine bosses could've been trouble if I hadn't fought them last, admittedly. Spider honestly strikes me as being tremendously shitty design. I did pretty much what you're doing: grab the biggest sword you can find, knock everybody down and kill them on the ground, pump HP through the roof because STR scaling caps so early in Demon's Souls and nothing else is worth caring about.

I'll never play Demon's Souls again, myself, too much that actively annoyed me about it after Dark Souls--the healing, the enforced resource scarcity and inability to fully upgrade weapons without extreme farming, the crappy bosses and crappier music, armor being actively counterproductive and generally nothing special aesthetically...Dark Souls 2 is even more > Demon's Souls than Dark Souls 1 is > Dark Souls 2.

Anyway, as far as DS2 goes, mostly just fitfully messing with various NG+s by this point. Flame Weapon on +5 fire Sinner's Sword = I do a thousand damage a shot now. Was not expecting that degree of potency from Not!Sinner, weapon stands up better than expected despite its problems (I sometimes have to run with the Bracing Knuckle Ring to keep it from breaking during longer zones). Also respecced scythe chick to use weapons that suck less (I noticed I had a Channeler's Trident and figured what the hell; turns out it's actually pretty cool, the standard R2 does a spinny multihit thing that staggers everybody, just a pity the weapon breaks as fast as Old Whip does) and dump a bunch of levels into hitting 40 in all mental stats to optimize hexing. Holy shit now I see where the broken really comes into play. Dark Caitha's Chime + Abyss Seal = Great Resonant Soul tosses off twelve hundred damage with like no casting time. Oh noes 500 souls and 30 HP per shot. And somewhere along the line I also got the platinum trophy.

Otherwise, fiddling with PVP. It really is unfortunate how that turned out here and I'm probably already done with it. The lack of any meaningful poise far too often reduces combat to stunlocking; invasion items are basically finite (or just prohibitively expensive in NG+); hit detection and lag seem to mix in a more toxic manner here--cases of "God dammit that Soul Arrow was ten feet away from me" are everywhere.

But for another thing, there's the way matches are determined by Soul Memory (I.E., the total number of souls you've accumulated over the course of the game regardless of what you've used them for) rather than by character level. I understand why they did this, and I fundamentally approve of the intent: it means that no player can make low-level runs through the game just to come back to starting areas and use overpowered pyromancies and elemental weapons to murder newbies with impunity in a zone before any players have the capacity to actually indict them (this was absolutely rampant in Undead Parish in DS1).

But the thing is, I stop leveling at a certain point because it bores me to just level until you can do anything. But that Soul Memory count won't stop going up so eventually all you're gonna draw are people who've taken the levels, all the levels, and pumped their stats through the roof to use all the cheapest stuff. I mean, I've killed max-level players in DS1 (because DS1 has no upper ceiling for red phantom invasions), but that's not really the experience I'm looking for here. The obvious rejoinder to this is "Take more levels, scrub," but I dislike doing this for the same reason that chopping wood to be the most talented person in the world at everything in Skyrim is fucking stupid: when you excel at absolutely everything, nothing you can do is really all that special. It cramps my style because I prefer running specialists; it's more fun having to adapt a focused skillset to different circumstances than to be capable of doing everything at once.

EDIT: I guess I should acknowledge another qualitative difference--it's much easier to find a match in DS2 because it scans the entire game world when you're trying to invade someone rather than just your current zone. On the one hand this means less wasted time spamming the Red Eye Orb, but otherwise if you want to play in a specific zone you're basically out of luck short of dropping a red sign and hoping for the best. Invasions also seem not to place you in set locations, but instead within a certain proximity of the host player. While basically convenient, I actually find this a bit of a bummer. Aside from having to scramble to get your bearings as to precisely where you are in the level every time you land in someone else's world, the tension of hunting someone down to get a sense of what you're dealing with from afar and preparing appropriately is basically gone. I've also had some invasions where I turned up beyond a shortcut that I could not backtrack through and the host was on the other side. Waste of everybody's time, that.

Anyway at some point last night a dude on my friend list PMs me to the basic extent of "I'm in Darkroot Garden, come and get me." So I toss DS1 back in for a bit and man the lack of stunlocking and the cleaner rolling make it handle so much nicer than DS2's generally squishy player interactions. The backstab-fishing is still fucking awful, though. Cleaning up that and the crazy HP bloat people could get in DS1 were probably the smarter things DS2 did for PVP purposes.

[Cotigo]

Bioshock Infinite:

Well, I missed the Beach Boys reference because I don't actually like the Beach Boys all that much. I will say that coming into the Revolution universe with a woman singing Fortunate Son was pretty neat though.

There are spoilers because I don't give a shit, the plot isn't very good anyway. So you say you want a revolution, well, you know... I think they got some scenes changed around after they recorded the voice acting and neglected to fix that. One second, Booker is all "Yeah Fitzroy is needed because Fink hires goons like me" and then not the next elevator conversation they're talking about how Fitzroy and Comstock are the same type of leader... which would make sense after it became clear that Fitzroy was going to kill you because the Booker in the universe you travelled to was a martyr for the revolution (god that is so bad) and she needed to keep the narrative uncomplicated to keep her revolution going, but absolutely nothing happened to change Booker's opinion between those scenes... unless just the fact that she's leading an attack was the reason? God whatever don't care, I'm going to assume it was a mistake in editing.

Plot is getting more retarded by the minute. The mysterious twins are here because of quantum mechanics and that's what those tears are about? this is so dumb.

I've also gone from fighting a bunch of bigots to fighting revolutionaries. On the one hand, this means I now fight giant mechanical Abraham Lincolns (yessssss), on the other hand, just what point is the game trying to make? It's starting to go off the rails into loony misinterpretations of quantum mechanics more than the social commentary that I guess it was going for in the beginning, which... the lack of a point to all the racism in the first part of the game makes it ridiculously gratuitous.  Judging by the audio log count I'm at least half, maybe more than halfway through the game, so I guess I should give up on there being any redemption in this area.

Gameplay... I have some useful Vigors now! ... Or they would be useful if I had been upgrading my Salts at all instead of putting all of my upgrades into shields and health. But still, Water Tentacle is nice for taking care of goons with bombs, and Charge could be quite nice if I used shotguns at all. Or had taken any of the then-useless melee upgrades earlier in the game.  Speaking of poor design decisions, that. So I basically get one shot to decide if I want to use an upgrade or not and can't ever switch, even if the previous upgrades synergize well with newly acquired vigors.  That's just so dumb. It's like they made all these neat powers for me to not play with. So dumb.

Don't get me wrong. I am actually enjoying the time I'm spending on the game in part because almost entirely because of the gameplay, but they made a lot of stupid design decisions that just make it worse than it could have been.

Speaking of dumb, I decided to force myself to start playing around with the guns. Holy shit, the Burst gun and the Repeater both manage to be flat out worse than the machine gun every mook came with in the first half of the game. Actually, the machine gun is pretty OK for picking up and then ditching immediately, saves Carbine ammo, but is clearly the worst weapon after those two. Hand Cannon would be great if it had more ammo. Shotgun is too slow but may be fine upgraded. Hailfire is a neat version of the volley gun that ends up being worse in practice because splash damage on contact is way more useful than ricocheting on anything you'd be trying to take down with a volley gun. Shotgun would be great!... if I could ever use it when I need it. I'm only so rarely surrounded by guys that it's never worth it to hang onto (2 gun limit is so dumb).

Anyway, progress... going to Comstock's lair now. I got stuck on some geometry because I thought I was playing a valve game and started jumping on crates. Ragequit.

[Fenrir]

All three Souls games Cid!

Replaying the Valley of Defilement I really do have to admit that Dark 2 went too far in the right direction by putting so many bonfires everywhere.
You get harder, tighter fights, but the amazing atmosphere of the valley can't possibly be copied. Even Blight town was tame in comparison.

I just fought Armored Spider as the first post Phalanx boss and had no trouble this time, it's been hell the first time through though. Like many bosses you can just go up close and mash mash mash. Play too defensively and you might lose. What's the problem with its design?


I'm not sure about Dark 2 being worse than Dark 1, I can see Soul Memory being a problem but I never play with the same character in PvP for that long anyway. Demon's is worse but I like the Valley and Latria a whole lot more than any other area in any other game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The comments about realistic areas vs. not is interesting. I'm not really sure how much I care about the realism, myself? To use DS1 as an example, Sen's Fortress felt very "video game"y. The route you take through the castle is an implausible warren, there are hallways where bowling balls the size of cars roll down endlessly and try to crush you, and in general the whole place felt built to trap one random earthbound warrior (as opposed to say an invading army). It's not really very believable as a castle or fortress. It was also my favourite area in the game. (Although Anor Londo was much more believable, and also just plain looked cool, which made me enjoy it despite the fact that its gameplay-specific design is bland. So both styles can work.)


New Super Mario Bros. - Beat this through again. All star coins as usual because those are so fun to get (Mario knows how to make just the right number of collectibles so that they don't feel like a chore, and instead a welcome challenge/distraction from simply completing levels). Took about 11 hours.

It's still a pretty fun game. At the same time, playing it right after SMB1, I am reminded that even after decades to hopefully let the nostalgia of the NES games wear off, I still prefer the NES games, which mostly comes from the fact that they are more challenging, and they make lives/extra lives count. In SMB1 I was tracking down coins in hopes of a valuable extra life. In NSMB (and most modern Mario games), lives and coins are all just a waste of your time or something done for personal pride.

Still NSMB has a lot about it I like. Compared to some other Marios, I really do enjoy the two game-specific suits. Tiny Mario is honestly quite inspired, a nice double-edged sword of a powerup. I wish there was a code you could input where you would play the whole game that way to be honest. Turtle Mario is a little more temperamental - the way you go into turtleshell mode is a little awkward if there are enemies around, since if you mistime it and don't acceelrate enough you'll run into an enemy like a moron - but it's still an awful lot of fun even if using it feels a bit dangerous. (That's probably why they also gave it the ducking = invincible to most things, to balance out an otherwise aggressive powerup.) Also enjoyed how the powerups were used in finding secrets. Getting them can be a bit annoying, though, as you're generally reliant on timed hits (or redoing certain levels, possibly in other worlds), which is a bit frustrating if you're set on getting the secrets. But it's fine; they were obviously trying to replicate the rare feeling of SMB3's frog/tanooki/hammer suits, but since they didn't want you to lose out on secrets forever they made them more a bit tricky to get than literally finite.

[Fenrir]

You've never went to a place with perpetually swinging giant axes before?
The problem is that Dark Souls 2 has videogame-y levels but without doing something much with it, unlike Sen's Fortress. That's a net negative compared to a believable place like the Boletaria Palace.

Part of the problem is that Dark Souls 2's locations are very short. Each Dark 1 area is half the size of a Dark 2 area I'd say? There's a lot more variety but you spend a lot less time in each location, so it feels kind of like an insane theme park at times. "Poison world! Windmill world! Lava world!"


Oh man I realize that we have never hyped the laughing cursed vases in Dark Souls 2? They're great.

[AAA]

There are spoilers because I don't give a shit, the plot isn't very good anyway. So you say you want a revolution, well, you know... I think they got some scenes changed around after they recorded the voice acting and neglected to fix that. One second, Booker is all "Yeah Fitzroy is needed because Fink hires goons like me" and then not the next elevator conversation they're talking about how Fitzroy and Comstock are the same type of leader... which would make sense after it became clear that Fitzroy was going to kill you because the Booker in the universe you travelled to was a martyr for the revolution (god that is so bad) and she needed to keep the narrative uncomplicated to keep her revolution going, but absolutely nothing happened to change Booker's opinion between those scenes... unless just the fact that she's leading an attack was the reason? God whatever don't care, I'm going to assume it was a mistake in editing.

Well, you see, Comstock oversaw an oppressive racist regime that brutally exploited an underclass based on white supremacy and jingoism, while Fitzroy started a revolution to overthrow said regime where some people died, so they're basically both Hitler.

[Sierra]

Talk to NPCs enough and they'll actually suggest that Sen's Fortress was built exactly for the purpose you describe, NEB.

As for Armor Spider, Fenrir, mostly the blast radius on its attacks makes dodging anything in that hallway really flaky. And if you get hit by the web spit it's just okay I guess I'll trudge around getting hit by fireballs and chewing grass for a couple minutes. Tedious and annoying more than challenging (though I guess I should note I fought it so late that I had enough HP to just tank through everything).

Child of Light: This is one of those games that I could easily coast through just based on aesthetics even if everything else sucked. Fortunately this latter is not the case, although I really should've taken the Grandia comparisons as reason to start the game on hard mode. I haven't even had to use Totally-Not-A-German-Strain-Of-The-Measles' healing spells at all yet. Oh hey I can change the difficulty midgame? That's cool.

[Fudozukushi]

Yeah, Sen's was literally designed to test warriors looking to reach Anor Lando.  So was Battle of Stoicism but lol.

Speaking of the Laughing Vases... they can kill enemies.  Yeah.  Unless that Lion Warrior dropped dead for literally no reason they'll kill dudes given enough time.  Not feasible, but HILARIOUS.

[Sierra]

The poison statues in The Gutter/Black Gulch are equally indiscriminate (they'll target invaders as well as enemies, making that easily the worst place to invade in the game).

[Grefter]

You've never went to a place with perpetually swinging giant axes before?

Oh man I realize that we have never hyped the laughing cursed vases in Dark Souls 2? They're great.

Canadian Castles are much more friendly than Euro Castles bro.  No swinging axes at all.  The Princess is also there every single time.  Universal health care + no EU is in fact that good.

Also I told you to stop making me want to play this.  I don't have the $70 to spend on disappointment (because my PC is having seizures and won't run it).

Edit - I totally forgot that Child of Light even had difficulty modes.  Hard might be okay I guess?  Normal is hellaz easy.  The final boss is a massive spike though.

[Captain K.]

Bioshock Infinite:  So it turns out where I gave up on the game was roughly 2 minutes away from where the action starts.  Anyway got the girl and just got Shock Jockey.  Having a different experience than Zenny - earlygame vigors are good, particularly the crow one.  It gets downright broken when you upgrade it.  Enemies step on trap, crows everywhere, enemies that die become *more* crow traps.  Basically you cast that once and it clears the entire room then you just walk around and loot corpses.  In weapon news, shotgun is instant kill even at range, while carbine is nothing special.

The worldbuilding is really nice... but... yeah, the racism.  I'm a white male and it makes me uncomfortable.  I'm not denying that things like this existed in the past, but I certainly don't want to play a game about them.  Not sure if the developers were trying for social commentary and went too far, or if they *are* racists and just using art as a pretense to say what they really think.

[Grefter]

My experience mirrored Zenny's to be honest, so you are saying Crow trap works like this?

I do definitely agree with Zenny in that Vigor usefulness is massively out of whack.  It is even worse with how much your gameplay is influence by what hats, pants and shoes you pick up early because there is some that are really powerful and if you get early skyrocket the usefulness of Vigors.  There is some that spike up gunplay as well.  There is some that hold up Melee even (but none to the level of Bioshock 1 Wrench Tonics).  100% random and not even any weighting to spawn stronger ones later in the game.

Salts you at least can't really go too wrong with and they are plentiful enough that you can resolve any "mistakes" you have made.  Various bits of clothing are completely RNG and you can do fuck all about it.  They are pretty plentiful too, but the pool of clothing is massive and has a lot of chaff in it.

Edit - Devs use crazy racism because it is set in a place full of mega crazies in a time where crazy racism is a thing.  The game is in no way about crazy racism.  Crazy racism is a vehicle to shower you in crazy though and crazy IS very important to the central plot.