The Gaming Den

I played a rogue/mage.

Each combination gets its own special bonuses. All the variants of mage (pure mage, fighter-mage, thief-mage) get a short-ranged teleport to replace their dodge, for example (the rogue-mage even has it poison enemies!).

As for weapons, yeah, I ended up with daggers. The flurry of attacks, the frequent criticals (what's more, some combos just INCLUDE criticals) and the capacity to just END humanoid or giant enemies with a stealth-kill were very nice.

I've been using daggers the last couple hours and I have to agree with you. The fast attack speed is very nice. I've also assigned the fuck-off big hammer to my secondary slot, which has been amusing, at least. I'll probably end up using chakrams or scepters when I stop jackassing around with that.

I got Shovel Knight from a friend.

1) Awesome game. Very old-school platformer, but also beatable.

2) It seems like if you can find ways to chain hits on bosses, you'll run through the game in a hurry.

3) The bosses are very cool concepts, usually. The Plague Knight throws around alchemical potions, the Spectre Knight boomerangs a scythe, teleports, and summons undead.

4) Hail!

I got Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen.

Any advice/traps to watch out for? And how long is this game?

I just started Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky a couple weeks ago. It's pretty fun, but I just realized that finishing the series might be a bigger commitment than I realized.

http://i.imgur.com/zZT1SZR.jpg

Maxus wrote:I got Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen.

Me too, if months later. Climbing on things to stab them repeatedly in the back of the neck/head is good times, and seems like the sort of thing more games should do. Outside of QTEs I mean, because those don't count.

What amuses me is it was a key mechanic in Shadow of the Colossus. Hell, there were practically no other mechanics. SotC was pretty simple.

So this is like playing SotC after it got the budget they wanted.

Maxus wrote:I got Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen.

Any advice/traps to watch out for? And how long is this game?

Doing quests for npcs raises their affinity for you (as does giving them gifts, talking to them, and buying their items). Near the end of the main quest the npc who likes you most is kidnapped and automatically becomes your love interest, so if you're not careful then caxton the armor merchant gets grabbed up because he's mistaken your business for comely advances.

There's a guide or something for how to make sure you romance the npc you want to romance and don't end up accidentally making out with the jester.

Also making your pawn pretty/handsome/a cosplay means getting hired out more and that means more rift crystals for you.

I got Risk of Rain on Steam for Christmas.

The game is increasingly growing one. I now have four classes to choose from. My favorite so far is the Bandit, but I haven't sunk my teeth into the Engineer yet...

The engineer is amazing.

So I've gathered. And what's funny is on my only Engineer try so far, the game went "HERE! Have dynamite! And three drones! And a frost badge! And barbed wire! Now you are like unto an unassailable god!"

How do you play this game? I just die in like a minute and that's it. Biggest quality-adjusted waste of money this year.

So, i bought Anno 2070 the complete pack including all DLCs for less than 10 bucks on Steam yesterday . . Still not worth the money in my opinion.
This is less engaging/interesting and more boring than Civ and Sim City x.x

Starmaker wrote:How do you play this game? I just die in like a minute and that's it. Biggest quality-adjusted waste of money this year.

You wander the map (there's two or three layouts for each map--a couple of Dried Lakes, a couple of Desolate Forests, so on) to find the teleporter (which is pretty much randomly placed), killing enemies and getting items to get stronger so you can take on the 90-second Enemy Spawnathon at the end.

Since you start with the commando...you have to use terrain, keep enemies from getting to you. Most of the enemies early on can't jump a gap--but some can go up small hills--so you play hit-and-run and build up money to open chests to get your bonuses going. The exception are the Jellyfish, who are a pain in the ass. Also, the rapid-fire shot does good pushback. Likewise, the piercing shot will, well, take out a whole line of enemies.

You've got to know when to cut your losses and move on. I hear that five minutes a level a so is what to shoot for, but since you're just starting out...It might be worth trying to grab all the items so you know what's what. By all means, activate any drones you see. Some heal you, some attack enemies in various ways.

Also, the three starting bosses have their own difficulties but aren't hard once you know them. (Description and strategy below).

The Colossus is the easiest if the terrain's right, because he's slow and you can avoid the golems he summons and just plug at him from range.

The Vagrant--a giant Jellyfish--can't hurt you by touching you, but it can shoot these exploding orbs at you. Which you can avoid by moving a bit. With some drones, it goes faster but the biggest problem is finding time, what with enemy attacks, to dodge it.)

The third--the Magma Worm--is the toughest for the commando. It leaps from the ground and comes back down aiming at you. Its body is in segments and each segment can be hurt individually, but the commando doesn't have AoE attacks by himself so he can't exploit this, he just has to keep plugging at it as it jumps and falls. (There's an item which makes you lay dynamite around you location when you hurt an enemy, which you can detonate by using the item. This is great for the worm, use it if you find it).

Update on my own end: I have the Acrid.

I've been playing some Talisman Digital Edition. It's a decent way to kill time, but the AI is quirky and playing a few times made me realize how easy it is to snowball off of some early good look. They definitely need a way to cancel queued spells though: I accidentally missed queuing an Immobilize for the previous player's turn, forcing me to immobilize myself and crashing the game. I also suspect there is a bug with the magic portal and warlock quests: the magic portal put me on the Plains of Peril while I still had a quest running, and I don't know what would have happened if I'd completed a quest on the throne.

As I already said, the AI has some quirks. Their priorities for certain cards are a little messed up. Watching computer players duke it out for the Orb of Knowledge they never actually use is somewhat amusing. I also saw an AI Druid walk back and forth over the Mines and Vampire twice before finally deciding (too late) to advance to the Pit Fiends for a run on the throne. He sacrificed his Unicorn instead of his spare Guide to avoid life loss (when he had about four life remaining), then got scared of the Pit Fiends and ran back out to the middle region. He did something similar again later after bouncing back and forth between the Inner and Middle regions for no reason several times.

Oh, man. Did a multiplayer run on Risk of Rain. I played Engineer, my friend played Huntress.

We decided we were just going to clean out all the items in every level, however long that took.

Turns out it took well over an hour. We both got the Loader and Chef, I got the Huntress and Sniper, and he got the Miner, and we cleared many, many achievements in the process.

That was fun, rocking around with that much firepower and being even with the swarms of enemies coming after us.

I bought Talisman as well during this Steam sale. It's surprising to me how a game about small incremental improvements and randomized advancement can be so compelling.

I've played a bit with King of Dragon Pass (the PC version, I've heard it has recently been released on mobile phones) and it's quite fun and something I think some people here might enjoy.

It's set in Glorantha but it's far from heroics. You're a leader of a tribe, and you try to get it to survive and thrive. There's a whole lot about harvests but you can also trade or feud with other tribes, explore and all that stuff. Except in the winter. In the winter you just wait, or throw a feast if you can spare the cows.

What's interesting is that it really drive home that you're the leader of a bunch of farmers with a different set of morals and a different culture. A group of adventurers come into town? Better to send them away, we don't live strangers here, especially that kind. A peaceful duck population has settled not far from your tribe? Let's demand a payment for them. Someone from another tribe has insulted you? Let's pillage their lands, that'll teach them. But make sure everyone's back in time for the harvest.

Picked up Infinifactory a couple weeks ago, just finished it today. It's a puzzle game about designing factories in a minecraftish interface, by the maker of Spacechem. It's pretty short at the moment, about 10 or 12 hours without going too crazy with optimization, although it is early access and they've announced plans to add more puzzles before official release, plus there's steam workshop-hosted player-designed puzzles. I enjoyed it a lot - it's possible to brute-force through a lot of puzzles, but coming up with faster and less space-intensive solutions is interesting.

These are a couple gifs of finished levels - the gifmaker is built in to the game and grabs frame-perfect loops once you tell it how many outputs you make per loop, which is excellent. The first one isn't particularly optimized, but it uses no switches and no timers, so I'm pretty proud of it. The other one is pretty generic, not a particularly bad solution but not an especially good one either.

Maxus, thank you for letting me know via this thread that Risk of Rain is a thing. I don't really keep up with the times, and am a sucker for platforming rogue-likes, so for whatever it's worth you just made my day.

Nebuchadnezzar wrote:Maxus, thank you for letting me know via this thread that Risk of Rain is a thing. I don't really keep up with the times, and am a sucker for platforming rogue-likes, so for whatever it's worth you just made my day.

Well, this is a nice start to the day. Drop me a PM if you ever wanna give multiplayer a try and I'll see if I can still do okay on this game

So after about a week of having Dragonball Xenoverse, I can say it's better than I thought it was going to be. I got it for the multiplayer with some buddies.

It's probably as close as a game can come to the Dragonball experience (not Arkham Asylum-close-to-Batman, but similar).

So the premise is there's a Kai who guards the timeline against disruptions. So there's a bunch of warriors who are from a bunch of different timelines who try to keep it straightened out, and making sure existing branches are self-contained.

THis being Dragonball, you do this by fighting stuff.

Gameplay is actually semi-freeroam. You have an area, but you can freely move around that area, flying, moving up and down, etc. Battles are wide-ranging and 3D, which I like.

Moves are more than just reskinned effects. Vegeta's Galick Gun is useful for one situation, Frieza's Death Beam is useful for another, and Ginyu's Milky Cannon (I hate that name) is surprisingly useful because it makes large spherical blast and can act like a landmine. Good for hurting bunched-up groups, which is a thing in this game.

It's also got a bit of an RPG element to it--you level up, put points in stats, you can also buy/earn costumes which have stat modifiers. You can also apprentice to various DBZ characters to learn some of their moves and earn a couple of items to make them more powerful.

The main two gripes are have is how it tries to put you in online mode, trying to connect multiple times, even if you opt to tell it not to. Second, I dislike the grind you have to do to get good stuff, even get dragonballs.

See, past a certain point you'll see other PC characters around. These can show up on side missions. If you talk to them, they'll want to fight and you have a chance to get a dragonball (a key item, it calls it) when you win. You still have to beat the sidequest to get it. It can get grindy, trying to make these guys spawn and hoping you get a dragonball. Also, certain skills or items only show up on particular side missions, and they may only drop in particular circumstances. SO HAVE FUN WITH THAT.

Anyway, if you're a Dragonball fan, or got the buddies and controllers to play it with, and you see a tall Frieza race (they also need to name those damn things) with a blue headplate, going by the name of Snoh, well, that's my dude. I hope he drops a dragonball for you.

I just played Starcraft 2, Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. I got them for like $10 each on a special one-day Amazon sale.

Why is this setting not in other games? It's such a great setting, and it's a shame that the only place where I get to see it is in Campaign missions for an otherwise tedious MP RTS.

K wrote:I just played Starcraft 2, Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. I got them for like $10 each on a special one-day Amazon sale.

Why is this setting not in other games? It's such a great setting, and it's a shame that the only place where I get to see it is in Campaign missions for an otherwise tedious MP RTS.

FWIW I've generally enjoyed the novels and comics attached to it, too.

Some of them have been... tedious. But the ones involving Nova were pretty cool. I'm a little sad that they never really explored that more, considering they had put so much effort into building her up.

Just finished Watch_Dogs, and it's pretty great. It has horrible, horrible, optimization problems, but I really enjoyed the story and the hacking mechanic was really fun, if somewhat limited. The driving was really enjoyable to me. Pro tip, if you want to get somwhere fast, use a motorcycle, otherwise it'll be impossible to navigate ythe streets what with the AI not knowing how trafic laws work (seriously, you can't predict them, use a motorcycle so at least you can manuver around them easily).