The Gaming Den

Oh, that makes sense.

But now I just want threesome romance options.

Prak wrote:Oh, that makes sense.

But now I just want threesome romance options.

Alas, Morrigan will not participate in the three-or-foursome opportunity. For a topless witch, she's kind of uptight.

That's why Morrigan Aensland is far superior. She knows how to have fun.

Shrapnel wrote:That's why Morrigan Aensland is far superior. She knows how to have fun.

Exactly. Dark Stalkers Morrigan is best Morrigan.

FFXV: Went camping and Gladiolus told Noctis to wake up early to pick a rare flower that only blooms at dawn.

This game has everything

I got the Last Guardian for my birthday.

THis game.

This game is gorgeous.

The puzzles can be awkward, but that's more because of the Shadow of Colossus controls/movement. You take a moment to start running and the general motion feels a little imprecise, like you're puppeting the character instead of perfectly controlling it.

And then you have the fact that your buddy is a ginormous...thing...and it's got its own AI and what it orients onto. They do make it feel majestic and incredible, while still making it recognizeably an animal. I found a shallow pool of water and the Big Guy rolled around in it. You can pet him, and if you do it to his face, he leans into it like a dog.

We'll see about story and gameplay, but the atmosphere and graphics are top grade here

The only thing I know about Morrigan from Darkstalkers is that a former roommate was obsessed with her and I hate that guy. There are a lot of things I hate because people I hate likes them.

Hey what's the news on FF15? I refuse to believe game sites and mags about the game cause the shit that is ff13+. It would be nice if they found their way back to making good games

I have not played it, and I really haven't seen anything that's given me a definitive impression on it, but from what I have seen I strongly suspect that it's in FF8 territory - it's not going to go down as one of the greats, but it's a playable big budget JRPG that has Final Fantasy in the title. I suggest watching youtube videos of the combat to see if it's up your alley, and then asking yourself if you're willing to follow a drugged up Japanese developer down a rabbit hole of JRPG tropes and plot holes.

Ultimately, I'm willing to bet there's enough good parts in FFXV's story to make you wish the bad parts weren't there, and I find those sorts of games can be fun for what they are. If I saw something that sold me on the combat mechanics, I'd give it a shot - but I just haven't done the research and more importantly it's not on PC so who gives a shit anyway.

I've played quite a bit of FFXV, and watched my girlfriend play considerably more. It's solid, though it certainly could be better.

It's absolutely great-looking as a game, which is nice (especially for women who like bishi guys, since all of the principle characters are dudes). There's a lot of quest variety to keep you busy and even the minigames aren't bad and provide real benefits. Combat's a bit wonky and involves a lot of crazy dancing around which conflicts with the game's shifting camera in frustrating ways - it is quite common to have trees between the camera and you and a monster while fighting, so you're hacking away blind. The dungeon system is also kind of frustrating, as you have to try and find your way to the boss without taking too many hits to your health - max HP drops continually in dungeons - so that the boss becomes impossible. Overall the combat has some great moments - dropping a high-powered spell to one-shot a hold platoon of magitek goons is great - but a lot of wonky-ness and I'm not sure how well it functions in the endgame.

Story-wise, well... there's two kinds of FFXV players, those who found a way to watch Kingsglaive and those who have not. For those who have seen kingsglaive, it's a story that (so far, not done by any means) hews pretty close to JRPG tropes and final fantasy ones in particular. For those who haven't seen kingsglaive, you'll have no idea what the heck is going on. In fairness though, this game is much more open world than a typical final fantasy. The vast majority of time is sucked up by side quests of all kinds, hunts, finding cool parts to trick out your car, even fishing, compared to the story parts.

Bottom Line: don't buy a PS4 for FFXV, but if you've got one and have any tolerance for JRPGs at all it's a solid pick. Also, even though kingsglaive is kinda dumb, it's very pretty and has some pretty sweet action set pieces (and a bunch of Game of Thrones actors doing voice overs, Sean Bean gets to die again as a fantasy noble) so you should probably watch it if you're going to play this game.

Combat looks wonky (thanks to a janky camera and shit UI), the story is hilariously absent most of the time, and doesn't make much sense when it does show up (in the form of a blind japanese ideal-woman stereotype) to send the boy band off in a new and completely unrelated direction.

If for some explicable reason you like the janky combat and absolutely love grinding sidequests, this is the FF for you.

But it is pretty.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:The only thing I know about Morrigan from Darkstalkers is that a former roommate was obsessed with her and I hate that guy. There are a lot of things I hate because people I hate likes them.

All you need to know about Morrigan from Darkstalkers is a Google Image Search of "Morrigan Darkstalkers"

I'll keep that in mind in case I forget about tits and need two fat reminders.

I actually played the 1st darkstalkers arcade game, I used to play Lord Raptor and was pretty good at it. So I guess it's more accurate to say I am aware of Morrigan I just haven't read the terrible fanfiction about the character that Capcom puts out (Fun fact: I didn't remember Lord Raptor's name so I had to google it, and I read just enough about him on a Capcom wiki to tell I didn't want to read anything else because it was terrible in every way).

I know nothing about Darkstalkers except for the existence of its infamous boob demon. I am incredibly disappointed to learn that Lord Raptor is not some kind of velociraptor aristocrat.

I seem to remember it as a fun game with lots of colorful characters based on different monsters. I seem to remember the second one having a hopping vampire with a boob window and a giant predatory wasp that just looked like a hot chick with big hooters as a lure.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:So I guess it's more accurate to say I am aware of Morrigan I just haven't read the terrible fanfiction about the character that Capcom puts out (Fun fact: I didn't remember Lord Raptor's name so I had to google it, and I read just enough about him on a Capcom wiki to tell I didn't want to read anything else because it was terrible in every way).

If it's put out by Capcom, and it's official, canon material, wouldn't it be terrible official fiction?

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I seem to remember it as a fun game with lots of colorful characters based on different monsters. I seem to remember the second one having a hopping vampire with a boob window and a giant predatory wasp that just looked like a hot chick with big hooters as a lure.

There's also a character that looks like an innocent Red Riding Hood and indeed has no supernatural powers but her basket is packed with guns/knifes and turns out she's a professional monster hunter.

One of her ultimates summons a bunch of hunters to pump out the dakka. One of her victory poses is being paid in cash by some guy in a suit.

Shrapnel wrote:

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:So I guess it's more accurate to say I am aware of Morrigan I just haven't read the terrible fanfiction about the character that Capcom puts out (Fun fact: I didn't remember Lord Raptor's name so I had to google it, and I read just enough about him on a Capcom wiki to tell I didn't want to read anything else because it was terrible in every way).

If it's put out by Capcom, and it's official, canon material, wouldn't it be terrible official fiction?

A valid point. I was more implying the quality of the writing was awful like a fanfiction.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:So I guess it's more accurate to say I am aware of Morrigan I just haven't read the terrible fanfiction about the character that Capcom puts out (Fun fact: I didn't remember Lord Raptor's name so I had to google it, and I read just enough about him on a Capcom wiki to tell I didn't want to read anything else because it was terrible in every way).

If it's put out by Capcom, and it's official, canon material, wouldn't it be terrible official fiction?

A valid point. I was more implying the quality of the writing was awful like a fanfiction.

Eh. Fanfics tend to vary wildly in quality. But I can think of far too many that outdo the original authors/creators by a mile. (Especially for Ranma 1/2 and Harry Potter)

Hell, sometimes Fanficiton becomes official like with Blaster Master.

FFXV combat is solid, tilting the movement in different directions also changes the attack you use and every weapon has a 'finishing move' of sorts via attacking at the right timing. Different weapons have different feels to them so most of the time it's preference but most enemies are weak to a weapon you have on hand. The armiger that really stood out to me was the giant shuriken. The game doesn't really teach you this in any tutorials though.

It can get pretty chaotic with 3 additional party members and fighting a horde of foes, especially if you're indoors. Unfortunate as the combat feels nice in 1 on 1 fights but there's so few instances of that in the game.


I was surprised that friendly fire happens with magic casting first time I cast ice was at point blank range and it left everyone staggering around covered in frost.

NieR Automata Demo

Dang the combat is super duper meaty and smooth like a deliciously marinated steak. One heck of a demo ending too.


Let It Die is also a fun roguelike where you scavenge weapons and armor that break over time and dead characters become enemies to fight.

In preparation for the encroaching nuclear apocalypse, I picked up the Mad Max game on Steam. Not Fury Road, the one not based on any specific movie.

(no, not REALLY in preparation)

I'm actually kinda impressed. It reminds me of Shadows of Mordor in how the progression goes--at first you play extremely sneaky and conservatively, once you have the resources rolling you're more bold, and I imagine by the time I reach the end I'll be a god among the wasteland, bringing wrath down on the enemies.

I usually don't enjoy the driving in a video game, but between the relative lack of traffic and the sound/visuals to make you feel like you're going fast, I dig the vehicular combat in this one. Ground combat is that Batman: Arkham system without the mobility, so again it's rather similar to Shadows of Mordor.

But it feels good to build up things and progress. It's a good game to play when you have some time to kill and want to dink around--you can pick a goal or quest and play for twenty or thirty minutes and do it, and save the big missions for when you have more time/inclination.

I've been playing a lot of Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal. It's a tower defense game, except that it's actually pretty fun. You have to fight against this implacable purple blob called the Creeper. The Creeper's dynamics appear to run off some sort of cellular automata, which is neat.

RPS did a recent retrospective, which is why I bought it: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/1 ... t-monster/
It's currently less than five dollars on Steam. I've played it for about ten hours, and I seem to be about a third of the way through the campaign. There's also a lot of standalone missions. The first few missions are pretty slow, but things eventually get a bit more complex. The campaign still has not introduced every unit, so I am sure things will get yet more complex still.

In pretty much every level, you build up a base and clear enough of the map to destroy the Creeper emitter(s). But there's a decent amount of variety in the setup. Some maps are composed of disconnected asteroids, and you have to island-jump between them. Other maps have a lot of debris that blocks your towers' line of sight. You can clear away the debris or use it as the basis for defensive fortifications using terraforming. The levels do the fun thing where you have to solve a lot of small problems, and in the process you create a sprawling impregnable defense structure.

The game is not fancy looking by any means, but it does a good job with information presentation. Even when you have more than a dozen units of varying types in a small space, the action remains legible. The in-game instructions are not always the clearest, though. My suspicion is that the developer is not a native English speaker.

The game's concept is pretty neat: Billions of years in the future, you are the last human in the universe. The Creeper has consumed all civilizations. So you're fighting against the Creeper and trying to figure out if there is anything left you can do. Eerie and evocative. The actual storytelling suffers from all the issues that afflict the stories of strategy games.

The main issue I have so far is that individual levels don't really surprise you. When you start out, you might have a few close calls, and resource scarcity is a major issue. But it usually doesn't take all that long to get a base that more or less take care of itself. And then you can just build up your economy bit by bit and slowly push out the creeper. There's usually a point in a mission by which you have basically no chance of losing. But the game still requires you to grind to the end for another five or ten minutes. Not great.

Stellaris 1.5 Banks update looks like it's gonna be massive.
New Mechanics, new Ressources, new Ethics and the such.
Finer Control over population groups. Also Orbital Habitats.
It looks like you can play space hitler or space ghandi o.O