Video Games

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 6:38 am

PVP souls gained are based on the level of the defeated enemy and whether you were invaded/invadee. Varies a bit based on the type of invasion. If you defeat an invader you get 50% of the souls they need to buy their next stat. If you successfully kill your invadee, you get 10% of the souls they need to buy their next stat.

Souls in pocket don't matter at all, as far as I know.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 6:49 am

Damnation!

I was hoping against hope that it'd be based off of souls in pocket, but the game devs must have thought of that one...Ah, well,

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 8:21 am

I have put my finger on another thing I dislike about Pokemon B/W: the graphics.

When you're wandering around the field, it's fine. In battle, it's fine. But pre-battle for important fights, it does ugly pixelated zoom-ins of people's faces in a Fighting Game style versus screen overlaid on the normal screen. It's stupid.

Also, any time you go through a door (such as the endless Pokemon Centre visits), it pauses just to zoom in and swing the camera lower for a bit. For no reason: it doesn't stay zoomed inside (thank fuck), but does it just to go "look, it's a pseudo-3d field, we can move the camera around!"

But all the actual people get horribly pixelated when they do this. There is no excuse for this shit, it's pure laziness (which could be negated by showing even more laziness and not zooming in!) If they want to have multiple focal lengths, they need to either have multiple resolutions for the sprites or use one of the various features available to smooth it out when zoomed in. Take some lessons from N1 for fuck's sake.

Also the female lead has a monkey face when running Southwards.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 2:36 pm

Also, when you're battling at all, your active Pokemon is zoomed in and pixelated (like they took the sprite and stretched it 2x on Paint.)

It's really jarring, because it makes the battles look like bad sprite comics.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 2:46 am

Darth Rabbitt wrote:(like they took the sprite and stretched it 2x on Paint.)

I think we know the reason for this: they did. Well, not in Paint, but it's literally what it does.

I'll admit I do like triple battles (nothing revolutionary, just an expansion of double battles but with a targeting gimmick), and combo-moves (the Pledges, shame we don't have more such things).

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 2:56 am

Yeah, I was actually incredibly disappointed that they put crappy psuedo-3d in the game just because they could. It added almost nothing (the multi-layer maps are kinda nice, in a "I could take it or leave it" way)

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 11:41 am

And none of it makes up for getting rid of Heart Gold/Soul Silver style Walking Pokemon.

That was probably the single coolest thing in any Pokemon game.

I would've given up anything from Black/White to keep that (which isn't saying much, since I hated most of the new features, and was indifferent to the others.)

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:29 pm

Darth Rabbitt wrote:
Maybe I just suck and it HAS been awhile but I remember Revolution X having a large number of quarter-munching shots that you can't dodge. I used to be able to beat Time Crisis 2&3 and House of the Dead 2 on one credit, though, so it's not like I'm a noob when it comes to rail shooters or anything.
Time Crisis 3 is way worse than Revolution X in that regard.

Played it a couple of years ago, and it was a near-impossible quarter eater that cost me over $30, between me and another player (a friend of mine,) just to lose on (what I think was) the final battle (had I another few bucks I might have beaten it, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory.)

I remember quite well this day. There was a Gauntlet: Dark Legacy game a few feet away, and I far preferred to play that over the steaming pile of shit that is TC3. However, SOMEONE wanted to keep playing TC3 instead, so we wasted all but two of our quarters on that turd, all the while I was looking at Gauntlet with longing, and hating the universe and everything in it for this unjustice. When we finally did quit TC3, and we finally did go over to Gauntlet, we could only play for five seconds because that fool Darth Rabbitt wasted all our coins on a crappy shooter instead of the greatness that is Gauntlet (forever may it shine). Since Gaunlet requires that you pump coins in constantly in order to keep your health up, and we only had one quarter each, we died nearly instantly. I was not happy. I'm still not happy.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 12:51 am

I feel that I have learned my lesson, and atoned for my sins, Shrapnel.

My ancestors smile down upon me. Can you say the same, Insecticon?

That being said, I recall we both lasted quite a few minutes in Gauntlet, enough that had we spent the cash on it from the get go we'd have been able to beat it.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:23 am

Darth Rabbitt wrote:And none of it makes up for getting rid of Heart Gold/Soul Silver style Walking Pokemon.

I haven't played HG/SS. Is it just "Your pokemon follows you around happily like Pokemon Yellow or the Happy Garden from Diamond/Pearl"?

Well, I went and finished the main story. Finding the doctor in Mount Doom was helpful for grinding, but I ended up going on through, and the bug thing evolved in the final of the Elite 4, so now it's awesome.

And the dog was seriously the MVP of the Elite 4, because it's Immune to Ghost, only took Supereffective hits from Fighting, beat just about everything (except the Flying/Rock thing) at Initiative and packs Return (high power STAB move), Thunder Fang (Flinch/Paralysis and Electric type), Ice Fang (Flinch/Freeze and Ice type) and Crunch (high power Dark type). It caused more KOs than anything else, and having decent DEF and HP just makes it synergise with Rocky Helm so well. Best was when an enemy hit it with a recoil move, so took two different types of recoil and fainted.

Catching "the lightning dragon" was a pain as I had already used Master Ball on the randomly wandering thundergod thing, but smacking it down to low HP then spamming Dark Balls did the trick.

Anyway, I am glad that's done. Might actually go through the post-game just for the hell of it (and to snatch up favourites from previous generations). I hop I'm not missing too much by not using the Dream World/C-Gear thing, but I can't actually connect, so...

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:30 am

Koumei wrote:
Darth Rabbitt wrote:And none of it makes up for getting rid of Heart Gold/Soul Silver style Walking Pokemon.
I haven't played HG/SS. Is it just "Your pokemon follows you around happily like Pokemon Yellow or the Happy Garden from Diamond/Pearl"?

Pretty much.

But it's still really fucking cool to do it with any Pokemon from Gen I-IV, as opposed to like 1 Pokemon (in Yellow) or like 10 (in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum.)

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:41 am

...G/S introduced Sneazel.

BRB, BUYING HG/SS LIKE RIGHT FUCKING NOW

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Sep 08, 2012 3:43 am

This is what 4E should have had on release

Yeah, it's a browser-based game that is clearly inspired by D&D4E, and it's about as interesting. The fights don't take as long though, so I guess there's that.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 3:29 am

Maxus, and others

I've played Demon Souls with couple characters (beat it with my second character), and played a bit of Dark Souls with a friends character. Why is this game so heavily praised on this forum? I know someone made the realization that Dark Souls = D&D experience or something like that. All the same, what makes the combat so great?

Not knocking the game mind, Dark Fantasy intrigues me as well, but not sure I ever found any explanations on here, detailing its pro/cons.

Also, anyone watch Extra Credits at all, it did an episode on a game I've been wanting to rent for quite some time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjaBsuXWJJ8

Aside, mostly just been playing Skyrim lately, and I share the distaste for the College's story questline, whereas I've kinda digged Thieves Guild, and looking forward to more of Dark Brotherhood.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 4:08 am

pros:There's a lot of nuance. Even weapons of the same classification--hammers, swords, greatswords, axes, etc--have different reaches, attacking speeds, and, often, movesets between each other. There's also a reward to setting a goal for learning to competently fight with a certain weapon (for me, the Demon Great Hammer) and then being able to pull it off. You feel pretty badass. Player skill accounts for a huge amount of your success. There's folks who beat the game at really fucking low levels, just because they can.

Just on the pure mechanics, there's a lot of room for experimentation and there's plenty of viable weapons, and you see a fair bit of creativity among the playerbase. F'rinstance, when I PVP, I bring along a scythe that can inflict Bleed Damage, but it also inflicts Bleed Damage on me, the wielder. I just equip myself with all the gear that increases bleed resistance, so it'll hit my enemies long before it hurts me. I've only ever had the Bleed damage take effect on a couple of people, but the advantage is partially psychologically--it SUCKS to get hit with a status effect in this game. When the meter for one shows up, the first reaction is to panic.

It's something like Mass Effect 3's multiplayer for me--there's enough depth and nuance that it gives the optimizing part of my brain something to chew on when I don't have a D&D game going.

The game does growth extremely well. The first time you find a Black Knight, he's going to murder your ass unless you're -perfect-. Now? I don't think anything of killing them. A ways later in the game, it clicks that you're steamrolling the stuff that gave you trouble before. Not only have your stats and equipment improved, but your game knowledge as well. You now know the favored attack patterns of the common enemies, and you also know enough about the game in general that new stuff won't auto-kill you. You can likely improvise enough to win, or at least last long enough to learn.

Any replays will be substantially easier because you know the layout and how enemies behave.

Speaking of which, exploration is definitely rewarded. Shortcuts, loot, and weird hidden areas (Ash Lake, anyone?) abound.

Cons: the game has a love-hate relationship with grinding and power levelling.

Grinding will give you more stuff and more souls and let you get more materials, and so on. It pays dividends. But some drops are absurdly rare. You often find late-game enemies that're presented as minibosses, and sometimes they drop awesome swag that change how your character approaches the game (if you get a Black Knight Sword from that first Black Knight, rejoice! You can now one-shot all normal enemies for a while! Unless you don't like getting non-level-appropriate loot). But if you level up too much, other players your level (it'll match you up with people within a 10% of your level) will be far fewer, so it gets harder to summon help or engage in PVP. There -is- an active online community, so you can send up a flare for help, but still.

That active community also has a lot of griefers and people who mod/hack the game to always win. There's a fairly serious glitch where you can get an instant critical hit in a game where crits are some seriously bad shit.

The game also has a fair amount of missable items/etc, and it's easy to screw yourself up until your NG+ on some things.

I still gotta recommend it, though.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 4:32 am

The big selling point of Dark Souls is that its two main components, combat and exploration, are actually fun. Compare that to Skyrim, where basically you just click on an enemy until it goes away. You can't do that in Dark Souls and expect to survive long. It's a smart idea to make the most time intensive part of your game fun, I wish more RPGs did that.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 3:22 pm

Haven't done Mages College or Thieves Guild yet.

The Bards College and Companions were both really fun, but brief.

Also, destroying the Dark Brotherhood was awesome (playing it would probably be too, as they were the only really fun and/or interesting questline in Oblivion, but I wanted to destroy them for the hell of it.)

Main Quest is kind of unsatisfying, as

you find out that the Thalmor are basically behind the entire Civil War, and you can't do anything about it even though you are actually required to negotiate a cease-fire between the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloaks during the main quest, which should give you the chance to say "hey, Ulfric, Tullius, the Thalmor are pricks playing you against each other, here's proof that they're trying to fuck with your head Ulfric" and then have Ulfric turn around and impale that bitchy Thalmor ambassador (as is, I decapitated her immediately after finishing the Main Quest... other than the guy in the College of Winterhold I have killed all named Thalmor in Skyrim)

I really hope they introduce a DLC where you can interact with the Thalmor in any meaningful way next.

Although you do get a shout that

gives you a dragon as your Pokemon, basically, and you get to ride it, which reminded me of this so I couldn't stop laughing up to the point where I killed Alduin.

As that suggests I haven't done the Civil War quests either.

On a semi-related note, I did find it funny that during Clavicus Vile's quest I sold my soul to him for the Civil War to end, and he said that he'd have the Dragons end it by KILLING EVERYONE, and I had already finished the main quest, so not only were the dragons not going to destroy Skyrim, and so

I summoned my dragon Odahving in front of his shrine to show him that he was a unoriginal dumbfuck when it came to twisting people's wishes.

Now I'll have to sell my soul to myself, so that I can end the war using my great and terrible level 37 Argonian werewolf power.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 6:07 pm

I also think Demon's Soul also has the advantage that it is PS3 only, so you don't have a shitty pc port that grinds peoples gears.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:10 am

ishy wrote:so you don't have a shitty pc port that grinds peoples gears.

Why is the mouse so bad? WHY? Seriously, let me describe it for you (this is before I'd really gotten in and tinkered with mouse settings all over my computer and the game to find something workable):
Mouse across mousepad quickly: <90 degree camera turn.
Mouse across mousepad slowly: >4320 degree (12 full rotations) camera turn.

So, obviously mouse and camera motion isn't linear. But it's a console port, that's what you expect. Mouse acceleration and all that jazz, it's everywhere. But look at those numbers! Jesus christ! That's almost a 50x difference. You may not notice the subtler problem. Or you may notice it, but think it's a mistake on my part and that I got things backwards. See that the quick mouse movement results in a smaller turn? That is not a typographical error. That is absolutely the case. Dark Souls PC is perhaps the first game anywhere to have mouse deceleration.

I love the game, but the Dark Souls port genuinely set new records for shittiness.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:13 pm

So, I've had this intermittent game of Crusader Kings 2, where via a process that can only be described as some bullshit, I went from duke of Swabia to Byzantine Emperor like forty years into the game. Many NPCs died to accomplish that.

Currently, I'm in 1270 or so, and still the Emperor, having conquered large chunks of the balkans, retaken Anatolia, seized roughly half the provinces on the north coast of the black sea, and conquered a quarter or so of Spain. It's really the first game where I managed to become a Christian power of note. I declared war on the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde joined them, and I still fought them to enough of a stalemate to secure a white peace.

That being said, since I've got Agnatic-Cognative Primogenature, it's pretty much mathmatically inevitable I'll get a shitty ruler at some point and everything will go completely to hell.

Currently I'm contemplating what to do now. Europe is largely under the dominion of the HRE, excepting Byzantine/Muslim Spain and half of France, and while taking them on would be fun, I don't have a claim on them above the county level, so a war with them would bleed the armies of literally all the Catholics (I got Byzantium to become Catholic) dry and not give me anything in return. Spain has massive distance-to-capital penalties to my vassal's loyalties, so expanding there is problematic. I have very little idea how the Caliphates stack up against me, but probably attempting to find out would end in Mongols. Probably I should work on absorbing the remaining minor kingdoms around the Black Sea. At least, I should do that after my current ruler dies and the independance wars/succession crisis dies down, because that dude is pushing 60.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 5:43 am

I had a good moment today.

I was playing Red Dead Redemption, came onto a game where three guys were griefing a newbie, in addition to the other stuff happening.

I pitched in with the newbie. Got cussed at by the griefers. I said something to the tune "Play the game."

They immediately picked up on my accent. It's not like it's -that- strong or anything, but, yes, I do have a bit of Southern accent. So they immediately started up with "They have Internet down there?" "No, he must have moved!" "Can't blame him."

I don't get pissed off very often, but this somehow hit me. Now, I know a lot of the Den has a dim view of the South. But if you dare to presume that I'm an uneducated hick because I let "y'all" slip, fuck you. No, seriously, that is one of the most intellectually lazy and dehumanizing things you can possibly do. It's a bigotry that I try to fight whenever I can.

What it turned into, though, was glorious.

I turned up the Southern Gentlemen knob on the accent (think, say, Dennis Quaid playing Doc Holliday in that Wyatt Earp movie), and went wrath of god on them. I know the RDR game map forwards and backwards by now. I know a lot the nuances. These guys? They'd been playing a while. Still didn't know that the 5-shot sniper rifle is weaker than the single-shot one, despite the single-shot being acquired first.

Turns out there's a certain kind of person that can't stand having their ass kicked by someone they initially think is less skilled than them.

This kind of person goes absofuckinlutely wild when their opponent begins giving them lessons. Like...Use the Rolling Block over the Carcano. Dynamite is your friend. Characters run around uncontrollably when set on fire. The knife will kill you in two cuts. The American Standardbred is faster than the Zebra Donkey on roads. There's a gatling gun on a roof in El Matadero.

Meanwhile, we got enough stuff going the newbie got a level. So that was nice.

I don't get too many moments, but this one? This one was a good one.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 3:04 pm

I experienced a good moment lately, too.

While I did not get to beat down someones ass like Maxus did, I did manage to beat the ever-loving fuck out of Megaman X8. I not only kicked the ass out of the game, I also unlocked everything, found every upgrade and armor capsule, and generally beat the bitch out of everything Megaman. It was awesome.

Then I played Pokemon White in order to remind me what suffering feels like so that the feelings of greatness and sexual potency wouldn't go to my head.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Sep 13, 2012 1:46 am

Shrapnel wrote: Then I played Pokemon White in order to remind me what suffering feels like so that the feelings of greatness and sexual potency wouldn't go to my head.

This.

I mean, there are worse games, and I've played less enjoyable games, and there are other games I'd enjoy even less to the point that I didn't play them, but of all the Pokemon games, 5Gen actually feels like a punishment. Still, I've finished main plot (and will grudgingly give them a point for having Team ___ be vaguely interesting), I found all the Sages that aren't called Ghetsis, I've crossed all the damn bridges (B&W are set in totally-not-New-York. Apparently NY has no berries, but BRIDGES EVERYWHERE), I've captured Lightning-Dragon-Legendary, Ice-Dragon-Legendary, Flying-Lightning-Legendary and that thing in the cave.

There is not much left to do, thank fuck. And when I visit my sister this weekend I'll use her DS to upload some level 100 4Gen Legendaries across, and then beat Cynthia like she owes me money (and seeing as they pay you when you beat them...) And I have my Floatzel and Weavile. They are totally my favourites forever, though giant pink Ghost-Water jellyfish with Water Absorb, Leftovers, and Rain Dance|Shadow Ball|Surf|Scald is pretty awesome.

And then I will not buy B&W2. Or any future ones that don't have vast improvements, praised by people here.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Thu Sep 13, 2012 2:57 am

Guyr Adamantine wrote:Tell me about it. I got 24 mods on FNV, including Requiem For A Capital Wasteland, which gives Fallout 3 as playing ground. Its fucking awesome.

Where pray tell can you get Requiem For A Capital Wasteland these days? They pulled it from The Nexus over some kind of copyright legal bullshit. I'm 100 hours into Fallout: New Vegas with Project Nevada installed, and I wouldn't mind picking up Fallout 3 for the PC and replaying it with the New Vegas armor, weapons, and companions.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Thu Sep 13, 2012 4:06 am

Koumei wrote: (and will grudgingly give them a point for having Team ___ be vaguely interesting)

It loses any points from that for making it obvious that Zelda Ghestis of the Seven Sages of Hyrule Team Plasma is a villain manipulating the Legendary Hero Link N's plans from the start.

But what I find really funny is that the story should probably be called the Tragedy of Captain N (spoilered for length)

I mean, the people of Unova seem like they get off on Pokemon getting hurt (Mom: "I heard their cries from down here (excitedly, after your first battle with your annoying as fuck rivals,)" Professor Boobs Juniper: "People should be able to do anything with their Pokemon," and Random Pokemon Trainer: "We don't know what Pokemon are saying, so we don't know what they like or dislike.")

(Also Hideously Deformed Akuma Clone Alder is clearly a pedophile, and possibly another Pokemon Molester given that he stalks Annoying 5 Hour Monologue Rival Cheren everywhere and is obsessed with what he does and plans to do, and also seems wayyy too happy with you and Cheren beating the shit out of kindergarteners... that was the most fucked up thing ever, not the battle as much as how much Alder got off on it)

So N, this child prodigy, sees how fucked up this shithole Unova is and legitimately wants to improve it (if just for the sake of the Pokemon; I don't blame him for that, all the humans from Unova are assholes) by making sure the people of Unova don't have Pokemon to jerk off to beating the shit out of each other (now, his ideas are still stupid, but there have been games where you play a Trainer who steals Pokemon from bad people so they can't be used for bad things, or people who befriend wild Pokemon rather than capture them and focus their efforts on helping Pokemon out and now these are bad since it's not the player doing it, which is even stupider) and he tries to befriend you on the basic merit that you're a player character and can't talk your Pokemon actually seem to like you, and you don't seem to want to molest abuse them.

And then you beat the shit out of him, right after he's defeated the Champion and almost achieved his life's work, and then his father figure Ghestis appears and tells him he's a failure, and Team Plasma is a lie.

Then you beat the shit out of Ghestis, and Alder says to the guy who's literally just had his whole life ruined, "What do you think of Pokemon now?"

That is like the most dick thing ever to say to someone.

Basically you are complicit in completely destroying the one remotely decent (if just as annoying as all the other rambling, moralizing characters save Cheren, who is possibly the most annoying video game character ever and makes me want to kill whenever I hear him babble) human being in Unova.

Also, the super fucked up part where Annoying Companion #2 Bianca's father is concerned with letting his incompetent adolescent daughter wander around a world with wild Pokemon that do heavens knows what to people without Pokemon, and people that steal Pokemon from stupid Trainers, whom have stolen from her before, and he's made out to be bad and selfish for being concerned for his child's safety (then again, she did deserve to die for being so annoying.)

I mean, I can see where the "you need to tolerate everyone" message came from, but it comes off as Both Sides BS since pretty much everyone is an idiot with stupid ideas in the game.

And what was up with all the Gym Leaders having jobs, and making this to be such a big deal?

It just made them seem incompetent as Gym Leaders, not in any way more interesting.

Finally, I was pissed that I didn't get to be the Champion after finishing the main game.

I beat N, and he beat the former Champion, which means that he's current Champion, and so I should be the Champion, and get the fucking Hall of Fame.

But I don't get any fucking Hall of Fame or anything like that (not even a diploma.)

TL;DR: FUCK THIS GAME