Feel free to look up my achievements if you want.

Cleared the Bloody Palace too. Looking at my list again, I guess the only thing I didn't really pull off was getting an S rank on all stages.

It's disturbing how much I bitch slapped DMC4.

In that case, your skills are immensly superior to even mine, good sir, and I congratulate you.

It's just weird how I got so obsessed over that game and replayed it several times over back to back for the difficulties and stuff. A rare thing for me to do thesedays, but I guess I had nothing else to play at the time or something haha. Like with DMC1, I started up hard but that damn dog was like in the second level and I got my ass handed to me, so not sure if I have the patience or willpower to master that game. It'll probably be the same case with DMC3, so beating it on normal or something will be good enough for me probably haha. I can tell MGS Rising will be a beast too, the combat seems really intricate and the demo was pretty challenging.

When you get to Mass Effect 3, get the From Ashes DLC, (free with first-run copies, might be a fiver on sale now), Leviathan, (ten or fifteen, integral to the ending parts), and the Extended Cut DLC, which is free. Apparently there is a final piece of DLC coming down the pipeline which is supposed to be a huge piece of content. I personally would do some multiplayer as well. It's basically a team-based horde mode where you can level up different classes and races, and then "retire" them to the fight against the Reapers and it'll add a great deal to your military strength number in the single-player portion. It's pretty awesome.

Also, I said some shit about Dead Space 3. I take it all back. The game is pretty great. It reminds me a ton of The Thing and the ending bits feel like the island end portion of Resident Evil 4. It's really awesome and I enjoyed the story immensely. Not sure if I'll replay it or not. The weapon creation stuff is fun to toy with, and I'd love to New Game + it, but eh.

Good to hear as I never read anything about those bits of the story. And I recall my friend raving about the multiplayer when it came out, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

I'm playing on veteran difficulty right now as a vanguard right now which is apparently one of the more difficult classes, though I haven't had too much trouble - Once I got used to the combat setup things went pretty smoothly; usually takes me 6 or 7 tries per boss fight. Interested to see how Hardcore and Insanity run if I ever decide to replay it. Current team so far is Wrex and Garrus, which my friends have taken to calling the "bro squad."

No, I haven't read that review. I don't really read anything review related from there.

I beat it on Insanity and it was pretty damn challenging, especially the end battle. Until I realized the enemies are unlimited and you just have to try to fight your way to the missile console to launch the missiles. Then it got a lot easier.

Ah ok then, I wrote a review there and used that exact wording in my title haha. Way for thinking on the exact same wave length then I guess.

Great minds and all that. I couldn't really describe it as anything else, from what I remember, it was one of the first titles that wowed me visual wise on the 360, and there was a lot of hype because of that. But the gameplay just wasn't substantial enough for me. The side objectives were mundane, the main assassinations weren't really that interesting, the combat broken. The following games are so much better.

Did anyone play this Dust - An Elysian Tale? What did you make of it?

It was one of the early ones to almost get me to buy a then next gen console, I'm glad I stole it on PC instead, because dayum, it sucked. The platforming elements were really well done, and the graphics were gorgeous, but the game was terrible. The whole sci fi element did nothing but ruin the mood, the combat was broken as you said, the assassinations were cruddy, and it was only half a bloody game. You can't end a game on a cliffhanger after 6 hours, that's not a full game.

Yes, awesome game, as well as possibly the most beautiful 2D game ever. Highly recommended.

So Tactics Ogre for the PSP is pretty neat so far. I just got to Chapter 2 and I'm getting addicted... I'm sure the game is very long, but I should probably slow down since I was mostly planning on playing it during my upcoming travels in a few weeks.

A few early impressions:

- Archers are OP, or is it just me? Trueflight + Tremendous Shot + Longbow is just ridiculous.
- Canopus is also OP, but I imagine that will change since he seems stuck with a shortbow. Still, flight + bow = lol
- The class levelling system is a bit weird, but I guess it has the advantage of having new recruits being less underpowered... still, I already have my quota of characters and the game is easy enough that I don't lose them, so I doubt I'm gonna hire new folks at the store.
- I really, really miss the "fitting room" from FFT. Gack. At least loading between the store and the menu is fast enough. But they should have added that in the remake at least...
- What do the "ingredients" do? I haven't found a use for them yet. I hope this game isn't too big on "crafting", that's so overused.
- Are there any classes that are unlocked only by reaching a certain level in a previous class, à la FFT? Or are they just unlocked through those tokens you buy?
- That battle with the undead and the necromancer was damn hard, I won but really struggled (I remember it being difficult on the original PSX one too). Then after that, every battle's been a breeze. WTF? I didn't even really grind, I just did 1 random battle (on purpose that is) because I wanted to reach level 5 to equip a specific weapon on someone, but that's it. I thought this game was supposed to be harder than FFT but other than the undead battle (which I still won on my first try, by having Canopus rush the boss, haha) it's not even close -- I imagine it'll get much harder in later chapters? I like that grinding isn't required, but on most of the battles I wasn't even in any danger whatsoever.
- The game is annoying sometimes. I chose to save Cistina (or something), but the damn guest AI made it difficult, I had to retry because the first time she just stupidly rushed the enemies and my healers never managed to catch up. In fact, it's the only battle I had to retry so far, and that's only because I picked the "save her" option AND the AI was stupid. Then,
- The end of chapter 1 is brutal (story-wise). I thought it was kind of shitty that
- It appears the Warren Report has extra cut scenes that are not in the main game? Referring to the end of chapter 1, It wasn't an essential scene but I'd have been sad to have missed it.

Assuming you wanted someone to answer some of those questions;

You're playing the wrong version if you want it to be hard Morrigan. I know I've said it plenty of times already, but the PSP version is practically a different game in itself with how much they changed with the mechanics and all. Ingredients? Doesn't ring a bell at all. In general everyone seems to say the PSP version is easy in comparison.

Canopus might seem OP, but not for long. All named characters are -nothing- compared to how hilariously OP they were in FT. Again, this could just be the PSX/SNES version though.

As hey mentioned, yet another plus to this game over FT to me is that there are multiple paths that are pretty dramatic and still lots of other decisions you can make later on that can go either way and be big deal breakers. The Chaos route (if you took the blame, this is the route you went) is the one I did and the one supposedly closest to FFT's in a way, then there's the Lawful route and Neutral. All routes eventually lead to a familiar chapter 4 (the final one), but yeah they change up 2-3 a lot apparently. So the game is bigger than FFT and has more replay value. I'm looking forward to replaying it someday going a different route.

The game took me 60 hours on the SNES. But I messed with the Hell Tower or whatever it was which is 100 floors of madness, only got to 40 or something before I got bored. Supposedly to get the best magic in the game you have to clear it... 3 times.

Well, I was vaguely aware of the PSP version being easier, but so far, it's pretty ridiculous. I don't mind something being easier more balanced than a dull grindfest, but again, so far, I failed only 1 battle, and it was due to me choosing to save an NPC and her AI being dumb; and I only struggled in 1 other battle which I still got on my first try. FFT was much harder than this without being an unbalanced grindfest, for instance. I would have preferred something closer to that. As it is, I mop the floor without breaking a sweat at the moment. And that's without using the hilariously broken tarot wheel (seriously, WTF were they thinking).

Also, I picked this version because I need portable gaming. If there's ever a way to play the original version that doesn't feature horrible framerate drops, I might give it another chance some day, but if it's too grindy... meh.

I found some of the "don't let an AI die" missions difficult, just because the ally AI can be really fucking stupid.

I figured a contributing factor to the lack of difficulty may be experience with SRPGs though. I know you've played a lot too Morrigan.

I don't think that's it. Fire Emblem is still maddeningly hard (and much more punishing) and even FFT pre-Orlandeau could get quite challenging, you'd be in actual, y'know, danger...

No idea what the tarot wheel is either, lol.

The PSX version is on the PSN store actually, could you play that via PSP?

I did grind a little, but only at certain points. The kicker is is that you could set both sides to CPU... so carefully picking classes/characters and knowing the mechanics of the game, it got kind of easy to abuse. I'd just do that, speed up the emulation speed for awhile and let it sit there for a bit. So I didn't really do any real work. I think the trick was to get a high leveled healer (forgot the class name), then build up another one, but you wouldn't level them up TOO much or else no other character could hit them. But if you had them 10-20 levels ahead the others, it was a hilariously easy way to power level.

Character levels could make or break most missions in the early half, but that wasn't really the case in the second half, when it was then just more about equipment, skills you had, etc.

The friendly AI was definitely stupid. There were a handful of characters I could have recruited at a few points, but they'd spawn across the map next to enemies and get killed instantly. It was pretty messed up. Sheer luck.

I don't think FFT was that hard. FE just feels like pure luck to me with its rock/paper/scissors gameplay, though I only played the GBA ones, always heard some of the others like the GC game were a bit more difficult. It was easy for me to get through these without losing any units. With SNES/PSX TO, I had to make sacrifices, lol.

Holy shit, Colonial Marines is getting just slaughtered in reviews. Pity, I had good hopes for it. I guess that's the result when you have parts of the game outsourced to like three different studios... Maybe you should concentrate on one game at a time, Gearbox?

The Tarot wheel is a feature in the PSP TO that... get this... allows you to undo as many as fifty (!!!) turns. For free (e.g. no punishment or cost or counter-balance for doing so). So if you screw up, you can just completely revert your mistake. It's retarded and game-breaking, and the game is already pretty easy! I don't use it, obviously, but the fact that it's a game feature is just... ugh. Modern games and their hand-holding...

FFT isn't that hard, no, but it does require you to be very tactical in terms of job and skill selection and if you're not careful you'll get your ass kicked on certain battles, assuming you don't grind of course (it can also happen even when you are careful), the game is fairly punishing if you screw up. In other words, on many battles (not all obviously) there is a sense of danger. In PSP TO, there is little to none.

I never played the GBA Fire Emblems, but the Gamecube one was so hard it was unbalanced: if you didn't level up your main hero to a powerhouse, you could be prevented from finishing the game. This happens to a friend of ours; his main character was fairly strong, actually, but still not strong enough to take on the last boss (only the hero could damage him), and there was no way to grind, so he never finished the game. Honestly that's just stupid and game-breaking, but even without that issue, the game was pretty damn difficult, though I don't remember if there was a difficulty setting or not. The Wii Fire Emblem seems similar to the CG one though I didn't see much of it. I played the DS one, which I believe is an enhanced remake of the first NES game, and it's pretty damn challenging. I didn't finish it yet, and probably won't, because it just felt a bit tedious at times (an almost non-existent story makes the sequence of battle feel a bit of a chore at times), but it's much harder than FFT and TO (PSP) for sure.

The hard part about the Fire Emblem games is that in the ones I've played at least the AI is fucking mean as hell, and ALWAYS tries to sneak through your lines and hit the weakest characters. This can be really irritating if you didn't notice a guy there, didn't properly take into account how far he could move, didn't realize how hard he would hit, etc. It's not so much *challenging* exactly, as just requiring trial-and-error before you figure out which enemies need to be dealt with first, how fast you can travel through certain areas, etc.

You were required to be pretty on-the-ball when it came to leveling your guys, but I certainly don't remember any problems like the one Morrigan mentioned. The game actually got easier as I went on, since I had done a good job of getting everyone leveled up and I had some really tough dudes on my team. It was most punishing when everyone was pretty wimpy and had low HP.

I played one of the GBA Fire Emblems on an emulator before, and yeah, it was punishing and difficult. You had to be exact with what you did, or you'd end up screwing yourself later. And like Morri said, since you can't go back and grind in those games, if you fuck something up you could end up jolly well screwed. I got myself boned when I (being a special kind of idiot who didn't know that one of the staples of the series was that if you lose a unit, they stay dead for the rest of the game) lost my winged ranged unit after she was ambushed by an archer I overlooked. "No matter" I figured, and carried on with the battle. It was the first unit I'd lost the entire game so I was still pretty chuffed with myself. It wasn't until the cutscene after the battle indicated that I wouldn't be getting her back and the next battle began that I realized how much more difficult shit was about to get. I'm not a "save after every turn" save-scummer, but I was save stating after each battle, so I couldn't go an undo my mistake. The fact that I'm just notoriously bad at strategy games discouraged me from continuing and losing any more characters. Plus I have a habit of starting like five games at a time so I just went to something else and eventually forgot about it.

I was enjoying it though, I think I'll start it up and try again while I still have the time, now with all this strategy game talk...

Halo 4's multiplayer is ass. The loadout system encourages camping and adds an annoying luck factor, and randomly getting blasted by a guy who spawned a rocket launcher is supremely irritating. Joining an in-progress game where you're down by 25+ kills (And your opponents all have snipers, rockets, etc.) is the exact opposite of fun! If you get killed by a vehicle, there's a decent chance you'll respawn with it killing you immediately!

What do you guys think of this Star Citizen game that's being made by that dude who did Wing Commander?

After playing through Borderlands 2 I have come to the realization that the last game that I truly was eager to play and discover the ending was Shadow of the Colossus. I have enjoyed games since then, just not as much. It's a bummer as I do spend a decent amount of my free time playing them to be not as engrossed by the stories and progression of the game. The Dead Space series has done a fairly good job of intriguing and motivating me to finish the games, but with the release of the third one I sorta feel indifferent about finishing the trilogy. I bought and installed Neverwinter Nights the other day because I have never played it and am hoping it lives up to the hype I always remember it had back when it came out. I also am thinking about buying Dark Souls seeing as how it has gotten such praise from you fellows. This probably explains why I have been on such a Dwarf Fortress binge as of late, no real story just endless digging and building.

Path of Exile has me hooked as much as Diablo 2 ever did. Counter-strike: Global Offensive would be a lot better if the ranking system didn't suck; can't STAND getting stuck with horrible teammates like five games in a row.

I changed my preorder to God of War. I downloaded it just to try it out..Well, my center speaker wasnt working, but I played a few minutes of it. It looks like a game released five years ago. The video settings are maybe half of what a typical pc game is now. Its really scary knowing that supposedly this looks way better on pc.

Based on various reviews, the dated graphics are the least of its problems....

Ah, Neverwinter Nights. I remember not being a fan of it back in the day, to say the least.

As for Dark Souls - I think I'd actually recommend against buying it if story is what you seek, as there very little going there storywise (you're basically playing an errand boy for characters you know and/or care very little about, while having little to no idea/context why are you doing what you're doing and why should you even bother). What the game excels in is the setting, but be prepared to do some heavy lifting to piece the lore together (as solid portions of it come in the shape of item descriptions and NPC interactions, a good chunk of which is could be easily missed if you're not paying enough attention). Not to mention the fact that some parts of the lore are of an entirely suggestive nature.

Tomorrow.

http://www.gog.com/

I'll buy it, again.

Hell yeah. Hopefully they use this patch:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140085

Just installed a few of the old Delta Force games, namely the first, Delta Force 2 and Delta Force Xtreme. Very fun, chilled stuff. Just load up a mission when you're bored and enjoy the amazing over-the-top screams of the enemy as they're shot. Ahh, so many memories. The maps are pretty cool, the wide open outdoors is a good setting for shooters I think. Too few take advantage of it.

Well so far NWN seems to be decent, I am going with a wizard for my first character. As for Dark Souls, I didn't know that about the story line. Maybe I will borrow it from a co-worker then before purchasing it. Thanks for the heads up.

The latest on The Last Guardian:



Still hope?

The reason Neverwinter Nights was so good was because of the campaign editor and the multiplayer. It brought the DnD experience to real-time multiplayer; one player could even be a Dungeon Master. It might be hard to get a multiplayer session going nowadays though.

Is it the type of game where it's impossible to beat going solo? I have nothing against mutliplayer RPG's, unfortunately my work schedule jumps around so much that trying to lay down a time to play would come last on my list. That's the main reason why I have never gotten into MMO's even though I would like to.

No, they wouldn't let you play single player if you can't beat it solo.

Good point, I just know you can do some MMO's single player until those giant bosses where it takes like 10= players to bring 'em down. As long as there isn't anything like that in store for me than I will keep plugging along.

If you have a good enough character you don't even need an NPC party to beat the main NWN campaign. I just plugged along with my dwarf fighter and solo'd everything, because I didn't want party members for some reason (I don't even remember why, I was a teenager and that was by no means the most questionable of my decisions).

That was literally the hardest part of the game for me on Insanity. Some classes definitely have it easier than others. My Engineer was having a hard time simply because the turret and drone didn't last long enough to be a distraction. My Sentinel got through the first time funnily enough.

Any word on what the new content is supposed to be?