What games are you currently playing?

[Armando]

The Rick Roll used to weasel its way into everything, then it finally jumped the shark and busted up a Thanksgiving Day Parade and it wasn't cool to Rick Roll anything after that. Rick Astley took matters into his own hands while bronies jump the shark for the TV show.

That's the opposite of what's going on here

"The world needs more Bronies" --John de Lancie


--Lauren Faust

John De Lancie was bothered enough by the bad rep Fox news and similar outlets have given Bronies that he Kickstartered a documentary on BronyCon just to set the record straight (Tara and Faust joined in when they heard about it.) Tara's stated a couple of times that bronies are her favorite fandom, and she called out Howard Stern on Twitter over similar bullshit. One of the younger VAs is a talented singer/musician and has collaborated with a certain brony musician on a couple of songs. Many other cast members interact with the fans on Twitter.

Even Steve Blum is OK with this:


If nearly doubling Notch's donations in Humble Bundles and showing off an indie fighter at Evo is considered jumping the shark, I'd like to know what you consider the state of other fandoms to be.

[Icemage]

It's been quite a while since I last played. I'm not sure which moves you're thinking of, I can't remember any with huge wind-ups. I'm thinking of Thunder Surge and Fire Surge, the ones that send you dashing forward covered in a wheel of elemental magic. Unlike Shoryukens you were pretty much safe for the whole duration of those two move. Back when the game was still recent, the only reliable strategy I'd seen or found to deal with Unknown was to cheese it to death with surge moves. It basically subverts the entire combat system. Vanitas at least let you put up a real fight, even if the constant dodging was bullshit.

Fire/Thunder Surge are a bit OP, but they're also relatively low-damage moves. They also only have a relatively small amount of invincibility frames; the reason people use them on the optional bosses is because they're quick triggers with a fair amount of built-in safety if you make a mistake and they're forward movement attacks (again, not unlike a Shoryuken). You can't spam them against those bosses or they'll hit you when you come out of the animation. They're only safe when used as a counter against either boss.

I think you're being a little too hyper-critical of the combat system based on the extreme examples of hidden bosses. I agree that the constant dodging that's necessary for some fights was pretty stupid, but it's not a huge deal-breaker, and it's still a thousand times better than Crisis Core's "let me mash one button to win as long as I set the right materia" combat. KH makes no apologies for the fact that it's a kid-centric game, so it's a bit unrealistic to expect it to be a deep brawler; that it even has challenging boss battles that actually do require skill and reflexes speaks volumes about the relative quality of the combat, IMO.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Also, more trolly goodness;

[Nestama]

Well, Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance arrived today, so naturally I'm still playing Theatrhythm.

[DakAttack]

I went on an adventure with a friend in DayZ, yesterday. We located each other somewhere east of Elektro, and made our way to the old fire station north of it. We found a paltry amount of ammo and food, so we continued north under the power lines from the nearby power plant. At the edge of the woods, beneath the power lines, we found two tents filled to the brim with goodies. We took our time robbing them of blood bags, food, water, weapons, and ammo. It was exciting to know I was finally participating in the game.

Anyways, we continued to one of my favorite locations, the barn north of Elektro. There we just happened to find tons of ammo for the gun we had just stolen, and we were looking through our inventories when a bandit busted in with a trail of zombies. He dropped my friend with a round from an Enfield, and I dropped him with a round from mine. He was unconscious, so I finished him off and tended to my friend's wounds. The bandit had a bunch of nice stuff.

So we're done with the barn, and feeling pretty good about killing a bandit. Well, I am. My friend is angry he got knocked out with a single bullet, but we're playing on an Expert server. We decide to head into the center of Elektro to see what kind of trouble we can stir up. We come to the edge and there are about a dozen zombies ambling around down a hill, near small market shop. Since I've got tons of ammo I open fire and we begin dropping zombies one by one as they realize we're there. This is probably what lead to our eventual downfall. With the field clear, we continue down the hill and into the market. We're checking out the contents on the floor when my friend drops again. This time he's dead for good. I turn around and see somebody standing in the doorway, and I go down. I'm not dead, but I'm close to it and bleeding out. I wait until the unconscious timer is up and attempt to bandage myself to stem the bleeding. As I'm doing that, I'm looking for the guy who shot us, and I realize he's dead on the ground outside, being eaten by zombies. The bandaging completes with a sliver of health left, but for some reason I die anyways. Terrible, but still pretty fucking fun.

[Armando]

Fire/Thunder Surge are a bit OP, but they're also relatively low-damage moves.

Only relative to the super-high-end moves that never work against end bosses and are OP themselves when they do work.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the blemishes the game has are dealbreakers. It's just that the game is hit-or-miss in a lot of things. It's impossible to predict if a given attack will work against a boss at all, unless it's extremely basic. Even things like Seeker Mines (which are also OP) start to fail against the end bosses. Enfeebles are hit-or-miss. When you finally find an attack that works, they don't stop you from putting 6 of it in your deck. And if you're really terrible, you can just put 8 cures and never die.

Again, none of that is a dealbreaker but I like it when games don't start to fall apart as you get better at them. I'd still play it all over again despite those flaws, and it's still my favorite KH.

[Taskmage]

Knew what was going to happen, obviously, but still made me jump because FUCKING LOUD. Thumbs down.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Still not scarier than a cliff racer.

[Firewind]

I looked over the last couple of pages and people are still bugged by ponies?

[Malacite]

Knew what was going to happen, obviously, but still made me jump because FUCKING LOUD. Thumbs down.

It's funnier in the 2nd video.

Ah SCP-173, he just wants a hug

[DakAttack]

I looked over the last couple of pages and people are still bugged by ponies?

If you decorate your cubicle with brony plushies, framed pictures, and the like, my impression is: this man is going to talk to me about a children's cartoon. Everything he says will somehow relate to it. His breath will smell like it. Regardless of the work he's doing, he's probably thinking about it. Oh, hey there's a guy I know who's not going to talk to me about My Little Pony. I'll go talk to him.

[Firewind]

What if the guy who won't talk about My Little Pony has pictures of someone steamrolling a box of kittens?

[DakAttack]

Then I wouldn't talk to him. He's probably crazy as shit.

[Icemage]

Can we scuttle the brony discussion back into the MLP thread? It really doesn't belong anywhere in this topic.

---

Finished off a bunch of tasks in MK9 for PS Vita (all tower and bonus tower challenges, arcade ladder on Expert with no retries). I'm not really liking the game mechanics enough to bother playing online; the hitboxes on this version are just as flaky as the ones on PS360, and sometimes move priority makes no sense.

Picked up Malicious on PSN as well as Dyad.

Malicious is a moderately pretty third person brawler with some interesting mechanics, slightly weird hit detection, and bosses that are very challenging. It's also a very short game, consisting of what appears to be half a dozen levels. Not sure what to make of it really. The rank and file enemies aren't much of a problem, but the boss in each level is really difficult and it's going to take a little trial and error to figure out how to tackle each one.

Dyad is trippy. Dozens of levels which superficially look like Tempest on acid, but each one has different game rules and looks and plays differently from all the others. Definitely a unique and cool game. I'm slooowly working my way through the levels. It plays a bit like Rez had a head-on collision with AudioSurf with psychedelic visuals.


Icemage

[DakAttack]

I played some more DayZ, but solo. The Expert difficulty servers have all the best loot, so I've been ranging between two high-value barns to collect from the four military locations between them. I found an AK47 Kobra and AK47su in a single location, each with their own supply of ammo. Since you can only have one weapon, I grabbed the Kobra and both piles of ammo. It's pretty sweet, but now the dilemma is: what do I do with it? I know I'm not properly prepared for any future injuries, so I'm thinking my next move should be raiding a hospital. The problem there is that there's only one that I know of, and it's in the middle of Chernogorsk, a hot spot for zombies and players alike. I'll be risking injury just to find supplies to heal injuries.