What games are you currently playing?

[Vyuru]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

One fun thing I liked doing in FFIX was having Vivi heal the party.

Have everyone equipped with stuff so that they absorb shadow damage. Then have Vivi cast the spell that deals shadow damage to everything on the battlefield.

Good times

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Healing in endgame was a joke. I just had auto-regen on everyone; I didn't even realize I had Curaga on Garnet until right before final boss. The bigger problem was dealing with Grand Cross status effects. If not for my B-Party being hilariously underleveled, I would've replaced Garnet with someone who could do decent damage (I mean, summons are ok, but the animations are annoying if you can do more damage by pressing "attack" on someone else. Only really useful for keeping the enemy from moving for awhile while your ATB charges and Auto-regen gets everyone to full).

And with Chakra+White draw, you don't even need ethers or elixers.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Most annoying aspect of FF9 was by far Stealing. Dear lord even with Thief Gloves and that trait that enhances theft rate (forget the name) it was just God awful. I don't know how many boss fights I sat through with the boss at 1 hit from death on purpose just waiting for Zidane to finish stealing so I could end the fight.


That, and the lack of multi-hit attacks. Seriously wtf, it was a tribute to series up to that point but they left out multi-hit abilities entirely? Bad SE, BAD! Ark was just total fail as a summon too, despite the cool animation.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Most annoying aspect of FF9 was by far Stealing. Dear lord even with Thief Gloves and that trait that enhances theft rate (forget the name) it was just God awful. I don't know how many boss fights I sat through with the boss at 1 hit from death on purpose just waiting for Zidane to finish stealing so I could end the fight.

I remember getting the Holy Lance with the steal ability. The first attempt was 25 minutes long and I never got it. I had to stop because I had an appointment. The next attempt was 47 minutes long. I had 99 potion and hi-potions, had the right abilities learned and equipped, and raised his Spirit as high as I could. Forty seven minutes later...I was just about to say forget it and my son screams "Holy Lance! Go! Go! Go!" lol Stealing shit sucks! lol

---------- Post added at 01:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 PM ----------

WTF! I just beat Kayne & Lynch 2 in about 4 hours! I get on the damn plane and think "Cool! Whats next!?" Gdi...fuck multiplayer...

[Ziero]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

A few weeks ago, it was announced that online service for Demon's Souls would be extended for at least another year and that in celebration all servers would have "Pure White World Tendency" for a few weeks. It was because of that little boost I started playing the game again after dropping it, and I really started to remember why I loved it in the first place. Such a wonderfully unique game, with literally endless replayability and no real "wrong" kind of playstyle. I even started two new characters from scratch just to see how it is when playing with different types of characters.

My "No Magic, No Armor(except pants) Axe/Club only" Barbarian run was pretty easy so far. Especially when I made myself a Flaming Morningstar, that thing just tears through enemies like a massive spiked metal fireball on a stick tears through butter. I'm just using brute force on things and most enemies end up face down on the ground more often then not when smashed with a giant axe. I also seem to be getting lucky with Ore drops since I have a lot of upgraded weapons already.

However my "curved swords only" thief character has once again reminded me of why I stopped playing this game. Especially since I inadvertently triggered "Black World Tendency" in literally the most annoying, dangerous level in the game(for those who don't know 'world tendency' affects how strong monsters are, how much life they have, how much life you have and will cause special, harder versions of some monsters to appear where there were no monsters before...effectively putting the game in super hard mode). Now the simple thing for me to do would be to avoid that stage and let it go back to neutral...but where's the fun in that?

On top of that, it seems the devs behind MAG have started a new Beta to test out the potential new leveling and shop system for the game, as well as the new game mode. Originally, your character grew based on a single "Skill 'tree' System", where every level you'd get a Skill point and you'd spend those points to unlock skills, gear and gain access to higher level skills and gear. Often times this would force people to spend skill points on things they didn't want just to move up a tier to get things they did want. One particular example was those who preferred to use ARs had to at one point choose to unlock an Optical Scope for their ARs or to unlock an ability that increased stability in said Optical Scope if they wanted to unlock the 3rd tier AR. It cost players at least 2 skill points to get through that tier, and another 5 to unlock the actual gun, which meant a lot of Skill Points were just "wasted".

In the new system, Skills are just that, Skills. And the Skill Trees are actual trees, with a main line of skills to unlock, with optional skills branching off at different levels. Every skill comes in tiers, meaning the more of one skill you buy the better it gets and every single skill only costs a single Skill Point, so at every level up your character actually shows signs of improvement. All the weapons and gear that you used to have to buy with Skill Points have now been moved to a separate shop system. At any point in time, assuming you have enough cash (gained through play) and the appropriate level, you can buy any weapon, attachment or piece of gear you want without wasting points on things you don't need. Before where you had to spend upwards of 20+ skill points to unlock a weapon, now you can buy it outright. It gives players far more flexibility and allows for far more customizations. Though some things are still "cookie cutter" best, a player still has tons of options to what skills, gear and weapons they choose to use.

Combined with all the other changes made to the game, and the two new game modes...one already added the other still in testing phases, and it's like a whole new game. It's easily my favorite FPS, and I've played a few. Mostly because of the great character customizations and the objective based gameplay, it doesn't feel as restricted as most FPSs to me.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

How is it compared to the first?

I'm loathe to play it after how absurdly difficult the 1st game was even on easy mode. And it's not like the mechanics or anything was overly challenging, it's just the AI was so god damn bad and there were a few parts where you just killed faster than you can blink. Particularly on the last mission "Choice" I died like 3-4 times in a row right at the beginning of the level because I didn't focus all my fire on the jeep (I kept killing the gunner but the guys around him would literally kill me with their last shots as we drove by)

Then there was the crap in Havana... and the bank... and ugh. Just too many segments with lots of enemies shooting you while your AI buddies don't do jack shit to help. And it honestly did not help at all that they took 6+ rounds to drop and all the guns were horribly inaccurate. Didn't matter if I burst fired or full-auto my machine guns, the accuracy stayed the same either way which is just plain retarded.

In fact the only gun with any real accuracy is the Sniper Rifle, but of course it was bolt-action and only carried 10 rounds. Add to that that most of the time you're surrounded by multiple enemies and yeah... bleh. Was a cool story, but the gameplay just put me off completely.


I have a looooooong ass write up about SC2 coming, but I wanna go practice against the AI's a bit more and get some strategies down pat. Also fuck the challenges, god damn...

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Seriously wtf, it was a tribute to series up to that point but they left out multi-hit abilities entirely?

None of the enemies in 9 have more than 65k HP or so. Multi-hit attacks would reduce even Ozma to nothing in no time (and he can already be taken in one turn with return magic). And sure, there's raising HP, but why not keep it low?

[TheGrandMom]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

And sure, there's raising HP, but why not keep it low?

Because your OCD won't let you??

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Oh, you can count Speed Demos Archive Ustreamers in games i'm currently playing, though I'm not actually playing them. Sometimes watching speed runners reset 400 times is more entertaining than actually playing the game.

Especially when they have comments on and you can kibbitz.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Oh, you can count Speed Demos Archive Ustreamers in games i'm currently playing, though I'm not actually playing them. Sometimes watching speed runners reset 400 times is more entertaining than actually playing the game.

Especially when they have comments on and you can kibbitz.

Wouldn't that just be watching people practice speed runs or do they actually count people that reset?

To me, what I did in my Super Metroid "speed run" was technically more like a series of sprints, which is what you sort of describe these people as doing. While sprints are all wall and good, I would consider them practice. I would think a true speed run to be something played straight through in one sitting as fast as possible.

Then again we live in a world where Billy Mitchell can sit on his "records" and any time someone beats him, he'll send in a tape showing he did better or beat the guy by like 500 points. The latter is basically how he just reclaimed his title on Donkey Kong from Dr. Hank Chien

[Feba]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Wouldn't that just be watching people practice speed runs or do they actually count people that reset?

What do you mean? Speed running as a practice entails resetting. You don't just sit down and play a game until it's done and call it a speed run, at least not at the level that SDA people play at. They go forward as far and fast as they can, until something fucks up their run (a death, fall, or other setback of that sort that costs them an unforgivable amount of time), and then they reset and try again. Keep in mind, these are people going for records, not just trying to play through a game in one sitting. For example, I was watching some guy play MMX2 for around 20 minutes, he had been beating the previous record by about 40 seconds. Hit a bump in one of the boss rush fights that cost him about 10 seconds, but kept going. Had a couple of slight problems with zero that caused him to have to ragequit. And then he started trying again.

Do you mean segmented speed runs? SDA takes them too, with a slight time penalty (15 seconds iirc?) to discourage segment abuse. Basically, to force you to play good at least somewhat consistently, so you can't just save every time you get to a save point and try things over and over until something looks good. Segmented runs are usually on longer games (think GTA, a couple of Final Fantasies have been run), or games where precision can make a huge difference (in which case there's usually a table of levels, with individual records for each.)

But SDA has very strict anti-cheating policies; all runs are reviewed by multiple people familiar with the game to make sure nothing fishy goes on. I haven't really seen any pettiness over who has the high score, everything appears very sportsmanly. There's probably been some squabbles, but I haven't seen them in my forum lurking. The bigger debates are about the rules in general-- what kind of runs get their own categories (no deaths, no X item, no this, no that, using warps, going out of bounds, using some major sequence break, etc.), ultimately it usually depends on the game itself.

If you mean save states, no, they don't use save states at all. I mean, you may see someone practicing on an emulator, and yes they would use save states, but emulators aren't allowed (in principle because they may not represent games fully and fairly to the original hardware; in practice because they're so easy to abuse. I think VC and the like are okay now, so hell, they basically operate under BBQ-Rules). Those would go under Tool Assisted Speedruns-- which are also incredibly interesting to watch, since they basically represent the ultimate in play quality, far better than any human could ever achieve. We're talking about games where 'beating the record' is measured in single digit frame count.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Had a couple of slight problems with zero that caused him to have to ragequit. And then he started trying again.

Collect all 3 Zero or parts or epic fail
Also did he get the Shoruyukken or not? Go go 1~3 hit boss fights. Considering all it takes is a minor detour and full HP when you arrive it's not that bad (Hadoken in MMX1 is too much @ 4~6 runs through the stage and you can't even use it on Sigma's final form)

Now then, TGM how does K&L II stack up vs the original?

[Nandito]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Going to start college soon and to deal with the boredom of travel/downtime, I've picked up Persona 3 Portable for my PSP. Poor thing was being treated like a MP3 Player the whole time.

Never really played this series before, though always hear good things about it. Not like my RPG standards are high anyway... but so far, I'm liking it. Catchy soundtrack and the battle system looks simple enough. I'm probably gonna spend a good time fusing Persona's, though honestly haven't done one yet. Can't tell when's a good time to start so - leveling and Social Links until then.

Also, what's the deal with Mitsuru? She French or something? Her English VA says otherwise but I dunno. >_>

[bikkebakke]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I love the Persona series! Always a good play. I just beat the girl side of P3P since its new on the portable version. Game never gets old to me.

Playing FFXII again... forgot all about this game.

[DakAttack]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

On top of that, it seems the devs behind MAG have started a new Beta to test out the potential new leveling and shop system for the game, as well as the new game mode. Originally, your character grew based on a single "Skill 'tree' System", where every level you'd get a Skill point and you'd spend those points to unlock skills, gear and gain access to higher level skills and gear. Often times this would force people to spend skill points on things they didn't want just to move up a tier to get things they did want. One particular example was those who preferred to use ARs had to at one point choose to unlock an Optical Scope for their ARs or to unlock an ability that increased stability in said Optical Scope if they wanted to unlock the 3rd tier AR. It cost players at least 2 skill points to get through that tier, and another 5 to unlock the actual gun, which meant a lot of Skill Points were just "wasted".

In the new system, Skills are just that, Skills. And the Skill Trees are actual trees, with a main line of skills to unlock, with optional skills branching off at different levels. Every skill comes in tiers, meaning the more of one skill you buy the better it gets and every single skill only costs a single Skill Point, so at every level up your character actually shows signs of improvement. All the weapons and gear that you used to have to buy with Skill Points have now been moved to a separate shop system. At any point in time, assuming you have enough cash (gained through play) and the appropriate level, you can buy any weapon, attachment or piece of gear you want without wasting points on things you don't need. Before where you had to spend upwards of 20+ skill points to unlock a weapon, now you can buy it outright. It gives players far more flexibility and allows for far more customizations. Though some things are still "cookie cutter" best, a player still has tons of options to what skills, gear and weapons they choose to use.

Combined with all the other changes made to the game, and the two new game modes...one already added the other still in testing phases, and it's like a whole new game. It's easily my favorite FPS, and I've played a few. Mostly because of the great character customizations and the objective based gameplay, it doesn't feel as restricted as most FPSs to me.

So, it's the way I said it should be from day one? GG.

How do we participate in the beta? Is all you need a copy of the game?