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An update on my hacked WoW account situation while I'm waiting for the privacy guys to get back about closing the account...
OH THANK GOD. I WAS SO WORRIED ABOUT THAT CURED HAM STEAK. MY PANTS ARE FULL OF RELIEF.
I got one for my main too, but only on that server (granted it was the only one I had an 85 on and he probably thought the alt was a mule with valuables) and I don't remember what the hell the shit on that list even is, much less what was actually on him.
I was half expecting to look at the list and see my old buddy the Corrupted Egg Shell I raided with for a while and kept around for novelty. It's like the only piece of gear I remember because it was so hilariously awful and it took me so long to replace it. When the raid leader asked me and the other healer to link our trinkets for an upgrade, his exact words upon seeing that fucking eggshell were "oh dear God" and I got the new piece without discussion.
HOLY SHIT XCOM ENEMY UNKNOWN IS $14! http://store.steampowered.com/app/200510/
http://www.siliconera.com/2013/05/13/heres-if-my-heart-had-wings-from-new-visual-novel-publisher-moenovel/
TL;DR: the visual novel If My Heart Had Wings is apparently poised appear on Steam.
h/t to Ataru at the Carpe Fulgur forums
So I just watched some recent Game Overthinker episodes, and...
...what happened to the Game Overthinker of the first twenty-something episodes? What happened to my straight-up, serious commentary? Why the Zelda fairy, why the WhateverThinker characters, why the ham-handed plots? Just give me serious commentary on the game industry already, please!
Linkara, there's your answer.
Needle Man. I've said it once, I'll say it again.
Fuck wrong dat nigga's hitbox?
Cthulhu Saves the World, Insane Mode complete, all bonus bosses.
If you spec Umi for melee, she is a fucking monster by the end of the game. During the last couple bosses she'd buff up, then lay a 12k/turn poison, trigger insanity, and start throwing 30k Slow Strikes almost as strong as the unite combo finisher would hit at the end. For perspective, if you count her two turns for self-buffs, this will likely kill any single boss in the game in three hits, regardless of anyone else's damage. If you ever try Highlander mode or something, use her to kill the last several bosses. I'm so serious.
Astral Cave was easy save a few overpowered encounters -- the boss was a total wuss. Soulcaster was pretty much a no-go until after I killed the final boss and put the last several levels I got into HP, which nearly doubled what I had at the beginning of R'yleh because I dicked around on the last floor for about two levels trying to figure out how to get to a chest. Once I got past the blind luck of taking down the first one, it was kind of a snore.
You know, I've been thinking. What exactly is good game design? Is a game with good design always going to be received well, and a game received well always having a good design? I'm asking 'cause I'm curious of the relation between design and reception.
There's not always any correlation. Excellently designed games fall by the wayside all the time because of awful/no marketing, and shit games get hyped to hell and break market records constantly.
That, and "received well" doesn't always mean much in a world where most of the reviewers have political ties to the companies they're reviewing.
I recently remembered that I never finished the campaign of Frozen Synapse. Going back to it, I now remember why:
How the hell do you beat level 20 (Ninstar, second floor)? That mission is unfair. Hold out for 10 turns (50 seconds of in-game time) while outnumbered by Enyo:Nomad (who keep bringing in reinforcements), while also dealing with a bullshit instant-loss condition. Still have units when an E:N unit enters the perimeter? You lose. Still have all of your units, inside the perimeter? You still lose. E:N unit steps inside the perimeter, but dies immediately? You. Lose. Because. Fuck. You.
Funnily enough, I said "received" to avoid confusion, and I got exactly the confusion that I wanted to avoid. I meant the player reception, not how well the game sells, or how positive the reviews are. I pretty much know of all that you have said.
So, to put it in different terms: if the significant majority of those who've played the game enjoy it, does it mean it was well-designed, and if it was designed well, does it mean the same the other way round?
My issue is that all the talk about game design you have in here seems to be about the gameplay and game mechanics. So let's say I've enjoyed a certain game a lot, I know plenty of people have so as well. I've heard the game was poorly designed, because its mechanics weren't in line with the good ending (the message, if you wish) - for sake of the discussion, let's consider an example of a sport game with an extensive cheating system, in which you get the good ending when you play fair all the time. So I wonder if and how the game design is necessary, because the game was well-received, in spite of what's been called poor game design.
Winning a boss battle with one HP left every time.
It's okay, you can just say Cave Story. Typically, that's referred to as the one black mark on an otherwise very well-done game.
The sports game with cheating (say, NFL Blitz or something) clearly telling you that not doing it will get you a better long-term reward while not particularly penalizing you in the short term for doing it anyway would probably be fine, though it would feel weird from a developmental standpoint -- at the very least, as long as cheating doesn't, say, kill off most of your team two hours later for narratively bullshit reasons. Typically though those games are meant more as goof-off party games rather than single-player storytelling, and gratuitous cheating would be quite in line with that.
Well that would explain why my first GM put our party into near-death scenarios every single battle.
Not necessarily endorsing this btw.
What exactly do you mean by this? Should it be the player's first try? After ten tries? Should it require this much skill even after learning the boss's patterns? Should a boss be fully dodgeable?
I was being somewhat facetious. Although it's true that, generally speaking, difficulty and balance are some of the more difficult elements of game design.
@ Bee: Not Cave Story, but you're pretty close. Iji. I can see some faults in the mechanics - the pacifist route could see more use for hacking skill, and violent route doesn't allow for enough gratuitous violence (I couldn't max all the combat skills early enough) - but as I played, none of these did bother me that much. Huh. Perhaps it's one of these moments where inside knowledge spoils the fun.
Or, you know, it's that I'm just the kind of player who disregards mechanics, as long as other elements (plot, music, bloodshed) are of acceptable quality. The fact that I enjoyed Mass Effect best at low difficulty, which is exactly opposite to Alex's definition of good game design ("winning a boss battle with one HP left every time"), and generally enjoy combat in games best when I can freely blast the bad guys to pieces, seems to support this conclusion.
Something that bugs me about "pacifist" routes in certain games is how you're sometimes forced to do things like, for example, having enemies get eaten by cockroaches.
Pun not originally intended.
God help me, valve has added trading cards to steam.
I beat the Ivory Lagiacrus, and effectively finished High-Rank.
Maybe I just got lucky, maybe it wasn't as aggressive as it should have been, maybe it didn't spam that lightning AOE as much as it should have, or maybe it's because I was using the Dios+ Switch Axe, but it was way easier than what Alex described. I'd rather fight that than even a regular Lagiacrus any day.
Regular Ivory Lagiacrus is a cakewalk, but that AoE lightning attack (both of them, in fact) is possibly the worst thing when you're under more severe limitations. Like in Mark of a Hero, where after defeating an I.Lagi that deals G-Rank damage, you still have to fight two more monsters. Or, as I hear, in the recent event quest. I.Lagi's lightning AoE attacks annoy me, though, because there's no way out of them once they start up if you can't block. Only a really limited set of monsters in the game have abilities like that, and of them, only Stygian Zinogre is really a good fight. So I.Lagi can just decide to randomly punish you for nothing at a moment's notice with no way out, use up your resources, and waste a bunch of time.
In similar news, G-Rank Jho is down. As is Dire Miralis and Alatreon. Gold Rathian and Silver Rathalos are also kaput. Even when they were in the same mission. Hallowed Jhen Mohran successfully repelled. Now I just have to defeat Lucent Nargacuga, and two Jhos in the Arena.
Playin some games I never had the opportunity to play as a kid. Starting with Street of Rage 2, fuking Jagi looking mother fukkers.
Man, that R. Bear.
Fuck that guy.
What next?
* Recettear
* Ys Origin: Hugo mode
* Ys Origin: Toal mode
* La-Mulana
* something else from here: http://backloggery.com/glennmagusharvey
^^ ^^^
Funny, the enemy naming in SOR 2 used names from mangas like Fist of the North Star and Berserk. One guy's called Heart while another one's called Souther.
I've noticed, someone there must've been a fan of those mangas.
You're not going to get very far away only veering by one degree. Unless you're like, miles from it.
I was going to post just that, but I guess the joke is somewhere in there.
The joke is, people who don't know math tried to make fun of the 360 when it came out, by saying the same thing nohay did but with "One" replaced by "360".
And, of course, you'll have a better chance walking away if you turn one degree than if you turn 360, so...