What are you playing right now?

Platinum has a lot of great games, but I feel most of them are held back by something or another. Not counting their Clover work, so purely Platinum:

Mad World: haven't played it;

Infinite Space: haven't played it;

Bayonetta: fantastic combat system stuck in a drab game with dull QTEs and hairpulling minigames. Not a fan of its gimmicks either, but god great combat system.

Vanquish: perfection.

Anarchy Reigns: fantastic OST, terrible single player, fun multiplayer

MGR:R: miracle game, fun active combat, fast, fluid, lots to unlock, but really short and the final half is a bit lackluster in levels. Half the game is sewers I feel.

Wonderful 101: fantastic combat system once again held back by constantly not having you play the damn game.

Bayonetta 2: honestly still one of their best titles, just didn't have the combat mechanics of the original so high level play is gimped. The 'no jump' bosses are a tad annoying, but as an overall 'game' this is the NG:B of that generation for me in terms of content, level design quality, art design etc.

Korra: fun little side game, nothing special.

Transformers: haven't played it enough to form an opinion.

Star Fox Zero/ Guard: haven't played.

TMNT: haven't played

Near a Tomato: haven't played.

Astral Chain: as close to action-gaming perfection as we're going to get these days I feel, absolutely stellar title.

> MGR
I still love it, just not #1 for me anymore. Surprised it wasn't your cup of tea, absolutely loved it myself and it's still very vibrant and tense for me to play. It has a bucket-load of issues, but considering the deadline they had, it's more than fine imo.

FINALLY beat Sekiro last night!

I bought and played Sekiro last year at launch but only played about half the game before losing interest and focusing on other games. Decided to give Sekiro another shot and enjoyed it (mostly) much more this time.

Now super excited for Ghost of Tsushima new game+ and multiplayer mode coming this Friday!

I’d say Platinum’s games are...middling at best, for me. Hated Anarchy Reigns and Madworld, Infinite Space bored me, didn’t play any of the licensed games. Nier is whatever. Bayo 1 and 2 are good but have too many annoying supporting factors. W101 has great mechanics but almost everything else about the game aggravates me; the constant interruptions, unintuitive and obtuse nature of everything, the bad camera angles and art style/colors make it hard to tell what’s happening, pacing is atrocious, etc etc. It’s a shame because I want to love the game but it’s hard to. MGR has a lot of spirit but doesn’t do much for me past that. Astral Chain is probably my second favorite game from them but even then, I feel the game is a bit too much of a cluster, and the campaign has a lot of misses. 

>samurai games 

Nice, are you playing Nioh 2 as well?

I wonder if with sitting yourself down and commiting, if you'd like MGR:R more. We tend to be pretty equal in terms of taste up until now, so there's a chance it might connect if you really go for it.

But yeah their games in general have this "it's great, but..." attached to them. Astral Chain was terrible until I beat it for instance, after that it was a fantastic experience.

I think a big reason why they are so beloved though, is that they kept the genre alive and kicking when most were abandoning it. In a stream of DmC:DMC, NG3 and countless CoD rip-offs, they were just making PS2 games in a sense, which a lot of people (me included) loved. A game is sometimes worth more in a specific timeframe if you know what I mean.

Hey Roy I just snagged a copy of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It'll arrive some time next week.

Wow, that was unexpected. Enjoy! Though of the three games I'd say it is by far the weakest. Intro takes forever before it let's you do your thing. So be patient with it I'd say.

More than half a month later, but I wanted to weigh in one final time on my Other M experience! I finally finished the game, and for good measure I also played through Super Metroid (for the first full time) the same week. To be brutally, unlikably honest, I had a LOT more fun with Other M. My experience with Super was about 75% aimlessly wandering vast swathes of terrain, hunting for the one pixel or tile that hid my way forward. Seriously, like 8-9 hours out of a 12-hour playthrough. The shooting was kind of whatever, and the jumping felt quite poor to me. To the very end, I never understood the jump/struggle physics in situations when you're stuck in something like quicksand or a pair of claws.

Other M, meanwhile, continued to be fun for me the entire time, and I enjoyed some of the fan servicey bosses like the garbage monster from Fusion. I didn't like the direction the story took in the finale at all, but I also can't name an action video game whose story I particularly like. My solution was to simply zone out while the characters were acting out their trope-laden parts. I do have a special disdain for the "presumed ally turns out to be evil superhuman demigod" trope, but whatever--it's a means to a boss fight.

Also really loved the post-game! Exactly the cherry on top I was hoping for.

Royta/Raeng wrote:

You see this with God of War too, and almost with NG3. The developers tried something truely new, but as a result you remove the old. GoW2018 was a hit, so by default we'll never see the classic gameplay again. You could argue "you still have the old ones" and that's absolutely true, but there was still so much they could do with it. Same with Hitman. Same with Star Trek, same with Metroid haha!

> metroid story
I think for me it was mostly that I was really interested in Metroid's story and mythos already, so when a Metroid game was announced that would really zoom in on that aspect, I was extremely excited and thus also extremely let down haha.

It's interesting--I talked to a friend about Other M, and he said he wasn't enjoying the game at all UNTIL the story stuff in the final hour. He reviewed the game for an online outlet and said the fan servicey lore stuff at the end bumped his score up a whole integer. Funny because that was literally the only part of the game I disliked.

Regarding God of War, Hitman, et al--I guess when I see a company reboot a series, I take it as a sign that they'd already deemed the existing formula no longer viable, so it's never felt like they're rebooting the series INSTEAD of doing it the old way--they're rebooting it instead of doing nothing. I think you're probably right that God of War 2018 will set the template for the future of the series, but Hitman actually did go back to the classic style after Absolution, with excellent results. So now Absolution just feels like this special one-off experiment they tried out. I think in the long run, DmC probably helped DMC5 come to fruition because they at least had some relatively fresh and positive data to point to.

I was thinking about all this yesterday when we were talking about Resident Evil 4 on Twitter. I try not to judge games by what they AREN'T or the surrounding context of their "franchise," and I started wondering if that's what I was doing in my assessment of RE4. It doesn't feel very much like Resident Evil to me at all. The camera change alone felt like a more major shift than anything Other M pulled. But ultimately I think it's just that RE4 leaves me cold in virtually every regard--I even prefer 5 (co-op is fun) and 6 (the action mechanics are pretty cool!). Also worth noting that after RE4 set a new template for many years, they have inched their way back to something more like the classic style.

Lacquerware wrote:

Other M, meanwhile, continued to be fun for me the entire time, and I enjoyed some of the fan servicey bosses like the garbage monster from Fusion.

What do you think of big monsters designed for attacking players in a 3D space compared to a 2D space?

It was really cool seeing the charge shot get pulled downwards by the gravitational pressure; however, I thought everything about Nightmare in Metroid: Other M was a major downgrade from its Metroid Fusion encounter:

1.) There weren’t any contested precision shots to a small damageable area while Samus is under gravitational pressure.
2.) And gone is the screen-size devouring looming behemoth as the stage is changed into an open circular arena so you can run around and away from Nightmare changing the fight into a race track run laps design. The room spaciousness -- okay, it's nice to see a fired charge shot in a wider room than a hallway -- makes the boss have to zone in with a charging dash, which activates the uncontested lateral motions of SenseMove.
3.) Live “freak out” factor is gone. Now cutscenes.

But you were satisfied with all that? I think it’s an inherent underlying design issue to convert Nightmare to 3D and have the same lasting impression as in 2D. The combat engine seems unsuited for the fight or to improve upon that fight. Everything had to be clean and ultra slick in Other M, and I’d insist that combat system is specialized in multi-target combat where Samus is actually bogged down by enemies. Nightmare, the “garbage monster boss”, has essentially been sanitized here for the player.

Also really loved the post-game! Exactly the cherry on top I was hoping for.

The post-game does a nice turn of events making Samus into a hunter activating deadly encounters instead of getting trapped in them. (Those creatures also discourage vertical movements favoring the lateral motion of SenseMove.) Phantoon got me thinking about how the game limits any possible mishap that could occur with SenseMove; for example, there could be gaseous orb or sticky flooring that could be maneuvered into with SenseMove, so you'd have to weigh the pros/cons of dodging a primary attack that would land you into a secondary attack (trap). Even going so far as to add low-occurring "unfair" design (i.e. unavoidable damage locations) to counteract Samus' dodge superpower.

I finished playing the first two Gargoyle's Quest games. I had fun with them.

One thing that got me curious was something I read from Wikipedia. It says the Ghosts 'n' Goblins series has two 3D Hack 'n' Slash games. Does anyone here know if they're worth playing?

@Lacquerware

Honestly, I'm glad you enjoyed Other M. I think it just goes to show that each game has its niche, just like Super Metroid had its own. To me Super Metroid does feel a bit like Seinfeld if you get me, it is absolutely fantastic and invented a lot of things, but if you play it really late it can feel a bit predictable. That said, as we discussed before, the wandering aimlessly through an alien world is what Metroid is. Other M really is on the other end of the spectrum. It's kind of like Ninja Gaiden becoming an JRPG, JRPG fans would like it a lot more then (sorta, you get what I mean).

Will say the post-game of Other M was excellent, agreed there. That was Metroid for me imo. Just exploration, item hunting and a killer boss too.

> reboot means the formula is no longer viable
Close, but imo it generally means "there's more money to be gotten elsewhere". While this is an understandable goal, it can eventually lead to all games becoming more and more similar, while all hunting for the biggest demographic and leaving the other audiences in the dust. I'm not really a fan of the man, but this video from Jim is an excellent intro to that discussion (not too long either): https://youtu.be/_aGNqw0mDm8?t=89

God of War was still financially viable. Ninja Gaiden too. Hitman too. Star Trek too. But it wasn't making Call of Duty/Last of Us numbers, so there we go. Most of these have 'recovered' from this too. Ninja Gaiden went for story and exposition and fell flat on its backside, only for the studio to embrace it's "extra chunkyness" to quote the video, and make Nioh which is all action. Same with Hitman, which fully embraced the open-world stealth in favour of story.

> DmC positive data
What do you mean with the positive data?

> RE4
It's a hard game for me to judge. On the one hand it led to the series losing its identity and original camera/playstyle for over a decade, on the other, it didn't ditch its core values as much as I used to think. It was still a gameplay-first game. Inventory management was still there. Combat was still methodical. The shift felt less pronounced than Other M. Most importantly though, imo, RE4 was just a good game, and Other M wasn't haha. Not bashing you, that's just how I feel about that game.

That and RE always had an identity problem, with every game having a new director attached to it, it wasn't really consistent to begin with.

Resident Evil 4 more or less invented or standardized Over The Shoulder Third Person Shooters. It didn't lose its identity and become something every other shooter was doing. It carved out its own path, just like the original games did by using static camera angles.

And since you still can't move and shoot it really still feels like you're playing Resident Evil... albeit more in line with 2 and 3's more actiony parts.

I do feel it's very different though. Mostly in terms of its feel, but also in its gameplay. Gameplay is now lineair and there's no longer a 'fight or flight' concept. Enemies that you skip won't bother you later since you never retread older areas and a lot of fights 'lock you in' ala DMC (or DMC, ala RE4 haha). The extra given combat options also stand out I feel.

It's a fantastic game, absolutely brilliant. But it did ram a nail into fixed-camera tank-control games and urged a new direction (or different direction) for the series and even genre. I'm grateful that with the Revalations sub-series they're trying to return to that older style.

On the flipside, I played Cold Fear last year. It was sort of what RE4 was supposed to be (hookman build camera), really bizarre game. You played it?

I've never played it but I know about it. Is it worth a play? I'm not asking if it's good, haha. I'll judge that for myself if you say yes.

I do remember people dismissing it as a blatant RE4 rip-off back in the day. Now that I'm older and wiser I realize that couldn't possibly have been the case-games like that don't get made in a few months.

It's worth a play imo. It uses the camera system originally shown in RE4, with a fixed camera until you look over the should when aiming. Personally, it's worth it alone for that as it gives a glimpse into another timeline where Hookman got released.

Personally, the system is terrible now that I've tried it, but it is unique. Because you're in static-camera angles, you'll always be aiming over the shoulder, as it gives you more things to see. It also really screws with your sense of place.

The combat isn't that interesting, but the starting area is fantastic. I honestly had quite a bit of fun playing it. It plays *nothing* like RE4 though. If I had to compare it to any game it would be Metal Gear I think.

EDIT: to add, the first area really steals the show imo. It's on a boat that rocks about which influences things moving, there's water-waves hitting it etc. Really well done.
EDIT2: it is also one of those "you can really fuck your run up" games. If you're at a checkpoint without ammo or healing and low on HP, your run is dead basically haha.

vert1 wrote:

What do you think of big monsters designed for attacking players in a 3D space compared to a 2D space?

It was really cool seeing the charge shot get pulled downwards by the gravitational pressure; however, I thought everything about Nightmare in Metroid: Other M was a major downgrade from its Metroid Fusion encounter:

In general I enjoyed the boss fights in Other M and thought they did a good job making them feel like dynamic moments where unique actions occur. As was to be expected in a Japanese game circa 2010, there were a couple Monster Hunter-esque moments, like the lava fishing and some of the enemy designs. If you're gonna make a switch to 3D action, you could do a lot worse than taking notes from MH.

My memory of the Fusion encounter with Nightmare was really fuzzy so I just YouTubed it. The Other M version definitely lacks the gravity (how ironic) of the Fusion one, as well as the surrealness. I also recall it being one of the weaker Other M fights. I think I was missing something when he chases you around the perimeter of the room, and I kept clumsily jumping over his limbs or getting hit by them. I kind of stumbled through the fight. On the other hand, I stumbled through fewer bosses in Other M than pretty much any other Metroid.

>contested precision shots

I've never been in love with this aspect of classic Metroid boss fights. Trying to squeeze off shots that pass perfectly through the center of a seemingly larger target--I feel like a sperm. I prefer the Contra/Lost Planet approach of "giant obvious weak point but first you must learn our dance." But I suppose it suits the idea of Samus being this sleek, highly skilled combatant. I really like how Other M handles its shooting. It saves the manual aiming for "important" shots that would call for precision, but takes the focus off aiming for the bulk of fights, challenging you to use Samus's acrobatics while still applying damage (which is indeed kind of Contra-y).    


>But you were satisfied with all that?
Yeah, to be honest my thinking only went as far as "oh it's a throwback to that thing, how fun." It doesn't beat or replace the original moment, but I think it's still a fun nod.  

>post-game
It's funny--after my friend told me he didn't like the game until the last 90 minutes, I was expecting some kind of Zero Suit sequence or something else that really changed up the gameplay, but it was just a crapload of expository dialog and shonen anime cutscenes. I went back to him and was like "...Did I miss something?" And he was like "I just really liked all the fan servicey lore." And I was like "YOU DID?" But then the post-game happened and it was EXACTLY what I'd been hoping for.  

>SenseMove
I really liked this mechanic throughout the experience. It's a great combination of simplicity and versatility, and it never really stopped being satisfying. I think "just" mechanics in general are really satisfying, but the way it also feeds your offensive options by charging your charge shot was really smart. Reminds me of some fighting game mechanics, like using your V-Skill to charge your V-Trigger in SFV.

I also think it was a way for them to build on the "feel" of Samus hinted at in the old games. She's always been really "flippy," but now it's done in a way that makes the action feel really dynamic and exhilarating.

Phoenix Wright wrote:It says the Ghosts 'n' Goblins series has two 3D Hack 'n' Slash games. Does anyone here know if they're worth playing?

I think you're talking about the Maximo games? I've only dabbled with the first Maximo, but I've heard they're both great and I had a fun time with what I played. They don't feel that much like Ghosts 'n' Goblins though. They're almost more like a light take on a Souls game, in that the world is very dangerous and forward progress is methodical and careful. Visually it could be mistaken for something like Jak & Daxter, but it's more a football field than a playground.    

Royta/Raeng wrote:@Lacquerware

To me Super Metroid does feel a bit like Seinfeld if you get me, it is absolutely fantastic and invented a lot of things, but if you play it really late it can feel a bit predictable. That said, as we discussed before, the wandering aimlessly through an alien world is what Metroid is. Other M really is on the other end of the spectrum. It's kind of like Ninja Gaiden becoming an JRPG, JRPG fans would like it a lot more then (sorta, you get what I mean).

I think a major takeaway of this whole discussion is a lesson I already learned with Devil May Cry, The Simpsons, and various other beloved things whose creation has changed hands over time: what defines the identity of a property is totally subjective. If you'd asked me as a fan to describe Metroid, I never would've said "hours of aimless wandering." I would've said something about space, environmental puzzles, and filling out an open map and getting more powerful as you go. It's not that I wasn't aware of the wandering--it's that I saw it as a flaw that I liked the games in spite of. And because I generally enjoyed the Metroids I've played, the flaws don't occupy much space in my memory. But if wandering for hours doing nothing but shooting walls is what a person loves about Metroid, then of course they're going to feel betrayed when the next Metroid takes that away.

The way I see it, the advent of waypoints wasn't any more a betrayal of the core gameplay than Super Metroid's addition of a map was. If anything, it feels like a logical extension, likely implemented to alleviate the obvious issues with pacing. In Other M, items and progress are often still hidden by environmental puzzles that require you to explore and experiment, and sometimes even turn back, thinking you missed something. To me, THAT was Metroid's critical element. Closely examining SPECIFIC environments to achieve a SPECIFIC goal. Not doing aimless round trips across the entire planet. It's not like Other M just gives you a dotted line to follow. (In fact I ended up only finding like 40% of the collectible items by the time I'd finished.)

Honestly I don't think it's even as drastic a departure as the jump from Ninja Gaiden NES to Ninja Gaiden Xbox. I think Other M has more in common with Metroid NES. Come to think of it, Ninja Gaiden Xbox arguably has more in common with Metroid NES than it does with Ninja Gaiden NES. @_@    

> Close, but imo it generally means "there's more money to be gotten elsewhere".
I suppose that's true, but I also think that because video games--generally, but "franchises" especially--are inherently a capitalist venture, "not the most money we can get out of it" is essentially synonymous with "not financially viable." And yes, it's a real drag. I've come to just accept that mainstream games must inject mainstream appeal to secure investors; but they're still capable of doing good work within those parameters. I would absolutely like Nioh more if there were one weapon for each class, DMC style, instead of INFINITE LOOT. But Destiny. As it stands, Nioh still excels in so many areas that DO appeal to me, I'm happy to shrug off the rest.

That said, I think as the market continues to grow, it's becoming increasingly safe to do weird niche stuff again. I think the late aughts/early 2010s were sort of an adolescence for the industry, where they were obsessed with convincing a mainstream audience that they were cool and not nerdy. Weirdo stuff like NieR was scarce, and got pretty much the reception you'd expect (crickets). In 2017 NieR: Automata was a Big Deal. I take a lot of heart in that. Video games are a more diverse market than ever before, so even if your favorite IP isn't what it used to be, it's more likely than ever that someone will come along to fill that niche. I think Ninja Gaiden, a mid-tier IP that was never not niche, could come back. But God of War will probably only ever exist as a 1st-party front-liner, meaning they will always adhere to major trends.


> DmC: What do you mean with the positive data?
It sold multiple millions of units and was critically acclaimed despite being a weird product. After the "drop in quality due to excessive outsourcing" narrative took hold within Capcom Japan, they could point to DmC and say "Well this one did relatively well despite being outsourced. Maybe there's still something to this 'Devil May Cry.' Especially if we, the almighty Capcom, develop it ourselves. Especially if we leverage our almighty RE Engine." Bionic Commando wasn't so lucky.


> RE4 - The shift felt less pronounced than Other M. Most importantly though, imo, RE4 was just a good game, and Other M wasn't haha. That and RE always had an identity problem, with every game having a new director attached to it, it wasn't really consistent to begin with.

See this gets back to that "identity is subjective" thing. I agree that ultimately the question should be "Is it good," but I thought RE4 was a WAY bigger deviation from precedent than Other M (again, keeping in mind I played Other M with a normal controller. ^^;

I don't think I agree that RE always had an identity problem--I think RE1, 2, 3, CV, REmake, and Zero all have a clear and consistent template. (Incidentally, it's a lot like the Metroid template.) To me, the camera change was major. The fixed camera angles meant the creators had complete control over how the world was presented and observed. This allowed them to create tension in basically the same way as horror filmmakers, all in real time. This completely disappeared with RE4. RE4 sometimes builds tension in other ways, but it often seems to not even want to. You're a cocky acrobat now who can leap off rooftops, kick down the doors that used to serve as anxiety fuel, and suplex villagers.

None of that is inherently bad, but it's a major shift away from the experience of the previous games, where being underpowered seemed to be the entire point (so much so that you didn't even have control over the camera). As far as I can tell, the action is what brings people to the table. And that's a great reason to play a Capcom game, but I just find RE5 and RE6 more fully embraced the action approach while RE4 always leaves me cold. RE6 Mercenaries is the fullest realization of the "shoulder-cam" era of RE, imo.

Also RE4 popularized one of my least favorite action mechanics: the instant-death, arbitrary-input QTE. This made great sense as a way to take people's quarters in Die Hard Arcade. It makes no sense elsewhere.

EDIT: For what it's worth, even though RE4 is much more linear, which I also think was a major deviation from precedent, it did still preserve one critical aspect, which is that the journey is almost seamless. By the end of the adventure, you can look back and marvel that you were there almost every single step of the way. I think RE5 abandoned this with its chapter structure, and RE6 almost seemed disdainful of it, putting seams everywhere and ping-ponging you around the entire planet every fifteen minutes. Feh!

Maximo is great.

Lacquerware wrote:
I really liked this mechanic throughout the experience. It's a great combination of simplicity and versatility, and it never really stopped being satisfying. I think "just" mechanics in general are really satisfying

Gonna stop ya here. It's not really a "Just" mechanic if you can mash it out for 99.9% of the game instead of reacting to an attack. Sure, you can say "Well *I* waited for an attack before I startedm ashing directions" but that doesn't really make it a "Just" mechanic.

Kid Icarus Uprising had the same exact mechanic (down to being able to charge shot out of it) and did it way better because it actually punished you for mashing out a dodge instead of timing it.

Khayyaam wrote:
Gonna stop ya here. It's not really a "Just" mechanic if you can mash it out for 99.9% of the game instead of reacting to an attack. Sure, you can say "Well *I* waited for an attack before I startedm ashing directions" but that doesn't really make it a "Just" mechanic.

Kid Icarus Uprising had the same exact mechanic (down to being able to charge shot out of it) and did it way better because it actually punished you for mashing out a dodge instead of timing it.

::waves:: Hi! I know you from Twitter!

I agree it was really easy to pull off, but it seems the same in principle, in that you have to input the thing within a window defined by enemy attacks, to get a special effect instead of the normal thing that occurs when you do that input. Don't really want to get into a whole semantics thing, but since you mentioned it, I guess I'd argue that it's just a really lenient "just" mechanic.

In general I think they made a deliberate decision to keep the combat on the light side, which I think is in keeping in line with the Metroid flavor. This isn't Ninja Gaiden, after all, and I respect that the people who made Ninja Gaiden themselves knew the difference.

...Also for the record I botched those SenseMove dodges PLENTY of times. Just me? ^^;

lol, hi

Yeah I mean, if you were timing it every time sure you'd mess up sometimes, but you can legit tap a direction without really any care to whether an enemy's even attacking and most encounters pose no danger, and it wouldn't mess up your offense due to the auto aim mechanic either.

The only attacks I remember being unable to Sensemove belonged to Ridley, Phantoon and maaaybe one of those postgame buggy boys, but I don't remember much about them besides them turning into shields. Once I realized there's nothing stopping me from repeatedly tapping a direction while shooting to basically get a sensemove out every time I didn't have an issue with any of the game's enemies or bosses (granted, that's also why I know there are moves that are impossible to sensemove.) Even the final boss the only difficulty I had was remembering how I'm supposed to kill her.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar.

Had my eye on this for ages but it's always been around $60. In the current sale it's $10.

Quitting this. Found out some very annoying and stupid things that ruin it for me.

Which was?

The crafting tables only appearing in dungeons randomly.

Playing Okami HD on PS4.

On my PS2 versions I have 100% files and a challenge run complete, but I'll do it all again because I find the game that good.

Will get all the trophies and make some notes on the mechanics.

I ain't playin' shit. Just teaching GoW proper (and DB). Speaking of the latter, learned "KYS" was added to the YT blacklist. Neat.

Hey Gmg

>kys too harmful to Nuhumans
I'm sure they're attributing a certain percentage(which we should discuss somewhere else) to mean comments in the interwebz.

>DB
Whats your take on the Moro saga?

> moro saga
Heard it was again Goku Time, with Vegeta only serving to boost Moro's power.

> what are we playing
Mostly Shadow of Rome and Dawn of War 1. Fun RTS that fuels my lust for Warhammer in a CORVID world.

Shadow: >certain percentage
Those that Kratos would sacrifice to meet the Fates, yes. GFAQs didn't care for that nickname, either.

>take on
Whole lot of wasted potential, tons of rehashing (enough to make GT blush), lot of excess, etc.

Royboy: >Goku Time
Does an awful lot of jobbing for that to be so. Even gets his 'copy genius' status shit on some more with Vegeta learning IT on his second try (within minutes) while Gokek took 150+ days (Vegeta with three months learned the master level technique of the school in question). One gag meant to take the piss out of our Prince sees him warp into trash when attempting to go to Gokek's ki signature (not sure why his retarded fans thought that was so great when it implies the ki of their jobber MC is likened to a trash bin that should have no chance of being warped to). A lot could be said, really.

>only serving to boost the goat
Gokek does this repeatedly himself. Even pulls the infamous senzu stunt again. Impressive in its own way. One wonders if FSF won't be necessary to unfuck this silly situation with a world merger.

I played a little of Digimon: Hacker's Memory. Had my eye on this for ages and just got it on sale. Might look into it more after I'm done with Okami. Some quality mechanics shit in the works. Found out a few things I never knew.

I finished The Wonderful 101 last night - got a few thoughts I'll put in the dedicated thread later.

I think the next game I'm going to try out is Quake 3 Arena. It seems Doom has given me a bit of a craving for fast paced FPS at the moment. I don't really have any interest in getting stomped by the 20 year vets, so I'm going to play through the single player tower and bot matches as and when I feel like it. I got curious when I read that the bots are made to be individual - they have their own accuracy levels, reaction speeds, responses to being attacked (some might flee while others will stubbornly fight) and preferences for weapons. The more difficult bots use "advanced" techniques that humans might use, such as prioritising splash damage over direct hits with explosive weapons, jumping round corners and attacking while retreating. I hope to find that these behaviours are noticeable when I play as it sounds really interesting.

>Digimon: Hacker's Memory

Interested to see if you can get through it. Heard mixed things about it, like Hard mode only making foes have more HP.

>DB

Let me ask this here. Is Super considered canon?

What I'm interested in is how you can build. You can digivolve/revert any digimon to any form it seems. You can learn their abilities and customize your digimon with whatever you want. In the training farm you can build a certain amount of stat points that can be distributed freely from what I've been told.

> dragon ball
Pretty much. But there were different universes. You have:
- Dragon Ball Manga > Dragon Ball Z Manga > Dragon Ball Super Manga
- Dragon Ball Anime > Garlic Junior movie > Dragon Ball Z anime > Dragon Ball Super Anime > Dragon Ball Broly Film > Dragon Ball GT anime

The GT anime's canon-ness is debatable at this point, but there were a few episodes in Super that were setting up for it it seems (mentioning Uub). None of the films are canon at this point aside from Broly and Garlic (Gods and Res. F were remade in the show (badly, might I add)). Movie 13 used to be canon with Hirudogarn, but was removed from canon later-on for whatever reason.

Back when I was hanging around in the Dragon Ball General board, I recall people debating whether GT was canon. It went back to debating about how Super retconned some things about End of Z, but I don't remember the exact details.

>build

Sounds a bit like the DS Digimon games, but I don't know to what extent. When you mean any form, you mean they can turn into any other Digimon? Or is it restricted by their 'trees', like the DS Digimon games?

I remember Digimon World 3 had 8 (or 9?) Rookie forms, and half of those forms could turn into the same Champion/Adult (or whatever it's called) if you wanted. You could also digivolve/revert to any form, and you could make an Ultimate learn most techniques you learned along the way. The techniques themselves weren't too interesting, though. There's also a 'Gym' that you can use to increase pretty much any stat you want, even elemental ones. But there's a catch. In order to get the resource needed to enter the Gym, you must first level up. You get 5 TP (Training Points IIRC), per level, and you could spend either 1, 5 or 10 TP. Of course, the more you spend, stats will increase a lot more in comparison. But that's not all. The training process is entirely up to your Digimon (read: RNG), meaning that there is a chance that you can simply not get the stat increases you were hoping to get.

World 2's techniques and 'Interrupt' mechanic is what I find a tad interesting. As the name implies, you could interrupt a foe's turn if you wanted, and depending on the type of Interrupt used, on top of you dealing damage to them, you could, for example, significantly lower the damage output of the attack they were about to use. The game also has a glitch that lets you bypass the effects of the Confuse status (i.e. attacking your own party) if you used Interrupts, but the status will never go away for as long as the fight lasts, or if you use an item.

All of that said, I recommend staying away from World 2 and 3. The latter dumbs down the gameplay by the mid-endgame by making most techniques in general pretty worthless, so it's better to use the basic ''Attack'' command. World 2 is not at all suited to be played at normal speeds, and you can only level up once per battle, even if you gained enough EXP to get 15 levels, making the whole "revert so you can increase the level cap" task very taxing.

Wright: >ask it here
Good choice. Daddy GMG is your boy.

>is it considered canon
By those who know no better (the majority), yes. As they often get duped time and time again (like with GT in the past). But does it really qualify? No. Not remotely.

Roy: >various
It seems GoW is not the only thing I'll be teaching around these parts.

>debateable
Not remotely.

>setting up for
Surely you jest.

>Uub
EoZ.

>aside from Broly
Surely you meant to say Nu-Broly (humoring those making this mistake).

>and Garlic
HA! HA! No.

>remade in the show
A joke unto itself.

>used to be
How do you lads make these mistakes in your understanding of the franchise? Is it from being an anime-only? I was at one point (though never just a Funidub fellow *as I was never patient enough to not seek spoilers*), but still knew better. Upon gaining access to the source, I was able to remedy the matter with repeated study and vigorous "debates".

NOTE: Might be a good idea to make a Dragonball thread. So, I did: https://stinger.actieforum.com/t633-dragon-ball#13769

>Sounds a bit like the DS Digimon games, but I don't know to what extent. When you mean any form, you mean they can turn into any other Digimon? Or is it restricted by their 'trees', like the DS Digimon games?

Not sure on trees but I saw this video of some guy digivolving and reverting to lower forms and back multiple times creating an attack focused build. For example, at one point he had a Devimon digivolve into a Greymon which wasn't possible in the shows I watched as a kid.

The rest of your post sounds like what HM does only there's no RNG for stats. You can get to level 99, then on the farm you can allocate points through training. Each digimon has a personality type that determines what stat gets boosted or something, but I hear you can use an item to switch personality.

>abilities

There are good status effects. I plan to build based on these.

>no RNG for stats

Interesting. So one of my gripes with World 3 is fixed in HM.

I'll be interested to follow your input on that game. Even if there are issues that prevent you from finishing it, I think I might be interested to grab it as long as the issue(s) lies not within the mechanics themselves, but in some other areas like most RPG Digimon games tend to fail at (like loading times and some other technical issues).

Been juggling several things. Nothing traditionally action since I’ve taken a break from it, but a lot of quality regardless:

-Dead Space 2 NUR/no shop-I think I’m on chapter 5(just did the first hide and seek fight), going well so far. This is certainly one of those games that gets easier the more you become familiar with it, even if you’re going up in difficulty. The attention to detail and arsenal is just phenomenal. Amazing game.

-Spelunky 2- I’ve almost beat the game several times, I always get to 6-2 or 6-3 and die. Anyone who likes platformers, action games, or RPGs needs to play this, a legitimate masterpiece. The details, secrets, items/weapons, levels, enemy variety, controls are all insanely good. Every facet of this game is expertly crafted and everything goes together so well.

-Castlevania: Bloodlines- Just beat it with save states, will try a normal run later today. Never played this before and I’m surprised by it, really solid overall, a lot of neat level design and bosses. The subweapons are definitely weak after CotM2 and the aesthetics are...not my favorite though.

-Yakuza 7- got this to play with the wife, we’re enjoying the story and characters a lot so far. The combat is odd, to say the least. I’m not very far so I can’t say much about it yet.

I went through about a month or so of trying different games that didn’t click with me, luckily I found some ones that I can really get into. Pretty soon I’ll really start going through the action backlog.

Infinity: >NUR
To what extent? Not using nodes to improve your shit? Not getting better rigs? If both, that is NUR+.

>no shop
While I didn't use it as a restriction, I didn't have any need for them in my DS1 No-Gun NUR+. I wonder if DS2 would have gone differently had my run not stalled out the way it did. 'No Items' wasn't a condition for the DS1 playthrough either, but other than being lazy about the bit where Lurkers fire on you as some 'tram' or whatever carries you (not like I can fire back upon them), I can't recall using them. I wonder if I could have gotten a some objects to use as cover and placed them or held them to block their shots there.

NOTE: Did you see the list of recommended people I shared not too long ago? Some have some runs you might find interesting.

Forgot I posted in this, let me perform a resurrection.

>not using nodes for both improvements and rigs
Indeed. I also didn’t open any of those rooms that needed a node for entry. I did finish the run the other day, I’ve started another run to mess around with some upgraded toys like the javelin gun.

>DS1 no-gun run
This sounds like it could be tedious, I’m assuming there are a lot of tricky workarounds here?

>DS2 run stalled out
Very sad.

>objects as cover
What is the extent of using objects/corpses as shields? I accidentally blocked a projectile with a corpse during my run and it has me wondering what else could be done.

>list of recommended people
I must have missed it. Would gladly look into it though.

Been playing more Y7, combat is extremely weird and not thought out very well. There’s this element that gets introduced early on where objects(the usable kind in past games) that are nearby when you attack will be integrated into the characters turn, but it’s inconsistent, low damage, and nearly impossible to plan for since you don’t control movement at all. Just a huge missed opportunity. Random encounters are all over the place in terms of difficulty. I’m over halfway through the game yet I feel the combat hasn’t really started to show itself, but I think this all I’m going to be getting out of it unless something big changes. Using money for summons is interesting as is getting interrupted on the way to a close-range attack, though.

>tricky workarounds
Years ago I did plasma cutter only and was shown a trick that had something to do with looking at the ground as you ran past enemies. Don't really remember what it did. I think it stopped enemies from grabbing you or something. Might have only worked with the basic types. Look into it.

I started playing Bioshock. It's nice so far. I also want to continue playing Blood Omen. You know, I
think I should make a backlog.

>a trick that had something to do with looking at the ground

Enemies in dead space 1 run at you when you look at them. If you never look at them they just walk around I believe.

^It was something like that. Keeping them behaved wasn't too dissimilar for me to GoW itself. They'll still attack from off-screen if in close, but their behavior is definitely less aggressive (so perhaps more akin to DMC in that regard *just that they don't exactly have cues meant to clue you off for taking your eyes away from something that might be sneaking up to slap your ass given the genre*).

I’m putting DS2 on hold briefly until I get my laptop on Monday. It’s on sale on Steam for $5 so I’ll be starting it all over. Luckily you can play Zealot right from the get-go so I can start with a new challenge run. NG2 is probably going to take up all of my time when I’m using a console for a while. It’s going to be weird not using the PS4 very often, since it’s what I overwhelmingly use.

>DS2
Were you able to make use of the links I'd provided?

I'm starting the new year with by playing Chaos Legion(Finally!). A dumb question but is it possible to beat the game without using Legions?

If you mean summoning them, then yes. You can use assists. Without those, not 100% sure.

I've done a no Legion run but remember a few points where I needed them, or at least thought I did. Don't remember where.

You can definitely boss definitely can though. I've done it. You boost Seig's stats as well and he gets quite strong.

Super Mario 3D Land on a 2DS system. First time. I was about to skip that, leave it out, for what I remember a print review on the stated grounds that it is too easy. A decade later I'm playing it for I have canceled my subscription half a decade ago. And it's neat. Of course it's a breeze, but the stage design is interesting. Wondering if many enthusiasts dismiss the non-existing camera control. Some people rile heavy on that. Yeah, I've played SM 3D World before that, and that one cranks it up, all with 4P mp. But I don't feel cheated with the Land. It doesn't have a lot of secrets if any and the stage themes like sand or cloud are not sorted. No matter. I'm at the endgame. Let's see what the postgame has to offer...

Got the M2's Aleste Collection and Gradius 3. The collection features two Sega Master System and two GG Aleste games for the Game Gear. Those four are fine console shmups in itself, but the main attraction for me was the brand new GG Aleste 3. The game plays like classic shmup: collect the upgrades, destroy the enemies quickly and dodge like maniac. I do like the bullet hells but there is just something so special and videogamey in old school shooter. I am close to 1cc, currently routing the final stage. Absolutely in love with the game.

What about Gradius 3 then? It exists just to crush your soul. I am a methodical guy, but I don't think that I 'll have the patience to route it trough. Especially without proper save states. With that said, there is not many games where I spontaneously jump up from my chair to celebrate after beating a stage.