The Whatever The Heck You're Playing At The Moment Thread

[dmauro]

As another selling point for Batman: Arkham Asylum, you spend most of the game beating up juggalos.

[isfet]

so i finally got around to renting Prototype

or rather, Blockbuster finally had a copy when i was there the other day.

so, i'm glad i rented it.  it's really not doing much for me in any of the ways i assume it should be.  the combat feels unsatisfying (though i'm a bit stuck up when it comes to beat'em up combat) and the freeroaming appears somewhat illusory.  it's cool, in theory, to run all over Manhattan with ridiculous powers, but i don't feel threatened by anything.  and there's no real punishment for being a jerk either.  i find myself just destroying stuff because the game makes me mad.

but, yea, not my cup of tea.


what i played of the new Batman game at Dave's convinced me that i'd probably buy it when it's $30.  if i loved Batman that much more, then i'd probably have it already.  but yea, pretty good fun.

[FortNinety]

I tried giving the Batman demo another shot earlier today, to understand why Dave and the rest of the world loves it to so much. And I must admit, the MGS-esque elements are pretty interesting, but otherwise, I still find the game to be a boring eyesore as before.

The combat is mostly "eh", due to everything being so stupidly float, though the wonky camera is the biggest culprit. Though the enemy's AI started to shine as I trudged forward, so maybe the later boss battles are lots of fun. But once again, I can't recall a game with such putrid art direction. As stupid as it sounds, if it had a slightly better coat of paint, I'd be willing to give it more of a chance.

Then again, maybe I just have bad taste, because another game that everyone seems to be jacking off to, Muramasa, is also equally annoying, which I'm trying my best to at least clear somewhat. Am on the final boss with the girl and dear God is the lack of a jump button really getting in the way of things.

[dhex]

mostly for scratchmonkey: diablo! diablo keeps fucking killing me. i'm up to level 32 and still getting whacked hard every time i try to go toe to toe. leaping in and out helps, but homeslice just keeps kicking my ass. (all my elemental resistances are at 75%, highest you can get on normal) running away from the chain lightning thing he does works out ok but every other attack he has is just total dickery.

the internet is no help in this regard, being all up on the "here's my level 99 barbarian who specialized in throwing pink javelins eastward" and other boutique builds.

[isfet]

oh, forgot to mention that i started a new game of Romancing SaGa on PS2.

i think the title of "favorite JRPG series" (by which i meant "only JRPG series i can really still enjoy") is something of a tossup between Shin Megami Tensei and the SaGa series.

i've spoken at some length before about my trek through the unabashedly bizarre Unlimited Saga, but Romancing SaGa is much more accessible to anyone.  or, at least it appears that way to me after playing Unlimited.

but the thing about SaGa games (in the Playstation era and beyond at least [never got to play the SNES games]), is that they're probably the only true "nonlinear" JRPGs in existence.  they're nonlinear in the way that Fallout is nonlinear.  there are certainly things you can do to advance the plot, but you aren't necessarily told "GO HERE" or forced to move in a straight path.  the lack of a level system also eliminates grinding to a large degree.  it's basically one of the only JRPG series i've played that doesn't immediately assume the player is a complete and utter moron.

sometimes it even assumes a bit too much of the player.  but that turns out to be a really good thing when you give the series enough of a chance.


anyway, i'm currently playing through as the prince who wears fairy wings for some reason.  i've recruited a big amazonian Norsewoman, a king and his knight and the acoustic-guitar-playing Bard who leaves and joins randomly but is an amazing attacker.

hoping i can get the pirate to join me soon.

[scratchmonkey]

mostly for scratchmonkey: diablo! diablo keeps fucking killing me.

Yeah, good luck. I guess they figured as the initial end-boss, Diablo hisself needed to be at ridiculous levels of powerful. The main thing with his attacks is to avoid the red-breath thing as it does ridiculous amounts of damage and I don't think any of the resists apply to it.

Generally, the strategy that I wind up using is placing a town portal fairly far away from him so that he can't Bone Prison it, making sure that you've got a fairly useful minion and having a lot of potions. It's one of those fights where you're probably going to be spending a lot of time hammering on the number keys so that you can keep yourself at a non-critical amount of health. Remember that you can use the Horadric Cube* to combine potions.

I imagine that when you finally do it, it will involve a lot of running back to town to resurrect your minion and buy more potions. At least that's how it goes for me.

* - You have quite a treasure there in that Horadric Cube.

[dhex]

i'm going to level up to 35 or 36 and then try him again. it's ruinous to keep dying like that.

right now i'm trying to figure out what other prereqs i need for whirlwind. i have a bunch of good weapons (dual wield) but i'm not sure if i want more mana/leech combos or to keep what i have now, which is a good main weapon and an off hand that drains mana and ignores target defense when striking.

i've used the hordradic cube to build perfect versions of all the gems and combine runes. am i missing out on something else, though? i.e. will 3 super potions make an ultra or something?

[scratchmonkey]

Here's a list of transmutations you can do with the Cube.

The most important one is that you can use 3 Health potions + 3 Mana potions + one chipped gem to make a rejuv potion and that 3 rejuv potions can be combined to be a full rejuvenation.

In terms of weapons, I'm not sure that mana stealing sounds that great unless that weapon has good damage to go with the ignore defense. Generally, you want to concentrate on maximizing damage above all else, especially as a barbarian.

[dhex]

because otherwise i run out of power for my double strike, which is my main attack. leap is my secondary attack as i don't have the prereqs for whirlwind yet.

am i doing something wrong?

[scratchmonkey]

Leap or Leap Attack? I'm assuming the latter, since the former doesn't do any damage in and of itself. So that involves a lot of running around trying to get the space necessary to leap into him, then running away again?

As for Double Swing, yeah, that sounds like a pretty bad skill, especially for use against Diablo. The main function of it is that you can hit multiple enemies at once. There's no damage bonus though, which means that it won't be that effective against a single enemy with a large amount of health who can hurt you faster than you can hurt it. The "money" skill for dual-wielding Barbarians is Frenzy, which is what I max out most of the time, along with points in the various Weapon Mastery skills for further pumping of damage.

Whirlwind might be helpful once you get it; I think you might be boned in that you won't be able to put enough ranks into it to make it really effective.

This highlights one of the issues that I have with Diablo II -- it introduces the skill trees to the game and while they seem pretty useful early on, once the game gets reasonably difficult, it becomes clear that certain skills aren't that useful and that spreading your points around isn't useful at all -- you really need to concentrate on creating a character around a "theme" that usually involves putting almost all of your skill points into a handful of skills and 1 skill into those that you might need for prerequisites. This is pretty much true across all of the classes.

[dhex]

dang.

on solo enemies it hits with both weapons. i'm mostly one or two hit killing everything in hell that's not diablo, really, minus some of the more annoying guardians of the gates or whatever they're called. i mostly use leap attack to run the fuck away from diablo rather than hitting him. maybe i should just try bashing his ass and circle strafing instead?

daaaaaaaang.

[dhex]

ok, gonna try to build up frenzy. we'll see how that goes.

i think i spent too many points (12) in swords mastery, maybe.

[isfet]

i really, really want Demon's Souls

but have no money until tonight at 1am

so uh, guess i have to wait for that.


in the interim, still playing Romancing SaGa.  i like how some quests turn out to be a lot...simpler, than a long-time RPG player might think.  for example, some guy asks for bodyguards to assist him into the catacombs of a city.  i was expecting the typical RPG-ish catacomb-ish dungeon crawl with some undead enemies.  but uh, no!  apparently once you get to the room, he just does some grave robbing and then you're done with the mission!

one might call that "lame," but i think it's actually rather interesting.

and while the game doesn't necessarily have a good/evil system, apparently doing certain missions will affect which other missions become available to you.  so if i kill so and so, i can't accept a mission from him later, etc. etc. 

good times!

[scratchmonkey]

ok, gonna try to build up frenzy. we'll see how that goes.

i think i spent too many points (12) in swords mastery, maybe.

So long as you're only using swords, that's fine. Most folks just max out one of the weapon skills and then stick to those weapons for the rest of the game.

You might want to try and see how Leap Attack works out, I'm not sure how many points you've put into it; it does a large amount of damage though. That said, I don't think it really works with dual-wield. It's more of a spear or polearm thing.

[FortNinety]

Been mostly playing lots of arcade titles on the 360, along with demos here and there..

First off, I simply cannot recommend this game enough: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025855031e/?bt=0&sb=1&mt=32&gu=66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025855031e&p=1&of=0

... It's by far the most polished, and most fun to play, indie game on the 360. Yes, even more so than Streets of Fury.

Kaiten Pastissier, another indie title from Japan, is also a nice little distraction, and costs only $1 to fully unlock. It's VERY much like a GBA game, which you'll see for yourselves.

I gave the demo for that Lucasarts sidescroller a spin for a bit... I forget the name. Wonderful graphics. But really boring.

Semi-related: anyone else give the demo for Brutal Legends a spin? It's... "eh". As expected. My hunch is that the final product will be just as vastly overrated as Psychonauts.

Also nabbed the demo of Wet. I kinda like it? Since it reminds me of Stranglehold. Though it's not as interesting, when you get down to it.

Then there's the new Need For Speed, which I like a lot. Aren't the people who make Project Gotham Racing behind this?

Though I'll get it when it's $10, cuz the only racer I want is DiRT2 based from it's demo. Among other things, it seriously has the most beautiful racing graphics that I've ever seen. I can't understand why more folks aren't making a stink about it.

Meanwhile, on the PS3, I just nabbed Critter Crunch. Was a BIG fan of the BREW and iPhone versions, and the console iteration is also a sight to behold. Too bad it's the kind of game that just works far better on a portable device.

Oh, and I got the Japanese demo of Bayonetta. I guess because of my SD set, I can't tell how bad it supposedly looks!