I want to see dat hardcore XXX clipping

Just had a flashback to a screenshot from one of those "adults only" sex mods for Skyrim...

The two Khajits' tails were clipping

I thought you might have been talking about Schlongs of Skyrim.

That quote is hilarious. Sex might provide a justification for Geralt to pursue her, but that guy is claiming that showing us a sex scene will make the player want to. Besides, from what I've heard of the game, this Geralt chap sleeps with anything with two legs that walks, yet for some reason I should care about his 639th sex partner?

Snap... is that BP the one at the end of 4-2 that people apparently farm a lot for souls too?

I feel like these will be a bitch too:
MARROWSTONE
MOONLIGHTSTONE
DARKMOONSTONE
FAINTSTONE

I've got Second Chance already actually. That and Curse Weapon have been my choices for awhile now, good stuff. I'd like to get Warding in the rotation now too. I've got STR at 50 and VIT at 40 now so I'm focusing a bit more on other stuff.

Actually yeah that's the one, and the one I was thinking of isn't even a BP, now that I remember, just a regular black skeleton. The one I farmed for my pure bladestone was this non-BP black skelly that's on that cliff at the end of that hidden passage, before where the crystal lizard is.


The last three aren't so bad, you can farm the crystal lizards in world 5 (faintstone) and 3 (moonlightstone/darkmoonstone). You're SOL if no pure drops from them though, so make sure you get PBWT to maximize the quality of drops. Marrowstone and cloudstone are the worst though. I never bothered farming them, I don't even know how I ever got enough chunks (at least the pures are free as loot) even by playing the game a lot. I think they were the very last two trophies I got, and I had totally forgotten about them when they dinged. I just wanted a fatal estoc since they seemed useful in PvP (it wasn't) and a dark shield because I figured it'd be nice on a low str character that can't use the dark silver shield (it wasn't, either -- better to raise str at 16 than use these crappy shields).

tl;dr if you're actually farming those drops solely for the trophy, you're a sucker and I you

Seems I've got that JRPG itch again! Usually I just end up playing through FFIX again, but this time I'm gonna try Suikoden II.
Edit: I'm in love.

Exactly! That was my first thought when I read this (although the original Guardian article is a tiny bit more, erm, in-depth) - the notion of using sex to establish some kind of connection between characters isn't entirely invalid, but it's ludicrous in this context. I mean, it's genuinely difficult to avoid sex with NPCs in the first two games; I remember being surprised on a pretty regular basis when seemingly harmless dialogue options led to a hilarious bodice-ripping cut-scene. Hell, there's at least one side quest that can only be advanced if you do! All of a sudden it's meant to signify an emotional connection of cosmic significance?

Granted, they seem to be referring more to after-the-act intimacy rather than the act itself as a way of demonstrating the bond between characters, but even that is superfluous. If you've played TW2, you'll already be aware of the relationship between the two (through something at least resembling story-driven moments); if you're new to the series, this will just be yet another game in which the motivation for the protagonist's overarching personal quest is chasing after someone to whom he or she has an emotional bond. It's hardly a novel storyline, nor is it difficult to empathise with; I doubt anyone needs to be hit over the head with the sex stick to get it. Any emotional heft will most likely only ever come from playing the game for a while anyway; you can't force that sort of thing right at the start.

You mean with the vampire prostitute? Yeah I skipped that one because it was so stupid. Girl is potentially enthralled to work in a brothel against her free will due to dark magic? Obviously the first course of action is sleep with her!

Yup! See, I made the mistake of not skipping that one - partly because I didn't actually expect Geralt to screw her (I thought he'd dupe her to get her out of there or talk to her alone or something), partly because I was curious to see what would happen.

Surprisingly enough, the level of storytelling actually goes downhill from there (within that quest). It ended up resembling those really awful European 70s quasi-porn versions of Dracula.

EDIT: I realised the main movie I was thinking of was Warhol's Blood for Dracula, but still...

Wow. :\

wait, what's the sidequest? you trick a girl into being a prostitute? that's bizarre...

wtf there's so much sex is this game.

So remember Flying Hamster II from last year? The Kickstarter was sadly failing badly, but somehow they managed to get picked up by a publisher (FDG Entertainment) anyway. Fantastic news, right?

But now it gets... better? The game got renamed to "Monster Boy" (since the Wonder Boy / Monster World trademark is still registered) and will be a full-blown spiritual sequel to the Wonder Boy in Monster World franchise, and they got the original creator of the series involved too. Awesome. I'm still kinda sad that we won't see FH II, but it seems they'll keep those animal transformations in some form or other in the final game, according to the latest KS update and this teaser on the website. And well, I can't remotely be mad at a new MW-like game. And the art really looks like Monster World games in HD which is a good thing:









Also, Michiru Yamane is still on board.

Regarding that Blue Eyes quest:



I definitely won't go to the ends of the earth to defend The Witcher as being totally sexually progressive stuff, and there's *definitely* some raunchy T&A stuff going on in it, but I don't think this particular quest anyway counts quite as "go fuck sexy ladies because male gaze!" type stuff. I mean, I was basically playing the game with exactly that pervy mindset and it didn't play out like my pervy approach had hoped for, at all.

Monster Boy looks really neat....

I'm just surprised by how much sex is in the game...really just find it odd.

Witcher 1 is relentlessly, unforgivably sexist (although not directly misogynistic, I suppose). Witcher 2, on the other hand, isn't at all.

Speaking of Witcher games, I watched a recent interview with Kevin VanOrd (Gamespot's best reviewer) and he said that The Witcher 2 played far better with a controller plugged into your computer than using the standard M+KB. I thought you guys said playing with that control set-up was super clunky or something...?

@iamntbatman:

So you have to screw said girl to...what..."test to see if she's really a whore"?

You have to screw the girl because you're apparently roleplaying a brainless sex addict.

Wait, are we talking about Witcher or Fate/Stay Night? Because it could be both.

Yeah, it is. I have absolutely no idea why he'd say that. Unless the game got a major patch or he's referring to some sort of mod I don't know about, but the normal game with a controller is terribly clunky and you can tell the inventory/skill/etc. UI is made for a mouse. If I could have switched on the fly between controller for combat/exploration and mouse for the UI, I'd have done that (like I did with Deus Ex: HR, I used the mouse for the hacking mini-games and the controller for everything else), but the game locks you into using only one at the same time and it was pretty bad.


I, for one, am thoroughly unsurprised.

I think it was really more just shitty writing on display than an insidious perpetuation of rape culture. Even after the so-called "Enhanced Edition" was released (where they re-wrote and re-recorded 1/4th of the game's substantial dialog), Witcher 1 was still pretty poorly written except for the stuff that came directly out of the Witcher novels. It's important to remember that the game was mostly written by game developers, not professional writers. The game is indeed sexist but it's sexist in the same way Connery-era James Bond is sexist. Thankfully, for TWitcher2 they hired a bunch of new, professional writers and it most definitely showed.

Also, it's funny because I long thought Witcher 2's clunky inventory menus on PC were designed specifically FOR consoles in mind, as did many others (even prompting many PC users to accuse CDP of using them as beta-testers for the X360 version). It's rather amusing that wasn't the case here.

Didn't Frog just get Witcher2 on X360? What are his thoughts on the controls?

The two are not mutually exclusive. The latter does not need to be intentional after all.

So, on NeoGAF they have voting threads for the best game of the 6th generation (which they define as Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/Xbox, GBA, and PC from years 2000-2005, arbitrary but necessarily so). I think Resident Evil 4 or is going to win this one (though I disagree myself, I didn't even put it in my top ten but it was among my honourable mentions), though Metal Gear Solid 3, Metroid Prime and Half-Life 2 are popular choices as well. What about you guys? This generation is well over and we've had time to let it sink in. Here was my list, though I kinda cheated on #1 (shh don't tell) as I technically only played the demo of this version, but I genuinely like that game best out of the list and it's eligible, so...

1. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (Dreamcast version)
2. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
3. Silent Hill 2
4. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
5. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
6. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
7. Resident Evil Remake (Gamecube version)
8. Suikoden III
9. Legacy of Kain: Defiance
10. Guilty Gear XX

Honorable mentions

x. Suikoden V
x. Golden Sun I and II
x. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (also: Aria/Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin)
x. Panzer Dragoon Orta
x. Resident Evil 4
x. Skies of Arcadia Legends
x. Odin Sphere
x. Splinter Cell
x. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
x. Beyond Good and Evil
x. Wild ARMs: Alter Code F
x. Wild ARMs 3

Explanation for each choice can be found here, if anyone cares. So what say you, M-A? Top 10 best games of 6th gen?

Also a similar thread was made for best Soundtrack for that same generation. Here's my top 10 (details and samples for each game can be found here):

1. Guilty Gear XX
2. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
3. Wild ARMs: Alter Code F
4. Panzer Dragoon Orta
5. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
6. Wild ARMs 3
7. Golden Sun
8. Soul Calibur II
9. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
10. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

I'm currently playing through Symphony of the Night for the first time. After years of sighing at the ebay prices, the fact that Xbox 360 owners had access to it and PS3 owners didn't and abstaining from playing it on an emulator because my one experience of doing so involved a bad ROM (the music kept cutting out, that shit's not on), I only recently discovered it was made available on PSN over two years ago.

What a beautiful game. It's possibly the most hyped PS1 game (at least one them), so not much needs to be said.

I have only a couple of complaints: 1) giving the player the ability to back-dash but not forward-dash was a bad shout. Doesn't ruin the experience, but doing some sort of hyper-moonwalk all over the castle feels a bit silly. 2) I'm in the inverted castle now, and the bosses are still far too easy. I guess it might be a different story if I attempted to fight them without having collected so much gear, but so far, it feels sort of like when you fight a Megaman boss with the right weapon.

A while ago I posted about my rage that was induced by unknowingly getting the bad/easiest ending in HoD, and the same damn thing happened again with this game. Made myself a cup of coffee, sat down and got comfy, turned on the PS3 anticipating several hours of demon slaying, and about five minutes later the credits were rolling. At least it was easier to figure out what had happened this time.

Has anyone played Harmony of Despair? It seems like a very odd addition to the series. I never play online multiplayer, which seems to be the main appeal, and I'm wondering if the single player is worth buying it for.

Am I the only one who has this sinking feeling that a lot of sleeping giants are going to awaken at this year's E3? It seems as though the current generation has been building up since late 2013 and is finally going to explode at the convention next year. As we all know, activity has been pretty unimpressive on the Xbone and PS4 so far.

To be totally honest I'm not going to bother really trying to research the shit out of this topic as that would just be massively time-consuming for me. I also never had a PS2 so that's obviously a huge chunk of that generation that I pretty much missed out on. The ordering on this list is fairly arbitrary, and apart from some obvious giant favorites I tried to include some games that I really loved but maybe didn't quite get the attention I think they deserved.

1. Half-Life 2 - Probably my favorite FPS of all time and one of the greatest video games ever made, if you ask me. Incredibly immersive, wonderfully realized world, stunningly gorgeous, excellent voice cast, really satisfying weapons and combat, great level design. And Episode 2? Holy shit.
2. World of Warcraft - I know MMO's are mostly disliked 'round here, and the game probably did get really fucking stupid later, but I would be completely full of shit if I didn't include this game. I sunk countless hours into vanilla WoW, including shitloads of progression raiding, a whole lot of PvP, some excellent socializing and hijinks and all-around good times. I never played an MMO before this one but basically this was the definitive experience for me - scratched tons of itches all at once, like loot chasing, min/maxing, socializing with other nerds, being competitive with something I was actually good at, beating difficult challenges with large coordinated groups of players.
3. Diablo II + Lord of Destruction - So. Many. Loots. I don't even want to think about the number of hours I put into this game. One summer in high school I was supposed to be helping my friend build a patio and a big brick planter in his back yard, but we'd do maybe half an hour of work then jump straight into Diablo 2. Frenzy barb master race!
4. Resident Evil 4 - Not too many games have been so good that when I beat them, all I wanted to do was jump immediately into a second playthrough. Absolutely ludicrous plot, trademark cheesy/awful voice casting, zombies, zombies, zombies. The total control overhaul was awesome and while I was kind of sad to see the wonderfully rendered backgrounds from the REmake and RE:0 get left behind, the actual gameplay just took massive leaps forward. Really great pacing and level design, cool enemies, fun weapons.
5. Halo 2 - Despite the backtracking, repetitive gameplay, bland environments and weird floaty controls, the first Halo was a really enjoyable game for me, and the second really honed things to perfection. The campaign was really good and featured a lot of really great setpieces and much improved level design over the first game, but the real gem of course was multiplayer. I never really got into actual Xbox Live multiplayer but 8-player team deathmatch in a basement full of nerds was goddamn glorious fun.
6. Metal Arms: A Glitch in the System - Now that I've finally played a Ratchet and Clank game, the influence of that series on this game is really pretty obvious, but nonetheless I thought it was really great fun. It's basically the same sort of style: action-packed 3rd person shooting with zany upgradeable guns, a bit of platforming and some hilarious plot action. The multiplayer was a shitload of fun, too. Too bad this never got a PC port or I'd play it right now.
7. Ninja Gaiden - Yeah, yeah, I still haven't played any of the Souls games for the definitive hardcore melee combat experience, but goddamn, Ninja Gaiden. This game was so ridiculously punishingly difficult but immensely rewarding at the same time. The combat was just ludicrously visceral but extremely tight and responsive. Button mashing got you dead quick, the platforming bits were really fun, and the enemies and weapons and whatnot were all awesome.
8. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door - Seriously one of my favorite RPG's ever. Really wonderful, hilarious writing, beautiful art style, and really addictive timing-based combat. It's all turn-based JRPG-ish stuff but individual attacks benefit from really spot-on player input to make things more exciting. Probably my favorite Gamecube exclusive.
9. Freelancer - While this game is far from perfect, in the years since I first played it I'm constantly on the hunt for a spiritual sequel that fulfills all of the promises this game made. Two things about this game really make it stand out for me: one is the simple fact that all spaceships in it go the same speed. This seemingly minor tweak largely removes speed as a factor in ship-to-ship combat, which increases the importance of things like player skill, maneuverability and effectiveness of weapons. The other factor is that the game plays absolutely wonderfully with mouse and keyboard, which gives it a huge leg up over other space sims I'd played before that basically required a joystick to be playable. Action-packed and arcadey in just the right doses, this is pretty much the definitive space sim for me.
10. Burnout 3: Takedown - Despite the fact that this game has a mostly obnoxious soundtrack and a ridiculously obnoxious bro announcer, it's probably my favorite racing game of all time. It's about as arcadey as you can get outside of Mario Kart and is maybe even more arcadey on the whole. Sure, the actual races were a shitload of fun and the takedowns were endlessly entertaining, but the real gem was the crash mode puzzle levels where you had to skillfully wreck your car into busy intersections to try to cause as much damage as possible. Blow up all of the things!

Honorable mentions:
Deus Ex + Invisible War (I played the second one first, so it wins more nostalgia points)
Custom Robo
X-Men Legends I + II
Resident Evil: 0
Super Smash Brothers: Melee
Halo
Ico
Cubivore
Metroid Prime I + II
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Serious Sam
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II
Jade Empire
Dungeon Siege
Animal Crossing
Psychonauts
Hulk (the Radical Entertainment one)
Soul Calibur II
Viewtiful Joe
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
Doom 3
Fable
Max Payne I & II
Otogi I & II
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
The Simpsons: Hit and Run

This game is nowhere near my top ten list for that gen, but I'll admit I laughed way harder than I should have at running over Flanders. Over and over and over again.

Changing subject, Stalker: SoC is fucking sick. Most of you have played it so I won't bother talking too much about it, but, damn. One of the most immersive games I've played. This is going to be a fun ride.

What mods are you running it with?

Just the one you recommended for now, I want a normal run first before I fiddle too much with it.

Hooray! Yeah, it's by far the best for a first time playthrough. Very few of the core mechanics are changed from vanilla SoC; it's primarily just texture/lighting/sound upgrades as well as an insane amount of bug/crash fixes.

That's what I read. The main selling point for me were the fixes, I don't mind graphics too much.

Anyways, it has been a cool experience so far. I may have wandered into some place I shouldn't have because I'm dying a lot more than I did before. I really can't get past the bastard, I'm going to have to check a walkthrough to see if I've walked into a hornet's nest.

Hah, yeah, not really top ten material but I had a ton of fun playing it. Basically it was way more fun than GTAIII, which it was basically a parody of. Cletus forever!

Nochielo, make sure you have a go with Autumn Aurora mod at least once - that thing is a beast. I'd also avoid Complete mods since they water down the whole experience.

So now that we know which PS2 games are worth playing, can someone shoot me some PS1 recs? Anything's fine except fighting games and round based combat. Thanks in advance.

Top ten of 2000-2005? I'll bite:

Psychonauts
Anachronox
Temple of Elemental Evil
Baldur's Gate II
Syberia
Gothic II
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Myst III: Exile
Bridge Commander

I also enjoyed VTM: Bloodlines, Rome Total War, Dungeon Siege and a few others.

Looking at that list it's definitely not my favorite period, at least on PC. As I recall it was a big time for FPS and RTS, two genres I'm not very keen on, and the worst time ever for adventures.

One of these days I'll pick up a used 6th gen console and play all the gems I missed from that time, as there looks to be some good ones.

What have you played or are looking for?

@batman: Good list. Have you played Devil May Cry 1/3 though? I'm all over Ninja Gaiden's nuts myself, beat it on very hard, got very far in the second tournament (that is completely lost in time and not playable again sadly, this is the one that replaced all enemies. I think black ninjas were in the starting stage and the rest were replaced by cat people things, it was bonkers hard). Too bad I couldn't get into the sequels at all. Ninja Gaiden 2 on the 360 was insanely unplayable and a broken mess, awful framerate, bad camera angles, both of which I rarely complain about in games. I didn't care enough to try the Sigma version on the PS3. I played the demo for the third game and just didn't care.

But yeah, as much as I love Ninja Gaiden, I think I like Devil May Cry even more, and that's with no nostalgia attached really since I finally just played those with the HD trilogy release. DMC3 is pretty much Japanese action game God level perfection. God Hand is even more ridiculous and complex, but a bit more arcadey. I like DMC3 more.

I wouldn't compare these games to the Souls stuff at all though. They're probably harder to me too since there's really no leveling up or grinding in most aspects, and they're just far more fast paced.

Damn I still need to get Bayonetta 2.

Having replayed Half-Life 2 just last year, it's flat out disturbing how well that one ages. It would easily be on my top 5 or so from the PS2 gen. Definitely one of my favorites period. I think the greatest thing about it that I haven't really seen since, is the masterful pacing. Once the action kicks in, it's fucking nonstop for the next hour or two, but right when you need a breather... it happens, and you have time to take in the dreary atmosphere and plot. Not a lot of other FPS's out there that give me that roller coaster feeling HL2 does.

So far I've only played Spyro. Next I'd prefer something more challenging though. I'm particularly interested in action games, platformers and racing games with multiplayer, but mostly I'm asking because I was 100% Nintendo camp during that era and simply have no clue about the popular IPs and must-plays.

See my post above (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, though I didn't actually give any description of the game...). If a 2D, vampire/castle themed action game with some RPG elements, Metroid style exploration and really addictive gameplay sounds good, get on it immediately. This is assuming you haven't played the GBA/DS Castlevanias which were based off this one (they're great too).

Trust me, it will not disappoint. Only problem is, unless you have a PS3, Xbox 360 or manage to find a good ROM (probably not hard, I was just put off), you're paying many more coins for a PS1 game than I ever would.