The Doom talk earlier got me to buy the Doom Classic Complete collection on PS3. Like the 20th time buying it, but why not?

This was quite a deal though, it comes with Ultimate Doom, Doom II, Final Doom (TNT and Plutonia), No Rest for the Living, and Doom II Master Levels.

Right now I'm going through the Master Levels though and yikes, some of these are kind of awful haha. The Garrison, Titan Manor, eh.

Speaking of Doom, I recently picked up Doom 64 on the N64, complete. This is a game I hated as a kid, despite never having even played it, almost entirely because I loved Doom and did not own an N64. I quite like it, now that I'm finally able to play it. It seems weird, though, to play a Doom game without rockin' music (even though that's how Doom 3 is).

Morrigan, even then, a lot of those armour styles have absolutely retarded helmets. Any helmet that has significant protrusions isn't a wise idea. There is a reason the horned Viking helm wasn't used in combat, after all. All it takes is one halberd or axe blade to 'hook' a spike/horn and it'd take you completely off balance, possibly even break your neck if the strike had enough momentum. A lot of them also look too heavy/bulky to be truly viable, though I guess you can just shrug that off as if the user was strengthened through magic to be able to wear it effectively. Even then, speed and the ability to adapt quickly is more important than raw strength. A YouTuber named Skallagrim explains it all very nicely.

Anyway, I understand the idea of cool looking helmets, but unless it's a plume or something that isn't going to get in the way, then it gets a little irritating for me. Practical armour and weaponry is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, unfortunately.

I enjoyed Doom 64. Like you I hadn't played it until recently (well, a few years ago) and prior to this didn't have much interest in it because "it's not real Doom"/ I never owned an N64 . What felt weirder to me was playing a Doom game with those graphics. Some of the monster redesigns aren't great. The cacodemon for example, is just goofy as fuck looking. I did like the dark coloured imps though.

Can't remember if the soundtrack is the same or just in the same style, but I thought PSX Doom's spooky ambient music was really effective.

The overall lack of upbeat, melodic tracks like the first two games gave DooM 64 a great atmosphere. I loved it, it scared me to death when I was a kid, so in that sense it lived up to the original in my eyes.

Writers can't juxtapose madcap absurdity with sharp, tightly constructed character drama? You've apparently never watched any Scandinavian film ever . Although I think your average Christopher Durang play is far more representative of what Larian is attempting to do with their odd mix of humor and almost morose seriousness.

I certainly don't disagree with you on how distasteful boobplate is, of course, just that I think in this case it has less to do with Larian intentionally throwing it in their game to further objectify and subjugate women than it is merely their attempt to operate within the current frame of what-is and what-is-not considered acceptable in modern (and indeed, not-so-modern) fantasy entertainment.

Right now your insistence that you're "never gonna buy it" simply because it has some admittedly heinous concept art and promotional material seems a bit more short sighted and impetuous than you usually tend to be, especially considering that the focus of the game is on its turn based, tactical combat and specializations rather than its story, dialog and characters (which so far have still been pretty damned solid.) Give it a chance, I say! I'm still watching Game of Thrones even though the needlessly graphic sex and violence drives me up the wall at nearly every turn.


I'm actually running a playthrough of Divine Divinity right now, and it truly is a better Skyrim almost a decade before Skyrim. Fantastic stuff.

Any1 played some Goat Simulator?
Really didn't know what happened to me when playing the game but it is so odd and pointless that it is fun http://store.steampowered.com/app/265930/

Yeah, I know some outlets were giving that a lot of shit for being gimmicky, but I think it's a perfectly valid/fun time for $10, especially with all the mod-capable content.

Realistic looking armor can be cool and all, but I also have a soft spot for ridiculous helmets and giant pauldrons and stuff, so long as it happens in a reasonably fantastical setting (even a fantasy-ified version of some sort of real piece of history). Sure, there's room for a lot of really lame and ugly as fuck armor design, as evidenced by some of the stuff Morrigan linked, but there's also room for shit that looks cool, too!

Maybe later tonight I'll fire up my LotRO account and get some screen grabs of some of my toons, who at one time I spent way too much time finding the perfect cosmetics for...

Ah, here we go, found some screen shots I posted elsewhere:

Well, with fantasy, you could always paint the armour in any colour you want or with visual designs and shit. You could also have the armour be made out of fictional metals that give it different colour hues and stuff like that. I mean, imagine what some shining, glinting green chain mail would look like, as an example. You can make something look both fantastic and practical at the same time.

Yeah, but it's "fantasy." That's like saying that spacefaring vessels in sci-fi environments could just be spheres or cubes or something because there's no need for aerodynamics or wings or whatever in space, but sometimes spaceship design that has these features just straight up *looks* cool. When the setting doesn't already function with a lot of respect to realism, I just don't see the importance of demanding functional/practical armor.*

*Of course I'm not trying to justify things like boob plate or other skimpy female armor but rather just big, bulky or otherwise impractical armor.

I understand that. As I said, it's just a pet peeve of mine (and I just think oversized armour looks ugly). Anyway, for skimpy armour, it's the sexist attitude that is the problem. If you had a game with women running around half naked, but also had the men looking like Arnold in the Conan movies or cosplaying as Manowar, I don't think anyone would really bat an eyelid. But a lot of fantasy design women like that, but then put the men in somewhat practical-ish armour. That's the heart of the problem. What I don't get is why every woman in certain games need to be sexualised. There are plenty of opportunities to add in some sexy women where it actually makes sense (brothels, maybe some outgoing scantily clad townswomen et cetera) while keeping other women practical where it too belongs (such as soldiers, being most obvious).

Conan is a power fantasy, not so much a sexual fantasy, so that's not really equivalent to oversexualized female character design. (But I get your point.)

Cube ends up being the most badass-looking imo.

My girlfriend and I have beaten Donkey Kong Country 2 recently, and I am eagerly awaiting the other two in the mail. I think I had as much fun rediscovering and reminiscing over the game as I did playing it through the first time. I remember liking 3 the least as a kid (mostly because of Kiddy Kong ), but looking at it now I'm more eager to play it than the original.

You can apparently throw in the sounds over normal Doom on PC through source ports and such. It really completely changes the game. I kind of dig the really dark, mysterious sounding style it had going for it (PSX Doom is the same). But yeah, pretty different. With Doom I usually just turn the music off and blast metal when I play it. It's about the only game out there I like doing that with, lol.

Doom 64 is incredible though, I really dig it and Hell Knight's are the normal enemy in the second half, it gets pretty damn tough. The PC port Absolution is really awesome.

Well, it's not the only reason I wasn't going to buy it. I don't care about PC RPGs in general. I might have taken a look if the art direction was exceptional (or the reverse, if the combat interested me even if it had poor art), though, but seeing as it's such shite, then I literally have zero reason to play this game.

Oh man, Divine Divinty... I remember that demo on the 360. So bad it's good, almost.


Yikes, my eyes. Sorry you had to spend time on those. Though to be fair to you, those are just some shite graphics. Isn't there a new LotRO that looks like it's not from the stone age now?

Anyway, my toons are cooler than your toons, my dad can beat up your dad, etc.

Wish I had the PC version to take nicer screenshots... some day...

AHHHH! THE NEWEST VERSION OF DWARF FORTRESS HAS BEEN RELEASED!

Anyone else a fan? It's likely gonna be a buggy mess for the next little bit but I am 100% okay with that. The feature updates are just fantastic. Corpsefister cancels Life: Playing Dwarf Fortress.

Ok, maybe you will think these are cooler:

Yikes. That crushed black on the armour just looks so out of place.
Sorry, those are comical rather than cool.

That was Divinity II...

Oh, oops.

Yeah, the original Divinity II X360 port is notoriously dogshit, and it wasn't particularly great on PC either. However, the re-tooled, remastered (most every texture in the entire damned game was updated and/or fixed and/or de-crappified) and fully patched version, "Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga" (which was provided as a free update to people who had already bought Divinity II) was quite solid and worthwhile. Sad they sullied their reputation with their mediocre first stab at a fully 3D Divinity title, but at least they eventually got it right, and made amends for it the proper way. Apparently even the X360 Dragon Knight Saga was good as well, though I haven't played it and probably never will.

EDIT: Anyway, Divine Divinity is basically an homogeneous mixture of Diablo II and Ultima VII (in modern terms, think the breadth and replayability of Skyrim with actually challenging and not supremely min-maxable mechanics and waaaay less copypasta), and it's just about damned perfect, at least in its current state. Despite nearing its 15th birthday, it still looks fucking gorgeous thanks to its sprite-based characters and hand-drawn backgrounds, as well as support for pretty much every resolution that has ever existed. And it's like $6 on GOG and you could run it on a potato! Seriously, there's nothing to lose here.

That Dwarf Champion, gauntlets aside, looks alright though the cuirass/breast plate looks really odd on the lower half. Not a fan of the colours, but that's purely cosmetic. It's certainly not the worst armour design I've seen in fantasy games (thought the texture job leaves much to be desired). The Elf Hunter armour looks mostly fine, though I dare say it looks heavy and clunky as fuck for a hunter, who I gather is meant to be quiet, swift and nimble. Hardened leather or a coat of scale would be much more appropriate I think. Maybe some lamellar, which I think is an armour style vastly underrated in fantasy. It looks amazing.

But it still has these animations.

I believe that's primarily a limitation of the Gamebryo engine, but yeah, most (albeit not all) animations still suck. Game is still great looking though, provided you have the rig to handle. Screenshot here (this is literally what it looks like on a decent PC).

Hah, well, I could've put the hunter in leathers (as that's what sort of armor he actually wears) but I used the cosmetic system to put him in that full plate. That platemail cosmetic was only available on one set of difficult-to-obtain raid armor that I got on my dwarf champ, and the hunter, being just a lowly alt, got his sweet rare cosmetics passed down to him when I changed the cosmetics around on the dwarf champion.

The hobbit burglar posted above is meant to be like a crazy woods-dwelling survivalist rather than a typical decked-out-in-black thief like every other burglar in the game.

I can definitely recommend Star Ocean: The Last Hope International under the following criteria:

-Liked Tidus from Final Fantasy X, but felt a game should have a main character that feels even more sorry for themselves? Edge Maverick is the man for you. Why did Mass Effect have Renegade and Paragon dialog options? Where's the do nothing and cry option for those of us who want our starship captains to whine?

-Wasn't Selphie from Final Fantasy VIII just the cutest? Awwww.......Kawaii ^_^ Tee hee *giggles* Don't you want the same thing but more pint sized with worse dialog and bad voice acting? Allow me to introduce Lymle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-oLBkSxrho

Good news is the AI makes other characters helpless just like Ni No Kuni, so you have to use her on boss fights to make sure everyone's healed.

-If you're a fan of the few hiccups in Dark Souls 2's hit detection, but want to see it throughout an entire game, then definitely pick up Star Ocean. You'll get the added challenge of your clean hits on an enemy being ignored while they can whale on you all day.

It's nice that you can switch main characters but feel forced to use Reimi since her bows are safe. The illusion of freedom is always enjoyable in games.

-Wasn't it cool how Final Fantasy XIII let you lust after young girls? Why not try Vanille with a pinch of beastiality?

Star Ocean caters to that with Meracle.




If you're really pleased with the direction Final Fantasy went, then Star Ocean is definitely the ideal game.

Eugh. The only Star Ocean I've played was the one for PS2 ('Til the End of Time, and considering how long it is, that's truth in advertising), and while most of the characters were fairly unbearable, it at least had Wendee Lee-person and Crispin "Our Lord and Savior" Freeman-person, the combat system was fun, and the soundtrack was neat. But that clip was just painful to sit through, especially since Laura Bailey is clearly slumming it as that purple chick. Come on, Laura. You're better than this tripe.

New Bundle is out. Too bad I've already played, like, all of them. Still might check it out since many of those playthroughs were from not-terribly-legit purchases...

Anyone else getting this?

Hmm...might consider paying $6.78 for the Bioshocks and Spec Ops. But I'll wait until after my upcoming interview, to ensure I'll not be shooting myself in the wallet.

Yes, right now, $7 is enough to be considered a major purchase.

So, I wasn't aware of this until just a few days ago, but WayForward (makers of Contra 4, Shantae, Mighty Switch Force, and plenty of licensed properties) were tasked with creating the 3DS version of the latest Transformers game. While the console / PC ones are third person shooters, WayForward opted for a turn based strategy game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVRzc9X7Ksg

I've only played a few missions so far but it seems pretty solid. It's easy to make a Fire Emblem comparison but that's not exactly correct from what I can tell so far. It's more like Advance Wars, I suppose, but when you attack, the battle plays out in a three turn fight where you pick an ability to use from initially for but apparently later 8 (as you unlock them). You seem to have a lot of units to pick from (eventually) and you can equip them with certain support abilities. I haven't gotten too far into it, but it seems promising.

I haven't seen this posted.
http://www.siliconera.com/2014/07/08/fi ... -warriors/

It looks like they're just saying "Fuck the timeline" at this point.

I don't think they once would have considered this one would be canon whatsoever?

Damn can't stop thinking about Shovel Knight though. GOTY.

That final boss theme completely blew my face off. It was like FFIV all over again or something. If you don't mind being spoil, feast your ears:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txQwfMGw3Ss

Fez? Bastion? Cave Story? Fuck em'. SHOVEL KNIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!

With all of the previous choices (Agitha, Midna, Zant, and whatnot) it seemed like a post-Twilight Princess game.

Plus knowing Nintendo they'd try to shove it in their already convoluted timeline anyway.

x 1000
That game is literally my worst nightmare. Good fucking gods. Why are you torturing yourself? Surely you have better console games to play?

Hyrule Warriors isn't canon.

You can tell because Zelda isn't helpless.

Bummer. I replayed Star Ocean 2 a few years back and still found myself enjoying it. I played about 30 minutes of Till the End of Time and never got back around to playing it. I still have the New Vegas DLC to get to, Skyrim to eventually play, Dark Souls II once I get over my crying and whinging, Borderlands 2... to say nothing of my penchant for playing basketball or baseball games. Hell, I'll probably want to replay Fallout 3 or New Vegas at some point. I don't think I'm ever going to get around to playing a Star Ocean game again, and it seems like I'm not missing out on anything.

Crazy how timelessly visceral Doom is. Just watched some of those PSX vids.

Divine Divinity was great, back in my pothead days I'd get stoned and play it for hours. Some of its music is stuck in my head. I've got the new one, but I only played for a few minutes, gotta give it more of a go.

The only games I haven't played are the ones you need to pay 20& for.
Knowing Steam, the new X-COM will be sub 20$ soon enough and Bioshock's gameplay looks like typical console fps garbage to be honest.
Is the story and setting really worth it?

Is The Darkness II any good? I thought the first one was pretty neat but I never read anything about the second. If it's anywhere near the caliber of the first game, it would definitely be worth a buck or whatever, though.