What are you currently playing? [3]

[Giji Shinka]

(Specifically with Raiden. What MGS4 did to his character is unforgivable).

I don't know what happened to Raiden in MGS4 or in previous games, (Cause i'm new to this series) but i thought he's character was pretty cool in MGRR.

[Xard]

This proved a bridge too far for me, finally. I had been looking forward to Ilos which is probably one of my favorite areas in any game ever from an art-design standpoint, but the interminable slog that is the trademark Bioware midgame finally broke me around the 9000th shout of ENEMIES, EVERYWHERE! Maybe I'll return to it over the summer when I am genuinely bored as opposed to just procrastinating.

That it took me something closer to month than two days to finish last 2/3rds of my Renegade playthrough says pretty much..

Ilos is nice but I think I prefer Noveria. It's probably just my general boner for bug hunts, idk.


So anyway, I promised CJD back then I'd write review of sorts. Unfortunately CJD isn't around (come back pls) but might as well go forward and do it anyway

********

Mass Effect 1 (ps3)

First things first: this is the worst Bioware game I've played after having the time of my life enjoying the epic, soulshaking adventure that was NWN1 OC years ago. Too bad ME1 doesn't have the excuse of being campaign creation kit first and foremost. Certainly Bio's Disney Theme Park ride through China aka Jade Empire was pretty constrained in various ways but even it had much more life and vigor to it than this droll SF fest that tries to be Hollywood epic when it should've played up the camp and FUN quotient inherent in its bulk SF trappings.

Alternatively dumbed down, lifeless Kotor gets the essentials down well.

Gameplay

First the gameplay. I actually found the combat system reasonably enjoyable overall. It was hardly brilliant in any respect and as you kept hauling in levels and somewhere between levels 20-30 fights start to turn ridiculously easy and thus more boring but overall it provided a nice package to spend most of the gameplay on. I'd say it does ok as shooter-oriented action/RPG system crossover. Throwing people around with Bionic powers rarely got old and one shotting pretty much everything with late-game OP'd as fuck shotguns was pretty fun.

Unfortunately I can't say same about the RPG system (levels, skills etc.) itself overall. First of all ME hands out levels like candies to the point any kind of specialization or juggling of skill points doesn't mean jackshit because you can eventually max out most of your skills anyway. The effects you'll end up having on your build end up being largerly cosmetic.

Then some skills are pretty much useless. Particularly grating was the fuck up with the two dialogue skills (charm/intimidate of course): there was pretty much no reason for having both because each time skill option comes up in dialogue both options are avalaible. If you're Paragon max out Charm, if Renegade max intimidate. That's it. There's no reason to spend skillpoints on both as they do exactly same shit 99% of time and the different bonuses to in buy/sell don't justificate the separation of one dialogue skill into two since they're so useless. I almost ever used shops and maxed out my money and omni-gel pools way before end of game.

The general dumbed down RPG mechanics + too many levels given to player especially also sneaks up in the combat: fucking level scaling man, fucking level scaling. Granted, it was not Betheshit vidya bad but holy fuck did it kill all sense of adventure and fun from looting, doing side missions etc. as well as render merchants meaningless excl. the guy in Normandy from whom you can buy Spectre gear (which in turn made 99% of loot meaningless, whoops). There're no cool encounters with unexpected gear to be gained, no unique items of any value to be found etc. because all enemies and loot are scaled to your level. You gradually get better gear as you go up levels and since you go up those so fast 99% of shit you get from lockers and enemies is worthless about half hour later. There's also no reason to buy any gear since you get same or better gear from dead enemies all the time for free.

As for customization the stuff you can use is poorly balanced. I have no idea what sort of player would use anything but regeneration granting upgrades on the one slot avalaible for armor for most of game. Speaking of those, I can count the time I used medkits in ME with my fingers. Grenades were even more pointless.

Then there's the inventory system from hell. Seriously what the fuck Bioware? How do you do this? You essentially take Kotor GUI, make it bit prettier and in terms of functionality thousand times worse on all fronts. It would be one of the shittiest Inventories I've seen in any RPG even without the ridiculouss 150 item cap...which in turn made me suspect Biolards are just sadists with this shit.

Seriously what the flying fuck was that piece of shit that would hardly fly even back in 90s!

For final word on combat I can't help but mention MAKO. Fucking Mako man, fucking Mako. It's surprisingly drivable on DualShock but got old really fast.

As for dialogue wheel I didn't have problem with it most of the time but sometimes the options to be selected and what character does/says don't match up AT ALL. In a really bad way. Still, it was better than I expected.

Side quest design


hahahaahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahaha

ahahahahahahahahahahah
hahahahahaha


ahahahahah


fuck you, bioware.

By far the biggest reason why my second playthrough was sheer suffering for largest time: the planets not related to main quest - which incidentally make up most of ME's side quests and playtime - are fucking horrid, lazily designed clone worlds with exactly same buildings with exactly same blueprints, same shitty as fuck mountainy terrain that can be utter pain to get through in Mako, same shitty relics to be picked up and same shitty metals to be located.

The utter lack of creativity and copypasta development atttitude that afflicted all these shitty planets (to drive around in fucking Mako no less) is by far the biggest sin of ME1 to me, even moreso than the goddamn inventory system.

NWN1 OC might've been as trite in terms of writing but not even it ever was this lazy. If the side planets in ME1 are this bad I shudder just thinking about infamous DA2.

Basically: fuck every single side planet, fuck 90% of side quests that are as identicals as environments and rarely give you rewards of any magnitude.

The side quests on main planets are pretty fine, luckily. Citadel in particular is pretty much Taris mk. II and probably the most fully realized location in game with nice variation with quests and characters.

I also really enjoyed the oh-fuck-it-is-CCA-time DLC. That was well designed and fun to play side "planet". Too bad others were shit.

Main quest design

The main planets/quests are pretty nice. I especially enjoyed Ilos and Noveria all around. The last two planets before showdown were nowhere near as impressive and Citadel's strenght was its side missions instead of the dullery inherent in finding evidence against Saren.

The climax was basically game equivalent of competently made if undistinguished Hollywood action flick. Enjoyable but nothing special. Also way too easy.

There was one great, inspired design decision (persuading bad guy to kill himself) there which unfortunately got nullified by what happens right afterwards

Writing & character

Overall ME1 really feels like overlong prologue to a spae opera story that really might be pretty fine. Sovereign was creepy as fuck (digged the design a lot) but obviously I can't say much on Reapers as villains at this point. Similarly I suspect the generally small amount of meaningful choices player gets to make is probably due to the consequences being shown in later games so in terms of C&C I feel like giving this sort of charitable interpretation.

As for the story that I can evaluate already - whole Saren deal - all I can say is that it's very much so-so. The one "twist" in the storyline could be seen to be coming ages from very early on and in general the "hey let's hunt Saren on these planets where we've seen Geth activity" is pretty much boring and trivial.

The grand feeling of swashbuckling adventure and playing a part in great epic just isn't there the way it is in eg. Kotor. I don't know if this is just beause of ME universe being nowhere near as fascinating as Star Wars but I suspect this largerly comes down to story just not being very good. It's bare bones as hell and Saren is hardly interesting villain.

I enjoyed the "substories"on Ilos and Noveria the most. The other parts of main quest felt even more unengaging and boring than NWN's OC which is achievement of some kind, I guess.

I'd say the best written part of the game in fact would be the in-game Codex as it shows the effort Bioware did put in conceiving the setting, the alien races, the space combat etc. very well. Too bad very little of the signs of promising depth the Codex occasionally reveals end up showing in the game otherwise. For example the Asari religion sounds pretty cool and in more capable hands could've resulted in some interesting material but in-game Bioware's writers have the aptitude for turning out C-grade space mysticism. EMBRACE ETERNITY indeed.

As for characters I found very little to hold on. Joker was kinda funny, Wrex ok take on Bioware's old gruffy merc archetype (best thing about Wrex is his whole holy-fuck-it-is-killer-turtle-jesus-christ-get-in-the-car look, Krogans are cool) though nowhere near Canderous and IIRC I liked Jade Empire's drunkard more. Tali I probably found most interesting, mainly thanks to Quarian society seeming rather interesting. Goddamn space gypsy muslim racists.

As for others, well, boredom all around. Ashley was probably the most beliavably written party member with unexpectedly well grounded complexes and no-nonsense attitude but she was hardly interesting as character. Carth Mk.II was detestable in principle and way more boring than the most whiny middleaged ace pilot in Star Wars history. Garreth was slightly psychotic and only character on whose development you could seemingly have some influence but again, boring.

Liara was a fucking joke - I didn't really dislike her but she had pretty much nothing going for her in terms of character and don't get me started on how she's written as love interest. I romanced the moeblob for both male and female Shepard but goddamnit Bioware go watch more anime if you want to know how to write hnnngable moeblob waifus Liara obviously tries to be.

(speaking of which, pretty much everything related to romance felt like really shitty dating sim without any kawaii uguu bonuses - get your act together, Bioware.)


There was one good character though.

Renegade Female Shepard.

Holy fuck was she fun to play. I think this largerly comes down to Jennifer Hale being Goddess as always but playing Shepard as no nonsense badass with her voice never got old. Initially I was a bit disappoint Hale didn't use her sexvoice (I mean, Bastilla voice) for Shepard but the one she went for fit Shepard to a tee. The male voice actor was incredibly wooden in comparison.


So yeah, great MC, pretty boring party members and so-so SF story.

Weakest Bioware campaign since NWN OC. Gehhh


Verdict: Mindnumbingly average when you put pluses and minuses together. Fem Shepard is still fun as fuck but yeah, I don't think they'll get me into Mako ever again. Not exactly bad but nevertheless least Bio game I've played NWN1* excluded

*though HotU >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ME

[The Killer of Heroes]

I don't know what happened to Raiden in MGS4 or in previous games,

Put it this way:

In MGS2, Raiden was basically the Shinji Ikari of Metal Gear. He was a character designed to subvert audience expectations in order to explore an aspect of modern society.

In MGS4, Raiden devolved into the hero of a shallow Hollywood '80's action movie. Depth and meaning was sacrificed for style and flash.

[Azathoth]

Ilos is nice but I think I prefer Noveria. It's probably just my general boner for bug hunts, idk.

Honestly there are no areas in the game where I find that enemies are terrifically fun to fight but most areas, past the rather dull first act, range from good-looking to staggeringly pretty. One of a great many ways in which the sequels dropped the ball is by making everything fuck-ugly in an effort to reach the GRIM N GRITTY pinnacles to which they aspired. Except wait, that doesn't excuse jack nor shit since Gears of War had the exact same aspiration (only with at least a hint of self-parody) and was orders of magnitude prettier than the Mass Effect sequels. Even the endless grindy Mako missions could be strung along for quite some time just based on the pleasantness of exploring spooky alien worlds and their psychedelic skyboxes. I don't know, I dig pretty games. Same thing with Morrowind: crappy/unbalanced/boring mechanics excused by dem sunrises, dat soundtrack, dat Kirkbride design work (and crazy in-universe religious texts). I feel like I've made this exact post before, possibly in this thread, but imo it bears repeating.

Agreed almost 100% on your verdict on the game in total though (especially Jennifer Hale, lol).

Too bad very little of the signs of promising depth the Codex occasionally reveals end up showing in the game otherwise.

I think this deserves more than a "too bad" though. The Codex though is something that really really bothered me (and again in Dargon Age): why in the name of God was so much writing time and effort put into this bullshit which doesn't improve the game in any way shape or form? No I DON'T need another journal popup whenever I click on something for the first time - no I DON'T need to know about how the Turians fought the humans back in the day - at least not in the form of a fake wikipedia article I don't. If it's relevant to the plot, then WORK IT INTO THE PLOT, and if it's not then don't fucking bother me about it, Bioware. I realize worldbuilding is always a big challenge and even more so in a AAA game, where you can bet at least 50% of the playerbase is just there to shoot aliens and doesn't give a fuck about your meticulously crafted fantasy world - but that is not an excuse to saddle the player with your story bible and its reams of totally irrelevant bullshit, you know? People began to sperg out over tiny details of fake technology and fake history in Star Trek fandom because TOS was, in itself, a highly entertaining show and quality television, and people were interested in the world it created INDEPENDENT of any explanations of why communicators and warp nacelles work. (So interested, in fact, that they ran out of interesting shit to care about and began to sperg). And that's why I'm annoyed by the Codex: there's all these retarded little details that literally don't matter at all, yet the writing of the actual game is so lazy, so underwhelming, and so unengaging that you have to wonder what the writers were actually paid to do.

[Xard]

well yeah but Raiden is a girl's name so it doesn't even matter either way. Character sucked regardless of writing quality


**********

So, having finally freed myself of Mass Effect what am I up to?

MGS2: Started a long, long walk towards MGS4 with this. I intend to clear entire HD collection in order before finally getting to see it how it all ends. It's been years since I played MGS2 and can't remember details of story very well so


Mass Effect 2: just started it and it's even more shootery and notably more dumbed down but in this case this might actually be improvement. Too early to tell but some of my gameplay complaints have already been addressed.

Final Fantasy IX: Confession! I never played this back in the day! Got it from Playstation store and have enjoyed it so far. The world and style of writing is much more to my liking than the teenage angst fest that are VII and VIII.

Ni no Kuni: I'm not sure how I feel about some of the localized dialogue and names that seem to emulate old school boys adventure books. I can see why they did it and overall the effect seems good but some names are just grating and some changes incomprehensible: why did they feel need to change Mark to Philip, for example? Thankfully I can have the jap audio anyway.

Also this game is fucking good. I've not played it very far but I can already tell I'm surprised if this doesn't live up to its high reputation as PS3's top RPG.

Macross 30: My main focus as of now. Good game and somewhat hilariously I've enjoyed it far more than Mass Effect, even excluding bonus points the game gets from fanboyism. Gameplay is fun and flying around, shooting down and spamming missiles etc. doesn't get old. The customization system for mechs aka Pimp My Valkyrie is also well made and fun to tinker with (though I've got nothing better than VF1-A at this point). Side quests are pretty enjoyable basic RPG grindshit and main story seems pretty interesting, even if it just largerly excuse for gratuitous All Star Macross character crossover fest.

Speaking of which, I've only got Sheryl and Alto so far but since the original characters are pretty fun (especially Aisha aka Pink Zessica) I haven't really yet started to miss my greenhead moeblob or Basara. I'm strangely eagerly looking forward to adding Zero characters to the roster, if only to see what the game makers are going to do with Sheryl meeting her grandmother in loli form.

Also given how hard time Alto gave me in VF-25 already I'm not really looking forward to having to fight eg. Isamu

[Final Messenger]

the original characters are pretty fun (especially Aisha aka Pink Zessica).

Aisha is the best girl (even though I have no idea what she saying )

[ssguy]

Put it this way:

In MGS2, Raiden was basically the Shinji Ikari of Metal Gear. He was a character designed to subvert audience expectations in order to explore an aspect of modern society.

In MGS4, Raiden devolved into the hero of a shallow Hollywood '80's action movie. Depth and meaning was sacrificed for style and flash.

People say that, but I'd say he's even more pathetic in 4. He looks like a cool cyborg ninja, but he hates himself, is depressed, constantly complains, etc. He just has really cool fight scenes, so everyone ignores how fucked up he is in the other cutscenes. Meanwhile in MGS2 he tries to act cool since he thinks he's a special super agent. He literally sees himself as Solid Snake, and he sees Solid Snake as a badass. He's pretty naive until the end of 2.

Even in Rising he's not too bad, although he does become more of a psychopath.

As for what I'm playing, I just finished Infamous 2. What a piece of shit.

I'm also close to finishing Sequence. The game has a unique concept and great writing and voice acting, but... you can get a few items from random drops, but most of the time you only get crafting ingredients. Most items can only be crafted, including items you need to progress to the next section of the game. Crafting has a percent chance to fail, and requires your XP (the same you use to level up), so you'll delevel if you don't have enough XP. And if it fails that XP is lost, although you can at least spend more XP to try again. To gain new powers you need to craft the formula, then spend more XP to learn the spell, then complete a challenge. If you fail the challenge you need to spend more XP to try again. It's a rhythm game but it only has a few songs. That, plus the general ease of the game, lack of balance, and grind, means that I've listened to the first 30 seconds of Derty over 400 times and holy hell I just hate it so much. But I really want to know what happens next in the story.

It's a love hate relationship.

[Stryker]

he hates himself, is depressed, constantly complains, etc.

Any sufficient evidence to prove this?

[The Killer of Heroes]

I'd be curious as well. I won't disagree that you could extrapolate that Raiden hates himself in MGS4, and he's certainly depressed (And fuck I was too due to how horrible the ROSE X COLONEL CAMPBELL OTP FOREVAAAAA" plotline was), but I can't say I remember him complaining "constantly"...or much at all in MGS4, actually.

In fact I can only remember about one or two cutscenes where he expresses much emotion.

[ssguy]

I'd be curious as well. I won't disagree that you could extrapolate that Raiden hates himself in MGS4, and he's certainly depressed (And fuck I was too due to how horrible the ROSE X COLONEL CAMPBELL OTP FOREVAAAAA" plotline was), but I can't say I remember him complaining "constantly"...or much at all in MGS4, actually.

In fact I can only remember about one or two cutscenes where he expresses much emotion.

Every cutscene that has him talk either has him talking about how the old Jack is dead, or he has no place in the world, etc. And then that one where he mentions that it even rained when he was born. I actually can't remember anything positive coming out of him.

[The Killer of Heroes]

Not exactly the kind of sentiments I had in mind when you brought up "complaining", but he does act depressed like that, yes. An unfortunate side-effect of the optimism his arc in MGS2 being abandoned and replaced with his MGS4 one, and all the nonsense that game does with Rose and Campbell (Raiden didn't even know Campbell in MGS2, and then the game acts like he does in MGS4 lol).

[EvangelionFan]

[s]Reply[/s] quote-and-comment on Xard's Mass Effect comments

SPOILER: Show

Ilos is nice but I think I prefer Noveria.

It's in the snow, bro! The snow! Or the elevators. The elevators are better on Noveria.

First the gameplay. I actually found the combat system reasonably enjoyable overall. It was hardly brilliant in any respect and as you kept hauling in levels and somewhere between levels 20-30 fights start to turn ridiculously easy and thus more boring but overall it provided a nice package to spend most of the gameplay on. I'd say it does ok as shooter-oriented action/RPG system crossover. Throwing people around with Bionic powers rarely got old and one shotting pretty much everything with late-game OP'd as fuck shotguns was pretty fun.

I played Mass Effect twice, both times in 2009. I had a decent time with the shooting ... that is, during the main storyline, as the most memorable feature about the boxed side quests are a) the pretty environment they sit in b) the fact they are the same three or four rooms re-boxed over and over. I also recall some annoyance with the medpac / healing system which was not very helpful in said boxed side quests; and useless disc grenades.

Are you going to use the Infiltrator class in Mass Effect 2? Use the Infiltrator class in Mass Effect 2. Slowdown Scope + BEST Gun + Headshots + no enemy snipers = hardest difficulty becomes no difficulty. Short stick is that it isn't practical for close quarters (I seem to recall some 'over the shoulder' business got in the way), but IIRC there is only a one time on a main quest where enemies can actually get up close and do major damage, and it is only because of how that particular point of the quest was designed.

Unfortunately I can't say same about the RPG system (levels, skills etc.) itself overall. First of all ME hands out levels like candies to the point any kind of specialization or juggling of skill points doesn't mean jackshit because you can eventually max out most of your skills anyway. The effects you'll end up having on your build end up being largerly cosmetic.

There was RPG? Oh, right. The skill tree. Yes,the UI looks and sounds nice but aside from the skills you've described I don't really recall there being much a point to it. Unless we were supposed to 'imagine' that the skills did something, like true tabletop RPG, but that was not in my game.

There're no cool encounters with unexpected gear to be gained, no unique items of any value to be found etc. because all enemies and loot are scaled to your level. You gradually get better gear as you go up levels and since you go up those so fast 99% of shit you get from lockers and enemies is worthless about half hour later. There's also no reason to buy any gear since you get same or better gear from dead enemies all the time for free.

If you do the sidequest of the Asari seer-counsellor on the Citadel she'll give you this metal ball thing which you can take to planet which has a metal ball socket which will have a brief animation before giving you a textbox about some 'vision' you supposed had after putting the thing in the socket.
I should note that the second game attempts to remedy the 'no loots' issue - but I'd call them 'trophies' because you either buy them in shops or find them in certain missions and they are more or less just display items for your quarters.

For final word on combat I can't help but mention MAKO. Fucking Mako man, fucking Mako. It's surprisingly drivable on DualShock but got old really fast.

On the PC I'd say the problem isn't so much with the Mako as it is with the set controls that provide either bland or difficult experiences in navigating Bioware's vanilla terrain maps.

As for dialogue wheel I didn't have problem with it most of the time but sometimes the options to be selected and what character does/says don't match up AT ALL. In a really bad way. Still, it was better than I expected.

I dont' recall having many issues with the dialogue, bar the choice of Sirtis as the voice of the Matriarch. I did not play renegade though, and although you said Femshep Renegade is fun I don't think I'll go back to the game just for that.

By far the biggest reason why my second playthrough was sheer suffering for largest time: the planets not related to main quest - which incidentally make up most of ME's side quests and playtime - are fucking horrid, lazily designed clone worlds with exactly same buildings with exactly same blueprints, same shitty as fuck mountainy terrain that can be utter pain to get through in Mako, same shitty relics to be picked up and same shitty metals to be located.

Although I have already touched on this, I'd like to say that I liked some of these sections (except for the 'collecting' bits) because in most cases the worlds looked good.

The utter lack of creativity and copypasta development atttitude that afflicted all these shitty planets (to drive around in fucking Mako no less) is by far the biggest sin of ME1 to me, even moreso than the goddamn inventory system.

I'd have to say that it's how the copypasta is used - namely in that these missions are simply far too slow for what is on offer, so unless you're in it for the skyboxes or the 'atmosphere' of the better-designed worlds-

Basically: fuck every single side planet, fuck 90% of side quests that are as identicals as environments and rarely give you rewards of any magnitude.

Oh yeah, right, I was about to say that. At least you have a few good opportunities for parkour with the Mako. Mako parkour. I said it.

The side quests on main planets are pretty fine, luckily. Citadel in particular is pretty much Taris mk. II and probably the most fully realized location in game with nice variation with quests and characters.

Now that you mention it there are overbearing similarities to Taris, and yet, I almost feel like it has more in common with Telos from the second game. Otherwise as you say the Citadal has the most on offer and the highest quality in terms of background action and voice acting, the next best would probably be the planet with the Thorian.

I also really enjoyed the oh-fuck-it-is-CCA-time DLC. That was well designed and fun to play side "planet".

Did you like how they played the love scene music when you're talking to the woman at the end? If not, go back and check that.

There was one great, inspired design decision (persuading bad guy to kill himself) there which unfortunately got nullified by what happens right afterwards

I was about to ask if you did this, but in any case no matter how Saren 'dies' the plot of the game is that he falls through the glass and is revived by a red dynamic glow.

Overall ME1 really feels like overlong prologue to a space opera story that really might be pretty fine. Sovereign was creepy as fuck (digged the design a lot) but obviously I can't say much on Reapers as villains at this point.

More or less my thoughts on the first volume. If you really get into the Codex it can feel like they have all of their elements in the right places, and yet the shortcomings of the inventory system, the skill tree, the slowness of the Mako missions and the copypaste rooms are working against that most of the time. Unless you really, really have nothing better to do or are bored with whatever else you have going on in your life, it'll be hard not to come out of it feeling as if most of the time you spent playing was actually an average experience and not as fine of experience as you might have wanted it to be.

The grand feeling of swashbuckling adventure and playing a part in great epic just isn't there the way it is in eg. Kotor. I don't know if this is just beause of ME universe being nowhere near as fascinating as Star Wars but I suspect this largerly comes down to story just not being very good. It's bare bones as hell and Saren is hardly interesting villain.[/ssize]

Apart from there not being any swashbuckling at this point (thus not a swashbuckling adventure) it is roughly bare bones because there is a fair amount of material in the codex and the galaxy map that wasn't used in some way in the main or side quests. In that I am agreeing with you that the Codex is the best written component of the game and brings a fair amount of depth to the setting if you have a look at it, and I would have been disappointed if you had felt otherwise.

[size=10]Liara was a fucking joke - I didn't really dislike her but she had pretty much nothing going for her in terms of character and don't get me started on how she's written as love interest. I romanced the moeblob for both male and female Shepard but goddamnit Bioware go watch more anime if you want to know how to write hnnngable moeblob waifus Liara obviously tries to be. [

Among the characters you can select to accompany Shepard on missions, Liara has the most pleasant sounding voice and for this reason I had fewer gripes in clicking through her dialogue options that I did with Garrus (police officer template reporting for duty), Wrex (Wrex: Shepard.) and Tali (oh gosh that voice turn it off). I suppose it would have been more interesting to hear Ashley's dialogue as Femshep, but as Maleshep the effort that went into her character doesn't really shine through until you think about the conversations out of context.


...



Half an hour put into that...
I expect a thoughtful reply ;)

and I suppose I should include Azathoth or else he'll feel left out

SPOILER: Show

Honestly there are no areas in the game where I find that enemies are terrifically fun to fight but most areas, past the rather dull first act, range from good-looking to staggeringly pretty. One of a great many ways in which the sequels dropped the ball is by making everything fuck-ugly in an effort to reach the GRIM N GRITTY pinnacles to which they aspired.

I am fairly confident you will agree with me when I comment that the level design of the side quests in the ME2 are a significant improvement in most instances, but otherwise yes, the inclination of the developers to give everything a bit of grit or a bit of edge probably detracted from my experience. In cases such as Omega station you can respect why they did it that way, and in the Grunt levels it is sensible for them to so; but I wonder if I would have liked all of the second game to have the aesthetic quality of the first, I mean in a way the first game is fake/plastic in how much sheen everything has whereas the wear and tear of some of the places in the second game feels more true to the places they are striving to represent

Even the endless grindy Mako missions could be strung along for quite some time just based on the pleasantness of exploring spooky alien worlds and their psychedelic skyboxes. I don't know, I dig pretty games.

Yay someone who feels the same as I do about the Mako missions
Spectacular skyboxes, Ho!

And that's why I'm annoyed by the Codex: there's all these retarded little details that literally don't matter at all, yet the writing of the actual game is so lazy, so underwhelming, and so unengaging that you have to wonder what the writers were actually paid to do.

They were paid to sit outside while the two lead developers sat in a room and decided how the trilogy should end. Which is, I should admit, one of the reasons I have not gone out to buy the third game. That and I don't want to have to worry about EA/Bioware's DLC distribution policy ever again

Have at ye
or not as my opinions on these games are not at all outlandish

[sephiros]

Metro: Last Light came out today, and I've played through 8 or 9 chapters so far, but it's time I went to bed. Comperd to the last game
-Guns handle a lot better than 2033, but i haven't been in too many massive fights yet.
-The stealth is great, sooo much better than 2033. If anything, it's on the easy side so far. I've only been detected while sneaking twice.
-The atmosphere is still there. I had chills run down my body once or twice.
Overall, it seems much more polished and cohesive than the first; nothing mechanics-wise has detracted from the game. I want to go finish it, but I think I'm gonna wait until tomorrow night so I can play it in the dark.

[Dream]

(...) and he's certainly depressed (And fuck I was too due to how horrible the ROSE X COLONEL CAMPBELL OTP FOREVAAAAA" plotline was), (...)

Sorry, i know this is really off-topic, but this was too funny as to leave it unmentioned

I haven't played MGS4 and played MGS2 ages ago. I don't remember Raiden making much of an impression, but then again i don't remember the ending making much of an impression besides "WTF" either so i was probably pretty lame back then.

On topic: I downloaded and tried to play that War Thunder game IO talked about a few pages back, but unfortunately my PC can't handle it. Partly in frustration, i decided to try a few new things in Combat Flight Simulator 3, the major of which was changing my usual rival from P-51D American Mustangs to Mk 9c British Spitfires (Or Supermarine Spitfires).

Piloting stuff you don't care about  SPOILER: Show

It's fun to fight agaisnt the mustangs, while they're not exactly cunning and are a bit too predictable, they have a decent agility and have managed to sneak up behind me and shoot me down from time to time. But overall, i always managed to keep an upper hand on them, shooting down 20 or 30-something of them in one play (I think my record is 50-something), so overall things tended to be fun, if a little dull.

All that changed when i first fought agaisnt the Spitfires. I don't think i managed to shoot a single one the first time. Instead what happened (and what kept on happening for a lot of battles.) Was that i lost the one i was tracking in less than a second, couldn't find him no matter how hard i looked, and got instantly killed/blown to bits from far away a couple seconds later. Never even knew who shot me.

The Spitfire pilots are not only incredible sharpshooters (if they are in attitude and speed in which they can get a reasonable shot, they'll most certainly shoot, and they'll most likely hit) but they're incredibly cunning, formidable, agile, and above all unpredictable. Fighting agaisnt them really puts you on the edge and it's quite frankly even a little terrifying (It can really shock you when you're level flying or performing a maneuver and all of a sudden your tail's shot off or your engine's blown). They're not only great at shooting and evading, but they also seem to know how to use my inexperience and impatience agaisnt me, most of the times i find one of them, i can't get on his tail and when i notice there's another behind me. And hell, i should know how agile and maneuverable they are considering i pilot Spitfires too (However i fly the Mk 9e version), it was really astounding at first how we could fly the same planes yet have such different performances.

My wingmen have always been somewhat useless but agaisnt the Spitfires it's just ridiculous. In the occasions i make it to a second round (that is to say, the entire wave of 5 Spitfires was shot down) there are generally none of my wingmen remaining on the air, and i tend to follow their fate moments later. Where i could shoot down 20 or 30 mustangs, in the occasions i fight Spitfires i only get 1 or 2 shot down, at most i could shoot down 5 Spitifires after fighting them all night long.

Going agaisnt the Spitfires is a bit nerve-wracking and more than a little frustrating, but it's also rewarding in the sense of being a real and gigantic challenge. In a way i do have fun fighting them, but man are they tough.

[BiQ]

I finally played through Portal, as I have now a machine that actually runs it. It was kinda neat and wondrously the 3D didn't make my head spin in nausea too much. Also somewhat short. And glitchy on Linux with intel integrated graphics, hopefully they fix it sometime.

I hope I wasn't supposed to really feel it for the companion cube in the end though, because I only thought of everything as kinda amusing twists. And the ending was spoiled years and years ago of course, so there wasn't much in the way of that either. The song is nice though.

[Paranoid]

I finally played through Portal...

Your avatar is very fitting.

[TehDonutKing]

I hope I wasn't supposed to really feel it for the companion cube in the end though,

I think the Companion Cube was supposed to be a joke character.

[Xard]

Honestly there are no areas in the game where I find that enemies are terrifically fun to fight but most areas, past the rather dull first act, range from good-looking to staggeringly pretty.

I wasn't actually referring to combat per se (though emptying assault rifle clips into rachni flesh is certainly more satisfying to me than going through yet another Geth shoot-em-up track) but the rachni race in general and the setting in Noveria. It's hardly a new storytelling trope at this point but bug wars have some sort of primal draw to me. Depending on work giant insectlike aliens as enemies lend themselves easily to thematic exploration of dehumanizing enemy, rejection of "Other" etc. (sorry for sounding like lit. course 101 ) if it's of more brainy and critical variety of SF and if not space bugs are simply very visceral, inhumane enemies to struggle against. Insect physiology in general is about as alien as anything to us humanoids we can find on Earth and there's simply something deeply unsettling and horrifying about giant bugs. It's much easier to sympathize with aliens based on eg. mammals. Giant bugs on the other hand seem to hit some "primal revolt" buttons within me without any real effort.

So yeah, I like my space bugs for variety of reasons. Noveria also had interesting if all too short opening area that was almost entirely free of any action based gameplay which was refreshing change of pace followed by pretty atmospheric Aliens/The Thing/insert-your-isolated-location-with-survivors-struggling-against-alien-menace-here labs. I also enjoyed the bit with Rachni queen at the end a lot and choice presented there was one of the few times game seemed to give me interesting decision to make. Though whether or not it actually was genuinely meaningful decision depends on the sequels, I guess.

I dig the Cthulhu-plant hijinks on Ilos too and both planets had that nice "horror" vibe to them (as well as great art direction) but I found Noveria richer planet in terms of mission as it was less action heavy, I like shooting space bugs more than Geth and plant ghouls and there's pretty snow on Noveria.

All in all I'd say Ilos, Noveria and Citadel are easily the best three locations in the game - and even then I didn't like any of them all that much.

I don't know, I dig pretty games. Same thing with Morrowind: crappy/unbalanced/boring mechanics excused by dem sunrises, dat soundtrack, dat Kirkbride design work (and crazy in-universe religious texts). I feel like I've made this exact post before, possibly in this thread, but imo it bears repeating.

Well, this is exactly why Morrowind is the greatest hiking simulation ever.

I know what you mean and game mechanics are of secondary importance to me too, especially with RPG genre. Kotor 2's game balance was totally fucked for variety of reasons but such things simply fail to lower its value in my eyes, value that arises first of all from the excellent story, characters and atmosphere - and I haven't even played the restored, modded version of game yet.

Agreed almost 100% on your verdict on the game in total though (especially Jennifer Hale, lol).

Heh, that's nice to hear. I think it's pretty horrifying I can even half-seriously snark at Bioware's romance & character writing and tell them to get good tips for writing this sort of shit from baleful nonsense that are anime and VNs but hell... If you're going to go full dating sim anyway (lol Mass Effect 2) you might as well learn something about art of pandering from Japanese otaku game makers.

I played Rance 2 at the same I played ME1 for the first time and I dunno, if moeblob-fuck object like the adorable pink slave girl Sill has ten times the charm and likeability of the cast of your serious EPIC science fiction storyline you fucked up. It's a bit weird since I've got so used to Varieties of Panderous Experience over the years of watching Japanese filth but I actually got somewhat offended by how Liara was written as love interest. I guess it's mainly due to how horribly written the romances are even by Bio's standards and how clear it is they're just pandering to the geeky fanbase while maintaining facade of respectability and seriousness. If you're going to go and provide simulated romance fantasies to players you might as well owe it up and be honest and self-conscious about it like most comparable Japanese creators seem to be.

And that's why I'm annoyed by the Codex: there's all these retarded little details that literally don't matter at all, yet the writing of the actual game is so lazy, so underwhelming, and so unengaging that you have to wonder what the writers were actually paid to do.

Well, I enjoy finding scrolls etc. in games that one can read through in the game if one wants to. It's basically a nice bonus extra effort from game makers for players who really like to immerse themselves in the world. The crazy religious texts of Morrowind you mentioned are good example as would be all kinds of scrolls you can find in NWN (some of which turn up giving plot relevant information, some of which don't).

I didn't particularly care for egging the player to click on fucking everything and rewarding player with XP for collecting this shit and it was tiresome to having constantly access codex to click the "mark all entries as read" button

But yeah, I do broadly speaking agree with what you have to say about Codex. It was very frustrating to see how little of it ever cropped up in the game.

If you do the sidequest of the Asari seer-counsellor on the Citadel she'll give you this metal ball thing which you can take to planet which has a metal ball socket which will have a brief animation before giving you a textbox about some 'vision' you supposed had after putting the thing in the socket.
I should note that the second game attempts to remedy the 'no loots' issue - but I'd call them 'trophies' because you either buy them in shops or find them in certain missions and they are more or less just display items for your quarters.

yeah it was nice, too bad that was about the only unique, interesting thing I ever found from the copypasta worlds.

Although I have already touched on this, I'd like to say that I liked some of these sections (except for the 'collecting' bits) because in most cases the worlds looked good.

yeah, as Azathoth said lots of pretty skyboxes and since DualShock controls were pretty good I found driving around rather enjoyable untill the realization about copypasteness of it all sunk in. As for the terrain some planets were ridiculously mountainy and made proceeding from place a to place b occasionally utterly nervewrecking. I even got stuck couple of times.

Did you like how they played the love scene music when you're talking to the woman at the end? If not, go back and check that.

Really? I didn't notice. Too bad I don't think I have save from the spot anymore since I overwrote saves a lot...

Speaking of "love scene", the sex scenes were hysterically bad and I really could've done without them.

Among the characters you can select to accompany Shepard on missions, Liara has the most pleasant sounding voice and for this reason I had fewer gripes in clicking through her dialogue options that I did with Garrus (police officer template reporting for duty), Wrex (Wrex: Shepard.) and Tali (oh gosh that voice turn it off). I suppose it would have been more interesting to hear Ashley's dialogue as Femshep, but as Maleshep the effort that went into her character doesn't really shine through until you think about the conversations out of context.

ehh, Wrex had boss voice. The vaguely ethnic accent(?) of Tali was pretty annoying, yeah, but since I found Quarians interesting as a race and society she was one of my favourites nevertheless (so yeah, she really rode on her backtory perks). Apparently she gets pretty moeblobbed in 2 which might be good or bad thing, hard to say. Still, I already found some parts of her character incredibly unlikeable. Mainly her entire attitude towards Geth etc. - Quarians seem utter assholes and given what I know about choice presented to you in ME3 I wonder if my liking for her lasts.

Aisha is the best girl (even though I have no idea what she saying )

Interestingly enough I very much agree, even if Mina is from the type I commonly prefer and is funnily clearly the "Kawamori heroine" (Hitomi/Juna/Sara/Ranka/Mikono/Nagisa) despite guy probably having nothing to do with project beyond ok'ing it and its story and of course designing YF-30. This is not to say I don't like Mina, I do, but Aisha is easily the real charmer of two (at least at the point of story I'm at now).


Aisha is very much the cheerful, flirtatious "mechanic genius" girl that isn't all that uncommon type in animoes. She's rather funny and very easy going, pretty much pink Zessica without the suffering. The deal sealer is probably that her seiyuu is Marina Inoue and besides



she's Zentraedi who flies pink VF-19! That makes her pretty immune to all possible criticisms

[Final Messenger]

Interestingly enough I very much agree

Ah good we agree on who the best girl is like you said Mina isn’t bad but yeah Aisha is more interesting and seems more like a fun character and I prefer her character design as well.

she's Zentraedi who flies pink VF-19! That makes her pretty immune to all possible criticisms

Agreed that pink VF-19 is amazing on so many levels

Speaking of Macross 30 I just finished the game and oh my what a great final battle when this started to play I had the biggest grin on my face. The last boss was a pretty fun fight and add all the music that was used made for a great finale.

I also think I got the Aisha ending from what I understand there are multiple endings)I’m unsure how exactly I got it but that is the ending I wanted. SINCE THE ZENTRAEDI NEVER FUCKING WIN THE LOVE TRIANGLE ABOUT TIME THEY WON

Now I’m on a new game plus and unlocked the “ultimate difficulty” but I’ll do a hard mode run fist before I attempt that. Also I was very pleased with the orgy of characters and VFs that were unlocked upon beating the game; now I can play as other characters and unlocked a boat load of alternate costume looking forward to NG+

[Stryker]

Just started up on Shogun: Total War 2. Any tips?