What games are you currently playing?

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

It's probably a lot easier with the Wii mote, but it is kinda like trying to look in 2 directions at once isn't it?

Yes. It's awkward and un-fun. I think I'll keep playing a little longer to see if it gets better, but man that control scheme is just stupid. Would it REALLY have killed them to map one button for lock-on? The "aim for specific parts" thing is a good idea on paper, but it's freaking worthless at 480p resolution. You can't even see where specific parts are sometimes, even when they aren't in motion. Whoever came up with that idea needs to have their head checked.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

How bad is your TV? I mean I play in 480p on a 48" LCD so it's a little pixelated but I manage.

I mean if I can be perfectly honest, my eyesight is total shit - my lenses are outdated and I'm honestly worried about my sight in my right eye but I can still play the game with no problems now. It took me a while to adapt to no option for inverting Y-axis (which again, WHAT THE HELL?!) but otherwise I'm handling combat with very little issues.

Of course, I don't use the chain (or items actually...) a whole hell of a lot in battle unless absolutely necessary. I'd love to actually see what specifically is giving you a headache because like I said, it took me all of an hour or so to get the hang of literally everything.

Not that the game is by any means perfect, as there are times where the camera can really screw you over. And there was one fight where I swear I was targetting the Ogre's head and it kept latching onto the arm...

The only combat skill I honestly don't care for is the chain-shot; it's totally random as all hell, I never seem to get more than 2 consecutive shots even though I wait for the center to line up perfectly with the golden light. Incidentally, I fucking hated the 1st water boss because of that. The boss fights have all been rather interesting thus far though and I've actually enjoyed them - except for the 1st boss because well, he just stupidly easy.

For looting corpses, if you're unsure hold down R (don't press it) for the zoom and the body part you have selected will glow golden. Makes it a lot easier to target the heads of fallen Ogres as their arms often get in the way. Speaking of, apparently looting arms usually nets metals.

Really the only enemy I've found so far to be utterly intolerable are the freaking Mace ogres... the Lancers are annoying but manageable, but that God damned mace if they hit you with that while they're swinging it that's GG no RE; it automatically combos into multiple hits for ridiculous amounts of damage, and later on the game seems to LOVE spawning pairs of armored ogres (either lancers, mace or both) in confined spaces...

Oh, and whenever possible if facing multiple enemies grab one and throw him. Don't actually toss the bugger mind you, just keep swinging him around it's SO ridiculously effective for clearing rooms (and requires very little input).

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

How bad is your TV? I mean I play in 480p on a 48" LCD so it's a little pixelated but I manage.

I play on a 50" plasma. It's pixelated but not awful. The bigger problem is just trying to get that stupid reticle to line up on a target while dodging attacks. It's unnecessary and annoying. I can do it, it's just way more effort that it's usually worth.

Don't get me started on the aggravation that is some of the flying enemies, either. Chain them, see them fall, then watch the chain link hit a ledge and let go of them. Grr.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Yeah I'm not gonna even try to argue that last point, the worst is now I'm running into rooms with a Minotaur (who for whatever reason are covered head-to-toe in steel plating and have MASSIVE OMGWTFRUSHITTINGME claws) and several bees flying over head...

The minotaur is actually rather easy to deal with, it's the damned bees getting in my way - usually the best bet is to chain one and swing it around, but if you don't do it juuuuust right the you won't hit and stun the minotaur and instead and lose like 1/2 HP... it's stupid.

I'm currently in the Truegold Tower and I've got 1 last chain to deal with but I have no f'ing clue how to reach it... I can clearly see where I have to go, sorta - there's a central platform that leads to the door, but I've yet to find a path that will actually take me to it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

[QUOTE]It does have flaws, mind you. The art style is quirky, a bit hard on the eyes at times, and occasionally downright ugly. The resolution feels short-changed a bit (somewhat fuzzy graphics), and the voice acting feels pretty bland. None of that influences the gameplay, though, which feels pretty well tuned.
[/QUOTE

I saw someone on Destructoid say that it looked like Todd McFarlane ate Army of Darkness and threw up. Were I to add anything to that, it was that he threw it up on Dark Souls and Dark Souls was upset Todd McFarlane threw up on on it. I think it would have actually been better if it just had totally embraced the campier Evil Dead vibe it seemed to partly go for. Its at least visually halfway there as is and then you have talking book. When you're already not taking the setup for the narrative seriously, why be so serious with everything else?

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I saw someone on Destructoid say that it looked like Todd McFarlane ate Army of Darkness and threw up. Were I to add anything to that, it was that he threw it up on Dark Souls and Dark Souls was upset Todd McFarlane threw up on on it. I think it would have actually been better if it just had totally embraced the campier Evil Dead vibe it seemed to partly go for. Its at least visually halfway there as is and then you have talking book. When you're already not taking the setup for the narrative seriously, why be so serious with everything else?

That's too much hyperbole for my taste. The game has a stark, dark gothic art style similar to Demon's Souls. Maybe not always as well executed or consistent, but the levels look good and most of the enemies and animations are at least serviceable or better. The Cerberus enemy in the demo in particular is impressive (and very hard to kill).


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

^_^ nearing the end of the Burning Citadel

Some of the enemies are making me want to rage now actually, particularly that giant flaming moth... thankfully you can just run past it. The burning tigers on the other hand... all of my nope. I also just figured something out, that the game doesn't make readily apparent;

When giving Elena flesh to eat, it doesn't matter how much of the gauge is left. Each quality of flesh restores it to a set amount. I first thought it was a pre-set amount, and so if I exited an area quickly enough and fed her a piece of dripping flesh, it would get me a full meter.

Nope, not gonna work - only way to get a full meter is with Master Flesh or Pulsating Flesh, which quite honestly sucks considering Pulsating is worth 100 Leots... which incidentally means the only way to get the max rewards for each Tower is to allow Elena to transform at least partially, as it's going to take a while to rack up 600~800 leots worth of spare flesh. They honestly shouldn't have set the bars so damn high...

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Nope, not gonna work - only way to get a full meter is with Master Flesh or Pulsating Flesh, which quite honestly sucks considering Pulsating is worth 100 Leots... which incidentally means the only way to get the max rewards for each Tower is to allow Elena to transform at least partially, as it's going to take a while to rack up 600~800 leots worth of spare flesh. They honestly shouldn't have set the bars so damn high...

Huh? You can always go back to the Observatory and feed her. Go part way in, get a decent piece of flesh that fills at least 1/3-1/2 of the timer, spend a little time farming smaller pieces, and then give the big piece to her and sell off the smaller pieces. The monsters will respawn, but any doors/seals will stay unlocked when you return. You don't have to race to finish each tower. :/


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

No I know, that's what I've been doing - going each tower in stages. I only had her transform partially on me once after the 3rd tower because the boss was a such a pain in the ass.

EDIT/UPDATE: OK, I'm now on the Dawn/Dusk Towers (they're linked) and then it's on to the endgame... not sure if I'll be able to get the S ending :/

I'm sitting at level 8 Affinity I think (10 is max), and I honestly don't think I'll bother with NG+, maybe several months from now idk but I don't think I can tolerate redoing some of those dungeons. Hell is too good for whomever designed the 2 water bosses... ESPECIALLY the 2nd. Truegold Tower's boss made me rage a bit too, but not quite as much. I actually enjoyed all the other boss fights so far ^^ just those 3 really pissed me off.

Dunno if I want to bother farming for gifts... I kinda screwed the pooch a bit actually - I should have been spending a full day with her after each tower, sleeping every hour after running out of conversation options - that's the easiest way to raise affinity (along with giving gifts) and apparently, the sooner you return from a Tower, the more affinity you'll get from interacting with Elena.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Meh, playing through the Soul Sacrifice demo still feels like a chore. Finished the sixth little level and deleted it. To its credit, these missions are fairly short and that's great for a portable game, but I just don't find it as engaging as Phantasy Star Portable 2,, Phantasy Star Zero or MGS Peacewalker - all of which sport a similar structure (though they and Monster Hunter have better hubs to break up the monotony - in Soul Sacrifice your hub is a prison cell with a talking book in it and then its back to fighting.

Sadly it seems PSO2 for Vita is a ways off here in the west.

Oh well, I have plenty of Soul Hackers and Guacamelee left anyway.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

And DONE!

Beat Pandora's Tower and got the S-Rank ending. Pretty good, the final boss was annoying but I dealt with it OK. I'm still annoyed that I had all the ingredients to make a Chaos Robe but the f'ing game wouldn't let me (spoilerific reasons).


Ending was OK. I'm gonna go google the other endings as I'm curious now lol... don't care to do NG+ though. There's really not enough replay value to warrant it. I got the best ending and I didn't even really try all that hard for it (though I only just barely got to the minimum affinity requirement in time).

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Finished Bioshock Infinite.

Don't want to spoil anything, just... what the fuck, Haruhi...

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Guacamelee has got a really nasty bug in which Zelda-esque dungeon challenge rooms won't unlock after the challenge is cleared or the enemies just don't spawn at all and you're rooted in place AND trapped. This would be like if the Metroid Other M door bug happened in Zelda Wind Waker's multi-tier challenge dungeon. Amazed this wasn't caught before release or fixed yet.

I've also noticed Juan's income doesn't reset on failure, so I could fail things on purpose to infinity (well, provided a challenge room bug doesn't happen) and most easily max out his health health, stamina and other abilities.

Hopefully these things do get fixed, as I wouldn't want to put up the challenge room one in Hard mode later on.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Guacamelee has got a really nasty bug in which Zelda-esque dungeon challenge rooms won't unlock after the challenge is cleared or the enemies just don't spawn at all and you're rooted in place AND trapped. This would be like if the Metroid Other M door bug happened in Zelda Wind Waker's multi-tier challenge dungeon. Amazed this wasn't caught before release or fixed yet.

I've also noticed Juan's income doesn't reset on failure, so I could fail things on purpose to infinity (well, provided a challenge room bug doesn't happen) and most easily max out his health health, stamina and other abilities.

Hopefully these things do get fixed, as I wouldn't want to put up the challenge room one in Hard mode later on.

Didn't notice any of these issues and I got a platinum trophy. I died plenty of times on Hard mode on various arenas, and even normal mode kicked me to the curb in a few places, so I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed some of these. Even if it happens, pretty sure the game saves right before each challenge arena, so probably not a huge hassle to restart the game if something goes pear-shaped, no? Or is it resetting your progress?

You can only purchase 3 health and stamina fragments each from the shop, so while you can buy all the extra moves and get one extra point of stamina and health, there's not much point to grinding as the extra moves aren't that helpful. The rests of the (many) health and stamina fragments are scattered all over the map. Assuming you don't completely suck at the combat, you should have more than enough money by the end of the game to purchase everything.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Didn't notice any of these issues and I got a platinum trophy. I died plenty of times on Hard mode on various arenas, and even normal mode kicked me to the curb in a few places, so I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed some of these. Even if it happens, pretty sure the game saves right before each challenge arena, so probably not a huge hassle to restart the game if something goes pear-shaped, no? Or is it resetting your progress?

And I never encountered the Other M door bug - but its still there for the people that have encountered it. I've had it happen three times now and as auto-save happy as the game might be its still time wasted. At any rate, its been mentioned in a number of reviews and co-op players seem to see it even more often.

Another gripe I have about this game is no ability to customize the button layout - which is common for the 2D half of this genre post-Super Metroid. There's some finger gymnastics here that the default layout just isn't built for - but its the only one you get. There are also some platforming challenges where you could viably use Goat Uppercut to shortcut, but the game rigs it so it changes to Dashing Derpderp every single time no matter how hard you press Circle + Up to uppercut. Its one thing to forbid sequence-breaking, but invisible-walling it in a viably open vertical area is rubbish.



So Goat Fly, Shift, shift, wall grab, wall run, double jump, shift, DJ, shift, DJ/shift x4 (Jump/Dashing DD/Shift x4 also works) when Wall Grab, Wall Run, DJ and Goat Uppercut could have done the same thing and yet the game converts the uppercut to Dashing Derpderp because they don't want you to go that way. When a game won't follow its own rules and punishes players for being clever, that's never a good sign.

I've also seen some instances of jumps I shouldn't be able to make even with the uppercut and yet the game gives you a slight nudge to get away with it anyway, probably because they didn't want to redesign and lower the platform just enough to fix it.